|
Bureau (part 1)
"Anyone who has not worked for them simply cannot understand them." Half past eight; the bedside alarm woke Kelanie up with the sampled victory-screech of some carnivorous xenoform. She was up immediately, eyes wide, fingers clawing the pillow-pads, gasping with shock as the subconsciously-induced adrenalin shivered through her system. As she calmed down, her pupils dilated out from crisis-induced pinpricks, her breathing and pulse rates returned to normal, and she wondered, not for the first or last time, if life was like this in the private sector. She scrambled off the bed as it began to deflate and retract into the wall. Her personalised holographic news service activated as she stepped into the shower. It took the appearance of an old man dressed in a monk's habit, who bore a strong resemblance to William S. Burroughs. It leered at her, and croaked, "Rough night last night?" She pushed the oxygen control with the heel of her hand, took a few deep snorts. Under the stream of high-pressure hot water, she soaped herself and replied, "Mind your own ratty business, line-noise. What's on the agenda for today?" The news laughed, wheezing and rasping. "Come on, seriously! I refuse to believe that you don't remember the event you have been awaiting, for - how long has it been?" She turned off the shower, snorted some more oxygen and, with a warm towel over her shoulders, found some clean underwear and a long jumper she had only worn three times since it was washed last. "Three months. You can assume that I've been on the ExPort waiting list for so long that I've forgotten where I'm supposed to be going. Put on some music and refresh my memory." The news spoke over the soft sounds of a song by This Mortal Coil: "You are due at the NoSaNoOs ExPort at nine point five, to check in for your pre-flight examination and briefing." Kelanie, vigorously towelling her hair and wondering if she had time for her pelvic exercises, looked up. "The ship's in, is it?" "Due to arrive this afternoon, departs for Copperla, Syndaine and other points towards galactic centre at eleven-fifty this morning." She smiled wryly. "`Other points towards galactic centre', eh? As a government agency, aren't we entitled to more detailed information than that?" The news lowered its simulated holographic eyebrows and intoned, "The NoSaNoOs still refuse to recognise the Interim Government. It is their opinion that, since the Maracites have only been in office for ninety-two years, that they cannot be treated seriously." Kelanie found one of her mech boots, and, while looking through the closet for the other, retorted, her voice muffled, "Stuff `seriously'... `decency', or `common courtesy' would be nice." The news, which was a sub-contracted system of the NoSaNoOs, replied in a carefully neutral tone, "I will remind Miss Camden that the NoSaNoOs still regard humanity as little better than animals, and that NoSaNoOs transport services are supplied to xenoforms with a much greater level of social sophistication than humanity, with an equal level of disregard for what you term `decency' or `common courtesy'. All are Equal. None Is Favored." This was said with the assurance of an aphorism. She said nothing as she found her other boot. She sipped lemyn juice from the dispenser as she cold-booted her boots; they shuddered, purred and beeped as their diagnostic routines finished. "Okay. Any more on my assignment?" "Nuh-uh." "Sigh... okay, where did I leave my notepad?" "I think it's under the heap of clothes next to the dryer." She retrieved it, and tapped the function key to open a channel to the transport pool. "Single to the NoSaNoOs ExPort by nine point five." While waiting for a response, she threw some more clothes in a mesh bag. The xenoform in the Transport department gurgled back at her, and a touch of exasperation sharpened her tone. "Is there anyone down there who speaks Anglic?" "Foogle." replied the xenoform. "Oh, line-noise." she retorted.
NoSaNoOs: (from "Nos-a-Nos", pre-reconciliation Scriptive, "Circle within the Circle") Dominant ruling bureaucracy controlling more than ninety thousand systems by virtue of monopoly on information, transport and energy-conversion technology. She climbed into the transport through the roof-hatch and slid into the seat. The driver said in a buzzing accent, "Of destination, be in state of definition." She replied, "NoSaNoOs ExPort, and put some wings on it, hey?" As she buckled the safety belt, the driver's head rotated one hundred and eighty degrees, and she found herself looking into the faceted eyes of something resembling a six-foot stick insect. "Of wings, be in state of indicating correct placement." it chirred through its cheap translator. "Just drive, okay? The NoSaNoOs ExPort." The driver slowly waved its antennae, staring at her, and then turned back to the control column and instrument panel. As the transport lifted from the ground and into the stream of AV traffic overhead, the driver hit a key on its heads-up array with a mandible, and the vehicle was filled with raucous mariachi music. Gritting her teeth, Kelanie paged through the Species ID section of her notepad, until she identified the driver as a lower-caste Kaelen. Reading further: ... when requesting respectful silence for the involved Hive Separation ritual, the Kaelen Queen emits a pheromone (scent chem.ref 976541) and emits a traditional cry of distress screech-tone (hear aud.ref 976537) She patched the audio reference through to her notepad, held it up so that the point speaker was just behind the Kaelen's backwards-pointing resonator-plate, and keyed it. It played louder than she expected, and the transport almost fell out of the traffic stream as the Kaelen frantically chewed at the heads-up array controls. The music cut off in mid-trumpet-bray. "Of interpersonal relationships, being placed in situation of obligation due to social error." She kept reading until she had finished the section on the Kaelen lower caste. When the transport had settled on the concrete pad at the southern edge of the NoSaNoOs ExPort, she climbed out and tapped the driver's side window, which lowered with the grinding sound of poorly-lubricated biotech fairings."Of interpersonal relationship, emphasis! placed in situation of obligation due to error," the driver emphasised She held up her right hand, made a fist, splayed her fingers and said, "Of large-array social status, in state of adjusted obligation," which meant, in effect, that humanity was in some way indebted to the Kaelen and this exchange had mitigated that debt somewhat. She smiled, and the Kaelen's antennae flattened out. She was impressed; here was a lower-caste xenoform that could interpret human facial expressions. Most xenos didn't bother; this Kaelen was probably a university student. She strolled across the expanse of concrete, swinging the mesh bag, shading her eyes from the morning sun with her forearm. Apart from the control/customs bunker, the ExPort resembled a series of linked concrete ovals. As she crossed the lower of six outer landing pads, she half-expected to see a cricket pitch set in the middle. She was met at the warehouse-sized door of the bunker by a boy who appeared to be about twelve years old, wearing bright green shorts and t-shirt, and skate-board pads on his knees. He brushed aside a wayward fringe of carrot-coloured hair, and waved to her. "Miss Camden? Bureau of Procuration? Hi, I'm Denkaster, Port Administrator." She followed him into the open-space office and took the seat he offered her. "Do you have your medical records handy?" he asked, sorting through a pile of fiche plates on his cluttered desk. She nodded, and touched the Match Fields key on her notepad, which emitted the familiar screeee sound of notepads matching carrier frequencies. While the notepads exchanged handshaking signals and then information, she asked, "Do you know where this transport is going? after Syndaine, that is?" Denkaster sighed, found the fiche he was looking for and replied, "'fraid not... you know the NoSaNoOs, never tell us anything. Although I do have some notes from your section head on Syndaine that relate to your assignment... your notepad should have them now." She thanked him absently and started paging through file areas looking for the information, which had been, as usual, mis-keyed as "corrections to existing documentation". Sitting in the departures lounge, Kelanie read the notes. She was expected to travel to `Millimillenary' (a central exchange for passengers of the NoSaNoOs, ninety-five light years away), and to `entertain' an executive of the Tendeysharhi, a species she had never heard of. In fact, her notepad had never heard of them either. "Wonderful. How the hell am I supposed to work with a sentient that I've never seen before?" Reading on, she noted with rising indignation that Starkey, her section head, expected her to interview the members of the Tendeysharhi entourage, with a view to picking up the proper etiquette and approach. Angrily, she punched Starkey's phone number into her notepad. Starkey answered, though as usual, she employed video filters to prevent anyone from identifying her. In a weary voice, Kelanie asked, "Okay, Robyn, what's the big deal? How am I supposed to make it with an alien that the Registry hasn't even heard of? Line-noise, I don't even know if it's an oxygen-breather!" "Kelanie, dearest... how are you?" Robyn's filtered voice only just matched the aliased squares that represented her lips, and again Kelanie wondered if she was working for an artificial intelligence. If this was the case, Kelanie was not surprised that Starkey wanted to keep it quiet, given the NoSaNoOs' restrictions on machine-based consciousness. "I'm just a tad apprehensive about giving a blow-job to something which may or may not have a dick, that's all!" Kelanie replied sarcastically. Robyn held up a hand, palm out. It appeared as a mass of pale pink squares on the display projected by Kelanie's notepad. "I know, I know... this was dumped in my lap, and I don't know any more about it than you, although we're laying even money that it has something to do with the Humanist faction in the Maracites-" Robyn stopped when she saw the `I don't want to get drawn into another tedious political argument' expression on Kelanie's face. "- and... well, at the base level, it's to seal a trade agreement with the Tendeysharhi. What else can I say?" "You could tell me something about Millimillenary, for a start... have you ever been there?" Kely thought she detected a smile on Robyn's face. "Once. There are other humans there, I believe. And despite what you've undoubtedly heard of the NoSaNoOs, you won't be treated like a sardine in a tin. Their ships are often nearly empty, when heading back towards the Centre." Kelanie tilted her head to one side, staring at the surrealist image that her notepad was showing. "Robyn... what do you think about the NoSaNoOs?" This time, she was sure that Robyn smiled, before giving the Bureau salute (pressing the back of her hand to her lips) and hanging up.
The Parkry are a biological anomaly; hive creatures, evolved from a much smaller insectoid form, developing lungs to replace the smaller-scale spiracle system, and yet not developing voices to go with them. They rely completely on written or electronic means of communication, and are thus ideally suited to the administrative positions that they occupy in the NoSaNoOs' structure. They are entirely pacifistic, having no territorial imperatives beyond a vague sense of duty to the hive; an evolutionary memory that has been, for the most part, replaced with a sense of duty towards the NoSaNoOs. She didn't hear the ship arrive, being absorbed in her search through the ExPort's closed database for information relating to the Tendeysharhi. Looking out of the warehouse-sized doors, she noticed that the sky now appeared to be overcast. However, sunlight glinted off the metallic edges of a nearby building, and she saw signs of activity around her. She stood, stretched, and sauntered over to the nearest gate. Outside and overhead, she could see the bottom of some huge curved shape, patterned like stained concrete, slowly sinking to the ground. On the base of the ship, directly in line with the gate she stood in was an oval gap, about twice as wide as the gate, completely dark, as if filled with black glass. The glass appeared to melt from the centre towards the edges, and stevedores began shifting cargo trolleys. They took care to avoid the short figures dressed in dark grey that scuttled out on four legs from the rear of the ship's cargo bay. Kelanie knew them; Parkry, hive creatures who made up most of the administrative staff of the NoSaNoOs. One of them turned its blank, golden-eyed, mouthless face to her and beckoned with a three-jointed arm. It didn't wait to see if she followed, merely turned and trotted back into the ship. "This is it?" she peered into the round hatch, about a metre wide, with an expression of distaste. The silent Parkry glanced at her from underneath the brow of its curiously flattened head, pointed again, executed a 180-degree turn on its four stick-insect-like legs and left. She shrugged, hefted her mesh bag and climbed through. It was smaller than her apartment; spherical, lined with something like grey foam rubber. There was a faint smell of aphrodisia incense, as if the berth had previously been occupied by Kabouter-hippies. No bed, datapoint or light-source, apart from the sodium glow that came from the corridor. She sat crosslegged in the middle of the floor, tossed her mesh bag aside; it rolled down the curve of the room to rest against her leg. When she activated her notepad, she was surprised to find that the ship had a local data service, albeit a limited one, offering little more than expected departure time and a simple interactive map of the ship, with restricted areas marked by the NoSaNoOs segmented circle-starburst symbol. There were other areas in this data service to explore, but she decided to leave them alone for the moment, not through prudence in not disturbing the NoSaNoOs, but to leave her something to do during the trip, which would take between three and seven days, if the translation was accurate. According to the info postings from this system, the ship was under way, and had already left earth orbit. She felt no acceleration or other sense of motion; leaving her bag and fixing the berth's location in her backbrain, she decided to try and find a window. Robyn was right; the ship was almost deserted. In ten minutes' wandering through the series of corridors that radiated from a central shaft, she only saw four Parkry, who scuttled by, tacitly ignoring her, and something like a six-legged Afghan hound, which circled her while she stood stock-still, too cautious to make any possibly offensive moves. It stopped, looked up at her (this was the impression she got, though the xenoform lacked obvious visual organs) and then ran off. She breathed a deep sigh of relief, and then started looking for a toilet. She allowed herself a slight measure of distress when she began to suspect that the Tertiary language didn't even have a word that related to the concept of `toilet'. She eventually found a vague reference to an organic recycling service and proceeded to the map reference. It was a room very much like her berth, lined with grey sponge plastic, sealed with a weak field that contained the faint odour of chemicals and containing a water-filled pit. She wrinkled her nose in distaste, but after assuring herself that she was alone, proceeded to use the facilities. She then made her way back to her berth, with the firm intention of spending the rest of the trip in a state of low- metabolic-rate sleep. When she got there, she found a large cat in her berth. When she climbed in to the room, the moggy awoke immediately, fixed its emerald gaze on her and put its ears back. She froze. It looked like a very tall, thin, wiry humanoid covered with thick, banded grey fur and with strangely jointed legs. And a tail, which was now slowly lashing to and fro behind it. There were fluffy tufts of white fur poking out of its ears, and a mat of similar fur running down its chest. It yowled something, to which her notepad could only beep apologetically; fortunately, it had its own translator, which snarled something like Anyhah-araha eiyaha at her, followed by some sort of insectoid chittering. She spoke to the xenoform's translator. "Terrestrial Anglic, thank you." The translator, shaped something like a flattened bottle, made some purring noises, and then said in Anglic, "My room, my territory. I was here first. Mine." She pointed to her bag, which the xeno had apparently opened and gone through, spreading her clothes over the floor of the berth. "My bag. My property. It was here before you were, my claim to this territory." The xeno narrowed its eyes and growled softly. She continued, "I will call a Parkry, they will decide -" Tthe xeno yowled, and the translator interrupted hastily. "No, no, I am content to share. I will sleep in the middle. Do not make excessive noise or excrete on the floor." She was about to say something like well, just who the hell do you think you are, buster? when she remembered previous experiences with alien language translators, and she kept her silence. The Xenoform curled up into a compact ball, lashed its tail around it and closed its eyes warily. She sighed, and carefully lay down beside it, smiling bemusedly when she heard it start to purr. She composed herself and began the mental exercises to prepare for a period of extended sleep. She slowed her breathing, inserted some links into her sub-conscious to awaken her if her notepad should sound an alarm for any reason, and then drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep. She woke to find that the xeno had shifted and was sleeping with its forepaws across her hips, its head against the small of her back. The soft purring had deepened to a husky `brrr', and she woke fully when it gently butted its head against her back and made a small `riowr' sound. She tried to turn without moving her body from the shoulders down, and could see one large paw, the size of a tennis raquet, with three-centimetre-long claws extending and sheathing reflexively, making tiny indentations in the bare flesh of her hip. Proceeding with caution, she took the paw in her free hand and gently lifted it. The claws quivered, and then extended to their full five centimetres, clutching her hip in their broad span, the points of the claws sinking in a few millimetres. "Excuse me," she murmured. The xeno's translator ignored her. "HEY!" she shouted. The xenoform awoke with a start, digging its claws further into her hip. She twitched, but remained where she was. "Take your paw off me." The xeno's translator paused for a long moment, and then yowled at the xeno in its native language. The xeno sheathed its claws, flicked its ears back momentarily, and curled up again, excluding her from its personal space. She turned over, closed her eyes and composed herself for sleep again; within half an hour, the xeno had its paw on her hip again, whereupon they went through the same procedure; and again some two hours after that, after which she gave up and went to sleep in the passageway. She regained consciousness two days later, to visit the toilet again. She slowly stretched, licked her dry lips, and then noticed the xeno sitting curled up at her feet, like a doormat patterned in grey stripes, outside the berth. It was gazing at her intently. It yowled, and its translator said, "You sleep. Why?" "No food. Little water. Not hungry when asleep." The xeno's ears flattened when the translator reported this. It uncurled from its station at her feet, entered the berth (on all fours), and emerged with a bloody haunch of raw meat in its jaws. She went pale, and backed away slightly when the xeno offered it to her. It regarded her with an air of obvious surprise for a moment, waggled its ears and then tore into the meat itself, keeping a wary eye on her.
The Tendeysharhi are a classic example of parallel evolution, in that they resemble, superficially, large felines, and many feline traits, including an acute sense of territoriality, feline language structure (which tends towards subtly-intoned yowls and screeches) and a tendency to shed large amounts of fur at certain times of the year. The females are noticeably more violent and territorial than their mates. The Tendeysharhi did not develop a science sufficient to begin space exploration on their own; they were `apprenticed' to the Moridani before the Purge, and were allowed to join the NoSaNoOs as a subject race after it. The hatch melted away, and a breeze wafted into the entry hold, carrying with it the strange fragrance of another world. The light had a golden-bronze hue to it; the sky faded from a pale gold directly overhead to a curious yellow-green at the horizon. It reminded her of the patina found in the folds of old bronze statues. The sounds of dozens of different languages overlaid and formed counterpoint to the squeaks, pops, mellifluous surging chords and crashes of alien music. The air pressure seemed a bit higher than earth's; the gravity a bit less. There was definitely a higher oxygen content in the air, and she felt giddy as she danced down the exit ramp, resisting the temptation to swing her mesh clothes-bag. The cat-like xenoform raced past her on all fours, yowling as if its tail were on fire, and vanished into the crowd of Parkry who were rushing to get on board the ship. She ploughed a furrow through them and made her way to the customs hut, a pale blue geodesic dome with three triangular archways cut into it. Her giddiness was tempered by the sight of dozens of tall Plateau Bythians casually lounging around the ExPort, all of them toting dull grey plastic weapons. She entered the dome, and felt the itchy tickling feeling that accompanied mass-spectronometric scanning as she passed through the doorway. No immediately obvious alarms went off, so she assumed that the devices she posessed were within current NoSaNoOs levels of acceptability. She'd heard nasty stories of people who had tried to commute just before the last Purge, when the standard of Interdicted technology had been dropped while they were carrying things like empathic personality emulators and nano-gated NeuralNet arrays. She set her translator to `NoSaNoOs Tertiary', the language used to communicate with subject races (of which humanity was one), and entered the dome. There was a queue, but it was leading in the other direction, from the other side of the ExPort and into the ship. A smaller-than-average Parkry was propped next to a data-post, holding a vocoder hand-set and waving at her. She went over and sat before the xenoform, crossing her legs. The Parkry massaged the hand-set, and the data-post said something in Tertiary. Her notepad's translator responded immediately: "Query: Full Name. Origin. Purpose for visit." "Kelanie A'liiya Camden, Earth, Diplomatic Exchange." At this, the Parkry glanced over from the holographic output from the data-post. It squeezed the hand-set, keeping its glittering eyes on her. More Tertiary. "Expression of interest, your reference: Diplomatic Exchange. Query: Which Bureau." She sighed, safe in the knowledge that the translator would ignore it, and replied, "Bureau of Procuration." The Parkry seemed to lose interest. It gave her a plastic bracelet, studded with a pattern of metallic dots, and the data-post played a recorded message, in flat, unaccented Anglic: "This clothing is your identification while you are staying on Millimillenary. Do not lose it, sell it or exchange it for interdicted technology. You will not be allowed to leave the planet without it. It is resistant to all chemicals and temperatures above" (here, the post made a sound like a poorly-tuned radio), "and below" (a sound like a bass-pitched dog's whine). "Please note: it is not resistant to thermonuclear, fusion or ComonCurensy isotope detonation above the thirty megaton range. Put it on now." The Parkry was watching her again, so she wrapped it around her left wrist and pressed the ends together, which melded to form a single piece. "This clothing can only be removed by an authorised agent of the NoSaNoOs, on your departure from Millimillenary." The interview appeared to be over. She stood up, and wandered towards an exit, where small groups of Parkry were still queueing for departure processing. She fished the video-eyepiece (which she had not used since she last visited Japan) from a pouch in her bag and put on the headband, the eyepiece hanging over her left eye like a pirate's eyepatch. It made a tiny peep noise as it matched carriers with her notepad, and the view through the eyepiece blurred momentarily. One by one, as the processor in her notepad identified and translated them, various signs written in Tertiary were marked and translations were appended in the eyepiece's view. She spotted a data-post marked Free Information for the Newcomer and went over to it. She spoke to her notepad; "Excuse me? I need information." The data-post made pretty holographic moire patterns to indicate that it was thinking, and then replied, in Anglic, "Please be more specific." "I need to locate food, water and a place to sleep. I also need to locate other humans on Millimillenary, if there are any." Another pause, more moire-patterns, and then, "Food and water for humans can be obtained from the Human Embassy, at LFFRE-77153. No information regarding requirements for," and it quoted her words, playing a sample of her saying a place to sleep, "is available. You will find other humans at the Embassy." It displayed a map (which looked like it might have been designed by Piet Mondrian). Her notepad translated the text, and if she was any judge of distance, the Embassy appeared to be about seven hundred kilometres away from the ExPort. "Are there any places matching my requirements, closer to the ExPort? If so, please list the five closest, and the distance to them." Another pause, and then: "There are three. `Maracite Information Exchange Registry', LFFRB-77151, six hundred and ninety-three blocks from here to there, `Church of the SubGenius', LLFRB-77122, six hundred and fifty-one blocks from here to there," - another pause - "`Waddell's Emporium of Extremely Fashionable Attire and Quite Nice Ice Cream Parlour', NRNAL-10021, two blocks from here to there." These three were represented by tiny red inverted As on the map, two of them close to the Embassy, the ice-cream parlour so close to the ExPort that it appeared almost to be on the same block. She took a snapshot of the map with her notepad, expanded it until she could see enough details to find the ice-cream parlour and left the dome...
|
|||||
|
( top )
All work on this site is © Nikolai Kingsley unless otherwise stated. |