Learning the World

“Fortunately there are only a few eights of them,” said Lenoen. “A supply of stumblefruit has been set aside for their benefit.”

“Doesn’t it grow on the island?”

“A sour vintage,” said Lenoen. “The little carved idols are worth having, by the way. The prices drop on landfall.”

The originals of the carvings hove into view as the ship rounded into the harbour: on a slope that reached from the top of the cove to the lip of the plateau, gigantic statues, priapic or comic, leered down on the huddle of roosts around the tiny stone quay.

Sea beasts, like flitters but the size of a man, plump and streamlined, swimming with webbed feet and short fleshy wings, escorted the ship in and leapt for scraps. Kwarive was almost as delighted with the sight as Handful.

“Water-wing! Water-wing!”

“Clever Handful,” Kwarive murmered. She gri

Darvin looked down at the darting, splashing animals.

“They have big heads,” he said. “Let’s hope the aliens don’t try to educate them.”

“Time to educate you,” said Kwarive. “The cranial bulge contains oil, not brain.”

“Reputedly delicious,” said Lenoen, “and it burns with a clear and smokeless flame.”

Kwarive pretended to cover Handful’s ears.

“That’s… horrible.”

“They swarm in the seas around the Southern pole,” said Lenoen, sounding defensive.

The ship hove to, dwarfing the quay, the top deck overlooking the native roosts. The turbines reversed and fell silent. Ropes were flung and caught, and inexpertly wound around boulders. After some commotion the expedition disembarked.

“There will be no flying,” said Markhan, addressing the teams. “The air currents and thermals around the cliffs are unpredictable and dangerous to all but the locals.”

Everyone gazed with envy at a brace of soaring natives, scouting high above for nests to rob.

“So how do we get up?” Darvin shouted.

Markhan pointed to a barely detectable zigzag of steps hewn in the side of the cove. “Climb.”

Two hours later they collapsed exhausted on the sharp grass of the cliff top. After a rest and a snack they made their way on, a long straggling line of four eights or so, mostly scientists, with here and there pairs of soldiers lugging etheric devices or sacks of supplies.

“We should have brought an aeroplane,” gasped Orro.

“And taken off from exactly where?” asked Darvin.

“A ramp built at the prow of the ship. Possibly assisted with… a catapult. Or rockets.”

Holder looked thoughtful.

“Big prick,” said Handful, touching a statue as they laboured past it.

“New word,” said Kwarive.

“Curiously,” said Lenoen, shaking sweat from his brows, “the stone of the statues is not native to the island. Its nearest quarries are on our northern coast.”

“Hence your claim,” scoffed Holder. “Despite the first historical sighting—”

“First in whose history?”

“Gentlemen,” said Kwarive. “Do spare your breath.”

A call from Markhan brought the line to a welcome halt. Soldiers lowered their loads. Nollam cranked up a generator and sent a taped etheric message into the sky. He had kept this up day after day since leaving Kraighor, to no response from above. None came this time either.

“Onward!” shouted Markhan.

The slope was worse than the cliff. It seemed endless, without even risks and slips and panicked flapping and flying to break the monotony. Darvin’s legs ached. Handful whined, demonstrating that he had learned a small vocabulary of complaint. Small lizards and skitters scuttled through the grass and cringed from circling patrols of predatory flitters.

After another hour the plateau spread out before them, black and bare, littered with boulders, crusted with salt, spotted with semi-saline pools above which minute endemic insects buzzed in sinister clouds. Everyone slumped down. Water bottles were passed back and forth, dried fruit and meat munched. The sun, now past noon, had dispersed the cloud and glared down from almost directly overhead in a deep blue sky. The heat was intense, the wind nugatory, every zephyr welcome. People stood and spread their wings, flapping slowly to cool their blood.

An etheric receiver buzzed. Nollam crouched before a tiny TK screen, shading it with his wings, then jumped up. “They’re coming!”

Yells of triumph and delight gave way to apprehension. Nobody knew how the aliens would arrive. Orro had talked about a gliding vehicle, Holder about a rocket descending on a pillar of fire. Soldiers, their movement sluggish in the heat and stumbling on the rough rock, spread ba

It was Orro who spotted the arrival first. He shouted and pointed straight up. Darvin swung his binoculars around and saw a black dot. Sunlight flashed on it, and it became a still-tiny shape, with a hint of rectangularity. With a great effort of goodwill he handed the binoculars to Kwarive.

“Wow,” she said. “No rockets, no jets, no wings.”

“The wingless have mastered gravity,” said Darvin, restraining himself from grabbing back the glasses.

“They have not,” said Orro, with better eyesight or better binoculars. “I see a rope above it. It is descending like a load on a crane.”

“Where might such a crane be mounted?” said Holder. “On the moon?”

“On a moon,” said Kwarive. “Remember how the alien moon appeared last night — directly overhead? That’s what it’s hanging from.”

Darvin stifled a laugh, embarrassed by his companion’s ignorance of physics; Holder guffawed. Orro removed the glasses from his eyes to frown, and without thinking relinquished them to Darvin’s grasp. This time he saw the now fast-descending thing as a tall box, and saw too the line stretching into the blue above it.

“She’s right,” Orro was saying. “Why should that be more absurd than a satellite staying above the same spot on the ground? Even you, Darvin, were wondering aloud not too long ago why it didn’t fall down. Oh, and the binoculars, if you please, old chap.”

Darvin passed them back with as much grace as he could.

“It isn’t that,” he said, trying not to let irritation infiltrate his voice. “I’m not saying it’s absurd, or impossible in principle. But in practice! The length of line that would be involved is simply inconceivable.”

“One wonders why the aliens bother coming here,” said Kwarive. “You know so much about them already.”

The descending box was now visible without binoculars. It was obvious from the exclamations around him that most people still shared his first assumption, that the thing levitated. As it drew closer the line became apparent to the naked eye, and the marvel at the sight only increased. The box now looked in parts transparent. Wisps of vapour puffed from its sides every few seconds: course corrections, Darvin guessed. Its speed seemed to increase as it descended, but Darvin knew for certain that this was an illusion. After another couple of minutes and several more corrections, it came to rest on the rocky plain a few eights-of-eights of paces away from them.

No shouts of command could stop the civilians walking forward. The soldiers too, after an urgent argument, ran to keep pace. The order they obeyed was to keep their crossbows slung.

As though at an unseen barrier, everyone stopped at the same place. The box now looked much bigger than it had seemed before. The afternoon heat hung heavy. The lurid pools stank like ammonia. Creaking and cracking noises echoed across the rocky flats. A door opened in the side of the box. With one accord everyone took a couple of paces back.