He never understood why they didn’t think of themselves as the good guys, and it worried him. He was a better teacher than that.
The probe’s data confirmed their suspicions of a fairly low level technology even though the colony here had been saved to a large extent by the climate, isolation, and the fact that they’d been set up so close to the Silence that nobody’d heard of them or blundered into them before.
The initial centralized city was stock prefab architecture and was composed of large administrative-type buildings and warehouses. There was no indication that it was ever used as a real settlement or capital, only that it was the place where everything was landed. Some cultivated fields surrounding the complex showed that there was continuing activity there, but on a subsistence level.
A technological culture would have had few if any roads; hovercraft and air mags would have made them superfluous. Here there were not only roads, but dirt roads, many deeply rutted, as well as heavily trod paths and trails. The farther from the central core they looked, the less signs of automation or any kind of prefabrication existed.
Development had been more or less radial due to the vast interior plains, the abundant rivers and lakes, and the apparently year-round mild climate. The fields looked quite snappy close in to the landing site, but became more ragged although not less abundant as the distance from the site increased. Houses tended to be the marshmallowlike prefab of the old Combine close in, as did the big buildings at the center, but you didn’t have to look far to see little evidence of that sort of technology. By the third “ring” of settlement, most of the houses appeared built of some sort of adobe, quite natural and matching the available materials. There was evidence of some building in wood and stone, but it appeared that they hadn’t quite gotten the full hang of that as yet.
What was most eerie was the total lack of any energy pulses or sites or transmissions along the surface. Not only were there no aircraft, there weren’t any powered conveyances of any sort to be seen or detected.
“They’re either extremely resourceful or they are members of an old order recidivist cult,” the chief anthropologist, Ruth Morgan, noted when looking at the finely detailed three-dimensional pictures coming in from the probe.
“You mean like the Old Order Amish or the like?” the Doctor responded. “We’ve already seen and traced all the known ones from them and similar groups. That doesn’t mean they weren’t out for a simpler life, but we’ve seen too many dead worlds where colonists thought they knew how to do things by hand.”
“Still, this group is basically growing grains, fruits, and vegetables the old way,” she noted. “Those fields are tilled by animal power. There’s no electric grid at all. And yet, I’m not at all sure it was intended that way. You see those herds there? They’re crindin, a big, lumbering creature our records indicate is from an old Silenced colony called Mandolan. They were picked to be brought here and probably used in that way, since they’re not known to be edible by humans. They make great oxen if you know how to use a yoke and plow, though. Hard to believe many people did.”
The Doctor frowned and looked at the closeup of the big beasts, that in many ways resembled six-legged two-trunked monstrous purple elephants. “Interesting. I’m beginning to grow more and more curious at this colony’s past. I think we ought to keep getting data as long as possible but go on in.” He punched the intercom. “Captain, high orbit. I don’t want us seen from the ground, but I want to be close enough to do our setup work. I don’t feel danger here, but I do feel mystery.”
The Doctor turned back to the anthropologist. “Any sign of churches or other types of houses of worship?”
She shrugged. “I’m sorry, Doc, but I can’t tell. The buildings are so crude we wouldn’t expect them to risk a steeple, and there’s nothing in the shape of any of the buildings to suggest a cross or similar outfit. No minarets, either, and certainly nothing in the towns to indicate Buddhism or one of its offshoots. My feeling is that it’s either pretty secular, possibly Hindu or an offshoot of it, or another faith with little liking for the trappings of organized religion. They may just worship as they please. Until we’re down there, we can’t know.”
“People?”
“You can see some of them there in those freezes from the survey. Reddish brown skin predominates, but that doesn’t mean much in that climate. Hair seems to be either coal black or pretty white, mostly bearded. The dress looks functional, probably handmade, and fairly standard. Women are wearing either a pullover patterned dress or some sort of pants and loose shirt pretty much like the men. Long hair, which indicates few pests, but I don’t see much sign of beards from the admittedly limited sample. The interesting shots are these, taken in one of the warmer regions near a shallow lake. The lake appears thick with rice, and the lands around look to be some variation of cotton plants. Look there—see the movement? Men, women, boys, girls, all out there clearly picking cotton by hand. I bet that in the rice harvest season they do the same thing in the lake. The trail network connects them to basically a quarter of the other farms, suggesting a trading system. Rice and cotton take certain conditions you don’t need for wheat and maize, for example, and I don’t see a lot of indications that these cotton pickers process their crop in bulk. I’d say they trade.”
“Well, it looks promising,” the Doctor noted. “I think we ought to send some folks down there and get a practical lay of the land. Anybody in the mood to go Biblical and take a long, hot walk?”
“We are always ready,” Morgan assured him without a second thought, and, while pleased, he accepted that at face value.
II: ORPHANS OF THE SILENCE
There were an infinite number of ways to approach a new world of which you knew nothing, including the full frontal assault, as it were, where you just landed as yourself and had faith that the locals would be more curious than hostile. In this case, with so little known but such a primitive layout below, it was decided that they’d send down two young but experienced Arms of Gideon looking as innocent and fresh-faced and nonthreatening as possible, one male, one female.
John Robey was twenty-four standard years old, about a hundred and eighty centimeters tall, with a strong but ruggedly handsome face, short-cropped sandy brown hair and brown eyes. His companion was Eve Toloway, twenty-two, about a hundred and sixty centimeters, with a near angelic face, olive complexion, and big green eyes. She and John had worked together now and then, but this would be their first away team experience together, and her first at any time in her life. They were selected by computer and approved by the Doctor as appropriate for this mission.
Both of them had been born and raised within The Mountain and knew no other life or ways. Both were sincere, dedicated, and well trained. They both wore white robes with hoods made out of a material that was far more than it seemed, and would help protect them from the potentially harsh and possibly unknown dangers of a planetary climate. Consistent with the Doctor’s beliefs in his interstellar religious commune, John would be in charge down there, but that didn’t imply inferiority on the part of Eve but rather a chain of command of sorts. In fact, their leader often joked that he thought women were superior to men, which is why the Bible set up things with the weaker sex in charge. Otherwise, he said, only half joking, men would soon be obsolete.
The small scout cars were precious to a ship like The Mountain; although incapable of interstellar flight, they could land just about anywhere, take off straight up faster than most people could see, and were silent and secure. Once they’d contained complex self-aware computers as backups; they were designed for such things. Now it was strictly a basic system, though, not because of any paranoia or fear on the part of The Mountain or the Doctor, but basically because those things had required first-class specialized maintenance and by the time The Mountain had acquired its current scouts the old computers had either become too unreliable to use or had been removed. It didn’t really matter because of the way they were now used anyway; The Mountain actually flew them remotely from an area between the bridge and gunnery control, and in a pinch the passengers could take over and fly them manually.