Bicansa offered her own hand readily enough. But Pala’s hand passed through the woman’s, making it break up into a cloud of blocky pixels.
It was this simple test that mandated the handshake protocol. Even so, Pala was startled. ‘You’re a Virtual.’
‘As is your own companion,’ said Bicansa levelly. ‘I’m close by actually – just outside the dome. But don’t worry. I’m a projection, not an avatar. You have my full attention.’
Pala felt unaccountably disappointed that Bicansa wasn’t really here.
Sool indicated a small car, waiting some distance away, and he offered them the hospitality of his home. They walked to the car.
Dano murmured to Pala, ‘I wonder why this Bicansa hasn’t shown up in person. I think we need to watch that one.’ He turned to her, his cold Eyes glinting. ‘Ah, but you already are – aren’t you, Missionary?’
Pala felt herself blush.
Sool’s village was small, just a couple of dozen buildings huddled around a scrap of grass-covered common land. There were shops and manufactories, including a carpentry and pottery works, and an inn. At the centre of the common was a lake, its edges regular – a reservoir, Pala thought. The people’s water must be recycled, filtered by hidden machinery, like their air. By the shore of the lake, children played and lovers walked.
All the raw material of this human settlement had come from cometary impacts, packets of dirty ice from this star’s outer system that had splashed onto the sphere since its formation. It was remarkable that this peaceful scene could have originated in such violence.
This was a farming community. In the fields beyond the village, crops grew towards the reflected glare of spindly mirror towers, waving in breezes wafted by immense pumps mounted at the dome’s periphery. And animals grazed, descendants of cattle and sheep brought by the first colonists. Pala, who had never seen an animal larger than a rat, stared, astonished.
The buildings were all made of wood, neat but low, conical. Sool told the visitors the buildings were modelled after the tents the first colonists here had used for shelter. ‘A kind of memorial to the First,’ he said. But Sool’s home, with big windows cut into the sloping roof, was surprisingly roomy and well lit. There were traces of art. On one wall hung a kind of schematic portrait, a few lines to depict a human face, lit from below by a warm yellow light.
Sool had them sit on cushions of what turned out to be stuffed animal hide, to Pala’s horror. In fact everything seemed to be made of wood or animal skin. But these people could generate Virtuals, Pala reminded herself; they weren’t as low tech as they seemed.
Sool confirmed that. ‘When the First found this masked star they created the machinery that still sustains us – the dome, the mirror towers, the hidden machines that filter our air and water. We must maintain the machines, and we go out to bring in more water ice or frozen air.’ He eyed his visitors. ‘You must not think we are fallen. We are surely as technologically capable as our ancestors. But every day we acknowledge our debt to the wisdom and heroic engineering of the First.’ As he said this, he touched his palms together and nodded his head reverently, and Bicansa did the same.
Pala and Dano exchanged a glance. Ancestor worship?
A slim, pretty teenage girl brought them drinks of pulped fruit. The girl was Sool’s ‘daughter’; it turned out his ‘wife’ had died some years previously. Thanks to her training Pala was familiar with such terms. The drinks were served in pottery cups, elegantly shaped and painted deep blue, with more inverted-sunburst designs. Pala wondered what dye they used to create such a rich blue.
Dano watched the daughter as she politely set a cup before himself and Bicansa; these colonists knew Virtual etiquette. Dano said, ‘You obviously live in nuclear families.’
‘And you don’t?’ Bicansa asked curiously.
‘Nuclear families are a classic feature of Second Expansion cultures. You are typical of your era.’ Pala smiled brightly, trying to be reassuring, but Bicansa’s face was cold.
Dano asked Sool, ‘And you are the leader of this community?’
Sool shook his head. ‘We are few, Missionary. I’m leader of nothing but my own family, and even that only by my daughter’s grace! After your scouts’ first visit the Assembly asked me to speak for them. I believe I’m held in high regard; I believe I’m trusted. But I’m a delegate, not a leader. Bicansa represents her own people in the same way. We have to work together to survive; I’m sure that’s obvious. In a sense we’re all a single extended family here…’
Pala murmured to Dano, ‘Eusocial, you think? The lack of a hierarchy, an elite?’ Eusociality – hive living – had been found to be a common if unwelcome social outcome in crowded, resource-starved colonies.
Dano shook his head. ‘No. The population density’s nowhere near high enough.’
Bicansa was watching them. ‘You are talking about us. Assessing us.’
‘That’s our job,’ Dano said levelly.
‘Yes, I’ve learned about your job,’ Bicansa snapped. ‘Your mighty Third Expansion that sweeps across the stars. You’re here to assimilate us, aren’t you?’
‘Not at all,’ Pala said earnestly. It was true. The Assimilation was a separate programme, designed to process the alien species encountered by the Third Expansion wavefront. Pala worked for a parallel agency, the Office of Cultural Rehabilitation which, though controlled by the same wing of the Commission for Historical Truth as the Assimilation, was intended to handle relic human societies implanted by earlier colonisation waves, similarly encountered by the Expansion. ‘My mission is to welcome you back to a unified mankind. To introduce you to the Druz Doctrines which shape all our actions.’
Bicansa wasn’t impressed. Her anger flared, obviously pent up. ‘Your arrogance is dismaying,’ she said. ‘You’ve only just landed here, only just come swooping down from the sky. You’re confronted by a distinct culture five thousand years old. We have our own tradition, literature, art – even our own language, after all this time. And yet you think you can make a judgement on us immediately.’
‘Our judgement on your culture, or your lack of it, doesn’t matter,’ said Dano. ‘Our mission is specific.’
‘Yes. You’re here to enslave us.’
Sool said tiredly, ‘Now, Bicansa—’
‘You only have to glance at the propaganda they’ve been broadcasting since their ships started to orbit over us. They’ll break up our farms and use our land to feed their Expansion. And we’ll be taken to work in their factories, our children sent to worlds a thousand light years away.’
‘We’re all in this together,’ Dano said. ‘The Third Expansion is a shared enterprise of all humanity. You can’t hide, madam, not even here.’
Pala said, ‘Anyhow it may not be like that. We’re Missionaries, not the draft. We’re here to find out about you. And if your culture has something distinctive to offer the Third Expansion, why then—’
‘You’ll spare us?’ Bicansa snapped.
‘Perhaps,’ said Dano. He reached for his cup, but his gloved fingers passed through its substance. ‘Though it will take more than a few bits of pottery.’
Sool listened to this, a deep tiredness in his sunken eyes. Pala perceived that he saw the situation just as clearly as Bicansa did, but while she was grandstanding, Sool was absorbing the pain, seeking to find a way to save his way of life.