I’d wanted to talk to Zan during the flight, but she and Ruuel and Maze went off to be captainly at each other. Still, I had a nice chat with Mori Eyse from Fourth, and Dess Charn and Sora Nels from Twelfth, about our various assignments on Muina. Since I mainly knew Twelfth Squad from the grim race of the Pillar retrieval, I’d been curious to know if they were as temperamental as Lenton, and whether they seemed to resent Zan as much as he does. But they were unexpectedly normal – overly serious as almost all of the Setari are, but polite and with hints of personality behind the rigid professionalism. Very few of the Setari are willing to be off-duty around me, but Twelfth unbent enough to ask questions and have non-controversial conversations.
Pandora looks horrible: a big white blot on the landscape. The main building is up to its third story and still growing, though most of it hasn’t had the interiors finished. No sign of balconies, though there’s more windows than I feared. There’s a bunch of smaller outbuildings which are in use, though – amazingly quick construction. Sora was telling me that they don’t dig the foundations, that the buildings send down roots (like teeth, given what they look like) and that fittings like pipes and ducts grow themselves, all based on an immensely detailed scale model. Around the construction site are tents and vehicles and people and dirt trampled to mush, and the beginnings of paths spreading like white filigree.
"How many people are here now?" I asked, as we took one of the floating sleds across to what had become a place I barely even recognised.
"Over two hundred and fifty." I’d asked Mori, but it was Ruuel who answered – since I’m assigned to them, it means I travel with Fourth Squad rather than First, who were on a different sled.
"For now this is Muina’s capital," Ferus added. "I was very disappointed that the meaning of the name wasn’t included in the announcements."
"Meaning of name is gift," I said. "Or giver of gifts or something like. Been a while since I read Greco-Roman myths."
"Do you know all the different beliefs of your world?" Mori asked.
"Not even close. Earth has hundreds of different languages and cultures. Greco-Roman stuff comes from over six thousand Tare years ago – it’s not an active mythology." At least, I’d be really shocked if anyone was actively worshipping Zeus and Hera and all them.
We only spent an hour at Pandora, watching more supplies and people being unloaded from the Litara and waiting for the Diodel arrived. The Diodel’s a smaller ship than the Litara, and has been off surveying, and is going to be our base during the mission. It beds (pods) thirty and the crew, in addition to First and Fourth Squads, are a bluesuit called Onara who commands five greensuits, a pinksuit, a medic called Learad with an assistant called Vale, and eight greysuits who are the research team – mainly archaeologist sorts. The head greysuit is a woman called Rel Duffen, who doesn’t seem keen on either the Setari or me, but at least isn’t overtly hostile.
The pods are in long lines down the centre of the ship rather than grouped in rooms. I’m between the two squads, with Zee in front of me and Sonn behind. And Ruuel one behind her. While I was waiting for the ship to take off I sent Zan an email which said: "On Earth, if someone seemed unhappy but not like they wanted talk about it, I’d send them a message which said hugs. If you get any free time, I recommend going to watch the otters." I attached a very badly drawn map, and was glad when she sent me a reply: "Thank you."
I don’t want to prod Zan too hard. I’m starting to accept how unlikely second level monitoring makes it for anyone to talk about anything sensitive with me. And how I’ve got Buckley’s chance of being taken off second level monitoring any time this century.
Today’s going to be a long day. We’re heading to the largest of the old cities, which is several time zones away from Pandora, and the sun will set in our new location well into what would be sleep shift for the squads who started out from Tare this morning. They think the city was once called Nurioth. Guess the Nurans named their moon after it.
Once we were underway the ship captain, Tsel Onara, gave us a to-the-point rundown of what we would be doing that day. Over the last few days the Diodel has been making an air survey of Nurioth, mapping it and looking for a place which was both central and clear enough to set down. They’d located a patch where there were no buildings beneath the trees, so first up the Setari (and me) are going to go down and weed a clearing. They want a very big area, as level as possible, with a large perimeter so they could see anything approaching the ship.
After that, the Setari are going to tour the immediate surrounds and clear out any threats. Depending on what the Setari’s threat assessment is, the greysuits may or may not be permitted to enter the nearest building, guarded by a mix of greensuits and Setari. Everyone is to be back at the ship before the sun starts to go down.
Archaeology is a slow business, so I don’t see how a team of eight can do anything more than a basic review. They’re really just checking to see what the conditions are like here, and whether useful things like writing might be better preserved. We’re flying over the city now and it’s seriously huge.
Thursday, April 3
Demolition
We levitated down into the park, both Setari squads together, and me tucked under Par Auron’s arm. It was a gorgeous park. Tremendously overgrown and neglected of course, but the whitestone paths were still in place, and the leaves were just starting to turn red and yellow, gem-like against black wood. Once the Diodel had stopped hovering overhead and zoomed off to circle the city, birds began to peep and chirp cautiously. We’d come down in a relatively clear section in the very centre, and in one direction was an avenue of trees – the strength of the whitestone had kept all but a few trees to the outside of the path. The spot where we’d set down had a barely visible round shape – either a filled-in pond or a border of a garden – and the plants underfoot were fine and feathery.
"Mark two," Maze said. "Distant."
Mark two is a bit like saying ten o’clock. When a squad enters a space, they count the direct left of the gate as mark 1, and continue around to nine for a semi-circle, or sixteen if the gate is central rather than on one side of the space. Since there’d been no gate involved here, they’d set a direction for mark one before leaving the ship.
"Structure at mark five," Ruuel added. "Beyond that is out of range. Sweep?"
Maze nodded. "Take ten to sixteen." First Squad enhanced before heading out, leaving me to trail along with Fourth Squad in a big semi-circle through the half of the park in the opposite direction to the big avenue. I think that half must have been more cropland than park, since there was barely a trace of paving and I saw occasional patches of some kind of grain plant, struggling in the shade of the trees.
Just like with Pandora, the place was seething with life, except some of that life was Ionoth. I guess the memories of monsters are just another predator to deer and pippins, and the miniature pigs, and some things very like chipmunks which I hadn’t seen at Pandora. Birds in every direction, especially a really annoying plump and hysterical type which stayed hidden in the grass until you were right on it and then shot up into the sky shrieking its head off. I was busy being guilt-ridden that we were about to level the entire area, and kept thinking of that old song – I’ve no idea who it’s by – that goes "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot". It’s not like we don’t clear-fell on Earth, but having been fed environmental awareness since grade one, I couldn’t help feeling responsible all the same. It overwhelms me at times: accidental or not, I changed a world. Worlds.