New Ceres Issue 1 Read online

New Ceres

  Issue 1

  Edited by Alisa Krasnostein

  New Ceres Issue 1

  Copyright © Twelfth Planet Press, 2006 and 2013

  All stories © their respective authors

  www.twelfthplanetpress.com

  Cover art by Dion Hamill

  Design and layout by Tehani Wessely

  The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owners and the above publisher of this book.

  Table of Contents

  Introducing New Ceres

  Fiction

  “Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright” by Maxine McArthur

  “Scandal at the Feast of Saturn” by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  “She Walks in Beauty” by Dirk Flinthart

  New Ceres Non-Fiction

  Postcards from Georgiana

  Tale of the Veremaurs

  Acknowledgements

  Also from Twelfth Planet Press on Kindle…

  Introducing New Ceres

  Meet the world of New Ceres, an exciting and dangerous place. Its water is green and its inhabitants are sophisticates.

  New Ceres is precarious: its New Enlightenment constrains society as well as liberating old thoughts and literature and drinking customs. The planet plays interstellar politics to defend its independence and it recruits refugees from Old Earth and the conquered New Alliance planets to maintain some dangerous habits.

  On New Ceres you will find coffee houses and highwaymen, drinks, gambling and illegal high technology.

  “Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright” by Maxine McArthur

  At the top of the incline the caddy dug in all four hooves and stopped dead; Clarissa, who had been watching Io’s shaded disc rise over the darkening hills, slipped over its shoulder and slid off onto her backside.

  For a moment all she could think of was the pain of rocks digging into tissue already tender from unaccustomed riding. Stupid creature. She tugged petulantly on the guide rope.

  The caddy ignored her and, after snuffling hopefully among the rocks for non-existent strands of vegetation, cocked one back leg and appeared to fall into a trance.

  Clarissa pulled herself upright again, one hand on the caddy’s rigging. The slick soles of her new boots, guaranteed by the third-best cobbler in Prosperine, skidded disconcertingly on the rubble. This area had been re-soiled in the first wave of terraforming and should have been properly vegetated by now.

  She checked the rigging. Her cases of equipment were still firmly attached. At least the superstitious villagers knew how to tie knots.

  At the thought of the villagers she kicked moodily at the pebbles. If they hadn’t started seeing things, she wouldn’t be here. If the irresponsible Prosperine Herald hadn’t pushed the ‘failed terraforming’ angle of the story, she’d have been at home attending the first theatre of the Season. And if that greedy fool Ignatieff hadn’t eaten three helpings of what even she could see was probably untreated bovcream, she wouldn’t be stuck out here without an assistant — and the sun about to set.

  ###

  “We must be seen to take some official notice of these speculations.” Miles Estaban, Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Environment in the Ministry of the Interior, steepled his gloriously manicured fingers and leaned back in his chair. Even his smile was manicured.

  Clarissa shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She always felt like a truant child in front of Estaban’s desk. Of real Earth timber, it occupied almost a quarter of the office with stolid black mastery.

  “I just don’t see why it has to come to us, sir.” She sounded churlish, but couldn’t stop herself. The very idea of having to leave Prosperine churned her stomach with cold dread. And at the best time of the year…

  “You are the Rural Lands and Terraforming Board, are you not?” Estaban frowned.

  Not me personally, Clarissa wanted to say, but didn’t.

  “The Minister is concerned at the speculation that the, er, creature is a native life form missed during terraforming,” said Estaban.

  “With respect, sir, that’s not possible,” said Clarissa, the prospect of missing the start of the Season lending her courage. “Even if the terraforming was not thorough, which it was, what has the creature been doing for seventy years? A large carnivore has to eat something.”

  “The Minister wants an investigation.” Estaban’s tone said this was the end of the matter.

  A shaft of sunlight lay on the thick carpet, and through the open window came the sounds of people laughing in the street below. Spring had arrived.

  “The local policeman thinks it was feral hounds,” muttered Clarissa sullenly.

  “Go and get some evidence to prove it, then.”

  ###

  One of the pebbles Clarissa had kicked struck another with a clack that sounded far too loud. It echoed in the narrow, rocky pass, then the silence grew thicker. No birdsong, even. In Prosperine sparrows and pigeons — at least, winged constructs that on New Ceres were called sparrows and pigeons — twittered and chirped at sundown.

  The alien-ness of the landscape shocked her. Why? She was third-generation New Ceres, after all. But even though she had never seen the ‘terra’ upon which the terraforming was based, she knew it should look like the country around Prosperine and the coastal farm-belts: rolling fields of many-coloured crops, belts of leafy trees, neat strips of roads and landing zones. Banks of flowers. That country was alien no longer. Few humans could remember its original contours. The native ecosystems were gone — that’s why talk of a ‘leftover’ lifeform was so ridiculous.

  Yet here in the hills, the bones of the land showed through.

  Still alien.

  Waiting.

  She shivered, cold now the sun was gone. Those stupid farmers in the hamlet, Black Creek, had said there was a herder’s hut in the hills that she could use if she couldn’t get back by dark. Follow the path, they said. The caddy knows the way.

  The caddy. Why did it stop? Clarissa trod gingerly over the rocks until she could see past the creature. She kept a firm grip on the guide rope but the caddy just blinked at her with placid disinterest.

  Five hundred metres or so away, the ground flattened into a valley between rocky outcrops. Upright fuzz covered it in patches, pasture perhaps, dotted with small whitish rocks. More importantly, on the far side up against the hill, a thin trail of smoke rose straight into the still air. The herder’s hut, round with a conical roof like the hamlet dwellings.

  If someone else was staying there, too bad. Clarissa was on official business. They would have to make other arrangements.

  Then she dropped her gaze to the path ahead and groaned.

  The entire slope down was covered in a mess of rocks and rubble. A landslide must have covered the path. How was she to get down?

  The person in the herder’s hut must have got down somehow. Or … she could go home and say she needed an aircar to access the site. But if she turned back now, she’d have to spend the night in the open. It had taken her over half a day to walk from Black Creek. If only she hadn’t been so impatient! Unwilling to spend any more time than she had to in this benighted place, she’d thought she could get to the site, do her tests, and return before nightfall. She hadn’t reckoned on the rough country or the glacial pace of the caddy.

  She inspected the caddy’s cloven hooves doubtfully. Could it clamber over rocks? A tug on the rope only made it ground both back legs firmly.
You’d think the bio-designers could have come up with a construct better able to cover varied terrain. She certainly couldn’t haul the equipment and pick her way. Unless…

  One of the rigging packs yielded its treasure — a redcam, infrared goggles with adjustable sensor. Although it might not be able to send its recording to her workstation — satcom coverage was lousy in the provinces — it would store data until she could return and analyse it.

  More importantly, the redcam could be adjusted to show minute differences in ground surface temperature, which might show her the easiest way through the rocks.

  As the goggles activated, the world darkened to shades of black. Too dark… She fiddled with the controls, and made the discovery that the small whitish rocks dotted around the valley floor were alive. They showed as vaguely oval yellow glows, the smaller ones orange. Lum, maybe. Her mouth watered at the memory of roast lum in her favourite restaurant. What a pity these lums would have to be sent away and treated before they were edible…

  Further adjustment of the goggles blurred everything but the rocks, a haphazard overlay of lighter grey on darker. She stared until her neck muscles cramped, but it all looked like the same layer. Then, as she tilted her neck to get some relief, she saw a patch of flatter ground on her left.

  Excited, she stepped towards it, only to be brought up short by the guide rope.

  “Come on.” She tugged irritably at the caddy, which appeared as a bright yellow blur with a red core. It laid back its lime-green ears and edged towards the side of the canyon.

  “No, stupid, you can’t climb the walls!”

  Using a combination of pushing, pulling, threats and cajoling, she managed to get the caddy to follow her on a tortuous course down the scree. The animal kept its balance, but Clarissa several times skinned her knees and barked her shins.

  They slid the last few metres in a shower of dust and rubble. Clarissa brushed herself down, exhausted and bruised, but satisfied. She would stay the night here in the hut, do the tests early, and be back in the village by evening. Maybe even back in Prosperine.

  “There’s a path along the edge, y’know,” said a deep, harsh voice behind her.

  She spun, saw a huge bright shape, squeaked in fright, then remembered the goggles. When she snatched them off, the fading light seemed very gold and translucent. Far too beautiful to waste illuminating the bearded face of the man who stood behind her.

  “You shouldn’t creep up on people,” she said primly.

  The man still stared rudely, so she added, “I’m Clarissa de Gent, with the Board of Rural Lands and Terraforming. I’ve come to investigate the reports of an unknown carnivore. Have you heard of these sightings?”

  The man kept staring. His gingery beard contained dry crusted things. His many layers of clothes had merged into a frayed mass. The smell that rose off him was so pungent that Clarissa felt if she put on the goggles again it might show as a lurid green or purple aura.

  He cleared his throat, spat noisily to one side while somehow keeping his eyes on Clarissa, and said, “Jacob Wood.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr Wood,” Clarissa’s mouth said, while mentally she withdrew several steps.

  Then her eyes widened. He had a gun.

  She could not have mistaken it for anything else. Long, dark, with a flared muzzle, it hung in the crook of Jacob Wood’s arm with smug menace.

  “Is that your hut? The people in the village said I could stay the night there.” She packed the redcam away in its box as she spoke.

  Wood grunted, whether in assent or puzzlement, she wasn’t sure. Carefully not looking at the gun, she tugged on the guide rope and started walking across the valley floor. The caddy stepped out happily now, perhaps aware that the end of the journey was near.

  Jacob Wood strode beside her. “What’s that you had on your head, then?” He nodded at the equipment boxes.

  “It’s a portable infrared scanner. A bit dated, I know, but useful.”

  “Do your own eyes not work well enough?” He said everything in the same argumentative, insolent tone; she couldn’t tell if it was an insult or not. No wonder the government was having trouble with the farmers, if Jacob Wood was a typical example.

  “Not in the dark, no,” she retorted. As if to confirm this, she tripped on a tussock. “And the reports said the unidentified creature appeared on a misty day.”

  A thought struck her and she reluctantly looked at him directly.

  “I don’t suppose you saw it, did you?” No name had been mentioned in the policeman’s report, just ‘two farmers from Black Creek hamlet’.

  “They sent one girlie with a pair of goggles to find a tyger?” Wood scoffed.

  Girlie? Clarissa opened her mouth, shut it again. Decided to concentrate on the essentials.

  “What do you mean, ‘tyger’? There aren’t any tygers on New Ceres.” A tyger was an extinct Earth carnivore, she knew. Big and striped, cat family … or was it dog? No New Ceres constructs like that, anyway.

  “Figure of speech,” he said unexpectedly. “Meaning a dangerous animal.”

  “Yes, well, I expect they don’t believe there’s any danger. Not,” she added hastily, thinking of the gun and the solitude, “that I can’t protect myself.”

  It sounded less convincing than she’d hoped.

  As they walked, the lums dotted around the valley converged on them, so that by the time they reached the other side they were surrounded by a warm, woolly mass, silent except for the occasional bleat and the patter of many feet.

  The hut seemed smaller in the almost-complete darkness. She fumbled in the rigging for a lamp and switched it on. The swathe of white light gave her a glimpse of crude resaik walls, cracked and peeling, before Wood reached over and snatched the lamp from her hands.

  “Hey!”

  He switched it off immediately and passed it back. “No light outside. Attracts … things.”

  Clarissa groaned inwardly. How could a simple job become so difficult?

  “Whatever you say. Thank you for bringing me to the hut. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He chuckled into his beard. “Hut’s open to travellers. But that don’t mean I move out.”

  “Pardon me, but I do represent a Ministry in your planetary government,” she said irritably. “The Board in the Department of the Ministry that directly administers your interests. I rather expected more respectful treatment.”

  The man hawked and spat again. “What’s your bloody Ministry ever done for us? Grind us down, that’s all.”

  Clarissa did not, at all, want to spend the night in a small space with this man. On the other hand … the night air was very cold. The hills stood black against a clouded, starless sky. Up in the hills something called, with a click-click-click that ended in a high-pitched squeal.

  At least inside the hut she’d be warm.

  “Do what you like,” rumbled Wood. “I’ll be putting the flock abed.”

  He disappeared into the darkness, followed by the shuffling mass of lums. She could hear them moving behind the hut, then with a faint hum, several long thin green lines snapped on.

  “Hot corral. Battery charges during the day.” Wood stood beside her again.

  “Don’t you have hounds?” she said. Dogs were dogs, as they’d always been, not mixed-gene constructs. Nobody had ever wanted to change them.

  “Dogs died,” Wood said gruffly. “Get your gear off that caddy and I’ll set up a corner for it with some hay.”

  She hadn’t thought what she’d do with the caddy overnight. Vaguely she’d imagined it would park itself somewhere, like an aircar. She certainly hadn’t carried food for it — why would she, when she didn’t bring food for herself, assuming her inn would provide.

  Staggering slightly under the weight of the boxes and rigging — to think that the caddy carried all this and Clarissa — she stumbled up dirt steps and into the hut.

  ###

  She had to admit, the soup was good.

&nbs
p; She’d had an initial moment of panic — what if the soup contained untreated meat or milk? What if Jacob Wood was one of those militant Union farmers and would poison her to make a political statement? What if he was going to drug her and steal her equipment? What if…

  She watched him slurp soup and dribble into his beard with evident enjoyment, and decided it was better to die full than live hungry.

  Once she was full, she could pay more attention to the hut and its owner. The smell of the charcoal burning in the firepit almost cancelled out the smell of Wood himself. Despite the chimney-shaft in the roof above the pit, the walls were blackened from smoke. No windows. It was all terribly primitive. Unhealthy.

  On one wall three shelves stuck out like bunks. Another shelf stuck out on the opposite wall. The gun lay beside it. Clarissa made a mental note to take the top bunk.

  “Do you live here all year?” she blurted out. Nothing in the hut hinted at personal belongings. Walls, floor, cooking pot, utensils.

  Wood grunted and stretched his legs beside the fire. “In winter we stay down near the river,” he said.

  Clarissa wondered if by ‘we’, he meant him and the lums. Or maybe him and the dead dogs.

  “What happened to your dogs?”

  He was silent for so long that she wondered if he hadn’t heard. The fire popped once. A lum bleated sleepily outside.

  Jacob Wood reached over and pulled a pouch from beside the stone edge of the firepit. He took a pipe from the pouch and tamped tabac into it with flat, ridged fingers wider than the bowl.

  “The dogs was killed by your tyger,” he said. Watery, bloodshot blue eyes watched her warily.

  “My … that wasn’t in the report.” This is ridiculous, the Prosperine Clarissa thought. There are no tygers or anything like them on New Ceres. But the Clarissa who sat in the hut in the dark hills felt a chill of doubt.

  “Would you tell me your version?” she asked humbly.

  Wood lit his pipe from the coals, bending down to suck on it so that Clarissa feared his beard would catch light also.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “It’s my job to find out what happened.”