“It’s going to rain,” was the answer he got from Blackstone. A glance at the sky told him that it was true, although it hardly seemed excuse enough for the impoliteness.
The blatant tokenism of the responses Solari did receive to his tentative greetings suggested that the seven were exceedinglyunenthusiastic about welcoming the policeman into their midst, but Matthew wasn’t certain whether that could be taken as a sign of collective guilt. Unhappily, he let Solari draw him aside, so that they would not inhibit Blackstone’s attempts to organize a human chain to begin unshipping the cargo.
“The doctor was right about the weight,” Solari complained. “It doesn’t feel too oppressive, as yet, but it does feel distinctly peculiar.”
Matthew had been too preoccupied with the minutiae of his descent to pay too much heed to the restoration of nearly all his Earthly weight, but as soon as Solari mentioned it he became acutely conscious of the additional drag. As the policemen said, it didn’t feel toouncomfortable, as yet, but it did feel odd. The oddness didn’t seem to be confined within him, though—it seemed to have accommodated itself automatically to the general alienness of the environment.
It wasn’t until he concentrated hard on his own inner state that Matthew realized that his heart was pounding and that his breathing was awkward. His internal technology had masked the extra effort, but he realized that even standing still was putting a strain on him. Adaptation to the new gravity regime was going to take time.
He looked up reflexively, in the direction from which he had come, almost as if he expected to see Hopeglinting in the sky. Even the sun was invisible behind a mass of gray clouds, but there was a margin of clear sky visible behind the hilltops in what Matthew assumed to be the north. The sky was blue, but not the pure pale blue of Earth’s sky; there was a hint of purple there too.
In every other direction, the purple coloration of the landscape seemed to leap out at his wandering gaze in a fashion akin to insult, if not to flagrant contempt. The color was not in the least unexpected, of course, but everything he had seen on Hope’s screens—even the large wallscreen—had been bordered and contained. The colors had been true, but the frame surrounding them had robbed them of a certain awe-inspiring vividness, and of their subtler sensual context.
Matthew had imagined stepping down onto alien soil a thousand times before, amid vegetation that was as bizarre as he could visualize, but he had seen too many “alien planets” in VE melodramas to be prepared for the sensory immediacy of the real thing. Even the best VE suits were incapable of duplicating the complexity of real touch sensations, let alone the senses of smell and taste. His surface-suit, by contrast, was geared to making the most of all the molecules whose passage was not forbidden. The air of the new world presumably smelled and tasted even more peculiar than it was allowed to seem to him, but the seeming was all the more striking to a man who had been enclosed in sterilized recycled air since the moment of his reawakening, and for some considerable time before.
Matthew felt dizzy. His reawakened senses reeled, and he had to take a sudden step back.
“Are you okay, Matthew?” Ikram Mohammed asked. He was the only one who had paused in his work long enough to take note of Matthew’s reactions. Blackstone had organized the others to cut and shape an easily navigable path to the hatchway, and they still seemed more than ready to direct their resentful attention exclusively to the Australian rather than the newcomers.
“We’re fine, Ike,” Matthew assured him. “Just give us a minute or two to get our heads together.”
Vince Solari stood on one leg, experimentally, then on the other. “Not so bad, all things considered,” was his judgment. “Could be worse, I guess.” Although the direct reference was to the renewal of his weight, his tone suggested that he felt that the unreadiness of his suspects to approve of his arrival was a trifle overdone.
The bubble-domes of Base Three were not visible from where they stood, although Matthew assumed that Milyukov’s boast about the accuracy of his delivery system had been justified. The expectant crowd could not have assembled so quickly had the base been more than three or four hundred meters away.
Matthew was still clutching the bag containing his personal possessions, but he finally condescended to clip it to his belt. He rubbed his hands as if in anticipation of getting to work, but he resisted the temptation to force his way back into the tangled vegetation in pursuit of the machete-wielding scientists. He suspected that his Earth-trained reflexes were not yet sufficiently reaccommodated to let him grapple with the branches as skillfully as his new companions, and would certainly betray him if he tried to take a place in the human chain that was now taking definitive shape.
“Sorry about this, Matthew,” Ikram Mohammed said, waving an arm at the remainder of the company, who were working away with their backs to Matthew and Solari. “We’re not used to visitors, and Milyukov’s made us wait for an extra week to get the last few pieces of the boat.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice before adding: “He said that it didn’t make sense to send two consignments—which is true, of course, but it didn’t stop us thinking that what he really wanted to do was make sure that we all had to stay at the base until his detective arrived to finger one of us as a murderer. No offense, Mr. Solari.”
“None taken,” Solari assured him, insincerely.
“I’ll talk to you later, Matthew,” the genomicist said. “Got to pull my weight. Don’t try to join in yet—wait till you get your land legs. Look around.”
Matthew did as he was told. He took another look at the sullen sky, from which the first raindrops were just beginning to fall, rattling the leaves of the dendrites. He searched the bushes for signs of animal life, but nothing seemed to be moving. There was hardly any wind, and everything but the thicket where the capsule had come down seemed still and somnolent. The ground between the stands of trees was mostly bare, exposing black rock and gray scree slopes. The more distant slopes were already blurring behind curtains of rain, except where the ribbon of bluish sky still maintained its defiant stance. There, the many shades of lilac and purple stood out far more clearly.
But I’m standing here on my own two feet, Matthew reminded himself, naked but for an artificial skin that’s no more than a millimeter thick save for the soles of my feet and the codpiece. It’s a strange place, but it’s a place where human beings can breathe, and live, and work, and play. It’s a place that could be home. Isn’t it?
One or two of the reluctant laborers were glancing back at him now, some more furtively than others. Lynn Gwyer flashed him a smile, rolling her eyes apologetically as if to assure him that she would be glad to offer a proper welcome when the crowd had dispersed. Tang Dinh Quan’s glances were speculative, trying to weigh him up. Godert Kriefmann and Dulcie Gherardesca seemed to be paying more attention to Solari than to him. Maryanne Hyder didn’t seem to be meeting anybody’s eye—certainly not Blackstone’s—although there was something about her bearing that suggested that her fierce concentration was by no means evidence of self-sufficiency.
“At least the crew were all on the same side,” Solari whispered in Matthew’s ear, having obviously made similar observations of his own.
“No they weren’t,” Matthew replied, in a similarly confidential tone. “They just put on a better act for our sake. Here, the strains show—and with Bernal not long dead, a victim to violence, I’m not surprised.” But they are all on the same side, he added, privately. Underneath the stresses and the strains, they know that. They have to be on the same side, and so do we. The only undecided matter is how well we’re going to play the game.