“Now docking,” announced the voice on the ship’s intercom in Gyvo, then repeated the words in a cycle of languages that had become familiar during the flight. A screen hanging from the ceiling showed the ship’s glowing silhouette slowly merging with a glowing silhouette of the docking tower.
A shudder went through the vessel. Vanaka had felt it plenty of times, but somehow it never stopped being a bit ominous. She shook it off, stood up, and walked over to the luggage compartments. The key she’d kept around her wrist opened it and Losan and Erine joined her in taking their bags out. Vanaka took the heaviest one and slung it over her shoulder. Caution against displaying her full strength in public had been such an integral part of her upbringing that she simply couldn’t stop a feeling of unease, even as reason told her the other passengers only saw size, not weight.
The green disembarking light shone in the ceiling and on the walls, directing people to the entrance as the gateway opened with a hiss that spoke of the ship’s age. She resisted her eagerness to see a new world enough to just keep pace with the rest of the line, as it shuffled out to a happy jingle playing from a speaker. They went through a short hallway that had been sealed during the flight and past side-doors guarded by crewmembers, and then bottlenecked through the airlock and into the tower itself.
Most of the people around her simply hurried about their business, approaching staff with questions, turning to information terminals or going straight to small business or banking booths. It was such a bizarre display to her. Didn’t they understand how wondrous this was, being far from home, on the threshold of a whole other planet?
“If I ever start getting casual about setting foot on another world...” she said to her two ansoti. “Do try to shake me out of it.”
She spun in a circle, and a moment of carelessness caused her big, box-shaped backpack to bump into a passing woman. The weight launched her off her feet, but Losan caught her arm and Vanaka reacted an instant later. Between the two of them the woman regained her footing.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Vanaka said to her, turning to the Larin tongue as a likely shared one. The woman nodded with a calm enough expression, said something Vanaka didn’t understand, and continued on her way.
“Well...” she said to the ansoti, turning an awkward smile their way. “Don’t shake me too hard.”
There were three elevators, each one running down to the surface in a separate umbilical. One was for cargo transportation and the new arrivals started drifting towards the other two. Vanaka’s trio walked towards the one that would take them down to the capital of Nevilis.
As they usually were, the elevator interior was very substantial, to make up for the length of each trip. Besides the entrance was a viewing platform, and Vanaka was drawn to it like a galu to sugar.
There below them was the planet of Gorono, a tiny rock against the vastness of space, spinning around one of billions of suns in the sea of stars. And yet it was also a lifeworld, a place of experiences, and that made it enormous. It had an ecosystem, centuries upon centuries of people being born, living and dying, culture, pain and joys.
Stepping away from amateur philosophy, it had significant polar ice caps and much of the dry land was too high above sea level for easy human habitation. In short, white, brown, blue and green seemed about evenly distributed across its surface.
“So, run it all by me again, Erine,” she said.
“Inhabited as far back as the First Civilisation,” the woman said, repeating the research she’d done. “Had a rough time during the Age of Silence, and didn’t really develop advanced technology until the rest of the galaxy found them during Rediscovery. They were preyed upon by early sky-kings, but have been a self-sustaining, self-managing people for about three hundred years now.”
History is a savage land, Vanaka thought, quietly quoting one of her tutors.
“They’re not well off or important, but they’ve carved out a niche as a thoroughfare in this general region of space, and a modest industry,” Erine went on. “Much of the inhabitable lowlands is characterised by tall stone pillars that originally formed on the sea bed. They’re called rahun in the local tongue, and rather than tear them down the locals mostly build in, around, or on top of them. The population is around two billion, eighty-five percent baseline humans, eight percent Kapadian, three percent Veroki, and the rest is just this and that.”
“They have their own native language, formed during the Age of Silence, but Gyvo is taught for a few years at school, and thanks to all the shipping Bakiso is widely understood as well.”
Erine looked at Losan.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Guns are tightly controlled. Getting a licence takes more time than we’ll spend down there and isn’t even guaranteed to succeed. You will have to store your pistol down in the entrance complex. But one can get away with civilian self-defence stunners down there, at least in public areas.”
She turned her gaze meaningfully on Vanaka.
“And I came across an interesting law: All security cameras in the capital must be bright-orange and highly visible.”
“That IS interesting,” Vanaka told her with a smile on her face. “Really, what would I do without you?”
Erine smiled back, but it faded quickly as she stepped up to the transparent shield that separated them from the freezing cold of the upper sky.
“And yes... supposedly it is a thoroughfare for crime as well as trade,” she said. “There is street crime in the larger cities, in the less well-off areas-”
“As always,” Losan interjected.
“-as always,” Erine said, “but supposedly the more organised, interstellar kind has a strong foothold here as well.”
“And we are about to stick our toes into that particular hive,” Losan said, just a little bit grimly.
“Just as Helpers,” Vanaka reminded him, determined to stay optimistic. “We’re just going to help out a little, and then be on our way.”
She joined Erine in standing right up against the shield. Vanaka put her palm on it and looked down the umbilical that would take them down to Nevilis.
“Maybe after all this... maybe I will just do performances for a bit and save up some money.”
She patted the glass.
“Let’s just see what happens down there.”
# # #
The city was an interesting sight. The elevator took them down to an area that was flat either due to demolition or some quirk of the phenomenon that created the stone pillars, but once they were through the immediate arrival area the planet’s distinctive features came into view.
It didn’t take Vanaka long to gain an appreciation for the way the locals had integrated architecture and the landscape. At a bit of a distance the pillars rather looked like artistically designed buildings, but as the monorail took them into the capital itself it became clear enough that she was indeed looking at natural formations.
They stopped at a station and joined one of the several different flows of people that spread out of the mono. They walked up a gently ascending ramp onto a network of ramps, and came to a stop on what seemed to be a viewing platform bolted onto one of the pillars.
Vanaka reached out and touched the stone, originally worn smooth by the ocean, then exposed to millennia of wind and rain, and finally human interference.
“What is it about this urge to touch interesting things?” Erine wondered even as she followed Vanaka’s lead.
“It’s the ultimate connection, isn’t it?” Losan suggested. “You and something else, joined via the skin.”
“Sure,” Vanaka said. “That makes sense.”
Above the plain roads that had been laid out on the ground stood a city of hollowed-out pillars. It was all a very striking sight. The pillars themselves were encircled by artfully carved windows, with masonry or concrete only visible where there seemed to have been a need for repairs. For the most part the pillars of Nevilis bore the mark of great care having been taken in turning them into a city.
Fastened to the exterior of most pillars were platforms that reached all the way around. Some featured buildings, but most simply allowed traffic to flow. Bridges crisscrossed the spaces between, and a few of the pillars had had tunnels dug all the way through. The average number of floors on each pillar seemed to be four, but Vanaka saw a whole eight on a truly towering pillar that stood above all else around it and bore the marks of having some official purpose.
“Erine?”
“Yes?”
Vanaka pointed at that king of pillars.
“Find out if it’s possible to stand on top of that one.”
“I will add it to the list,” her ansoti said.
Vanaka turned to face her.
“Am I running you ragged?” she asked with a smile.
Erine grinned back at her.
“You are leaving me with the things I am good at.”
“Good to know.”
There were a number of tiny one or two-person vehicles moving about the bridges and platforms, slowly enough to not be a big hazard to pedestrians, but transport was mostly through monorails with equally tiny compartments. Once Vanaka got tired of looking all around like the tourist that she was, she hurried over to a ten-car train as it came to a stop close to them. They paid, and boarded. The car they got into was just barely large enough for both them and the luggage, but would carry them indefinitely until they chose a stop to get off at.
The train was attached to the rail overhead, and with a bit of a lurch it took them off of the platform and out above the streets far down below. Vanaka went right back to being a tourist as her surroundings started changing far more quickly, as they soared about, above, and between. There was a lot to see, as there always was in cities if one looked with the right kind of eyes. And for a while Vanaka just allowed herself to enjoy it all with a smile on her face.
But she couldn’t help but notice, in the corner of her eye, that Losan watched with a different kind of eyes. And eventually she started following his gaze, and saw, to no great surprise, that he was looking at the less lit areas of the city. The ones with narrower platforms and bridges, smaller businesses if any, and generally more cluttered looked. The places the rest of the city simply wanted to forget about.
It was in places like this that the dirty, nasty kind of crime proliferated. Crime like human trafficking. Which was why the network existed. And which was why she was on this planet at all.
Erine put her finger on the glass, rather to Vanaka’s relief.
“How about this hotel?” the ansoti asked. “It looks nice.”