Chapter Text
The purple sky had one star too many. Above the desert, the wells and the slag, it drifted slowly, denying its place in the aether.
The spatioport was unused at this time. No delivery had taken place in recent days: all the merchandise had been stashed away in depots, no hazardous equipment lingered at imprudent bypassers' reach. The dock, one of the few open spaces among the domes and tunnels of a planetary habitat, was overrun with children, greedy for a space they could really run in.
Serge walked around their games at a respectful distance. He had nothing against children, he had raised two daughters and regreted nothing, but thirty at a time were too much. They were old enough to have their own translator but too young to master it, their little brains sent anything on any channel, he didn't have the energy for their noise.
The extra star kept moving, he was sure of it now, its ionised trails cut into the dusty horizon. It wasn't a celestial body, it was sinking through the atmosphere. With a thought, he consulted the port's schedule. No arrival was planned. Of course, there would have been a few more adults at the port if a ship was coming. Radar? Yes, a vessel was coming. Civilian spacecraft, government registered.
His position offered an excellent view, so he did what any citizen would do: he opened his sensory channel wide, lending his eyes to the colony. Somewhere else, the port's workers were on the way, they would take care of the ship and its passengers, they'd drive the children back to the habitats, but he wouldn't be bothered: until manœuvres were completed, he embodied the collective's curiosity.
What he could have done without was the position it placed him before the passengers. Of course, to a bureaucrat from Earth, the man that stood directly in front of the gate and made eye contact before anyone else must have been in charge of welcoming him. That was the collective's bothersome side: with the Signal to provide all answers, nobody had the excuse of ignorance to turn down a job, he was stuck with the Earthlings for now.
The stranger was unusually tall, brown haired, with the angular features of too skinny men. His outfit showed a will to appear professional, but its time in the landing harness had wrinkled it out of shape. He walked forward and offered his hand:
“André Caron, auditor for the Settlement Ministry. Your colony was selected for a surprise inspection, we'll have to ask you for an access to your installations and documentation. Be assured that we'll be as disruptive as possible.”
The mission was a surprise inspection, but not a random one. The mining colony, poetically named 157B in official documents, produced increasingly botched and fragmentary reports. It was nearly autonomous in its daily management, but it shouldn't believe that nobody cared what the supplies Earth sent its way became!
The final straw: the latest audit had revealed an unexplainable gap betweeen food orders and demographic statistics. How could rations for two thousands feed eight thousands? The two possible explanations were frightening: either a disaster had decimated the planetary base and the survivors chose to hide it, or they received deliveries from another supplier, in exchange for mysterious and probably illegal services. André, the team's leader, hoped that a civilian mission wasn't a mistake, that a troop transport vessel wouldn't have been a better emissary.
The port seemed almost deserted, peopled only with the staff required for a small passenger ship. On a tarmac built for massive ore shipments and supplies cargos, the ship looked like a forgotten toy, unworthy of calling the port's workers back to duty. Straight in front of him, a single man waited, a little shorter than average but visibly muscular under his thick canvas shirt. His black hair was short, with a thin shaved stripe where a shiny metallic clip sat, probably the emitter for an implanted device. His insistent stare left no doubt: this was his contact. He extended his hand and introduced himself.
“I'm Serge Kopac, the man answered, drilling equipment mechanic. What do you need to look at, exactly?”
That was not a reassuring answer. Of course, the miners and the specialists who maintained their gear made up most of the colony's adults, but to meet government representatives, one expected a manager, someone who knew his way around manifests and archives. That reinforced the hypothesis of a catastrophic attrition, bureaucracy's organigram dismembered, tasks handed around in order of urgency, not enough educated citizens left to afford a permanent organisation. They'd have to visit the residential areas, André decided, population counts were not reliable, they'd have to see in person if housing was occupied.
He didn't show his worry immediately and answered: “Mostly documents. Import, export, population, building maintenance, this sort of things. Then inspections, we compare inventories to records, ask a couple questions to your workers. Youtine stuff.”
The situation wasn't done growing more complicated. The local didn't flinch when a group of five creatures came nearby. Their silhouette reminded of a large dog at first glance, but the resemblance stopped at their ugly centipede head. Aliens! And from no species André knew about. No report mentioned aliens!
It would not, after all, be a routine visit.
Serge first offered to take the inspectors to a suite a janitorial team was preparing for their stay at this very moment, but they refused the delay: what would a surprise inspection be worth if it allowed time to destroy evidence? Internal reports had to be downloaded immediately. The mechanic didn't know where to find an administrative terminal, but the Signal told him which way to go one step at the time. The emitter must have been a Tsac, they never really grasped that humans didn't like to walk without knowing where they were going. But in front of the visitors, he let nothing show.
“You didn't signal an extraterrestrial contact, the civil servant asked while they walked. Diplomatic relations are centralised on Earth, you know we must be kept up to date. You wouldn't like to be housing fugitives or terrorists, would you?”
Serge had to close the public channel for a moment. He was no diplomat, coordonnator or manager, no one who could translate the collective mind's opinion into something polite: “How is that your damn business?” He only restored it after being sure not to say it out loud. The planet was not, for now, impressed by its visitors.
“Demographic statistics include the aliens, he eventually provided. You have total numbers, births, deaths, effectives by trade, everything your forms demand!”
He guessed that Earth's management would have issued different forms if they had known the two colonies had merged. He also guessed that the collective had, more or less consciously, kept the change hidden. Year after year, management ran a little more through the Signal, and bureaucracy decayed slosly in a peaceful neglect. No one was in charge of deploying a new census method, and no one wanted to be. Still, he understood why the Earthlings would object.
“It's not complicated, he sighed. They need cobalt, we need cobalt, and this region has more than enough for both. What's precious here is not the ore in the rock, it's the shaft of the mine, the drill that digs it, and the arms that drive her. We get more by digging together, even if your bosses don't like to lose control.”
His gaze landed on a kind of large spider that clung to an Earth woman. A thick disk for a body, ten legs arranged in two rows, eyes and less identifiable organs at their base. They were in no position to tell them not to associate with aliens, at least the Tsacs had a head!
André noticed his gaze.
“Terry is an engineer and a valued member of our team. It's not the presence of extraterrestrials we're objecting to, it's that we were not informed. Which government do we contact, if anything happens? Who do we check with, to know if they're outlaws? Do they have enemies, the sort of enemies that might blow you up along with them? Nobody likes paperork, but it exists for a reason!”
Serge only realised he had reached his destination when his hand stretched out to reach the doorknob. He opened the door he had never crossed, walked into a corridor he had never visited, but knew exactly the way to the archives' terminal. He led the inspectors. Now came the moment he didn't like: turning the computer on, and typing in the password he didn't know. One couldn't send a password over the Signal, he had to synch straight to the archives' secretary and let him control his muscles for a few seconds of absolute vulnerability. The Earthling didn't realise what they were putting him through!
One of the civil servants plugged an adaptor to the computer, briefly took place at the keyboard, and copied the relevant files. Once in range, he'd send them to the ships' board AI. The machine would tell them what to loon into first in a few minutes. And to think they thought they were doing all the work.