Authors: R. M. Meluch

The Ninth Circle (19 page)

Aemilius caught himself holding his breath. The attaché shifted his weight from foot to foot, almost jogging in place.

“Target acquired.”

Aemilius breathed. He asked, “Is he trying to run?”

“Negative. The load is quiet.”

The load had little choice but to sit quiet. Attempting thrust inside an energy hook was suicide.

“I’m beaming you a satellite view, Governor.”

Aemilius activated his wall monitor to display the satellite image.

The wall vanished into a wide open sea, blustery gray-green under a half-clouded sky.

The view narrowed to where the energy hook from an orbital station was reeling its catch up from the deep. The cable of energy wasn’t visible except for a static circle in the ocean waves.

When at last the energy bubble broke surface, its curved top appeared as a smooth dome of dark water, slightly shimmering. Ocean water slipped off the outer shell of the nearly frictionless energy bubble as it rose.

Suspended above the waves, tons of water churned inside the transparent energy globe.

Murky with algae, plankton, small fish, and particulates, the water appeared to swirl without the encumbrance of the Xerxes within.

Aemilius had to marvel. “Perfect stealth.” He couldn’t make out any sign of the captive spaceship at all. “Perfect.”

The Intelligence agent snarled, “That’s not stealth. That’s an empty hook! There’s nothing in there except a great lot of sea water and that junk at the bottom.”

A cluster of objects sat at the bottom of the energy bubble. The objects were disturbingly orderly. Organized like a misplaced office.

“You’re sure?” the governor said.

Was there a human being alive who hadn’t snatched an annoying insect out of the air only to set it free because he didn’t feel it in his hand?

“He’s sure,” the Italian attaché said, sounding vastly more relieved than he ought.

“We
missed?
” Aemilius said.

“No, no, no,” said the attaché. “Please, please, please don’t drop the junk. That’s the important part.
Domni
, my nation owes you.” He fluttered his hand toward the visible objects caught in the bottom of the energy globe. “
That
is the ambassador’s system.”

Bagheera
’s control room stood vacant in the moody brooding half-light of ship’s night. The Xerxes bulleted through the interstellar void.

Leo had adjusted some of the ship’s environmental controls. The ambassador’s original settings had given the Xerxes the feeling of a planet-bound office building. Leo blew those settings away. Gave the ship a sense of motion, like a bullet train rumbling on rails, fast. Long journeys were easier to take if you felt like you were getting somewhere.

Nox paced, wide awake in the gloom.

The consul’s blood was gone from the deck, from the consoles, from the air lock. Leo had activated the ship’s clean-up routine and made that mess go away.

Nox told himself it was a backhanded mercy, killing the consul. This way Camiciarossa would never know what it was like to live with a screw up this big.

Nox had thought killing would be easier. He’d done it often enough in simulators. Except for garrotes. He’d flunked garrotes. He couldn’t get anything around anyone’s neck without telegraphing his intent.

He’d never felt any aftereffects from simulated killings during training.

He lay down in his cabin. Got up. Sat in the control room. Brooded in the dim glow of the instrument lights.

Twitched. Got up. Prowled the ship.

Ghosted into an empty compartment.

The cabin was completely empty. There used to be a full office setup in here. Leo had insisted they tear it out whole, down to the deck grates it stood on, fly it back to Phoenix and sink it in the ocean. Leo had been frantic as a caged rat about it. “That’s got to go! It’s got to go! It’s got to go
back! Now! Now! Now!
”

He said it made the difference between them being shipjackers or being international spies, and did we ever want to sleep again. Ever?

The ambassador’s office and everything in it was gone now.

Nox drifted. Ended up back in the control room.

He sat on the deck, his back resting against the bulk, elbows on his knees.

Heard someone else moving about.

Pallas leaned into the control room. Saw him. Crossed to where Nox sat and offered something down to him.

Nox looked.

It was an electronic puzzle game, wherein one manipulated moving shapes.

Nox shook his head, mumbled refusal in the direction of his ankles.

Pallas touched the game to Nox’s shoulder, insisting. “It’s supposed to head off symptoms of post trauma stress.”

“I’m okay.”

“You threw up on my boots,” said Pallas and forced the device into Nox’s hands. “Play the
coiens
game.”

Glenn hesitantly touched the backs of her fingers to the mane of the nearest fox. She met with no shyness. No objection. And she ended up rubbing the fox behind the ears.

The fox closed its eyes in an earthly expression of contentment, then flopped down and rolled completely over on its back.

His back. The fox was male.

Glenn rubbed the fox’s chest and belly, struck by the absurdity of this first contact.

The fox’s tongue lolled out one side of his mouth.

Glenn decided to call him Brat.

“That is not a very dignified position, my dear,” Glenn told Brat. Her words were gibberish to the alien.

Fox mouths couldn’t form consonants. Apparently foxes couldn’t hear the difference between most consonants either.

The foxes communicated in a whiny humming language, pitched, but mostly without whole notes.

Patrick had perfect pitch. He had already picked up some basic phrases from watching audio-video recordings on the voyage here. Fox grammar was apparently simple. The foxes were a simple species.

They were humming.

“What are they saying?” Glenn asked.

“I’m not getting all of it,” Patrick said. “Mostly they’re saying ‘Funny.’”

“Funny, as in there’s something wrong with us?” Glenn asked.

“Funny, ha ha,” Patrick said. “They think we’re funny.”

Over the next days it became apparent that foxes found most everything funny.

They were carnivores. That was sort of obvious. Sometimes they tanned the hides of their prey to use as cloaks or sunshades or windbreaks.

“This is as advanced as their technology gets,” Patrick told Glenn, inspecting a handsome pelt. The fur was golden-white, patterned with two rows of black spots. It used to belong to an antelope. The other side was cleanly finished.

“Sandy says their cranial capacity is on par with ours. Which means they should be capable of higher learning. They’re just not
doing
it.”

“Any idea what’s keeping them primitive?” Glenn asked.

Fox whiskers tickled the back of her neck. It was Brat. Pointing out to her that she was slacking.

Glenn resumed petting the fox.

“They’re not primitive,” Patrick said. “They just
are
. They’re not trying to advance.”

Brat smiled in the grass, eyes shut, not wanting to be anywhere else.

“They have a vague concept of future. I can’t get a word for ‘when’ out of them. I can’t say ‘when the sun goes down,’ or ‘tomorrow,’ or ‘when the snow comes.’ But they must have some idea that it’s going to get cold again if they’re tanning hides.”

“Maybe they just like the hides,” said Glenn. “They’re pretty.”

“Then they’re not preparing for the future at all. And the past isn’t that hot a topic either. They don’t write. They don’t recognize pictures or drawings. And maps? Forget it. They don’t have words for left or right. Directions are where they point their noses and their eyes. They don’t count on their fingers or toes. They don’t recognize holding up two fingers as meaning the number two.”

He held up two fingers for Brat. Brat just wiggled and shifted to make Glenn move her hand a little to the right.

Patrick took out his omni and played
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
.

At the sound, Brat rolled up on all fours. He pivoted his head left and right, confused, or trying to get the music out of first one ear then the other. Brat slunk in on his belly toward the omni. Sniffed it. Then puffed at it, like spitting without the spit, and trotted away.

“Aw, c’mon. Everyone likes Mozart!” Patrick called after Brat.

Patrick tried out a variety of music on the foxes, from Bach to rock to Celtic to dirty blues to Arcturan etudes.

Despite communicating with tones, it turned out that foxes didn’t have a taste for any music, especially chords.

With each song, the foxes made strange gestures at the sounds, holding their heads sideways, their muzzles wrinkled. They hummed short notes and brushed their paws at their ears.

“Don’t tell me,” Glenn said. “They think it’s funny.”

“No,” Patrick said. “They’re calling it ‘noise.’”

His playlist came to Farouq’s Percussive Symphony No. 3.

All ears perked up.

“Ah! We have a hit.”

Foxes leaned in, ears cocked forward, interested. Bodies moved to the beat, claw tips tapping.

“They’re ’cussers!” Glenn cried.

Merrimack
’s company and crew were great ’cussers.

Patrick turned up the volume.

The fox whom Glenn called Mama-san stood up on her hind legs to dance. Foxes hooked elbows, and the dance became a line.

The mature male dubbed Conan thumped on a hollow log with his paws and claws. Others stamped their feet, clapped sticks together, and shook shells within cages of their claws, improvising on Farouq’s beat.

The female foxes shook their western ends and swished their lush tails at the males.

Glenn, who didn’t have a tail, broke off a leafy branch and swished that behind her as she joined the dance. The young foxes Brat, Tanner, Banshee, and Princess rolled on the ground laughing—actual rolling on the literal ground—barking hilarity.

Winded, Glenn quit her place in the line. She tossed her tail aside and dropped to sit on the ground next to her husband. Her cheeks felt flushed. She huffed out a big breath. Said, a bit astonished, “I am having a great time.”

Patrick kissed her temple. “Me too.”

The ’cuss jam ended as the sun was going down.

A red-orange glow striped the horizon.

Foxes frolicked in the gloaming. Chased each other. Jumped and snapped at bioluminescent moths.

The evening was cool. The first stars came out.

Foxes were not modest but they were not as brazen as dogs either. Glenn and Patrick heard trills of fox loving in the thick brush under the trees.