Still, in that moment her loyalties crystallized. She moved to stand next to Renna, ready to support whatever he decided. There was a long pause while the drone of engines faded gradually to a whisper, and then nothing. At last, the man shrugged.
"All right, let's ride."
Peripatetic's Log:
Stratos Mission:
Arrival + 40.157 Ms
Cy complained about having to use archaic codes to guide my shuttle down the ancient landing beam. I was too nervous to be sympathetic. "Who had to learn an entirely new language?" I groused, while white flame licked the viewing ports and a heavy atmosphere tried to crush my cocoon like a grape in a vice. "It's supposedly a dialect based on Florentinan, but they have parts of speech nobody's seen before — feminine, masculine, neuter, and clonal . . . with redundancy cases, declensions, and drift-stop participles …"
I was jabbering to stave off raw terror. Even that diversion vanished when Cy asked me to shut up, letting her concentrate on getting me down in one piece. That left nothing to do except listen to the shrieking-hot wind against the hull plates, centimeters from my ear. Normal landings are bad. But I had never heard sounds like these. Stratoins breathe air thick enough to swim in.
It being summer when the Council finally voted permission to land, aurorae followed me down — curtains of electricity tapped into magnetic coils streaming off the red sun's dwarf companion. I was headed for low latitudes, but even so, ribbons of ionic lightning caused sparks to crackle along a console, uncomfortably near my arm.
Ballistic crisis passed. Soon the lander was cutting tunnels through vast water-vapor clouds, then turning in a braking swoop over a quilt of dark forests and bright meadows. Finally, a riverside gleam led to clear signs of habitation and industry. For most of a Terran year, I had looked on this terrain from space, half-dead from the ennui of waiting. Now I pressed the window, drinking in the loveliness of Stratos … the somber luster of native vegetation and more luminous greens of Earth-derived life, the shimmer of her multicolored lakes, the atmospheric refraction which gives every horizon a subtle, concave bend. Hills rose to surround me. With a final stall that set my stomach spinning, Cy set the shuttle rolling across twenty hectares of pavement, split here and there by shoots of intruding grass. By the time the shuttle cooled enough to let down a narrow ramp, a welcoming party was already waiting.
I imagine their embroidered gowns would have fetched magnates' prices on Pleasence, or even Earth. Of the five middle-aged women, none smiled. They kept their distance as I descended, and when we exchanged bows. No one offered to shake hands.
I've had warmer receptions . . . and far worse. Two of the women identified themselves as members of the reigning council. A third wore clerical robes and raised her arms to make what sounded like a cautious blessing. The remaining pair were university dons I'd already spoken with by videx. Savant Iolanthe, who seemed cautiously guarded, with sharply evaluating gray eyes, and Savant Melonni, who had seemed friendly during the long negotiations, but now kept well back, regarding me like a specimen of some rare and rather dubious species. One with a reputation for biting.
During the months spent peering in frustration from orbit, I've seen how most settlements rely on wind and solar and animal power for transport — fully in line with what I know of Lysian-Herlandist ideology. Industrialized regions make some use of combustion-powered land craft, however, and I was shown to a comfortable car equipped with a hydrogen-oxygen engine. To my amazement, nearly everything else, from chassis to furnishings, was crafted out of finely carved wood! I later surmised that this doesn't just reflect the planet's comparative poverty in metals. It is a statement of some sort.
I sat alone in one compartment, isolated from the others by a pane of glass. Which was just as well. My intestines complained noisily from prelanding treatments and, despite having spent several megaseconds acclimatizing to a simulated Stratos atmosphere, my lungs labored audibly in the heavy air. An assault of strange odors kept me busy stifling sneezes, and the carbon dioxide partial pressure triggered recurrent yawns. I must have been a sight to behold. Yet, none of that seemed to matter in my elation to be down at last! This seems such a sophisticated, dignified world and folk, especially in comparison to what I met on Digby, or on godforsaken Heaven. I'm certain we can reach an understanding.
