Sunlight streamed through the stand of poplars. A meadow was visible beyond the trees, green stalks splattered with the brightness of bluebells, daisies, and phlox. A robin pranced near the base of one tree, searching for insects. Glass doors sealed the atrium off from the rest of Gateway Station. The expensive solido of a North American temperate forest was set off by potted plants and sickly grass underfoot The solido looked more real than the real plants, but at least the latter had an honest smell. Mabel leaned slightly toward one pot. Dirt and moisture and growing things. Of cabbages and kings, she mused dourly. Horsepucky. She wanted off Gateway. Earth was temptingly near, and she longed to put blue sky between herself and the malign emptiness of space. There was a comfort to be found on the knowledge that her feet could meet earth, and not her honest imposter.
Two of the glass doors that sealed off the atrium parted to admit Gideon Gleeful. For a moment she found herself regarding him as a man and not just a company cipher. Maybe that was a sign that she was returning to normal. Her appraisal of him was mitigated by the knowledge that when the Nostromo had departed on its ill-fated voyage, he was two decades short of being born. It shouldn't have made any difference. They were approximately the same physical age, albeit he being man of smaller stature.
"Sorry." Always the cheery smile. "I've been running behind all morning. Finally managed to get away."
Mabel cut him off. "Have they located my brother yet?"
Gideon looked uncomfortable. "Well, I was going to wait until after the inquest."
"You know, I've waited fifty-seven years and I think I've discovered I've become somewhat impatient. So humour me, please."
He nodded, set down his carrying case, and popped the lid He fumbled a minute with the contents before producing several sheets of thin plastic.
"Is he . . . ?"
Gideon spoke as he read from one of the sheets. "Dipper Pines. Unmarried. Age 41 at . . time of his disappearance. That was 42 years ago. There's a whole history here. Nothing spectacular or notable. Details of a pleasant ordinary life. Like the kind most of us lead, I expect. I'm sorry." He passed over the sheets, studied Mabel's face as she scanned the printouts. "Guess this is my morning for being sorry."
Mabel studied the holographic image imprinted on one of the sheets. It showed an older, slightly pale man in his early forties'. Could have been anyone's uncle. There was nothing distinctive about the face, nothing that leapt out and shouted with familiarity. It was impossible to reconcile the picture of this older man with the memory of the brother she'd left behind.
"Dipper," she whispered.
Gideon still held a couple of sheets, read quietly as she continued to stare at the hologram. "They say he just up and vanished. Hmmm. They still haven't licked all varieties of that one. No one just up an' vanishes near a meteor."
Mabel looked past him, toward the forest solido but not at it She was staring at the invisible landscape of the past.
"I promised him I'd be home for his birthday. His twenty-seventh birthday. I sure missed that one." She glanced again at the picture.
Gideon nodded, trying to be sympathetic. That was difficult for him under ordinary circumstances, much more so this morning. At least he had the sense to keep his mouth shut instead of muttering the usual polite inanities.
"You always think you can make it up to somebody later you know." She took a deep breath. "But now I never can. I never can. Oh, Dip." The tears came then, long overdue. Fifty-seven years overdue. She sat there on the bench and sobbed softly to herself, alone now in a different kind of space.
Finally Gideon patted her reassuringly on her shoulder, uncomfortable at the display and trying hard not to show it. "The hearing convenes at oh-nine-thirty. You don't want to be late. It wouldn't make a good first impression."
She nodded, rose. "Waddles. Waddles, c'mere." Oinking, the pig sauntered over and allowed her to pick him up. She wiped self-consciously at her eyes. "I've got to change. Won't take long." She rubbed her nose against the pig's back, Waddles closed his eyes and nuzzled his master.
"Would you like me to walk you back to your room?"
"Sure, why not?"
He turned and started for the proper corridor. The doors parted to permit them egress from the atrium. "Ya know, that pig's something of a special privilege. They don't allow pets on Gateway."
"Waddles isn't a pet." She scratched the torn behind the ears. "He's a survivor. Aren't you, tough guy?" Mabel lifted the small ovine to her face, a pleasant oink paying her efforts.
As Mabel promised, she was ready in plenty of time. Gideon elected to wait outside her private room, studying his own reports, until she emerged. The transformation was impressive. Gone was the pale, waxy skin; gone the bitterness of expression and the uncertain stride. Determination? he wondered as they headed for the central corridor. Or just clever makeup?
Neither of them said anything until they neared the sub-leve where the hearing room was located. "What are you going to tell them?" Gideon finally asked her.
"I don't get ya. What else do I need to say? You read my deposition; It's complete and accurate. I don't need to lie, you know."
"Look, I believe you, but there are going to be some heavyweights in there, and every one of them is going to try to pick holes in your story. You got feds, you got Interstellar Commerce Commission, you got Colonial Administration insurance company guys. . ."
"Okay! Okay! I think I get the picture. Lotta peoples are gunning for me."
"Look, just tell them what happened. The important thing is to stay cool and unemotional."
Sure, she thought. All of her friends and shipmates were dead, her brothers been missing for forty-two years and she'd lost fifty-seven years of reality to an un-restoring sleep. Cool and unemotional. Sure. Not a problem, Mabes.
Mabel Pines was usually a very easy going, very happy person. Yet, despite her determination, by midday she was anything but easy going and happy. Repetition of the same questions, the same idiotic disputations of the facts as she'd reported them, the same exhaustive examination of minor points that left the major ones untouched, all combined to render her frustrated and angry.
As she spoke to the somber inquisitors the large videoscreen behind her was printing out mug shots and dossiers. She was glad it was behind her, because the faces were those of the Nostromo's crew. There was Grenda, grinning like a goon. And Candy, placid and bored as the camera did its duty. Crazy old McGuckett was there, too, and Melody. Soos the traitor, his soulless face enriched with programmed false piety. Stan . . .
Stan. Better the picture behind her, like the memories, and so she turned.
"I'm sorry, but are there sprinkles in your ears, or what?' she finally snapped. "We've been here three hours. How many different, zany ways do you want me to tell the same story? You think it'll sound better in Swahili, get me a translator and we'll do it in Swahili. I'd try Japanese, but I'm out of practice. Actually, I can't remember when I last spoke Japanese. Ugh, that and I'm also out of patience. How long does it take you to make up your minds?"
Blendin Blandin steepled his fingers and frowned. His expression was as gray as his suit. It was approximated by the looks on the faces of his fellow board members. There were eight of them on the official board of inquiry, and not a friendly one in the lot. Executives. Administrators. Adjusters. How could she convince them? They weren't human beings They were expressions of bureaucratic disapproval. Phantoms. She was used to dealing with reality. The intricacies of politicorporate maneuvering were beyond her.
"Look, this isn't as simple as you seem to believe," he told her quietly. "Look at it from our perspective. You freely admit to detonating the engines of, and thereby destroying, an M-Class interstellar freighter. A rather expensive piece of hardware."
The insurance investigator was possibly the unhappiest member of the board. "Forty-two million in adjusted dollars That's minus payload, of course. Engine detonation wouldn't leave anything salvageable, even if we could locate the remains after fifty-seven years."
Blandin nodded absently before continuing. "It's not as if we think you're lying. The lifeboat shuttle's flight recorder corroborates some elements of your account. The least controversial ones. That the Nostromo set down on LV-426, an unsurveyed and previously unvisited planet, at the time and date specified. That repairs were made. That it resumed its course after a brief layover and was subsequently set for self-destruct and that this, in fact, occurred. That the order for engine overload was provided by you. For reasons unknown."
"Look, I told you-" Mabel gave a weak, forced smile.
Blandin interrupted, having heard it before. "It did not however, contain any entries concerning the hostile alien life-form you allegedly picked up during your short stay on the planet's surface."
"We didn't "pick it up"," she shot back, the smile vacating her face. "Like I told you, it-"
She broke off, staring at the hollow faces gazing stonily back at her. She was wasting her breath. This wasn't a real board of inquiry. This was a formal wake, a post-interment party. The object here wasn't to ascertain the truth in hopes of vindication it was to smooth out the rough spots and make the landscape all nice and neat again. And there wasn't a thing she could do about it, she saw now. Her fate had been decided before she'd set foot in the room. The inquiry was a show, the questions a sham. To satisfy the record.
"Then somebody's gotten to it and doctored the recorder. A competent tech could do that in an hour. Who had access to it?" Mabel demanded, daring those around her to match her glare.
The representative of the Extrasolar Colonization Administration was a woman on the ungenerous side of fifty. Previously she'd looked bored. Now she just sat in her chair and shook her head slowly.
"Would you just listen to yourself for one minute? Do you really expect us to believe some of the things you've been telling us? Too much hypersleep can do all kinds of funny things to the mind."
Mabel glared at her, furious at being so helpless. "You want to hear some funny things? How about this, lady: once upon a time, there was a pig princess, and that pig princess had huuuge tracks of land, and-"
Blandin stepped in verbally. "Miss Pines! That's enough! Now, listen: the analytical team that went over your shuttle centimeter by centimeter found no physical evidence of the creature you describe or anything like it. No damage to the interior of the craft. No etching of metal surfaces that might have been caused by an unknown corrosive substance."
Mabel had kept control all morning, answering the most inane queries with patience and understanding. The time for being reasonable was at an end, and so was her store of patience.
"That's because I blew it out the airlock!" She subsided a little as this declaration was greeted by the silence of the tomb, the energy of her outburst vibrating through the particles of air like a spell. "Like I said!"
The insurance man leaned forward and peered along the desk at the EGA representative. "Are there any species like this "hostile organism" native to LV-426?"
"No." The woman exuded confidence. "It's a rock. No indigenous life bigger than a simple virus. Certainly nothing complex. Not even a flatworm. Never was, never will be."
Mabel ground her teeth as she struggled to stay calm. "I told you, it wasn't indigenous!" She tried to meet their eyes, but they were having none of it, so she concentrated on Blandin and the ECA rep. "There was a signal coming from the surface The Nostromo's scanner picked it up and woke us from hypersleep, as per standard regulations. When we traced it, we found an alien spacecraft like nothing you or anyone else has ever seen. That was on the recorder too."
She continued, "The ship was a derelict. Crashed, abandoned . . . we never really did find out. We homed in on its beacon. We found the ship's pilot, also like nothing previously encountered. He was dead in his chair with a hole in his chest the size of a, well, a freakin' welder's tank."
Maybe the story bothered the ECA rep. Or maybe she was just tired of hearing it for the umpteenth time. Whatever, she felt it was her place to respond.
"To be perfectly frank, we've surveyed over three hundred worlds, and no one's ever reported the existence of a creature which, using your words, and", she bent to read from her copy of Ripley's formal statement " "gestates in a living human host" and has "concentrated molecular acid for blood"."
Mabel glanced toward Gideon, who sat silent and tight-lipped at the far end of the table. He was not a member of the board of inquiry, so he had kept silent throughout the questioning. Not that he could do anything to help her. Everything depended on how her official version of the Nostromo's demise was received. Without the corroborating evidence from the shuttle's flight recorder the board had nothing to go on but her word, and it had been made clear from the start how little weight they'd decided to allot to that. She wondered anew who had doctored the recorder and why. Or maybe it simply had malfunctioned on its own. At this point it didn't much matter. She was tired of playing the game.
"Look, I can see where this is going." She half smiled, an expression devoid of amusement. This was hardball time, and she was going to finish it out even though she had no chance of winning. "The whole business with the android, why we followed the beacon in the first place, it all adds up, though I can't prove it." She looked down the length of the table, and now she did grin. "Somebody's covering their Soos, and it's been decided that I'm going to take the muck for it. Okay, fine. But there's one thing you can't change, one fact you can't doctor away."
"Those things exist. You can wipe me out, but you can't wipe that out. Back on that planet is an alien ship, and on that ship are thousands of eggs. Thousands. Do you understand? Do you have any idea what that means? You need to go back there with an expedition and find it, using the flight recorder's data and find it fast. Find it and deal with it, preferably with an orbital nuke, before one of your survey teams comes back with a little surprise."
"Thank you, Officer Pines,' Blandin began, 'that will be-"
"Because just one of those things," she went on, stepping on him, "managed to kill my entire crew within half a day of hatching."
The administrator rose. Mabel wasn't the only one in the room who was out of patience. "Thank you. That will be all."
"No! That's not all!' She stood and glared at him. "If those things get back here, that will be all. Then you can just kiss it goodbye! Adios! Don't let the door slam your butt on the way out!"
The ECA representative turned calmly to the administrator. "I believe we have enough information on which to base a determination. I think it's time to close this inquest and retire for deliberation."
Blandin glanced at his fellow board members. He might as well have been looking at mirror images of himself, for al the superficial differences of face and build. They were of one mind.
That was something that could not be openly expressed however. It would not look good in the record. Above all everything had to look good in the record.
"Gentlemen, ladies?" Acquiescent nods. He looked back down at the subject under discussion. Dissection was more like it, she thought sourly. "Officer Pines, if you'd excuse us, please?"
"Not likely." Trembling with frustration, she turned to leave the room. As she did so, her eyes fastened on the picture of Stan that was staring blankly back down from the videoscreen. Captain Stanford Pines. Friend Stan. Companion Stan. Grunkle Stan.
Dead Stan. She strode out angrily.
There was nothing more to do or say. She'd been found guilty, and now they were going to go through the motions of giving her an honest trial. Formalities. The Company and its friends loved their formalities. Nothing wrong with death and tragedy, as long as you could safely suck all the emotion out of it. Then it would be safe to put in the annual report. So the inquest had to be held, emotion translated into sanitized figures in neat columns. A verdict had to be rendered. But not too loudly, lest the neighbors overhear.
None of which really bothered Mabel. The imminent demise of her career didn't bother her. What she couldn't forgive was the blind stupidity being flaunted by the all-powerful in the room she'd left. So they didn't believe her. Given their type of mind-set and the absence of solid evidence, she could understand that. But to ignore her story totally, to refuse to check it out, that she could never forgive. Because there was a lot more at stake than one lousy life, one unspectacular career as a flight transport officer. And they didn't care. It didn't show as a profit or a loss, so they didn't care.
She booted the wall next to Gideon as he bought coffee and doughnuts from the vending machine in the hall. The machine thanked him politely as it accepted his credit card. Like practically everything else on Gateway Station, the machine had no odor. Neither did the black liquid it poured. As for the alleged doughnuts, they might once have flown over a wheat field.
"You had them eating out of your hand, Miss Pines." Gideon was trying to cheer her up. She was grateful for the attempt, even as it failed. But there was no reason to take her anger out on him. Multiple sugars and artificial creamer gave the ersatz coffee some taste.
"No I didn't. They had their minds made up before I even went in there. I've wasted an entire morning. They should've had scripts printed up for everyone to read from, including me. Would've been easier just to recite what they wanted to hear instead of trying to remember the truth." She glanced at him. "You know what they think?"
"I can imagine." He bit into a doughnut.
"They think I'm a headcase."
"You are a headcase," he told her cheerfully. "Have a doughnut. Chocolate or buttermilk?"
She eyed the precooked torus he proffered distastefully. "You can taste the difference?"
"Not really, but the colors are certainly nice."
She didn't grin, but she didn't sneer at him, either.
The "deliberations" didn't take long. No reason why they should, she thought as she reentered the room and resumed her seat. Gideon took his place on the far side of the chamber He started to wink at her, thought better of it, and aborted the gesture. She recognized the eye twitch for what it almost became and was glad he hadn't followed through.
Blandin cleared his throat. He didn't find it necessary to look to his fellow board members for support.
"It is the finding of this board of inquiry that Warrant Officer Mabel Pines, NOC-14672, has acted with questionable judgment and is therefore declared unfit to hold an ICC license as a commercial flight officer.'
If any of them expected some sort of reaction from the condemned, they were disappointed. She sat there and stared silently back at them, tight-lipped and defiant. More likely they were relieved. Emotional outbursts would have to be recorded. Blandin continued, unaware that Mabel had re-attired him in black cape and hood.
"Said license is hereby suspended indefinitely, pending review at a future date to be specified later." He cleared his throat, then his conscience. "In view of the unusual length of time spent by the defendant in hypersleep and the concomitant indeterminable effects on the human nervous system, no criminal charges will be filed at this time."
At this time, Mabel thought humorlessly. That was corporatese for 'Keep your mouth shut and stay away from the media and you'll still get to collect your pension.'
"You are released on your own recognizance for a six-month period of psychometric probation, to include monthly review by an approved ICC psychiatric tech and treatment and or medication as may be prescribed."
It was short, neat, and not at all sweet, and she took it all without a word, until Blandin had finished and departed Gideon saw the look in her eye and tried to restrain her.
"Lay off," he whispered to her. She threw off his hand and continued up the corridor. "It's over. Don't poke the big dogs."
"Right," she called back to him as she lengthened her stride. "So what else can they do to me?" Gideon could only shrug as she moved past him.
She caught up with Blandin as he stood waiting for the elevator. "Why won't you check out LV-426?"
He glanced back at her. "Miss Pines, it wouldn't matter. The decision of the board is final."
"The sugar-coated-floppy-pops with the board's decision. We're not talking about me now. We're talking about the next people that find that ship. Just tell me why you won't check it out."
"Because I don't have to," he told her brusquely. 'The people who live there checked it out years ago, and they've never reported any "hostile organism" or alien ship. You don't think I'm a complete fool, do you? Did you think the board wouldn't seek some sort of verification, if only to protect ourselves from future inquiries? And by the way, they call it Acheron now."
Fifty-seven years. Long time. People could accomplish a lot in fifty-seven years. Build, move around, establish new colonies. Mabel struggled with the import of the administrator's words.
"What are you talking about? What people?"
Blandin joined the other passengers in the elevator car. Mabel put an arm between the doors to keep them from closing. The doors' sensors obediently waited for her to remove it.
"Terraformers," Blandin explained. "Planetary engineers. Much has happened in that field while you slept, Mabel. We've made significant advances, great strides. The cosmos is not a hospitable place, but we're changing that. It's what we call a shake-'n'-bake colony. They set up atmosphere processors to make the air breathable. We can do that now, efficiently and economically, as long as we have some kind of resident atmosphere to work with. Hydrogen, argon, methane is best. Acheron is swimming in methane, with a portion of oxygen and sufficient nitrogen for beginning bonding. It's nothing now. The air's barely breathable. But given time, patience, and hard work, there'll be another habitable world out there ready to comfort and succor humanity. At a price, of course. Ours is not a philanthropic institution, though we like to think of what we do as furthering mankind's progress."
He continued, "It's a big job. Decades worth. They've already been there more than twenty years. Peacefully."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Mabel inquired, the scope of her fears growing with each moment of consideration.
"Because it was felt that the information might have biased your testimony. Personally I don't think it would have made a bit of difference. You obviously believe what you believe. But some of my colleagues were of a differing opinion. I doubt it would have changed our decision."
The doors tried to close, and she slammed them apart. The other passengers began to exhibit signs of annoyance and some of worry.
"How many colonists?"
Blandin brow furrowed. "At last count I'd guess sixty maybe seventy, families. We've found that people work better when they're not separated from their loved ones. It's more expensive, but it pays for itself in the long run, and it gives the community the feeling of a real colony instead of merely an engineering outpost. It's tough on some of the women and the kids, but when their tour of duty ends, they can retire comfortably. Everyone benefits from the arrangement."
"Sweet Smile Dip," Mabel whispered.
One of the passengers leaned forward, spoke irritably. "Do you mind?"
Absently she dropped her arm to her side. Freed of their responsibility, the doors closed quietly. Blandin had already forgotten her, and she him. She was looking instead into her imagination.
Not liking what she saw there.
What jerk-faces. I swear, the next time Mabel goes up against those guys, we all aught to help out and just... throw used napkins at them. That'll teach 'em, mark me!
Once again, really most of the credit should go to the fabulous and awesome TheEquestrianIdiot2.0 for his writing. I just make sure everything is still glistening at the end of the upload. Not really all that hard though, to be honest. :p Soon we're going to be getting into the real funsies. That means aliens, and a WHOLE lot of characters we know you'll all love.
(Three small red lazer dots appear on EZB's chest, in the points of a triangle)
Oh, that better not be you, Bill Cipher! (A blast of blue flame erupts from EZB's chest as shot of plasma explodes through him, killing the poor dude instantly. A predator shimmers on a tree in the distance, and fades away.)