Amy Thomson - Through Alien Eyes

She spent the night hopping around Frankfurt, calling her contacts in the CCD. Then, around four in the morning, she took the train to Paris, and checked her messages in an all-night net cafe. One of her CCD contacts came through with a name: General Alice Burnham. On the train to Lyon, she did some digging. She got off the train in Dijon, and caught a train to Bern. In Bern, she contacted a net pirate she knew about from a friend.

He was a burly man with a grizzled red beard, who went by the name Morgan. They met in a cafe.

“Are you Morgan?”

“You Goudrian?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yes, Brinker sent me.”

Morgan drained the last of his thick Turkish coffee. “Were you followed?” he asked.

“Not that I could see, but— ” She spread her hands and shrugged. “The world’s a big place, yes?”

“Come on, then,” he said. He motioned to the big, bald-headed man with the enormous black handlebar mustache behind the counter. The man nodded and opened a door at the back of the cafe\ Analin went through onto a landing at the top of a dark staircase. Morgan took her hand, and they carefully descended the dark stairs and went through a door that opened onto a parking garage.

Morgan tossed a ring of keys to the attendant. “Trieste, I think, tell Mildn to send me a red Gavotte this time. And call Ian and tell him to meet us “at the Erdbeere.”

“That way,” he told Analin, gesturing at a door. They went through the door to another garage, and then through a maze of hallways, garages, and basements, emerging finally in the lobby of a seedy apartment building. They left the building, and got into a waiting cab.

“What do you need?” he asked her, as they settled back into the cab.

“Traceless shielding on this comm unit for a few days.”

“Why not get another number?”

“I’m expecting an important call on it tomorrow evening.”

He nodded. “We’ll forward it through one of our tracer mazes. It’ll look like you’re calling from Brazil.”

“I also need a dossier on General Burnham, security head of the Space Service, including as much classified material about her connections with the CCD as you can find. And a good night’s sleep somewhere safe.”

“O.K.,” Morgan said, “but it will cost you.”

“I know. How much?”

“Fifteen thousand Swiss credits.”

Analin shook her head. “Too much. Five thousand.”

“May I remind you that you’re in no position to bargain. Burnham’s a difficult target.”

“I thought you were a professional,” Analin said, lifting her chin defiantly. She didn’t have fifteen thousand credits. Eleven would wipe her out, but this story would earn it back several times over.

“One of the best,” he said. “That’s what you’re paying for. Twelve thousand.”

“Six.”

’Ten.”

“Seven.”

’This problem intrigues me. I’ll go as low as eight and a half.”

“Eight and a half,” she agreed after a moment’s hesitation. It was a good price, for what he was offering, but it would not do to appear too eager. “But I get one more follow-up report.”

“All right,” he said. They linked wrist comps, typed in their access codes, and completed the transaction. The money would remain in escrow until Analin confirmed that the work had been done.

The deal made, Morgan leaned forward and said something in Swiss to the driver about a hotel. The cab turned and sped to an anonymous-looking pension.

“I’ll be back in eight hours with a preliminary report,” Morgan told her when she was safely in her room. “Sleep well.”

Analin nodded. As soon as he was gone, she shucked her clothes, showered, climbed into bed, and let sleep take her.

She was awakened by a knock on the door. Groggily, she got up, shrugged on the rumpled clothes she’d cast off the night before, and peered out the security peephole. It was Morgan, carrying a paper bag and a fat manila envelope.

She opened the door.

“Breakfast, and your report, Ms. Goudrian. May I say that it is utterly fascinating reading?” Morgan announced as he strode in. He set the paper bag down on the table and took out a breakfast pie and a large container of coffee. The smell of hot pastry made Analin’s mouth water. It had been twelve hours since her last meal. She glanced from the envelope to the breakfast pie and coffee, torn between hunger and her desire to read the report.

“I’ll summarize the contents of the report while you eat,” Morgan said. “Your General Burnham is a most interesting person. She’s a hard-line Expansionist, and a professional paranoid. She’s part of a clique of highly placed Expansionists in the Space Service. Burnham has official ties to HumanSpace, and the Terraforming Foundation. Unofficially, she has ties to several pronatalist groups including a couple with terrorist leanings.”

Analin nodded. “And her ties to the CCD?” she asked, taking another bite of breakfast.

“There’s a Dr. Koro, who heads the Expansionist clique at the CCD. Their affiliations have a significant overlap. Koro’s comm logs show a significant increase in calls from Burnham over the last two months, beginning about the time the Homa Darabi Maru came through the jump gate.”

“I see.” Analin pushed aside her food and flipped through the report. There was a lot there; it would take a couple of hours to study it.

“Your inquiries have stirred up a hornet’s nest,” Morgan told her. “Burnham’s people are looking for you.”

Analin shrugged. “That’s why I’m here. Are they coming close?”

“You ditched them in Dijon. It’ll take them a while to go through the train station’s security-camera files. By tomorrow, they’ll know you came to Bern.

“By tomorrow, I’ll be somewhere else,” Analin said. “I’ve done this sort of thing before.” She held out her wrist comp to signal the completion of their transaction.

But before she left, she needed to start work on the article she would post on the Web. She went over Burn-ham’s dossier, pulling out the evidence she needed. Then she dove back into the net, digging out more information on the CCD and Dr. Koro. All she needed were a few more quotes from Juna and Moki and she would be ready to file. She shook her head, marveling at the stroke of good fortune that had moved Juna to contact her instead of some other net reporter.

Juna sat back, mulling over what Analin had just told them.

“Analin, why don’t the Expansionists like us?” Moki asked.

“They have nothing against you or Ukatonen specifically,” Analin told him. “They’re isolationists, and the idea of aliens out there scares them. They want the universe to themselves.”

“But why are they afraid of us?” Moki asked.

“Because you’re not human,” Juna explained. “Because you’re different.” She turned back to the comm screen. “What are the Expansionists saying about the Tendu?” she asked Analin.

“About what you would expect. The Tendu are dangerous, and they may be diseased. They’re also spreading horror stories about how the Tendu turned you into something grotesque and deformed.”

“Hasn’t the Survey let them know that Ukatonen changed me back?” Juna asked.

“The Survey hasn’t said much at all about you or the Tendu, aside from the fact that you’re here and that you’re in quarantine.”

“This whole thing is so silly,” Juna complained. “The Tendu aren’t dangerous. In fact, they can help us a great deal. Their skill at healing can advance our own medical knowledge. Their knowledge of ecosystems could help us restore Earth’s environment and speed up the terraform-ing of Mars and Terra Nova. With their help, we could explore living worlds without an environment suit, perhaps even colonize them. But first, the Tendu and humanity need to get to know each other, to learn what we can do for each other. We can’t accomplish that trapped up here in quarantine.”