Authorization 86.2110. Alien Contact, Secondary. Team Leader: Vasil Likisi. Mission definition: assess for

1. intelligence

2. social organization

3. technological level

4. hostility index.

If suitable, attempt to gain level one agreement to the General Treaty. At all events, secure Sims Bancorp colony powerplant and other prohibited technology.

“It was stupid from start to finish. I don’t care what they said, I’ll bet Sims knew all about it — they were pissed enough to be losing the license.”

“It’s not in any of their internal datastream. I say they didn’t know, and the critters just hit I-critical about the time the first survey was done.”

“Poppycock. They had to know. Unless no one reviewed the weathersat’s recordings — look — there — you can’t call that undisturbed ground.”

Kira Stavi sat back and listened to the bickering. Vasil Likisi, experienced team leader her left little toe. Vasil Likisi corporate bootlicker was more like it. Vasil holding forth about Sims… and hadn’t he once worked for ConsolVaris, one of Sims’ minor acquisitions? She looked at the display instead of getting into the argument that Vasil clearly wanted to have with Ori… Ori could handle it. And the display had its interest. Although it had no legend, she knew from experience that the purple and yellow streaks were enhanced-contrast thermal-emission spectra. Regular streaks and blobs, too regular entirely. Vasil was right about that, at least.

Ori brought up the point she would have, the point he had tried to bring up before. “Is it possible that we’re seeing a species at emergence?”

“Impossible,” Vasil huffed. “It’s those clods at Sims—”

“I don’t see why it’s impossible.” Ori’s voice didn’t go up, but he had not been intimidated by Vasil, and he made that clear. “Just because we’ve never observed it before doesn’t mean it can’t happen. In theory, it has to happen sometime.”

“The odds—”

“Make no difference now. What matters is what is.” Ori could never leave out his Pelorist tags. Vasil went redder, if possible. Kira decided it was time to cool things off.

“What about the thermal source at the old Sims site? Are we quite sure that doesn’t imply illegal occupancy?” Vasil scowled, but held his peace when Ori turned to her. “They said not.” Ori rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It did surprise Captain Vasoni, but there was no organized movement. He did look for that. Here—” He touched the display, and it shifted location, then scale. The shuttle field’s original outline had blurred already — tropical vegetation, Kira reminded herself, could do that in a short time. Buildings still crisply upright — well, they would have made them stout in the first place. A cluster of hotdots here, labeled sheep, and another near the river, labeled cattle. Those were the right size, and temperature, and perhaps livestock could survive without human care that long. “Has anyone asked the vets?”

“Oh yes. And the original herd sizes. That’s well within possible limits. They won’t survive another decade without care, but they’re well below the carrying capacity of their pasture, and they can forage in the village gardens as well.”

“We have one hotspot in the village itself,” Vasil said, but more calmly. “Vasoni wasn’t scanning it the whole time, so we can’t be sure it’s the same one, but whatever it is isn’t human. Wrong patterns. The Sims colonists reported a treeclimbing, dexterous species in the nearby forest, which came into the settlement at first. If it were Terran, it would be a monkey. The experts think this is one of those. It’s smaller than the big fellows up north.”

“Mmm.” Kira wasn’t convinced. “Anyone check the personnel list of the Sims pickup?” “As well as we can. The colony database they brought with them could have been doctored, of course, but they claim to have accounted for everyone. A few of the elderly died in transit, as you’d expect. We could confirm if Vasoni had had the sense to get a fine-grain visual of the old colony beforehand, but by the time he realized he needed one, he had a mutiny to deal with.”

“Well, then.” Kira hoped to get them back on the real problem, the aliens. “Any ideas on where these folks would fit on the Varinge Scale?”

That brought them back all right. Scowls from both, sighs, the sort of thing that made her wonder why she stayed in the service at all. Teamwork, ha!

“No artifacts,” said Vasil. “We don’t even know if they have metal.”

“And our ship leaves in less than ten days, and we won’t learn anything more until we come out of FTL at the beacon and can strip it. Vasoni did have sense enough to put a permanent watch on the area.” Kira looked at the rest of the list. A specialist in linguistics, of course, though so far the record of the alien linguistics staff was something below encouraging. By picking alternates with slightly different specialties, they could cover a fairly broad range of biology, technology assessment, linguistics, anthropology… but something this important really needed a larger team. Particularly when the team leader was a political appointee who had used his degree, such as it was, in corporate and government service. The problem was the capacity of the transport vessel. No one wanted to waste the time it would have taken for an ordinary ship to crawl inward from the jump point to the planet they wanted… which meant squeezing them into a military ship that could make the inward transit in days, not months. And that meant putting up with a military presence. Kira wondered what the others thought about that. After all, these things had killed the colonists, all of them, so they were certainly dangerous. The military could protect them. On the other hand, the military tended to think they were in charge of things, even when they weren’t. This was supposed to be a scientific and diplomatic mission. They all loved the coolers, Ofelia discovered, especially the frost that formed on the freezing compartment walls. Twice she came into her kitchen to find the cooler door open, and one of them scraping away with its horny fingernail, while a second held the bowl. The first time, the one holding the bowl dropped it, exactly like a guilty child, when she came in; they both bobbed a little, and sidled out. The second time — was this a different pair? — they both stared at her coolly and went right on eating frost until she pushed them aside and shut the door firmly. The difference in reaction struck her as very human: some recognized rules to observe, even as they broke them, and some didn’t care. She was glad she had disconnected the coolers in nearly all the other houses. She would have to have spent all her time checking cooler doors. It wasn’t just the waste of electricity; it was the wear and tear on cooler motors. At least they didn’t mess with the motors. She had managed to convince them — how, she wasn’t sure — that they must not take things apart. They did turn the lights on and off, and the water, but that did no harm. She had worried that they might start up some of the vehicles down by the shuttle field, but they hadn’t. Perhaps those vehicles wouldn’t work now anyway, sitting out in the storms all this time. She had not tried to start them since… she couldn’t quite remember. Before the creatures came, anyway.

Perhaps that was why they hadn’t experimented.

They were not as bad as children, really. Endlessly curious, as children were, but unlike children they understood limits. The worst was not being able to settle to her own pursuits any more without being aware of their curiosity and attention. When she tried to paint beads, one of them was sure to stick a talon into the different paints; when she tried to string beads, a large beaky head hung over the work, watching. When she crocheted, one of them would reach to feel the yarn, “helping” by taking it off the ball and holding it slack. She had no way to explain that she needed the slight tension against the ball to gauge the tension of her stitches. If she tried to work on the log, they clustered in the door, watching as the words scrolled across the screen.