Braided World

9780553583793

0553583794

Chapter One Deep in the night, the river flowed: a black, hot flood, here in this drowned world. Rain hurled down, peppering the thatch roof, filling the river ever higher. From the water's surface, wavering lights from electric lamps twisted back up, cut to ribbons. Anton Prados sat outside the screened room where Nick Venning slept in his hammock. On the narrow walkway, with the river sliding under the stilted platform, Anton waited out his guard duty shift, a precaution in this land of disturbingly familiar beings. He thought he heard a small plop--a stone or a gecko falling into the river. His hand twitched on his empty holster, where his gun should have been. Confiscated by the monarch of the rivers. For the past two weeks, they'd been guests of the royal pavilion, taking the king's lavish meals, waited upon by his servants. Prisoners in silk, as Anton thought of it. Still, it was a decent reception from a semi-industrial people with no concept of the galaxy, and no idea why the humans should think that anyone had called them. It could have been worse. Anton and his crew were rather like dinner guests arriving on the wrong night, on the wrong doorstep. The Restoration was lucky not to be turned away. The shuttle had landed on a rock plateau in the middle of the populated delta lands. It was soon greeted by a throng of people arriving in skiffs, men and women with bronze skin and a range of weapons from digging tools to primitive pistols. Anton walked unarmed into their midst. It was a good tactic. Not that they were entirely surprised to see him. They had telescopes. They'd known visitors were here. Anton admired their poise, since his own crew continued to be dumbfounded by the presence of what looked like human beings thirty light-years from Earth. Now, as he sat outside the monarch's palace, he watched the shadows of the residents pass to and fro behind the thin wall panels. The Dassa, as they called themselves. Descended, surely, from humans on Earth. Genetic diversity sequestered, as the Message said. Though not always dark-eyed, they were bronze-skinned--altered or selected for the tropical environs, Zhen had guessed. Because they had to live in the hot latitudes of the planet. Because of how they reproduced. Around him, the tiers of the royal compound stacked up to three stories, depending on the height of the foundation stilts. Under it all, the palace river turbines provided electricity. Across the small inlet, where the palace sprawled along the river, the women on the ground mission, Bailey and Zhen, were assigned quarters. Their light was out. Sleeping. A gust of wind puffed at the woven reed wall, bearing pungent odors of bloated wood and mud. Dimly, he could make out small bridges here and there, inundated by water, arched wooden trestles protruding like the backs of sea monsters. Geckos crawled freely up the stilts from the water to catch insects attracted to the lights. Anton watched them stalk their prey. The geckos were genetically identical to those of Earth. Although microbiology, not zoology, was Zhen's field, she had research tools at her disposal; most of the shuttle cargo had been Zhen's lab equipment. In contrast to the geckos, however, some specimens of animal life had not made the transition from Earth in exact form. Or else they had evolved. The monkeys, for instance. The Dassa, for another. Though the Dassa were not perfectly human, the women they called hoda likely were. Because the hoda could bear children, and proper Dassa did not. Not in the usual sense. So the hoda represented potential breeding partners. From Zhen's analysis, their genotypes were incredibly diverse, a priceless reservoir of genetic diversity. But how could they be mates for those on Earth? Even supposing they were inclined to mix with their human cousins, how could they, given the space/time intervals--three real years, depending o