Second Contact (Okal Rel Saga #1)

Chapter 1.1 - Pilots Are Uncomfortable People

"Contact?" Ann asked. "Contact with Sevolites?"

She was lounging in a deck chair on a patio facing a beach of white sand. Her recruiter perched opposite her, indifferent to everything about her except her talent as a pilot of faster-than-light space craft.

"Contact, yes," he admited, "but not with the beings you might think of as Sevolites. Just ordinary humans."

"No Sevolites, huh?" Ann retorted, with a frown. "Of course. You wouldn't want me to imagine it might be interesting." She paused to inhale a lungful of cigarette smoke in defiance of common civility and a lifetime of health education. "So, do I get cut loose if I volunteer?"

Her recruiter glanced around the idyllic scene. "You're not exactly ... tied up," he observed.

Ann had to concede the point. Her group home was set in prime holiday territory on the lush planet of Mega: a sort of resort with built in counseling. But she could not go where she liked or do what she wanted. Not, at least, without a whole triumvirate of counselors giving their fussy approval.

Ann frowned. The recruiter was okay to look at — a bit soft in the middle and saggy at the shoulders — but well groomed and the only company she'd had for a month. All the same he was becoming a bore.

"So," she said, "why are we so interested in ordinary human Gelacks again after — what's it been? Two hundred years? I thought we were pretty thoroughly out of touch."

"We were," the recruiter said, "but there have been developments. Your job would be to work with the Second Contact mission sent to discover whether we can reconnect with the humans living on the far side of the Killing Reach Jump. An anthropological mission of humanitarian intent. We know, of course, that some kind of civilization of Earthly origins existed at the time of the Killing War, but the records of the Old Regime are spotty. First Contact seems to have been rather poorly handled, all in all."

"Poorly handled!" Ann repeated, with a laugh. "What would you call the Big Bang? A bit of a rough start?" She sat forward, stubbing out her cigarette. "We got kicked out of Killing Reach down to the last ship — by Sevolites!"

"There are no Sevolites in Killing Reach," the recruiter assured her, patiently. "No real ones. The only remnants of the Gelack empire we've encountered —"

"What?" Ann interrupted; skin tingling as if she had been dunked in a cold bath. "Encountered? As in now?"

"Why, yes! It's on the record."

"I don't like reading when I'm clinically depressed," said Ann.

The recruiter frowned. Such ignorance of current events ought to shame any self-respecting Reetion. "Perhaps you'd like to review the facts on your own," he suggested. "Catch up. Before you decide whether you'd like to join the mission. Maybe acquaint yourself with its principle champion, the anthropologist Ranar."

"Ranar?" Ann frowned. She didn't know of anyone called Ranar. It sounded nice though — sort of sensual. Two round, smooth syllables: Rah-nar. "Is he a pilot?" she asked.

"A pilot? No, no. Ranar is a brilliant young man. A Voting Citizen at seventeen and the youngest member of any net-wide council at twenty-four. Gelackology is a bit obscure, to be sure, but —"

"Good looking?" interrupted Ann.

The recruiter frowned. "You're an intelligent woman, Ann. It's in your profile. And while reality skimming pilots may be more extreme, emotionally, than most people, you do not have to play up mindless stereotypes."

Ann shrugged. "I have a high libido." She leaned forward, enjoying her ability to make him angry. "That's also in my profile."

Her recruiter resorted to lecturing. "Second Contact is going to be an historic mission with the potential to make up for a missed opportunity to reunite us with a lost branch of mankind. You should be honored to be asked."

Ann was no taller than her visitor and weighed less, but as she rose to her feet it seemed to her as if she towered over him in spirit. "You're not recruiting me for my diplomatic skills," she pointed out. "All you're interested in is my pilot's grip. So you'll have to put up with the rest of the package."

"You're a very uncomfortable person," he complained.

"I'm a pilot," Ann said, with a shrug.

"Will you take the deal, as offered?" he asked.

She had already decided. "Of course."

"We'll send someone to collect you in the morning," he said, packing up the few things he had brought with him.

"I can find my own way to a spaceport," said Ann.

"As you prefer." He took his bag and strode off.

As she watched him go, Ann wondered if looking forward to meeting Ranar might be construed as a little shallow when N'Goni, her lover and mentor, was languishing in a catatonia ward at the nearest Space Service hospital. But how long was she supposed to mourn? It wasn't as if she hadn't tried to warn him. But oh, no! He couldn't possibly be succumbing to the wear and tear of reality skimming. Not N'Goni, the hot-shot exploration pilot. No "little girl" was going to show him up! Not even if her psych profile had always been better than his.

Ann told herself she had done what she could, right down to socking the presiding doctor for refusing to use her experimental treatment when he lapsed into a coma. N'Goni's recorded rejection of the visitor probe option hadn't mattered to Ann. She figured Space Psychiatrist Lurol should have realized he was already losing it when he declined to give consent, a couple months before. Ann's assault on Lurol was why she was grounded now, on Mega, instead of out there working.

Surely N'Goni, himself, would want her to be getting on with the work they'd both loved?

Ann's primary counselor came out onto the patio from inside the group home. "What did Space Service want?" he asked.

Ann didn't even turn around. "I'm Supervised," she snapped. "Access the record if you want to know."

"I was hoping we could talk about the offer," he began, but gave up when she shouldered past and dove into the common room beyond.

Inside, the big jerk who thought every woman with a high libido must be dying to try his out, hailed her with his usual salute from the common room couch. "Your place or mine?" he bellowed, using a line he had picked up from one of the old Earth movies Ann liked to watch. She didn't reply. It just encouraged him.

Ann went quickly down a short hall to her bedroom where even in a group home she was out of scope for fellow inmates and the average citizen. Only the ubiquitous surveillance of the AI's known as arbiters applied in a domestic setting, making sure that citizens did nothing to violate each other's human rights. Since Ann was Supervised, her counselors could also check up on her at will, but that didn't particularly bother Ann. Her behavior had been someone else's business all her life. When it wasn't counselors, it was pilot handlers, and before that it had been her parents.

Ann's room contained few personal effects, which was typical for Reetions and particularly expedient for pilots. Most of what defined her was in digital storage, available from anywhere upon request.

"Stage on!" she ordered as she entered. Her customized arbiter interface presented itself as a fat, middle-aged man who was stark naked except for a pair of thongs. His appearance was a composite of nudists she had spied on in her childhood on Rire. Ann had not imbued him with an interactive personality. Conversations with an arbiter worked better if you accepted it was out to reduce you to a handful of demands with modifiers, whether its projected focus looked like a person or not.

"I want information on a Voting Citizen named Ranar," explained Ann. "He's heading up a mission known as Second Contact."