Spacer Tales: The Alien Monks Read online

facilities were very expensive and booked up months in advance, and there was nowhere on the planet you could even see sky without hundreds of traffic streams criss-crossing it.

  ‘Good decision,’ Tam chuckled too. ‘It’s much nicer on Neuwald. But please, may I offer you some refreshment? We have sterile water in lab certified sip-tubes if you would like some.’

  That was generally all that alien visitors would venture outside the clean-room conditions of the facilities the Diplomatic Corps provided for them. Human worlds were riddled with diseases to which other species had no immunity, and pathogen management was a big part of keeping them safe.

  ‘We are able to consume human food,’ Shantaitha Katanda assured him.

  ‘We have been given implants,’ another added, ‘in our throats, noses and stomachs, which filter pathogens.’

  ‘And in our arms,’ one of the others indicated his left bicep, ‘which release a flow of anti-pathogens to simulate an immune system.’

  ‘It is very clever,’ another observed, and they all smiled again.

  ‘Humans are very innovative,’ Shantaitha Katanda commented, and told Tam, ‘We wish to experience a Kluskey burger.’

  ‘A member of the crew told them that it’s worth coming to Neuwald just for a Kluskey burger,’ Milo Jones informed him.

  ‘Ah.’ Tam smiled with gratification. ‘Well, you’re very welcome. So, what can I get you to drink?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you. We do not drink at the same time we eat.’ Shantaitha Katanda told him.

  ‘No problem. Burgers coming up. No, no – on the house,’ Tam told Milo Jones, seeing that he was expecting to thumbprint a credit swipe. As the diplomat smiled thanks, Tam gestured hospitably to the plates he’d put onto the bar for them, each containing a classic Kluskey burger. ‘The burgers are soyprotein which mimics the taste of a Neuwaldian oceanic fish called a salsis,’ he said. ‘It is served in malted bread with a salad of organic wakame – that’s a type of seaweed – lime leaves and peppers. The sauce is a secret recipe. I make that myself and you can only get it here at Kluskey’s.’

  He became aware, as he was speaking, that the Gideans had become unnaturally still. They were gazing at the burgers with looks of rapt attention. Even when Tam had finished talking they just stayed exactly as they were, a tableau of silent statues.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Milo Jones told him, when Tam glanced at the diplomat after several seconds, waiting for a reaction from the stone-still figures. ‘They may be like this for several minutes. It just means they’re interested and taking the time to study what they’re looking at.’

  ‘Ah.’ Tam began to understand the difficulties that the exodiplomacy team must be having, escorting this party on visits to human worlds. Normally those situations were managed discreetly by the places visitors wanted to go to being closed on some pretext or other and the visitors being taken around in disguised vehicles. To be taking them around in public, when they were so obviously odd and prone to stopping dead in their tracks for several minutes at a time, must be a diplomatic nightmare. Milo Jones, however, just smiled placidly.

  ‘When they do this, we just tell people they’re a street theatre group.’

  Tam chuckled, remembering that Shantaitha Katanda had asked their escort whether they were businessmen or a street theatre group when they’d first arrived.

  ‘Clever.’ Tam commented, with murmurs of agreement from several of the other spacers listening to the conversation.

  ‘I had to think of something fast, on Flancer.’ The diplomat grinned a little as he explained, ‘They stopped dead in the street to look at some roadworks. They were attracting a lot of attention so I said they were a group of mime artists. Hundreds of people have posed with them and taken holos, with no idea who they really are.’

  Tam laughed again and returned his attention to the still figures of the enraptured Gideans. Their eyes did move, swivelling as one to watch as Milo Jones demonstrated how to pick up a burger and take a bite. Having watched him chew and swallow, they considered for another few seconds and then stepped forward to examine their own burgers more closely. They did not, however, copy their escort in picking up their food. Instead they picked up knives and each, very carefully, cut out a precise cube from the middle of their burger. The serene look on the diplomat’s face made it clear that this was normal for them.

  The bar went very quiet. Everyone watched the Gideans pick up their perfect cubes of burger, regard them for a moment and then pop them into their mouths. For several seconds, it was as if the other customers had caught the aliens’ trick of staying absolutely still as everyone looked on, waiting for the reaction.

  They had to wait quite some time, though. It was a good five minutes before the visitors had finished absorbing their cubes of burger. They chewed occasionally but for the most part just stood there with contemplative expressions. Long before they’d finished, the bar had gone back to its usual hum of conversation, though with an air of expectation and everyone keeping half an eye on them. When it did come, the reaction was calm.

  ‘An interesting delicacy,’ Shantaitha Katanda observed.

  ‘Sixty eight flavours,’ said another.

  ‘High calorific content,’ a third observed.

  ‘Humans would eat the entire object?’ a fourth queried, and at Tam’s nod, all the visitors looked amazed.

  ‘Humans consume many times more calories than we do,’ Shantaitha Katanda commented. ‘You must eat a great deal, of course, to sustain your much higher metabolism. Such nutrient,’ he indicated the cubes they had cut out and eaten, ‘will sustain us for three days. Thank you for enabling us to experience it.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Tam, ‘but may I please satisfy my curiosity with a question?’

  Milo Jones tensed just a little. If you were allowed to meet alien visitors like this, there were definite groundrules which the Diplomatic Corps ensured you knew before the encounter. One of those rules was that you did not ask any questions about the Firewall or about the catastrophe which had plunged human worlds into Dark Age chaos around ten thousand years before. Nobody knew if it had been a war or a plague or some other disaster, and nobody knew what civilisation it might be out there which had imposed and was still maintaining the Firewall. Ambassadors from the few species which were venturing into human space would not discuss it at all. It was, they said, too sensitive and too complicated and they would not discuss it with humans until they had got to know one another much better. Milo Jones’ look at Tam reminded him that such questions were forbidden and Tam’s answering glance assured the diplomat that he had not forgotten that.

  ‘If it is a question we may answer,’ Shantaitha Katanda agreed, gazing thoughtfully at Tam. ‘We may not disclose information about the Firewall or about technology considered too dangerous for your people at your current level of development.’

  ‘No, it’s nothing like that,’ Tam assured him. ‘It’s just that I’ve heard many stories about your people – well, about Chati Karanda anyway – and I would be fascinated if you felt you could tell me if some of those stories are true. I have heard, for instance, that he was a monk on your world before he came to join the Fourth, and that he is master of a martial art in which your people can defy gravity by some kind of telekinesis.’

  The Gideans all broke into huge beaming grins and made rapid little squeaking noises which were presumably their equivalent of laughter. They certainly looked highly amused, and all the spacers in the bar laughed too.

  ‘It is true that we are what you would call monks,’ Shantaitha Katanda told Tam, readily. ‘We live in houses of contemplation, studying the art of del shant shantai, the art of stillness. To be absolutely still requires absolute control. But we do not defy gravity, nor do we have any telekinetic ability. It is merely that we have a high degree of control over our bodies. And strength, perhaps, beyond human musculature. So…’

  As he
spoke, he put one finger onto the bar, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and coming up onto his toes, raised one leg behind him. As it approached his head, he lifted the other foot off the ground and kept raising up as if in zero gee. It wasn’t the way an acrobat might flip onto his hands; it was a slow and graceful perfect arc. When it finished, Shantaitha Katanda was upside down over the bar with all his weight resting on the tip of one finger.

  ‘This is a basic exercise,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Even a novice could sustain this for many hours without effort.’ He turned himself the right way up with the same phenomenal poise, and smiled at Tam’s awed expression. ‘Chatichai Karanda is not a master, not Shantaitha,’ he told him. ‘Chatichai Karanda was a novice in our house of contemplation.’ He indicated his fellow Gideans. ‘He found the pursuit of stillness difficult because his mind and spirit were restless. He had become fascinated with humans and decided that his path lay in exploring possibilities amongst your people.’

  ‘We are visiting to assure ourselves of his welfare and happiness,’ another of the monks added.

  ‘And while we are here, we are seeing a little of your worlds ourselves. It is very interesting.’

  ‘We are going to see a wedding today,’ said another, with a smile. ‘The wedding will be conducted by a