Art Pact 99

It became clear to us that what we were seeing was actually some kind of religious ceremony, a revelation that sent the ethnographers on the orbiter into an excited frenzy. A machinegun stream of (sometimes contradictory) demands came down to the camera bots, as the scientists changed and rechanged their minds about what waqs hte most important aspect of the ritual to focus on. They seemed to be finding endless nuances and intricacies among the crowd, although to me it just looked as though they had arranged themselves pretty much randomly along the beach front, all facing out into the choppy but slightly odd waves that covered the surface of the sea.

"We should probably move back a bit," Vincenzo suggested. "I mean, what if they're precious about it?"

The boffins backed him up, Karenova in particular pointing out that segregation in Earth religions was extremely common, a fact which she explained to me as if I had been born on moon. When I sarcastically asked her if she could provide more examples she huffed down the link at me and I saw my mission approval coins decrement in two quick clinks in the corner of my vision.  After a few seconds the two coins clinked back into my account and I accepted that as as much of an apology as she was willing to concede to me.

"I think we should stay," I said. The scientists, obviously keen on being able to stay, went silent to hear my pitch, although Beaufort crossed his arms and motioned his two goons forwards. "They might have some sort of segregation, but it must obviously be a distinction we can't see ourselves, because I'm not spotting any pattern here."

"True," Vincenzo said.

"Let's be generous and assume that everything we've seen about them so far carries over to their religion. They're much more even-handed than we are. And they've been pretty open about letting us in to what we'd think of as private moments"--I saw Beaufort blanch at the memory of the cave two nights ago--"so it seems unlikely they'll really care about us seeing them at worship. In fact, they might just assume that it's pretty much the same for us."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, whatever their religion is. If they haven't been in contact with any of their other demes in as long as they say, they might have no idea that there's any other way of thinking. Perhaps that's why they're so calm about us - we're strange to them, but if they don't have any concept of alien, of other-ness, then they probably have no idea just how different we are. They've been as chatty as anything, right? Maybe they even think we understand them, maybe they think we're just not talking back for some reason."

"Like we're deformed, or something," Vincenzo suggested. My mission approval clinked up a few coins - probably just ordinary crewmembers who happened to be impressed by my speech, but I was glad that I'd got through to someone at least. I wondered if Beaufort was one of those political types who liked to have everyone else's M.A. visible in his overlay at all times. Perhaps he was, because as mine started increasing I could see him shifting into a less and less adversarial stance until finally he nodded and it appeared that my argument had been successful.

We carefully stepped between the seated locals, who received us with the same placid expressions that the scientists told us were probably the local equivalent of smiles, or at least amiable apathy. The cam bots swooped and hovered over the scene, bobbing uncertainly in the slow but constant wind, unable to hold their position as well as normal in the low-noise mode I'd switched them too. Someone in the ship must have come to the same conclusion, because I didn't hear any complaints from above. We took up a position about half-way between the rearguard and the few locals that had ventured right up to the sea-line.

"Sand looks like it does on Earth," Vincenzo noted, crouching down to let his fingers run through it. I heard a collective intake of breath from the more cautious of the science panel, but nothing bad happened to him, and as he stood up he let a thin stream of fine white sand trickle through his fingers and blow away in the wind. It would have made a high-quality resort beach, I thought, were it not for the weather. Vincenzo smiled, and nodded out to the surface of the ocean. I looked out and instantly gasped in amazement.

The storm front that had been slowly approaching the village over the last few days had changed during our journey. Something about the geographical arrangement of the bay, perhaps, or thermals rising off the water as it grew shallower at the edge of the sea. I have no idea how we could have missed it until that moment - I can only say that we must have been so focused on the locals that nothing above head height really registered for us. However it came about, it was as if one moment the sky was normal, the next it was filled with a thick rippling gold band, like thousands of metal columns arranged together that had begun to melt under the influence of some monstrous heat. The cloud bank had descended to perhaps a couple of hundred meters overhead, still amazingly coherent compared to the clouds we were used to, and as we watched a single powerful column of lightning leapt down from its underside to strike the sea.

The blast of the thunder, originating perhaps a kilometer away, was incredible. Vincenzo, standing a few meters ahead of me, almost fell over with shock, and I myself dropped low as though I'd walked into something. The lightning had not just affected us, though. After a second, when I had recovered my senses, I saw that the entire surface of the ocean was glowing: peppered liberally with thousands of bright points of light that floated below the surface.

"Wow," said Beaufort - the most human thing I'd ever heard him say.