Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

where
we are.’
    ’That it does. And here comes the welcoming party,’ Dano said
dryly.
    Two people walked steadily up the road, a man and a woman. They
were both rather squat, stocky, dark. They wore simple shifts and
knee-length trousers, practical clothes, clean but heavily repaired.
The man might have been sixty. His hair was white, his face a moon of
wrinkles. The woman was younger, perhaps not much older than Pala.
She wore her black hair long and tied into a queue that nestled over
her spine, quite unlike the short and severe style of the Commission.
Her shift had a sunburst pattern stitched into it, a welling up of
light from below.
    The man spoke. ’My name is Sool. This is Bicansa. We have been
delegated to welcome you.’ Sool’s words, in his own archaic tongue,
were seamlessly translated in Pala’s ears. But underneath the tinny
murmuring in her ear she could hear Sool’s own gravelly voice. ’I
represent this community, which we call Home…’
    ’Inevitably,’ Dano said.
    ’Bicansa comes from a community to the north of here.’ Pala
supposed he meant another inhabited light lake. She wondered how far
away that was; she had seen nothing from the flitter.
    The woman Bicansa simply watched the newcomers. Her expression
seemed closed, almost sullen. She could not have been called
beautiful, Pala thought; her face was too round, her chin too weak.
But there was a strength in her dark eyes that intrigued Pala.
    Pala made her own formal introductions. ’Thank you for inviting us
to your community.’ Not that these locals had had any choice. ’We are
emissaries of the Commission for Historical Truth, acting on behalf
of the Interim Coalition of Governance, which in turn directs and
secures the Third Expansion of mankind…’
    The man Sool listened to this with a pale smile, oddly weary.
Bicansa glared.
    Dano murmured, ’Shake their hands. Just as well it isn’t an
assessment exercise, Missionary!’
    Pala cursed herself for forgetting such an elementary part of
contact protocol. She stepped forward, smiling, her right hand
outstretched.
    Sool actually recoiled. The custom of shaking hands was rare
throughout the worlds of the Second Expansion; evidently it hadn’t
been prevalent on Earth when that great wave of colonisation had
begun. But Sool quickly recovered. His grip was firm, his hands so
huge they enclosed hers. Sool grinned. ’A farmer’s hands,’ he said.
’You’ll get used to it.’
    Bicansa offered her own hand readily enough. But Pala’s hand
passed through the woman’s, making it break up into a cloud of blocky
pixels.
    It was this simple test that mandated the handshake protocol. Even
so, Pala was startled. ’You’re a Virtual.’
    ’As is your own companion,’ said Bicansa levelly. ’I’m close by
actually - just outside the dome. But don’t worry. I’m a projection,
not an avatar. You have my full attention.’
    Pala felt unaccountably disappointed that Bicansa wasn’t really
here.
    Sool indicated a small car, waiting some distance away, and he
offered them the hospitality of his home. They walked to the car.
    Dano murmured to Pala, ’I wonder why this Bicansa hasn’t shown up
in person. I think we need to watch that one.’ He turned to her, his
cold Eyes glinting. ’Ah, but you already are - aren’t you,
Missionary?’
    Pala felt herself blush.
     
    Sool’s village was small, just a couple of dozen buildings huddled
around a scrap of grass-covered common land. There were shops and
manufactories, including a carpentry and pottery works, and an inn.
At the centre of the common was a lake, its edges regular - a
reservoir, Pala thought. The people’s water must be recycled,
filtered by hidden machinery, like their air. By the shore of the
lake, children played and lovers walked.
    All the raw material of this human settlement had come from
cometary impacts, packets of dirty ice from this star’s outer system
that had splashed onto the sphere since its formation. It was
remarkable that this peaceful scene could have originated in such
violence.
    This was a farming community. In the fields beyond the village,
crops grew towards the reflected glare of spindly mirror towers,
waving in breezes wafted by immense pumps mounted at the dome’s
periphery. And animals grazed, descendants of cattle and sheep
brought by the first colonists. Pala, who had never seen an animal
larger than a rat, stared, astonished.
    The buildings were all made of wood, neat but low,