The Peacock Cloak

ignorance.
    “They’re tardies,” he said at length, “that’s why. Going to Little Earth for some sort of meeting or something, their agent said. Do you know what a tardy is?”
    “Yeah. Sure. Hey, wow, that’s really something. I’ve heard of them, of course, but I’ve never seen one.”
    “Like to see them?”
    “Yeah. Yeah sure . I really would.” Doug laughed. “Man, when you check into one of these dumps you really don’t expect to see anything that’s actually interesting or real. But tardies, wow!”
    Jacob sighed, as if he were constantly being pestered about this, and it was starting to play on his nerves. But inwardly he smiled. He could see that Doug had completely forgotten the game.
    “Yeah,” he grunted, “everyone wants to see them.”
    “Of course they do. Little aliens from far away. The first truly intelligent alien species. Who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t want to see them?”
    “Yeah, well I’ve got a whole tribe of them I’m taking to Little Earth,” said Jacob.
    “A whole tribe, wow!” Doug exclaimed.
    He considered this for a moment.
    “Come to think of it,” he said. “It’d have to be a whole tribe, wouldn’t it? From what I’ve heard and read they’ll travel as far as anyone wants them to go, but only if all their kin go with them. That’s so isn’t it? I’ve got that right? They’re very family minded?”
    “Can’t say I know or care, to be honest. Want to come and check them out?”
    “Sure! Let’s go.”
    Doug Hempleman jumped up from the card table, Jacob noticed, without even glancing at the unfinished game.
    “Bingo!” he said to himself.

    They headed back to the station’s hub and crossed from there over the bridge to the Rio Quinto . Doug screwed up his nose as they entered Jacob’s squalid quarters and tried not to look at the mouldy plate and mug, the stained sheets, the squalid toilet with the door left open. They went to the hold airlock and put on pressure suits, then entered the airless hold itself.
    Jacob turned on the lights. Huge containers packed with samarium stretched out in front of them in stacks four metres high. Stepping over a couple of small hive robots from the station that were scuttling from one maintenance task to the next, he led his guest along a gangway that ran down the centre of the hold.
    “Their planet has an eccentric orbit, apparently,” said Doug, speaking over the radio link between the two suits. “Half the year it never falls below 100 centigrade and there’s no liquid water. The other half of the year it’s warm and pleasant like Little Earth or Prox. Isn’t that right?”
    “If you say so,” said Jacob.
    They reached a container at floor level at the far end which differed from all the others in that it was painted white. Jacob opened a small door and turned on a light.
    “Oh wow!” breathed Doug as they entered the chamber.
    He was immediately entranced.
    In the olive groves that ringed the crystal blue oceans of Prox-3, there were little creatures called cicadas that the early colonists had imported from Old Earth. Sometimes, walking in the hills, you’d find the discarded skin of one: hard, fragile, transparent and almost weightless, with eyes, wing cases and limbs just like the living creature, but completely hollow and dry. The tardies, about thirty of them, strapped in little seats down each side of the brightly lit container, looked very much like those empty skins. They were transparent too, and hard and fragile.
    But these had hands and feet and little faces. They were unmistakably people , very small perhaps, less than half a metre tall, but people nevertheless. And they weren’t really empty shells either, even if they looked that way. Their flesh was actually still there, shrivelled so much that it was just a dried-up smear inside the hard transparent surface. If the tardies were rehydrated these skins would fill out again with living tissues, and soften, and they would grow and move and come back to life.
    “They’re beautiful,” said Doug. “Quite beautiful. You’re lucky to have them, Jake. I wish I had some on my ship to look after.”
    He walked slowly between the two rows of seats, studying each individual in turn.
    “Hello there, little fellow. I wonder what your name is… Oh and good day to you my dear lady, you look very much like you might be the one in charge.”
    Hempleman turned and beamed at Captain Stone.
    “I bet you come down here all the time to check