tangle of metal, an oddly shaped mushroom. The recent photos occupy the reusable slots on the camera's recording diskette, shadows I discard as new ones catch my eye. But there is a set of pictures I have tagged to prevent overwriting, shadows cast before the last light left me. Now, as night falls and the ghosts struggle to wake themselves from their collective sleep, I put the diskette into the viewer in my hut and click through my little album.
Twenty-two men and women stand in the center of a burnt field, the grass charred black by the heat of a Vac/ship's landing. The ship is gone now, back to the orbiting task force where a million colonists wait in suspended animation until Harmony Team certifies the planet safe. Our mission is considered a formality—satellites and robot probes have given Muta such a positive rating that supply caches have already been dropped at selected sites all over the planet. Even so, final approval for colonization rests entirely with our team and its superiors. We do not place blind trust in machines; it is a doctrine of our faith.
By the time this picture was taken, all that remained to be explored was the anomalous fog bank perpetually covering a region of Muta's southern hemisphere: cause unknown, unchanged by wind and sun, impenetrable to orbital eyes. We thought our investigation would be routine and painless.
The team members offer smiles for the camera, showing or not showing their teeth according to their chosen self-image. Most try not to squint, though the sun is in their eyes; they want to look good for the photograph.
Behind them is the skimmer assigned to fly the team to the Great Fog Bank. On the craft's fuselage, brown letters proclaim Unity Task Force: Muta. Beneath the words are the twenty-two symbols of our totem houses, the spirits that unite our people and set us apart from other human cultures in this galactic sector. The symbols attest that the world is more than a machine, and humans more than a meaty collection of chemicals. We of the Unity are a spiritual people.
Each symbol on the fuselage is carefully labeled: the Dancing Madman, the Ready Mage, the Blind Priestess, and so on. The Unity is relentless in labeling everything.
In the far background, beyond the landing strip, you can see the grassland that the Unity named the Plains of Expanding Accord. Amidst the thick band of green there is a single dab of brown— some inquisitive Mutan herd animal peering at all the curious activity happening around the base.
At first glance, the people posed in this picture may be indistinguishable. They are all uniformed in the same tan fatigues. They all look healthy and competent. But to my eyes, three people stand out from rest. They stand together on the extreme right of the picture: a woman between two men.
The woman is Chiala, Archeology Officer, age 25. In the picture, her skin is the same glossy color as a chestnut fresh from its shell; but I remember it as dark honey, and I dream of the soft brown of her hand resting lightly on my forearm. Her smile is wide and bright. Around her throat she wears a neckerchief, white linen printed with a pattern of orange flowers. The flowers are chrysanthemums, totem flowers of my birthmonth. I nearly told her so when I helped her choose the neckerchief on our last recreation leave, but I decided to hold my tongue. It pleased me to have this secret link to her that even she did not realize.
The man on her right is Planetology Officer MolanDif, the same age as Chiala. In the hand dangling at his side, he holds the Unity regulation manual for missions exploring Earth-like environments. Harmony Team had completed three such assignments at the time the picture was taken, but MolanDif still consulted the manual regularly…not because he wanted to enforce the rules on his juniors but rather because he wanted to be sure of the rules himself. He was a man in constant need of specific instructions, of models to imitate. (His shirt is open low enough to reveal the steaming snout of a dragon tattooed on his chest. He once confessed to me he got that tattoo when he was a teenager; he had read somewhere that teenagers were supposed to do irrevocable things on impulse.)
The graying man on Chiala's left is Senior Orthodoxy Officer BarlDan, age 49. Me. My smile is self-conscious and clumsy—the skimmer pilot who took the picture for me ordered us to crowd together, and I was keenly aware of the solid warmth of Chiala's body pressing against my arm. (After the picture was taken, she did not move away from the contact. I was the one who withdrew to attend my duties.)
At one time, I could have named all the others in this picture. I still remember names, remember faces…but I become confused when I try to pair them. It panics me sometimes, the thought that I was supposed to safeguard all these souls, but now can't remember which man was the ceremonial castrato, which woman wore the mask of the Riven Tower. I think I know, yet I suspect I'm mistaken, that my memory rearranges itself when I sleep. I wake sometimes to find myself shouting at people who flee from me in my dreams.
The only other face I'm sure of is Junior Planetologist DiDeel, a young red-headed man grinning widely into the camera, his arm around the shoulder of the man beside him; and the only reason DiDeel retains a foothold in my mind is because he was the first to die. The others…dead too, officers, juniors, all dead, murdered in the fog, but I am losing them day by day and I cannot keep them with me.
In the extreme foreground of the picture, we have lined up our spirit masks. The masks are dormant, their inhabiting spirits forced into temporary exile by the brilliant sunlight. Their eyeholes are empty; they are merely constructions of paper and plastic, feather and foil.
Given a choice, I would have preferred not to take photographs of the masks; but some of the spirits were vain and demanded I take pictures of their mask-houses as often as possible. I complied, as I always complied with wishes of the masks. You cannot reason with a spirit.
In the Mutan city within the fog, Chiala kneels at the base of a marble statue. She has arranged weak laser projectors to throw up a yellowy grid-work of cubes around the statue, each cube ten centimeters to the side. The statue is thus boxed into a phantom coordinate system that helps her make measurements.
The statue resembles others found all across the planet: a man-high figure that might be a lump of bread dough, surrounded by a surface that bristles with quills like those of a porcupine. The quills appear to be protrusions of internal bones, forming a type of articulated exoskeleton. The top of the body is clearly a head, with two widely spaced eyes, a cluster of nose-holes shielded by a thatch of quills, and a fully toothed mouth. No ears are visible.
This was our image of the beings who built the Mutan cities, though we did not know how accurately the statues depicted them. Perhaps Mutan art was not representational—perhaps we were seeing some abstract style that only marginally resembled the true Mutans, or it could be that all these statues were idols of some deity whose appearance was utterly unlike the people's. Perhaps they weren't statues at all; they might be signposts, or notice boards, or equipment for a game.
The Mutans had vanished centuries before the Unity discovered the planet. It had happened abruptly, without property damage—a plague perhaps, a radiation disaster, or maybe mass suicide. The archeologists had many theories, but no evidence…only ruins, and a fog bank like a cloud of smoke after a great burning.
In the picture, Chiala holds a measuring tape to the pedestal that supports the statue. She has rolled up her sleeves. Some of the mist has condensed on her forearms, giving them a dark sheen, highlighting a line of sleek muscle from elbow to wrist. If I look at this picture too long, I find myself leaning forward to touch the viewer screen, to trace that line of muscle with my finger.
Chiala's eyes are on the work, not the camera. I approached her quietly through the fog; she didn't see me watching.
The picture is taken from the top of the bank looking down toward the water. Eight team members are in sight. Most are on shore, fussing with electronic instruments I cannot name. DiDeel wears hip-waders and stands in the water up to his thighs; he is far enough away to be nearly lost in the fog. He holds a metal pole that stretches out into the mist and disappears. My guess would be that he is scooping a water sample from the middle of the river, but for all I know, he could be fishing.
The group is attempting to locate evidence of volcanic hot springs in the riverbed. The senior planetologists, up in orbit with the colonists, hypothesized the fog bank was created by near-boiling water from springs mixing with near-freezing water running down from the Upward Potential mountains. No one found the hypothesis persuasive, but it offered a foundation for conducting tests until new data suggested something better.
MolanDif is on the far right of the picture, paddling an inflatable dinghy out of the upstream mists. The dinghy is filled with testing equipment. He holds the paddle awkwardly.
When he caught sight of me watching, he hailed me and pulled into shore. As I helped him out of the dinghy, he said, 'Officer BarlDan, I'd like to consult with you.'
'In my official capacity?' I asked.
'Of course,' he said—seemingly surprised I might have an unofficial one. 'When would be suitable?'
'I'm free now.'
'Oh,' he said. 'Oh.' He looked at the ground as if there might be something there needing his attention. 'All right, then.' He paused again. 'This is a private matter.'
'We'll walk along the river,' I said.
The Mutans had paved a wide promenade along the top of the bank, running completely across the city. Potholes had developed in the asphalt here and there, and tough fungal growth was working up from below, cracking the surface into patterns like the glass in a smashed mirror; but walking was easy if you watched your step, and it provided a route away from the others without getting lost in the fog. We walked for some time in a silence overlaid with the background mutter of the river. I waited for MolanDif to begin.
'I have reached the age of twenty-five,' he said at last.
I knew that; his birthday had passed while we were in stasis on the way to Muta, but Harmony Team had danced in his honor shortly after we woke up. MolanDif continued, 'The social adjustment manual says twenty-five is the optimal age for marriage.'
'To be precise,' I said, 'the manual says twenty-five is the median age at which a human being has reached a level of maturity consistent with the obligations of intimate social partnership. Not the same thing.'
'Still,' he said, 'I believe I am ready for marriage. I…I'm not fulfilled being alone. I think it would be better to be married.'
'Are you unhappy?' I asked.
'Oh no,' he said quickly. 'I'm quite well adjusted. To the situation. But I think…life could be
'Have you chosen a partner?'
'Chiala, of course,' he answered, in a tone of surprise that I could consider any other alternative. 'She's of equal rank. She's twenty-five.'
'And she's beautiful,' I said.
'Well, yes. But beauty…the manual says it's too shallow a reason for seeking marriage. Isn't it?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Yes, it is.'
'Sexual attraction is an inadequate basis for dedicated partnership actualization. That's right in the manual. The manual stresses that feelings—you know, love…' His voice fell to near inaudibility on the word and he went on quickly. 'Whatever you think you feel, it's only infatuation if you don't have a deeper basis for…for what you want. I'm not just infatuated with her, BarlDan. I have good deep reasons.'
'She's of equal rank and she's twenty-five.'
'Yes. You see how it makes sense?'
'Does it make sense to Chiala?' I asked.
'I couldn't possibly discuss it with her until you've cross-matched our personality profiles,' he said. 'If we aren't compatible in the eyes of the Unity…well, I couldn't pursue it, could I? I'd just…I couldn't pursue it. And if we
'Yes,' I said. 'I understand. I'll do the calculations for you.'
He thanked me hastily and headed back to the investigation site almost at a run.
I should have told him I wanted her for myself, that she was a dancing flame which could never burn bright enough fueled by his soggy wood. But how was I any different?
