The crew unpacked. They had been given a two storey roundhouse, set high up in the Hera Mountains, a dozen metres higher in altitude than the hangar where their spaceship waited, docked. Shams and Nat took a suite of rooms each upstairs, Joe and Eric downstairs. The house was modest and yet lavishly finished. Whitewashed walls made from sun-baked bricks stood counterpoint to warm stone tiles little different to those carefully arranged outside. Shams gazed at the deep, tiled pool bath in her suite, and the coppery green beauty of the taps.
She fell asleep seeing behind her eyes the milky apple green of the ionised taps, warm in the itch to scrape at its copper, to explore all possible differences in the elements of Thetis. She slept well.
The next day, from the garden terrace they took in the early morning sun, and watched a troop of giant tortoises shuffle across the sandy tufts of heather, between shrubs blooming with red and purple flowers.
"Nat, here are the things we need to arrange. Number one, a trip across the landmasses of the planet - this should be easy to do - their continents are all bunched together, with air transport, should take no time. We need to take rock samples from all corners of both continents but we're are going to need their help to scrape samples from both ocean floors. That is actually urgent, as nothing of the Panthalassa Ocean remains on our earth, no ocean floor. Incidentally, we could ask them about migration patterns and intermarriage between the inhabitants of the continents as well, just to get a feel of the movements in global culture and history. Number two - which is linked to the point just made - we don't know anything at all about the form of governance here. We've seen nothing; everything looks quiet and prosperous, but for all we know the bulk of them could be slaves. Number three -"
"Joe, can I finish my coffee?" asked Nat, wearily.
"Number three - the fact that on entirely different landmasses, in mountainous terrain, these people have similar plants and beasts and livestock -"
"We don't know about livestock," said Shams. "Are we sure they even eat meat?"
"They must do," said Eric. "Meat eating was key in human evolution. Or at least it was when I went to school."
"Well, we weren't fed any yesterday," she said.
"And they drink coffee and wine, they eat bread, they grow fruit - but the natural history of this earth must be radically different from ours. Are your minds not blown? How is any of this happening? And what if it keeps happening? What if every species of alien we ever come across is just another set of homo sapiens bumbling along on another earth, with eight planets and all the moons of those planets to match? We can't keep tripping over this! We need to make a detailed spectral analysis of the sun here and send them to earth for full analysis, we need samples of seawater, we need to find out how old this earth is, try to scratch some samples of zircon from one of the continents -" Joe held up his tablet, his list reeling off the screen.
"Does it matter?" asked Shams. Joe didn't hear, but Eric's eyes snapped alert in her direction.
"We'll consult Elegiac after the meeting. I need to run some checks and begin preliminary lockdown of its systems against attack," he said, lightly frowning.
Nat nodded. "Good point. The patch should be running by now. Although, I don't know if it's strictly necessary. They don't seem fazed by what we've told them. And they've only expressed passing interest in Elegiac, to be fair."
"That won't stop them from trying to snatch our Faster Than Light Travel module or its secrets, I bet. They're bound to be planning a -"
"Joe, stop! You're in danger of forgetting the number one before all other number ones."
"Which is what?"
"Diplomacy," said Nat. "We are here to build diplomatic relations, so we need them to trust us."
A bluish sheen glinted off the backs of the tortoises. The coffee tasted green, Shams decided. As if the beans of it were younger, but more bitter.
"We can only find out what they know through diplomacy," said Nat.
"They might be the program masters," said Shams. She smiled when no one responded.
They cleared up, and waited for the delegate assigned to them to arrive.
She arrived dressed in long, brown robes, with thick dark hair piled high. She wore earrings and smiled; her skin was smooth, flawless and thick; her eyes without circles and bright. "Welcome to Thetis," she said, inclining her head."My name is Ayash, and I am pleased to accompany you today."
They mounted a shuttle and flew down over the sandy peaks, alighting in a vast plain where a grand building stood, surrounded by high, ornate railings.
"Welcome to our Centre of Scientific Excellence. This centre has been open for four hundred years. It used to be located in the coastal valleys of southern Indus, before it was moved here due to more favourable climatic conditions. It is run by a consortium of experts who live and study across all three continents of Thetis -"
"Who leads it?" asked Joe. The gates to the building opened and they entered, before Shams's exclaimed aloud at the sight of half a dozen giant beasts ambling along outside the railings, taking shade under a collection of trees. They were not horses and they were not dinosaurs, but something in between. Again, there was a green sheen to what looked like short, close fur the colour of dusty amber.
"Everything's iridescent on this planet," muttered Joe.
Ayash laughed. "We call them horses. They are tame, docile and beloved of all humans, Laurasian or Indusian. You can pet them if you like, afterwards. And the Centre of Scientific Excellence is run by its scientists, of course."
"What do you mean?" asked Eric, fingering his silver beard.
Ayash smiled. "I mean, experts work on it as they like and as they must."
Stepping ahead of Eric and Joe, Nat gave Ayash one of her plastered smiles. The men fell silent.
"Do you ride them?" asked Shams, still watching the beasts as they gently nuzzled under the foliage.
"Long ago we did," replied Ayash. They stepped inside.
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