Explorer

by C. J. Cherryh

  He moved, and she moved. “It’s very strange,” she said. And it was.

  * * *

  It was, however, possible to go about a sort of a routine while the ship needled its way through folded space. Bindanda managed to create a basic but very fine breakfast, and it was possible to get a little work done, at least of the routine and non-creative sort, translating files—approving what the computer did—that being about the height of intellectual activity he trusted himself to manage.

  That was the first day. Jase had indeed been captain of record during that transition. Sabin, it turned out, had gone to her cabin and wished him and his crew luck.

  Maybe it was a sea change in relations—a statement to the crew at large that she trusted him that far, since below-decks was sure to have learned that Jase had been in charge. Or maybe it was a subtle strike at Jase’s confidence, meant to scare him. One thing remained certain: the navigators, the pilot, and the technical crew ran matters. The trade-off of authority and the alternate crew hadn’t risked the ship.

  Presumably, at the same time, Jase attempted to persuade the senior captain to trust outsiders with the log files. It remained to be seen whether that would ever happen.

  The staff watched television.

  The dowager stayed withdrawn in her cabin, her standard practice throughout these voyages through the deep dark: no invitation would tempt her. No one was at his best, and the dowager had no interest.

  The heir, however, took to racing wheeled cars, which Cajeiri had seen in videos out of the human Archive, and which he had made for himself out of pieces of pipe, tape, pieces of wire, various washers and gaskets, and beans for ballast. One early model exploded on impact with the base of the section door and sent Cajeiri and the servant staff searching the hall for errant beans—not so much for fear of the footing as the certainty that any ship’s maneuver would turn them all into missiles.

  Over the next number of days Bren produced the briefing tape. No one on the ship was at his sharpest, but Bren judged his wits adequate at least for a summation of the situation, and he reviewed for the entire security staff, in careful detail and with numerous questions from Cenedi, exactly what he knew: the surmises of various authorities, the history of the Guild, the physical details of the station’s structure and, not strange to his own staff, the station’s necessary and critical operations, especially as regarded the fuel port, the mast accesses, and the damage the ship had previously observed.

  Then the staffs—his, the dowager’s men, and Gin’s—put their heads together. In a meeting of their own lethal Guild, they listened to the briefing tapes, then considered the structural charts, reviewing approach, docking, and the refueling protocols. No one would deceive them. No one would confuse them by telling them lies. And no emergency would overtake them unanticipated.

  Bren wished he could say the same for himself.

  “Any luck on the records?” he asked Jase, in a social call.

  “She says she has it on her list,” Jase said.

  So, well, damn, but not surprising. That could go on for days. And doubtless Sabin intended it to take an adequate number of days.

  He helped staff where he could. Security came back to him ready to discuss their situation and their potential situation for muzzy days and evenings of careful reconsideration. He informed himself on finer technicalities about ship-fueling that he had never intended to know, but a translator necessarily learned, and relayed that information. He fell asleep of nights with Jago, their pillow-talk generally dealing with the same worrisome contingencies and potential operations as occupied their days.

  And he slept and waked and slept and waked, day upon quasi-day, with diminishing conviction about the accuracy of time-cycles in their automatic world.

  No luck, Jase still informed him, regarding Sabin and further records. She still says she’s thinking about it.

  Watching them, Bren began to think. Watching their reactions. Maybe waiting for Jase to make a move . . . but maybe, at last, questioning her own universe of rights and wrongs and consulting her human conscience. He assumed Sabin had one. But hope for it daily diminished.

  He visited Ginny for one lunch of quasi-egg sandwiches on something that passed for bread, and arranged to bring an atevi-style dinner to their section.

  Then the notion took them of holding a truly formal folded-space supper in the Mospheiran corridors—Cajeiri wanted to come, and gained permission from the dowager. He even demonstrated his best car for Ginny’s engineers and mechanics.

  Immediately there were notions for improvement and a proposal of bets. An electric motor. Remote steering.

  “No,” Ginny chided her engineers, but one suspected no would by no means suffice.

  * * *

  Well, Bren wrote to Toby, in a letter that couldn’t possibly be transmitted until they were within reach of docking at their home station, at mission end. Well, brother, the advisement from above claims they have seen some sign the ship is nearing exit, whatever they know up there.

  If you’re reading this, it worked. And it’s about the umpteenth day, and I’m tired of this muzziness.

  Tired and a lot scared at this point. I can’t string two thoughts together. I tape them in place, laboriously, or they slide off and get confused.

  I think about you a lot. I hope everything’s going well for you. I think about you and Jill and the kids, with all kinds of regrets for chances not taken; and of course there aren’t any answers, but I can’t survive out here thinking about things that could go wrong back home. I have to hope that you’re out on that boat of yours enjoying the sunshine. And that those kids of yours are getting along. And that Jill’s all right.

  He didn’t write a great deal about Jill and the kids, not knowing what sort of sore spot that might be by the time he returned. He’d left Toby in a mess, their mother in hospital, Toby’s wife Jill having walked out in despair of Toby’s ever living his own life, the kids increasingly upset and acting out, in the way of distressed and confused young folk. He wasn’t utterly to blame for Toby’s situation—but he regretted it. He wished he’d seen it coming earlier. He wished, with all his diplomacy, he’d found a way years ago to talk Toby out of responding to every alarm their mother raised—or that he could have talked their mother, far less likely, out of her campaign to get him out of his job and Toby back from the end of the island he’d moved to.

  Their mother was one of those women who defined herself by her children. And who consequently cannibalized their growing lives until, ultimately, the campaign drove the family apart.

  He patched nations together. He made warlike lords of another species form sensible associations and refrain from assassinating each other. And he hadn’t been able to impose a sense of reality on his own mother. That failure grieved him, his grief made him angry, and his anger made him feel very guilty when he thought of how he’d left the world, without that last visit that might have paid for so much—that would have turned out so opportune in his mother’s life.

  No, dammit. There was no final gesture with someone who was only interested in the next maneuver, the ultimate stratagem, the plan that would, against all logic, work, and get her sons home—no matter what her sons wanted or needed. If he’d gotten there, she’d have taken it for vindication.

  Toby, unfortunately, was still in the middle of it all. Toby had still been trying to figure it all out. And even if their mother had passed—as she might have—Toby would still be struggling to figure out all out.

  Well, what are we up to? he wrote to Toby. A lot of things that I’ll tell you when I get there, because I can’t write them down, the usual reasons. And today I tell you I’d really like that fishing trip. Jase would be absolutely delighted with an invitation from you. He’s done so much. He’s existing in a position he doesn’t think he’s able to hold. He even supervised this last ship-move. He does a thousand things Sabin would have to do if he wasn’t here. I think he’s why she’s sane.

  But besid
es that, there remain some few questions we’d like Sabin to dig out of files, questions we’ve asked. I wonder sometimes if maybe she’s putting more operations on Jase’s back because she really is doing something—or thinking about those answers. Maybe she’s found something she didn’t expect in those records and she’s considering her options. I hope. I don’t know.

  Remind me to tell you about exploding cars when I get back. For the future aiji’s reputation I don’t want that one in print either.

  When we last folded space I thought about Mt. Adams and the slope that winter—remember the race? Remember when I went off the ledge and through the thicket and lost my new cap and goggles?

  I remember hot tea and honey in the cabin that night and us making castles out of the embers in the fireplace. And I’d turned my ankle going off the cliff and it swelled up but I wasn’t telling Mum and I went on the slope the next day, too.

  We tried to teach mum to ski, remember, but she said if she wanted to fall down on ice there was a patch in front of the cabin that didn’t involve long cold hikes.

  It was an exact quote, and one she’d stuck to. But she’d brought them to the cabin—well, brought them up to the snow lodge ever since the time he’d lost himself in the woods and scared everyone, so she’d changed vacation spots. And she hadn’t liked the ski slopes, either, and had been sure he was going to fall into some ravine and die of a broken leg. Their mother was full of contradictions.

  He was sure there was an essential key in that set of facts somewhere, a means to understand her, and consequently to understand himself and Toby, if he knew how to lay hands on it. But no thought during ship-transit was entirely reliable.

  I was thinking about you and the boat today. You know, in his office up on the bridge, Jase has just one personal item—that photo of him and the fish. Clearly he thinks about getting through this alive and getting that chance to come down—maybe for good, he says, though between you and me, I think he’d get to missing life on the ship, too. He has a place here. And there. I know he remembers you and the boat.

  I have learned a few things in the last few days. I’ll have to tell you when I get there. But then this letter and I will get there pretty much together, so you’ll at least have a chance to ask me first hand.

  Here’s hoping, at least.

  He had another running letter, this one to Tabini; and to that one, too, he appended a note:

  Aiji-ma, we have moved the ship on toward the station. Your grandmother has taken to her cabin as is her habit during these uncomfortable transitions. Your son is taking advantage of the opportunity to undertake new experiments, not all of which have predictable outcomes, but he is learning and growing in discretion. We fill our hours with plans and projections and take a certain pleasure in his inventions and discoveries.

  Dared one think Tabini would understand? This was the boy who’d ridden a mecheita across wet cement.

  One believes you will approve, aiji-ma.

  Concerning Sabin, about the missing files, he withheld statement. If the letter ever got to Tabini, all their problems would have been solved—one way and another. He damaged no reputations, created no suspicions that might later have to be dealt with.

  He held misgivings at arms’ length. Viewed suspicion with suspicion, in the curiously muzzy way of this place. He waited.

  * * *

  Besides his letter writing, he took daily walks, around and around the section. He worked out in their makeshift gymnasium. At times the suspension of result and the lack of outcome in their long voyage simply passed endurance, and he pulled squats and sit-ups until he collapsed in a sweating, sweatshirted heap.

  He had nothing like Jago’s strength, let alone Banichi’s, but he’d certainly worked off all the rich desserts and sedentary evenings of the last ten years during this voyage. He no longer rated himself sharp enough to downhill Mt. Adams, but he figured if he fell in the attempt, he’d at least bounce several times before he broke something.

  And, like the transcript-translation and the two letters which had now become individual volumes, exercise filled the hours, mindless and cathartic. Unlike the transcript and the letter-writing, it didn’t force him to think of dire possibilities or to fret about records on which he could spend useful time, if he could only get them.

  He resurrected old card games out of the Archive and translated those for his staff, with cards made of document folders. Whist became a favorite.

  Cajeiri, deserted to his own young devices, built paper planes and flew them in the long main corridor, where they took unpredictable courses. Cajeiri said the strangeness of the journey made them fly in unpredictable ways. It seemed a fair experiment and a curious notion, so Bren made a few of his own, and greatly amused the dowager’s staff.

  Their designs were dubious in the flow of air from the vents. The properties of airplanes in hyperspace remained an elusive question. They were at least soft-landing, and the walls were safe.

  And there was the human Archive for entertainment, such of it as they still carried aboard. The servant staff assembled with simple refreshments and held group viewings in the servants’ domain, occasionally of solemn atevi machimi, but often enough of old movies from the human Archive. Horses had long since become a sensation, in whatever era. Elephants and tigers were particularly popular, and evoked wonder. The Jungle Book re-ran multiple times on its premiere evening. “Play it again,” the staff requested Bindanda, who ran the machine, and on subsequent evenings, if the other selections seemed less favorable, they ran and reran the favorite.

  On a particular evening of the watch, Bren passed the dining hall to hear loud cheers go up. He wondered whether there was a new sensation to surpass even The Jungle Book.

  He looked in. The assembled audience was, indeed, not just the servant staff. Banichi and Jago attended. He saw Cenedi and the dowager’s staff, and Cajeiri, his young face transfigured by the silver light of the screen—of course, Cajeiri had inveigled his way in.

  A black and white, the offering was—odd, in itself. Color was usually the preference. As he stood in the doorway, a scaled monster stepped on the ruin of a building. Humans darted this way and that in patterns that atevi would search in vain for signs of association.

  Men in antique uniforms fired large guns at the beast, which slogged on, to atevi cheers and laughter.

  Hamlet, atevi had appreciated and applauded, when he’d brought a modern tape to the mainland . . . appreciated it, but felt cheated by ambiguities in the ending. They’d been puzzled by Romeo and Juliet, but were both horrified and gratified by Oedipus, which they conceded had a fine ending, once he explained it.

  Now . . .

  A building went flat.

  The great Archive. The unseen dramas, manifestation of the collected human wisdom, the possibility of every digital blip the storage had carried on its way to build an outpost of human civilization. And this fuzzy black and white delighted the audience.

  Laughter. A light young voice among the rest, the future aiji.

  He couldn’t begin to explain this story. He considered going in, tucking himself in among the rest, trying to figure the nature of the tape—but he’d likely disturb the staff, who were obviously understanding the story quite well without him—or at least finding amusement in it. He drifted on to his own quarters and ran through the Archive indices for himself, looking for entertainment, for diversion, for edification—and finding absolutely nothing in the entire body of work of the human species that appealed to him this evening.

  Which somehow told him it wasn’t really a tape he wanted.

  What he wanted was to be absorbed and equal in the company out there, watching a mythical beast flatten buildings.

  What he most wanted was to sit surrounded by congeniality and supplied with something munchable and something potable, having a good time—but the staff, even including Banichi and Jago, could only do that when they thought they had a moment off, and if he showed up, it could only make them ask the
mselves who was minding the things that had to be minded.

  And they would get up and go see if there was anything he needed.

  He was feeling human this evening. He was feeling human, strange, and somewhat melancholy.

  So let them relax, he said to himself. Staff worked hard enough to assure his relaxation: let them have their own enjoyment without his crises of identity and visions of an uncertain outcome.

  And if Cenedi included the aiji’s heir in the security staff’s dubious amusements, Cenedi judged it was probably good for the boy. He himself sat at his desk solo, and played computer solitaire, in complete confidence that if he should ask, tea would arrive. But he chose, again, not to disturb staff. He was human. He was Mospheiran. He could very easily go to the galley and make his own tea. He thought he could find a pan and the tea-caddy . . . but he hadn’t the energy or the will to attend his own needs. He felt sorry for himself in the numb, dull-as-a-rock way the transition let anybody feel anything.

  And he kept losing the games, which in itself was a good barometer of his mood and his muddle-headedness with the basic numbers of his situation.

  Nearing the end of this long voyage, and no information, when he blackly suspected Sabin had by now seen it, formed a conclusion, and denied it to him.

  He was nearing the point at which his ideas had to work—if he had any; which he wouldn’t, until he got a view of the situation at their exit.

  God, he hated improvisation. The older he got, the more he distrusted gut instinct and initial impressions—and he used his instincts, or he had used them, and they’d worked, but they’d worked with people he knew, and often on blind luck—baji-naji, atevi would insist: actions in good awareness of the transitory numbers of a situation flowed with a situation, and luck and chance themselves flowed along discernable channels. One only had to understand the numbers to ride the current and improve one’s luck in moments of change.

  But one had to know the numbers. And he didn’t. The ship-folk were more alien to planet-bound humans than atevi were—while ship-folk had queasily found atevi easier to deal with than they found Mospheirans. And nobody, not even Jase, understood the Pilots’ Guild—or the senior captain.