“As well they might be.”
“We may see some action reasonably soon.” Sundaram spoke into Nansen’s sudden hopefulness: “But as for proper communication, you must give us time.”
“Us.” He includes the Yonderfolk. Already he feels a kinship across all foreignness.
The crew were gathered. Nansen spoke straight to the point.
“It went better than we anticipated. Icons, animations—We’re invited to come down and settle in.”
Ruszek’s hand shot up. “First landing!” he roared.
“Again?” Kilbirnie said. She shrugged. “Aweel, if you must. There should be lots more, shouldn’t there, skipper?”
“We still have details to work out,” Nansen cautioned. “First and foremost, I suppose, the actual landing site.”
“They ought to have one in mind already, given their experience in the past,” Mokoena said. “Selim and I have established that the biology and biochemistry here are the same as in the anomalous plants we collected at our previous stop.” This, too, though not unexpected, was a new announcement; knowledge had been leaping forward. “And the architecture—That was a colony of theirs. They are the Yonderfolk.”
Nobody asked why that world lay forsaken. They had raised the question wearisomely often. Nevertheless, for a moment it spooked around them.
Cleland pushed it aside. “Uh, this may be silly,” he ventured, “but have you found out the name of this planet, Ajit?”
Sundaram smiled. “Silly but natural,” he replied. “No, of course not. Perhaps we never will. It may have many names in many distinct languages. Whatever they are, I doubt we can ever pronounce any, if pronunciation is even appropriate—and if the Yonderfolk bestow names.”
Zeyd half rose from his seat, sank back, and declared, “We want one to use among ourselves.”
Yu nodded. “We have talked about this also.”
“We should decide. You know what I propose. Tahir.”
“That seems fitting,” Nansen said, “and out in these parts we don’t have to go through registration procedures. Shall we agree on Tahir?”
Assent murmured around the half-circle.
“Well,” Nansen said gladly, “we can start planning and preparing for descent, and thinking what to do down there.”
“Five years,” Brent growled.
Eyes went toward him. “What?” demanded Dayan.
He glowered back. “You know. The contract, the ship’s articles. We are not obliged to stay more than five Earth years after we’ve reached our goal. Which we have.”
“We may be at the start of the real, the greater search,” Sundaram said.
“Five years,” Brent insisted. He looked around from face to face. “Then we can go home if we choose. Wouldn’t you like to be back where you can dare have children, before you’re too old?”
23.
Year one.
The site was a broad opening in an expanse of woodlands on the eastern seaboard of a northern continent. A stream flowed through, clear and pure although the human palate sensed a slight pungency. A stand of trees screened an area that had been paved overnight to provide a field for spacecraft and aircraft. When violent weather was on its way, as happened not uncommonly, a flexible sheet extruded from one end, arched over to form a transparent dome, and grew rigid. It opened for you wherever you approached, closing again behind. After the storm was past, it softened and withdrew. Otherwise the Tahirians had prepared nothing, and raised no objections to whatever their guests did.
On clear days the land lay darklingly rich beneath a deep blue sky. Growth was nowhere green, but ruddy-brown, chocolate, black, maroon, damask, countless shades, lightened by petals white or colorful. The effect was not gloomy; there was so much life, leaves rippling and soughing in sunlight, odors as of strange spices. A mossy turf seemed to play the basic role of grass. Trees, shrubs, canes, brachiated more or less like Earth’s; to that extent had two, evolutions happened to run parallel. Wildlife abounded, from tiny things that could incorrectly be called worms or insects, on through swimmers, runners, and wings multitudinous in heaven. Cries, whistles, bellows, trills sounded through the glades.
Tahir rotated once in nineteen and a quarter hours, with an axial inclination of thirty-one degrees. Though the irradiation was lower, the atmosphere, slightly denser than Earth’s, joined with albedo to maintain a planetary mean temperature three degrees higher. However, climates varied tremendously from region to region, weather still more, through a year seven-tenths terrestrial length. This was in considerable part due to an orbit as eccentric as Mars’s—northern summers longer and colder, northern winters shorter and warmer, than southern. All factors considered, the place granted the humans might well be the best possible for them.
A gravity 9 percent above terrestrial added about five to eight kilos to a person’s weight, depending on mass. It was evenly distributed, and the crew soon hardened to it; as well as resetting their circadian rhythms—with pharmaceutical help. The work of settlement kept them busily and, most times, cheerily occupied. Ruszek and Kilbirnie ferried down load after load of equipment, supplies, and prefabricated parts. Robots helped, but hands found plenty to do. A storage shed rose; a building for a power plant and other facilities; a third for meeting, cooking, dining, recreation, celebration. At last individual cabins replaced the two temporary shelters that had separately housed men and women.
Although the Tahirians did not seem to have closed the region off, none of the nuisances appeared who would have come swarming on Earth, journalists, curiosity seekers, salespeople, cranks, politicians. Three or four visitors were frequently present, arriving and departing in small, silent aerial vehicles of teardrop shape and iridescent hues. They observed and recorded, with exotic apparatus, except for those who worked with Sundaram. They let the humans stare and record in turn. Otherwise they kept to themselves.
“It suggests a very controlled society,” Dayan remarked.
“Or a very alien one,” Cleland said.
Abruptly that changed. While speech was not yet possible, sign language had steadily improved. It took the form of animated cartoons displayed on a portable screen. The figures were simplified and conventionalized to the point of grotesquerie, but usually comprehensible. One day a Tahirian ran off a sequence that made Kilbirnie shout, “Harroo!” and dance across the sward.
The newcomers were invited to go on tours.
“They’ve decided we know enough by now and are harmless,” Nansen guessed.
“Not necessarily harmless,” Brent said.
“Who made the decision, and how?” wondered Yu.
Evidently the Tahirians gave priority to scientific and technological rapport. Was that because those were the least difficult subjects? They tried to explain what kinds of establishment they offered to show, on trips of a few days’ duration. Nansen divided his people accordingly. It made more sense than going in one herd. Nor did he want the camp left empty. For the initial jaunts, he assigned just two parties. The rest would stay behind until another time. He took the worst jealousy off that by including himself. When the aircraft took off, swiftly vanishing, Kilbirnie saw him bite his lip. She swallowed her own disappointment and slipped over to stand beside him.
Mokoena and Zeyd entered into magic.
They landed at a cluster of structures, low shapes of complex, pleasing geometry around a filigree tower. Their guide showed them to a chamber with soft pads on the floor and an adjoining bath and sanitor copied from the humans’. Obviously this would be their lodging. They stowed the food, bedrolls, changes of clothing, and personal kits they had brought along and turned eagerly back to the guide. The little being led them straightway to a descent and down a spiral ramp, down and down.
“Does he feel how our curiosity burns?” Zeyd asked.
“I think curiosity must be universal to intelligence,” Mokoena replied, “though it may not always express itself in the same ways.”
The laboratory(?) in which
they ended was long and wide, a hemiellipsoid out of which poured illumination. Several benches(?) were vaguely familiar, though no drawers were visible; did they extrude on command? The paraphernalia on top and standing elsewhere was unrecognizable.
Three more Tahirians waited. All had been in the camp from time to time. They gave their guests a few minutes to look around. Thereupon one stepped forward. His(?) leaf-mane waved. He uttered a few piping notes. Arms and tentacular fingers wove through a series of gestures. A sweet smell drifted into air that otherwise hung warm and quiet.
“A polite greeting?” Mokoena hazarded.
Zeyd bowed. “Salaam,” he responded. His companion raised a palm.
The being trotted off. They followed. He stopped between tall cabinet-shaped devices on three sides of a square. An associate operated controls. A screen of some kind slid out to make the fourth side.
A three-dimensional image of the scientist appeared in it. “Holographic projection,” Zeyd muttered. “Limatza—why?”
Skin vanished from the image. The watchers beheld muscles, unlike theirs but serving the same purposes. After a minute this was gone and they saw deeper layers, vessels through which ran fluid, pale streaks of a solid material. …
“Tomographic fluoroscopy,” Zeyd said unevenly. “Why don’t they just show us anatomical models?”
“I expect they wish to use it on us, and are demonstrating it’s safe,” Mokoena opined.
“Allah akbar! That skeleton—modular trusses—”
Mokoena gasped. She had dissected small animals that Ruszek and Brent shot. This, though, was a different line of evolution, even a different phylum, if “phylum” meant anything here.
“See, see,” she breathed. The view moved inward. “That big organ, does it do the work of our heart and lungs? It could be how they inhale and exhale, in spite of the rigid body—”
“Ionic and osmotic pumps?”
“Oh, Selim, revelation!” She caught his hand and clung.
“Well, they have bowels,” he said, as if prosaic words could fend off bewilderment. “What those other things are—”
The view went back outward, step by step. The humans focused their attention on the head. A brain was identifiable, however peculiar its form. Instead of teeth, convoluted bone ridges extended from the flesh of the jaws, presumably regenerating continuously. The fernlike shapes of four tonguelets, two above and two below, suggested they were chemosensors, perhaps among other functions. Indeed, Tahirians generally kept their mouths partly open.
“What do the antennae do?” puzzled Zeyd.
“I’d like to know more about the eyes, too,” Mokoena said. “So far we’ve only guessed the inner pair is chiefly for day vision, the outer for night.”
“And for peripheral.”
She glanced at him before her gaze jumped back to the screen. “Yes, of course, but why do you make it sound so important?”
“This was a dangerous world in the past. Life developed ways to cope with it.”
“Every world is dangerous.”
Zeyd spoke in a rapid monotone. They both kept watching the screen. “Here more than most. Tim and I were talking about it a few days ago. He pointed out that a planet this size must go through bouts of enormous volcanic and seismic activity, with radical effects on climates. The core and spin give it a strong magnetic field, but the field will vary more than Earth’s and in some geological periods the background count goes high. The moon is too small to stabilize the axial tilt, like ours. Chaotic variations must cause still more ecological disasters. I said to Tim that all this must have bred many different biomes. Probably ancestral Tahirians often wandered into territories where, animals and plants were unknown to them. They needed a wide sensory field.”
“And range? I hope you can explain the biochemistry of those eyes to me.”
“What?”
“I’ve been noticing things. Don’t you remember that wall panel in the aircar? An inscription on it, slashes and squiggles and—Red on red. Very hard to read. It has to be easy for them. That implies better color vision than ours. More than three receptors, I would guess. Not incredible. Shrimp on Earth have seven. If ‘receptors’ is the word I want.”
Zeyd chuckled. “Please. This is too much for a single hour.”
“I know. It’s like being a child in a toy shop. What shall we play with first?”
The image became that of a complete Tahirian. It blinked out.
Exhilaration brought levity. “Isn’t sex more interesting than eyes?” Zeyd japed. “Did you get any idea of how they reproduce?”
“No. It’s still as baffling as those dissections of mine.” Mokoena grinned. “Perhaps they’ll show us some explicit scenes.”
“Or enact them?”
She sobered. “Let’s hope for no serious misunderstandings.”
The screen retracted. The scientist emerged, approached, beckoned. He was gray-pelted, though presumably not aged, and wore a pouched belt around the torso. “What comes next, Peter?” Zeyd asked. As they began to tell individuals apart, humans had given them names, because humans need names. Zeyd could as well have put his useless question in Arabic, but Mokoena was listening.
Snaky fingers reached up to pluck at clothes. “Are we supposed to—to undress?” Zeyd exclaimed.
Again Mokoena’s teeth flashed white in the dark face. “They may be thinking about the same subject we were.”
“A demonstration?”
“I trust not!”
They looked at one another. Laughter pealed. They removed their garments. For an instant they could not hide enjoyment of what they saw. Then the four Tahirians crowded around to examine them, peering and sniffing(?), touching and feeling, gently but with unmistakable fascination, prior to putting them in the tomograph.
“Do they wonder if we’re separate species?” Zeyd speculated.
“As our good captain would say,” Mokoena answered, “viva la diferencia.”
In a vast, twilit chamber, shapes bulked, soared, curved, coiled, phantasmagoria reaching beyond sight. Some moved, some whirred. Lights danced and flashed in changeable intricacy, like fireflies or a galaxy of evanescent stars.
“Beautiful,” Dayan said, “but what is it?”
“I don’t know,” Yu replied softly. “I suspect the beauty isn’t by chance, it’s there for its own sake. We may find we have much beauty in common, we and they.”
The two were at the end of a tour. They had walked through twisting kilometers with their guides, and had stood looking and looking without understanding, but their daze came less from an overload of the body than of the mind.
The frustration in Dayan broke through. “We won’t make sense of any of this till they can explain it to us. Can they ever?” She gestured at the nearest Tahirian. “What has Esther, here, really conveyed, today or back at our camp?”
As if to respond, the native took a flat box with a screen out of her(?) pouch belt. Such units were the means of pictorial communication. Fingers danced across control surfaces. Figures appeared. Yu leaned close to see. Minutes passed. The other hosts waited patiently. Dayan quivered.
Yu straightened. “I think I have a hint.” Her voice rejoiced. “The symbols we have developed—I think one of these assemblies, at least, is a cryomagnetic facility for studying quantum resonances.”
“Don’t they already know everything about that?” Dayan objected. “These people were probably starfaring before Solomon built the First Temple.”
“I suspect this whole complex is a teaching laboratory.”
Dayan nodded. “That sounds plausible. It would be the best for us.” She paused before asking, “Do they do any actual research anymore?”
“What?”
“Would they? They gave up starfaring long ago. We may be the first newness they’ve encountered for thousands of years.”
Yu pondered. “Well, did not the physicists on Earth believe the ultimate equation has been written and everything we discover hereafter
will only be solutions of it?”
Scorn replied. “They believed. What about those jetless flyers here?”
“That may be an application of principles we know in ways we have not thought of.”
“Or maybe not.” Dayan’s mettle forsook her. “You will doubtless find out,” she said wearily. “Technological tricks. The science underneath them is something else.”
Surprised, Yu said, “No, the basic laws will come first. They are far simpler.”
Dayan shook her head. “Not without a proper vocabulary, verbal and mathematical. We won’t reach that point soon, will we? Newton’s laws, yes—but the Hamiltonian, Riemannian geometry, wave functions? Not to mention Navier-Stokes, turbulence, chaos, complexity, all the subtleties. It’ll be years before we even know whether the Tahirians know something fundamental that we don’t. What shall I do meanwhile?”
Yu touched her hand. “You will help me. If nothing else. No, we shall be partners.”
“Thank you, dear Wenji.”
The warmth was short-lived. Dayan looked off into the dusk. “Technology, your work, interesting, vital, yes,” she said. “But the mysteries—”
Sundaram sat in his cabin. The interior resembled his own aboard ship, except for the windows. They gave on a wild autumnal rain. Wind yelled. Before him on the floor, legs folded, torso upright, rested the Tahirian whom humans called Indira, because this happened so often that an Indian name felt appropriate. He was coming to believe that Indira was not known among her/his/its kind by any single symbol, but by configurations of sensory data that changed fluidly according to circumstances while always demarking the unique individual.
Computer screens and a holograph displayed sketches, diagrams, arbitrary figures, pictures. With illumination turned low, reflected light set Indira’s four eyes aglow. Sundaram spoke aloud, not altogether to himself.
“Yes, I am nearly certain now. Yours is primarily a body language, with chemical and vocal elements—characters and compoundings infinitely, subtly variable. It causes your writing to be ideographic, like a kind of super-Chinese hypertext. Is this correct? Then Wenji can make a device for expressing the language we create, the new language our races will share.”
Starfarers Page 23