“How they reconcile such an endlessness, which is also such a narrowness, with what I believe is an instinctual need for a hierarchy with meaningful functions, we do not yet know. I suspect that multisensory electronic communications are necessary for dynamic equilibrium. Are they sufficient? Beneath the calm surface, are there tensions and contradictions, as there surely would be in humans?
“We must continue our investigation.”
Sundaram keyed off, leaned back in his chair, and blew out a breath. “Enough for today,” he said. “Tomorrow I will make it into a lecture for the troops.”
Yu came up behind him. “Must you?” she asked. “You work too hard.”
“Well, true, they know most of it already, but in bits and pieces, unsystematic. Perhaps a synthesis will provoke fresh ideas.”
“Meanwhile,” she said, “what you need is some nonscientific meditation, followed by tea and a bite to eat and what else goes with having a good night’s sleep.” Her fingers closed on his shoulders and began to massage, firmly, lovingly.
It was late fall at Terralina when Ruszek returned from space. He had fared about with a pair of Tahirians, partly to see something of robotic mining in the asteroids—if “mining” was the word for extraction and refining processes largely on the nano level—and partly to learn some of the practical characteristics of a Tahirian spacecraft. There might be useful hints for human engineers, and even a clue to the mysterious driving force.
He found the settlement abuzz. Nansen was absent, visiting a historic and artistic center, perhaps a kind of Florence or Kyoto. That was not tourism; with the help of his guides, he would bring back a rich store of referents to enlarge and strengthen the Cambiante language. The others greeted Ruszek cordially.
Yet he could not make complete sense out of what he heard from them. Sundaram was preoccupied with the latest semantic bafflement he had come upon, Yu with the improvement of scientific-technological vocabulary. Dayan, Kilbirnie, Cleland, and Brent were in their various ways so enthusiastic about their wish that Ruszek lost patience with sorting out what struck him as babble. Zeyd was analyzing his latest biochemical acquisitions. That left Mokoena. She was busy, too, working up her notes, searching deeper into the patterns of Tahirian life. But she was willing to take a break.
He wanted to get her aside anyway.
Dressed against chill, they walked out into the woods. A game trail had become familiar to the humans; their passages had widened it till two could go side by side. Trees and undergrowth walled it in. The bronze, russet, amber foliage was now mostly gone, though, the walls left open to the wind. It whittered, boughs swayed and creaked, a pale sun in a pale sky cast fluttering shadows. From the damp soil rose a scent as of an oceanside on Earth, early decay, nature’s farewell.
The two were silent for a while, awkward after apartness. When at last Ruszek spoke, it was of the least personal matter. “This about the pulsar,” he said roughly. “Can you explain it to me?”
“Why, you’ve heard. They’ve made their proposal public. To go there and study it.”
“Halál és adóok!” Ruszek exploded. “Why? We’re supposed to have a good, useable language in another year or less. Then the Tahirians can tell us everything about it, down to whether it takes cream or sugar in its coffee.”
“That is the point,” Mokoena said. “They can’t. I see this wasn’t made clear to you.” She smiled. “Well, everybody talking at once, and also wanting to hear what you had to tell.”
“They can’t?” His stride missed a beat. He stared at her. “When it’s next door?”
Mokoena gathered her words as she walked. The wind shrilled.
“Ajit and Wenji have inquired into this lately, at Hanny’s request,” she said with care. “They have learned—Yes, the Tahirians were there more than once, thousands of years ago. When they stopped starfaring, they left robots to observe and beam back the data. But the robots wore out. Radiation, electronics degraded, I don’t know. Either they weren’t meant for self-repair and reproduction, or the materials are lacking in that system. The Tahirians haven’t sent more.”
“Are they that petrified? Those I’ve been with haven’t acted like it”
“I don’t know,” Mokoena sighed. “None of us does, yet. I have an impression that their ancestors … recoiled from everything to do with starfaring. They didn’t want reminders. So curiosity died in them.”
Ruszek shook his head. His mustache bristled against the wind. “That just is not true. I deal with them. They’re fascinated.”
“I likewise,” she replied. “And, in fact, the plans for a pulsar expedition include several Tahirians. But we—naturally, we see the most those who are interested, who’re glad of us.” Her voice sank. “I have a feeling that other Tahirians wish we’d never come to rouse forgotten emotions from their graves.”
“An expedition, why? There are space observatories. I’ve seen them.”
“Well, Hanny and Tim say the system, neutron star and planets both, must be in very fast, early evolution, and the instruments here aren’t adequate to track it properly. At least, a close look should provide data that’ll make the local observations a great deal more meaningful.”
Ruszek grinned. “Mainly, they want to go see.”
“Scientific passion.” Mokoena lowered her voice further. She gazed ahead, in among the bare, tossing boughs. “Also, what better have they to do?”
If flared in Ruszek. “Isten, what a jaunt!”
Mokoena laid a hand on his arm for a moment, the merest touch. “I’m afraid you shall have to forego it, Lajos,” she said gently. “The captain would never let both our boat pilots go, and Jean has already spoken for that berth. Hanny, the physicist; Tim, the planetologist; Al, the engineer and general assistant—it cannot be more. We don’t dare.”
Ruszek’s mouth twisted. “I wasn’t alert enough. Ah, well.”
“Besides,” Mokoena said, “perhaps you didn’t understand it in all the cross talk, but the captain opposes the idea. He says it can’t justify risking our ship.”
Ruszek narrowed his eyes against the bitter air. “Hm. I should think—we do know a lot about pulsars, this one especially, don’t we?—we could program Envoy so she can’t endanger herself.”
“We don’t know everything. We can’t foresee every hazard.”
“Nor can we here. I’ll speak to Nansen when he returns. He should at least let us vote on it.”
Mokoena gave Ruszek a long look. “Although you can’t go?”
He shrugged. “I am no dog in the manger. And I do now have plenty to keep me out of mischief.”
The wood opened on a glade where turf grew thick and soft, still deeply red-brown. A spring bubbled forth near the center, to rill away into the forest. In summer it was a favorite spot for humans to seek peace and, sometimes, human closeness. Man and woman stopped. Slowly, they turned toward one another.
“You’ve become a happier man than you were,” she said.
“I’m doing something real again, and enjoying it,” he replied. “Like you.”
“I’m glad, Lajos.”
Her eyes were very bright in the dark face. His words began to stumble. “You—us—I asked if we could go for this walk so we could talk alone—”
“I know.” Sudden tears glimmered. “I’m sorry, Lajos.”
His countenance locked. He spoke as nearly matter-of-factly as he was able. “You don’t want to try again, we two?”
“I—” Mokoena swallowed. “Lajos,” she said in a rush, “I am not casual. Whatever you may have supposed, I am not.”
“You mean you have somebody else in mind.”
“I mean only—No, Lajos, we’ll be friends, God willing, but only friends”
After a bit, he shrugged again. “Well, I said I have enough to keep me busy.”
Impulsively, she caught his hands. “You are more than a man, Lajos. You’re a gentleman. I could almost wish—”
He disengaged. “No harm if I hope,
is there?”
With the suddenness of the seasons in these parts, the first snow fell soon afterward and the land lay white when Nansen returned. He had stayed in radio contact; his folk were waiting to greet him as he stepped out of the Tahirian aircar. One by one the men shook his hand, then one by one the women embraced him—Yu shyly, Mokoena heartily, Dayan with eagerness and a long kiss while Zeyd went impassive, Kilbirnie unwontedly hesitant. As they left the landing field, the car took off.
A banquet was ready in the common room, as there had been for Ruszek earlier. Any occasion for a celebration was to be seized. Business could wait. News took over the conversation, gossip, small talk, babble and cheer, drinks clinking together. After dinner they set music playing and danced for a while. As she swayed in Nansen’s arms, Kilbirnie whispered, “Could we talk alone later?”
His pulse jumped. “Why, of course.”
“I’ll leave soon and meet you under the lightning tree.”
She could visit my office tomorrow, but we might be interrupted, or we might not have time afterward to mask ourselves. Or she could come to my cottage tonight, or I to hers, but that might be too intimate; it might confuse whatever she has to say. The thoughts and questions tumbled in him. He became rather absentminded company for the rest of the evening.
Finally he could say good night, don his thermal coverall, and go. Snow glistened crisp, scrunching beneath his shoes. The settlement huddled black by the dull sheen of ice on the river. Air went keen into his nostrils and streamed forth ghostly. The moon was full but tiny; nearly all light fell from crowding stars and argent Milky Way. It blanched the leafless boughs and towering bole of the tree he sought. The scar from which it had its name stood like a rune on high.
Kilbirnie trod from its vague shadow. Nansen halted where she did. They looked wordless into eyes that gleamed faintly in half-knowable faces.
“We missed you, skipper, we truly did,” the husky voice said low.
“Thank you. I missed you.” He smiled. “But that was personal presence. I continued as bossy as ever on the radio, didn’t I?”
“Nay. Ye’re a guid leader, the kind who trusts his followers to think and do for themselves.”
He saw what was coming, he had guessed it beforehand, but to help her he asked, “What did you wish to talk about now?”
“Surely you know.” She gestured at a point in the glittering sky. “Yonder wild star.”
“I’ve heard the arguments to and fro,” he said. “We’ll repeat them at a formal meeting. Is this the place for any?”
“Not the technical questions, no, like whether we can indeed program Envoy to keep herself safe—”
“Probably we can,” he interrupted. “But we can’t program you.”
Her grin flashed. “Och, I’ll be canny. We all will who go. We like being alive.”
He decided on a blunt challenge. “Do you, here?”
“Always and everywhere.” She plunged ahead: “But we can be part alive or fully alive. Ajit and Wenji, Mam and Selim—you and Lajos, among these planets— The rest of us want something real to do, too.”
“You can help,” he urged. “We need your help. Dios mío, have we not mysteries everywhere around us?”
“It is less than we could be doing. Fakework, often, which a robot can handle as well or better. Hanny and Tim think we may learn what we’d never otherwise know, yonder. And those Tahirians who want to come along—what might we learn from them, and about them?”
“Also,” he said slowly, “you would cut a couple of years off your time of service before we turn home.”
She straightened. “Aye, that’s at the core of what I wanted to speak of tonight, skipper. The technical matters, the public matters, we’ve chopped them over and over, and will over and over again, like making a haggis. But what it … means.”
Nansen waited.
She looked down at the snow. “Naught I’d care to say in a meeting.” The words came out one by one, in small white puffs. “What it means to me.”
He waited.
She looked back at him. Her tone steadied. “I’ll be away half a year, or thereabouts, more or less as much time as we’ll allow ourselves there. For you, two and a half years.”
He nodded. “Yes. And you’ll send your messages to us, but they’ll be almost a year old, and we won’t know—”
“Whether the ship that’s to bear you home is safe.”
“Whether you are.”
Silence shivered.
“Aye, ’tis much to ask,” Kilbirnie said.
“I have to think about more than safety. What will this do to morale?”
Her smile caught the starlight afresh. “You’ve a high-hearted crew these days, skipper. Make them more so.”
“Yes,” he said harshly, “if I let this come to a vote, we both know how the vote will go. But may I?”
Her reply was soft. “I understand. The responsibility is on you. And we are being selfish in a way, we four. We’ll not be those who suffer a long span of fear for us.”
“A long separation,” escaped him.
She was mute for a while in the frost. When she spoke, it stumbled. “Skipper, that’s what I—I hoped to say—that it is unfair to you, Ricardo Nansen.”
He rallied. “But you feel that forbidding it would be unfair to you.”
“Not me, not too much. Hanny and Tim—and, yes, poor, lonely Al—and those Tahirians who long to go starfaring …”
“And perhaps the star itself,” he conceded. “It does offer some fantastic opportunities … almost as if God is being generous—” He pulled loose from abstractions and returned to her. Breath had caught in stray locks over her brow and frozen to make starlit sparkles. “You burn to go, don’t you?”
“I could stay—aye, quite happily—if …”
“But you would always wonder what you had missed, wouldn’t you, Jean?”
Her eyes widened when he said her first name. He hurried on: “And your points about the others, and what it could all mean to the mission, yes, they are valid.” can give you this gift, Jean, if I can bring myself to it.
“Always the man of duty, no?” He couldn’t tell whether she admired or reproached or tenderly mocked. On Earth he would soon have found out, but this wasn’t Earth.
“Let me think further,” he said. “Meanwhile, the hour’s grown late, and we’re tired and cold.”
“And you’re heavy burdened. Aye, let’s go to our sleep.”
27.
Year three.
Envoy had been a star, hastening through night heaven to vanish in the planetary shadow, emerging to sink toward the eastern horizon. Now it was gone. For a while people found themselves glancing aloft before they remembered. At first they were glad of the undertakings that kept them occupied. Later, one by one and more and more, they were troubled.
A hurricane formed in midocean. On a previous trip, the Tahirian he called Stefan had shown Ruszek the energy projectors on the little moon. With animated graphics—using conventions lately developed, mutually comprehensible—en had explained that focused beams, precisely aimed, changed the courses of such storms; they veered from coast-lands where they could wreak harm. Now en and he boarded a robotic aircraft, among those that were to monitor events from within. “You’re really learning to read our feelings, aren’t you?” Ruszek exulted.
The teardrop sped through the stratosphere. Ruszek kept his instruments going, recording whatever they were able to. Eventually he might accumulate such a stack of information that Yu could make something of it, maybe even figure out how the jetless drive worked. He suspected the principle was quantum mechanical, and a starship’s engineer was necessarily a jackleg quantum physicist. At least, when Dayan got back—
The teardrop plunged. The weather loomed black ahead. He recalled Nansen’s story about flying through stuff like this, once … but that was five thousand years and light-years away The boat slammed into the dark. Wind raved, lightning flared. Forces shoved Ruszek bru
tally back and forth against a safety web improvised for him. “Ha!” he bawled, and wished he were the pilot.
But the pilot was a machine. Its purpose was not to have fun but to collect data and shoot them up to the moon. Harnessed nearby, Stefan stared at a crystalline ball en clutched. Glints danced in it, barely visible to the man. Another kind of instrument, he guessed while his skull rattled. Keeping track of … velocities, pressures, ionizations, a barrelful of shifty rages. Why? The robot must have full, direct input. Does Stefan want to follow along? Does en want to share the stress, effort, risk? Did any Tahirian do anything like this, before we arrived from beyond?
Stefan gestured. The fuselage went opaque. Interior lighting went out. Ruszek sat tossed about in a blindness that shuddered and howled.
Enjoy, he told himself, and did.
Light returned. This was no place to use a parleur, but Stefan fluted notes that were perhaps apologetic while looking with ens middle eyes at Ruszek, touching the globe, and waving at the lightnings.
En needed total darkness to take a delicate reading, Ruszek deduced. No … not total. Just no background. We’ve wondered if Tahirians can see single photons. Why not? Humans almost can. A coldness crept up his spine. Yes, I think that’s so. And … all the chaos while they evolved—let the science gang chew on the idea—but I think they think more naturally in quantum mechanics than we do. What does that mean for the way they understand the universe?
Wind ramped, rain and hail struck like bullets, the aircraft flew onward.
It was not clear to Nansen and Yu why the Tahirian Emil asked them to come with en, or took them where en did. The mutual command of Cambiante was, as yet, too limited. The scope of the language was. Probably in many ways it always would be.
Its creation, which was still in process, had been comparable to the great breakthroughs in physics. Without computers to generate possible approaches, try them, discard them, and generate better ones, it would doubtless have been impossible—certainly within a lifetime, let alone a pair of years. Sonics would not do. To a Tahirian, a vocable by itself was a signal—an alarm cry, for example—but not a word. Indeed, en did not converse in what humans knew as words, but rather in mutable concepts that shaded into each other. Straightforward writing was equally insufficient. A man or woman found Tahirian ideographics hopelessly complex, while to a Tahirian any human system, even Chinese, was bafflingly rigid.
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