by Nancy Kress
Tabor …
Pek Sikorski said softly, “Even when we try to do no harm, harm happens, doesn’t it? Not even specifically because we’re Terran. Just because we’re all people.”
Enli said, “My brother is dead because of me.”
Immediately she regretted it. The words had just slipped out, because of the firm kindness of Pek Sikorski’s arms. Because of the headpain. Because the words were reality, and it had gone unshared so long. So long.
“I’m sorry, Enli. But I’m sure that whatever happened, it wasn’t your intention that he die.”
Enli untangled herself from Pek Sikorski’s arms. With difficulty, she got to her feet. She stood looking down at Pek Sikorski, who apparently did not understand what she had just revealed. Pek Sikorski turned her tired, concerned, kind face up to Enli.
Pek Sikorski did not realize—did not know—that reality was not a matter of intention. Reality was a matter of fact.
Pek Sikorski really did not know that most basic thing.
“No, Ann,” Enli said. “It was not my intention that Tabor die.”
“Stay here and lie down for a bit—”
“I must go to my personal room and sleep.”
That was a lie, of course, but in the face of all the larger ones, it hardly mattered.
She found Pek Voratur in his business room, set close by the household’s front gate. He was not alone. A gardener stood beside him, carrying a basket of roots, the knees of his tunic dirty from kneeling. He was an old, small man with yellowed neckfur and a mild face, one of tens of undergardeners who moved constantly around the flower beds of the various courts, a man nobody would look at twice. The instant Enli saw him she knew he was another of Pek Voratur’s household informants.
“I would make a report, Pek Voratur,” Enli said.
“So it would seem,” Pek Voratur said. His sleek jowled face and shining skull both creased harshly. “And not just to me. You’re a government informant, Pek Brimmidin.”
“Yes.”
“You’re unreal.”
Enli said nothing. There was no need.
“And I was not told.”
“It is not customary to tell anyone near an informant that the unreal person is unreal. The strain is too great.”
“But not if you have those pills you just took. What are they? Did the Terrans give them to you?”
The old man said, his voice as unremarkable as the rest of him, “She had them in her tunic.”
“So they are from Reality and Atonement? Pills to make the pain of not sharing in reality become bearable. Such a thing exists?”
“I will leave your household now, Pek Voratur,” Enli said. was what she had been coming to tell him anyway. Pek Sikorski would certainly tell Pek Bazargan about Enli’s attack and her pills, and Pek Bazargan was the Terran who understood World the best. Once he realized that Enli was unreal, he would have told Pek Voratur. They shared that much reality. Enli had heard them do it, all those nights listening behind the walls.
“No, Enli. I think you will not leave.”
Even the old man looked startled. Pek Voratur dismissed him with a wave of his hand, and the man scuttled from the room.
“Let me see the pills.”
“No,” Enli said. For a sudden moment she saw him trying to take the pills by force. But of course he would not do that. Pek Voratur was real.
“But I’m right? They are from Reality and Atonement, to make it possible to do your job?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
But it was Enli who saw: the unmistakable signs of pain behind Pek Voratur’s skull. She was too much unreality, just standing here.
“Pek Brimmidin,” he said formally, “I will think on this. Go now. Do not leave my household. I wish to consult a priest.”
“Yes,” Enli said.
“Go.”
No farewell flower blessing. Of course not. He knew what she was.
She stumbled in shame across the blooming, scented courtyards, answering no one’s greeting. In the personal room she shared with three other women servants, she fell on her pallet. The beast slavered close, but sleep came closer. Sleep again? Yes, she’d taken too many pills. Sleep …
As it came, she wished it were death.
FOURTEEN
GOFKIT JEMLOE
In the middle of the night, Bazargan’s comlink gave the emergency signal for the second time since he’d come to World.
Immediately he jerked upright on his pallet and fumbled to light the oil lamp. Someone wanted his instant attention. That meant that at least the Zeus still existed. “Ahmed Bazargan here!”
Syree Johnson’s calm, flat voice said, “Dr. Bazargan. Colonel Johnson here. I’m sorry to tell you that we have a further emergency on the Zeus which will also affect you. The Faller craft returned back through the space tunnel, but we expect a larger deployment to reappear eventually.”
“I see. You want us aboard. But we already said—”
“No. The situation is more complex than that.” Johnson’s. voice had not changed, but nonetheless Bazargan felt his body stiffening in the darkness.
“Dr. Bazargan, the Zeus has a military mission in this star system beyond merely escorting your scientific expedition. One of this planet’s moons, ‘Tas,’ is not a natural body but an alien artifact, of the same origin as the space tunnels. It appears to be a powerful weapon. The Fallers want it, and so do we. In the time until their ships reappear, the Zeus will tow this artifact to the space tunnel and attempt to take it through.”
“A moon? You’re going to move a moon?”
“We are going to try. The only alternative is to blow it up, and if the Faller fleet appears before we reach the tunnel, we’ll do that instead. The reason—”
“Why wasn’t I told this at the start of the expedition?”
“Knowledge was on a military need-to-know basis,” Johnson said coolly. “You had no need to know.”
“But the—”
“I don’t have much time for this call, Dr. Bazargan. Please listen. Whether we take the artifact through the space tunnel or must resort to blowing it up, there may be consequences to the planet. That’s the reason I’m telling you now. The artifact emits a spherical wave that temporarily destabilizes elements with an atomic number greater than seventy-five. Such elements will emit radiation for an unspecified period of time. We have already lost one person to the lowest possible setting of this wave effect. Future emissions may occur with much greater disruptive force. You are being told now so that you may remove your personnel to a relatively safe area. Whether, and how, you also warn the natives is left to your discretion.”
“What … when …” Bazargan scrambled for his meager knowledge of physics. Destabilizes elements with an atomic number greater than seventy-five … what did that include?
“We don’t know when,” Johnson cut in. “That’s what I’ve been telling you. I’m assured that you have someone with you who can understand the implications—Dr. Gruber. The rest is up to you. Good luck.”
The comlink went dead.
Bazargan reopened the link, his hand shaking. The Zeus didn’t reply.
In the gloom Bazargan stood up and walked to the window. Only once before in his life had he been this angry, and then he had acted so rashly that years had been spent recouping his losses. Right now he didn’t have years. He breathed deeply and struggled for control.
They had not even told him. His team at risk—the entire planet at risk—and the bastards had not even seen fit to let him know of this possibility. Despite his record, his reputation, his scientific standing …
In the deep places of the heart, two forces, fire and water, struggle together … Ferdausi. Tenth century.
They had used him as a cover for a covert military operation, used all of World as a cover, put an entire planet at risk …
The scent of flowers reached him. The lily seemed to menace me, and showed its curved and quivering blade … Hafiz.
Fourteenth century.
Johnson had given him sixty seconds of her precious time, given it curtly and with no apology, leaving him to clean up the mess this would make of World-human relationships, not to mention the complete end of the anthropological project, blown up now as completely as the so-called “artifact” …
Crush not the ant who stores the golden grain:/ He lives with pleasure and will die with pain … Sadi. Century forgotten, at least for the moment.
Gradually he grew calmer. At some point, his hand holding back the loose window curtain and his senses flooded with night, he realized that he could mix a neuropharm to calm himself. No, better this way. The Persian poets were more reliable.
Flowers bloom every night/ Blossom in the sky,/ Peace in the infinities;/ At peace am I … Rūmī. Deep breath.
Thirteenth century. Deep breath.
He went to wake the others.
“Tell me again, Dieter,” Ann said. In the glow from a single oil lamp in the middle of the lab floor, her skin looked pale, almost translucent. Bazargan had brought David Allen from the crelm house, guessing that Dieter and Ann would be together. One less movement through the dark gardens to attract attention before they were ready for it. Only one moon shone in the sky, low enough to be obscured by buildings and trees.
Dieter, hastily dressed in a tunic that looked as if it had lain three weeks in his field pack, shifted on his pillow. Stress deepened his German accent. “I can go only by what Ahmed says that Johnson said. If a wave disrupting nuclear stability really does hit with any force, and if it really does affect anything over atomic number seventy-five, then all sorts of things will go radioactive. If it is temporary—she did say ‘temporary,’ Ahmed? Ja?”
“Yes. Can that be?”
“Not with anything we know how to do. But we didn’t know how to make space tunnels, either. So if it is so, all sorts of things will emit alpha radiation. Iridium, platinum, gold … everything above seventy-five? Ahmed, did she mention lead? It is so stable!”
“No. I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”
“Call the bitch back and ask!” David blurted. They had already had to calm him down once.
“We’ve tried calling. The Zeus doesn’t answer. Now be quiet, David,” Bazargan said.
“I won’t be quiet! They’ve fucked us over completely, don’t you get that? Now everyone on World might die!”
“No, no,” Ann soothed. “That won’t happen. In the first place, only half the landmass will be facing any wave that comes at a given time—maybe rock stops it. It could be. Also, living bodies would not be majorly affected by what Dieter is describing. I hope. Even if the wave comes at all, which it may not.”
“So we just sit here with our heads up our asses and hope it doesn’t come? And let half of World fry, but that’s okay because it’s only half?”
Bazargan stood. The bright curving pillows of World were low; on his feet he towered a meter over David. “I said to be quiet, and you chose not to listen. If you are not quiet now, you will be ejected from this meeting. By force, if necessary.”
David stood, too. “You wouldn’t do it.”
“Yes,” Bazargan said. “I would.”
The two men faced each other. Shadows danced on the walls. Gruber stood and moved beside Bazargan.
David laughed. “So that’s how it is, huh? All right, I guess Syree Johnson isn’t the only martinet on this expedition.” He sat down.
Bazargan sat, too, in no way acknowledging his victory. After a moment Gruber followed his lead.
Bazargan said, “We must warn World. No other choice is morally justifiable. We must tell them exactly what will happen, and when, and why.”
“We don’t know what or when,” Ann pointed out. “Will Dr. Johnson even tell you before she blows up that moon? Which one is it, again?”
“Tas,” Bazargan said. “I’ll try to make sure she is. Does.” It had been a long, long time since his English had failed; perhaps he should have taken a supplemental neuropharm after all. Instead he breathed deeply, arranging his thoughts as precisely as he could.
“I will keep calling until I get a commitment from the Zeus to notify us just before they either detonate Tas or try to move it through the space tunnel, which—”
“Madness,” Dieter muttered. “The mass is too great.”
“—lies, after all, almost six days away, if Dieter’s calculations are right. Of course, if the Zeus doesn’t reply, or if the Fallers just appear and blow up Tas themselves, then the Zeus’s warning won’t come in time. So perhaps it is best that we warn the natives of what might happen even before we know for certain that it will.”
“Yes. ‘No other choice is morally justifiable,’” David mocked. His young, handsome face twisted in bitterness. But Bazargan had run out of patience with youthful disillusionment.
“Dieter, you must list everything that must be removed from all villages and from Rafkit Seloe. Or would it be better to have the natives remove themselves?”
Gruber considered. “I don’t know how long they’d have to be away, and most of their actual building materials aren’t going to be affected by the wave effect … On the other hand, if the nuclei affected drop much below seventy-five in atomic numbers …”
“Then living bodies will be affected and we’ll all die anyway,” Ann said.
Bazargan said, “Then make your list, Dieter. Now. In the morning we will all go together to Pek Voratur, as our host, and ask him to take us to the Office of Emergency Aid in Rafkit Seloe. Yes, I think that’s best.”
Ann said quietly, “They will be angry with us. What sort of retaliation can we expect?”
Bazargan said quietly, “They might declare us unreal, of course. But I hope not. It will take a while to summon the High Council and make the decision. By that time I hope to have convinced everyone necessary that we are sharing reality as soon as it shifted for us. That’s why going to Voratur tomorrow is absolutely necessary. Any delay will be seen as unsharing.”
Ann said, “I think then that we had best go right now. Dieter can make his list afterward.”
In the lamplit gloom, Bazargan saw Gruber nod slowly. After a moment, David Allen followed.
“All right, then,” Bazargan said. “We’ll go now.” And then, rising out of some deeply buried childhood belief, the words surprising even himself: “And may Allah be with us.”
Gruber grinned.
Enli stirred in her sleep, then came fully awake in the darkness.
Her personal room was absolutely dark, and absolutely still. How was that possible? She should hear Udla and Kenthu and Essli breathing in their sleep. Kenthu snored … where was Kenthu’s nasal music, out of tune as a rusty flute? Where was the window, where the moonlight?
Something moved against a far wall.
Quietly Enli rolled off her pallet and across the floor. She had been good at this as a child, so good that Ano and Tabor had never known where she was. When she reached the middle of the room, or what she judged to be the middle, she stopped. Whoever moved around the perimeter would expect her to move the other way, against the safety of the wall.
She could see a little more now. The curtain had been drawn across the arched window, but a slim line of very faint moonlight shone around one end. Opposite the window the moving shape had stopped at the four wooden chests that held the serving women’s personal possessions. A lid squeaked weakly as the shape opened it. The small chests stood close together; Enli couldn’t distinguish which one he had. But if it opened, it was slovenly Udla’s. The other three kept their chests locked.
Now Enli could see that the floor was bare of all but her own pallet. Essli, Udla, and Kenthu had not even come home to sleep. Relief washed through her; at least they had not been hurt.
Who was the intruder? A petty thief? How did he get into the Voratur household?
The lid of Udla’s chest squeaked close. The shape tried the other three wooden chests and found them locked.
He—she?—ma
de no sound. But he moved unerringly through the dense gloom to the place where Enli always unrolled her pallet. In another minute, he would discover she wasn’t there.
Enli didn’t wait. She pushed off hard from elbow and knee, not trying to be silent, and sprang toward the intruder. Surprise was her ally. She tackled the dark shape and brought it down.
If it was a strong man, she would be overpowered.
It wasn’t a strong man. Enli straddled him, pinning both his arms to the floor. Her skin had scraped across a rough beard, but the room was too dark to see who he was. Then he spoke.
“Please, Pek Brimmidin … don’t hurt me!”
The old man, Pek Voratur’s other informant. Of course. Enli had refused to turn the government pills over to Pek Voratur, so he had sent his other informant to steal them. She should have expected it.
“I’m not going to hurt you, you old dustbin! But you won’t find the pills. They’re not here.”
“Oooohhh, don’t hurt me so. I’m very old.”
Enli loosened her grip. Standing, she turned to the archway to draw back the curtain. She wanted to see the man’s face. Stealing, of course, was not a violation of shared reality; everyone half expected it. Pek Voratur would never have taken the pills from her by force. He was real; the real did not violate the ultimate reality of another’s physical being. But of course he would try to get them anyway; they would make valuable trade goods. And this old thief was already unreal, or he wouldn’t be an informant. Enli wanted to see his face in the light. She had told him the truth about storing the pills elsewhere at night, but she wanted to share face-to-face reality with the thief so he would not ransack her room again and again, disturbing Udla and Kenthu and Essli.
Enli grasped the window curtain in her fingers and pulled. Something hard slammed into the small of her back.
… And this old thief was already unreal, or he wouldn’t be an informant …
Informants could kill. She, Enli, had.