Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by James Tiptree Jr.

  —He was falling, losing control, failing in his fight against the terrible momentum he had gained, fighting with his human legs shaking in the inhuman stiffness of his armor, his soles charred, not gripping well now, not enough traction to break, battling, thrusting as the flashes came, the punishing alternation of light, dark, light, dark, which he had borne so long, the claps of air thickening and thinning against his armor as he skidded through space which was time, desperately braking as the flickers of Earth hammered against his feet—only his feet mattered now, only to slow and stay on course—and the pull, the beacon was getting slacker; as he came near home it was fanning out, hard to stay centered; he was becoming, he supposed, more probable; the wound he had punched in time was healing itself. In the beginning it had been so tight—a single ray of light in a closing tunnel—he had hurled himself after it like an electron flying to the anode, aimed surely along that exquisitely complex single vector of possibility of life, shot and been shot like a squeezed pip into the last chink in that rejecting and rejected nowhere through which he, John Delgano, could conceivably continue to exist, the hole leading to home—had pounded down it across time, across space, pumping with desperate legs as the real Earth of that unreal time came under him, his course as certain as the twisting dash of an animal down its burrow, he a cosmic mouse on an interstellar, intertemporal race for his nest with the wrongness of everything closing round the rightness of that one course, the atoms of his heart, his blood, his every cell crying Home—HOME!—as he drove himself after that fading breath-hole, each step faster, surer, stronger, until he raced with invincible momentum upon the rolling flickers of Earth as a man might race a rolling log in a torrent. Only the stars stayed constant around him from flash to flash, he looking down past his feet at a million strobes of Crux, of Triangulum; once at the height of his stride he had risked a century’s glance upward and seen the Bears weirdly strung out from Polaris—but a Polaris not the Pole Star now, he realized, jerking his eyes back to his racing feet, thinking, I am walking home to Polaris, home! to the strobing beat. He had ceased to remember where he had been, the beings, people or aliens or things, he had glimpsed in the impossible moment of being where he could not be; had ceased to see the flashes of worlds around him, each flash different, the jumble of bodies, shapes, walls, colors, landscapes—some lasting a breath, some changing pell-mell—the faces, limbs, things poking at him; the nights he had pounded through, dark or lit by strange lamps, roofed or unroofed, the days flashing sunlight, gales, dust, snow, interiors innumerable, strobe after strobe into night again; he was in daylight now, a hall of some kind; I am getting closer at last, he thought, the feel is changing—but he had to slow down, to check; and that stone near his feet, it had stayed there some time now, he wanted to risk a look but he did not dare, he was so tired, and he was sliding, was going out of control, fighting to kill the merciless velocity that would not let him slow down; he was hurt, too, something had hit him back there, they had done something, he didn’t know what, back somewhere in the kaleidoscope of faces, arms, hooks, beams, centuries of creatures grabbing at him—and his oxygen was going, never mind, it would last—it had to last, he was going home, home! And he had forgotten now the message he had tried to shout, hoping it could be picked up somehow, the important thing he had repeated; and the thing he had carried, it was gone now, his camera was gone too, something had torn it away—but he was coming home! Home! If only he could kill this momentum, could stay on the failing course, could slip, scramble, slide, somehow ride this avalanche down to home, to home—and his throat said Home!—called Kate, Kate! And his heart shouted, his lungs almost gone now, as his legs fought, fought and failed, as his feet gripped and skidded and held and slid, as he pitched, flailed, pushed, strove in the gale of timerush across space, across time, at the end of the longest path ever: the path of John Delgano, coming home.

  AND I HAVE COME UPON THIS PLACE BY LOST WAYS

  IT WAS SO beautiful.

  Evan’s too-muscular stomach tightened as he came into the Senior Commons and saw them around the great viewport. Forgetting his mountain, forgetting even his ghastly vest, he stared like a layman at the white-clad Scientists in the high evening sanctum of their ship. He still could not believe.

  A Star Research Ship, he marveled. A Star Science Mission, and I am on it. Saved from a Technician’s mean life, privileged to be a Scientist and search the stars for knowledge—

  “What’ll it be, Evan?”

  Young Dr. Sunny Isham was at the bevbar. Evan mumbled amenities, accepted a glass. Sunny was the other Junior Scientist and in theory Evan’s equal. But Sunny’s parents were famous Research Chiefs and the tissue of his plain white labcoat came from god knew where across the galaxy.

  Evan pulled his own coarse whites across his horrible vest and wandered toward the group around the port. Why had he squandered his dress credit on Aldebaranian brocade when all these Star Scientists came from Aldebtech? Much better to have been simple Evan Dilwyn the general issue Galtech nobody—and an anthrosyke to boot.

  To his relief the others ignored his approach. Evan skirted the silence around the lean tower of the Mission Chief and found a niche behind a starched ruff belonging to the Deputy, Dr. Pontreve. Pontreve was murmuring to the Astrophysics Chief. Beyond them was a blonde dazzle—little Cyberdoctor Ava Ling. The girl was joking with the Sirian colleague. Evan listened to them giggle, wondering why the Sirian’s scaly blue snout seemed more at home here than his own broad face. Then he looked out the port and his stomach knotted in a different way.

  On the far side of the bay where the ship had landed a vast presence rose into the sunset clouds. The many-shouldered Clivorn, playing with its unending cloud-veils, oblivious of the alien ship at its feet. An’druinn, the Mountain of Leaving, the natives called it. Why “leaving,” Evan wondered for the hundredth time, his eyes seeking for the thing he thought he had glimpsed. No use, the clouds streamed forward. And the routine survey scans could not—

  The Deputy had said something important.

  “The ship is always on status go,” rumbled the Captain’s voice from the bevbar. “What does the Chief say?”

  Evan’s gasp went unnoticed; their attention was on the Research Chief. For a moment the high Scientist was silent, smoke of his THC cheroot drifting from his ebony nostrils. Evan gazed up at the hooded eyes, willing him to say no. Then the smoke quivered faintly: Affirmative.

  “Day after next, then.” The Captain slapped the bar. They would leave without looking! And no ship would ever survey this sector again.

  Evan’s mouth opened, but before he could find courage Sunny Isham was smoothly reminding the Deputy of the enzyme his bioscan had found. “Oh, Sunny, may I touch you?” Ava Ling teased. And then a glance from the Chief started everyone moving toward the refectory, leaving Evan alone by the port.

  They would process Sunny’s enzyme. And they should, Evan told himself firmly. It was the only valid finding the computers had come up with on this planet. Whereas his mountain . . . he turned wistfully to The Clivorn now sinking behind its golden mists across the bay. If once he could see, could go and feel with his hands—

  He choked back the Unscientism. The computer has freed man’s brain, he repeated fiercely. Was he fit to be a Scientist? His neck hot, he wheeled from the port and hurried after his superiors.

  Dinner was another magic scene. Evan’s mood softened in the glittering ambience, the graceful small talk. The miracle of his being here. He knew what the miracle was: his old uncle at Galcentral fighting for an outworld nephew’s chance. And the old man had won. When this ship’s anthrosyke fell sick, Evan Dilwyn’s name was topmost on the roster. And here he was among Star Scientists, adding his mite to man’s noblest work. Where only merit counted, merit and honesty and devotion to the Aims of Research—

  Ava Ling’s glance jolted him out of his dream. The Captain was relating an anecdote of Evan’s predecessor, the anthrosyke Foster.

  “—hammering up
on the lock with these wretched newtwomen hanging all over him,” the Captain chuckled. “Seems the mothers thought he was buying the girls as well as their boxes. When he wouldn’t take them in they nearly tore him apart. Clothes all torn, covered with mud.” His blue eyes flicked Evan. “What a decon job!”

  Evan flushed. The Captain was bracing him for the numerous decontaminations he had required for field trips out of seal. Each decon was charged against his personal fund, of course, but it was a nuisance. And bad form. The others never went out of seal, they collected by probes and robots or—very rarely—a trip by sealed bubble-sled. But Evan couldn’t seem to get his data on local cultures that way. Natives just wouldn’t interact with his waldobot. He must develop the knack before he used up all his fund.

  “Oh, they are beautiful!” Ava Ling was gazing at the three light-crystal caskets adorning the trophy wall. These were the “boxes” Foster had taken from the newt people. Evan frowned, trying to recall the passage in Foster’s log.

  “Soul boxes!” he heard himself blurt. “The boxes they kept their souls in. If they lost them the girls were dead, that’s why they fought. But how could—” His voice trailed off.

  “No souls in them now,” said Dr. Pontreve lightly. “Well, what do we say? Does this wine have a point or does it not?”

  When they finally adjourned to the gameroom it was Evan’s duty to dim the lights and activate the servobots. He kept his eyes from the ports where The Clivorn brooded in its clouds, and went out to the laughter and flashes spilling from the gameroom. They were at the controls of a child’s laser game called Sigma.

  “Turning in?” Little Ava Ling panted brightly, momentarily out of the game. Evan caught her excited scent.

  “I don’t know,” he smiled. But she had already turned away.

  He stalked on, hating his own primitive olfactory reflexes, and pushed through the portal of the command wing of the Laboratories. Sound cut off as it closed behind him, the corridor gleamed in austere silence. He was among the highstatus Labs, the temples of Hardscience. Beside him was the ever-lighted alcove holding the sacred tape of Mission Requirements in its helium seal.

  He started down the hall, his nape as always prickling faintly. Into these Laboratories flowed all the data from the sensors, the probes, the sampling robots and bioanalyzers and cyberscans, to be shaped by the Scientists’ skills into forms appropriate to the Mission Requirements and fit to be fed finally into the holy of holies, the Main Computer of the ship, which he was now approaching. From here the precious Data beamed automatically back across the galaxy into the Computer of Mankind at Galcentral.

  By the entrance to the Master Console a sentry stood, guarding against Unauthorized Use. Evan tensed as he crossed the man’s impassive gaze, tried to hold himself more like a Scientist. In his bones he felt himself an impostor here; he belonged back in Technician’s gray, drudging out an anonymous life. Did the sentry know it too? With relief he turned into the staff wing and found his own little cubby.

  His console was bare. His assistant had dutifully cleaned up his unprofessional mess of tapes and—embarrassing weakness—handwritten notes. Evan tried to feel grateful. It was not Scientific to mull over raw findings, they should be fed at once into the proper program. The computer has freed man’s brain, he told himself, tugging at a spool rack.

  From behind the rack fell a bulging file. That stupid business he had tried of correlating a culture’s social rigidity with their interest in new information, as represented by himself and his waldobot. The results had seemed significant, but he had no suitable computer categories into which he could program. An anthrosyke had twenty-six program nouns . . . Sunny Isham had over five hundred for his molecular biology. But that was Hardscience, Evan reminded himself. He began to feed the worthless file into his disposer, idly flicking on his local notetapes.

  “—other mountains are called Oremal, Vosnuish, and so on,” he heard himself say. “Only The Clivorn has the honorific An or The. Its native name An’druinn or The Mountain of Leaving may refer to the practice of ritual exile or death by climbing the mountain. But this does not appear to fit the rest of the culture. The Clivorn is not a taboo area. Herdsmen’s paths run all over the slopes below the glaciation line. The tribe has a taboo area on the headland around their star-sighting stones and the fish-calling shrine. Moreover, the formal third-person case of the word Leaving suggests that it is not the natives who leave but some others who leave or have left. But who could that be? An invading tribe? Not likely; the inland ranges are uninhabited and all travel is by coracle along the coasts. And the terrain beyond An’druinn seems imp—”

  These were his notes made before he began to search the survey scans of The Clivorn for something to explain its name—a cave or cairn or artifact or even a pass or trail. But the clouds had been too dense until that day when he had thought he’d seen that line. Seen! He winced. Did he hope to do Science with his feeble human senses?

  “—transistorized tar pits of the galaxy!” said a hoarse voice.

  Evan whirled. He was alone with the tape.

  “Computer of Mankind!” sneered the voice. Evan realized it was the voice of his predecessor, the anthrosyke Foster, imperfectly erased from the old tape beyond his own notes. As he jumped to wipe it Foster’s ghost-voice said loudly, “A planetary turd of redundant data on stellar processes on which no competent mind has looked for five hundred years.”

  Evan gasped. His hand missed the wiper, succeeded only in turning the volume down.

  “Research!” Foster was cackling drunkenly. “Get their hands dirty?” A blur of static; Evan found himself crouching over the console. Horrified, he made out the words. “Shamans! Hereditary button-pushing imbeciles!” More blur, and Foster was mumbling something about DNA. “Call that life?” he croaked, “the behavior of living beings?. . . In all the galaxy, the most complex, the most difficult . . . our only hope . . .” The voice faded again.

  Evan saw the spool was almost finished.

  “Scientific utopia!” Foster guffawed. “The perfectly engineered society. No war. We no longer need study ourselves, because we’re perfect.” A gurgling noise blotted out the words. Foster had been drinking alcohol in his Laboratory, Evan realized. Out of his mind.

  “And I’m their court clown.” There was a long belch. “Learn a few native words, bring back some trinkets . . . good old Foster. Don’t rock the boat.” The voice made indistinct groaning noises and then cried dearly, “On your hands and knees! Down on the stones, alone. Simmelweiss. Galois. Dirty work. The hard lonely work of—”

  The spool ran out.

  Through the whirling in his head Evan heard brisk heeltaps. He stood up as his door opened. It was Deputy Pontreve. “Whatever are you up to, Evan? Did I hear voices?”

  “Just my—local notes, sir.”

  Pontreve cocked his head.

  “On that mountain, Evan?” His voice was dry.

  Evan nodded. The thought of their leaving flooded back upon him.

  “Dr. Pontreve, sir, it seems such a pity not to check it. This area won’t be surveyed again.”

  “But what can we conceivably hope to find? And above all, what has this mountain to do with your specialty?”

  “Sir, my cultural studies point to something anomalous there. Some—well, I don’t exactly know what yet. But I’m sure I got a glimpse—“

  “Of the mythical Time Gate, perhaps?” Pontreve’s smile faded. “Evan. There is a time in every young Scientist’s life which crucially tests his vocation. Is he a Scientist? Or is he merely an overeducated Technician? Science must not, will not, betray itself back into phenomenology and impressionistic speculation. . . . You may not know this, Evan,” Pontreve went on in a different tone, “but your uncle and I were at PreSci together. He has done a great deal for you. He has faith in you. I would feel it deeply if you failed him.”

  Evan’s heart shrank. Pontreve must have helped his uncle get him here. Appalled, he heard himself saying:
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  “But Dr. Pontreve, if Uncle has faith in me he’d want me to have faith in myself. Isn’t it true that useful discoveries have been made by men who persisted in what seemed to be only a—hunch?”

  Pontreve drew back.

  “To speak of idle curiosity, which is all you really suffer from, Evan, in the same breath with the inspired intuition, the serendipity of the great Scientists of history? You shock me. I lose sympathy.” He eyed Evan, licked his lips. “For your uncle’s sake, lad,” he said tightly, “I beg of you. Your position is shaky enough now. Do you want to lose everything?”

  An acrid odor was in Evan’s nostrils. Fear. Pontreve was really frightened. But why?

  “Come out of this now, that’s an order.”

  In silence Evan followed the Deputy down the corridors and back into the Commons. No one was in sight except three scared-looking Recreation youngsters waiting outside the gameroom for their nightly duty. As he passed, Evan could hear the grunting of the senior Scientists in final duel.

  He slammed on into his quarters, for once leaving the view opaque, and tried to sort the nightmare. Pontreve’s pinched face roiled with Foster’s drunken heresy in his brain. Such fear. But of what? What if Evan did disgrace himself? Was there something that would be investigated, perhaps found out?

  Was it possible that a Scientist could have been bribed?

  That would account for the fear . . . and the “miracle.”

  Evan gritted his jaw. If so, Pontreve was a false Scientist! Even his warnings were suspect, Evan thought angrily, twisting on his airbed in vain search of something tangible to combat. The memory of Ava Ling’s fragrance raked him. He slapped the port filters and was flooded with cold light.

  The planet’s twin moons were at zenith. Beneath them the mountain loomed unreal as foam in the perpetual racing mists. The Clivorn was not really a large mountain, perhaps a thousand meters to the old glaciation line, but it rose from sea level alone. Torch-glows winked from the village at its feet. A fish-calling dance in progress.