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

by James Tiptree Jr.

  Twice she touched on the violent acts that had brought her here, and each time the current jumped almost to real pain. Strongly, oh, how strongly he supported them and her!

  Rather wildly, they both sought ways of closer contact, ending whole-body-plastered to the vitrex. Neither could bear to cease contact long enough to eat much. Vaguely she thought that accounted for a slight unnoticed ill feeling.

  Then came the day when her timer blatted so insistently that she saw it was past the red mark. The illness she’d ignored was real.

  Calgary’s air had ended.

  It was time to come out—to him. She explained what he already knew, and received grave assent.

  When the huge port swung open, the air that rushed upon her was impossibly sweet and fresh—spring air such as CP’d never breathed before. Calgary’s foulness made a fog at the port. The first thing she saw through it was his hand, stretched to her. He led her out, to a different end.

  Again, when two lovers win to real bodily contact, it is always the same. But these two were still separated, not by a mere wall, but by being prisoned in wholly different bodies with wholly different needs.

  Unnecessary to follow all their efforts in those first hours. Sufficient that they learned two things. First, mutual laughter, and second, what all Earthbound lovers find, that nothing suffices.

  They blamed this on their differences, but they suspected the truth. Where love has been intense and silent and all-consuming, only the impossible, the total merger into one, could slake its fires.

  On this world, such a consummation was only a little less impossible than on Earth. In the end, they found the physical palm-to-palm contact deepest and most poignant, and they stayed so.

  Outward events were few and slight, but the most important in the universe. While she was still feeling wonderfully well, he led her up a nearby hill to a small glade with a superb view. She saw in reality the glorious self-lit colors of great Auln’s cultivated lands, its wildernesses and rivers, and in the distance, a small city or town, the sky overhead reflecting all. Behind them lay the luminous sea, from which blew a gentle breeze, and where she glimpsed strange sea creatures tumbling. Presently her lover lured a few of Auln’s “birds” and other strange or charming creatures to them.

  At one point she flinched about her nose, and he “told” her in pictures how his own flopped ears were viewed as deplorable. Even on this world where individuals mutated so wildly as scarcely to seem of the same species, by chance all but a few heads bore upright ears or other sensors. His own rounded head was almost the sole feature seen by all as ugly. This revelation caused much time to be occupied by caressing reassurances.

  She was weakening fast, but pain seemed absent or muffled for a while. Her exposed pale skin burned and blistered shockingly by the second day, despite the gauzy cover he had made for her by tearing out the lining of his cloak. The burns did not hurt much either. Later, when she saw him wince, she began to suspect why. They had a battle of wills, in which hers was no match for his trained one.

  On the third day her beautiful hair was falling out in sheaves. He collected it, strand by strand, smoothed and kept it.

  That day she had the whim to cut their names on a stone, and could scarcely bear it when he left her to bring one. Amazed and delighted by the novelty, they realized she had never known his name—Cavaná. She said it, sang it, whispered it a thousand times, built it into all her memories. Finally she did, with help, scratch Cavaná and Carol onto the stone, and tried to make other lines, but was too weak. He never left her again.

  By this time they were lying with their heads on a cushioned log, their hands as if grown together.

  One of the last things she noticed was the amusingly fluffed, mossy little vine that made the log so comfortable. He told her its future.

  The Fountain had flowed since the Viewers had been here last. Two farmers from Pyenro were now putting in part of their town duty clearing vine from the alien sky-box. They passed on news of two new young ones, and a possible animal-sickness the Viewers should keep track of.

  Their task inside the now open sky-box busied the Viewers for some time. Old Andoul, of course, could not enter. While the others were occupied, she communed effortfully by sound with the three sky-obsessed ones who had remained here. They had stayed discreetly out of sight of Cavaná and the alien, but had caught nothing of consequence in that time. However, the open sky-box had given them much of overwhelming interest, including a sheaf of extraordinary flat, flexible, permanent images, which they called “stars.” They asked Andoul and Askelon, a new young Viewer, to view them. This they did. The images were of nothing recognizable, being largely black-spangled, but oddly moving in addition to their fascinating new technique.

  The farmers had widened the summit path for Andoul. When all was finished below, the Viewers started up. It was steep. The deformed child Mir-Mir, who was so young it hadn’t yet chosen gender, had to clamber up on Andoul’s back, tucking up its red veils and complaining aloud, “If you accept any more jewelry, Saro Andoul, I’ll never find a place to sit. I believe you do it on purpose.”

  “Speak properly, child,” Andoul told it. “And if you eat any more no one will be able to carry you. . . . Aah! I View.” All halted, and Mir-Mir slid off.

  They had arrived at a pretty little glade near the summit. An elongated mound, green-covered by vine, lay with one end on a green-clad log.

  Looking more closely, all could see that the form was in fact two, closely apposed and entwined at the log end, where lateral mounding indicated arms.

  Xerona and Ekstá advanced to it, squatted, and placed their webbed hands gently on what might be two vine-covered heads pressed tight together.

  After a moment, both touched one body and Xerona sent them all an image.

  “Cavaná,” Mir-Mir said aloud. Andoul grunted in disapproval, both of Mir-Mir’s vocalizing and what was in its mind. Ferdil, one of the three very silent, hardworking Viewers who resembled Cavaná, was actually Cavaná’s cousin.

  “See the bigger legs,” Mir-Mir said defiantly. “Poor Cavaná, so ugly. But she lived in the sky!”

  The two beaked Viewers were indicating the other form, transmitting a rather sketchy image of the orange-maned alien. They were all silent a moment, refining and supplementing the image. Finally Askelon sighed.

  “I did ill,” he mourned aloud. “It was my responsibility.” He sent short images of himself inspecting the nude alien, and himself now, downcast with both hands drooped from the wrists. Shame.

  Old Andoul gently corrected that image to raise the hands. “We all must begin,” she said in words. “None of us considered it very important. Perhaps it isn’t. Although—” She lapsed back to imagery, showed the alien in a framing of color that was short-speed for “Person of perhaps great soul,” and then jumped to sketched-in multitudes of other redheaded aliens diving upon them with fantastic sky-boxes and explosions of flame.

  The other Viewers sighed, too. Askelon revived slightly. Ferdil and her two friends went over by the feet of the dead ones, and gazed down at the hidden form of Cavaná, locked in death with her alien love. When Ferdil gave the sign of formal last farewell, the others, after a polite interval, did likewise.

  Meanwhile Xerona and Ekstá were hard at work, their own heads against first one dead head and then the other. At length they arose, their expressions very sober.

  “Nothing . . . of interest or use to others,” Ekstá said. “Cavaná . . . took much of the alien’s pain.”

  Xerona was trying to hide weeping, but missed an indigo tear at his throat gills.

  “Ah, look!” Askelon, scanning hard to redeem himself, had come upon an odd corner of rock. When he lifted and cleared it, they saw a flat stone with chasings or scratches on it.

  “Alien writing!” exclaimed Mir-Mir, hobbling to it. “Ferdil!”

  Ferdil and her companions were already Viewing the stone. With a confirmatory transmission to old Andoul, she produced a
small container from her belly pack, inserted a straw, and skillfully blew a mist of moss-inhibiting bacteria over the stone. Then she set it on edge beyond the lovers’ heads.

  Unexpectedly, Ferdil spoke in words.

  “I knew Cavaná well, we were deep friends in the early days, before. . . . She had only just chosen gender when she made Contact. . . . Her love was very severe; changeless, unremitting. Almost a sickness. But she left us much. And one thing more—we know now her communication was real. Many doubted. But the one she Called really heard, answered, and with much effort came.”

  The others were silent, admitting her right to important verbal speech.

  Around them Auln lay in beauty, under the eternal soft-colored cloud ceiling that was their sky. The plain in view here was vast, bioluminescent to the high horizon. Nothing had ever changed here, nothing would. No light of day, no dark of night, no summer, neither fall nor winter. Only their own works, like the sumlac fields, changed the tints reflected in the cloud. People came from great distances to watch the shifts at planting time and harvest, and for their enjoyment the farmers synchronized many crops. Now the sky carried pink bands that came from the simultaneous channeling of water into the millin lanes.

  Characteristically it was the child Mir-Mir who broke the silence as they started to descend.

  “I am going to change, and become a Star Caller!”

  “Oh, child, you don’t know what you’re saying!” Askelon exclaimed involuntarily. “Look at the life Callers have, they must give up everything to Search and Search—and if they find and focus, they are—well—” He paused, gestured back at the mounds of the dead.

  “Doomed!” finished Mir-Mir melodramatically.

  Proper transmissions came from all sides now, from so many fellow Viewers at once that they blurred. But it understood that this was all discouragement, dismal images of a Star Caller’s totally dedicated narrow prison plus Mir-Mir’s own flightiness.

  “No. I think I really mean this,” Mir-Mir said soberly. “I’m not going to become a very good Viewer. And I have this different feeling”—Mir-Mir put its head up to look raptly skyward, stumbled, and almost fell—“not just since this. Before. I didn’t say it. I think I . . . I think I’m capable of that love.” It had halted them all and was rubbing the hurt, twisted little legs with its frail hands.

  Old Andoul spoke, surprising them all.

  “I too have felt. Long ago . . . a hint of love. The love of all that is alien. Of the stars. But I believe that with me it was too generalized. Those who Call must focus, and so lose everything to perhaps gain one. . . . More, in my youth we were not quite certain even that the stars were there, that it was not delusion. Think hard till you are sure, child. But more Callers are not unnecessary, now . . . and speaking of now we must move along.”

  “Yes,” said Ekstá severely, pushing on at a determined waddle as he sent brisk images of the sessions now beginning at Amberamou, and the urgent matter of the flying herd. As he passed Mir-Mir he said, not unkindly, “Auln knows, child, you’re loud enough!”

  Presently the path was empty; summit and Calgary’s hollow lay silent again. Above, more salmon-colored rivers stream through the clouds, as the great farm channels filled. The pink light touched the stone, on which were scratched human letters trailing off unfinished:

  CAVANÁ + CAROL OF LOVE & OXYGE

  Mir-Mir’s intentions held. Sometime later, somewhere a man or alien would turn his gaze up to the stars with ardent longing, would begin to imagine he could hear. . . .

  A MOMENTARY TASTE OF BEING

  . . . A momentary taste

  Of Being from the Well amid the Waste—

  —KHAYYÁM/FITZGERALD

  IT FLOATS THERE visibly engorged, blue-green against the blackness. He stares: it swells, pulsing to a terrifying dim beat, slowly extrudes a great ghostly bulge which extends, solidifies . . . it is a planet-testicle pushing a monster penis toward the stars. Its blood-beat reverberates through weeping immensities; cold, cold. The parsecs-long phallus throbs, probes blindly under intolerable pressure from within; its tip is a huge cloudy glans lit by a spark: Centaur. In grief it bulges, lengthens, seeking release—stars toll unbearable crescendo. . . .

  It is a minute or two before Dr. Aaron Kaye is sure that he is awake in his temporary bunk in Centaur’s quarantine ward. His own throat is sobbing reflexively, his eyes are weeping, not stars. Another of the damn dreams. Aaron lies still, blinking, willing the icy grief to let go of his mind.

  It lets go. Aaron sits up still cold with meaningless bereavement. What the hell is it, what’s tearing at him? “Great Pan is dead,” he mutters stumbling to the narrow wash-stall. The lament that echoed round the world. . . . He sluices his head, wishing for his own quarters and Solange. He really should work on these anxiety symptoms. Later, no time now. “Physician, screw thyself,” he jeers at the undistinguished, worried face in the mirror.

  Oh, Jesus—the time! He has overslept while they are doing god knows what to Lory. Why hasn’t Coby waked him? Because Lory is his sister, of course; Aaron should have foreseen that.

  He hustles out into Isolation’s tiny corridor. At one end is a vitrex wall; beyond it his assistant Coby looks up, takes off his headset. Was he listening to music, or what? No matter. Aaron glances into Tighe’s cubicle. Tighe’s face is still lax, sedated; he has been in sleep-therapy since his episode a week ago. Aaron goes to the speaker grille in the vitrex, draws a cup of hot brew: The liquid falls sluggishly; Isolation is at three-fourths gee in the rotating ship.

  “Where’s Dr. Kaye—my sister?”

  “They’ve started the interrogation, boss. I thought you needed your sleep.” Coby’s doubtless meaning to be friendly, but his voice has too many sly habits.

  “Oh, god.” Aaron starts to cycle the cup out, forces himself to drink it. He has a persistent feeling that Lory’s alien is now located down below his right heel.

  “Doc.”

  “What?”

  “Bruce and Åhlstrom came in while you were asleep. They complain they saw Tighe running around loose this morning.”

  Aaron frowns. “He hasn’t been out, has he?”

  “No way. They each saw him separately. I talked them into seeing you, later.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Aaron cycles his cup and heads back up the hall, past a door marked Interview. The next is Observation. He goes in to a dim closet with viewscreens on two walls. The screen in front of him is already activated two-way. It shows four men seated in a small room outside Isolation’s wall.

  The gray-haired classic Anglo profile is Captain Yellaston, acknowledging Aaron’s presence with a neutral nod. Beside him the two scout commanders go on watching their own screen. The fourth man is young Frank Foy, Centaur’s security officer. He is pursing his mouth over a wad of printout tape.

  Reluctantly, Aaron activates his other screen one-way, knowing he will see something unpleasant. There she is—his sister Lory, a thin young red-haired woman wired to a sensor bank. Her eyes have turned to him, although Aaron knows she’s seeing a blank screen. Hypersensitive as usual. Behind her is Solange in a decontamination suit.

  “We will go over the questions once more, Miss Kaye,” Frank Foy says in a preposterously impersonal tone.

  “Dr. Kaye, please.” Lory sounds tired.

  “Dr. Kaye, of course.” Why is young Frank so dislikable? Be fair, Aaron tells himself, it’s the man’s job. Necessary for the safety of the tribe. And he isn’t “young” Frank anymore. Christ, none of us are, twenty-six trillion miles from home. Ten years.

  “Dr. Kaye, you were primarily qualified as a biologist on the Gamma scout mission, is that right?”

  “Yes, but I was also qualified in astrogation. We all were.”

  “Please answer yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  Foy loops the printout, makes a mark. “And in your capacity as biologist you investigated the planetary surface both from orbit and on the ground from the landing site?”


  “Yes.”

  “In your judgment, is the planet suitable for human colonization?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you observe anything harmful to human health or well-being?”

  “No. No, it’s ideal—I told you.”

  Foy coughs reprovingly. Aaron frowns too; Lory doesn’t usually call things ideal.

  “Nothing potentially capable of harming human beings?”

  “No. Wait—even water is potentially capable of harming people, you know.”

  Foy’s mouth tightens. “Very well, I rephrase. Did you observe any life-forms that attacked or harmed humans?”

  “No.”

  “But”—Foy pounces—“when Lieutenant Tighe approached the specimen you brought back, he was harmed, was he not?”

  “No, I don’t believe it harmed him.”

  “As a biologist, you consider Lieutenant Tighe’s condition unimpaired?”

  “No—I mean yes. He was impaired to begin with, poor man.”

  “In view of the fact that Lieutenant Tighe has been hospitalized since his approach to this alien, do you still maintain it did not harm him?”

  “Yes, it did not. Your grammar sort of confuses me. Please, may we move the sensor cuff to my other arm? I’m getting a little capillary breakage.” She looks up at the blank screen hiding the command staff.

  Foy starts to object, but Captain Yellaston clears his throat warningly, nods. When Solange unhooks the big cuff Lory stands up and stretches her slim, almost breastless body; with that pleasant snub-nosed face she could pass for a boy.

  Aaron watches her as he has all his life with a peculiar mixture of love and dread. That body, he knows, strikes most men as sexless, an impression confirmed by her task-oriented manner. Centaur’s selection board must have been composed of such men, one of the mission criteria was low sex-drive. Aaron sighs, watching Solange reattach the cuff. The board had been perfectly right, of course; as far as Lory herself was concerned she would have been happy in a nunnery. Aaron wishes she was in one. Not here.