Emprise

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  “My guess is Ryuka will be very cooperative.”

  “You don’t understand, Commander—”

  “I think I understand perfectly. You came on this mission with certain expectations and believing certain paradigms. Your expectations were wrong and your paradigms are lying in a heap, but you’re trying as hard as you can to pretend otherwise. I’ll get you your tissue samples. But will you believe what they tell you, or will you continue to prefer an orderly falsehood to a disorderly truth?”

  Rankin was slow to answer, and Charan wished he had tapped bridge video and could see the scientist’s expression. “They couldn’t simulate our biochemistry,” he said finally. “If you can get samples, and if they prove out human, I’ll have no choice but to accept it.”

  “I’ll get you samples,” Charan repeated. “Better put out the word to the others—I’m going to call Ryuka.”

  As Charan predicted, Ryuka was more than willing, almost grateful, to accede to a request for a skin scraping and ampule of blood. Charan took the samples in the full view of all three of the others via the meeting chamber video, then placed them outside the drive core hatch when all three were in full view on the bridge video.

  That done, he returned to Ryuka. “You asked to set Jiadur, to meet Sialkot. If your ship would take us to them, I would be most honored—”

  “There are things we have to know first,” Charan said. “Will you answer some questions?”

  “Of course, Founder.”

  Charan called a velocity-normal view of the constellation Cassiopeia to the display screen. Since most of the faint and very distant stars were blacked out for clarity, the pattern of the constellation was clear.

  “Can you identify your home sun?”

  Ryuka reached out and touched the screen, then jerked his finger back as printing appeared instantly on the screen next to the spot he had touched.

  MU CASSIOPEIA

  “A fine yellow sun, constant and warm.”

  “Tell me about your home world.”

  “Surely there is nothing I could tell the Founders—”

  “Please.”

  “You gave us a good green planet, warm and rich with life,” he said fervently. “We are grateful.”

  “How many planets are in your system?” Ryuka waggled a finger in an unfamiliar gesture. “I understand—the Founders wish to know how well we have learned. Very well. Journa is the third planet of eleven.” He smiled. “When we left Journa, by all authorities, there were but ten. The eleventh is very small and very distant.”

  “Does Journa have a natural satellite?”

  “Neither so large or so striking as the Founders’ own.”

  “You know about the moon?”

  Ryuka ducked his head. “As a keeper of the trust, I have been favored by seeing the images from the Eye of the Founders.”

  “I see.” Charan hesitated. “Ryuka, I am wasting your time with unimportant questions. What I most want to hear from you is how you discovered the Eye of the Founders, and why you came searching for them.”

  Ryuka nodded. “Yes. I ask only that if I fall into self-pride in the telling, please correct me, for I look on it as our finest hour.”

  And this was the story he told:

  It all came to pass because we needed to know the Purpose. Journa is so beautiful and suits us so well that the question was long in coming. Our naturalists imagined a harmony that was not there. Our historians ignored a mystery that was.

  But beginning five hundred years ago, our naturalists came by fits and starts to grasp the span of cosmic time and began to look into the past. In the sands of Kalim they found the ancestors of the molnok, and in the crusts of Eldenshore the forerunners of the sepi. The muck of Babbanti gave up whole skeletons of rentana, and the rock of Tenga the shells of ancient f’rthu. The naturalists learned of experiment and change, of death and failure, and evolved a picture of a spreading tree of life.

  But nowhere did they find the father-stock of the gelten that provides breadgrain, the tell that brings companionship, or, most disturbingly, of the Journans themselves. Some excused the failure because so little time had gone into the search, and others because so much time had passed. All were sagely confident that further studies would prove that molnok, tell, and Journan were in their essence one.

  In this same period, the historians—and I count myself as one in their tradition—were probing the past and learning a different lesson. Sifting the layers of cities which had stood for thousands of Journan years where they had risen, we found in the undatable deepest layers of five of them the same tools, the same spokelike city plan, the same forty-letter alphabet. Searching the history of knowledge, we found that those apocryphal ideas for which no known thinker was credited all traced to the five First Cities.

  We asked the unaskable—what had preceded the First Cities? Why had their populations, so admirable in many ways, left no histories of their own? How had knowledge sprung into flower so fully rounded? Some dismissed the questions because they thought them unimportant and others because they did not like what they suggested. But all were hopeful that signs of an earlier pastoral life would soon be found.

  It fell to Yterios, a scholar in the First City of Kelnar, to draw the conclusion that those who followed him think obvious and unremarkable. Yterios saw that the findings of the naturalists and the historians both pointed toward the same truth—that Journa was not our first home. The gelten, the tell, and ourselves were newcomers, placed on Journa only yesterday.

  Yterios saw that the taboo against eating the flesh of molnok and caravasu was nothing more than a recognition that the chemistry of a lifeform not kin to us would slowly poison us. He saw that the reason why the stands of gelten were always strong and thick was that there were no native forms to which it fell prey, unlike the parasite-ravaged wild sepi. He pointed out that it was a blessing to be part of a world where we were neither food nor had any reason to kill for food, that we had been granted a gentler, more tranquil life than we otherwise might have known.

  But Yterios could not demonstrate by what force we had been brought to Journa, or from where, or why. Who were the Founders, and what was their Purpose? Once asked, the questions obsessed us. Yterios said the first did not matter, since the act was done. On the question of Purpose, Yterios taught that the good life we had been granted both allowed and obliged us to be the preservers of Journa and the stewards of our own talents. It was not the Founders who had Purpose, but ourselves.

  For three hundred years Yterios’s teachings held sway. But then the lone voice of Rintechka the Skeptic raised disturbing questions. If the Founders were mortal beings who had passed this way and gone on, how would they ever learn of our stewardship? Was the duty an endless one, or were they to return some day? In either case, what was to be our reward for serving the Purpose? How were we to know before that day how well we had discharged our charge? From Rintechka we learned it was up to us to find the Founders. It was up to us to bring to you proof of our good stewardship.

  So we searched for you, in every corner of the globe, in every inner voice of conscience, and among the stars. We looked and we listened. And we discovered the Eye of the Founders.

  As we learned more from the Eye, we saw more clearly with it, though there was always much we did not understand.

  But we saw that you were as we were and called you kin. We saw that your world held the father-stock of the fatherless species and we called you Founder. We studied your tongue and took it for our own to honor you. And you told us how to call to you and come to you and these things we did.

  For the metals to build Jiadur and the fuel to power her we opened many wounds on Journa’s face, wounds that time and care can mend but not remove. For the archives that fill her we opened our collective hearts and memories. It is a thing-done-once. We offer it to you, to honor you, in gratitude for the gift of life, and in fulfillment of the Purpose given us long ago.

  When Ryuka was finished and had return
ed to his shuttle, Charan quietly lifted lockout and made Pride of Earth whole again. He did it without fanfare or explanation, and the others accepted it in that vein. En route to a long-overdue shower he encountered Rankin sitting in the mod B lab, hands folded before him. The older man’s eyes were hooded and puffy, as though he had been crying.

  “The tests—”

  Rankin nodded. “As you said they would.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “No,” Rankin said. His voice broke, like a strangled moan. “You know, evolution is a forgiving discipline. There are few rules that say ‘thou shalt not.’ An explanation could have been readily found for any size or shape or niche of creature that could have come down that tunnel. People don’t realize how strange and wonderful life on Earth is. The sulfur tube-worms of the deep trenches—the seven-mouthed Hallucinogenia—the platypus, an outrageous parody—” His voice broke again, and he looked away and swallowed hard.

  He went on quietly. “We could have handled almost anything. Except that.” He stabbed an accusing finger in the direction of the microscope.

  “Human.”

  “As much as any of us.” He sighed. “This will mean so much rewriting of what we said was true that no one will ever trust us again.”

  “Perhaps it’s history that needs to be rewritten. Opinion, Doctor. Could they be right? Could we be the Founders?”

  Rankin shook his head despairingly. “I just don’t know. How could we have forgotten?” He raised his head and his eyes burned into Charan’s heart. “But if we aren’t, then we must be another Journa. Because no set of natural laws I can imagine would allow two species so identical to have arisen independently.”

  Tears of anger and frustration were welling in Rankin’s eyes, but he would not acknowledge them by wiping them away. Instead he forced a laugh. “Do you know how I really feel? I feel as if I’m in a low-budget movie where they got to the end and couldn’t afford the monster costume.” His laughter had an ugly edge to it. “What now, Commander? What in the hell do we do now?”

  Charan chose to answer the question on the most superficial of the several levels on which Rankin had intended it.

  “Rest,” Charan said. “Rest for everyone. And prepare yourself for more surprises. Tomorrow we go aboard Jiadur.”

  Chapter 22

  * * *

  When Neither Truth Nor Lie Will Serve

  Jiadur loomed up impossibly large as the shuttle bearing Ryuka and the four visitors bore down on it. With gentle bursts of gas from maneuvering jets and a not-so-gentle thwong as the two ships touched, Ryuka nestled the shuttle into its recessed docking cradle. Still betraying the anxiety that he had begun to evince when they had left Pride of Earth parked a hundred klicks abeam, Ryuka led them through a series of long cylindrical corridors to his quarters and Sialkot.

  She was a small woman with cool hands and a warm smile. Charan judged her to be—like Ryuka and, for that matter, Rankin—in her fifties. But he realized with a start that, unlike Rankin, the Joumans had left their homeworld young. We have grown old with waiting, they had said—more than thirty years’ worth. The real meaning of that commitment impressed itself on Charan as he saw them together and the eagerness in their expressions.

  “Let there be an end to waiting,” he said. “Show us the trust of Journa.”

  Two went with each Journan, both as a nod to the size of the trust and a concession to the divided expertise of their guides. Each pair would be shown half of the holdings, Sialkot explained; later, they could change guides and see the remainder. Charan and Wenyuan went with Sialkot, while Joanna and Rankin followed Ryuka. The split suited Charan—he did not trust Wenyuan and did not know Sialkot, both good reasons to accompany them.

  Charan had drummed into the others that they were to look, to learn as much as they could, to ask questions for understanding, but to keep their judgments and speculations to themselves for later. He was quickly glad he had done so. If the sacrifice of its crew in making the voyage had not made it clear, the first few chambers of the keep did: compared to the effort mounted to produce Jiadur and its contents, the creation of Pride of Earth had been an afternoon’s idle play. There were undercurrents to the encounter which demanded that the Terrans’ every step be a measured one and their every comment well-considered.

  One spherical chamber was occupied only by a presumably life-size representation—whether corpse or immaculate model Charan could not say, though he suspected the latter—of the disc-shaped translucent aquatic creature called the caravasu. Fully five metres across, the caravasu dominated the room. The walls of the chamber depicted the creature’s life cycle and evolution: from a small hard-shelled scavenger with flotation cells to a motile fresh-water sun-feeder, an animate version of the giant Brazilian water lily.

  A great gallery contained uncountable works of art, the most popular subjects Journan lifeforms and landscapes. The styles ranged from technically breathtaking ultrarealism to emotionally charged impressionism. Charan asked for explanations of the media and techniques he could not immediately connect to anything familiar. The most memorable went by the name of prakell, after its first practitioner: it required the artist to work while being systematically starved of oxygen, which though risky brought a distinctive kind of reckless vigor to the finished product.

  In what Charan thought of as the Hall of Machines, he took pleasure in a glittering toy that tumbled, hopped, shrieked merrily, then began to tumble again. Sialkot told him to his surprise that the glittering material was once living.

  “It is not unlike wood in its origin,” she said. She went on to explain that population was strictly regulated by tradition grown out of ecological principles; few Journan families had more than one child, and virtually none more than two.

  “As a consequence, much thought goes into the creation of stimulating companions for the young,” she told them. “Of course, nearly every family has its tell.”

  Remembering that the tell was one of the “fatherless” species Ryuka had mentioned, on encountering one in the Hall of Animals Charan was not surprised to find it something he could comfortably call a dog—not one of the prissy domesticated varieties, but a leaner, feral creature much like the wild dog of Australia. Inexplicably, the tell seemed to make Wenyuan uncomfortable, as though it reminded him of something he preferred to forget.

  His senses overwhelmed, one chamber flowed unbuffered into the next in Charan’s memory. There was too much to see and they moved on much too quickly to absorb even the tenth part of it. But there was no slowing Sialkot short of brute force; she had tended and studied and waited too long. So they went with her, only the most outrageous sights staying with them vividly, the more ordinary swept out of memory, each by the next.

  Forgotten: a panoramic landscape that filled one huge curving wall, made wholly of the colored bristles of sepi and the downy silk of molnok. Forgotten: eight hundred carvings in a soft bonelike rock of the air-creatures of Journa, on the wing, alighting, poised for flight. Remembered: an improbable orrery in a huge central chamber, where a massive relief globe of Journa accompanied by its eccentrically orbiting moon faced a blazing sun, a field of stars.

  When at the end of six hours he was at last led back to the Journans’ quarters, his sensory weariness and the knowledge that he had seen but half the collection conspired to sap his remaining physical energies. He saw by their postures and expressions that the others felt similarly, and asked that they be taken back to Pride of Earth—taken home, in the terminology they were surprised to find themselves using.

  En route, they made no effort to write down their impressions and remembrances—the task was too great and the need for surcease too pressing.

  Secure in their own ship again, their tongues were loosened. “It was as if they had emptied the Art Museum and the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Technology and threw in the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress for good measure,” Joanna said softly.

  Though most of th
e specific references were meaningless to the others, they understood.

  “No one thing I saw overwhelmed me,” Rankin said. “But room after room, hour after hour, the endless parade of the treasures of an entire planetary civilization—”

  “Little enough about the Joumans themselves,” Wenyuan noted. “They were as ghosts. They stood behind each work of art, every invention. But it was as though they were not a worthy subject themselves.”

  “Didn’t you understand what they told us? Couldn’t you tell by the way they watched us?” Charan asked. “They’re looking to us to give them their sense of worth. And I don’t know what we’re going to tell them.”

  A night spent in reflection brought Charan no closer to that answer, and in the morning he took each of the others in turn to mod E for a private talk.

  “Do you still think the Joumans are a threat?” he asked Wenyuan bluntly when they were alone.

  “No. But that does not mean they are not a problem,” Wenyuan said with equal candor. “I find that I am grateful you terminated communications with Earth.”

  “Why is that? No—I think I know. Tai Chen agreed to the open communications policy because she was perfectly willing to see us publicize a failure. Now things have changed.”

  “The knowledge we have won belongs to those with the vision to act on it, not to the masses,” Wenyuan said firmly. “It is our duty to bring that information to our superiors as rapidly as possible. The only secure means by which that can be done is to return to Earth immediately.”

  Charan’s fingers prowled through the stubble on his chin. He said nothing. Sensing weakness of will, Wenyuan pressed his point.

  “Events here have rendered my instructions irrelevant, as I am certain they have yours,” he said convivially, spreading his hands wide. “The only duty remaining is to report—not blindly and recklessly, with a transmission that could create public havoc, but privately and prudently.”

  Some resistance stirred at last in Charan, more reflex than real. “My instructions presumed the Senders were real. The Consortium has worked to prepare the people of Earth for this moment.”