Georgia On My Mind and Other Places

by Charles Sheffield

  Gilden was nodding agreement, but he was having trouble absorbing information. Even without the alien Sigil, Lucidar provided an overload of strangeness. Gravity, sun, air, exotic flora and fauna. People. The gravel-voiced Bravtz’ig—the nearest that Gilden could come to his name—was tall and broad enough to have qualified as a giant on Earth, but here he didn’t draw a second glance. It was tiny Derli and Gilden himself who would make the Lucidar freak show.

  Alien world, alien thoughts. He stared out of the window of the spaceport tower, to where the Sigil ship was visible as a far-off speck of pearly white.

  To penetrate its shields, of unknown nature and number, without leaving evidence of your presence. To plumb the impermeable hull’s deepest secrets…

  He forced his attention back to the conversation. Bravtz’ig was still talking. What had he just missed? Derli, sitting at his side, had a recorder. Was it running? He would need to review this meeting later.

  She gave him a private smile and a raised eyebrow. She knew! Knew he had been observing her with the voyeurs. He was convinced of it. Valmar must have told her. And she didn’t mind. He had a sudden voyeur flashback, a memory of Derli sitting naked and straight-legged on the bed. She was arching her back to reveal delicate pink-nippled breasts, then bending far over to massage overtaxed thigh muscles. Long amber tresses tumbled forward to hide her flat belly and pubic thatch. Had she done that deliberately, knowing he was watching?

  Once again he had to fight his way back into the present. What was happening to him? It must be pure travel fatigue. For the past day and a half he had found himself unable to sleep, his head pulsing with thoughts of Valmar Krieg’s prophecy about the challenge of the Sigil.

  While he had been daydreaming, another of the Lucidar group had produced surround-videos of the Sigil couple, made not long after their original landing. Now their display was beginning.

  Any single element of data about the aliens might be the crucial one. Gilden had seen videos of the two Sigil, but these were much more revealing. He studied them closely, knowing as he did so that he would review them again many, many times. The suits worn by the aliens concealed everything but broad general features. He could see that both Sigil were similar in morphology, bipedal and with bilateral symmetry. The legs were attached close to the middle of the forward-curving torso, and not far above them two long arms emerged at right angles to the body. The dark, hairless head formed a broad cone above a thin neck and ended at the front in a prominent black muzzle.

  There were certainly differences between them, but the main surprise was the disparity of sizes. One Sigil towered high over its smaller companion and was at least three times the bulk. Gilden assumed that the huge Sigil must be the female, because of the loving deference and exaggerated care with which it was treated by its diminutive partner. Then he thought of gentle Derli, and Valmar Krieg’s indifferent brutality, and wondered if he had things exactly backward.

  “Sexual dimorphism.” Derli spoke softly, more to her recorder than to Gilden or anyone else. “A substantial size difference between the sexes. Common among certain arthropods and mammals with harems. However, analogy with existing Terran forms is more likely to be misleading than helpful. The presence of just one of each of the Sigils argues against multiple mates.”

  Bravtz’ig was speaking again. “The Sigil told us—when they were still telling us anything—that a ship always carries one of each. By the way, although they can both apparently talk the big one never does. All we’ve been told about them comes from the little one.”

  “What do you mean, when they were telling you anything?” Valmar had seemed half asleep. Now he was alert. “I thought they were still talking? If you have concealed information from the Mentor…”

  “Relax, Master Krieg.” Bravtz’ig laughed, and his expression was more aggressive than respectful. “We’ve not concealed a thing. Don’t get wrapped around the bureaucracy.”

  Gilden had another revelation, one that again turned his world upside down. The Mentor was nominal ruler here, but Bravtz’ig clearly had no fear of him. No one on Lucidar was worried about being carried off for arbitrary Teller inquisition and eternal torment. And yet the Teller had seemed absolutely confident that Gilden, whether he succeeded or failed in his task with the Sigil, would return to Earth. How could she be sure?

  The answer was obvious: red-bearded Valmar Krieg, trusted adviser to the Mentor, was Gilden’s unstated guardian. He would be responsible for Gilden’s return.

  Bravtz’ig was continuing, and Gilden had to postpone his own worries: “The Sigil still talk to us, but there’s been an enormous change since the first days of communication. We found out how their civilization is organized, and how their ship works, and that this is their first contact with our section of the Spiral Arm. But the real information stopped coming on the day they went into seclusion in their ship. They still come out now and again, but we get what my boss calls party chat—they tell us trivia.”

  “Maybe they received instructions from their home world.” Valmar Krieg had taken the Terran lead, even though Gilden was the one who was supposed to solve the problem of the Sigil.

  “If they did, they must be far beyond us in communications technology. We’ve been monitoring their ship with everything we’ve got. No sign of an outgoing signal.”

  “Any theories for what happened?”

  “Bunches. But they all boil down to one of two ideas: either they learned something about us that they didn’t like, or they’re afraid we’ll learn something about them that they don’t want us to know.”

  “So why didn’t they just up and leave?”

  “We’ve been afraid they will. We’ve deliberately kept dribbling them useful information, bit by bit—a lot more than they’ve given us recently. But we soon realized we needed expert help.” Bravtz’ig nodded to Gilden. “If you can get an observation instrument into their ship, you’ll be a Lucidar hero no matter what you did on Earth.”

  “I’ll need help, too.” It was close to noon, and Lucidar shimmered with heat haze. The speck of white pearl danced tantalizingly on the horizon. A matching tingle of anticipation shivered within Gilden. “First, I’ll need everything you have about their ship.”

  “You’ll get that. But I don’t think you’ll be happy. They’re closed tight. We measure zero material exchange with our atmosphere, no transparent materials, and no emergent radiation.” Bravtz’ig glanced at Derli. “What about you? What do you need?”

  “I’ll be as dependent on Gilden as you are. I can determine a little biology from external appearance, but with an alien species it’s not very reliable. Their suits are a problem. I need X rays, sonograms, tissue samples.” She turned from Bravtz’ig to Gilden. “Unless you can get me those, Arrin, I can’t really begin.”

  The easy things had to be done first. Even if there was only one chance in a million that they might succeed, Gilden could not afford to overlook the obvious. He also could not assume that Bravtz’ig’s team was as painfully thorough as he had to be.

  The Sigil ship sat on six splayed legs in the middle of the open plain of the landing field. It was, as Bravtz’ig had warned him, sealed against matter gain or loss. Not a molecule from Lucidar went into the rounded hull, and none escaped. That eliminated the use of every material voyeur device in Gilden’s arsenal.

  Which left only radiation, in its various forms. It was not the first time that he had faced such a problem. Gilden, from the mobile experiment station provided by Bravtz’ig, set out to observe the Sigil ship using every wavelength from hard gamma to long radio.

  Nothing.

  He took a more active step and bathed the ship with monochromatic radiation generated from his own sources. The return signals at every frequency were quite featureless. No radiation penetrated more than a millimeter into the shining surface. Not in the ultraviolet, not in the visible, not in the reflective or emissive infrared. He went doggedly on, creeping through the spectrum from shortest to longest
wavelengths.

  Again, nothing.

  At last, when the sun was setting, Gilden abandoned his experiments in favor of pure thought. Sometimes, a negative result could be as significant as a positive one. One fact nagged at him: there was no anomalous thermal signature, no elevation of ship hull temperature above ambient. How could that be? If the Sigil ship was in exact temperature balance with the atmosphere, where did the heat go that was generated in the interior?

  He was not able to answer that question, but it was an important one. Surely the Sigil, no matter how advanced their science, could not evade the laws of thermodynamics. Even if all power devices were turned off inside the hull, any living organism had to eat. Eating implied energy conversion from one form to another. Heat production was an inevitable by-product.

  Gilden’s neck ached, and his closed eyes saw nothing but the red afterimages of dials and monitors. His head was suddenly buzzing with a swirl of speculation and unanswered questions. He filed his observations and went back to the living quarters that Bravtz’ig had assigned to the visitors.

  On the way in he stopped at the bathhouse to bathe his weary eyes. Derli was there, leaning against a washbasin. He nodded to her, but only after he had laved his face and dried it on a hand towel did he notice her stooped posture.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Her smile was forced, her lips pale.

  “There is.” He stepped closer. “You look awful.”

  “I’m just a bit sick, still.”

  “I thought that was space nausea, and you were over it.”

  “I thought so, too.” She leaned forward to rest her forehead against the cool gray metal of the washbasin. “Guess a new planet can do it just as well. Unfamiliar air, food, gravity.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m working as fast as I can, but it’s slow going. The ship’s really impenetrable. Maybe you should return to Earth and come back here when I find some information you can use.”

  “No!” Derli straightened her back. “Leaving is the last thing I want to do. I don’t feel good, but I love this place. I’ll stay on Lucidar until I’m forced to leave.” She took a deep breath, and reached up to touch Gilden’s cheek. “But thanks for the thoughtfulness. I’m not used to that. Maybe we can talk later, when I feel better.”

  She walked unsteadily out, leaving Arrin Gilden with something new to ponder. Until I’m forced to leave. He had assumed that as Valmar Krieg’s partner, Derli Margrave was one of those who made the rules. But it seemed she was no more free to choose than Gilden himself. Derli’s domination extended beyond sexual possession.

  Gilden touched his cheek, and admitted for the first time his full resentment—hatred?—of Valmar Krieg.

  Gilden stayed in his quarters for the whole evening, his thoughts sliding uneasily from one subject to another. The Sigil, Valmar, the Teller, Derli. She did not come, although his voyeurs told him that she was alone. Valmar Krieg was far away, meeting with Bravtz’ig. The Sigil were locked tight within their ship.

  Finally Gilden took the unprecedented step, walking the twenty paces from his rooms to Derli’s.

  She was looking better, leaning back on a broad divan covered with a beige cloth that complemented the color of her hair. Gilden realized that his voyeurs needed to be slightly recalibrated. On their imagers the hair and divan had not quite matched.

  “I wondered if you would come. I was going to give you another half hour.” She patted the seat beside her. “I thought you might be afraid of Valmar.”

  I was going to give you another half-hour. And then what?

  “I am.” Gilden remained standing. “I mean, I am afraid of him.”

  “You came anyway.”

  “He’s miles away.”

  “I see.” Derli gave a little shrug. “I guess you would know, Arrin, if anyone would. No point in taking a risk, is there?”

  The tone was a criticism, far more than the words. Gilden sat down at her side. “I told you earlier that I was making slow progress. But that’s not true anymore. I think I know a way into the Sigil ship—not with an actual voyeur, nothing as direct as that. But a way to send in a probe signal.”

  “You told me earlier that the ship was impenetrable.”

  “The hull is. But I realized that there had to be some way to get rid of generated internal heat. It’s going out through the ship’s support legs, diffused deep into the surface of Lucidar itself.”

  “And you can get a probe in the same way?”

  “Nothing material. But I can send in my own signals that way, use high-frequency modulated phonons—ultrasonic packets—if I have to.”

  “It sounds difficult.”

  “I’ve done it before. Give me a few days.”

  “I’m a patient woman.” She turned to face him. “You came here to tell me that?”

  “Yes.” It was a lie. The Teller would have picked it up at once. “And to ask you something.”

  “Ah!” Derli leaned far back on the divan. “That’s more like it. Ask me, Arrin. I’m waiting.”

  “You say that you love Lucidar, and hate the idea of leaving it. But you are not a condemned criminal, like me. What’s to stop you staying here after the work on the Sigil is over?”

  “You don’t know?” She abandoned her languorous pose and sat straight up. “You really don’t?”

  “If I knew, I would not ask.”

  “Lean toward me, and give me your hand.”

  Gilden did so, and allowed her to guide his hand to a place on her head just behind where the thick amber hair was parted.

  “Feel that?” She set his index finger on a spot where the skin of the skull was slightly rough. “That’s scar tissue, over the implant. Valmar knows the code. If I refuse to return to Earth or do something disloyal to the Mentor, he will activate it.”

  Gilden was still touching her head, feeling the delicate bones of the skull. “What would it do?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not supposed to know. Uncertainty is part of the control. Maybe the top of my head would be blown off. Maybe I’d be in permanent agony. Maybe I’d just become a drooling idiot or a nymphomaniac for the rest of my life. I’ve seen all those and worse.” She took Gilden’s hand in hers, and again guided it. This time to a place on his own skull. “You, too, Arrin. Anyone gets it who leaves Earth and works directly for the Mentor.”

  “Even Valmar?” Gilden fingered with awful fascination the unnoticed small patch of scar tissue on his own head.

  “Of course. Lucidar might subvert him, too. The difference is, Valmar controls you and me, but some other person controls him.”

  “He owns us!”

  “Not all of us, Arrin. Some of our actions are our own.” Derli was pulling him toward her, at the same time as she sank back on the divan. Gilden struggled free of her arms, stood up, and stared down at her. He was trembling.

  “You don’t want me?” A smile would have made it intolerable. But Derli looked hurt and sorrowful, like an abandoned child. Gilden groaned, turned, and blundered out of the room and the building, out into the evening gusts of Lucidar’s spring. He walked blindly and randomly, hardly aware of time or direction until increasing cold drove him home.

  Back in his own quarters, he activated a voyeur. Derli was still sitting on the divan. Somehow she knew. She stared right at the minute observation instrument and raised her hand in a wave.

  This time she was smiling, but Gilden saw no reproach or scorn on her face; only an understanding that for him some things were still impossible.

  He waved back, knowing that she could not see him. And then he settled down to work. He had an additional task now, as difficult in its way as the problem of the Sigil—and far more dangerous. There was one place where no sane voyeur would ever dare to look. In this case, Gilden had no choice.

  He worked until close to dawn at a level of intensity that approached a trance. When he finally collapsed into bed the new problem ran on inside his head, distorted and paradoxical. And when V
almar Krieg marched into his bedroom early the next morning, Gilden saw his arrival as part of another cloudy dream sequence.

  “Derli says you’ve cracked it.” Valmar sat down uninvited on the end of the bed.

  The words sent Gilden’s heart into a mad race. Then he realized that the other man couldn’t possibly know what he had worked on through the night. Because Derli herself didn’t know. Krieg had to be talking about the Sigil and their ship.

  “I haven’t cracked it. But I do have ideas.”

  “Tell me.” Krieg held up his hand. “Don’t get the wrong impression. It’s not that I feel I can’t trust you, but I have to file my own status reports. I must know what you’re doing, at least in outline. How will you get your voyeurs into the Sigil ship?”

  “I won’t. It’s utterly impenetrable for solid objects without alerting the Sigil.” Thinking about technical questions calmed Gilden at once.

  “So how can you learn what’s inside?”

  “That’s a different problem. We can be fairly sure that the Sigil ship has its own internal monitoring system, probably with imaging components just the way that our ships do. So I don’t need to get my own voyeurs inside—I just have to control the Sigils’ own monitors. Then I have to get that information out.”

  “It sounds impossible.”

  “I’ve done it half a dozen times, back on Earth. The trick is to find an access point. That’s what I think I have. The Sigil ship is getting rid of excess heat down into the planetary surface. So I have an avenue. I can send pulses in by the same route and read their returns. After that it means lots of data analysis, none of it automatic. But I’m comfortable with that. The part I’m less sure of is my interaction with the Sigil ship’s computer systems. I have to plant my own code in there, hidden in a way that won’t be noticed, before I can control the ship’s monitors.”

  Krieg was thoughtfully stroking his red beard. “That doesn’t sound so hard. Logic is logic, universal.”