The Stalk

by Janet Morris

  Mankind had come dressed to the nines to meet its destiny at the edge of the home solar system. Not until the Stalk had taken its place at this interstellar bargaining table did the Unity Embassy make its appearance, poking its brain-teasing mass slowly through the firmament with its gigantic escort vessel close behind.

  All the protocols were being painstakingly established for this first of many meetings. All the niceties of place and space were punctiliously attended to by Unity Interstitial Interpreters. All the decorous formalities attendant on so momentous an occasion were duly observed by the Unity Council. All the introductions of Unity world representatives who were just beginning to arrive by the shipload would be slowly and conscientiously made, to make sure that humankind understood its role as host, its place and part as Valued Friends in a venerable society. And. most importantly, to make certain humanity didn't become afraid or doubt its territorial supremacy, its security, its primacy over all things human.

  Joe South had made sure of that as soon as he docked the Ball inside the Unity mothership. You had to go very carefully when so many new experiences were pushing people to their limits. You had to be sensitive to crowding folks. Human beings reacted aggressively when they felt cornered. Through no fault of the Unity's, human assumptions were crumbling to dust in the face of the unalterable changes at work.

  So he warned the Interstitial Interpreter who met him and Reice outside the Ball in the mothership slipbay to be very cautious in getting this festival of introduction and welcome under way. "They don't know what to expect. You've got to give them plenty of notice. Don't spring things on them, nowtime, without prior consultation." Prior consultation wasn't a Unity strong suit.

  The Interpreter dipped its head toward him agreeably. "Talking nowtime with Mickeycroft." Behind and around the Interpreter, the mothership loomed with portals and gates into eleven continua. South could see dragons hard at work, ancestral skies, huge generators streaming power grids, deep-sea thermionic converters bubbling atmosphere, and worlds no man had ever seen before. The Interpreter floated before them on a circular screen of light that shifted under its feet slightly when it moved. "Soontime party okay with Honored Friends and Hosts, similarly okay with Honored Friends and Guests from Unity worlds coming," the Interstitial Interpreter assured South.

  Reice elbowed South and blurted. "Yeah, but you should have warned the UNE. Before a bunch of other ships start showing up from all over town, you better make sure the Secretariat understands you're throwing a surprise party for Threshold."

  "Reice," South said warningly. "They'll handle it." No use critiquing pasttime. The Unity and the UNE still had lots of rough edges to file off their relationship. And South still had to give back the "keys" to the Ball.

  He held out his hand, palm up, and offered the small black septagon to the Unity Interpreter. "Here's your Ball back. Thanks for the chance to fly it. I really learned a lot."

  The screen on which the Interstitial Interpreter was standing rocked like a surfboard. "Joesouth keeping Ball, thank-him gift from all us Unity Council. Ball not okay? Joesouth want different gift? Must indicate preference. Ball special-fixed for growing-up spacetimers, not standard for our using. Ball good Joesouth vessel, having inside place for spacetimer's craft. Place for being home, wherever being going. Good for visiting, all journeys, any spacetime places. Good for traveling throughout Unity. What Joesouth not like, Unity maybe fixes? Make better?"

  "No shit?" Reice said wonderingly.

  "Shut up, Reice." South wasn't really angry at Reice. Without Reice there as his witness, South might not have been able to believe his ears. "Your Excellency—I don't... have any problem with the Ball's performance. I gratefully accept this Unity gift. Thank you." You had to be careful how you expressed yourself, just like you had to be careful what you wished for. Had he wished for the Ball? Could be. Flying it had been like nothing he'd ever experienced, but he never would have asked. "Thank you and all the others." South closed his fist around the key to his Ball and put it in his pocket.

  "Thanking this entity not necessary," said the Interstitial Interpreter, whose conical crown was throwing sparks. "Thanking all others, you have nowtime opportunity, Joesouth."

  The Interstitial Interpreter began to spin on his platform. Reice grabbed South as the surface under them began to spin as well. South said through gritted teeth, "Just hold on, Reice. It'll stop. It's like a lift, or an escalator, where spaces aren't linear."

  They spun past the Ball in its berth. They spun up a wall, past a half-dozen open portals. And when they stopped spinning, they were facing a throng of celebrants, none of whom were human, but all of whom were clearly having one hell of a good time.

  Reice staggered off the platform and pulled South with him.

  "What do you make of this?" Reice whispered intently. "You think they're all Unity aliens?"

  "You bet," South said, looking over the heads of the throng, hoping to find something he recognized as an exit. "Just like our test flight, see?" He pointed to one crystal-tine shape that moved in a personal mist, and another that floated through the air, colorful tentacles caressing whatever it passed.

  *T don't remember much about that test flight." Reice admitted as South urged him through the throng and Reice slunk along, wide-eyed and staring.

  "Don't worn-about it." South counseled. 'The memories will come back to you eventually. They did for me. anyway. It's partly the Unity way of making sure we don't over-stimulate new neural pathways while they're still forming. Your brain is being asked to do different things—things it was meant to do eventually but hasn't done until now. There's a lot of unused potential in these craniums of ours. If you have trouble remembering, we can get the Unity to help you. They helped me." With Unity help. South had regained all his lost memories of his X-3 flyby and his first visit to a Unity world.

  "I don't want nobody messin' with my mind." Reice said. shying away from contact with an ambergris-like mass as they passed it, then rubbing his own skull ruminatively.

  "I know just what you mean, but don't be scared." South wasn't about to tell Reice that it had been South's flyby of X-3. and what followed, that had convinced the Unity aliens it was time to make contact with humanity. He wasn't sure he'd ever tell anybody that. "I was scared to death, myself. when I first saw things I couldn't catalogue and had experiences I could store but couldn't retrieve except allegorically. You didn't see your dead relatives. You didn't see angels, exactly. You saw the alltime."

  "I did?" Reice said, awe in his voice. '"You know. then. I mean, what I saw."

  "Sort of. Just hold on to the images and let your brain metabolize the stimuli at its own rate." A six-armed something wearing some kind of life-support module over its gills ambled by on more legs than South could count. South made way for that one, right along with Reice.

  But it stopped, swung its torso around, twisting on its mop-like legs, and came their way so fast that both men retreated into the crowd and bumped against other beings.

  Suddenly, they were the center of attention. The six-armed thing wanted to hug South, and he couldn't dissuade it. It smelled vaguely of seaweed. Other creatures touched him, tickled his face, tugged on his clothes.

  When he got out of the animated mop's six-armed hug, Reice was leaning over, talking to a plasma steward as if he'd been doing it all his life.

  "It says it can guide us to the other humans."

  "Great, let's go." South could use some human company. He was never much for parties. They followed the plasma steward through the throng, onto another lift, and from the lift into a bubblecraft. "You don't need to put on your helmet," South advised Reice, but Reice didn't believe him once the bubble oozed down the access tube into visible vacuum and started heading for Threshold's docking tubes.

  "Oh, man, oh man," Reice kept saying, or maybe praying, until the bubble made it safe and sound to the Blue Mid slipbay.

  Then they were in the real party zone, where they knew the players and where
the action was. By the time they found a tubeway and ordered a ConSec levitation car, they were already three blue beers apiece the worse for wear. When the car came, Reice couldn't wait to call Sling and invite the aftermarketeer up to Blue North, on Reice's authority, to have a look at the command and control center.

  You couldn't get to the center itself, there were so many people crowding around the Secretariat party floor. South lost Reice somewhere around the time that Reice saw Ricky Cummings and the Forat-Cummings girl, both being hugged by Richard the Second, holding forth at a refreshments table with a big NAMECorp insignia behind it.

  Some things would never change. South hadn't had blue beer for a long time, and he never could hold the stuff without getting drunk. He found the spiral stairway to the observation deck and got halfway up it before he had to sit down.

  Below him, humans and Unity Council members, Interstitial Interpreters and plasma beings, and even subhuman UNE races were mingling with seeming success. South tried to take a head count, but some of the Unity races didn't have discernable heads.

  He could make out Remson and Mickey Croft, though, surrounded with Interstitial Interpreters whose crowns were especially ornate. Croft was being handed one of Dini Forat-Cummings' racoonlike pet Brows, and the empathic animal was curling up in Croft's arms like a baby.

  Whatever was going to happen, you had to give mankind credit for walking into the unknown, eyes open. It hadn't seemed to the Unity aliens that they were asking too much of humanity to move a little space habitat a few billion miles for a little elbow room, but it had been one close call.

  South was prayerfully glad he hadn't had any more to drink. His ability to control timeslip when in contact with other humans was badly degraded by the blue beer he'd drunk. He felt like holding onto the railway of the spiral staircase to keep from falling, or sliding away into some other spacetime.

  He had STARBIRD, and Birdy, too, safe in the Ball. He had the Ball, a gift from the gods. Nearly literally. Every person in this room had been so close to Dead on Arrival that South couldn't bear to think about it: you had to be careful what you wished for.

  His mind still shied away from the jump mission. When you do the impossible, you want to forget about it as soon as you can. Maybe he could get the Unity to help him forget. But he knew he wouldn't.

  Every person down there had a life to live, thanks to Unity technology and their own guts, no thanks to him. He was just in the right place with the right piece of equipment.

  He heard footsteps on the stairway above him, but he was so accustomed to Unity constructs that he didn't move aside or even think to stand up.

  "South," somebody said. "Joe South, you crazy old Relic of a coot! Git up 'n let m' lookit ya."

  South craned his neck and looked up. "Hiya, Keebler. How's the scavenging business in Unity space?"

  The greasy, white-haired, green-toothed old goat hunkered down and held out a gnarly hand. "Fan-tas-tik! C'mon up, and I'll tell ya all about it. You and me c'n do some business, Mr. Test Pilot."

  "I bet we can," he said, and levered himself to a standing position.

  The stairs spiraled up forever. He focused on Keebler's hand, and when their flesh touched, he was up on the floor of the observation lounge in a heartbeat.

  Riva Lowe was up there, too, looking proud and ambassadorial in some fancy dress made out of tiny stars. She was talking to the woman who'd run South's psychometric evaluation. He didn't want to go over there.

  Keebler still had him by the hand. "C'mere, Southie. Lookit them ships. All them ships. Lookit the kinds o' ships! D'ya realize what this means?"

  "I guess," South said. "We've got a future, in human terms."

  The white-hole scavenger who'd become Valued Friend of the Unity grabbed him by the shoulders and squeezed, his rheumy eyes very bright. "Better than that, Commander South. We make the future. We got the alltime, we got the notime, we got the whole of the Unity worlds open fer human exploration—"

  "Exploitation, he means," said Riva Lowe from behind Keebler's back. "Don't let him snow you, Joe. Our friend Keebler's not content with being rich and famous; now he wants to cut a deal with the Secretariat to guide us to technology transfer opportunities in the Unity worlds."

  Keebler let go of South and turned to her. "You need the help, Lady Ambassador, from a Valued Friend o' the Unity like me."

  "Maybe we do, Mr. Keebler. Would you excuse us?"

  She motioned South away from the man who'd brought the Ball to Threshold, pasttime. "South, say something nice to Mickey. Remson's not having much luck calming his fears."

  South was looking out the observation window. "Did you see all this," he murmured. "Keebler's right. I never expected so many...."

  Outside the observation window, spacecraft and dimensional craft such as no human had ever dreamed were still arriving, one after another, to wish humanity well and welcome them into intergalactic society.

  "The Unity explained about the ... extraordinary number of visitors to Mickey, but I wish they'd done it earlier. He's still nonplussed, to say the least." Riva Lowe came up beside him. The gown she wore seemed to be nothing but tiny specks of light woven together over bare skin.

  What could he say to the Secretariat ambassador? "The Unity is working hard to anticipate our flash points. Tell the Secretary General that for me." She was as beautiful in that gown as any of the wondrous craft arriving at humanity's front door. ConSec must be going nuts, trying to park all those vessels.

  "You tell him." She flashed him a look like iron and he couldn't refuse her. Together, so close, they must have lost their grip on clocktime. Colliding wills can do that. The next thing he knew, he was shaking hands with Remson and the Secretary General and telling Mickey Croft that the Unity wanted South to "express their pleasure at being able to throw this little surprise party for us, sir. I was over on the Unity ship and there's lots of ambassadorial types from various Unity races waiting to meet you."

  "I imagine there are, my boy." Croft looked exhausted, sepulchral, worn to a razor's edge. "I suppose you ought to take me over there to meet them." Croft sighed deeply, grimacing at the traffic outside the observation lounge. "We seem to be the only A-list party in the universe tonight. But first, I think Mr. Remson has something for you—a token of our esteem, a small recognition of your service to your Secretariat."

  So that was why Riva had kept trying to get him to talk to Croft. He put his hands in his pockets, and his knuckles brushed the keys to the Ball there. His Secretariat, Croft had said.

  Remson cleared his throat. "Commander South, under the circumstances, we don't wish a public ceremony, but we nevertheless are pleased to present you with this official recognition of your distinguished service." Remson held out a small box containing a tiny, striped bar pin. "And to give you this Secretariat visa for a month on the home planet, Earth, to be taken in part or at one time, at your discretion and our expense."

  Riva Lowe reached up from his side and kissed him, just a peck on the cheek. But her eyes were shining.

  "Thank you, Mr. Remson, Secretary Croft." He took the data disk that would get him past the ConSpaceCom guard around the world where he was born. He could go home now, anytime, with full privileges.

  The next thing he knew, he was up close to the observation window, his nose nearly pressed to it and Riva Lowe beside him. He vaguely remembered telling Croft that he'd be glad to take the Secretary General and his party across to the Unity ship whenever they wanted to go. Time must have slipped his hold again.

  It didn't matter. He said, 'Thanks for the all-expenses paid trip to Earth."

  She said, "It was the only thing I could think of that we had to give you."

  "I got everything I want. Except ..."

  "What?" she said.

  "A little friendly companionship. Somebody who understands. We're not exactly like anybody else, anymore."

  "What are you saying?" she wanted to know.

  "Want to take a ride with me, nowtime?
They won't miss us. We'll be back soontime. They won't even know we slipped away."

  "Where?" Her eyes were pinwheeling, but he didn't mind.

  "Earth," he said. "In the Ball."

  "In the Ball? What about STARBIRD! Surely you haven't given up STARBIRD, your first love."

  "We'll take STARBIRD with us. Birdy, too."

  "Well, that's okay, then," she said, and the observation lounge began to slip away under them as her fingers found his.