The Wave and the Flame

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  The Lander was now resting in a barren circular clearing, surrounded by a velvet yellow wall of vegetation. The mangled high-gain dish lay between two of the landing struts, five meters of mud-splashed metal, half in, half out of the cooling shade of the underbelly. Stavros gave it a sidelong casual inspection, as if it were old news, though this was as close to it as he had been since the Engineers had found it and hauled it in. Sections of its golden mesh and several of its umbrella ribs had been ripped away during its tumble in the flood. Other ribs had been bent like hairpins, their mesh interstices shredded and hanging loose like dead skin.

  McPherson glanced up at the rattle of cartwheels and freed one hand from the rib she was straightening, long enough to wave. Clausen crouched in the sun near the center of the dish, in a pie slice between two barren ribs, contemplating the stump of the sheared-off central post, all that remained of the receiver mounting. His expression was unreadable behind his mirrored sunglasses as he watched Stavros approach.

  Stavros was disproportionately relieved to see the lean profile of the Master Healer seated beside Danforth in the shadowed Underbelly. A small section of the space had been once more partitioned into private quarters, using crates and storage lockers brought back down from the Caves. But Danforth’s bed had been set up beside the third landing strut, where he could watch the sky protected from the ferocious sun. An arrangement of blankets and bundled tarps allowed him to sit upright, propped against the trusswork of the strut.

  Stavros halted the ranger apprentices beside the cart and eased into the shadow. Table-sized crates were pulled up around the bed, already littered with pictures and data sheets. Danforth seemed diminished, his dark skin almost pare against the thick stack of tarps, but he was busily sorting the pile of photos nearest him into several smaller piles laid out around him on the bed. Weng sat to one side, taking careful notes as Danforth read off time and location from the bottom of each photo. Stavros noted that the Master Healer, seated silently at Danforth’s shoulder, held a photo in his hands which he studied with a deeply thoughtful intensity. Two fingers rubbed wonderingly at a corner of the glossy plastic.

  “The mass cloud movement would seem to be diagonal,” Danforth was muttering as Stavros approached. He tipped one photo at an oblique angle, then grabbed up a second and a third to match them side by side until he had a handful like a fan of cards. “Northeast to southwest? Bearing no relation to the planet’s rotational poles… okay… well…” He nodded to Weng. “Put a flag on Sequence L-Beta 374-29 through 34.”

  He tossed the photos aside to greet the arrival of his equipment with a mixture of impatience and relief. Weng looked merely relieved. She unobtrusively dropped her hand to flex out an attack of writer’s cramp. and Stavros decided that playing secretary to her second-in-command, no matter how much she favored him or the work he had come to do, was not exactly her idea of the first order of the Captaincy. But her usual groundside pastime did require a computer. Stavros was sorry that his purpose required her to remain bereft of her music for a while longer, but meanwhile, Weng apparently welcomed any task that put idle time to good use.

  “Over here, over here,” Danforth urged as Stavros signaled the cart in to unload. Grimacing from the sudden movement, Danforth gestured to the crates nearest his bedside. “Ibiá, pull those over closer. Lay that stuff out on the ground-no, wait, I need that pile! Stick it over here.”

  Weng rose and silently stood aside. Ghirra watched without a change in his pensive gaze.

  “He’s already back in stride, I see,” Stavros murmured to Weng as he moved in to set up the terminal. Guiding the ranger apprentices in quiet Sawlish, he felt like the local repairman from the native quarter called in to fix the colonists’ holoset.

  “At last! A toy to quiet our restless invalid!” Clausen strolled in out of the sun and stood with his hands in his pockets, an avuncular grin curling beneath his mirrored lenses. Stavros watched Ghirra withdraw further into himself, and turned his own back as if absorbed by the equipment.

  “No fresh data until we get CRI up again,” Clausen continued. “A shame really, but then there’s plenty of backlog for you to clear up, eh?” He leaned against the landing strut at Danforth’s side and said, sotto voce, “Six weeks of numbers you read and stored away, Tay?’

  “It was all coming in too damned fast,” Danforth admitted peevishly. “And it kept changing on me. Without CRI, I can’t run the high-resolution models, but even with this little terminal, I can do some tinkering with the input data on simpler models, see what it takes to get them to match the weather patterns we’re actually observing. That should tell me whether I’m right about there being a whole term missing from the big model.” He looked for support to Weng. “Our mystery factor.”

  Weng nodded and Clausen clucked sympathetically, but his silvered eyes focused on Stavros’s unresponsive back like a homing weapon. “Don’t you feel honored, Tay, that our Ship’s Linguist has taken time from his very vital work to do you this favor?”

  Stavros ignored him. Danforth, for his own reasons and to Stavros’s surprise, let the opportunity for a dig go by. Clausen stretched his grin into a jovial smile and winked at Weng. “This’s more time than he’s given so far to fixing the comlink, am I right, Commander?”

  “I was made Com Officer by default,” Stavros reminded him quietly as he straightened to lift the monitor into place. “I didn’t volunteer for the job.” He made an elaborate business of adjusting the screen to Danforth’s convenience, testing the planetologist’s unusual silence. Danforth’s eyes resting on him were carefully neutral. Stavros realized he could no longer deal with Clausen and Danforth as a single entity. The relationship had shifted during their long night out in the storm. Stavros allowed Danforth a moment of honest if unexpressed empathy. Two weeks in the dark with Clausen had probably been no picnic, all injuries and fever aside.

  “Tut, tut,” admonished the prospector cheerily. “Was I complaining? I need something to keep busy with myself until I can get back to the Sled… By the way, Stav, my boy, I hear you’re joining the exodus, and quite an exodus it is, I must say.”

  Here it comes, thought Stavros, preparing his arguments for the omni-precedence of Mission.

  “Mr. Ibiá asked my permission and I gave it,” Weng interceded coolly. “After all, Mr. Clausen, you are the person most experienced with the electronics of the comlink. It seemed most efficient to let Mr. Ibiá get on with his real work.”

  Clausen nodded, all patient understanding. “Whatever you think is right, and of course I’m flattered. But there was also the matter of securing help to recover the Sled.”

  “I believe Mr. Ibiá has managed to arrange that,” Weng replied.

  Stavros fitted the last jack and flipped the switch on the battery pack. His rough-cut hair was drying and falling in his face. He shoved it back, making it seem a gesture of impatience rather than nerves, “I did the best I could for you with Aguidran, Emil,” he began earnestly, thinking how second nature the dissembling had already become. Astonishingly, Ghirra chose this moment to rise and wander around to Clausen’s side of the landing strut, coming up beside him to play the responsible healer who insisted on checking the progress of all of his patients’ wounds. Only the seriousness of the situation kept Stavros from laughter.

  “I got her to agree to send back the extra contingent of rangers assigned to the dairy herd, once the herdsmen have them settled in the summer pastures. That should be as many as a dozen rangers, and they should be able to make it back within, oh, four shipsdays after the caravan leaves, which will be very soon now, within the day.”

  Clausen did some fast calculating, distracted as he was by Ghirra’s gentle but insistent ministrations. “By which time, it will be dusk again.”

  “Late afternoon,” Stavros conceded. “You’ll make it out to the Sled by nightfall easily enough, maybe even get it ready to be hauled out. The night will slow down your return, but the rangers work well in the dark, and you ca
n be doing some of your repairs along the way. As long as the weather holds, you should be okay.”

  The mirrored lenses stared at him a moment as Clausen shook off Ghirra’s hand with a small sharp jerk. Stavros heard a soft mirthless chuckle. At first, he couldn’t imagine who it had come from.

  Danforth?

  Then the prospector laughed also, and pulled off his sunglasses to rub his eyes with apparently amused exasperation. “Well, my boy, in that case I shall have to feel encouraged, shan’t I?” He turned the friendliest of smiles on Ghirra, who waited like a stone at his side. “Are you done with me, honored doctor? I’m quite all right, as you can see, and I really must get back to work.” Ghirra stood aside, and Clausen nodded a cheery adieu to them all, then strolled back into the sun.

  Stavros hoped his gratitude to the Master Healer was clear in the look he gave him.

  Weng stirred. “While you have a moment, GuildMaster…” She drew Ghirra away to her worktable deeper in the Underbelly. Stavros sent his apprentice helpers on their way to return the borrowed cart, then fussed a bit more with the equipment setup, conscious of Danforth’s steady quiet attention.

  “Ibiá,” said the planetologist at last. “I’ve got one bit of advice for you out there.”

  Stavros met his glance and caught the disappearing remnant of a bitter smile.

  “Take a hat,” Danforth advised. “The hardest one you can find.”

  “Mr. Ibiá, perhaps you could be of some help.”

  Stavros turned aside on his way through the shaded Underbelly to join Weng and Ghirra at her crate-top workplace. She had hemmed her space in with tall storage lockers, creating a three-sided cubicle whose cramped dimensions and molded plastic walls recalled a shipboard cabin. The single folding camp chair faced into the cubicle, into the plastic walls, presenting a stubborn back to the hot sun and the dust and the velvet yellow foliage beyond the Lander’s shadow.

  Ghirra hovered at the cubicle opening, uncommitted to entering the angular plastic space. For the first time removed from his own frame of reference and set against this aggressively Terran background, he seemed less substantial, thinner, browner, smaller, yet so much richer and more complicated. Stavros sensed his entire data set for the Master Healer reordering yet again. He noted a certain fragility of expression in Ghirra’s long fine-boned face, visible only when the golden smile had been put away. He marked it for a sign of deep-set doubt, and longed to know the precise nature of the Master Healer’s personal dilemma.

  The doubt rose closer to Ghirra’s surface as he attended politely to Weng’s inquiries. He held a sheet of limp Terran paper in his hand, delicately, as if he would prefer to be without it but had no wish to offend the alien Commander.

  “Mr. Ibiá,” began Weng brightly as Stavros approached. “I have asked the GuildMaster if he would explain in his own language what this is.” She handed Stavros another piece of paper. A neatly drawn but mysterious diagram dominated the page, joined columns filled with oddly distorted Sawlish characters. Jottings in Weng’s hand filled the borders of the sheet. “From his own library,” she added. Weng was clearly excited.

  Stavros looked to Ghirra.

  “I cannot,” said Ghirra quietly.

  “Guild lore?” guessed Stavros. “Not to be revealed?”

  Ghirra shook his head, a mixed gesture of pride and apology. “Physicians’ keeps no secret. I cannot because I do not know it. It is from the very old books.”

  Stavros looked back to Weng. She had obviously received this answer already.

  “GuildMaster, if you will?” She gently plucked the other paper from Ghirra’s fingers and passed it to Stavros for his perusal. Stavros gave it a grunt of puzzled recognition.

  “Periodic table?”

  “Correct. Ours. Can you explain it to our Master Healer?”

  Stavros tried, lacking a major part of the appropriate vocabulary. Ghirra listened impassively, looking very like his stem sister, as Stavros talked of the nature of matter, then launched into a basic outline of atomic theory. Hoping to settle on a viable word for ‘atom,’ he paused.

  “Imael,” supplied Ghirra.

  Stavros cocked his head at the uncommon diphthong.

  “Old words,” Ghirra added tightly. “This is a Priests’ Truth, what you say.” And he continued the explication on his own. His description was highly metaphorical, like a complex tale-chant. The theory contained within the poetry was broadly drawn but essentially intact. Most significant to Stavros, the more technical specifics, such as the atom and its parts and characteristics, were all named in the ancient ritual language that Ghirra had called PriestWords.

  When Ghirra had finished, Stavros translated for Weng, who expressed her satisfaction with a sublime smile.

  “A priests’ truth?” he asked Ghirra. “You do not believe this?”

  Ghirra’s delicate tension increased but his tone remained carefully reasoned. “How do I believe what I do not see?”

  This man has the soul of an empiricist, thought Stavros. No wonder he’s contemptuous of the priests. He handed back the Terran periodic table. “Through this you can see. It offers the truth of numbers.”

  Weng took the second sheet from him and gave it to Ghirra as well. “And through this,” she stated. “In your own tongue.”

  Stavros grasped the connection at last. “That?”

  “I believe so,” she replied. “The more I study it, the surer I am.”

  “From the very old books, Ghirra?” he asked in a near whisper. “And you cannot read them?”

  Ghirra’s eyes were lost when he looked up from the two diagrams he held side by side. “Dho imme rek,” he murmured helplessly.

  Stavros felt the now familiar awe that prickled him whenever he heard the Sisters sincerely invoked. He had unwittingly plumbed the bottom of the physician’s anti-PriestGuild skepticism, and touched belief. Unwilling belief, it was, belief crying out for a more satisfactory explanation, but belief enough to cause Ghirra to stare at Weng with new eyes.

  To Weng, Stavros explained, “The ancient books come from the Goddesses, he says.”

  “Toph-leta,” Ghirra added faintly.

  “Life-gifts,” Stavros translated.

  Weng finally absorbed the Sawl’s now very evident disturbance, but could not be discouraged from her course of inquiry. “I apologize if I have caused you discomfort, GuildMaster. I merely seek confirmation of a thought that perhaps once, a very long time ago, your society was a different one.” She chose her words carefully now, eschewing all value judgments. “It is not unheard of that a civilization has once been more extensive, perhaps more mobile, perhaps lacking the raw materials necessary to space flight but with more time and interest for the pursuit of the sciences. That diagram, if it is what I conjecture, might be seen as proof of this. Do you have history of such a time?”

  “Science,” said Ghirra softly. The word was not unknown to him. Stavros supposed there would have been talk of science with Susannah in Physicians’, though perhaps on a more practical level. The healer seemed to recover his composure by a sudden effort of will. “No. No history. The Sisters only.”

  Weng pursed her lips, disappointed but not discouraged. “The veil of time is always thicker than we hope for.”

  “Weng! Come look at this,” called Danforth from the confines of his bed.

  Weng did not refuse the interruption. She took the diagrams from Ghirra’s hands and laid them on her worktable. “Perhaps we will speak of this again. GuildMaster. I thank you for your time.” She nodded to them both and glided away to answer Danforth’s summons.

  Stavros did not move. He waited. Ghirra was silent for a long time, head bowed, mulling over some private difficulty. His eyes when he raised them were profoundly troubled, seemed to wish to bore into Stavros’s soul for an answer.

  “Ghirra,” Stavros offered humbly and meant it. “Anything…”

  Ghirra considered. “Yes,” he decided. “It is time.” Having made his decision, he
relaxed a bit and let his smile uncloud his face and touch it with anticipation. “Come, ’TavrosIbia. There is a thing I must show you.”

  36

  The cloud bank had returned to shroud the Vallegar in a massive fog as Stavros followed Ghirra up the stairs. The physician was in a hurry, his troubled manner transformed into determination that hardened further with each upward step. When they met Liphar coming down, breathless, pointing at the clouds, Ghirra barely slowed. Turning to run after them, Liphar demanded to know where they were going.

  “Eles-Nol,” Ghirra replied in Aguidran’s growl.

  Liphar stopped dead. Stavros glanced back to find him standing slack-jawed in the middle of a step. Behind him, the clouds had begun to roil and darken.

  “Ghirra…?” Stavros stumbled, moving upward, looking back at Liphar.

  Ghirra did not stop. “Tell him come.”

  Liphar sprang forward at Stavros’s signal, shaken but eager to follow. Ghirra led them up to the second level, then headed out along the exterior ledges toward the easternmost entry. The cave mouth was a small one and deserted. Ghirra hurried up the inner stairs and into the tunnels. Once inside, Stavros gave up on his mental mapping of every turn and allowed himself to be led. The last time he’d gone blind into the maze of corridors behind the main tunnels, he’d ended up at the BathHall. He was encouraged now by Liphar’s nervous bird-dog twitch, as they paced along darkened empty corridors, to hope for something equally wonderful.

  At length there was a door, a low wide wooden door in a long stretch of wall unbroken by other openings for as far as he could see in either direction. A niche beside the door housed a large light station. It appeared to be not much in use, as its shelves were crowded with unlit lamps.

  The thick planking of the door was carved into decorative panels and strapped with thin curlicued bands of precious iron. Its heavy barrel hinges were of hardened wood. The carvings told a tale in shallow relief, spread over five consecutive panels, to be read from top to bottom. Stavros touched the crude granular iron reverently, then the oiled wood. In the smooth stone above the doorframe was carved the wave-and-flame motif of the PriestGuild. Ghirra lit a lamp and held it up to light the topmost panel.