3xT

by Harry Turtledove

  She shook her head once more. From everything she knew about the Great Ones, that latter image had a horrifying feel of probability to it. She asked Greenberg, "Is there any way to get inside the column?"

  "The Foitani have done magnetic resonance imaging studies that show it's not solid—there are chambers in there," he answered. "None of their machines found an entrance, though, and I didn't either, the last time I was here."

  "Might be worthwhile blasting a hole in the side," Jennifer said.

  "Might get us killed for desecration, too," he pointed out. "They've been studying this thing for a long time. If they wanted to try blasting their way in, they would have done it by now. Since they haven't, I've operated on the assumption that they don't want to."

  "A shaped charge wouldn't do that much damage," Jennifer said, but then she let it go. She feared Greenberg was right. The Great Unknown was the principal monument the imperial Foitani had left behind, at least so far as their descendants on Odern knew. If they'd wanted to break into it by brute force, they probably would have done so for themselves.

  Now the column was very close. Greenberg drove right up to it, halted his sledge. Jennifer stopped beside him. She craned her neck and looked up and up and up and up. The experience made for vertigo. Her eyes insisted the horizontal had shifted ninety degrees, that she was about to fall up the side of the tower and out into space.

  She needed a distinct effort of will to wrench her gaze away and look back to Bernard Greenberg. He smiled a little. "I did just the same thing the first time I came here, only more so," he said. "The next time I looked at my watch, ten minutes had gotten away from me."

  Jennifer found that she wanted to look up the side of the tower again. She ignored the impulse until it sparked a thought. "Do you suppose this is what sets the Foitani off? Maybe it just hits them a lot harder than it does us."

  "I don't think it's anything so simple," he answered regretfully. "For one thing, it doesn't begin to explain why they're drawn here from ten kilometers away."

  "No, it doesn't," she admitted with equal regret. She climbed down from her sledge. "I'm going to look around for a while."

  Her shoes scuffed on the polished gray pavement. But for the faint whistle of wind between columns of the colonnade, that was the only sound for kilometers around. If Gilver boasted any flying creatures, they stayed away from the precinct of the Great Unknown. Jennifer found herself missing birdcalls, or even the unmusical yarps of the winged beasts native to Saugus.

  She also found herself deliberately keeping her back to the white tower so she would not have to look up it. As deliberately, she turned round to face it. She refused to let the Foitani intimidate her.

  She walked over to the tower and kicked it hard enough to hurt. Greenberg gave her a quizzical look, which she ignored. She'd booted the water-bottle the Foitani had given her all the way across her chamber. She wished the tower would fly through the air the way the water-bottle had. It stubbornly stayed in place.

  "As if anything that has to do with the Foitani ever paid the least bit of attention to what I wish," she said, more to herself than to anyone else. With her pique at least blunted, she climbed back onto her sledge, turned it about, and headed back down the colonnade road toward the Foitani base outside the radius of insanity.

  "What are you doing?" Greenberg called after her. "You just got here."

  "I've seen all I need to see, for now," Jennifer answered, "Enough to make me certain I'm not going to turn the Great Unknown into the Great Known by walking around and peering as if I were Sherlock Holmes."

  "That's the second time you've mentioned him to me. Who was he?"

  "Never mind. An ancient fictional detective." Not everyone, she reminded herself, read Middle English—or even Middle English authors translated into Spanglish—for fun. She went on, "Anyway, the point is that I need more data than my eyes will give me. If the Foitani here at their base don't have those data, nobody does."

  "What if nobody really does?" Greenberg asked. He was coming after her, though. The Great Unknown didn't drive humans crazy, but that didn't mean anyone enjoyed being around it, either, especially by himself.

  "If they don't have the data we need, then maybe we ought to think about manufacturing some shaped charges and getting inside the column to see what's hiding there. If the Foitani want to call that blasphemy or desecration, too bad for them. They can't blame us for not coming up with answers if they won't let us ask the right questions."

  "Who says they can't?" Greenberg said. Past that, though, he did not try to change her mind. She wondered if he agreed with her or if he was just waiting for her to find out for herself.

  About one thing he'd been right: if the Foitani base on Gilver wasn't the dullest place in the galaxy, that place hadn't been built yet. The base was mostly underground, which had served it well when the attack from Rof Golan came. It only served to concentrate the boredom, though, because the Foitani didn't seem to care much about getting out and wandering around. There Jennifer had trouble blaming them. Gilver had not been a garden spot before the fleet from Rof Golan hit it. It was worse now.

  Jennifer decided to beard Aissur Aissur Rus first. Of the Foitani with whom she'd dealt, his mind was most open. When she proposed blasting a hole in the tower, he studied her for a long time without saying anything. At last, he rumbled, "I have been urging this course on my colleagues for some time. Some say they fear the tower has defense facilities incorporated into its construction and so are afraid to damage it. Others tell me frankly they believe the demolition would be a desecration. I prefer the latter group. Its members are more honest."

  "If you won't test, how do you propose to learn?" Jennifer asked.

  "Exactly the point I have been trying to make," Aissur Aissur Rus said. "Now that I have your support for it, perhaps I can persuade some of my stodgier fellows to see that it is only plain sense."

  "Or maybe they'll oppose you even more because you have a non-Foitan on your side," Jennifer said, thinking aloud.

  "Yes, that is certainly a possibility. On the other hand, the Foitani of Rof Golan have also evinced a strong interest in the Great Unknown. I would sooner be associated with a non-Foitan than with those savage beings who style themselves Foitani. So, I think, would others."

  That righteous anger, delivered in the translator's toneless voice, made Aissur Aissur Rus seem more nearly human to Jennifer. Preferring the out-and-out infidel to the heretic, to one's own gone bad, had roots that went back to Earth and were ancient there.

  "Let us take this up with Pawasar Pawasar Ras," Aissur Aissur Rus said, apparently fired with enthusiasm. "He always declined my requests when he stayed on Odern. Now that he has at last seen the Great Unknown for himself—and seen that the Rof Golani covet it—perhaps he can be made to feel as certain we can unravel its mysteries as if he were to find himself just within the radius of doom."

  Radius of insanity was Jennifer's term for it, but she had no trouble following Aissur Aissur Rus. She looked up at him. He was staring away from her, staring at an empty spot a meter or so in front of the end of his muzzle. His gaze held enough intensity to make her shiver. She used once more the standard question she'd learned as a trader. "May I speak without causing offense through ignorance of your customs?"

  Aissur Aissur Rus needed a moment to return to himself. Then he said, "Speak."

  "Just—a feeling I had. Were you ever on the fringes of the radius of doom?"

  His big, rather ursine head swung quickly toward her. "It is so. How could you have deduced it?"

  "You used the comparison you made as if you understood exactly what it entailed."

  Getting a Foitan from Odern to show alarm was not easy. Jennifer had seen that. Now she saw one who was alarmed and did not try to hide it. Aissur Aissur Rus's plushy blue fur rose till he looked even bigger than he was. He bared his teeth in a way different from, and more frightening than, the usual Foitani frown-equivalent. His eyes opened so wide that
Jennifer saw they really did have a pale rim.

  He paced up and down the chamber, working hard to bring himself back under control. At last he turned back toward Jennifer and said, "May I never have such an experience again. I knew the danger, but proved to be unfortunate. Most of us may safely work at a distance within my personal radius of doom. I went to discuss some instrument readings with a technician and found myself—"

  He stopped. His fur stood on end again. He waited until it had subsided before he went on, "I found myself filled with insight such as I'd never had before. I knew—I could feel that I knew—exactly how to comprehend the Great Unknown. I started to go toward it, to implement my knowledge. I went by the most direct route. I threw a desk and table out of the way, tried to batter down a wall at a place where no door existed in it, kicked and clawed the technician when he had the ill luck to stand in my way. It took four of his fellows at the installation to cart me back to a safe distance, and I fought them at every step until my mind was free of the Great Unknown's thrall."

  The account of his episode of insanity was all the more chilling because it came out in the translator's flat tones. Jennifer shivered. She bore Aissur Aissur Rus no great goodwill, particularly as he'd evidently been the one who instigated her kidnapping. But she would not have wished on anyone what the Great Unknown did to Foitani.

  She asked, "When you were safe again, did you recall the insight you'd had within your radius of doom?"

  "No, and that may be the worst of it. I still feel that if I returned there, I would know again; I gather others of my kind have had a similar reaction. But none ever succeeded in communicating this knowledge, and I doubt I would prove the lone exception." He whispered something in his own language. The translator made it come out as emotionlessly as everything else, but Jennifer supplied the exclamation point: "Oh, to be wrong!"

  They went to see Pawasar Pawasar Ras, who fixed Aissur Aissur Rus with a black ball-bearing stare. "You have been advocating this course for some time."

  "Yes, honored kin-group leader, I have," Aissur Aissur Rus said.

  Pawasar Pawasar Ras turned to Jennifer. "Why do you take his part?"

  "Because if you really do want answers about the Great Unknown and nothing you've tried has worked, then you'd better try something else. If you're not serious about this project, then you can go on doing the same old things for the next twenty-eight thousand years." She threw in the number with malice aforethought. Beside her, Aissur Aissur Rus's ears twitched, but he kept quiet. She finished, "Honored kin-group leader, you were serious enough about what your people are doing here on Gilver to come here yourself. The Foitani from Rof Golan seem serious about this place, too. So why won't you do what plainly needs doing?"

  Pawasar Pawasar Ras bared his teeth at her. She stood firm, as she had with Dargnil Dargnil Lin in the library. Finally Pawasar Pawasar Ras said, "Had the Great Ones encountered your species, human Jennifer, they would have made a point of exterminating it. I must say I feel a certain sympathy toward such an attitude myself."

  "I'll take that for a compliment," Jennifer answered coolly. Aissur Aissur Rus's ears twitched again. Now it was Jennifer's turn to try to stare down Pawasar Pawasar Ras. "Are you going to do what needs doing, or is this whole project just a sham?"

  "Honored kin-group leader, what the human means is that—" Aissur Aissur Rus began.

  "Don't soften what I said," Jennifer interrupted. "I meant it. If your people were willing to invade human space to snatch me to investigate this thing, why aren't you willing to do a proper job?"

  "As we have noted, you do not think kindly of our species," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "Tell me this, then: Why do you care whether our project succeeds or fails? Indeed, I would expect you to hope we fail, so that you might gain a measure of revenge thereby."

  Jennifer looked at the big, blue alien with the same reluctant respect she'd had to give him after they first met at the Odern spaceport. "You know which questions to ask, I must say. When your people first kidnapped me, I did hope you'd fail," she answered honestly. "I've changed my mind, though, for two reasons. First, digging out the answers you need looks like the only way I'm going to get back to Saugus. And second, I just flat-out hate the idea of any job being done poorly when it could be done right."

  "At last, human Jennifer, you have found a characteristic the two of us share," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "Very well, then, it shall be as you suggest. We shall undertake to open the tower that is the centerpiece of the Great Unknown. Should matters not go as you hope, however, remember that a share of the responsibility remains yours even if, as kin-group leader, I make the ultimate command decision here."

  "You sound as if you expect the tower'll start spitting out warriors from the age of the Great Ones, or something like that," Jennifer said. "For heaven's sake, it's been sitting here ever since the Suicide Wars."

  "As you did, I will give two reasons for my concern, human Jennifer," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "First, the Great Ones built to last, as witness the hyperdrive trap that nearly took us all on our journey here. And second, the Great Unknown remains active at least in some measure, as witness its state of preservation and the radius of doom that surrounds it. Opening the tower will be in the way of an experiment, and in a proper experiment one learns what one had not known before. I will not deny my fear at some of the things the Great Unknown may teach us."

  Jennifer thought about that. A line from a Middle English fantasy writer—was it Lovecraft? Howard?—floated through her mind: do not call up that which you cannot put down. Maybe it was good advice.

  She shook her head. If she didn't take the chance, she didn't think she'd ever see Saugus again. She was willing to take a lot of chances to get back to human space. No matter how big the tower in the middle of the Great Unknown was, she didn't think it could hold enough old-time Foitani to overrun the entire human section of the galaxy. After what Pawasar Pawasar Ras had said, she wasn't as sure of that, but she didn't think so.

  "Let's go on with it," she said.

  "We will need to consult with some of our soldiers," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "They will best be able to gauge the type and strength of explosive likely to penetrate the tower while doing the minimum amount of damage."

  "Possibly Enfram Enfram Marf. He is a specialist in ordnance," Aissur Aissur Rus suggested.

  "Whomever you say." Jennifer paused, wondering whether she should trot out her all-purpose question again. She decided to: "May I speak without causing offense through ignorance of your customs?"

  Pawasar Pawasar Ras and Aissur Aissur Rus's translators answered together. "Speak."

  "I've met a good many Foitani by now. As far as I can tell, all of you have been males. If I'm mistaken, I beg your pardon, but if I'm not, why haven't I met any of your females?"

  "As this question steps along, the claws of its feet press against delicate flesh," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said.

  "Shall I attempt an answer, honored kin-group leader?" Aissur Aissur Rus asked.

  "Please do," his boss answered.

  Aissur Aissur Rus turned to Jennifer. She was ready to hear anything—perhaps even that storks brought baby Foitani from the lettuce patch like so much airfreight. Aissur Aissur Rus said, "I know that in your species, human Jennifer, as in most, gender is fixed for the life of the individual. This is not so among us. During approximately our first thirty years of life, we are female; for the balance, we are male. Thus you will not see females in places of importance among us, as they, by their nature, cannot acquire sufficient experience to justify such placement."

  "Oh," Jennifer said. That made a certain amount of sense. She decided to tweak the Foitani. "You are aware that I'm female."

  "Indeed," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said, apparently relieved that someone else had done the talking about actual details. "You are, however, also of another species. The denigration implied by that far outweighs any relating to your gender."

  "Oh," Jennifer said again, in a different tone of v
oice. The Foitani didn't need to look down their muzzles at her gender to keep her in her place.

  Even Aissur Aissur Rus seemed relieved not to have to talk about gender any more. He quickly changed the subject. "Let us proceed to Enfram Enfram Marf, human Jennifer. He is our explosives expert here, as I said."

  "All right." Jennifer smiled a little at finding the Foitani, for all their differences from mankind, so Victorian about the way their bodies worked. Had she not studied Middle English, she wouldn't have had a word to describe their attitude; the term had not come forward into Spanglish. Something occurred to her. "Did the Great Ones operate the same way you do, Aissur Aissur Rus?"

  "Certainly." Aissur Aissur Rus drew himself up even taller than he was already, a paradigm of offended dignity. "They were Foitani and we are Foitani. How could disparity exist between us?"

  "I didn't mean to make you angry," Jennifer said, on the whole sincerely—she liked Aissur Aissur Rus best of the Foitani she'd met. "I was just asking."

  "Very well, I shall assume the slight was unintentional. Now let us proceed to Enfram Enfram Marf."

  The Foitani explosives expert was taller but thinner than Aissur Aissur Rus. He had a scarred muzzle that made him easy to recognize. All the Foitani seemed predatory to Jennifer; Enfram Enfram Marf seemed predatory even for a Foitan. He all but salivated when Aissur Aissur Rus explained why they were there. "I do not believe it," he said several times. "How did you persuade Pawasar Pawasar Ras to let us use the power we have? I thought he would just let us sit here forever, doing nothing."

  "The opinions and suggestions of the human Jennifer aided materially in getting him to modify his previous opinion," Aissur Aissur Rus said. That made Jennifer like him even better. Plenty of humans wouldn't have shared credit with a friend from their own species, let alone with an alien they'd hijacked.

  Enfram Enfram Marf turned to stare at her. "This ugly little pink and white and yellow thing?" Jennifer heard through Aissur Aissur Rus's translator. "Pawasar Pawasar Ras listened to this sub-Foitani blob where he would not hear you? Our sphere's a strange place, and no mistake."