by Gene Wolfe
“Empathy?” He could hear the fragile smile.
“That’s your word. Sympathy.”
“Before it was corrupted by association with pity, that used to mean what empathy does now.”
A new voice rang in Daw’s headphones: “Captain! Captain!”
“Yes. Here.”
“This is Polk, Captain. We didn’t want to bother you, sir, but we’ve got the numbers from the central registers in that corner module, and from the form—well, we think you’re right. It’s a bearing.”
“You’ve got duplicates of the charts, don’t you? Where were they going?”
“What star, you mean, sir?”
“Yes, of course.”
“It doesn’t seem to be a bearing for any star, Captain. Not on their charts, or ours either.”
Helen Youngmeadow interrupted to say: “But it has to point to some star! There are millions of them out there.”
Daw said, “There are billions—each so remote that for most purposes it can be treated as a nondimensional point.”
“The closest star to this bearing’s about a quarter degree off,” Polk told her. “And a quarter of a degree is, well ma’am, a hell of a long way in astrogation.”
“Perhaps it isn’t a bearing then,” the girl said.
Daw asked, “What does it point to?”
“Well, sir—”
“When I asked you a minute ago what the bearing indicated, you asked if I meant what star. So it does point to something, or you think it does. What is it?”
“Sir, Wad said we should ask Gladiator what was on the line of the bearing at various times in the recent past. I guess he thought it might be a comet or something. It turned out that it’s pointing right to where our ship was while we were making our approach to this one, sir.”
Unexpectedly, Daw laughed. (Helen Youngmeadow tried to remember if she had ever heard him laugh before, and decided she had not.)
“Anything else to report, Polk?”
“No, sir.”
She asked, “Why did you laugh, Captain?”
“We’re still on general band,” Daw said. “What do you say we switch over to private?”
His own dials bobbed and jittered as the girl adjusted her controls.
“I laughed because I was thinking of the old chimpanzee experiment; you’ve probably read about it. One of the first scientists to study the psychology of the nonhuman primates locked a chimp in a room full of ladders and boxes and so on—”
“And then peeked through the keyhole to see what he did, and saw the chimpanzee’s eye looking back at him.” Now Helen laughed too. “I see what you mean. You worked so hard to see what they had been looking at—and they were looking at us.”
“Yes,” said Daw.
“But that doesn’t tell you where they went, does it?”
Daw said, “Yes, it does.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They were still here when we sighted them, because we changed course to approach this ship.”
“Then they abandoned the ship because we came, but that still doesn’t tell you where they went.”
“It tells me where they are now. If they didn’t leave before we had them in detection range, they didn’t leave at all—we would have seen them. If they didn’t leave at all, they are still on board.”
“They can’t be.”
“They can be and they are. Think of how thinly we’re scattered on Gladiator. Would anyone be able to find us if we didn’t want to be found?”
Far ahead in the dimness her utility light answered him. He saw it wink on and dart from shadow to shadow, then back at him, then to the shadows again. “We’re in no more danger than we were before,” he said.
“They have my husband. Why are they hiding, and who are they?”
“I don’t know; I don’t even know that they are hiding. There may be very few of them—they may find it hard to make us notice them. I don’t know.”
The girl was slowing, cutting her jets. He cut his own, letting himself drift up to her. When he was beside her she said: “Don’t you know anything about them? Anything?”
“When we first sighted this ship I ran an electronic and structural correlation on its form. Wad ran a bionic one. You wouldn’t have heard us talking about them because we were on a private circuit.”
“No.” The girl’s voice was barely audible. “No, I didn’t.”
“Wad got nothing on his bionic correlation. I got two things out of mine. As a structure this ship resembles certain kinds of crystals. Or you could say that it looks like the core stack in an old-fashioned computer—cores in rectangular arrays with three wires running through the center of each. Later, because of what Wad had said, I started thinking of Gladiator; so while we were more or less cooling our heels and hoping your husband would come in, I did what Wad had and ran a bionic correlation on her.” He fell silent.
“Yes?”
“There were vertebrates—creatures with spinal columns—before there were any with brains; did you know that? The first brains were little thickenings at the end of the spinal nerves nearest the sense organs. That’s what Gladiator resembles—that first thin layer of extra neutrons that was the primitive cortex. This ship is different.”
“Yes,” the girl said again.
“More like an artificial intelligence—the computer core stack of course, but the crystals too; the early computers, the ones just beyond the first vacuum-tube stage, used crystalline materials for transducers: germanium and that kind of thing. It was before Ovshinsky came up with ovonic switches of amorphous materials.”
“What are you saying? That the ship is the entity? That the crew are robots?”
“I told you I don’t know,” Daw said. “I doubt if our terms are applicable to them.”
“But what can we do?”
“Get in touch with them. Let them know we’re here, that we’re friendly and want to talk.” He swung away from her—up, in his current orientation, up six miles sheer before coming to rest like a bat against the ceiling, then revolving the ship in his mind until the ceiling became a floor. The girl hovered five hundred feet above his head as he inspected the machines.
“I see,” she said, “you’re going to break something.”
“No,” Daw said slowly, “I’m going to find something to repair or improve—if I can.”
Several hours passed while he traced the dysfunction that held the equipment around him immobile. From the module where he had begun he followed it to the next, where he found broken connections and fused elements; another hour while he made the connections again, and found, in cabinets not wholly like any he had seen built by men, parts to replace those the overloads had destroyed. When he had finished his work, three lights came on in distant parts of the module; and far away some great machine breathed a sigh that traveled through the metal floor to the soles of his boots, though Helen, still floating above him, did not hear it. “Do you think they’ll come now?” she asked when the lights gleamed. “Will they give him back to us?”
Daw did not answer. A shape—a human shape—was emerging from the mouth of a distant tube. It was a half mile away, but he had seen it as the girl spoke, a mere speck, but a speck with arms and legs and a head that was a recognizable helmet. In a moment she had followed his eyes. “Darling,” she said. “Darling.” Daw watched. A voice, resonant yet empty, said, “Helen.”
“Darling,” the girl said again.
The empty voice said: “I am not your husband. I know what you believe.”
Daw saw it as the figure came down beside him. He thought the girl would not see it, but she said, “Who are you?”
Through the clear faceplace Daw could see Youngmeadow’s face. The lips shaped: “Not your husband. You would call me a simulation of him. Something that can talk to you; they cannot, or will not, do that directly.” It seemed to Daw that the face, so like Youngmeadow’s, was in some deeper way not like Youngmeadow’s at all, or anyone’s—as thoug
h, perhaps, those moving lips concealed organs of sight in the recesses of the mouth, and the voice, the sound he heard, poured forth from the nose and ears.
“Where is my husband?”
“I cannot answer that.”
“Cannot,” Daw asked, “or will not?”
“There are four words, and all are difficult. What is meant by is? By husband? I can ask, but you could only answer in further words, further concepts we could not define.”
“You are a simulation of him?”
“I said. ‘You would call me a simulation of him.’”
Helen asked suddenly, “What have you come to tell us?”
“That with this”—the figure that looked like Youngmeadow gestured toward the repairs Daw had made—“there has been enough. You have seen something of us; we, now, of you. There cannot be more, now. We both must think.”
“Are you trying to tell us,” Daw asked, “that we could not have worked out a philosophy for dealing with your culture until we made this contact?”
“I can answer few questions. We must think. You too.”
“But you want us to leave your ship. Are we friends?”
“We are not,” the simulation answered carefully, “not-friends.” He lifted off as a man would have, and in a few seconds was gone.
“He wasn’t your husband,” Daw said.
“I know it.”
“Do you trust me, Helen? Will you take my word for something?”
She nodded.
“Your husband is dead. It’s over.”
“You know.”
Daw thought of the scattered bits of rag and vacuum-shriveled flesh he had seen—and not mentioned to the girl overhead—white making the repairs. “I know,” he said.
He lifted off, and she flew beside him for a time, silently. There was a dysfunction in his headphones so that he heard, constantly, a sound like the noise of the wind. It was not unpleasant, except that it was a dysfunction. At last she said, “Was he ever alive, Captain? Do you know what I’ve been thinking? That perhaps he never was. The cabins, you know.”
“What about them?” Daw asked.
“They’re only supposed to be for one person, but you had two of us in there. Because everybody knows empathists have to be married … and there’s Wad—he really wasn’t on the ship either. Are you sure my husband existed, Captain? That he wasn’t just something implanted in our minds before we left Earth? I can remember the way he held me, but not one thing he said, not word for word. Can you?”
“He was real,” Daw said, “and he’s dead. You’ll feel better when you’ve seen the medics and had some rest.”
“Captain …”
“He came in here,” Daw said, “and somehow he realized the truth, that the crew of this ship—whatever you want to call them—was still on board. Then he thought the same thing you did: that he would break something and make them notice him. His empathy was all for people, not for things. He broke something and they noticed him, and he’s dead.”
“Only people are important,” the girl said.
“To other people,” Daw answered, “sometimes.”
On board Gladiator she said: “I never told you what it was I asked Wad, did I? I was asking about you—what your childhood was like.”
In Daw’s mind a voice more insistent than hers quoted: “At the resurrection, therefore, of which of the seven will she be the wife? For they all had her.” But Jesus answered and said to them, “You err because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For at the resurrection they will neither marry nor be given in marriage …” Aloud he said, “I hope Wad told you the truth.”
“When you were in training—I mean, like he is now—you were watching a simulated captain, weren’t you? Was it yourself you saw there, only older?”
“I don’t think so,” Daw said. “A real captain. He was a crusty bastard, but he generally knew what he was doing.”
LA BEFANA
When Zozz, home from the pit, had licked his fur clean, he howled before John Bananas’ door. John’s wife, Teresa, opened it and let him in. She was a thin, stooped woman of thirty or thirty-five, her black hair shot with gray. She did not smile, but he felt somehow that she was glad to see him.
She said, “He’s not home yet. If you want to come in we’ve got a fire.”
Zozz said, “I’ll wait for him—” and six-legging politely across the threshold sat down over the stone Bananas had rolled in for him when they had been new friends. Maria and Mark, playing some sort of game with bottle caps on squares scratched on the floor dirt, said, “Hi, Mr. Zozz—” and Zozz said, “Hi—” in return. Bananas’ old mother, whom Zozz had brought here from the pads in his rusty powerwagon the day before, looked at him from piercing eyes then fled into the other room. He could hear Teresa relax, hear her wheezing outpuffed breath.
He said, “I think she thinks I bumped her on purpose yesterday.”
“She’s not used to you yet.”
“I know,” Zozz said.
“I told her, Mother Bananas, it’s their world and they’re not used to you.”
“Sure,” Zozz said. A gust of wind outside brought the cold in to replace the odor of the gog-hutch on the other side of the left wall.
“I tell you it’s hell to have your husband’s mother with you in a place as small as this.”
“Sure,” Zozz said again.
Maria announced, “Daddy’s home!”
The door rattled open and Bananas came in, looking tired and cheerful. Bananas worked in the slaughtering market and though his cheeks were blue with cold, his two trousers cuffs were red with blood. He kissed Teresa and tousled the hair of both children and said, “Hi, Zozzy.”
Zozz said, “Hi. How does it roll?” And moved over so Bananas could warm his back.
Someone groaned and Bananas asked a little anxiously, “What’s that?”
Teresa said, “Next door.”
“Huh?”
“Next door. Some woman.”
“Oh. I thought it might be Mom.”
“She’s fine.”
“Where is she?”
“In back.”
Bananas frowned. “There’s no fire in there. She’ll freeze to death.”
“I didn’t tell her to go back there. She can wrap a blanket around herself.”
Zozz said, “It’s me—I bother her.” He got up.
Bananas said, “Sit down.”
“I can go. I just came to say hi.”
“Sit down.” Bananas turned to his wife. “Honey, you shouldn’t leave her in there alone. See if you can’t get her to come out here, okay?”
“Johnny—”
“Teresa, dammit!”
“Okay, Johnny.”
Bananas took off his coat and sat down in front of the fire. Maria and Mark had gone back to their game.
In a voice too low to attract their attention Bananas said, “Nice thing, huh?”
Zozz said, “I think your mother makes her nervous.”
Bananas said, “Sure.”
Zozz said, “This isn’t an easy world.”
“For us two-leggers? No, it ain’t, but you don’t see me moving.”
Zozz said, “That’s good. I mean, here you’ve got a job anyway. There’s work.”
“That’s right.”
Unexpectedly Maria said, “We get enough to eat here, and me and Mark can find wood for the fire. Where we used to be there wasn’t anything to eat.”
Bananas asked, “You remember, honey?”
“A little.”
Zozz said, “People are poor here.”
Bananas was taking off his shoes, scraping the street mud from them and tossing it into the fire. He said, “If you mean us, us people are poor everyplace.” Her jerked his head in the direction of the back room. “You ought to hear her tell about our world.”
“Your mother?”
Bananas nodded. “You should hear what she has to say.”
Maria said, “Daddy, how d
id grandmother get here?”
“Same way we did.”
Mark said, “You mean she signed a thing?”
“A labor contract? No, she’s too old. She bought a ticket—you know, like you would buy something in a store.”
Maria said, “Why did she come, Daddy?”
“Shut up and play. Don’t bother us.”
Zozz said, “How did things go at work?”
“So-so.” Bananas looked toward the back room again. “She came into some money, but that’s her business. I never ask her anything about it.”
“Sure.”
“She says she spent every dollar to get here—you know, they haven’t used dollars even on Earth for fifty, sixty years, but she still says it. How do you like that?” He laughed and Zozz laughed, too. “I asked how she was going to get back and she said she’s not going back. She’s going to die right here with us. What could I possibly answer?”
“I don’t know.” Zozz waited for Bananas to say something and when he did not, added: “I mean, she is your mother, after all.”
“Yeah.”
Through the thin wall they heard the sick woman groan again and someone moving about. Zozz said, “I guess it’s been a long time since you saw her last.”
“Yeah—twenty-two years Newtonian. Listen, Zozzy—”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know something? I wish I had never set eyes on her again.”
Zozz said nothing, rubbing his hands, hands, hands.
“That sounds lousy I guess.”
“I know what you mean.”
“She could have lived good for the rest of her life on what that ticket cost her.” Bananas was silent for a moment. “She used to be a big, fat woman when I was a kid, you know? A great big woman with a loud voice. Look at her now—dried up and bent over. It’s like she wasn’t my mother at all. You know the only thing that’s the same about her? That black dress. That’s the only thing I recognize, the only thing that hasn’t changed. She could be a stranger—she tells stories about me I don’t remember at all.”