Omega к-4

by Джек Макдевитт

  Eventually, the female love interest gave in to temptation a second time, either with a different character, or with the same character wearing different clothes. Digger couldn’t make it out until the end, when three apparently happy lovers strode off arm in arm. Hardly anyone else was left standing. The audience pounded enthusiastically on any flat surface they could find.

  “Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending,” said Kellie.

  Romeo, Frank, and Juliet, Digger thought. Nevertheless, in his view, a distinct improvement. Digger liked happy endings.

  The crowd drifted out. Some headed for cafés, others strolled into connecting streets. Everyone was on foot. No carriages rolled up, no horses.

  It had gotten late. There was a sundial in front of the theater, but that obviously wouldn’t work at night. He wondered how the locals scheduled a show. When the moon touched the sea? Sunset plus time for dinner plus time to walk in from a half kilometer away?

  Anyhow, he had gotten it all on the pickup. They returned to the lander and sent it off to the al-Jahani, wondering how it would be received there.

  THEY STAYED IN the lander, in the harbor, overnight. It was hard to sleep, because it was the middle of the afternoon their time.

  Despite everything, despite his culpability in Jack’s death and his sympathy for the Goompahs, he had never felt more alive. Kellie had fallen into his arms like ripe fruit, and he knew beyond any doubt that whatever happened out here he would take her home with him.

  She lay dozing inside a blanket while he considered how well things were turning out and fought off attacks of guilt over the fact that he felt so good. It was possible his career might be over; he might be sued by Jack’s family and possibly barred from future missions by the Academy. But whatever happened, he was going to come out ahead.

  After a while he gave up trying to sleep and opened a reader. He scanned some of the more recent issues of Archeology Today, then tossed it aside for a political thriller. Mad genius tries to orchestrate a coup to take over the NAU. But he couldn’t stay with it and eventually ran part of the show they’d watched that evening. The Goompahs seemed less childlike now.

  “The audience loved it.” Kellie’s voice came out of nowhere.

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “More or less.”

  “It was all pretty matter-of-fact,” he said. “Nobody seemed shocked.”

  She shrugged. “Different rules here.”

  “I guess.”

  She rearranged herself, trying to get comfortable. “But you know, if I was reading the story line right—it’s hard to be sure of anything—but I thought they reacted pretty much the same way we would have. You could pick out the villain, and they didn’t like him. They approved of the young lovers. Even if there were three of them. They were silent during the killings. Holding their breath, it seemed to me.”

  Digger had had the same reaction.

  “What did you think of the score?”

  He laughed. “Not like anything I’ve heard before.”

  THEY WENT TO the library next day. It was a battered L-shaped gray stone building set along two sides of one of the smaller parks just a block from the theater. They found a signboard posted inside the heavy front doors. Several pieces of parchment were displayed, on which someone had listed about two hundred items. “Maybe it’s an inventory of the holdings,” suggested Kellie.

  They took a picture and drifted into a large room given over to reading. Nine or ten Goompahs sat at tables, poring over scrolls. A couple more were standing before boards to which notes were attached. (Looking for a ride home?) Another examined a map at the back of the room. A couple of the readers were making notes. To do that, it was necessary to go to the librarian, secure a pot of ink and a pen, and do it right there at his station, where he could watch, presumably to ensure you didn’t have any sloppy habits. You used your own parchment, which was sometimes attached to a piece of wood and resembled a clipboard, and sometimes rolled inside a cylinder.

  Digger noticed that the windows were screened with metal crosspieces and supported heavy shutters. Unlike many of the public buildings he’d seen, this one could be locked and bolted at night.

  There were two librarians, both male. Both wore black blouses and purple leggings. Otherwise, they were not at all alike. One was older, obviously in charge. He moved with deliberation, but clearly enjoyed his work. He was constantly engaged in whispered conversation with his patrons, helping them find things, consulting a wooden box in which he kept sheaves of notes. None of the material seemed to be in any kind of order, but he kept dipping into it, rummaging, and apparently coming up with the desired item, which he would wave in the air with satisfaction before showing it to those he was assisting.

  His name, or perhaps his title, was Parsy.

  His aide was equally energetic, eternally hustling around the room adjusting chairs, rearranging furniture, flattening the map, talking with clients. He had something to say to everyone who came or went.

  Between them they kept a close watch on the readers. Their primary function, Digger suspected, was to make sure no one got away with a scroll.

  Kellie wanted to look at the map. “Back in a minute,” she said. “Don’t go away.” He followed. The map was of the isthmus, and it looked reasonably accurate. The cities were marked and labeled, and he noted the symbols that represented Brackel. The map ended beyond the most northern and southern cities. Terra Incognita. A few islands were included. Digger remembered one, a big one to the west. Utopia, which they were using as a base for the lander, was not on the map, although it should have been. Beyond the big western island, he thought, lay the edge of the world.

  He took more pictures, then resumed wandering through the room, looking over the rounded shoulders of the readers. The texts were, of course, hand-written.

  The scrolls were not laid out on shelves, as printed books might have been. They were kept in a back room, secure from potential thieves. A visitor consulted the list at the front door, filled out a card, and submitted it to one of the two librarians, who then retreated into the sanctum sanctorum. Moments later, he emerged with the desired work. Judging by labels, many of the books required multiple scrolls, but it appeared only one scroll at a time could be had. And, of course, nobody checked one out and took it home.

  The inner stack was closed off. It was a small room, located immediately behind Parsy’s desk, and sealed off by furniture so that no one could get near it without being seen by him. It had no windows and no other exit, save into a private washroom. Its walls were lined with cubicles, in which lay the scrolls. The cubicles were marked with a few characters. Biography, Digger thought. Northern Isthmus Travel. Literature. Mystery. There were altogether approximately two hundred labeled volumes, comprised of roughly three times as many scrolls.

  Digger, maybe for the first time since he’d been a child, took a moment to reflect on the pure simple wonder of a collection of books. Throughout his life he had always had immediate access to whatever book he cared to look at, to whatever body of knowledge he wished to explore. Everything humans knew about the world they lived in was within fingertip reach.

  Two hundred books.

  Literacy appeared to be widespread. The readers did not seem, in any way he could determine, to belong to a higher class than the Goompahs strolling the streets. He recalled the school he and Jack had come across outside Brackel. Outside Athens.

  THEY WERE PLANNING to wait until the place closed, and then begin the recording session. It was late afternoon, they’d been away from the lander for ten hours, and Digger discovered a need to relieve himself. It would have been easy enough had it been dark. Just find a remote street corner, shut the systems off, and go. But it was still daylight. They’d not been using the sacks that allowed one to dispose of waste inside the suit because then it became necessary to haul it around, and neither of them cared to do that. Just organize things properly, Jack had always maintained, and you won’t need it.


  Right.

  Digger was thinking how he’d like to grab some of the scrolls and run. He entertained an image of a group of scrolls apparently leaping into the air and streaking for the exit on their own.

  “You okay?” asked Kellie.

  “Looking for a washroom.”

  “Good luck.”

  He found it at the rear of the building. There was only one for the general public, apparently intended for both sexes. He pushed through the door and entered a small room, equipped with a floor-level drain and some wide benches. No commode. You sat on a bench, if need be. The room was occupied, but only by one individual. Digger waited until it was empty, killed the e-suit, did the deed (listening anxiously for footsteps outside, trying to plan what he’d do if he got caught, knowing he couldn’t just reactivate the unit without making a mess of himself).

  But he got through it okay. Just in time, though. The door was opening as he hit the switch. Flickinger field on. Lightbender on. Goompah in the room, standing uncertainly in the doorway, as if he had just seen something out of the corner of his eye.

  All kinds of firsts were being set here. First person to watch an alien theatrical production. First to visit a library. First to use a washroom.

  He smiled and walked out into the corridor, forgetting that, to an observer, the door opened of its own volition. He realized what he’d done just as he started to close it behind him. Two more Goompahs were coming, one of each sex. The door caught their attention and he moved away from it, leaving it ajar. They looked at it, looked at each other, did the Goompah equivalent of a pair of shrugs, and went in.

  Digger returned to the reading room, found a chair toward the rear, and sat down to wait.

  CLOSING TIME. THE last of the readers was waddling toward the door. When she was gone, the librarians took a quick look around, straightened chairs, picked up some loose pieces of the hard crackly material that passed for notepaper, and arranged their own stations. Parsy went into the back room, counted the scrolls, opened a logbook, and signed it. His colleague, whose name seemed to be Tupelo, put out the oil lamps, closed and bolted the shutters, and retrieved a wooden padlock from his desk.

  Kellie was visibly impressed by it. “They’re not entirely without technology,” she said.

  “No big deal,” said Digger. “The Egyptians had them four thousand years ago.”

  Tupelo closed the stack room door and lowered a bar across it. Digger had feared they might padlock the room, and he was primed to try to lift the key. But it didn’t happen, and he was feeling that he was home free when someone knocked at the front door. The librarians opened up and a small, evil-looking beast was led in on a leash. The creature looked like an undersized pig, except that it had fangs, fur along its jaws and across its skull, and a line of quills down its back. It snorted and showed everyone a healthy double row of incisors. Its master, a brightly-ribboned female, moved in with it while the two librarians finished checking around to be sure everything was attended to.

  “That what I think it is?” asked Kellie.

  The animal’s red eyes came to rest directly on Digger, and it commenced to pull at its leash. Its master spoke to it and the thing looked away momentarily and growled. Then its head swung back.

  “As soon as she turns it loose,” said Kellie, “things are going to get tense.”

  The librarians filed out through the front door. The female looked around the darkened room, apparently puzzled by the beast’s behavior. Digger watched her kneel beside the animal and stroke its neck.

  “Our chance,” he told Kellie. He edged toward the stack room, raised the bar, and signaled Kellie to get inside. When she’d gone through, he followed and pulled the door shut.

  Simultaneously he heard a shout. Then, unmistakably, the beast was galloping across the reading room. They heard it slam into the stack room door, which Digger was holding shut.

  More voices outside. Howling and scraping.

  Then someone was tugging on the door. Digger backed away from it, looking around for a weapon, seeing nothing except the scrolls. The commotion outside continued until finally he heard the female’s voice. Kellie produced a pistol and was about to thumb it on when the door opened. But the animal was tethered again.

  Parsy held up a lamp and stepped into the room. Tupelo was speaking, probably trying to explain how the bar happened to be in the raised position.

  The animal, fortunately, was being held back.

  They looked in all directions. Obviously, no one was hiding there. When the animal continued to growl and show its teeth, its master kicked it. The thing whined but quieted. They dragged it clear, the door swung shut and the bar banged down.

  “I guess we’re in here for the duration,” said Digger.

  “We can cut our way out if we have to,” said Kellie.

  They listened to receding voices. Then came the familiar charge across the room by the little pig, and lots of snuffling outside their door. But the thing wasn’t trying to tear it down this time.

  Digger heard the front door open and close.

  “What was the plan again?” asked Kellie.

  The animal whined.

  “No problem,” he said. “When they come tomorrow to secure the doggie and open up, we’ll just stroll out.”

  The lightbender field faded, and she was standing before him. “Have you considered the possibility,” she asked, “that tomorrow may be Sunday?”

  THERE WERE, IN fact, 587 scrolls. They were tagged and divided into fourteen cubicles. Digger set up a lamp and worked one cubicle at a time, taking them out singly, logging the marking on the cubicle and on the tag for each scroll. When they were ready to start, one held the pickup, the other handled the scroll. And they began to record the Complete Available Works of the Goompahs.

  Digger once again wished he had command of the language, and promised himself he would learn it, promised himself he’d read at least one of the texts in its original form before he went home.

  They were surprised to discover some illustrations: animals and plants, buildings, Goompahs, maps. Other segments might have been mathematical, but since they didn’t know what the local numbering system looked like, or the mathematical signs, they couldn’t be sure (other than some sections devoted to geometry).

  The paper used in the scrolls was of a textured quality, appealing to touch, but thick enough to limit the length of the work that could be placed on a single dowel.

  The dowels were made of wood or copper. A few of the scrolls were contained within protective tubes that had to be removed before the parchment could be unrolled. The printing itself was simple and unadorned. Like the architecture, Digger observed.

  They worked through the night. There was a brief rain storm around midnight. The creature at the door whined once in a while, scratched occasionally, but never went away.

  They watched the time, and when they knew the sun had been up for a half hour or so, and could hear the unmistakable sounds of traffic outside, they decided they were pushing their luck, shut down the effort, and put everything back.

  In time they heard noises at the front, heard the doors open, and someone took the beast away. It protested, the caretaker protested, and there was much pawing and scratching at the wooden floor. And then everything went quiet for a while. Eventually the stack door opened, courtesy of the younger Goompah, and they passed out into the musty, sunlit reading room.

  “I feel as if we owe this guy a good turn,” said Digger.

  Kellie was a glowing wraith in his goggles, gliding between chairs and tables. “If we can figure out a way to turn that cloud aside,” she said, “you’ll have done that. And more.” The library was empty save for the aide. “What did you have in mind?”

  “When this is over—”

  “Yes?”

  “—And we know how things stand, I’d like to leave something for him. He’d never know where it came from. A gift from the gods.”

  “Leave what, Dig?”

&nb
sp; “I don’t know. I’m still thinking about it. These folks like drama.”

  “Oh.”

  “Maybe something from Sophocles. Translated into Goompah.”

  LIBRARY ENTRY

  “Are books important, Boomer?”

  “Reading them is important.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they take us places we can’t get to otherwise.”

  “Like where, for instance?”

  “Like China, when they were building the Great Wall. Or Italy, when they were discovering that the world could be explained rationally. Or Mars when McCovey and Epstein first walked out the door.”

  “That sounds pretty exciting, Boomer.”

  “There’s someplace else too, that’s especially important.”

  “Where’s that? Ohio?”

  “Ohio, too. But I was thinking that it’s the only way you have of getting behind someone else’s eyes. It’s the way we found out that we’re really all the same.”

  — The Goompah Show

  All-Kids Network

  May 21

  chapter 22

  On board the al-Jahani, in hyperspace.

  Monday, June 23.

  IT WAS THE first day of full-time basic Goompah. The change came easier than anyone would have dreamed. Of the entire group of trainees, only two seemed to be struggling with the spoken languages, and even they could order food, ask directions and understand the bulk of the response, comment that it was going to rain, and inquire whether Gormir would be home in time for dinner.

  They’d been speaking Goompah almost exclusively in the workroom since mid-May. And now Judy and her Shironi Kulp, her Elegant Eleven, were ready to excise all English from their vocabularies for the balance of the outbound flight, save when they had something that had to be passed on to the makla. The word meant outsider, she confided to Collingdale. It was the closest they could get to barbarian in Goompah.

  They were permitted one sim per day. But teams had been assigned to translate the English so that even the entertainment was offered in the target language. An honor code was in effect, and violators were expected to turn themselves in.