The Avatar

by Anderson, Poul

  Hours later, he sat in the apartment given him, a Scotch and soda in his grip, and fumbled after a decision. Soon he must join Troxell for dinner. No doubt he could fob off undesirable questions and suggestions, pleading weariness. It wouldn't be feigned, either. Under no circumstances could he be candid. And he mustn't stay here long, caged in outer space while events ran wild at home. For him, the Wheel was bad karma. So if he could structure the conversation this evenwatch, he might elicit clues as to how best to proceed. But this involved having at least a tentative scheme of action, which in turn demanded that he stare down some rather horrible facts.

  A hot shower had washed the sweat off him, a change of clothes rid him of the stench. The lounger cuddled his body. The tumbler was cool in his hand, moist, each sip reminding him of smoke- bonfire at a political rally, campfire in the Rockies, hearthfire après-ski in a Swiss chalet, cigar after a four-star dinner and, across the table, a worshipful young female from the governmental programmer pool. . . . Haydn lilted. Stars marched magnificently across a port in the wall. He barely noticed any of it.

  What to do, what to do?

  Tragedy, real tragedy, a light-year past what he went through as a junior attorney in the Judge Advocate's bureau under the old martial government, helping prosecute malefactors who were actually the products of a society in chaos. They who boarded Emissary for Beta were in their fashion the finest Earth had to offer, gifted, educated, high-minded. He could not even call them rabid technophiles, any more than they could properly call him a rabid xenophobe. He and they held separate parts of the truth, like the blind men feeling the elephant.

  He had to confront the hard questions, though, or stop thinking of himself as a statesman. Which position was more nearly right, or less grossly wrong? What was more essential to the elephant, its tail or its trunk?

  rye seen too much misery in the wake of the Troubles, read the statistics on too much more. He would forever be haunted by a little girl he never knew. A border clash had occurred between units of the United States and the Holy Western Republic, a mortar shell went astray, he as an officer of the joint armistice commission had poked around for evidence of culpability and found, instead, her holding a teddy bear against the wound that bled her to death. And at that, she'd gone fast, in the ruins of her home. Famine was worse, pellagra worse yet. What raison d'être does government have, except to care for people? And who will care for them except government?

  Quick gulped a mouthful, paid attention to it going down his throat, became consciously sardonic. Now I'm quoting Speech No. 17-B. That helped calm him, without changing the facts.

  The foremost fact was that Homo sapiens had no business among the stars. Eventually, yes, when he was ready, then let him go forth. But first he should put his own house in order. One could actually argue that interplanetary enterprises, from the original Sputnik, had been a mistake. Granted, this was heresy. Quick had never publicly uttered it. The technophiles would have come down on him like an avalanche, with their figures of increases in real wealth due to minerals and manufactures, their citations of advances in scientific knowledge and everything that that meant in every field from earthquake control to medicine; and they would have been truthful. What they never stopped to wonder was what mankind might have done in the way of building a decent, stable world, had mankind stayed quietly at home.

  Be that as it may- Oh, damn the Others. If they aren't already damned. They're enough to make a man believe in Satan.

  Helter-skelter, off to Demeter, at whatever cost in work and material, to give new hope to thousands out of Earth's billions. . . . Yes, yes, the investment was paying off, Demeter was returning a nice profit, some of which the general public was getting in the form of higher wages and lower prices-but what about the poor who must scrounge along while the investment was being made? That capital would have bought them a lot of welfare.

  More important, fundamental, unhealing, was the drain on attention. The best of Earth, in ever-increasing numbers, no longer cared much about the government of Earth. They were off into space. Turn them completely loose, let in the Betans, and that would spell the end of Ira Quick's program for a humane and rational civilization.

  He stroked his beard. The silkiness was minutely soothing as he continued to review. His was far from the sole interest at stake. No two of his allies had identical motives. Stedman, of the Holy Western Republic, feared the collapse of a faith and a way of life already weakened by secular Terrestrial influences. Makarov, of Great Russia, foresaw his dream of reunification with Byelorussia, Ukrainia, and Siberia coming to naught. Abdullah, of the Meccan Caliphate, suspected that Iran, already committed to high-energy Industry, would gain a decisive advantage over his part of Islam. Garcilaso, of the Andean Confederacy, had brought his corporation into a viable relationship with its chief competitor, Aventureros Planetarios, and didn't want that upset, less because he would lose money than because his family would lose standing. Broussard, of Europe, talked practical politics, but basically dreaded the oblivion into which his culture and tradition might sink. The list went on.

  Quick halted his reverie and clenched his drink. A realist must accept reality. He couldn't wish away Demeter, the star gates, the Others, or even the iliadic League. Water does not run uphill. However, you can dig a catch basin to stop it. After that, perhaps, given luck and devotion, you can install a pump to force it back where it belongs.

  Today I confirmed my fears. There is no way to make that crew cooperate. I can only be thankful that none of them have the skill to pretend, with the aim of betraying me later.

  They are valuable human beings; and no doubt the alien among them has the same claim on my conscience. We can't hold them captive till they die of age, can we? No. Too many chances for the secret to escape.

  Well, what is the alternative? Release them? That would not only negate everything we've striven for, it would doom the Action Party and every group that collaborated with me. What then of my hopes?

  All right, what are the facts? The Emissary crew have evidently been quite outspoken under interrogation.

  (a) Though the Betans could enter the Phoebean System whenever they wanted, they had no idea of how to reach the Solar System, from that machine or any other. No matter how close they got to the Betans, the human visitors had honored their pledge to keep that path secret.

  (b) The Betans recognized the possibility that contact with mankind might not be good after all, from their viewpoint or ours. They sent an ambassador, who was also an investigator, but would send nobody else to Phoebus. The next step was up to us. If no Terrestrial vessel sought them to initiate regular relationships, they would wait long before they took any initiative. (Quick had difficulty believing in such restraint, till he remembered that he was thinking like a human, not a Betan. Their primary interest in us had a thoroughly nonhuman motivation, and could scarcely be satisfied if they forced their way in.)

  (c) When Emissary left, nearly everyone took for granted she'd be years gone at the least, and might well never return. Thus time remained to organize Earth and Demeter properly.

  (d) They knew aboard Faraday that Emissary was back. To judge by a recent report from Aurelia Hancock, apparently the noxious Brodersen had suspicions, and thus doubtless associates of his did. Moreover, the San Geronimo Wheel contained twentyone men who knew still more, if not all. However, such small quantities weren't impossible to handle. Appeal to duty or vanity; persuasion, of several kinds; pressure, since any person has vulnerable points; and, of course, the creation of a climate of opinion, such that nobody in his right mind would heed the accusations of an isolated crank or two. That took time and money, but it worked. Despite tens of thousands of witnesses, the Western intellectual community did not accept the truth about Stalin's empire for decades, and was slower yet to acknowledge it about the Maoists'.

  Not that Ira Quick meant to set up concentration camps or anything like that. The example merely showed what a strong propaganda effort could a
ccomplish, for good or ill. Mostly a doctrine was spread by people who didn't even subscribe to it as a whole, but simply took for granted that certain key assertions were true. These got into the textbooks.

  (e) The Emissary folk themselves. That was what hurt. Let them loose to spread their tale-

  -for the tale was not merely that they had been there, it was exactly the revelation that Rueda and Langendijk preached-

  -and you might as well forget about social justice. Plus the career of Ira Quick. Oh, my associates and I would avoid criminal charges. We checked the legal technicalities most carefully. The Dangerous Instrumentalities Act gave his ministry broad discretion to sequester materiel it judged to be a menace. The Finalist case-members of a nihilist sect, about whom evidence appeared that they had discovered several fission warheads left over from the Troubles-gave precedent for holding persons incommunicado. While the Emissary matter would bring on a ruinous scandal, he'd be immune from prosecution. . . unless he kept his prisoners too long, say more than three months. Perhaps I could revive my law practice after the furor died out. With the world turned upside down, I suppose lawyers would have a field day. But what would be the meaning of it all?

  Therefore:what to do?

  For the sake of humanity.

  Quick gulped hard. Troxell was dutiful; he had been told that the Union Cabinet in executive session had ordered this arrest. That was not exactly the case. Instead, a determined handful within the government had acted.

  What next?

  Quick doubted that the Union itself, open and aboveboard, could make Troxell agree to a massacre.

  Foul word. For a foul idea.

  And yet very easy to carry out. For instance, by a merciful gas.

  Relieve Troxell's team. Find them individual assignments that will disperse them. Then two or three wholly dedicated men- On my head be it, and the heads of my colleagues. I could never wash clean these hands.

  But that dead little girl. Poverty. Ignorance. The best and the brightest gone off in search of mere adventure, when they could be serving. Is this situation basically different from a war?

  He drained his tumbler and banged it down. I don't know. I must think. Consult. Share guilt. Soon, though, something final must be done about that crew.

  "I do not understand," Fidelio said.

  "Nor I," Joelle answered, there in her quarters.

  "Nor he. The male called Quick h'eh-yih-kh-h-h]. Has he not seen in summaries and heard related what our dilemma is on our world? Can he not realize how we wish to come to you, if you will receive us?"

  "Either he can't, or he doesn't want to," belle said. "It may be too subtle for him. Or-I don't know. I'm not sorry to be as remote from these things as I am."

  Her gaze went to the port. In the crystalline night of space, the Pleiades had become visible as the Wheel turned. In that general direction, the Betans had calculated, lay Beta. Lay three humans whose corners of a foreign planet were forever Earth. "If Chris were here," Joelle said, scarcely to be heard, "maybe she could explain."

  XI

  The Memory Bank

  The sun that humans named Centrum is a K3 dwarf, its luminosity 0.183 that of Sol. Revolving about it at a mean distance of 0.427 astronomical unit, the second p!anet, Beta, gets about as much tota! irradiation as Earth does-more infrared, far less ultraviolet. The orbital period is approximately 118 Terrestrial days. Rotation has become locked to two-thirds of this. Hence the time from sunrise to sunset upon that world is one Betan year, and axial tilt operates to keep the southern hemisphere permanently glaciated. (Precession changes that, but over geological epochs, since Beta has no moon.) There is also a large ice cap on the north pole.

  The slow spin makes a weak magnetic field. Thus auroras are few and dim, sky glow at night stronger than on Earth or Demeter. Likewise feeble are cyclonic winds. However, violent weather is common along the terminator, where day meets night. In the northern temperate and tropical zones, the characteristic cycle is: early morning thaw; midmorning to noon, rainstorms; afternoon drought; evening rainstorms; later snowstorms; eventual freeze and quiet until dawn, at which time new gales herald the next thaw. Life has evolved to fit these conditions.

  It is of the same basic sort as life on Earth or Demeter, proteins in water solution, plants which photosynthesize, animals which eat the vegetation and each other. That is no surprise, on a globe as similar-mean diameter 11,902 kilometers, mean density 5.23 g/cc, liquid water covering sixty-five percent of the surface. Compared to, say, Mercury or Jupiter, the three worlds are practically triplets.

  Yet their slight differences condition the nature and fate of everything that is alive upon them.

  * * *

  Joelle Ky and Christine Burns wandered along an eastern shore. Around them reached wilderness. It lay within fifty kilometers of a megalopolitan complex holding fifteen million souls; but the Betans cherished their countrysides. Indeed, you might never recognize a city from above. You would see a historic core, buildings crowded into a thousand hectares or less, otherwise a parkscape interrupted by an occasional road, garden around an artificial lake, or elegant spire. Most of the city was underground. Even agricul.tural regions lacked the regimented look of human fields and pastures.

  Joelle and Christine had parked their aircar and gone off afoot. The vehicle was one lent them-instantly, upon request-by a local matriarch eager to oblige. Neither seats nor controls suited their bodies, but the autopilot took charge once Joelle had given instructions, and on a short ifight like this they could sit any old way.

  They walked for a while, silent, before Joelle gathered resolution to say, "You wanted us to find a place where we could talk in private, Chris," and wondered why that should be hard. Could she be flinching from what she might hear?

  Emissary's computerman drew breath. "Yes, I did," she replied in her musical Jamaican English. She was tall and lissome, with gentle features and fawn eyes. Her skin was almost ebony, her hair a black aureole. Today she wore a dress whose scarlet defied the landscape. "You needn't have brought us this far. Anywhere beyond earshot of camp would have done." She laughed. Ever since they met, Joelle had envied the ease with which she laughed. "Our hosts would scarcely eavesdrop, what?"

  "Oh, a change of scene," the holothete replied. She struggled to express: You wish to confide in me. My cold self feels the warmth of your need. Do you not deserve a beautiful setting for your confessional? She failed. "I've visited here before. I like it."

  "Me too. Why did you never tell the rest of us about it?"

  "Plenty of other areas are equally good. You know I have to go off alone every now and then."

  "Well, this is right for you, Joelle."

  That awakened an awareness of it, almost leaf by leaf. Habituation dropped away and she felt how the gravity took seven or eight kilos off her Earth weight and altered slightly the manner of walking, of every motion. She couldn't sense a reduced air pressure, but she noticed heat relieved by a salt blast from the sea on her right, and odor after odor, sweet, sulfurous, rosy, cheesy, spicy, indescribable. Surf boomed; wind skirled; a flying creature on leathery wings fluted.

  The sky was deep purplish blue. Centrum stood low in the west, well-nigh motionless, three-fourths again the angular size of Sol viewed from Earth, an orange disc at which she could safely gaze for a second at a time. Opposite, clouds towered immense above the eastern horizon, darkling in their depths save where lightning winked, red and gold on their edges. They cast that glow down onto the ocean, which elsewhere ran gunmetal color and whitecapped till it crashed on a shingly beach.

  The Terrestrials walked above, through bushes that scraped at their calves and sprang shut behind them. Inland, canebrakes rattled together and solitary trees fluttered fronds along thin, wildly whipping boughs. The level sunbeams brought forth infinite shades of brown, sorrel, ruby, apricot, ocher, gold, a somber, Rembrandtesque richness.

  Eight years, Joelle thought. Can I still truly remember a Kansas cornfield, a Tenness
ee greenwood?

  The surroundings fled, for Chris had taken her hand.

  Joelle's fingers replied, shyly, and the two women paced onward. At last Christine said, her tone muffled, "I hope you'll not mind if I. . . unload my trouble on you."

  "No. Go ahead." Joelle's pulse stammered. She picked her words: "You realize, though, I am the last of our crew who should try giving personal advice. What do I know of emotions?"

  "More than the rest of us. Would you stay a practicing holothete if you didn't find that a full kind of existence?"

  "Hardly a human existence."

  "It is, it is. Whatever a human can do is human."

  "By definition, if you insist. That doesn't mean a, an ascetic and a libertine are the same. I've had nowhere else to go but where I am."

  Christine regarded her. "I don't want to pry," she said at length. "If I start that, slap me down, please. But I think you know more about people than you realize you do."

  "How? I grew up in the project that developed holothetics, since I was two years old, a war orphan adopted into a military research reservation. It turns out a holothete must begin almost that early. You were-eighteen, did you tell me? -when you started training to become a linker. My first memory is of being linked. It marks a person." Joelle squeezed the clasp that joined hers. "I'm not complaining. On the whole, I've had a satisfactory life. However, it's not been like yours."

  "Not in the least? I - . . well, you've shunned intimate relationships on this trip, I've seen you fend off advances that weren't always casual, but -forgive me, I do not want to pry. Still, gossip -no, common knowledge, to speak plainly-you've had your involvements."

  Eric Stranathan, Joelle remembered, and for an instant Beta was altogether gone, he and she were at Lake Louise and there was nobody else. Afterward he, a proud man, a son of the Captain General of the Fraser Valley, could not endure the idea of being a mere linker vis-à-vis her (for this was when the understanding of what it meant to be a holothete had exploded into bloom) and bade farewell. You wouldn't have heard of Eric, Chris. You weren't born then. You're thinking of my occasional lovers since, mostly fellow holothetes, bodily pleasure and little else, except, I suppose to a degree, Dan Brodersen.