The Avatar

by Anderson, Poul

  "How do you do, Governor Hancock," she said, not inquired. "I'm sorry I missed you earlier. I was working in the conservatory and didn't hear the chime."

  Or were you stalling me for a half-plausible hour? The tappers report that mostly you do delay answering. Aurie fastened a smile on her face. "Why the formality, Lis? We're old enemies across the card table. And in civic affairs, we've been allies."

  Eyes that were slightly slanted and wholly ice-blue scorned hers.

  "You know why Governor Hancock."

  Aurie gathered her spine together. Fingers found a cigarette. "As you will. If I haven't made things clear by now, no use trying. May I speak to your husband?"

  The Athene visage did not stir more than its lips. "No."

  "What?" For an instant, it was as if the rain outside flowed upward.

  "He is ill."

  Attack! "Really? I don't believe a doctor has visited your place."

  "Do your agents record every detail about us?"

  Aurie started the cigarette and inhaled its rain-defying acridity while she assembled her retort.

  "Miz Leino, if you prefer that form of address, your husband must have explained to you what the situation is. When I requested his cooperation and he declined, I had no choice but to put him under temporary restriction and you under temporary surveillance.

  "Since then, certain phone conversations-yes, we are monitoring. Once the emergency is past, you have a Covenanted right to sue for damages. Meanwhile, we're monitoring. Two phone conversations indicated he was staying put as he's supposed to. It happens, though, the second of those calls came when you'd left the house and evaded the agents assigned to watch you."

  She drove into the woods, parked her car, entered the bush, and lost her city-bred shadowers. Hours later, the tap recorded an exchange between Dan Brodersen and Abner Croft. Hours after that, Lis Leino returned to her car and went home.

  Were both of those talks with Croft faked? Ira Quick has passed on to me a confidential memo about such a system. Leino could have had her daughter take a call; the kid needn't be aware what was happening. And my detectives have not yet managed to prove that Abner Croft exists.

  Aurie thrust her intent forward. "And now, my dear," she said out of her teeth, "looking over routine documents, I've suddenly discovered that Chinook cleared for Sol days ago. I was never informed. The law doesn't require that I be. But Chinook is Dan's pet ship, and Commissioner Two Eagles is a good friend of yours. You understand, I'm sure. I must speak to Dan."

  "He's ill, I told you," Lis, said, abominably cool. "He needs sleep. I will not rouse him."

  "Then will you admit police officers to confirm he's there?"

  For the first time, Lis colored. "Absolutely not. Get your God damned warrant."

  "I'll issue it myself," Aurie warned, "and if he's absent, charges may be brought against you too, Miz Leino."

  Arrogance: "Proceed, Miz Hancock. I will be consulting my attorney." Blankness.

  Aurie slumped. Outside, rain rushed and twilight thickened.

  He's gone, she knew. He slipped free somehow, and boarded his spaceship, and reached the Solar System.

  How to overhaul him? Or how to repair the harm?

  In form Ira.

  She should set that in motion this instant; but for a span, her hand could only bring the cigarette up, to parch her inner lips, and down again. Ira, was going through her, beautiful Ira Quick, you made so clear to me how our first human order of business is social justice, and how the Others and the seeking of them are. . . -like Milton's Lucifer, did you say?- Beautiful Ira Quick, I'll do what I can for you.

  XVII

  A message rode a carrier beam up from Eopolis to a comsat, which passed it on to the big transmitter orbiting Demeter farther Out. Thence it crossed interplanetary space to the T machine, near which Bohr received it. The first part was a name and two addresses on Earth, followed by URGENT OFFICIAL; the rest was in cipher. Obediently, the watchship's communications officer put the tape that had recorded it into a pilot fish, which passed through the gate to the Solar System and homed on Copernicus. The officer there sent it off on a tight beam to a relay station which shared the orbit of Earth and this T machine, ninety degrees from either, and which passed it to the planet. In that vicinity, a series of electronic complexities took place. Eventually-. after milliseconds-a telephone chimed and lit up in both of Ira Quick's offices, Lima and Toronto. Nobody was present at night, nor had he left word where he could be reached. (As a matter of trivial fact, he was enjoying a postprandial cognac with a pretty and ambitious young statistician whose person he would enjoy later on.) Getting no response, the phones filed the message, as directed, in a special playback bank for which only he had the combination.

  It happened that he was in Toronto. He had gone there upon his recent return from the Wheel, taking his family along since it seemed he would be on hand for some time. The necessity was deplorable, of seeing to the national side of his career after overmuch concentration on the international. Winter in central North America felt nastier every year, as if to refute the experts who said Earth was slowly heading into a new ice age. (To cope with that would require an immense government organization. Yet still infatuates of the Others would let people, effort, and resources pour forth uncontrolled to the stars!)

  On the morning after his pleasant occasion, a blizzard shrieked down from the tundras and blinded his city in flying white. Commitments demanded he go to his headquarters. Not even full length hologramy with stereo sound was always a substitute for shaking the hand of a humble constituent or lunching with an important one. From the hotel he could easily have shuttled underground to the Churchill Building; but first he must seek his place in the suburbs for a change of clothes. He'd considered renting a room downtown against these frequent contingencies, but decided not to. If word ever got out, there might be jokes about it.

  His wife gave him breakfast and no questions. He gave her a nice big kiss before he left. She deserved it. Alice McDonough was not only a niece of the man who reunified Canada after the Troubles, and thus a nexus of priceless political connections; she was attractive, an excellent hostess, the mother of his three sons, and devoted to him. . . or, at least, possessed of the decency to keep her outbursts private between them.

  His car battled its way toward the capitol complex. Wind yelled and buffeted it, snow streamed around the canopy, cold crept in past the heater. He felt irrationally glad to enter the parking garage; the storm roused primitive terrors in him. Greeting his employees as genially as usual, he proceeded to his inner office and switched the giant viewscreen from a direct look outside to a recording of a Hawaiian beach.

  Now the environment felt good: warm scene full of blue and white and surf-boom; comfortable chair; broad, solid, fully instrumented desk; carpet soft underfoot after he'd doffed his shoes; autographed pictures of celebrities, original cartoons, honorary diplomas, certificates of membership, framed letters, each a sign of esteem and affection. The work ahead of him, if less important than what he did for the Union, had its own fascination. Last night lingered piquant in awareness. "Ah-h-h," he murmured, smiled, and activated the phone playback.

  A red light flashed. What the hell? He jabbed the number sequence required. The screen lit with his name and Aurelia Hancock's return address. His heart lurched. He pressed for the next frame, saw gibberish identified by a number, and brought in the appropriate decoding program. Plain English appeared.

  Dear Ira,

  I pray this isn't terrible news, and you get it in time to do whatever you judge best. You remember about Daniel Brodersen, don't you? Reference: could have summoned the file of correspondence forth, but felt no need. It remained vivid in his mind how he had approved Hancock's suggestion of shutting that troublemaker up. Well, I've discovered he's escaped and is on his way to Earth. There's a full-powered surveillance on Brodersen and each member of his gang from the moment they landed, or from this hour if they had already done so. (Wha
t a damnable uncertainty! The time when a vessel emerged from a gate, as measured at that end, bore only a loose relationship to the time when she had entered it at the other end, presumably because of variations in the path she followed around the T machine. None had yet arrived ahead of her pilot fish, but some had been very close behind, and some as much as three days late.) He could commandeer the North American secret service -or rather, several well-chosen agents thereof- through the same channels as he'd used to get cooperation about Emissary.

  Yes, watch Brodersen and see what happened, what might be learned. But the instant any of them tried to get hold of the Ruedas, grab him and his whole bunch. A warrant for their arrest was among the contents of Hancock's message. They could join the prisoners in the Wheel, to share whatever disposition was made of those.

  Quick turned to other matters. After an hour, his chief of staff called in. Chauveau looked worried. "Sir, about the Chinook spacecraft," he said. "She's overdue, and hasn't sent any word, either."

  "What?" Quick clutched the arms of his chair. "Isn't Traffic Control interested?"

  "I didn't know their exact routine or whom to query at the Astronautical Control Board, and it took a while to find out. Seems that when a vessel enters the Solar System, the watchship beams her flight plan to her destination-in this case, Earth-but that simply goes into the data bank. They think anything more would be complicated and unnecessary, because a ship forced to change plans can always notify one of the stations that take emergency calls.

  "Well, this person I got hold of retrieved the record for me, which said Chinook ought to have made Earth orbit yesterday. Next she checked with Traffic Control, then with its Iliadic opposite number, and-well, in short, boss, nobody knew anything. My contact is quite concerned, but I managed to make her wait -hinting at a special mission which may have developed a slight hitch-wait before alerting the Safety Division. She won't for long, I'm afraid."

  "Good man," Quick said with an extra dose of warmth. Through him flared a hope. The one-in-a-million accident, that's never happened yet, did happen, and destroyed them. He rallied his wits. No.

  "What shall we do, sir?" Chauveau asked.

  Quick's mind sprinted. None of the staff knew why he was concerned. To pursue the matter as hard as was needful, he must give out a story. He had one prepared by now.

  Donning his most serious demeanor, he said, "Jacques, this is strictly confidential, and perhaps I shouldn't tell you at all. But I trust you, and I want you to feel motivated. You know about discontent growing on Demeter, complaints, formal protests and petitions, a couple of actual riots." Mainly, colonial businesses object to paying taxes to their mother countries and the Union-claim they're getting almost nothing in return-as if they weren't still part of humanity and obligated to help their less fortunate brethren. . . . No need to preach the gospel to yourself, Ira Quick! And I must admit a few gripes are legitimate. The government has not been as solicitous of their welfare as it should be. "What's not been publicized is the development of out-and-out revolutionary sentiment, gradually moving from seditious talk toward action." Not strictly a lie. I am anticipating what I fear may someday come true if the right people don't stay alert and in control. "Oh, among a tiny minority so far, of course. But you know what damage a few terrorists can do.

  "Governor Hancock has warned me that the owner-captain of Chinook may be involved and may have come here for no innocent purpose. She approached me rather than anybody else because we are close political associates, you know, and she relies on me to proceed cautiously. Remember, she has no firm proof against this Brodersen. He could be honest. False arrest would provoke more antagonism back there, as well as violating his rights."

  Quick combed fingers through his beard. "His behavior does look suspicious, though, eh?" he finished. "Let's start by finding out where he is."

  "I'd better put you in touch with Assistant Commissioner Palamas, the person I spoke to on the Board," Chauveau said.

  "Yes. While I talk to her, establish standby connections with-"

  Quick named them. A few had helped him take the initiative of sequestering Emissary. More knew nothing about that, but one way or another could be persuaded to exert their influence in useful directions, without requiring much elaboration of his story.

  They trusted him, or owed him for past favors, or would be glad to put him in their own debt. Between them, they wielded considerable power.

  His conversation with Palamas proved satisfactory. She'd instigate a search, System-wide if necessary, and report the results straight back to him.

  After that, however, the hours set in like gnawing rats.

  Those reaches out yonder, hundreds of millions upon hundreds of millions of kilometers, were not exactly patrolled. Here and there-on ships, moons, asteroids, manmade stations-were powerful radars or other instruments such as multiplying spectrometers, mostly for scientific purposes. They could be pressed into service, but that could not be done in a fingersnap, the more so when goodly fractions of an hour often must pass between message and response. And then they must sweep across distances more enormous yet, through degree after degree of arc, while time bled away.

  Quick had a gut-old idea where Chinook probably was. He hadn't dared do more than suggest it to Palamas, hinting that the studies going on at the San Geronimo Wheel were more important than the government had indicated and it would be too bad if an ion trail disrupted them. He could but hope that somebody out in space would agree, and would be in a position to check. It would certainly not be wise to communicate directly with Troxell.

  Somehow he lasted out the day, shook the humble hand, congratulated the scholarship winner, conferred about strategy for the next election over a lunch that he even noticed dimly was excellent, coped with assorted desk business, kept a drumhead affability stretched across his face. At seventeen hundred hours he called Alice to say he wouldn't be home that evening either.

  "Working late, may be all night," he explained.

  "Yes," she said tonelessly.

  Her look pains me. I am a compassionate man. "Truth," he said. "Call me back later if you don't believe it."

  "Why?" she sighed.

  He frowned. "Are you getting depressed again, dear? I've told you over and over that simply because my job requires me to move around a lot, you shouldn't stay in the house and mope.

  You need to develop outside interests, activities-"

  "You told me not to join the Galaxy Club, they're too much a pressure group for interstellar exploration. I was loyal and didn't. Now I've reached my limit of things you do want me to belong to."

  "Hey, let's not start fighting."

  "Oh, no. My problem is I love you." Her voice still sounded flat and tired. "And the kids. I think they need some protection I can give them. Have you ever speculated what kind of love relationships the Others have?"

  Pricked, he snapped, "I've heard fifty thousand speculations about everything conceivable concerning the damned Others- and claims of contact, creeds, crankeries, bad songs, worse writings, never a bloody thing constructive, never anything but avoidance of our proper human business."

  "Goodnight, Ira," she said and broke the circuit.

  He rolled his eyes ceilingward. "God, give me strength, if You exist," he declaimed, "and if You don't, do it anyway, huh?"

  Preparations soothed him a trifle, as they might a dog turning around before lying down in the grass. This wasn't his first vigil here, and the place was equipped for it. In theory he could manage everything from his house. In practice that required interconnections-for example, to special data systems-which would be expensive to install and imperfectly secure. He sent out for dinner, made the couch into a bed, loosened his clothes, settled full length in the embrace of a lounger, and considered what entertainment to screen. Maybe a classic book he'd always meant to read or a classic show he'd always meant to see? No, he was too tightly wound. Either mindless relaxation or else an affirmation, playing back one of the noble speeches
by the founders of the Party-or, wait, why not a couple of his own addresses, to study the form and possibly find details to improve? He reached for the retrieval control.

  His phone chimed.

  He was halfway out of the lounger before he had brought himself back down into calm. And still he sweated and shivered underneath.

  "I've finally heard," Palamas said. Background indicated she was calling from her apartment or whatever it was. "They appear to have located Chinook, approaching the Wheel from the far side."

  Brodersen, may his figurative soul burn forever in mythical hell, guessed-"What precisely is your information, please?"

  According to her answer, the probability looked high. A metallic object of about the right size had been detected at the edge of the forbidden zone. It was inbound, currently under low acceleration or none. A couple of days earlier, a Solar weather monitor had happened to record a jet trail outbound along what would be an appropriate path. The facts all pointed to Chinook's having made for the vicinity of the San Geronimo Wheel, coasting by, using enough boost to swing around and get aimed sunward again, coasting once more (for a better look), presumably soon to accelerate for Earth at a full gee and arrive with whatever yarn her crew had concocted. No, arrive with a broadcast that thousands of receivers will pick up, as soon as she's in range.

  "I expect we can reach her," Palamas said. "Lasers might miss, but if her radio is open as regulations require, she ought to hear a strong signal."