TOTAL ECLIPSE

by John Brunner

  “Have what?” Igor barked.

  “Uh… Well, wouldn’t a species with electromagnetic senses be very interested in the approach of an electrical storm? Particularly if they were in some kind of shelter, and wanted to decide whether to leave it or not on a longish journey.”

  There was a dead pause. Then, all of a sudden, Cathy said, “Barometer!”

  “What?” Ian blinked at her.

  “Something I found at the peat site and couldn’t make head or tail of: a sort of bellows arrangement, but collapsed.” She slapped herself on the forehead. “Why in hell haven’t I programmed the computers with data about storm-warning devices? Ian, this is incredible! It makes dozens of things fit which never occurred to me before!”

  Igor let go a great gust of laughter and flung his arms around Ian in an exuberant embrace.

  “Very interesting!” Ordoñez-Vico said in an acid voice. “A complete stranger arrives here for the first time, and in a matter of days he makes sense of something which I’ve been assured made no sense. I find that a most suspicious circumstance. Why, pray, have you pleaded such total ignorance?”

  There was another pause, but this time it crackled. It stretched to five seconds, ten—and then Ian clenched his fists, his face as red as fire, and took a pace to confront Ordoñez-Vico.

  “Because, damn it, there are a mere thirty people looking at a whole damn’ planet across a hundred thousand years! You don’t seem to understand what’s involved! Listen! You come from La Paz, don’t you? Right: imagine it without its people. It stands there empty. No one clears that blocked drain. The rains cause a flood. Dead leaves build up in the gutters, they rot and seeds start to sprout, blown from gardens and parks. Weeds blot out the flowers. The paving stones twist and heave as the tree roots burrow under them; grass grows in the cracks, moss and lichens appear on the walls as the foundations of the buildings shift. The glass cracks in the windows, and the rain blows in, and the wooden furniture starts to rot and crumble. Books dissolve into a soggy mess, birds flit in and make nests on the shelves and insects take shelter in closets and bathrooms and behind oil paintings. Fungi move in, too, and creepers, and mould. Wind-borne dust gathers in corners both outside and inside the buildings; soon, that’s also overgrown.”

  His eyes were focussing somewhere far beyond the face of the astonished general, at whom he appeared to be staring.

  “There’s a landslip somewhere. A concrete wall collapses, opens a whole building to the weather. There’s a temblor, and a hundred buildings fall. All that can happen in one hundred years, and it’s only the beginning. La Paz after a century, tumbledown, covered with creepers, the home of wild animals and snakes and butterflies and birds—how much could you tell about the way of life of a human family by burrowing into the rubble and rotting leaf mould, hm—if you were from another planet and had never seen a live human being? Ask yourself that! Here’s a piano frame—but you have no ears, you never imagined music! Here’s a tableknife—but you don’t eat, you only drink liquids! Here’s a sewing machine—but you have fur and don’t wear clothes! After one century, how much sense would you make of what remained? And we’re not talking about a hundred years here. We’re talking about a hundred thousand! Ignorance? Don’t make me laugh! It’s taken genius for the people here to find out what they do know, and it’s small thanks to the shortsighted fools who picked on you to come and pester them!”

  He spun on his heel and marched away.

  For a long, long moment Cathy and Igor stood with their eyes shut, expecting the landslide to crash down. But the general remained curiously silent. They blinked at him. He was very pale and seemed at a loss.

  “Ah…” he forced out at length. “I believe—yes, for the time being I’ve seen enough of what’s in here. You may carry on with your work. Good morning!”

  And he, too, turned away, with slow worried steps, towards the exit and the bright subtropical sunshine.

  VIII

  Now for the verdict…!

  The staff, both those scheduled to remain and those about to depart, were visibly nervous as they congregated at the refectory to hear the result of Ordoñez-Vico’s investigation. The most nervous of them all—and the last to arrive, apart from Rorschach, who was accompanying the general—was Ian.

  He hesitated a long time outside the door, his head in a whirl.

  I never thought so short a time could pack so many impressions into my memory!

  They all seemed to swarm up to consciousness at once.

  Seen from the hovercraft in which they had crossed to the mainland of the nearer continent: a flock of bright globular flying creatures rising to greet the dawn, more like jellyfish than any earthly bird—supported by ballonets of hydrogen, expanding as the day grew warmer and allowing them to float inland off the breeze from the ocean, there to trap blown seeds and tiny insectlike creatures on sticky tentacles by way of food until evening came and the wind again carried them back towards the shore and the tops of the trees where they passed the night.

  Trees? Not exactly. But tall plants with drooping tendrils and many close-set pale green plaques on each that absorbed sunlight and at night shrank close to the stems again to conserve heat.

  On a grasslike sward that stretched nearly to the horizon: a herd of animals related to the vanished natives, draped in loose dark blue or dark red skin almost as thick and tough as that of a rhinoceros, breathing rhythmically—their upper and lower carapaces pumping up and down like a bellows and an orifice at each end of the body opening and shutting in turn—while they cropped the underbrush.

  And, stalking them, a small predator with four incredibly long walking legs and its frontal appendages reduced to a counterpart of fangs: two deadly-sharp horny daggers.

  And on the rocky floor of an old volcanic caldera: a colony of brownish creatures from the same general category complete with their female elders; these latter, huge and sedentary and swollen with their embryonic young, basking in sunlight while young active males brought them succulent branches, funguslike growths and—why, nobody yet knew—chunks of rock as big as a man’s head.

  And at the first site he was taken to: humming machines quartering back and forth on the floor of a pit already some fifteen metres deep, automatically determining with gentle sonic probes whether anything solid lay under the cover of decayed vegetation, then yielding place to the other machines which cut the cover away with high-pressure water jets and gathered it up and brought it to a conveyor that took it over the crest of the next low hill and piled it into a huge spoil heap.

  There he had seen alien artefacts uncovered, not by the score or the hundred, but by the thousand in the course of one single day: every precious scrap being sifted out, labelled, photographed, probed and reported to the computers back at base by way of a line-of-sight relay on the hilltop. Other, more distant sites had to report by satellite, but this was the closest.

  All the appurtenances of what humans would call a city were here: buildings, most collapsed but some still roofed, and streets and roadways; what might be warehouses or shops; what might be a laboratory; what might be some kind of temple, perhaps, or public meeting place, in a complex at the centre with a library—a store of printed crystals—and hivelike dwellings equipped with water pipes, air vents, mysterious charcoal-like bars sunk in the walls; what might have been a market, or possibly a botanical park, for before the site was buried species of plant from the other continent had managed to seed and grow through a few seasons…

  And there were vehicles, or their skeletons, with a wheel at the front and two behind and the space between full of some substance that had rotted very quickly and left only a few stripes of metal to indicate its actual shape, and there were articles made of glass, and many of metal, and what must certainly have been trays and dishes and containers, and what correspondingly could never have been anything used by creatures shaped like men.

  Puzzling niches marked the walls facing the streets. More were to be found indoors
, but these people had never fitted doors, just doorways. There were traces of organic compounds in all niches, but those outside were different from those within.

  So much—so incredibly much!

  Despair darkened Ian’s mind.

  To think that my fit of bad temper may have put paid to all the effort that’s been sunk in the project! Oh, they haven’t said as much, nobody has even mentioned the idea, but—I’m a fool!

  He drew a deep breath, summoned his courage and finally joined the rest of the staff in the refectory. They glanced at him, and a few nodded, but they were all waiting for Ordoñez-Vico.

  In silence Ian sat down, by himself, near the door, and waited likewise.

  All the while he was touring the digs, the general had been quiet and sullen. He had listened a great deal, and constantly consulted his lie detector, but said hardly anything. Three days ago he had returned and called in his spy-eyes, and settled to the chore of analysing their records. Since then, gloom had gathered until it was like a fog shutting out the sunlight; one wanted to shiver even at high noon.

  One or two people had said flatly that even if they were ordered to, they were not going to go home. They did not sound as though they expected to be believed.

  Small wonder. To be marooned with a group of thirty would be bad; with a third as many, or a fifth…

  And here was Ordoñez-Vico in his sprucest uniform, and Rorschach bending like any restaurant waiter to pull and push his chair as he sat down. It was impossible to read any emotion on the director’s face.

  The general looked around the room slowly, his eyes picking out Ian and lingering on him; Ian quailed inwardly.

  And then he spoke.

  “It is time for me to state what report I propose to make to the U.N. Shorn of its details, it runs like this. The scientists here are contending with a nearly insuperable task, but they have made astonishing progress under great difficulties and deserve the maximum possible continuing support.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence. Then there was an almost hysterical outburst of laughter, cheers and clapping. Ian sat bewildered, staring at the still pale face of the general.

  Who waited until the tumult died away, and then went on: “It is, I believe, fair for me to say that my mission was not wholly the fault of those on Earth. To some extent you have yourselves to blame that the true difficulties you are facing are not correctly appreciated at a distance of nineteen light-years. One is accustomed to imagine that modern science is capable of practically anything; have we not, after all, broken through what was for long held to be the ultimate natural barrier, the speed of light? For my own part, until Dr. Macauley painted so clear a picture for me that I could almost see it in front of my eyes, I was not—to use a crude but appropriate phrase—‘feeling it in my guts.’ I’m obliged to Dr. Macauley, and so should you be.”

  Everybody turned to look at Ian, and there was another burst of clapping. Ian remained as still as a statue.

  “I have just two more things to say. First, Director Rorschach has volunteered to remain for another tour, owing to the fact that I must return and will take up space and food and air in the Stellaris. I am impressed with his record of achievement and will support his decision when I get home.

  “And, second”—he licked his lips—“I believe I may have offended several of you. I apologise. I had braced myself for what I knew would be a distasteful task. I had not expected to find it was also absurd. I wish you all the best of luck.”

  And this time the clapping was for him, while he sat stiff and immobile with tiny beads of perspiration pearling down his forehead.

  Then the meeting broke up and everybody rushed at Ian—who fled for the exit and the corridor leading to the seclusion of his room, leaving his colleagues behind to stare at one another in astonishment.

  This was Ian’s door. Cathy tapped at it. Beyond, there was a sound of movement and then a weary question: “Who is it?”

  “Cathy. May I come in?”

  Faintly, music could be heard. There was a celebratory party in progress in the refectory. Traditionally there was a party just before the ship’s departure, but this was for a better reason than ever before.

  “Ah… Just a second.” The lock clicked, and there he was, rather shyly gazing at her.

  “May I come in?”

  “Well—of course.” And as she stepped over the threshold, he went on, “I’m sorry I disappeared; it was very rude of me. But I’d been so sure I’d sabotaged the whole project, and when it turned out I’d done the opposite, I simply couldn’t believe it… Well, what can I do for you?”

  She looked at him levelly for a long moment. Then she said, “I suddenly realised that I want to kiss you.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Yes, but…” He shook his head blankly. “Why?”

  “Why?” She almost stamped her foot. “How can a man be so brilliant and so obtuse? Listen, Ian. What agonies you’ve been through came from inside yourself. Mine came from outside. My brother must have known he was likely to die before I got back, but he also knew how much I’d set my heart on being selected to come here, and he encouraged me and I made it and then, literally within minutes before learning he was dead, I was told that the only thing which might have compensated—being able to carry on with the work he too wanted to see done—hung in the balance and might be snatched away. The fact that it wasn’t is due to you, because instead of being mealymouthed and servile and cautious like the rest of us, you stood up to the general and let your real feelings show. You have a passionate commitment that I envy.”

  “But…” Ian sounded dazed. “But I remember clearly, when you sat down to weep for your brother, I was wishing I could feel so deeply. I can’t. I don’t have any passion in me.”

  She gazed at him searchingly. After a pause she said, “Is that true? I doubt it. I think it’s more that you’ve never had anybody to feel passionately about.”

  “I…” Ian shook back his untidy hair and squared his shoulders. “I guess it could be.”

  “No family?”

  “I was an only child, and orphaned young,” he muttered.

  “That accounts for a lot. But don’t imagine you lack the capacity for deep feeling. You’ve demonstrated that it’s there, even though it may be a trifle stunted. Unless you have any convincing objection, I propose to thank you for it in the nicest possible way. Lock the door and come here.”

  After a long time that passed in a flash, she stirred in near darkness and looked at her watch, which she had kept on.

  “Let’s go and join the party,” she said. “The ship is due to leave at dawn, and after that we shall have more work than we can handle. Come on and make your good-byes.”

  Stretching like a satisfied cat, incredibly relaxed, smiling as though the muscles of his face had forgotten how to do anything else, Ian said, “Cathy, why—uh—why not somebody already?”

  “What? Oh!” She shrugged, her dark hair loose around her creamy bare shoulders. “Well, naturally: several already. Ruggiero, Olaf before he became involved with Sue, even—after a lot of hard work—Igor… But there’s so much else to think about, and we’re not here as settlers, so we don’t think in terms of one-to-one relationships. Besides, there’s never been anybody here to whom I felt I could grow close.”

  “You think you could to me? But you scarcely know me.”

  “I know you better than I did an hour ago, and I like what I’ve found out. I think you’re the sort of person I can go on getting to know better and better for a long time. Which is a fair summary of what I’ve always told myself I wanted.” She patted his arm affectionately. “Let’s move. I don’t suppose anyone is wondering where we are, but if you don’t show up at all, they may get worried.”

  Next morning, when the Stellaris lofted skywards with that strange faint hum he had been told about, but of course had never heard—that vibration which made the very fabric of space seem to buzz with co
ntrolled gravitic energy—she stood at his side, fingers linked with his, and seemed to share the strange, rather shy pride which was burgeoning in his mind, pride that held out the lure of such hope as might make even the most vaulting ambition take on the promise of eventual reality.

  IX

  Cathy’s prediction had been all too literal. From the day of the ship’s departure onwards, he did indeed have more work than he could cope with.

  If only I could have some other brilliant insights now and then, to keep my spirits up…!

  But they didn’t materialise. That wild guess about the weather-prediction machine remained unique and—worse, but unavoidably—seemed less memorable as the days leaked away. True, programming the computers with every known item of data concerning meteorological instruments did produce a very wide assortment of brand-new hypotheses. But that was what they remained. Not one translated into a certainty.

  And for all we can tell it may have had nothing to do with weather after all. Given a simple physical principle—no matter what, magnetism, atmospheric pressure, refraction, anything—one can work outward from it along countless divergent paths. Maybe that bob-hanging-on-frame arrangement wasn’t a tool or an instrument; maybe, in their view, it was a religious symbol or a work of art!

  “Occam,” he kept saying to himself grimly. “Remember the Razor: Don’t multiply entities beyond necessity!”

  But who could say what the lost natives had regarded as necessary?

  A pattern of living and working had evolved since the foundation of the base which he readily adapted to. One thought in terms—effectively—of months, but they were formally termed “Progress Assessment Units.” Each numbered thirty days, of which two at the beginning were spent on travel, to the outlying digs; then twenty were spent at the actual sites; then two more were allotted for a return to base; and three days of intensive conferences with the entire staff were topped off with three days of free time, which, so far as most people were concerned, meant constant debate, an informal continuation of the conferences. To prevent strain building up to the point where people might become stale, ill-tempered or obsessional, Rorschach had decreed years ago that the middle day of these last three would be the one on which nobody, but nobody, talked shop. In the morning and afternoon there were generally competitions; chess, go, athletics, darts, gymnastics, bridge and half a dozen other pastimes were selected on the basis of a computer-generated random-number list. And in the evening there was a party.