“You go around the block all right, but you never go inside the house. What’s the answer, then? Tell me something positive.”
Rankin squinted at Charan. “There is one idea I’m playing with, a kind of update of Hoyle and your countryman Wickramasinge—”
Charan grimaced at Rankin’s mangled pronunciation of the name.
“—sorry. Their ideas cm directed panspermia. The concept is that an altruistic species takes it upon itself to spread life through the galaxy. Hoyle and his
coworker
.” he said pointedly, grinning, “talked about using microbes to kick off evolution on hospitable worlds. It’s really been a bastard child, not much taken seriously. Though I think there was once a semi-serious proposal, seems to me a Nobel-prize winner made it, for travel by sperm-and-egg, a kind of brood starship.” He laughed harshly.
“And this is the best answer you have? It sounds like nothing more than a dressed-up Founder myth. For that matter, it sounds a lot like Joanna’s explanation, too.”
“I know,” Rankin said unhappily.
“You haven’t been much help to me.”
Rankin shrugged apologetically. “You haven’t been much help to me, either.”
“What would you have us tell Earth?” Rankin smiled wryly. “You can tell them for me that the first paper on extraterrestrial physiology is going to look awfully bloody familiar.”
Charan sat by himself for several minutes after Rankin left, then roused himself and quietly reimposed
lockout
. When it was discovered by Wenyuan and an explanation demanded, Charan shut down internal communications as well. Let them wonder. If they were the least bit perceptive, they would know that he needed time to weigh and consider and decide, that even if the decision seemed simple to each of them individually, it was far from simple when all dimensions were considered.
“The others are slaves to their orders and their ideologies,” Moraji had said. “But you must stand for more than that.”
But stand for what? When all interests conflicted, how could he serve any one? And left out of every equation were the equally valid interests and expectations of the Journans. How could he choose? He asked himself, and grew angry all over again that the choice was even his to make.
For he could never forget that he had been encouraged, steered, and manipulated into a position and a circumstance he would never have sought for himself. He was there because Rashuri could not be—an obedient proxy, a strong-backed servant for a grasping, domineering man.
Why had Rashuri done it?
Charan had evolved a number of satisfyingly bitter thoughts with which to silently release his rage, and they came bubbling forth now.
I am your child but not your son. You are my father but not my parent. You gave me nothing and I owe you nothing
.
Why did he do it?
It was a new voice asking the question, a voice Charan did not recognize or welcome.
You made every interest of mine subordinate to an interest of your own. You encouraged me only when it suited you. You mapped out my life for me and offered me a Hobson’s choice at every decision point—take any horse so long as it’s the one by the door
.
Why, Father? Why?
There was childish hurt in the question.
I would hurt you if I could, Devaraja Rashuri, but you never showed your heart to me. I would shake you until you finally saw me as me and realized that you were wrong to treat me as just one more gamepiece. If only there were some way to strike at you
.
And then Charan realized that there was. It was within his power to literally hand the future to Tai Chen or the Church of the Second Coming, née Galactic Creation. If he chose to, he could bring the unsteady house of the Pangaean Consortium tumbling down and laugh while Rashuri cried. By allowing the proper message to go out to an Earth which would be made near-frantic by the silence of
Pride of Earth
’s crew, Charan could preside over the final, precipitous failure of Rashuri’s emprise.
And in the moment that he realized that he could, he knew that he would not.
Moraji had understood, had understood from the beginning.
Would that I could have chosen him for my father!
“Whatever else you may think of him, your father’s vision for Earth is a selfless and noble one,” Moraji had told him. “All of us now entrust that vision to you.”
The Consortium was more than Rashuri. It was Charan’s friends in the pilot corps and Greta at Unity, it was Kevin Ulm who had risked all and Allen Chandliss who had given all, it was a world reaching out for the fullness of life after decades of retreat.
Charan could not condemn all that in the name of retribution. Whatever answer he might find, it would have to allow at least a chance for the Consortium to succeed and to survive. None of its flaws would be corrected by replacing it with either an Eastern tyranny of arms or a Western tyranny of minds.
Why did he do it? What did it gain Rashuri to act as he had? TTie question was as unwelcome as was the answer. In terms of wealth and comfort, Rashuri had nothing as Director that he had not been entitled to as Prime Minister—less, now that he had made Unity his home. He took little time out for what would be considered a personal life, and the example he set by working long hours was widely despaired of by less motivated subordinates. What power he had, he used calculatingly and effectively in pursuing his goals, but never impulsively or vengefully. As much as it annoyed Charan to acknowledge it, Moraji was right. Rashuri had sacrificed much for his ideals.
Including the love of his son
, he thought fiercely.
But now the angry voice was the intruder. Everything that Rashuri had done, had been done because Rashuri held one goal to be more important than any other value. Enough of that goal was in place that Charan was obliged against his will to admit that it was worthy. He would never forget nor likely forgive what Rashuri had done to him, but he could at least understand and to some degree respect why-it had been done.
It was an awkward compromise emotionally, but adequate to allow him to push his own selfish motives out of the factors in the matter at hand.
I must free myself of
klesha
if I am to find the answer
, he thought.
Egocentrism is the enemy of enlightenment
.
But how could he avoid subjecting the Consortium to a shock from which it could not recover? If Charan had gained anything from his studies prior to Tsiolkovsky, it was a sense for the flow of events that after the fact becomes history. In every scenario he could conceive, the Consortium came out the big loser.
There was a second equation to be solved simultaneously: the Joumans. With no more facts than he had, he could not justify a course of action which would have said to the Journans, in effect, “We’re not the Founders, and you were pretty damn silly to think so.” Even if true, and that was far from clear, it was not his place to say so.
The set of solutions which would satisfy either equation was small. The set that would satisfy both could well be empty.
But Charan would not be rushed, would not act or allow action, until he was certain that was the case.
The others waited with some impatience, but more resignation, as one day, then a second slipped by. On the third day they felt and heard the AVLO drive come to life, and demanded Charan explain what was happening. When he would not offer an answer they came together in the bridge to try to discover it themselves.
What they saw was
Jiadur
growing larger in the bridge window as Charan nudged
Pride of Earth
toward the alien ship. He brought it in daringly close, halting the approach when the ships were a mere five hundred metres apart.
“What’s he doing?” fumed Wenyuan. “There is no purpose to this.”
Wenyuan had his answer shortly, when the bridge instruments informed them of the cycling of the mod E airlock and one of the telescanners picked up the sight of the tiny white waldoid jetting toward
Jiadur
. As if aware they were watching, Charan raised one hand in what could have been a salute, a greeting, or a wave goodbye.
A hatch in the hull of
Jiadur
, large enough that it might have been used by cargo carriers to bring its precious cargo aboard, irised open to admit the waldoid.
“He can’t just be going over to talk to them,” Rankin said as they watched the
Jiadur
’s hatch close. “He has the radio for that.”
“So what’s he doing, then?” Joanna demanded.
Rankin flicked a forefinger against the console repeatedly. “I don’t think he’s coming back.”
“That is my evaluation as well,” Wenyuan said gravely. “What do you mean?” demanded Joanna. “Surely you understood it was a possibility,” Wenyuan said.
“Each of us in our own way poses a problem for Charan. He may have settled on a surgical solution.”
“Abandon
Pride of Earth
,” Rankin said, continuing the thought.
“While he rides home with the Journans as a conquering hero?” Joanna asked angrily.
“Just so,” Rankin agreed.
“I don’t believe he would do it,” she said firmly.
“But he is gone all the same, and we are effectively disabled,” said Wenyuan. “We must be able to get into mod E somehow,” Rankin protested.
“How? And what would we do if we were successful? You can be sure that nothing so simple as destroying the terminal will free the control systems.”
“What were you going to do if you’d gotten in a week ago?” Rankin’s face was flushed. “Employ persuasion,” Wenyuan said with a cold smile. “But there is no one there now to persuade.”
Rankin’s face was pale. “So if he abandons us like this, we win the race back, but we can never stop,” he said slowly. “We’d flash through the solar system so quickly no one could do anything for us.” He swallowed hard. “I don’t mind admitting that I don’t want to die out here.”
“None of us do,” Joanna said. “So we had better pray that Charan comes back.”
They waited on the bridge for some sign that would confirm or refute their worst fear. Though all three were in close quarters, they had little to say to each other. Rankin passed the time completing his scientific report on the Journans and their ship, optimistic that it would eventually be needed. When he was finished Joanna took his place and added to the lengthy message she still hoped to send to Cooke and the Church.
Wenyuan sat at his station, rocking almost imperceptibly back and forth, and watched the area on the hull of
Jiadur
where Charan had last been seen. Though his eyes did not wander, his attention did, so that when a line of yellow light appeared, betraying that the hatch was opening, he was not the first to see it.
“Something’s happening,” said Rankin, who was. He allowed only the faintest hint of hope to color his voice.
They watched in silence as the great hatch opened wide, a bright wound in the dark-patterned hull. A few moments later, a small solid object came spinning out of the opening and continued off on a line down and away from both ships.
Rankin moved quickly to track the object with the telescanner node. When he poked the magnified image into the lower half of the window, all recognized it immediately.
“Why throw away the com unit?” Rankin wondered aloud. No one had time to offer an answer before Joanna cried out, “There’s the waldoid.”
Emerging from the hatch was the white worksuit, its four grapples each securing a burden: a nearly featureless gray-white case. Charan was screened from their sight by the cargo. They followed the waldoid to the mod E hatch, where it discharged its burdens one at a time.
“Explosives?” Rankin asked under his breath. There was no answer except that Joanna’s body stiffened.
Charan made a second trip to
Jiadur
in the waldoid, this time returning with three of the gray-white cases. When they were loaded aboard, he came inside and closed the hull hatch behind him.
“Airlock is cycling,” Wenyuan announced.
The intercom crackled, an unfamiliar sound at that point. “This is Charan. I have made my decision, and will be opening the core hatch shortly. Please remain on the bridge. I will join you there.”
Within ten minutes Charan appeared at the bridge passway. “Joanna and I both have reports ready to transmit. When will you let us send them?” Rankin demanded immediately.
“The only report that will be sent has been sent,” Charan said, pulling himself inside. “I’ll tell you what it said shortly. But we’ve some other things to cover first and there’s not a lot of time.”
“Time till what?” Wenyuan asked, his voice a knife edge.
“I’ll get farther faster without interruptions. And remember what I said—I’ve made my decision and I’m committed to it. But you’ll have one of your own to make in a few minutes.
“We camp out here to meet the Senders, not out of goodwill so much as to cushion the shock to Earth their existence represented. None of us knew what to expect, except that they would be different from us. But instead of aliens we found unknown brothers.
“You all tried to reject the evidence of your eyes to preserve your preconceptions. Major Wenyuan, you never wondered—once you were confident that they were too weak to conquer us, you began to look for a way to conquer them. Joanna attributed the surprise to God’s mysteries and so avoided messy explanations. Dr. Rankin wanted Journans to be illusionists, wanted to find alien offal behind the human face they turned to us.
“For my own part, I am content to accept what the Journans propose. I believe we are the Founders. Earth has the ancestors of what became their gelten and our triticum, their tell and our domestic dog, themselves and ourselves. This is not the first time we have ventured away from our homeworld.
“Why we forgot those earlier times I’m not prepared to say. Perhaps there are more colonies. If so, perhaps they remember more clearly than Journa. Perhaps the answers are on Journa herself, though not easily seen by Journan eyes. In any case, it is too early to be concerned with answers. We must think instead of effects.
“All three of you are eager to fulfill the narrowly conceived charges of those who chose you, while the broader questions seem to escape you. What shall we tell Earth? The troth? The Major-still suffers from shock, acting as though this whole affair were of no significance except for whatever advantage might be gained in global politics. The Scion has glibly abandoned most of her heartfelt beliefs and Albert a goodly portion of his cherished scientific troths. Look at yourselves! Look at each other!”