Fire Time (17 page)

‘That isn’t the point!’ she flared. ‘Your wretched base–’

She broke off and he stepped quickly into the gap. ‘The base is a detail, important here but still a detail. If it were cancelled, you would become able to do certain things. Nevertheless the war would go on engaging resources and shipping you need for most of your projects. Engaging them for the sake of humans who can hurt just as badly as Ishtarians.’

‘Well, I don’t know.’ She stared past him, into darkness. ‘Are we obliged to bail out the Eleutherians? Would we need that “balance of power” you say is our real reason, if we hadn’t first encouraged and then underwritten their land grab?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I only know, here we’re letting a chance – purely from a selfish, practical viewpoint we’re throwing away a chance at knowledge that could make as big a difference to us as, oh, molecular biology.’

From the corner of her eye she saw him frown; but she felt he was as relieved as she at this way to steer clear of a partisan fight. ‘M-m-m, I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘I’ take your word for it that the Ishtarians have done unique things, sociologically. Yet how relevant can their experiences ever be to us?’

‘No telling till we’ve tried. But I’m talking about straight biology. Look, what do you imagine it was like to live in a world where people got cancer? Or any of those foul things we tossed out after we understood our cell chemistry?
Our
chemistry. Since, we’ve begun getting in-depth knowledge – barely begun – knowledge of extraterrestrial life. I’ll bet it brings on a, an Einsteinian revolution in Terrestrial biology too. And one of the most enlightening cases is right here on Ishtar. Maybe solitary in the universe.’

‘You … your research needn’t be affected by the war, Jill.’

‘I doubt if mine matters – natural history, and in the most Earth-similar parts of the planet. No, I mean T-life. And to study T-life, we have got to get safe, steady, large-scale access to Valennen. Now the Gathering is in danger of losing Valennen. My honorary uncle Larreka’s been in charge there; he’s come down to plead for help in keeping a foothold–’ She turned her gaze full upon him. ‘How do you like that, Captain Dejerine? A possible rebuilding of all our ideas about how life can work – possible immortality for man, or you name it – in the hands of one battered old legionary mudfoot!’

‘I don’t quite follow you,’ he said softly, ‘I will be happy to hear you explain.’

Surprise jolted her. In their encounters hitherto, he had shown he’d done his homework. His questions were well informed and he needed answers less elaborate than she had given him at first. Why this sudden ignorance?

A put-on, to make me enthusiastic and jolly again?
she wondered.
And if so, for what purpose, plain good-heartedness or–?
–
He must know women the way he knows orbits. Or, anyhow, better’n any other man I’ve ever met does. For
sure better’n I know men. Not that that’s saying a valwas of a lot.

In the warm and fragrant star-dusk he sat at ease, glass in his experienced right hand, cigar in the left, cordial but with a hint of the mysterious; and, holy Darwin, was he handsome! Her heart knocked.

No, I am not falling in love, I am not, I insist I am not. Though scientific objectivity compels me to note that it wouldn’t be hard to do. Have an affair, at least. Which might or might not lead to, well, permanency. … No. A hairybrained notion. What kind of Navy wife would I make, or Primaveran settler he? An affair–

Her few men flickered before her. Not the boyfriends earlier; they and she were merely part of a group who styled themselves the Cartesian Divers, were considered wild in their staid community but really only dashed around at high speeds, did breakneck things in the outback, drank and smooched less than they sang rowdy songs, and rowdy songs less than ballads which filled them dripful of what today she called Weltschmalz; looking back, she saw that the boy Divers had been a tad scared of her, and maybe she of them. … Probably they’d prepared her to cannonball herself at Kimura Senzo when she was seventeen, Earthside eighteen. And for the two years he was here on his research grant, it had been a wholly beautiful, terrible, heavenly, hellish, shameless, furtive, merry, sorrowful, tender, angry, rainbow-colored lightning-colored thing they stole by divine right: and it wouldn’t have been what it was if he weren’t the kind who after she made him surrender, kept warning that in the end he would go home to his wife because he’d have deprived their little girl of her daddy too long as it was – and then did. … She got over it in a couple of years. The three romps since were exactly that, fun, friendship, appeasement of the body for a while, though not for very long because Primavera
was
staid and she didn’t want several people she liked to find out and be antagonized.

Ian– Well, I’ve never been sure, and besides, poor Rhoda–

Jillian Eva Conway,
she said in Larreka’s voice,
get your tail down! This man is the enemy, remember? A nice fellow, probably, but the object of the game is for you to seduce his mind.

An irresistible image intruded, of one brain sexily rippling its cortex at another. She giggled. ‘Pardon?’ asked Dejerine.

‘Nothing,’ she answered in haste. ‘A stray thought. Unlicensed.’

He gave her a quizzical regard. ‘If you would rather not talk science, I don’t mind discussing my personal magnificence. However, I really would like to know what you mean about the, the T-life.’

‘Oh. Yes.’ She relaxed
(sort of)
and took a sip of cognac. It slid ardently over tongue and palate. ‘Short for “Tammuz-descended life.” As distinguished from what we call “ortho-Ishtarian”, the life that originated here. You must know – I know you do, but I’ll repeat to make sure we’re using the same terms – Anu has a planet which is, or was, terrestroid, and about a billion years ago had evolved a sentient species. When their sun started ballooning, we think they tried to plant a colony on Ishtar.’

Dejerine raised his brows. ‘You think? My sources took that for granted.’

‘It’s theory.’ Jill shrugged. ‘After a billion years, what physical evidence is left? I must lend you some stuff on what the archeologists have done on Tammuz. Fascinating reading, if occasionally grim.’ She refreshed herself again. ‘In our style of thinking, it is reasonable to suppose the Tammuzians developed an interplanetary transport capability and tried to colonize Ishtar. Not all of them, that’d doubtless have been impossible, and Lord knows what epics of endurance the mother world saw while its sun slowly roasted it to death. We presume they hoped to save a few, who’d give the race a fresh start.’

‘Let me see if I have the facts correctly,’ Dejerine said. ‘Because Ishtar had already developed an incompatible biochemistry, they sterilized a large island and seeded it with their kind of life. The effort proved too great, or perhaps the
survival margin was too small. At any rate, the colonists died out, and the plants and animals they had introduced. Microscopic forms did come through, did establish an ecology and in time evolved new multicellular species. Do I have it right?’

‘You have the most popular theory right,’ Jill replied. ‘It’s certainly colored our notions here on Ishtar. Countless bad poetry, songs, science fiction plays for our amateur theater. … But it’s a theory, I say. Maybe Tammuzian spores were borne here by meteoroids. Maybe the sophonts rocketed spores here on purpose, for some weird reason. Maybe simple exploring expeditions of theirs happened to leave bits of life which survived. After all, a Tammuzian bug wouldn’t be edible to the local microfauna. Or maybe the sophonts did start their colony, and then discovered how to use Mach’s Principle – we did long before we’d’ve been able to mount that kind of interplanetary effort – and their whole race went whooping off into the galaxy. Maybe they’re still around, away out yonder, a billion years ahead of us.’ The lightness departed from her. She raised her face to the stars, where they glinted in their secret hordes, and whispered, ‘Now do you see? Even the archeologists aren’t necessarily turning over dry bones.’

She thought from his voice that the spaceman felt a tinge of the same frosty awe. ‘A big idea. Too big for us.’

She regained a matter-of-fact tone: ‘Plenty of theories, yes. The data they try to account for are fewer. First, on this planet Ishtar with its otherwise pretty terrestroid biochemistry, there occurs T-life: also built out of proteins in water solution, et cetera, but too alien to have developed here, since it is in the minority. Uses dextro amino acids, levo sugars, where we and the ortho-Ishtarians are the exact opposite – to name only a couple of the differences, and say nothing about those we haven’t yet identified.

‘Second, the planet Tammuz is dead, but fossil traces and suchlike clues show it did once carry T-life.

‘Third, on Ishtar T-life is fairly well confined to Valennen. The northern three quarters, at that. It does spill into the rest of the continent and nearby islands, but there it has
to be sympatric – share the range with ortho-life, which dominates. This suggests northern Valennen was the original site, a big island that later collided with another to form the land mass we know. Before, it was isolated, giving T-life a sanctuary to evolve in. Hence the notion that long ago, would-be colonists sterilized and re-seeded it. But we haven’t any solid proof. That’s unknown territory.’

She took a further drink, feeling the glow in her stomach – and, yes, in her heart, at his look of shared excitement.

‘Unknown, after a hundred years of man on Ishtar?’ he wondered. Before she could explain: ‘I see. Orbital surveys, cursory overflights, landings almost at random, samples, specimens, yes. But nothing more. You have had too much else to do.’

Jill nodded. ‘Right. Nobody’s lacked for projects in the ortho sections. Nor will they for decades to come.

‘But we have been accumulating a little knowledge, in the interzone of South Valennen. We’ve started learning something about T-life. And, if the Gathering can be saved, we’ve got the support base for a really massive attack on the riddles further north.’

In unwonted earnestness, she continued: ‘Don’t you see, this makes Ishtar directly valuable to Earth? Sure, I know about planets that carry analogues of T-life. But they have nothing else! Nothing we can eat, for openers, no chance for a base to practice agriculture, in a not-too-different surrounding ecology; no strong civilization of highly intelligent beings eager to help. Everywhere else, everybody who wants to study our biochemical mirror image in action, has to do it at the end of a long, thin, expensive supply line. Here it’s a matter of an aerial hop.

‘And then there’s that absolutely unique interzone.’

‘Interzone,’ Dejerine said. ‘I take it you mean where the ranges of ortho- and T-life overlap?’

‘What else?’ Jill answered. ‘In a way, it covers the whole planet. The theroids incorporate a few T-microbes into their symbioses, and that alone is worth learning more about. But only in the South Valennen area do you get interaction between
metazoans, or higher plants, or oddball things that we don’t yet know quite which what are.’

Dejerine blinked, then laughed. ‘You win.’

She grinned back. Two distinct ecologies, neither able to exploit the other. At least not till the ortho-sophonts came along. The phoenix tree is valued for more than being hardwood. Once out of the interzone, that lumber doesn’t rot nohow. There’ve been attempts to raise it nearer home, but none succeeded. Likewise for a few more T-species, plus ortho-species and minerals – plenty reason for the Gathering to want to be present in Valennen.

‘But otherwise, well, very limited interaction. Plants crowd rival plants out of soil and sunlight, and so restrict the scope of animals. Possibly lia is the main barrier to T-life spreading further than it has. Animals … no mutual nourishment, so as a rule the two kinds simply don’t bother each other.’

He startled her by obviously quoting: ‘What, never?’

‘Hardly ever,’ she warbled back, maybe startling him in turn.

‘Actually,’ she added, ‘what interaction does go on is cooperative, as far as we know – though we know itchingly little.’ She combed fingers through a strand of hair. ‘Um-m-m … let me give you an example. I’ll change the names to those of Earth types, to help you keep ’em straight, and bear in mind, the real critters are small.’ In a high-pitched singsong:

‘See the ferocious tiger. See the fat, juicy antelope. Is the tiger going to jump on the antelope? No, the tiger is not going to jump on the antelope. The tiger does not think the antelope is fit to eat. But see the tiger watch the antelope. The tiger knows the antelope has very fine eyes and a very fine nose. See the antelope peer. See the antelope sniff. See the antelope gallop off. See the tiger follow. The antelope locates a herd of deer. The tiger can eat deer. The tiger does eat a deer. The antelope is a fink. See the leopard. Leopards like antelope steak. See the tiger chase away the leopard. The tiger is a goon. Children, this is called co-operation.’

Jill tossed off the rest of her brandy. Dejerine moved to pour her a refill. ‘After all that lecturing.’ she said, ‘I suppose I should fetch me a beer. … Aw, a shame, on top of this gorgeous stuff. Go ahead, thanks.’

‘You certainly make your subject come alive,’ he said, the faintest accent on the first word.

‘Well, your turn. Tell me about places you’ve been.’

‘If you will give me more songs later.’

‘Let’s find songs we both know. Meanwhile, please do reminisce.’ Jill looked again skyward. Caelestia had dropped out of view and the stars shone forth still keener. Wistfulness tugged at her. ‘So much wonder. Damn it, I haven’t got
time
to die.’

‘Why have you never visited Earth?’

‘Oh … I dunno. Seems as if everything interesting there – wait, yes, I realize they have natural extravagances left like the Grand Canyon, but Ishtar has them too – mainly, everything is man-made; and our data banks hold millions of pictures, recordings, whatnot.’

‘The best hologram isn’t the real thing, Jill. It isn’t the totality of, oh, the cathedral at Chartres … which besides beauty includes the fact that countless pilgrims for hundreds of years walked and knelt and slept on the selfsame stones under your feet. … And you can have fun on Earth, you know. A lively person like you–’