Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
She turned her gaze outward, and this time saw in the far dark of the cometary field a thing that raised itself upon wide, pale wings and moved inward to roost upon a tiny moon of a cold planet. The Questioner watched the planet as it passed behind the sun, emerged, then arced toward her once more. As it swung by she received the fleeting impression of a wing of pale fire unfolding across the stars.
Something living sat on that cold rock, something from outside. Something akin to time; certainly something accustomed to waiting; a bat the size of a mountain range, perhaps? Or something like an octopus, with membranes stretched between its tentacles to make a winglike structure? Something very large, certainly, and something very old.
Her concentration was interrupted by a vast mooing or bellowing of radio waves coming from somewhere in the system, spreading outward in all directions, a message repeating over and over.
Come. Come. Here is a new planet, still warm. Here are fires, still burning. I await. I await
.
The message was in no words she knew, no language she had ever heard, and yet it was unmistakable in intent. It was a summons, and something within her responded to it, something she had not known was there. For the time, that was the only response. She could detect no other.
She turned to watch life erupting on the nearest planet. She could feel its burgeoning, though most of it was below the surface. It grew everywhere through the spongified outer layer of the planet, invading tubes and tunnels, caverns and caves, bubbles and blast holes, vents and veins. All spaces were room for it, all interconnected, one draining into another, some floored in fertile soil, some hollow and echoing, some running out beneath the sea where the dry stone corridors shushed to the sound of outer waters, like great ears alive to the pulse of their own blood, and all of them seething with life.
Questioner could feel that life; she could sense its manifestations and varieties. She was not surprised. Life always happened. It might survive an hour, or a year, or a millennium. It might kill itself after a billion years or be killed in half a million, but on this kind of planet and on a dozen or a hundred other kinds of planets, some kind of life always happened.
All this time, the great mooing had gone on in the background and was now answered by another voice, another call coming from the outer dark, faintly and far away. Questioner increased her visual acuity to detect a point of light moving slowly toward the system. When she looked back at the planet, she saw that life had emerged upon its surface. The planetary life forms were less interesting, however, than the interlopers from afar: the one who summoned; the other who came in response, now near enough to take form, a creature sailing with fiery wings upon the solar winds.
At the edge of the cometary field the wings lifted above the plane of that field to fly across it toward the inner planets. It approached the young sun slowly, reluctantly, draggingly, ever slower the nearer it came.
And there, from near the farthest, coldest world, tentacles of cold fire reached out to catch and hold the newcomer fast. The captor transmitted a howl of triumph. The captive screamed in a blast of waveforms. The Questioner understood both howl and scream, the one of triumph, the other of terror and pain. She knew that pain would gain the victim nothing.
Her
, the Questioner told herself, assigning roles to this drama. The victim would be female. The attacker would be male. It was
his
tentacles that held
her
fast.
There were flares of energy and agonized shrieks of radiation as the far planet swung slowly to the left, behind the sun. When it emerged once more, one set of wings rose above it and flew directly toward the Questioner. On that far surface of cold stone and gelid gas, across half the icy sphere, the newer arrival sprawled silent and motionless amid a charred wreckage of broken wings. Probably she was dead. At this distance, Questioner could not clearly make out her shape or configuration. She strained to see, but the approaching wings filled her view, a smell of fire and sulfur, a sound of hissing, an overwhelming darkness, and the representation came to an end in a sputter of smells and electronic noise, a clutter of meaningless waveforms and chemical spewings. Beside her on the soggy soil, the device clicked and turned itself off. The data-gravel had run through into its flask once more.
Had the participants in the record been Quaggi? Neither creature had looked like the Quaggi she had seen pictured or heard the Flagian describe. But then, butterflies did not look like caterpillars, either. Or vice versa.
While the record was still quite fresh in her memory, she ran the solar system through her planetary catalogue and came up with a match. The system was numbered ARZ97405. The moonlet where the interstellar being had been assaulted and killed was so unimportant that it was not even listed, but the planet she had watched most closely was now a mankind-occupied world called Newholme. Newholme. Well, now. Wasn’t that coincidental. She had witnessed the birth of a planet that was on her list of planets to be visited! A planet the Flagian trader had already sold her information about! She was moved to put Newholme upon her ASAP list, particularly since the Council of Worlds had received disturbing reports of its own. Human rights violations. The possibility of another large-scale “miscalculation.” Planetary instability.
The enigmatic record she had just seen tipped the scale. She would move the visit to Newholme forward in her itinerary. She would recruit some appropriate assistants and schedule the visit within the next cycle. And, when she was in the vicinity, she would stop at that far-out moonlet and see just what it was that had died there. Perhaps the Brotherhood of Interstellar Trade would offer her something for that information. Unless the BIT had been there before her!
Questioner sighed, a very human sigh. She had not moved or eaten or drunk for some time, and she was experiencing that slight disorientation and fuddlement that a human might notice as weariness and discomfort. A cracking sound made her look upward, to see her own ship settling toward the soggy arena of the shuttleport. In two real time days, she had seen a million years of planetary history. Remarkable.
Steam rose. Mud splattered. The landing was sloppy, which meant the captain had taken the helm. He was also a political appointee, one who had graduated eight hundred and ninety-fifth out of a class of nine hundred at the academy. If it weren’t for the professionals on board, most of them Gablians, the ship would never arrive anywhere. Dutifully, though in considerable annoyance, the Questioner rose and made her ponderous way toward the ship.
A
t some point in time (later than the time Questioner had experienced) on that same world Questioner had watched, two creatures were engaged in conversation. In real time it happened, one could say, roughly simultaneously with protomankind on Old Earth learning to make stone tools and build a fire. Mankind, along with the rest of the universe, was unaware of the beings, the beings were unaware of mankind, and the conversants were strangers to one another. They used no names, for they had none to use, and they figured out one another’s language as they went along.
As was admitted by the native.
“I have a vision of you in my mind. If you turned out not to be like that, I should feel disappointment. It is dangerous to feel that I know you when I do not.”
“I don’t think others know our kind,” said the newcomer, sadly. “We tend to live very much alone.”
“We’ll get to know one another,” said the native, with enthusiasm. “You must have seen much of the universe.”
“This galaxy, yes,” said the newcomer, depressed.
“What is a galaxy?”
“This local group of stars. There are others, so far away only their light may be seen.”
“Galaxy. Well. What shape is it?”
“Flat, mostly. With long, twisting arms it pulls about itself as it turns.”
“A spiral, then. Galaxies are spiral?”
“Some. Only some.”
“Are there many in the galaxy like you?”
“Twice I met another like myself. Far had they come, far had they yet to go, for there are many stars and times to swim. I had not swum so far as they, nor will I, for I am done.”
“You are not done,” said the native in a firm, cheerful way. “Not yet. You’re still quite alive and getting better. Are you very old?”
There was a pause, as a mountain range eroded toward a plain.
“Old? No, I’m not old.” The newcomer hummed for a time, as a machine might hum, searching for information. “I could have lived the lifespan of a star. There is no limit to my life, unless I die like this.”
“I wish you would
not
speak of dying. I do not allow dying here. Is this usual? Do all your people end themselves this way?”
“Of the two I met, one was young, one old. The young one knew no more of life than I. The older one told me beware, beware the call. That one told me to deafen all my ears against the call. I wish I had believed.”
“Only two of your own kind? But, surely you began somewhere? Somehow?”
The newcomer searched memory. “I remember shell, close all around. I do remember kin along with me, warm turning close within each other’s wings. I would have lingered there, but kin cried out. Somewhere a great lamenting. Then the flame. Away kin burst, we burst, fire trailing us, then something broke the shell. Kin went swiftly away. I called. No answer, just space and distant stars. I went out, too, unfurling wrinkled wings to catch starwind. Behind me, falling far, the shell that held us, burning as it flew.”
“Two of you in the egg,” mused the first. “That explains a lot.”
The newcomer puzzled over this. “What does it say?”
“It says that you have kin.”
“Kin? What good is kin! Kin left me there,” the newcomer cried in anguish. “Long time I flew among the burning stars. I searched for kin. I longed for kin, nestwarm, wing-close. When kin called me, I came.”
“You came here, to this system,” agreed the native.
“Here’s where kin was: grown great and terrible.” The newcomer trembled.
“You grieve because you think the one that did this was your kin,” said the native. “But maybe that isn’t true.”
An island chain thrust itself above the waves.
“Kin was like me, yet different from me. Kin was the only one I’ve ever known that was like me yet different from me. Who else could that have been?”
“I am different from you.”
“But you are different from everything.”
“None like me on other worlds?” the native said with surprise.
“I have seen none like you. I have seen life before, but none built up like you, accumulant, piled life on life on life….”
“Ah,” said the native, surprised. “How strange. I had assumed no world could exist without at least one like me. Who governs them? Who designs? Who rules?”
“I was not interested in governance.”
“You say you saw two others just like you. Perhaps they, too, were born as you were born. With kin who cried to get out?”
Long silence, during which several races of trees evolved and died. “I never thought of that.”
“So it’s possible the one who called to you was their kin instead of your kin?”
A long, long pause, then, doubtfully, “Even if true, it makes no difference. Am I not shackled here, no matter who?”
A continent came into being, floated halfway around the world, then sank beneath the waves.
“I don’t think it was your kin who did this to you, though your kin will probably do it to someone.”
“Will my kin do this thing? Oh, sad, so sad.”
“Why should this be the way?”
A long silence, then a whisper, “Perhaps there is no other way to be.”
The native detected great sadness and felt guilt at having caused such pain through mere curiosity. The native deputized a sizeable segment of itself to see to the comfort of the newcomer. Bringing comfort was very complicated. It took a long time.
“Are you more comfortable now?” the native asked eagerly, when the time was past.
“More comfortable,” sighed the second. “Yes. I am more comfortable now.”
“Are you getting enough nourishment?” The native worried about this. Now that the newcomer was truly settled, the native didn’t want anything to happen to it.
“Oh, yes, thank you.”
“And are they amusing you?”
“Yes. Yes? Well, I think they are amusing me. Sometimes I feel such joy. When they dance for me, I have such pleasure. I do not want to die.”
“I told you! You needn’t die!”
“I’m still dying.”
“No. You’re not. I’ll figure something out. Can you go back to sleep now?”
“I think I will. Just a little nap.”
“A few thousand revolutions, maybe.”
“Maybe.”
Silence then, on the part of the newcomer, though the native talked to itself. The native always talked to itself, now let me see, I-we-that need to do this, I-we-that need to send a hand there, a foot there, I-we need to spin off some teeth to chew over that matter, and, oh, yes, how is the newcomer? Asleep, good. Poor thing.
Poor thing. I see no reason why it should have to be that way. I will make it happy here. If it has had a difficult time, it deserves happiness. All my creatures deserve happiness.
C
ertain of my lectures will be repeated annually during your training,” said Madame. “They cover subjects which I know to be important but which you will think dull and irrelevant. This information is indeed pointless and dull, until the moment you need it, at which point it becomes vital. Therefore, I repeat myself at intervals to be sure you will have the information when you need it.
“When you are purchased by a patroness, you will become a member of her family. Who is included in that family will depend upon her preference and your good sense. Probably it will include at least the younger children of your patroness. It may include certain of her servants and a chatron or two. It may also include her husband. Her children and her servants will accept you to the degree you are helpful and amusing without in any sense attempting to supplant any of them in your patroness’s life. To the children, and to the servants, you will say such things as, ‘She is so fortunate to have you. She is so proud of you. I don’t know what she would do without you.’ Note, never say, what I would do without you. They are not your children, not your servants. Your relationship to them is reflected through her, as in a mirror. We will expand on this later; your conversation mistress will help you with the variations that may arise.