The Avatar (52 page)

“Do you fear damage?” the other woman asked, unruffled.

“Aye, Induced schizophrenia maybe, or a condition that mocks it or Who can say? I’m hardly more than nurse who’s had some extra training. The medical references aboard swamp me in technicalities on this subject, then give no diagnostic symptoms nor prognoses for the siluation is unprecedented. Nevertheless, you are behavilng more iind more…autistic.” Caitlín leaned forward. “Be honest Arc we, the rest of us anything else to you than part of thc: machinery?”

“Of course,” Joelle responded, still placid. The smile crossed her like a moonbearn briefly through clouds. “I like all of you wish you well, aim to doeverything in my power to get you safely home. To that end, I had bettcr develop the power. I assure you, far from going crazy, each day I beco’me more sane than any of our species has been before in its whole existence.”

“Och, a whale of a claim to be making.”

“Yes, it does sound grandiose when put in that ape-chatter man calls language. I wish you could have the experience. You’re a poetess, who might be able to convey a hint of the feeling, if not of the reality. I have no eloquence, and have had less practice than average throughout my life at expressing myself to ordinary people. Furthermore, unlinked, I am, well, less than half alive.” Joelle paused to search for phrases. “I suppose Susanne Granville has tried to explain how linkage is for her. That’s the palest shadow of what it is for me. You don’t think she’s mentally ill, do you? Or—when you’re composing—when you’re making love, you surely more fully than most—those are transcendental experiences, aren’t they? You seek them over and over, every chance you get. They don’t unhinge your reason, do they? On the contrary, aren’t you the stronger and stabler for them?”

“They’re natural,” Caitlín argued. “They evolved in us from the earliest life ever to stir on Earth. And you’ve renounced them altogether. That can’t be wholesome. Oh, yes, priests and nuns and saintly mystics, utterly dedicated scientists and artists, they’ve sometimes kept a balance. Maybe asceticism suited their temperaments better than common pleasures. Yet they did keep within the human world, seeking human goals, surrounded by things human senses can respond to—not wired in a machine. I’d never be forbidding you your holothesis, Joelle. I’m but thinking you should use the rest of yourself, too.”

For the first time, pain touched the countenance before her and the voice that answered, though barely. “I tried. Harder than you know. Year by year, the rewards of that shriveled and the hurts grew, till I was a silly, scrabbling crone when I was out of my linkage.” Calm returned. “Meanwhile, on this flight, I began really using, really mastering what I’d learned on Beta. And Fidelio taught me more. And the incredible inputs, the whole cosmos opening to me, facets of the Noumenon that neither Betan nor human had dreamed of. Trying for insight, I’ve been discovering new techniques-ways to discern, think, understand-philosophies-and they give me deeper insights, which lead me onward—”

The peace in Joelle rose to a quiet ardor. “Caitlín, believe me, I’ve never been so happy, and the farther beyond what you call humanness, the happier and saner I become. No, I’m not better than you, but I am different, and how would you feel if a
command robbed you of your gift for making songs and making love’? I … I will soon be able to overcome a thing in me that I know is wrong: that I pity you. Poor sweet beautiful animal. I pity you. But I don’t think the Others would, so I should not either.

“The Others—We may not find them. We may die in space, or on the world of some species that merely has superior technology to us. I can endure those things if either happens. But I’m convinced that every race, when it becomes able to, goes in search of theothers, as we’ve blundered into doing. What higher purpose can it have?

“And… if we should find them, if we should… I will be ready to speak with them.”

—Only later, having left a pledgc: behind her not to limit Joelle as long as no danger signals appeared, did Caitlín think of the last sentence, the unspoken one.
I will be ready tojoin them
.

Chinook flew.

The common room was asparkle with newly made decorations. Organ tones pealed from a data retrieval, through whose hologrammic screen glimpses, of Earth and Demeter slowly paraded, a flower garden, an ocean sunset, a mountain peak, a tree in a meadow. Elsewhere, the stars and the galactic heart shone. Clad in their best, Dozsa, Weisenberg, Leino, Frieda, and Caitlín flanked a table behind which Brodersen stood. In front of him, Rueda and Susanne were hand in hand. At the rear of the chamber waited a feast which had been days in the preparing.

Joelle alone was absent, but aware in her ascendancy of what went on. She had given the party her awkward benediction. A permanent watch must be maintaineld against the chance of an alien vessel emerging, to set instantly in action everything programmed, and she could replace the two who ordinarily were posted.

Brodersen lifted the papers he needed. He being neither priest nor magistrate and the couple not sharing the same faith, it wouldn’t have felt right to look up and use a traditional service. Caitlín had written this, and inscribed it with calligraphic flourishes as an extra gift for her friends.

Sheshould’vepresided, roo, he thought. She’dput ona better show. I’m a slouch of a parson. I … damnation, my eyes are stinging and blurring, I’m not about to cry, am I? Lis. Lis, the
sunbeams through the chapel window when we—

“Dearly beloved,” he began, “upon this day of our exile we are gathered to create a home. Lost, but lost among splendors; imperilled, but charged with hope: we ask the blessing of God, or we ask the blessing of life, on these two of us, Carlos andSusanne. We thank them for thecourage they have renewed, the spirit they have brightened. Shipmates, may joy be always yours! Now let us witness your vows, the while that we pledgeanew to each other—”

A siren screamed.

Chinook
was not far from the T machine, moving outward, to make a whole four hours available for ceremony andfestivities before turnover interrupted. At electronic speed, Joelle switched the proper viewscreen to full magnification. The querning cylinder and a pair of its beacons seemed to leap into the room. But nobody glimpsed more than a blur, that whippedpast sight and was gone. After a moment wherein music was obscene against thesilence, Joelle’s voice came, flat: “A ship. She completed transit in thirty-seven seconds.”

“Nomhre de Dios,”
Kueda whispered and caught his bride to him.

Before she could lose a tear, Caitlín was holding them both. Across their shaken shoulders, she called to Brodersen, “Dan, we’ve a larger matter to finish, aye, and celebrate, before we think about that unlucky business. Will you begin over?”

The captain sat alone in his office. Its private line was connected to the holothete. His jaws clamped hard on a pipe, which had turned the air around him acrid and was scorching his tongue. A bottle of whisky stood on his desk beside the printouts of high-speed photographs.

Those pictured a three-dimensional latticework, its widest dimension perhaps a kilometer, of no simple configuration, though graceful and fragile-seeming as a spiderweb at dawn, it also aglitter with dewdrop light. A pearly luminance cloaked the whole. That, and distance, left barest hints of any further details. The precise track it had taken had likewise escaped identification.

Joelle said: “I suspect the vessel is almost massless, almost entirely a construct of force-fields. Those could cushionpassengers and cargo against the fantastic accelerations that
took her through her guidepath. If there is a cargo; if there are passengers. She may well be robotic–no, doubtless too crude a concept—and she may carry nothing but patterns, imposed on a few molecules, which are information. Why send your body anywhere? Why not a recording of your personality, that can be activated when it arrives-in an identical, manufactured body or in one made for the particular purpose? It can do and experience whatever you want. Then it carl return as a pattern and be… transcribed…into you…. Why, you could live a thousand separate lives, on as many separate worlds, and afterward gather them all together.”

“Do you know this is true?” Brotiersen asked dully.

“Of course not. But I do know it’s possible. I even perceive certain details of how it can be clone. If you had such a capability, wouldn’t you take advantage?”

“Yeah, I s’pose. ‘Then they’ll never detect us’?”

“I didn’t say that. Perhaps more primitive, material craft go through this point too. Every race in the fellowship may not be on the same technological level, for; I number of reasons. Or perhaps the Others come by once in a while. I don’t think those were Others, Dan.
They
would not have rnissed our presence.”

Brodersen took a drink. “What do you guesstimate the chances are of any of your cases being true’? Somebodyhappening past who’s not too advanced to pay attention the way we’re not too advanced to notice a fellow man in the woods. Or else somebody who’s so very far along that his eye is on the sparrow.”

“I’d call the chances poor.”

“Yeah, me too. We may both be dead wrong, Joelle deadly wrong, but what’ve we got to go on except our best guesses you from your brain, me from blind instinct’! If we stay here a few more months, pacing back and forth for the sake of weight, we’ll’ve expended our reaction mass and have no choice but to go into spin niode and stay on. I call it better to keep what freedom of action we’re able. I’ll push for weighing anchor, when we discuss ancl vote ton the question.”

Brodersen’s pipe had gone out. He made fire to rekindle it. “We won’t debate for a couple of weeks, though.” he decreed. “Something could turn up meanwhile, just barely could. And Su and Carlos rate a proper honeymoon.”

Nothing did appear again.

J
UMP.

In utter blackness, a colossal Catherine’s wheel burned across a quarter of the sky. From where
Chinook
was it appeared tilted; vision crossed an arm, then the nucleus from which it curved, then an arm beyond that. It shone, it shone: the heart red-gold, the spirals blue-white, clusters scattered throughout like sparks. Elsewhere gleamed a few cloudy forms, attendants upon its majesty, and remotely the light from its kindred.

“Intergalactic space,” Brodersen whispered.

“Some fifty thousand light-years out. More than that from where we were,” Joelle said. Her tone held exaltation. “Judging by the colors, the relative brightnesses, of inner and outer portions, there are fewer giant stars than our astronomers estimated, and less dust and gas for new ones to form out of. We must still be in our future, perhaps farther on. A billion years? Let’s stay a while so I can learn!”

Brodersen regarded the cylinder and its glowing markers. “Another T machine all by itself, and big like the last. A stepping stone to whole other galaxies… and ages—When you reckoned what guidepath would take us the longest ways, you reckoned well.”

“But still no sign of help for us,” came Leino’s weary voice. “How long can we keep hunting? Into what weird places?”

Brodersen grimaced. “Yeah,” he said. “I begin to wonder myself. Maybe we’re not wise to plow ahead. Maybe Joelle should lead us in backtracking, if you can figure out how.”

“I believe I can, in a general way,” the holothete told them. “But that requires more information. Which I ought to gather in any event, to improve my computations, no matter what we decide.”

“Okay,” Brodersen said, “we’ll hang around a bit. Might as well.” He knuckled his eyes. “A chance to think. Maybe even to get some rest, after this latest blow.”

Caitlín asked gently, “Are none of you seeing how beautiful this is?”

She floated alone in the common room and adored. Clocks read twenty-two thirty hours of the day that the crew bore around with them, and what gathering there had been here had broken up early.

Dozsa came in, pushed toward her, checked himself by grasping a chair beside the one she held. The sole illumination was from outside, argent and rose, moonlight-soft. It tinged her against dappled shadows and darknesses more deep that filled the chamber.

“I thought I’d find you here,” he said. “Uh, how are you?”

“Beyond joy,” she answered, not looking away from heaven.

“Yes, it is a splendid sight. A shame that nobody else seems able to appreciate it. Except Joelle., I suppose, in her cold fashion…. It’s for lovers.”

“Indeed it is that, Stefan.”

The mate smiled and laid an arm around her waist. She didn’t noticeably react, for or against. He nuzzled her cheek and inhaled the aromas of flesh and loosely braided hair. “You’re a more gorgeous sight, Caitlín,” he murmured.

She chuckled. “Thank you, kind sir, for your mendacity.” The humor faded. “If you please, though, no offense intended, but I want to lose me in what we have before us, while we do.”

“Aw-w-w.” He pulled close. “Caitlín, sweetheart.”

She tensed and turned to face him squarely. “Stefan, we’ve been good comrades. You’d not be spoiling of that, would you?”

He kissed her on the mouth. She thrust back from him, not breaking his grip but gaining half a meter between all else of them. “Let me go,” she demanded.

He tugged at her. “Let me go,” she said, word by word, “or so help me the Mórrigan, I’ll put you in sickbay.”

Dozsa did. His indignation met her fury. She breathed hard. “If you doubt me,” she warned, “if you rely on your karate, you’ll be minus an eye at least, and quite likely the family jewels. I know how to take people apart as well as sew them together.”

Wrath came under mastery. “Ah, I got my temper up,” she
said with an effort. “You meant no harm, I’m sure. We’ll forget the matter.”

His anger waxed. “You’re not Dan Brodersen’s woman, pure and simple,” he spat. “You’re Martti Leino’s too. And who else’s?”

She bridled afresh. “My own and
nobody
else’s.”

“You throw your tail around where you feel like it, eh? And I’m not good enough.”

She attempted mildness. “Stef, dear, Martti needed help. I’m not free to tell why, but he did. He does no more, most of the time. Now Dan’s the one who bleeds. Decision after terrible decision must he make, never knowing if the next will doom us. I ease the bleakness for him a little. And he is my chief person, the man I love and who loves me.”