White Queen (15 page)

It would have been less surprising if the telepaths had ignored all forms of tele-communication. They’d been in contact with each other, mind to mind, spread over the globe from Karen to Alaska. There were signs that they kept in contact, in the same way, with their impossibly distant home. They reacted with firm distaste to most mechanical objects. How could they make any sense of the earthlings’ jabbering peepshows? But oddly, they were not indifferent. They tolerated 360 cams: record-making was a familiar, acceptable activity. There was another room, the one the team called “the ship’s log,” where Aleutian audio-visual records and display equipment were kept. It was also taboo, but in a more relaxed way. Likewise Kaoru’s magnificent library. Sometimes several of the nameless (the aliens who did not speak) would be found in there together, absorbedly watching an ancient movie.

It was the live conferencing that caused problems. No one really knew whether the aliens were aware of the real status of the assembly at Krung Thep, and were just playing along; or if they just didn’t care about the petty grades of earthling authority. But their first appearance in the Multiphon had been their last. The “Government of the World” had provided full delegate facilities for the visitors, in the early days when people still thought in terms of a charade, showing respect to the vanguard, while frantically planning to deal with an invasion force. The Aleutians had said thank you politely, and quietly moved everything in here. They left the video-conference desks permanently running, perhaps out of good manners. Occasionally, Aleutians had been spotted making brief, almost furtive visits.

They called the world one saw through the screen “the land of the dead.” It was alarming, Robin said, to think someone might have introduced them to virtuality gaming, on their travels. They’d probably have been so appalled, they’d have instantly blasted Earth to flinders.

Ellen didn’t want Braemar Wilson in here. She knew what this room would look like on television. She could feel it in her bones: the insult, the rejection. All those human faces, human voices, human concerns, pushed away and ignored.

Braemar looked around. “It seems our visitors don’t watch television. Don’t they respect the Government of Earth? I mean, that’s what’s going on in there, isn’t it.”

They sing and dance, thought Ellen. They have their own instruments, and the nameless make music without words. They create pictures, they play games. They find each other endlessly absorbing, they don’t need artificial stimuli. She knew better than to say anything out loud that was remotely critical of the sacred screen.

“On the contrary, they treat the ‘television’ concept with reverence. Their visual-record technology is curiously close to ours. You must have heard of the ‘ship’s log,’ which has given us our glimpses of the Aleutian home planet. Why should they be interested in our political squabbles? They don’t have any kind of organized violence, on their home world.”

There had been a massacre at a camp of young female construction workers near Islamabad. The girls were Central European migrants, trucked into the region, undercutting the local skilled male labor. The Women’s Affairs Conference was deciding, at great length, what kind of slap on the wrist it should dispatch to Pakistan.

Braemar ought to get back to the main hall, but she was frightened of Clavel. She told herself she was being useful here, since she’d trapped the chief nursemaid. She knew Ellen Kershaw of old. One of those ancient idiots who thinks boats shouldn’t be called “she.” She bore the woman no ill will, but it should be easy to keep her tied up.

“Ms. Kershaw, Ellen. You miss your conference desk, I’m sure. But it must be pleasing to see how many women are here today.”

Ellen grunted warily.” Middle class women with careers in the media. That’s hardly news.”

“My goodness no. But I don’t envy the mothers among them. I recall too well the childcare-guilt and panic that goes into one of these trips.”

“Some children have two parents.”

Braemar laughed lightly, and nodded at the massacre scenes. “Seriously, what do you make of the alien attitude to gender politics? Have they an opinion on the Eve-riots?”

Ellen was furious. The 360 cam that ogled her like a second little head beside Braemar’s face had a “light shell,” that included most of this room. There was no way she could escape with dignity. For a moment she was recklessly inclined to rely on censorship: but that too could be a gift to the media monster.

“How could they have? We humans tend to perceive gender in them, but the Aleutians don’t respond. We have no idea how they reproduce, you know.”

She smiled, smugly putting the sex-mad media-person in her place. Kershaw, old maid socialist, saw brotherly love and no nasty sex. Poonsuk Masdit, whom you had to respect, spoke about “medical possibilities”: dreaming of a cure for her mysterious wasting disease. They were all blinded by privilege, all of them. There was no way of warning them. Nothing could make them see a new race of superiors through the eyes of the powerless.

“No gender. I see. But they have a rigid caste-system. Isn’t it true that most of those here are slaves of the dominant few, with no life at all outside their hereditary tasks?” To the corrupt all things are corrupt. Ellen was morally certain that Aleutians didn’t think like that, but Wilson would smear anything. It was absurd to jump to conclusions. What Uji needed was time, and
patience.
A patient, quiet appraisal of the new that came naturally to the visitors, but that humanity seemed to have forgotten.

“I’m afraid you’re ahead of the project, Ms. Wilson. We have no firm basis for any interpretation of their social behavior.”

“There’s no firm basis for anything, is there? All right then, tell me this. If they don’t intend to stay, why did they bring the children?”

Ellen set her jaw, tried to loosen it again; drew breath. “They have some form of belief in reincarnation. The children are here because they are considered to be the avatars of important people. They are valued members of the community. Does that offend you, Ms. Wilson?”

“They came here in ships nobody has seen. They don’t understand tv, they don’t have any normal machines, they spend all their time doing ritual dances. They’re supposed to speak English, but all they really do is mimic a few whacky phrases. They’ve been described as magic savages. Would you say that’s fair? We come to meet the superbeings, we find ourselves staring at performing animals. Ellen, would you mind telling me who recruited you to the Uji team?”

Everything was negotiated through Kaoru. But he was no puppetmaster. Anyone who spent an hour here, with an open mind, must admit that. The Aleutians understood everything. Kaoru operated the way they all did, on intuition and trial and error. That was all anybody had in the face of this enigma, the sentient but unresponsive other. There is a classic test of self-consciousness: does the creature recognize its own face in a mirror? The Aleutians would fail. They did not look in mirrors, had put away the few they found at Uji, reckoning them even less useful than tv. Humans would fail too. A human adult meeting a mirror for the first time would fly at the beast in the glass, immediately recognizing an enemy.

“Ms. Wilson, if you insist on using the methods of tabloid journalism—”

“Is that an insult? Do you despise my audience, Ms. Kershaw?”

Ellen’s frustration was on the point of explosion. She was saved by the pirate captain, who came swaggering in. They wouldn’t let earthlings disappear, in ones and twos. They didn’t like it.

Rajath glanced at the screens and briefly covered his face, a curiously human gesture before the broken bodies laid out in the red dust. Then he stood, hips spread in a gruesomely exaggerated cowboy pose, and pointed his fingers at them.

“Bang, bang! Get off my cape!”

He loped forward, peered at another screen, turned to Braemar.

you
find it odd that your world government is so obsessed with a single poorly-defined personality trait?>

He put a long, powerful arm around each of them. He smelt like a stale dishcloth.

“No fighting in church?”

A journalist interrogated Kumbva.” Do you believe in the paranormal?”

“Does a frog croak? The paranormal is my stock in trade.”

“But you are an engineer?”

This alien was built like a bear: both bigger, and thicker in the arms and legs, than most of them. He had a waist-pouch made of plastic cowries tucked into one of his sleeve loops. He pulled it out, stowed his hand into the bag and made puppet-mouths at the cluster-eye fastened by the journalist’s ear.

“You cannot be serious,” said the alien: and walked away.

Maitri had brought out a recorder. He had often thought of taking minor orders, and felt quite at home at a “priest conference” (or
“press
conference” as they seemed to pronounce it). It seemed only polite, when so many people were recording him, to return the compliment. Rajath hadn’t come here to sell religious impedimenta, so he could hardly complain that Maitri was revealing their hidden assets.

A local cleric came up, and boldly touched his recorder.

The baggy brown box slung from the alien’s shoulder felt like rubber. The eye-band was thick and opaque: a rubber blindfold.

“What is that?”

“It’s a
secret,”
said the plump alien confidently.

The priest, or deacon or whatever he was, seemed disconcerted.

Clavel’s master at arms confided in Rosalie.

The alien who rarely spoke had said in English:
marriages are made in heaven.
Rosalie couldn’t read Aleutian lips well (difficult, when they had none), but these words were clear. She tried to read the
meaning.
It must be referring to this meeting between two sentient species. Its face and body showed a warm concern, a slightly mocking anxiety; above all the alien spoke
personally,
as if the “marriage” was a meeting of two individuals.

But there was doubt, and that chilled her. Might the human race be found wanting? Speak to me clearly! she signed, with all her heart. Mind to my mind!

protested Maitri’s lover.

Douglas Milne missed Lugha, the demon child, who had not appeared today. He had to content himself with the nameless Aleutian identified as “Rajath’s cook,” who was, Douglas believed, Lugha’s birth-parent. By all the signs, Lugha was considered as exceptional as he would have been on earth. The nice thing was, it made no difference that his father (mother?) was a lowly, mute hereditary servant. Douglas laid picture cards, squatting on his heels beside the alien. Aleutian child, human child. Aleutian adult, human adult. Human adult couples, showing affection. Human mother, hugging baby. All the humans were modestly clothed, in deference to the alien taboo against nakedness, but Douglas was trying to convey the question
where do babies come from?

The nameless alien showed signs of interest.

Douglas was always impressing on the others the dangers of interpreting their nonverbals in human terms. But you had to start somewhere.

“I guess you must love Lugha very much. And you must be very proud, he’s a great kid. I suppose it was absolutely necessary to bring him along?”

Nameless picked up the mother-baby picture. He touched the mother’s eyes, drew the line of her tender gaze to the baby’s face. Any human on earth would respond to that as a lovely, natural picture. Nameless seemed disgusted.

“The mother shouldn’t hold the baby?”

Nameless gave Milne a direct, dignified look. There was a widespread superstition in the teams that with full eye contact they could read you right down to your bowels: Douglas held his ground. Nameless laid an arm across his belly. That gesture might mean parenthood (motherhood?). The other hand repudiated the look in the human mother’s eyes.

I love my baby, (nameless might be saying) But not like that!

Intrigued, Douglas tried to advance the embracing couple. He pointed to the male human, pointed to Nameless. The alien put together male human adult, human child. Eyes, nasal, mouth, all became loose and tender and greedy. It was very tempting to read the grimace as deliberate miming of emotion: of sexual, romantic love.

Douglas regarded those who heard voices in their heads with kindly suspicion. The Aleutians communicated
with each other
telepathically. Anything else was fantasy. But he had his inexplicable moments and this was one of them. Nameless was saying: one should not fall in love with one’s own born child. One fell in love with some other baby!

The alien took the cards, with what seemed distaste, and dealt out adult with child, adult with child: made the sex face. He crouched back with a smug, superior expression. He seemed to think he’d delivered an important lesson in decorum.