Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (7 page)

“He
owns
us!”

“Not all of us, Arrin. Some of our actions are our own.” Derli was pulling him toward her, at the same time as she sank back on the divan. Gilden struggled free of her arms, stood up, and stared down at her. He was trembling.

“You don’t want me?” A smile would have made it intolerable. But Derli looked hurt and sorrowful, like an abandoned child. Gilden groaned, turned, and blundered out of the room and the building, out into the evening gusts of Lucidar’s spring. He walked blindly and randomly, hardly aware of time or direction until increasing cold drove him home.

Back in his own quarters, he activated a voyeur. Derli was still sitting on the divan. Somehow she knew. She stared right at the minute observation instrument and raised her hand in a wave.

This time she was smiling, but Gilden saw no reproach or scorn on her face; only an understanding that for him some things were still impossible.

He waved back, knowing that she could not see him. And then he settled down to work. He had an additional task now, as difficult in its way as the problem of the Sigil—and far more dangerous. There was one place where no sane voyeur would ever dare to look. In this case, Gilden had no choice.

* * *

He worked until close to dawn at a level of intensity that approached a trance. When he finally collapsed into bed the new problem ran on inside his head, distorted and paradoxical. And when Valmar Krieg marched into his bedroom early the next morning, Gilden saw his arrival as part of another cloudy dream sequence.

“Derli says you’ve cracked it.” Valmar sat down uninvited on the end of the bed.

The words sent Gilden’s heart into a mad race. Then he realized that the other man couldn’t possibly know what he had worked on through the night. Because Derli herself didn’t know. Krieg had to be talking about the Sigil and their ship.

“I haven’t cracked it. But I do have ideas.”

“Tell me.” Krieg held up his hand. “Don’t get the wrong impression. It’s not that I feel I can’t trust you, but I have to file my own status reports. I must know what you’re doing, at least in outline. How will you get your voyeurs into the Sigil ship?”

“I won’t. It’s utterly impenetrable for solid objects without alerting the Sigil.” Thinking about technical questions calmed Gilden at once.

“So how can you learn what’s inside?”

“That’s a different problem. We can be fairly sure that the Sigil ship has its own internal monitoring system, probably with imaging components just the way that our ships do. So I don’t need to get my own voyeurs inside—I just have to control the Sigils’ own monitors. Then I have to get that information out.”

“It sounds impossible.”

“I’ve done it half a dozen times, back on Earth. The trick is to find an access point. That’s what I think I have. The Sigil ship is getting rid of excess heat down into the planetary surface. So I have an avenue. I can send pulses in by the same route and read their returns. After that it means lots of data analysis, none of it automatic. But I’m comfortable with that. The part I’m less sure of is my interaction with the Sigil ship’s computer systems. I have to plant my own code in there, hidden in a way that won’t be noticed, before I can control the ship’s monitors.”

Krieg was thoughtfully stroking his red beard. “That doesn’t sound so hard. Logic is logic, universal.”

“Maybe suspicion is, too. If the Sigils have enough triggers built in against interference they’ll spot me before I’m hardly started.”

“So the sooner we know that, the better. Out of bed, and get to work. You weren’t brought all this way for a vacation.” But Valmar Krieg’s nod was one of satisfaction as he strode out.

More sleep would be impossible anyway. Gilden, muzzy-headed, forced himself to take a hot and cold shower, and then to eat a full breakfast before he set to work.

He had oversimplified the problem for Valmar Krieg to the point of imbecility, and at the same time deliberately made its solution sound more difficult. Gilden didn’t want anyone, most especially Krieg, aware of the sophistication of the tools he had developed over the past ten years. And no one must suspect that during the following days of intense dawn-to-midnight effort Gilden would be feeling his way through not one mental maze, but two.

* * *

Derli found him on the afternoon of the tenth day, asleep in the dining area. His head rested on the hard table, he was snoring, and in front of him sat a cold and untouched plate of food.

She took a seat cushion and eased it under his gaunt cheek. She did it as gently as possible but the disturbance awoke him. He stared at her, bleary-eyed.

“Mmph. What time is it?”

“Four hours after noon. You look terrible. Why don’t you go to bed and get some real sleep?”

“I was going to. As soon as I’d eaten. I was coming to see you. To show you.” He was mumbling, still hardly awake, working his jaw from side to side and turning his head to ease the muscles of his stiffened neck. “I don’t have all you need. Look for more as soon as I’m rested. But I have something.”

“You’re inside the Sigil ship?”

“Five days ago. Not too hard. Difficult part is time-sharing the monitors. So our observations won’t be noticed. And then getting information out.” Gilden stood up, leaning against Derli for balance. “Come on, if you want to see it. Krieg, too.”

“He’s not here. He flew to Montmorin for a meeting with a Lucidar group. I think there’s a big fight brewing with Earth. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Mm.” Gilden hardly seemed interested, leading the way into his own living quarters. “Doesn’t matter. Unless you need him.”

“For my work? I don’t. Valmar started out as a biologist, but he hasn’t done any real research or analysis for years. I don’t need him.”

Gilden grunted. He was already at work, setting up a linked series of displays. “Take a look at this first. It’s just a summary, an overview of what we’ve got. When you see what’s here and what’s missing, you can tell me where I should concentrate my efforts tomorrow.” He stood up and gestured to his seat.

“What about you?” But Derli sat down. The temptation was too great. A first image was already forming on the screen, of what could be an interior chamber of the Sigil ship.

“I’m going to take a shower while you do a run-through. You don’t need me for that—probably manage better without me.”

She said nothing. Gilden knew why. He had developed the displays slowly and painfully, over days of frustrating effort, but even that had been fascinating. For Derli the impact would be a thousand times as great.

He stood staring at her in silence for a couple of minutes. Then he retreated quietly to the bathhouse. Derli did not even notice his departure.

* * *

Progress was slow, but finally overwhelming. For the first couple of minutes of display Derli saw only blurry green outlines of two Sigil, moving jerkily from place to place. Frequent incomprehensible breaks or swirls of random color provided a maddening distraction, as did passing glimpses of what seemed to be chamber ceilings and floors.

But then, as Gilden’s mastery of the interaction technique had slowly deepened, the recorded images improved in focus, depth, color, and detail. Derli could discern odd features of the Sigil ship interior. The chamber walls had a convoluted, organic look to them, unlike anything constructed by humans. Even the control banks lacked clean, hard, functional outlines. She waited, impatient but understanding. Her interest was in the biology of the Sigil but she was not the only customer for Gilden’s magic. Others cared to know about the ship, not its occupants.

Finally, as though responding to Derli’s impatience, the display settled down to show the Sigil themselves. Derli leaned forward. They were not wearing the suits that had cloaked every record in the Lucidar data banks. She confirmed overall structure. Both Sigil were certainly bipedal, with bilateral symmetry. Now that she could see their external colors, she learned that the legs and arms springing from the forward-curving torso were a bright orange-red. The trunk was banded, in crimson and white for the smaller Sigil and in darker red and white for the other. Only the head of each was dark. The prominent muzzles, almost black, were ciliated with delicate silver tendrils like the feelers on a catfish.

Derli watched the display through to its last incomplete image. Then she backed up to the beginning, longing for more: more detail of the mouth, especially its inside; more and higher-resolution images of the lower part of the trunk where the reproductive and excretory organs were logically housed; X rays, to reveal internal structure; most of all, tissue samples.

She began to make a list, even though she knew that the last two elements would almost certainly be denied to her regardless of Gilden’s skill. Ship monitoring systems used X rays routinely for status reports on the drive and X rays also served a purpose with living organisms. But that was in diagnosis of abnormal conditions, not during routine survey of the ship’s interior.

As for tissue samples, Gilden had already assured her that he could return no material object, however small, from the inside of the ship. But he had performed other miracles. As the record progressed from beginning to end the Sigil became smoothly moving solid objects rather than flat, jerky cartoons.

Derli stopped wishing for what she did not have, and concentrated her attention on the similarities and differences between the two Sigil. She moved to the appropriate part of the file.

She knew from the original records provided by Bravtz’ig that the smaller alien was about one and a half meters tall, the big one maybe three meters. Such a large size imposed structural limitations on any form evolved on a planet with gravity comparable with Earth or Lucidar. Gilden’s new data confirmed it. The larger Sigil was bigger in every way, thicker, clumsier, slower moving. The small one danced anxiously around it, bringing food and drink, adjusting cushions, apparently catering to its partner’s every demand. Structurally, both of them possessed a generally similar body pattern except for variations of the lower trunk. That suggested the varying genital configurations appropriate to male and female. The color differences of the torso were also presumably sex-linked, brighter crimson bands fitting the display pattern of the smaller male.

It was all plausible and consistent. But something, somewhere, did not quite fit.

What?

She leaned back in her seat, placed interlocked hands on the back of her head, and pondered.

* * *

Derli had frozen the display at a certain point, concentrating on a smooth boss at the base of the male Sigil’s torso, when she heard a noise behind her. It was Gilden, his hair dark and wet and slicked down across his forehead. He was paler than ever, but far more alert.

“Is this everything?” Derli nodded to the display.

“Everything I thought you’d need to see. I have hours and hours of other records, about the ship itself and its computer system.”

“I think I should see them all. Just in case.” She pointed to her own notes. “And here’s my wish list. Without cell samples I’m reduced to guessing on things as basic as sex. Maybe you can work out some way to provide me with a substitute for that information.”

“I can try.” Gilden stared at the display. “You’re still in the middle sequence after all this time. Or did you go all the way through?”

“Twice.” She frowned up at him, then glanced across to the general display board. “Phew. I’ve been sitting here over three hours. Unbelievable. I thought you were just going for a shower.”

“I was. I took a nap first.” He hesitated. “Want to eat? I don’t remember when I last had a full meal.” And, when she seemed slow to answer, “We can talk about the rest of the data you need. Don’t know if I’ll be able to get it. But I’ll try. Just tell me what you want.”

He was too nervous. His jittery movements reminded Derli of the anxious male Sigil (if it was the male) hovering over its hulking partner. She stood up. “All right. I’m hungry, too. And we don’t have to discuss my problem. We can talk about anything you like.” She took Gilden by the arm.

A mistake. He flinched away from her touch. He would not look at her as they walked together to the dining area, and he stared up at the ceiling while Derli made food selections for both of them.

It was a chance too good to miss. She glanced at Gilden’s tormented, too-pale face, and quietly added a mixture of tranquilizers and stimulants to the drinks that she was ordering. He did not notice, even when they sat down and he took the first sip. He was staring at her when the food was served, but never into her eyes. He was studying her mouth, nose, and ears, as intently as a portrait artist.

The drugs were slow to take effect. They ate a full three-course meal, while Derli discussed Sigil physiology in as much detail as she was able, including her need for high-resolution body images, and Gilden remained silent. But at last, when the plates were cleared and a third drink had been served and drunk, he met her eyes and said: “You like it here. You don’t have to go back to Earth if you don’t want to.”

“I told you, Valmar knows the code of my implant as well as yours. He can make us do what he likes. Kill us both, if he has the codes set that way.”

“He might kill me, but surely he won’t kill you. He wouldn’t set your implant that way. You are his lover.”

“More than that. And less than that.” Derli laughed and reached out to stroke Gilden’s hand where it sat palm-down on the table, realizing as she did so that the drugs were affecting her as much as him. “He loves me, he loves me not. Arrin, I don’t know what Valmar would do if I said I was staying on Lucidar. But I know I dare not take
that
risk. Other risks, I want to take.”

All the initiatives had to come from her. She had known it would be that way. He said nothing as they stood up from the table and she led him slowly back to her bedroom. He knew exactly how to undress her and touch her, as though he had done it before a thousand times. Yet at the same time he was clumsy and breathless, a boy fumbling his way toward a first encounter.

Derli understood. When the time came she moved on top of him and took the final initiative. And when he was too nervous and sudden, finished before she was even close, she understood that, too. She was part of the problem, unable to respond in full despite the drugs’ assistance. In any case, there was more than one form of satisfaction.