In the Ocean of Night (32 page)

“Aren’t the men working at the wreck in danger if they know so little of what caused this?”

“I suppose. Though the wreck has a blind side—the hill it’s on masks most of the sky in that direction. That’s how those three fellows got to the girl in time. They took a shuttle across Mare Crisium at low altitude, landed on the other face of the hill and simply walked around it. The wreck doesn’t fire at anything on the ground, apparently. So they carried her out, in shock but repairable.”

“They did not try to penetrate the invisible screen?” “No point. Leastwise, not then. Some physicists have taken a knock at it since—they say it’s high-frequency electromagnetic, with an incredible energy density—but they failed.”

“Ah.”

Nigel cast him a sidelong glance. Mr. Ichino smiled. Wind rippled the pepper tree and murmured through the park and brushed by them. “And where are you leading, Nigel?”

“That obvious, eh?” he said dryly.

“You know I am retiring. I cannot work on this riddle any longer.”

“I know, but—”

“You do not think you can talk me out of it, I hope?” “No, I wouldn’t be that thick. But you’re wrong about not taking part in all this.”

Mr. Ichino wrinkled his brow. “How?”

Nigel hunched forward eagerly. “I read the prelim study on the Wasco crater. It’s a mammoth hole and the land’s scraped clean in a seventy-five-kilometer radius. But there’s where the detective work ends. Whatever housed the fusion device is obliterated.”

“Of course. There is nothing to be learned there. The only possible research must be done on the moon.”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” Nigel said lightly. “But suppose there
was
something stored at Wasco. Why? Easier to salt stuff away on the moon.”

“Unless you were working on Earth.”

“Exactly. Now, we haven’t a clue how old that wreck is. It probably had some sort of camouflage going earlier so nobody picked it up on the Marginis search. But if the wreck has been there a longish time, there might have been ancient operations
on Earth.
”

“And you wish to look for traces of that.”

“Ah… yes.”

“Interesting.”

“It’s simply a matter of where you retire.”

Mr. Ichino gave a puzzled glance.

“Well, say you spend some time this winter in the north woods.” Nigel spread his hands and shrugged, his offhanded-and-reasonable gesture. “See if there is any history of unusual activities there.”

“It sounds outlandish.” “This
is
outlandish.”

“Do you honestly think this has any reasonable probability of success?”

“No. But we aren’t
being
reasonable. We’re guessing what’s near on to unguessable.”

“Nigel.” Mr. Ichino leaned forward from his position and touched Nigel’s wrist. The other man’s eyes were earnest, excited. There was something in this dynamic tension Mr. Ichino recognized in himself, as he had been decades before. Nigel was, after all, nine years his junior. “Nigel, I want to end with this. I do not feel at peace here.”

“If you tried you might get to work on the Marginis wreck.”

“No. Age, inexperience—no.”

“Right then, granted. But you can make a contribution by running down this nagging bit—there may be something to be learned up there. Some trace, a fragment—I don’t know.”

“NASA will uncover it.”

“Of that I’m by no means sure. And even if they did— can we trust them to pass it on? With the New Sons so powerful now?”

“I see.” Mr. Ichino’s face became absentmindedly blank, concentrated. He licked his lips. He gazed around the tranquil park where in the distance the air rippled with summer heat. He noticed that Nigel was wisely giving him time to let the words and arguments sink in. Still, Mr. Ichino fretted uncertainly. He studied the people lounging and eating around them, dotted on the emerald lawn at the intervals decreed by privacy. Office workers, newspaper readers, derelicts, welfare stringers, the elderly, students, the dying, all sopping up the forgiving sun. Down the flagstone path came businessmen, always in pairs, always talking, earnestly not here and earnestly going someplace else. Commonplace. Ordinary. It felt so odd to speak of the alien in the midst of this relentlessly average world. He wondered if Nigel was more subtle than he seemed; something in this atmosphere made it possible for Mr. Ichino to change his mind.

“Very well,” he said. “I will do it.”

Nigel smiled and at the corners of his upturned mouth there seeped out a boundless, childlike glee; a seasoned anticipation; a regained momentum.

PART SIX

2038

ONE

N
igel squinted at the faxscreen memo:

        
Site 7 (Mare Marginis vicinity)

        
October 8, 2038

TO: John Nichols, Alphonsus Base

OPERATION REPORT

Assignment of rotating shifts to interface with alien computer network.

Team One:  Primary task: Inventory search utilizing direct readout.

                  
J. Thomson—analysis

                  
V. Sanges—electronic technician

Team Two:  Primary task: Translation. Search for correspondences to terrestrial language forms (such as predicate-subject, repeating syllabic context, etc.) in visual “language” sequences.

                  
A. Lewis—linguistics

                  
D. Steiner—electronic technician

Team Three:      Primary task: General exploratory search pattern. Communicate results to Teams One and Two.

                  
N. Walmsley—computer and language systems specialist

                  
N. Amajhi—electronic technician

Operations are to be conducted on a continuing round-the-clock schedule seven days a week. Important results will be communicated directly to Alphonsus by tight laser beam, reflected off synchronous satellite C, established Sept. 23 (multichannel mode). We understand that Alphonsus will reserve one channel for direct link to Kardensky’s Operations Study Group in Cambridge, for technical and library backup of needed information systems.

This communication signifies compliance with the directives of the Special Congressional Committee as formulated 8 September 2038.

(signed)

Jose Valiera

Coordinator

Nigel pursed his lips. Sandwiched into the jargon were some interesting points. Basic design of the group was the intensive core with a wide-based backup system, the model most favored by research theorists. The three teams were the intensive core. He could look forward to a grueling time of it; the pressure from Earthside would be intense.

Most importantly, he’d got the position opposite Nikka Amajhi.

Nigel nodded to himself and turned away from the faxscreen. The corridor was empty; indeed, the entire main section of Site Seven had appeared nearly deserted since he’d arrived four hours ago. Most of the staff was burrowing out more tunnels. Nigel padded down the tubular hall and consulted the site diagram. There, that was the working area. He found the right door in short order and went in.

A slender woman sat tinkering with electronics in a corner. The room was dim to allow maximum visibility at the two massive communications consoles that faced the far wall. Here was the nexus of the work to be done. The woman glanced up casually.

“Lost?”

“Conceivably.”

“The nearest map is—oh. A moment. You are…?” “Nigel Walmsley.”

“Oh! I am Nikka Amajhi.”

“Oh.” Absurdly, he felt uneasy.

“I understand we will work together.”

She stood up and held out a hand. Her handshake was forthright, no-nonsense. In her face he found an air of half-concealment, as though more emotions bubbled beneath than made it to the surface.

“You’re the inside worker.”

“Can’t you guess from my size?” She made a pretty bow, coming halfway up on her toes in the light gravity and balancing on one. Her jumpsuit fit snugly and something in the gesture, in the intersection of her hourglass waist and flaring hips, the artful grace of her, struck him as with a nearly physical blow. He licked his lips and found them dry.

“Oh. Yes. They wouldn’t want a hulk such as me hauling his carcass through those tunnels.”

“You couldn’t. You’re too big.”

“And too old.”

“You do not look it.”

Nigel murmured something polite and shifted the topic to an oddment of electronics that caught his eye. He recognized the trouble they were having. Knowing someone else by reputation, because of something they’ve done, has its hazards. The work or deeds of another become a kind of halo around them, preventing a clear picture. At times the reputation-halo was useful—at parties, where it could be used to keep people at a distance, or as a special key into places one could otherwise not go. But the halo was false. His was Famous Astronaut or Brave Man. But he was no more that than he was
exclusively
any of the dozen or so other aspects of his life. It was the same with Nikka. He knew her as a quick-witted woman, already famous in the media. She was probably something entirely different from his preconceptions. Well, there was nothing for it: lacking subtlety, he would have to bull his way through.

“That was a brave thing you did,” he said abruptly. “What?” she said, mystified.

“When you were shot down.”

“Oh.
That?
” She looked directly at him, vexed. “That was simply staying alive. Doing what anybody would do. There was nothing brave to it.”

Nigel nodded. “Now you can ask me what it was like to talk to the Snark.”

Puzzlement crossed her face; her eyebrows curled downward. Then she exploded with mirth and slapped him on the arm. “I see! We must do this ritual sweeping out of the cobwebs! Of course.” She laughed merrily and Nigel felt a weight lift from them. “Very well, I shall—do you say, bite?”

“Right. English isn’t your—”

“Native tongue? No. I am Japanese.”

“So I’d gathered.” Yet, he thought, she has none of the shyness I expected her to have. But that, too, was part of the unwanted halo.

“And your friend the Snark?”

“It said our desk calculators will probably outlive us.” “So I’ve heard. But it always takes a Lewis Carroll to make a Snark.”

“Yes,” he said, sensing behind her laughing liquid eyes a more serious intent. “Yes, doesn’t it?”

TWO

Mr. Ichino dozed a bit, late in the morning. He spent most of the day making the cabin fit to live, and as he worked he thought of Japan. Already the images of his visit were fading. He had gone, thinking to regain some fraction of himself, and instead had found a strange parody of the Japan his parents had known.

Perhaps it was the National Parks of Preservation. His ticket to the Osaka Park, despite its price, gained him admission only to the lesser portions. There the grasses and foliage were soot-stained, a dead gray. The great towering trees were withered and dusty. To call this a park seemed a deliberate joke and Mr. Ichino had become angry, only to be soothed by a young woman attendant and then sold another, vastly more expensive ticket. This unlocked a wrought-iron gate at one edge of the grimy forest, in time for the daily appearance of the trained nightingales. Their song burst over him suddenly as he crossed a tinkling stream. Fog shrouded the treetops in the ravine and Mr. Ichino stood ankle-deep in the chill waters, transfixed by the lilting merry song. Later, there came larks. Their trainers assembled in a shoreside clearing. The cages were lined up in a row and simultaneously the doors opened, releasing a fluttering cloud of the birds. They flew vertically upward, hovered below the lazy clouds and warbled for many minutes. The lesser larks returned early and occasionally flew into the wrong cage; the best lasted eighteen minutes aloft, and returned un-erringly.

He could not afford many visits to the Parks, so he spent hours in the city streets. The pollution victims who begged on corners and in doorways disturbed him, but he could not take his eyes away. The healthy passed by these creatures without a thought, but Mr. Ichino often stood at a distance and studied them. He recalled his mother saying, in quite a different context, that the deaf seem as fools and the blind were like sages. Those who could scarcely hear, in their effort to catch what others were saying, would knit their brows, gape their mouths and goggle their eyes, cocking their heads this way and that. But the blind would sit calmly, immersed, their heads bowed a trifle as if in meditation, and thus appear quite thoughtful. He saw in them the half-closed merciful eyes of the Buddha images which were everywhere. They sang softly,
chiri-chiri-gan, chiri-gan,
and ate of parched soybeans and unpolished rice, and to Mr. Ichino they were the only natural people left in this jumbled island of sleazy cities. Amid the pressing crowds Mr. Ichino drifted, letting his time run out, and then came back to America. He had learned that he was not Japanese, and the truth was more than a little disturbing. He had felt a kinship with the remnants of the fragile natural world in Japan, but that was all. A strange logic, he knew: the deformed seemed more human than the abrasive, competitive, healthy ones. He had emptied his pockets into their alms bowls, and wished he could do more. But he could give only momentary shelter to these crippled beings. And in a truly natural world they would be quickly snuffed out. Yet they seemed, cowering there in twos and threes, brushed aside by the earnest business of the world, somehow in touch with a Japan he had once known—or dreamed of—and forever lost. Yes, an odd logic.