The Avatar (2 page)

Vaguely she heard Archer: “—quarantine?” and Langendijk: “Well, if they insist, but we walked on Beta, again and again for eight years, and we have a Betan native with us, and nobody’s caught any diseases. Pinski and de Carvalho, our biologists, studied the subject and tell me cross-infection is impossible. Biochemistries are too unlike.”

Caught up in the beacons, she quite stopped listening. Oh, surely someday she, holothete, could speak mind to mind with their makers, if ever she found them.

Though what would they make of
her,
perhaps in more than one meaning of the phrase? Even physical appearance might conceivably not be altogether irrelevant to them. It was an odd thing to do in these circumstances, but for the first time in almost a decade Joelle Ky briefly considered her body as flesh, not machinery.

At fifty-eight Earth-years of age, her hundred and seventy-five centimeters remained slim, verging on gaunt, her skin clear and pale and only lightly lined. In that and the high cheekbones her genes kept a bit of the history which her name also remembered; she had been born in North America, in what was left of the old United States before it federated with Canada. Her features were delicate, her eyes large and dark. Hair once sable, bobbed immediately below the ears, was the hue of iron. Clad now in the working uniform of the ship, a coverall with abundant pockets and snaploops, she seldom wore anything very much more stylish at home.

A smile flickered.
How silly can I get? If one thing is certain
about the Others, it is that none of them will come courting me! Could it be the thought of Dan, yonder on Demeter? Additional nonsense. Why, at Beta I became eight years his senior
.

Somehow that raised Eric Stranathan for her, the first and last man with whom she fell wholly in love. Across a quarter century—plus the time she had been gone on this mission—he came back, seated opposite her in a canoe on Lake Louise, among mountains, in piney air, under a night sky nearly as vast as what lay around
Emissary;
and staring upward, she whispered, “How do the Others see that? What is it to them?”

“What are they?” he answered. “Animals evolved beyond us; machines that think; angels dwelling by the throne of God; beings, or a being, of a kind we’ve never imagined and never can; or what? Humans have been wondering for more than a hundred years now.”

She mustered pride. “We’ll come to know.”

“Through holothetics?” he asked.

“Maybe. Else through—who can tell? But I do believe we will. I have to believe that.”

“We might not want to. I’ve got an idea we’d never be the same again, and that price might be too high.”

She shivered. “You mean we’d forsake all we have here?”

“And all we are. Yes, it’s possible.” His dear lanky form stirred, rocking the boat. “And I wouldn’t, myself. I’m so happy where I am, this moment.”

That was the night they became lovers.

—Joelle shook herself.
Stop. Be sensible. I’m obsessive about the Others, I know. Seeing their handiwork again serving not aliens but humans must have uncapped a wellspring in me. But Willem’s right. The Betans should be enough for many generations of my race. Do the Others know that? Did they foresee it?

She was faintly shocked to note that her attention had drifted from the intercom for minutes. She wasn’t given to introspection or daydreaming. Maybe it had happened because she was computer-linked. At such times, an operator became a greater mathematician and logician, by orders of magnitude, than had ever lived on Earth before the conjunction was developed. But the operator remained a mortal, full of mortal foolishness, I
suppose my habit of close concentration while I’m in this state took over in me. Since I’m not used to dealing with emotions, the habit got out of hand
.

She knew peripherally that an argument had been going on. Hearkening, she heard Archer state:

“Very well, Captain Langendijk, nobody foresaw you’d return this early—if ever, to be frank—and therefore I don’t have specific orders regarding you. But my superiors did brief me and issue a general directive.”

“Ah?” replied the skipper of
Emissary
. “And what does that say?”

“Well, uh, well, certain highly placed people worry about more than your bringing a strange bug to Earth. The idea is, they don’t know what you might bring back. Look, I’m not saying a monster has taken over your ship and is pretending to be you, anything paranoid like that.”

“I should hope not! As a matter of fact, sir, the Betans—the name we gave them, of course—the Betans are not just friendly, they are anxious to know us well. That is why they will trade with us on terms that would else be unbelievably favorable. They stand to gain even more.”

Wariness responded: “What?”

“It would take long to explain. There is something vital they hope to learn from us.”

It twisted in Joelle:
Something that I have never yet really learned myself, nor ever likely will
.

Archer’s voice jarred the thought out of her. “Well, maybe. Though I think that reinforces the point, that nobody can tell what the effect might be… on us. And the World Union is none too stable, you know. You plan to report straight to the Council—”

“Yes.” Langendijk said. “We’ll proceed to the neighborhood of Earth, call Lima, and request instructions. What’s wrong with that?”

“Too public!” Archer exclaimed. After a few seconds: “Look, I’m not at liberty to say much. But… the officials I mentioned want to, uh, debrief you in strict privacy, examine your materials, that sort of thing, before they issue any news release. Do you see?”

“M-m-m, I had my suspicions,” Langendijk rumbled. “Go on.”

“Well, under the circumstances, et cetera, I’m going to interpret my orders as follows. We’ll accompany you through the gate, to the Solar System. Radio interlock of our autopilots, of course, to make sure the ships come out at the other end
simultaneously. You’ll have no communication with anybody but us, on a tight beam—we’ll handle everything outside—until you hear differently. Is that clear?”

“Rather too clear.”

“Please, Captain, no offense intended, nothing like that. You must understand what a tremendous business this is. People who, uh, who’re responsible for billions of human lives, they’re bound to be cautious. Including, for a start, me.”

“Yes, I agree you are doing your duty as you see it, Captain Archer. Besides, you have the power.”
Emissary
bore a couple of guns, but almost as an afterthought; her fire control officers doubled as pilots of her launch. Though she could build up huge velocities if given time, her top acceleration with payload and reaction mass on hand was under two gravities; and her gyros or lateral jets could turn her about only ponderously. No one had imagined her as a warcraft, a lone vessel setting off into what might be a whole galaxy.
Faraday
was designed for battle. (The occasion had never arisen, but who knew what might someday emerge from a gate? Besides, her high maneuverability fitted her for rescue work and for conveying exploratory teams.)

“I’m trying to do our best for our government, sir.”

“I wish you would tell me who in the government.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m only an astronautical officer. It wouldn’t be proper for me to discuss politics. Uh, you do see, don’t you, you’ve nothing to worry about? This is an extra precaution, no more.”

“Yes, yes,” Langendijk sighed. “Let us get on with it.” Talk went into technicalities.

Signoff followed. Langendijk addressed his crew: “You heard, of course. Questions? Comments?”

A burst of indignation and dismay responded; loudest came Frieda von Moltke’s
“Hollenfeuer und Teufelscheiss!”
First Engineer Dairoku Mitsukuri was milder: “This is perhaps high-handed, but we ought not to be detained long. The fact of our arrival will generate enormous public pressure for our release.”

Carlos Francisco Rueda Suárez, the mate, added in his haughtiest tone, “Furthermore, my family will have a good deal to say about the matter.”

A dread she had hoped was ridiculous lifted in Joelle, chilled her flesh and harshened her contralto. “You’re supposing they will know,” she said.

“Good Lord, you can’t mean that,” Second Engineer Torsten Sverdrup protested. “The Ruedas kept in ignorance—that’s impossible.”

“I fear it not,” Joelle answered. “We’re completely at the mercy of yonder watchship, you realize. And her captain isn’t acting like a man who only wants to play safe. Is he? I don’t pretend to be very sensitive where people are concerned, but I have had some exposure to cliques and cabals on high political levels. Also, the last time we talked on Earth, Dan Brodersen warned me we might return not simply to hostility from some factions, but to trouble.”

“Brodersen?” asked Sam Kalahele, von Moltke’s fellow gunner.

“The owner of Chehalis Enterprises on Demeter,” said Marie Feuillet, chemist. “You must allow for him exaggerating. He is a free-swinging capitalist, therefore overly suspicious of the government, perhaps of the Union itself.”

“We have to commence acceleration soon,” Langendijk declared. “All hands to flight posts.”

“Please!” Joelle cried. “Skipper, listen a minute! I’m not going to debate, I admit I’m hopelessly naive about many things, but Dan—Captain Brodersen did tell me he’d keep a robot near the gate, programmed to look out for us, just in case of trouble. He foresaw the possibility—the likelihood, he called it—that we’d return on a date soon after departure. Well, what else can that second craft be, orbiting far off—we have a radar pickup of it, you remember—what else can it be but his observer?”

Rueda’s voice rang: “Holy Virgin, Joelle, in all these years, why did you never mention it?”

“Oh, he felt we shouldn’t be worried about something that might never happen. He told me because, well, we’re friends, knowing I’d shunt the information off in my own mind. I put it on my summary tape, for the rest of you to play back if I should die.”

“But in that case, there is no problem,” Rueda said happily. “We cannot be held incommunicado, if that’s what you fear. Once the robot reports to him, he’ll tell the world. I might have expected this of him. You may have heard he’s my kinsman by his first marriage.”

Joelle shook her head. The cables into the bowl-shaped helmet were flexible and allowed that, though the added mass forced a noticeable effort and, in weightlessness, caused her torso to countertwist slightly.

“No,” she answered. “Notice how distant it is. No optical system man has yet built has the resolution to tell
Emissary
apart from—seven, is it?—similar ships, at such a remove. She’s simply a modified
Reina-class
transport, after all.”

“Then what’s the use of parking an observer out here?” snapped Quartermaster Bruno Benedetti.

“Isn’t it obvious what’s happened?” retorted planetologist Olga Razumovski. “But tell us, Joelle.”

The holothete drew breath. “Here’s what Brodersen planned to do,” she said. “He’d dispatch the robot ostensibly to study the T machine over a period of years in hopes of gaining a few clues as to how it works. The watchships don’t really carry on a very satisfactory program, so the project could hardly be forbidden. Besides, he wouldn’t do it in his own name. He’d get the Demetrian Research Foundation to front for him. He’s been generous enough with donations there. Anyway, the craft would be carrying out bona fide observations.

“Then why is so valuable an instrumentality forced to stay more than a million kilometers from the thing it’s supposed to be investigating? I daresay the authorities made some excuse about safety, possible collision if a ship came through with the wrong vectors. I make the probability of that happening to be on the order of one in ten to the tenth. But they could enforce the regulation if they were determined to.

“So the fact they would have done it, doesn’t that show their true motive? They don’t want to lose control over news about the gate—another Betan ship appearing, maybe, or us returning, or anything marvelous. They want to exercise censorship.

“Will they censor
us?
There is a powerful antistellar element on Earth, in more than one national government. They could have gotten hold of the right levers in the Union hierarchy. They could have plans that they’ve not consulted their colleagues, about.”

Curses, growls, a couple of objections grated from the intercom. Lonely among them went Fidelio’s fluting sound of bewilderment. What is the trouble? the Betan sang. Why are you no longer glad?

Langendijk silenced the noise. “As captain of a watchcraft, Archer has authority over me,” he said. “Prepare to obey his instructions.”

“Willem, listen,” Joelle pleaded. “I can pinpoint a beam to the robot so they’ll not detect a whisper aboard
Faraday,
and give Brodersen the truth—”

Langendijk cut her off: “We will follow our orders. That’s a direct command of my own, which I’ll enter in the log.” His tone gentled. “Let’s not quarrel, after we’ve come such a long, hard way together. Calm down. Think how large the chances are that some of you are overwrought, building a haunted house on a grain of sand. Archer communicates secretly, with the secret connivance of the watchship captain in the Solar System—communicates secretly with his secret masters, who tell him to take us to a secret place? Isn’t that a little melodramatic?” Earnestly: “Think, too—the law of space is above politics. It has to be. Without it, man doesn’t go to the stars, he dies. Every one of us has given a solemn oath to uphold it.” After a pause, during which only the ventilator wind had utterance: “Take your flight stations. We will accelerate in ten minutes.”

Joelle slumped. Hopelessness overwhelmed her. She could in fact have sent the uninterceptible message she spoke of, if her computer linkage were extended to the outercom system; but the switches for that were not in this chamber.

And Willem does have a point about the law. He could well be right, likewise, about this whole idea of a plot against us being a sick fantasy. Who am I to judge? I’ve been too remote from common humanity for too many years to have much feel for how it works
.