The Avatar (38 page)

Throughout, Caitlín watched. She could do nothing else, except now and then tap a shoulder and point to a thing in the distance that looked sinister—mountain-tall cloud, vortex of turbulence, snake’s nest of lightning, or a wildness for which humans had no ready word. Otherwise she refrained from bothering the men. She watched, she sent her whole being outward, she laughed for happiness.

Williwaw
won through. Occasionally it seemed doubtful she would, despite computations giving her favorable odds, but she did. Reaching the altitude whence the broadcasts originated, more or less, she found peace. Here the air was thick and warm and had no haste. Thermal currents welled from below to help upbear her. The autopilot could take over. She lazed through a broad circle and began a broadcast of her own, taped signals on various Danaan wavebands. A beam carried Rueda’s dull tone aloft: “We are safe. Repeat, we are safe. Give us a few minutes to rest, and we’ll report.”

Like Dozsa, he slumped, chin falling on chest. Caitlín leaned forward to touch both men. “Oh, my poor tired dears—” She stopped, for she grew aware of what was around her.

Without light amplification, she would have been blind. Given it, she saw widely. The foreignness was such that she needed a while before vision could truly register; but an onrush of beauty came at once.

Above, heaven was indigo at the horizon, lightening to violet at the zenith. Single clouds wandered there, faerie shaped, colored for a Colorado sunset. The sun itself stood high in a rainbow ring. Below, a cloud deck lay like an ocean, but no
ocean that men had ever sailed. Its reach was imperial; it had peaks, canyons, smoky plains, great slow cataracts, infinitely intricate yet never twice the same. Aureate, it was touched with reds, streaked with blues and greens and browns, shadowed where it plunged into mysteries.

A flock went by afar. Were they winged, were they finned? They were gone too fast to see; but they had gleamed.

There came a lulling sound from outside, from the calmly flowing wind.

Caitlín reclined her chair and let aches begin to drain away. The heaviness upon her was only like a strong, over-kindly hand.

After a while the humans recovered enough to talk with their ship, take readings, record views, and talk some more. A while after that, certain Danaans arrived.

Caitlín saw them first. Her partners were busy again, not as frantically as on the descent, but worriedly. Communication to space had cut off. The speaker gave nothing but crackle, buzz, chaos, no matter what Rueda tried. Somewhere above them, in that serene-looking heaven, some electric event had somehow made the upper atmosphere opaque to every frequency at his command. This was not a possibility, or at least a likelihood, that the holothetes had foreseen. They were not gods, they had had less information to go on than a Betan expedition would have gathered, and besides, every world in the universe is unique. Dozsa feared the trouble portended an equally sudden change in the air. Dense as it was, its pressure close to the limit of what the hull could withstand, might not currents go through it, Gulf Streams of gas whose borders were roiled and dangerous? Without overmuch hope, he sought hints from instruments and from the feel of the boat.

Thus they might well have missed the newcomers, gone by entirely, had Caitlín not been on the alert. She cried out—sang out—and pounded their backs while her other hand pointed, tuned screens to magnification, pointed afresh. Rueda whistled. “Marvelous,” he said. “Make for them, Stefan.”

Dozsa scowled. “I’m not sure,” he replied. “Under these conditions, to break our holding pattern—”

“Down, you
amadán
!” Caitlín shouted. “I swear they are what we came here for!”

“How can you tell?” the mate demanded.

“Do you mean to say you cannot?”

“Well… well—all right. I suppose if we don’t investigate, we’ll have had our trouble for nothing.”

Caitlín rumpled his sweat-gummed hair. “Now you talk the way Dan would be wanting.”

Between buoyancy and updrafts, stalling speed for
Williwaw
was low. Downward bound, Dozsa slowed her as much as he dared, or maybe a little more. The sight before her sprang into clarity, and dazzled.

By the woman’s count, nineteen forms, traveling by twos and threes, had risen from the clouds beneath to converge well ahead of the vessel, a kilometer lower but precisely on its projected track. They were the size of sperm whales and had the same basic torpedo shape, the same blunt snouts—in which the mouths(?) were set foremost, circular, closable by sphincters—and flukes at the after end—though these were fourfold, both horizontal and vertical, and seemed to be flexible control surfaces rather than propellers. Short tendrils and long antennae encircling their muzzles doubtless held, or were, sense organs. From their middles bulged a pair of intricate muscular structures, out of which sprang smooth, narrow wings that exceeded the body in length. Forward of these were two arms (or trunks, since they appeared to be boneless) ending in what humans could only call hands.

The coloring was exquisite: royal blue on backs shaded to sapphire beneath, while the wings were ashimmer like diffraction jewels, each movement of their pliant surfaces an interplay of chromatic waves. Glory exploded when the creatures began to dance for the spacecraft. They swooped, they soared, they planed, they turned, they glided within centimeters of each other, they arced off across kilometers, a wheeling, weaving, fountaining measure which seized the mind and drew it into itself as great art ever does, or love.

“They have music for that,” Caitlín foreknew. “Carlos, can you be tuning in their music?”

Rueda tore loose from his own rapture and worked with the sonic receiver. Presently he had eliminated the boom of the boat’s passage, damped the wind-sounds, and brought in the song. From sea-deep basses to ice-clear sopranos, and below and above those pitches humans can hear, tones filled the cabin. They were on no scale known to children of Earth; if they gave
the men any clear first impression, it was of unshakeable power; but Caitlín said while tears stood in her eyes, “Oh, the joy in them, the joy! You cannot hear it? Then look how they frolic.”

“I’d better concentrate on keeping us aloft,” Dozsa said. Despite his gaze straying to the half stately, half genial harmony of movements around him, he swung
Williwaw
through a tight curve.

“It’s welcoming us they are,” Caitlín said. “If they are in truth the Others, och, I always knew those must be happy folk.”

“Eh, wait, my dear,” Rueda cautioned. “It’s a superb spectacle, but you’re jumping to conclusions. Those could simply be curious and playful animals, like dolphins cavorting around a watercraft.”

“With hands? They use their hands better than hula dancers.”

“Where are clothes, ornaments, tools, any sign of artifacts?”

“They need none right now. Hush. I think I may be in the way of starting to understand that music.”

“You’d better hurry,” Dozsa warned. “I can’t safely continue this maneuver. I’ll have to go back to a larger radius pretty soon. The trouble is, our stalling speed seems to be more than the top they can manage.”

“As one would expect,” Rueda said. “Nature designed them for… Danu. Man did not design this boat for it. Besides, she’s nuclear-powered, while they run on chemistry—I’m sorry, Caitlín, you wanted quiet.”

“No, go on, if you’ve a thought,” she said. “I just wanted to listen, not dispute. I’ll save an ear for you. Science too is a set of arts.”

Rueda smiled lopsidedly. “I’m no scientist. A Sunday dabbler in it at most…. We are getting this scene on tape, aren’t we?”

“Aye, of course.”

“Good,” Dozsa said bleakly. “Life like this on a world like this. It’ll give us much to talk about in the years ahead.”

The pageant went on. Humans spoke amidst its melodies, staring at its motion, as they flew between red dwarf sun and sea of cloud.

“I think they must be live lighter-than-air ships,” Rueda ventured. “Those giant bodies are mostly gas bags, inflated by their own heat. Vents help them rise or sink, the wings catch winds, and probably there’s a jet arrangement as well, using a bellows or—I don’t know; but the atmosphere’s dense enough at
this level to make it practical. They breathe hydrogen instead of oxygen, naturally, but I suspect they’re otherwise not so unlike us, they’re also made of proteins in water solution.”

“Where do they come from?” Dozsa wanted to know. “What made them evolve? How did life start in the first place? Where does the food chain begin?”

“How many years and research organizations will you allow me for those questions, my friend? If you want my guess, I’d say the ‘primordial ocean’ is down under the clouds, where the air gets really dense and chemicals can concentrate—orginally on colloids? Remember, this planet is like Jupiter or Zeus or Epsilon. It radiates more than it receives. That means a thermal gradient to drive biochemistry, especially when the sun is weak. Energy comes more from below than above. I daresay our altitude here is marginal for life, like Antarctica or the sea bottoms of Earth.”

Dozsa scowled at the dancers. “Intelligence developing when the whole ecology floats? How would it? No stone for tools, no fire—”

Rueda nodded. “That’s why I confess to doubts about those otherwise delightful animals.”

Caitlín straightened in her harness. “Wurra, wurra, where have you two parked your imaginations?” she challenged. “Can you not think of growths adrift for use, like kelp and fish bones, only better? If you must have a thing that answers to fire, what about enzymes that catalyze reduction of organic compounds? And do we know what made apes turn manward on Earth, let alone dogmatizing about the subject on a foreign planet?”

Rueda stroked his mustache. “True. However, I decline to believe in the possibility of electronics without solid materials, minerals, being available. Yes, conceivably the Others know tricks with pure force-fields. But how does one get from here to there? Not in a single bound! Native Danaan sentience might develop, it might get as noble and artistic and intellectual as you please, but by itself it has
no
way to build a scientific-technological civilization.” His laugh came brittle.
“E pur si muove
. We’ve detected transmitters.” He sagged. Weariness flattened his voice. “Never mind. I’m afraid this gravity is getting to my marrow. I can’t think very well. How I hope something more happens soon.”

Dozsa nodded. He had no reason to repeat what they knew. Their stay was sharply limited in time. Muscles might adapt to
high weight, but the cardiovascular system, the entire fluid distribution of the human body, could not. Blood was pooling in the lower extremities; the laboring heart grew less and less able to supply the brain; seepage out of cells would bring edema; eventually the damage would be irreversible.

Meanwhile the hull was not impermeable. At this pressure, molecules of hydrogen were leaking through metal. The mixture would at last become explosive.

“Well, we planned on remaining till near sundown.” Dozsa sighed. “Probably we were too optimistic. Distances must be great everywhere on Danu. Those people, if they are intelligent, must be those that happened to be close by. The others—the Others—”

“The true Others would have arrived sooner, is that what you are saying, Stefan?” Caitlín asked.

Again he nodded.

“It’s right you are, I fear.” She looked back outward. “But how lovely they are here, how full of bliss!”

Dozsa returned
Williwaw
to her former height and path. The dance continued. The visitors watched and recorded as best they could.

The ember sun passed noon. More Danaans came.

There was no longer any doubting their sapience. The dance dissolved, and those took over who had brought equipment. Some had curious objects hung on their titantic persons, some guided vehicles of various shapes (platforms? birds? chambered nautiluses?) from which projected devices (telescopes? cobwebs? interlocked rings?). They did not attempt to meet the spacecraft, but came to rest well beneath her and adjusted their apparatuses.

The radio receiver brought in ordered sounds, in the same wide range as earlier tunes but plainly speech.

“Give me five minutes,” Rueda muttered, and got busy with a reflection spectrometer which had been preset for him aboard
Chinook
. Dozsa held the boat in a steady wheeling at a steady speed, though an afternoon wind was rising to drone around her structure and thrill through it. Aches, exhaustion, the drag of gravity were forgotten.

“How do we respond?” Caitlín inquired out of exultation; and immediately: “Och, aye, a notion, if you’ve none better, boys.”

“The mike is yours,” Dozsa said. “What have you in mind?”

“A patterned signal, to show them we wish to communicate. Why start with mathematics? They know full well that we know the value of
pi
. But if we can recognize their music for what it is and enjoy the same, faith, they can ours.” Caitlín reached down to the webbing on the side of her chair. “Well that I thought to bring my sonador.”

She inserted a program and touched the keyboard.
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
tumbled forth. “They offered us mirth,” she explained. “Let us offer it back.”

A screen at high magnification showed the Danaans reacting. At least, they moved about… to confer?

“Ha!” Rueda said. “I expected this.” He tapped the spectrometer. “Those vehicles, most of those gadgets are metal. Tell me how that was mined, on a planet whose surface is hot liquid hydrogen.”

“It wasn’t,” Dozsa declared. “It came from outside.”

Seen against purple heaven and a tower of cloud, two Danaan carriers linked together. One of the pilots withdrew on mother-of-pearl wings, the other remained. Suddenly he(?!) and the machines were hidden behind great sheets and curtains of light. Outward and outward they flared, every color, a created aurora. It wavered about for a short while, as if uncertain. Then—

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Caitlín whispered. “They’re replying to Mozart.”

She must show the men how this was true, how the lambencies matched the notes (in no simple fashion, but even more truly as the unseen artist strengthened a grasp on the intent of an Earthling centuries dead) until spectrum and scale became a single jubilation. Her understanding of the fact was not strictly scientific, demonstrable by any standard analytical technique; it was the kind of insight that came to Newton and Einstein.