The Fenris Device (12 page)

I looked at her, and then I looked where she was pointing.

Ecdyon had no sooner regained his feet after jumping Maslax than he had collapsed again. He was in an untidy sprawl all over the cabin floor. He was unconscious.

I realized that this was no time for standing around lamenting the cruelty of fate. I roused my languishing self-control.

“Get that suit off Maslax,” I told Eve. “Let's have that little box of tricks of his in a safe place. I'll take care of this.” I waved my hand perfunctorily to indicate that “this” covered everything to do with the instruments and switches.

OK, genius, I said—silently—so you can read. Anything he could do you can do better. Tell me which buttons to press and which knobs to turn.

So you can do what? he asked.

So I can warn off the
Cicindel
. We'll get around to the next move after that's out of the way.

How are you going to warn off the
Cicindel
? he wanted to know.

And was a good question.

You better teach me to click like a Gallacellan, fast, I said.

No chance, he replied. You've got to let me have control. With full control, I just might—and I mean might—be able to produce some sound by which I can make myself understood. But I need that control. You must see that.

I saw it. But I didn't like it. Sure, he'd taken control before—once in the Halcyon Drift, once on Chao Phrya when his talents as a musician became desperately important. But the first time I was cradled and hooded, and the second time there was no one around who was in any fit condition to watch. This time was different. I was mobile, operative, and Eve was standing right behind me. It seemed somehow quite indecent to let someone else have my body and my voice when other people were not only watching but might actually want to exchange merry chitchat.

Grainger, said the wind, we're running out of time.

There was, I knew, no alternative. There was no future at all in his producing click-patterns in my mind and my trying to duplicate them. But still I hesitated. If I was helpless, sure, I'd hand over automatically. But I didn't feel helpless. I was on my feet and moving.

If you can't let go, he said, you'll have to let me knock you out.

But that was right out of the question. I wasn't going to have him walking around in my body without my being around to keep a careful eye on him.

Fair enough, I said, it's all yours.

I just relaxed, let everything go limp. My body didn't even sag. There was one weird and frightening moment when I watched my hands reach out for the switches, knowing that it wasn't me who was moving them. But the moment passed. I relaxed, utterly and completely. I sat back to watch. I already knew, after my experiences on Chao Phrya, the difficulties of being an absolutely passive observer. When you've been sovereign in your body for as long as I have, you get used to doing all sorts of things almost automatically—I don't mean reflex actions, because the reflexes would be just the same whichever one of us was in control—I mean things like thinking about Eve and glancing sideways to see what she was doing. Thought and action are much more closely related than we tend to think. While you're doing absolutely nothing but lying still and thinking—effectively what I was doing—your current of thought is producing all kinds of tiny actions to complement and corroborate your thoughts. Conscious application of senses, small changes of facial expression, just changes in bodily tension—all these are the products of consciousness. I could get away with it to a certain extent, but it takes only a very small conflict of nervous impulses to wreak havoc with coordination.

It was easier, this time, simply because I'd been through it before—in theory. I wasn't as worried or as fearful as I had been in the purple forest. But then, on that occasion the total demand on my body had been to stay perfectly still. The chance of conflict had been quite minimal. The present situation wasn't like that—now, I had to pretend to be perfectly immobile, absolutely impotent, while the wind trundled my body around in a perfect imitation of Grainger going about the business of keeping himself in one piece. That was difficult.

In the earlier months of our association—our symbiosis, as we would have it—it would have been impossible. My animosity toward him, my fear and my resentment of him, would have rendered me quite incapable of giving him my body to use as he wished. The conflict would have been inevitable. To do as I was doing needed perfect trust. Not perfect harmony—we never had that and never could have had it—but perfect understanding. A willingness to let him get on with it in his own way. A willingness not to be afraid of what might happen to my most precious possession through his carelessness or willful neglect. That asks a great deal of any man—maybe more of me than of most men, by virtue of my individualistic philosophy of life. A man just cannot be asked to do something like that without finding himself changed by the experience. That had been my initial fear of the wind—that my old identity would be eroded, forced to change. And it was justified. Grainger now was not Grainger as he had been when the
Javelin
went down on the rock that became Lapthorn's Grave. Grainger plus wind was a different being, unequal to the sum of the parts. I hadn't wanted him, and the reasons I hadn't wanted him had proved to be only too good. And yet here I was, playing possum in my own mind, letting the invader who'd changed me change me even more, giving him my body to use. It was necessary, absolutely necessary, for the demands of the present situation to be met, but that necessity in no way altered what was actually happening, the constraints it put upon me, the demands I had to meet. The fact remains that however necessary it was, I couldn't have done what I did without the existence of a very special relationship with the wind.

I call it perfect trust. Some might call it love.

I heard the clicks coming out of the call circuit—the clicks that meant we have contacted the
Cicindel
. I didn't know how long we had left, and I had no way of knowing what sort of message the wind was going to try to get across in whatever imitation Gallacellan he could make my voice produce. How long an explanation would the pilot of the
Cicindel
demand? How long an explanation could the wind produce?

I heard my voice begin to click. I can imagine no more eerie feeling than listening to your own voice conducting a conversation in a language you not only don't know, but aren't physically equipped for talking.

I had no real sense of passing time—measuring time is something which involves the accumulation of events, and the conscious involvement with said accumulation of events. Suspended in my functional limbo I felt quite out of touch with time. I could hear the clicking going on, but I had real difficulty in deciding which clicks came out of the call circuit and which out of me. I didn't feel involved with either set.

I knew that I could talk to the wind, and he could talk to me, but I didn't know when it was safe to do so. He never interrupted me when I was talking—and very rarely when I was listening to someone else talking. He was an adept at interposing his comments and questions into the blank spaces of life—the seconds in which nothing is happening, between events. Of course he was an adept—it was his way of life. But I was a stranger here. I didn't know how to pick my moments. So I waited, simply not knowing what was happening. I could see the screens—the wind was watching them intensely—but I didn't know what each showed. It should have been possible to work it out—visual representation ought to be the same in the two races, as we saw by the same wavelengths of light. But I didn't even occupy myself with that—my sensation of detachment was too great for me to explore the limited avenues by which I might involve my mind in events. I simply watched and waited, content to be a passenger in the whole affair.

In a sense, the rest was a great relief to me. I had been on the move and under pressure for a long time now. The hours I'd spent in my bunk on the
Swan
between the dive and the drive had been recuperation, not rest. This enforced relaxation was the first in a long time. To some extent, I needed it.

Keep smiling, the wind's silent voice said to me, we're winning. The
Cicindel
is safe. Alone we did it.

Can I have my body back now? I asked.

I know you're not going to like this, he said, but I don't think that's wise. Of course, if you cut up rough, I'll have to let you have it, but if you want my sincere advice you'll stay exactly where you are and let me handle this.

Screw your sincere advice, I said. You always sincerely reckoned you'd be a better me than I am. I want my body back, and you better give me reasons why I shouldn't have it.

We're still in trouble, remember? This ship is heading for God knows where under its own steam, following a program we know nothing about and carrying a cloud of absolute destruction a million miles across. Now, that isn't funny, and we have to find a way of switching this thing off. I've read these labels and I've looked at these tapes, and I just don't know. We need help to sort this out and there's only one place where the help we need is available right now. That's the
Cicindel
. I don't know how much they know about this ship, but they knew enough to send out a warning, even if they did send it to the wrong places. I can talk to them.

What about Stylaster? I demanded. He surely knows more than anyone else.

Stylaster is going to want to know who I am, he pointed out. What do I tell him?

The truth.

You know I can't do that. If any of this bunch find out it's a human that's clicking at them they're apt to slap up their wall of silence. The guy I've got now knows something is wrong, but at least he thinks I'm a Gallacellan. On this basis, we can deal. Who knows what might happen if the truth gets out? Let me play it, Grainger, please. You must see that it's our best chance. Maybe our only chance. If we don't find out how to control this ship we have no chance whatsoever of getting back down to Johnny and the captain.

All right, I said—reluctantly, but what choice had I? It's your baby. But just do me one favor. There's no point in us playing musical chairs, so I'll stay put. But contact Nick and Johnny. Let's at least find out whether they're alive. And tell them to stay put.

I can't, he said.

What do you mean can't?

The caller, he said, it's jammed. Maslax broke a switch. I can call the
Cicindel
, but that's all. I can't call the Gallacellans on Iniomi. I can't call the
Swan
or Pallant or the human base on Iniomi.

All right, I said. All right. Just go ahead. Don't mind me. I'll just sit here and watch. Just get us out of this mess.

My body turned around, and I found myself looking at Eve. She stood beside Maslax, who was crumpled up like a rag doll, having lost interest in the whole affair. She had the gun in one hand and the small remote-control bomb trigger in the other. She had an air of astonished patience. She had just been watching me do the impossible.

“It's OK,” I heard my voice say. “We're safe, for now. We have time in hand to sort things out.”

She just went on staring, for a moment. It seemed oddly incredible to me that she didn't automatically notice that it was someone else using my voice and not me. But how could she possibly suspect?

“Nobody speaks Gallacellan,” she said.

“That's right,” I heard myself say, “nobody speaks Gallacellan. Once we're out of this, you can wonder how we got out for the rest of your life. For now, let's just go on doing the impossible quietly, hey?”

It was a perfect imitation. I had to admit that. My voice, my dryness, my slightly aggressive manner. All just perfect. He was more like me than I am—on an off day.

My eyes swung back to the instrument panel, and began to scan.

I clicked furiously. The call circuit clicked back. I knew we were in for a very long session, but I was damned if I was going to sleep. Instead, I reflected on one or two of the wrong conclusions I'd jumped to. There was one hell of a lot packed into a short space of time. Ordinarily, I am a top-class conclusion-jumper, and very accurate. But to err is human, and everybody's talent lets him down sometimes.

It was all a matter of misunderstanding. The Gallacellan/human wall of silence. The failure to communicate. I knew a bit better now. I could even see why I had been wrong about the Fenris device. The
Varsovien
was an emigration ship—that much was obvious. Not a warship at all. I had concluded that she would not be armed because I had been thinking of her simply as “Gallacellan.” It hadn't occurred to me that there was an enemy to arm her against. A simple enough flaw in reasoning. But this ship dated from the Gallacellan wars, when there were Gallacellans and Gallacellans. This magnificent ship wasn't the pride and joy of the entire race—it was the ultimate escape route planned and constructed by one side in the war. It hadn't been used. Either that particular side won, or peace came and the Gallacellans decided to patch up their civilization together. Of course the
Varsovien
was armed. With the ultimate weapon—the ultimate defensive weapon. The people on the ship couldn't fire it in anger—it was a faculty built into the reactive mechanism of the ship. The
Varsovien
was a gigantic cocoon—a generation ship which could look after itself and house a million people—maybe more. If left alone, it would simply have transferred and gone. If attacked, well, it would stick around for a while and let the attackers come. Then, after they'd had their fill, transcee and off we go. Typically Gallacellan, now I came to think about it. A prey species' ultimate dream. Perfect armor. The predators could do all they wanted—to no avail. The perfect passive resistance.
Honi soit qui mal y pense
.

That left just two questions: Why did Stylaster's Gallacellans want the
Varsovien
back? And why did the
Cicindel
contingent want to stop them? But those were questions of purely academic interest. A third question—a much more urgent and important question—dawned on me while I dwelt idly on the first two.