The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II (51 page)

That last part was not true, of course. Reynolds, like everyone, had known about the aliens, but he did not have to admit that their approach had not overly concerned him. He had not shared the
hysteria which had gripped the whole of the Earth when the announcement was made that an alien starship had entered the system. The authorities had known about it for months before ever releasing
the news. By the time anything was said publicly, it had been clearly determined that the aliens offered Earth no clear or present danger. But that was about all anyone had learned. Then the
starship had gone into orbit around the moon, an action intended to confirm their lack of harmful intent toward Earth, and the entire problem had landed with a thud in Kelly’s lap. The aliens
said they wanted to meet a man who knew something about the sun, and that had turned out to be Reynolds. Then – and only then – had he had a real reason to become interested in the
aliens. That day, for the first time in a half-dozen years, he had actually listened to the daily news broadcasts from Earth. He discovered – and it didn’t particularly surprise him
– that everyone else had long since got over their initial interest in the aliens. He gathered that war was brewing again. In Africa this time, which was a change in place if not in
substance. The aliens were mentioned once, about halfway through the program, but Reynolds could tell they were no longer considered real news. A meeting between a representative of the American
moon base and the aliens was being arranged, the newscaster said. It would take place aboard the aliens’ ship in orbit around the moon, he added. The name Bradley Reynolds was not mentioned.
I wonder if they remember me, he had thought.

“It seems to me that you could get more out of them than some babble about stars being gods,” Kelly said, getting up and pacing around the room, one hand on hip. She shook her head
in mock disbelief and the brown curls swirled downward, flowing like dark honey in the light gravity.

“Oh, I did,” he said casually.

“What?” There was a rustling of interest in the room.

“A few facts about their planet. Some bits of detail I think fit together. It may even explain their theology.”

“Explain theology with astronomy?” Kelly said sharply. “There’s no mystery to sun worship. It was one of our primitive religions.” A man next to her nodded.

“Not quite. Our star is relatively mild-mannered, as Jonathon would say. And our planet has a nice, comfortable orbit, nearly circular.”

“Theirs doesn’t?”

“No. The planet has a pronounced axial inclination, too, nothing ordinary like Earth’s twenty-three degrees. Their world must be tilted at forty degrees or so to give the effects
Jonathon mentioned.”

“Hot summers?” one of the men he didn’t know said, and Reynolds looked up in mild surprise. So the underlings were not just spear-carriers, as he had thought. Well enough.

“Right. The axial tilt causes each hemisphere to alternately slant toward and then away from their star. They have colder winters and hotter summers than we do. But there’s something
more, as far as I can figure it out. Jonathon says its world ‘does not move in the perfect path’ and that ours, on the other hand, very nearly does.”

“Perfect path?” Kelly said, frowning. “An eight-fold way? The path of enlightenment?”

“More theology,” said the man who had spoken.

“Not quite,” Reynolds said. “Pythagoras believed the circle was a perfect form, the most beautiful of all figures. I don’t see why Jonathon shouldn’t.”

“Astronomical bodies look like circles. Pythagoras could see the moon,” Kelly said.

“And the sun,” Reynolds said. “I don’t know whether Jonathon’s world has a moon or not. But they can see their star, and in profile it’s a circle.”

“So a circular orbit is a perfect orbit.”

“Q.E.D. Jonathon says its planet doesn’t have one, though.”

“It’s an ellipse.”

“A very eccentric ellipse. That’s my guess, anyway. Jonathon used the terms ‘path-summer’ and ‘pole-summer,’ so they do distinguish between the two
effects.”

“I don’t get it,” the man said.

“An ellipse alone gives alternate summers and winters, but in both hemispheres at the same time,” Kelly said brusquely, her mouth turning slightly downward. “A
‘pole-summer’ must be the kind Earth has.”

“Oh,” the man said weakly.

“You left out the ‘great-summer’, my dear,” Reynolds said with a thin smile.

“What’s that?” Kelly said carefully.

“When the ‘pole-summer’ coincides with the ‘path-summer’ – which it will, every so often. I wouldn’t want to be around when that happens. Evidently
neither do the members of Jonathon’s race.”

“How do they get away?” Kelly said intently.

“Migrate. One hemisphere is having a barely tolerable summer while the other is being fried alive, so they go there. The whole race.”

“Nomads,” Kelly said. “An entire culture born with a pack on its back,” she said distantly. Reynolds raised an eyebrow. It was the first time he had ever heard her say
anything that wasn’t crisp, efficient and uninteresting.

“I think that’s why they’re grazing animals, to make it easy – even necessary – to keep on the move. A ‘great-summer’ wilts all the vegetation; a
‘great-winter’ – they must have those, too – freezes a continent solid.”

“God,” Kelly said quietly.

“Jonathon mentioned huge storms, winds that knocked it down, sand that buried it overnight in dunes. The drastic changes in the climate must stir up hurricanes and tornadoes.”

“Which they have to migrate through,” Kelly said. Reynolds noticed that the room was strangely quiet.

“Jonathon seems to have been born on one of the Treks. They don’t have much shelter because of the winds and the winters that erode away the rock. It must be hard to build up any
sort of technology in an environment like that. I suppose it’s pretty inevitable that they turned out to believe in astrology.”

“What?” Kelly said, surprised.

“Of course.” Reynolds looked at her, completely deadpan. “What else should I call it? With such a premium on reading the stars correctly, so that they know the precise time of
year and when the next ‘great-summer’ is coming – what else would they believe in? Astrology would be the obvious, unchallengeable religion – because it worked!”
Reynolds smiled to himself, imagining a flock of atheist giraffes vainly fighting their way through a sandstorm.

“I see,” Kelly said, clearly at a loss. The men stood around them awkwardly, not knowing quite what to say to such a barrage of unlikely ideas. Reynolds felt a surge of joy. Some
lost capacity of his youth had returned: to see himself as the center of things, as the only actor onstage who moved of his own volition, spoke his own unscripted lines.
This is the way the
world feels when you are winning
, he thought. This was what he had lost, what Mars had taken from him during the long trip back in utter deep silence and loneliness. He had tested himself there
and found some inner core, had come to think he did not need people and the fine edge of competition with them. Work and cramped rooms had warped him.

“I think that’s why they are technologically retarded, despite their age. They don’t really have the feel of machines, they’ve never gotten used to them. When they needed
a starship for their religion, they built the most awkward one imaginable that would work.” Reynolds paused, feeling lightheaded. “They live inside that machine, but they don’t
like it. They stink it up and make it feel like a corral. They mistrusted that tape recorder of mine. They must want to know the stars very badly, to depart so much from their nature just to reach
them.”

Kelly’s lip stiffened and her eyes narrowed. Her face, Reynolds thought, was returning to its usual expression. “This is all very well, Dr. Reynolds,” she said, and it was the
old Kelly, the one he knew; the Kelly who always came out on top. “But it is speculation. We need facts. Their starship is crude, but it
works
. They must have data and photographs of
stars. They know things we don’t. There are innumerable details we could only find by making the trip ourselves, and even using their ship, that will take centuries – Houston tells me
that bomb-thrower of theirs can’t go above one percent of light velocity. I want – ”

“I’ll try,” he said. “But I’m afraid it won’t be easy. Whenever I try to approach a subject it does not want to discuss, the alien begins telling me the most
fantastic lies.”

“Oh?” Kelly said suspiciously, and he was sorry he had mentioned that, because it had taken him another quarter hour of explaining before she had allowed him to escape the confines
of her office.

Now he was back home again – in his room. Rolling over, he lay flat on his back in the bed, eyes wide open and staring straight ahead at the emptiness of the darkness. He would have liked
to go out and visit the observatory, but Kelly had said he was excused from all duties until the alien situation was resolved. He gathered she meant that as an order. She must have. One thing about
Kelly: she seldom said a word unless it was meant as an order.

They came and woke him up. He had not intended to sleep. His room was still pitch-black, and far away there was a fist pounding furiously upon a door. Getting up, taking his
time, he went and let the man inside. Then he turned on the light.

“Hurry and see the director,” the man said breathlessly.

“What does she want now?” Reynolds asked.

“How should I know?”

Reynolds shrugged and turned to go. He knew what she wanted anyway. It had to be the aliens; Jonathon was ready to see him again. Well, that was fine, he thought, entering Kelly’s office.
From the turn of her expression, he saw that he had guessed correctly. And I know exactly what I’m going to tell them, he thought.

Somewhere in his sleep, Reynolds had made an important decision. He had decided he was going to tell Jonathon the truth.

Approaching the alien starship, Reynolds discovered he was no longer so strongly reminded of his old home in São Paulo. Now that he had actually been inside the ship and
had met the creatures who resided there, his feelings had changed. This time he was struck by how remarkably this strange twisted chunk of metal resembled what a real starship ought to look
like.

The tug banged against the side of the ship. Without having to be told, Reynolds removed his suit and went to the air lock. Kelly jumped out of her seat and dashed after him. She grabbed the
camera off the deck and forced it into his hands. She wanted him to photograph the aliens. He had to admit her logic was quite impeccable. If the aliens were as unfearsome as Reynolds claimed, then
a clear and honest photograph could only reassure the population of Earth; hysteria was still a worry to many politicians back home. Many people still claimed that a spaceship full of green
monsters was up here orbiting the moon only a few hours’ flight from New York and Moscow. One click of the camera and this fear would be ended.

Reynolds had told her Jonathon would never permit a photograph to be taken, but Kelly had remained adamant. “Who cares?” he’d asked her.

“Everyone cares,” she’d insisted.

“Oh, really? I listened to the news yesterday and the aliens weren’t even mentioned. Is that hysteria?”

“That’s because of Africa. Wait till the war’s over, then listen.”

He hadn’t argued with her then and he didn’t intend to argue with her now. He accepted the camera without a word, her voice burning his ears with last-minute instructions, and
plunged ahead.

The smell assaulted him immediately. As he entered the spaceship, the odor seemed to rise up from nowhere and surround him. He made himself push forward. Last time, the odor had been a problem
only for a short time. He was sure he could overcome it again this time.

It was cold in the ship. He wore only light pants and a light shirt without underwear, because last time it had been rather warm. Had Jonathon, noticing his discomfort, lowered the ship’s
temperature accordingly?

He turned the first corner and glanced briefly at the distant ceiling. He called out, “Hello!” but there was only a slight echo. He spoke again and the echo was the same, flat and
hard.

Another turn. He was moving much faster than before. The tight passages no longer caused him to pause and think. He simply plunged ahead, trusting his own knowledge. At Kelly’s urging he
was wearing a radio attached to his belt. He noticed that it was beeping furiously at him. Apparently Kelly had neglected some important last-minute direction. He didn’t mind. He already had
enough orders to ignore; one less would make little difference.

Here was the place. Pausing in the doorway, he removed the radio, turning it off. Then he placed the camera on the floor beside it, and stepped into the room.

Despite the chill in the air, the room was not otherwise different from before. There were two aliens standing against the farthest wall. Reynolds went straight toward them, holding his hands
over his head in greeting. One was taller than the other. Reynolds spoke to it. “Are you Jonathon?”

“Yes,” Jonathon said, in its child’s piping voice. “And this is Richard.”

“May I pay obeisance?” Richard asked eagerly.

Reynolds nodded. “If you wish.”

Jonathon waited until Richard had regained its feet, then said, “We wish to discuss your star now.”

“All right,” Reynolds said. “But there’s something I have to tell you first.” Saying this, for the first time since he made his decision, he wasn’t sure. Was
the truth really the best solution in this situation? Kelly wanted him to lie: tell them whatever they wanted to hear, making certain he didn’t tell them quite everything. Kelly was afraid
the aliens might go sailing off to the sun once they had learned what they had come here to learn. She wanted a chance to get engineers and scientists inside their ship before the aliens left. And
wasn’t this a real possibility? What if Kelly was right and the aliens went away? Then what would he say?

“You want to tell us that your sun is not a conscious being,” Jonathon said. “Am I correct?”

The problem was instantly solved. Reynolds felt no more compulsion to lie. He said, “Yes.”