The Avatar (28 page)

“And to me,” Leino said slowly, staring at her where she stood in front of the dead man. “We were on jobs together in space, the kind where you trust your life to your partner. On Demeter we’d go backpacking, sailing, partying—” His talk trailed off.

She nodded. “What happens between man and man, no woman will ever truly understand; but precious it is.”

Half drunk, he threw at her: “What about man and woman?”

She turned to brush fingertips across the countenance which had been Zarubayev’s. “That’s worse to find words for, however long and hard the poets have tried.” Her glance went back to Leino. “Indeed Sergei and I shared more than simple pleasure.” Again it sought him who did not move. “They never realized,” she said, nigh under her breath. “They took him for dour when he was only shy; but oh, the fun in him when once he felt at his ease! They took him for being practical as a machine; but I recall
a night we brought a telescope outdoors, and after we’d lost ourselves in the forever, he began to speak of the Others. He believed they cannot be ignoring of us as they seem to, but most have a care and compassion we are too small to feel—”

She broke off. “Well,” she said, “you don’t want me to maunder, you want to give him his sending from you. Goodnight, Martti Leino.”

“No!” He lifted a palm as if to block her. “Please stay. I didn’t know anyone else was so near to him.” He rubbed a wrist across his eyes. “Forgive me. May I ask what you were doing in here?”

“Nothing to mention.”

He insisted: “You were singing.”

She squared her shoulders. “Well, yes, I was that, a song, as we do in the Irish countryside. But it would be wrong to puton a show when such is not the way of my fellows aboard. Goodnight.”

He stretched an arm in her path. “Please, Miz Mulryan—Caitlín—please don’t go.”

Her green gaze met his blue. “Why?”

“Because, oh, I told you, we share a heavy loss and… they’re singing Kipling songs in the common room—What is yours?”

She dropped her lashes. “Merely an
ochlán
. A dirge, you’d say.”

“Would you do it over?”

She regarded him for a moment before she decided. “Aye, since it is you who wish. He would have himself.”

They sat down on either side of the bed. The lamps flickered, shadows moved inward, ventilators whispered. Faint, rowdy sounds which drifted in from the wake did not seem out of place. Caitlín’s fingers evoked the “Londonderry Air.”

I
WAS A CROW.
My first dim dreams ended in hunger when the universe went void. Angered, I tapped at its shell until this broke apart; and there was the day. My eyes filled with dazzle. I opened my mouth to it and yawped for food. Wings overshadowed me, a beak large and hard thrust into my gape, love poured thence to my inside. Soon I was aware that naked others were crowding me, so I crowded back and demanded as loudly as they did.

Plumage grew on us, and we spent much time happily admiring our own glossy blackness. But before long our parents shoved us from the nest. After the first beautiful terror and wild flapping, I learned how the wind would upbear me and what power lay ready to be unfolded in my wings. I took the air unto me, soared, swooped, glided, rejoiced. The sky was mine, and the whole earth below it ripe for raiding.

I belonged to the flock, of course, and had my place in the ranking and my occasional duties, such as watching out for hawks or men when we sought the lands beyond our woods. I never wished things were otherwise. Crows have
fun
. We chattered, intrigued, shouted our mirth, went off on expeditions, persecuted owls, found goodies to eat and sparkly things to bring home, were endlessly entertained by the antics of alien creatures, lorded it over the treetops. In the depths of leafless cold, we could still peck a living out of the snowcrust. But oh, the green and rustling summers! Oh, my female and our darling small chicks!

I grew old at last, weak, slow, though my knowledge of this was misty. One day a fox caught me on the ground. I broke free of his jaws, but blood spattered out of me until I could fly no more. Finding me a thicket, I sprawled on damp mushroomy soil, shut away from the sky, panting, while darkness blew ever stronger through me. Then the Summoner came and, still alive for a while, I departed that country wherein I had been Bird.

A
CHIME SOUNDED
through the cabin Joelle had taken. “Come in,” she called.

Brodersen did, closing the door behind him. Framed by the impersonal chamber, he seemed doubly big and vivid. It blazed up in her that she wanted him.

Stop that nonsense!
she ordered herself.
He’s busy, preoccupied, see the haggardness, how the powerful arms hang at his sides, the gray eyes look more downward-slanting than ever. Furthermore, I will shortly begin my proper work, the wonder of Oneness will possess me and nothing else will matter
.

Nevertheless desire continued to thrill faintly along her veins. Eight years, no, nearer nine, and Brodersen had been that last lover, when he visited Earth—She’d not found celibacy difficult on the expedition, when every waking hour was charged with discovery. The risk of a man getting emotionally involved and pestering her when she wanted to carry out a project (as had happened a couple of times at home) was an overly high price for the rubbing of an itch that came infrequently anyway.
Of course, at last I did pay. Christine
—Chris lay buried on Beta. Dan was here, two meters from her.

“I stopped by to check on how you’re doing,” his deep voice said.

“Quite well, thank you,” Joelle replied above her pulse. “We’re certainly fortunate that you were foresighted enough to keep this ship completely stocked.”

“Foresighted, hell.” He grinned. “I was champing at the bit, and figured that if anything broke my way—like you coming home early—I should be ready to take off myself before some bureaucrat found a reason to refuse me clearance.”

He glanced around. “Just the same, we got caught pretty flatfooted,” he said. “And you folks from the Wheel are worse
off. Uh, about changes of clothes for you. Pegeen—Caitlín Mulryan, our quartermaster, you recall, she’ll be happy to lend you a couple of things—you’re about the same size—and she’ll make more out of spare cloth we’ve got along when she gets a chance, for you and whoever else wants. She’s a good seamstress. You might be thinking what sorts of garment you’d prefer.”

Joelle shrugged. “You know I don’t care, provided it’s comfortable. But thank her for me, please. I’ll try to remember to do so in person, but you also know how forgetful I am about everyday matters.”

“What more can you use? For instance, most of us keep a small private stock of food and drink. I imagine you’d rather not eat every meal in the mess.”

“Oh, if they don’t mind me often being a poor conversationalist, I don’t mind sitting at a public table. I shut the noise out…. But it would be nice if I could offer you—offer a guest refreshment.” She gestured, noting how awkward the motion was. “Won’t you sit down? And, well, I didn’t acquire any dislike of a pipe while I was gone.”

“I noticed that at the conference, and was glad.” He took a chair. She brought another to face it. Fetching out his tobacco pouch, he went on, “I can’t stay but a minute or three. Got to arrange for making the salt water bath you say Fidelio needs. We have the chemicals, I’m sure, and the metal or plastic or whatever for a container, but we’d better make some recycling arrangement too, in case this trip stretches out longer than I hope it will.”

“Isn’t that a problem for your engineers?”

“Yes, but first Fidelio has to explain exactly what the requirements are. That’ll be slow, even with Carlos to help, he knowing some of the Betan language. No, languages, right? You’re the expert in those, but I gather you’re due for a computer session. I think I can help discussion keep moving. Not to mention forty million other things that need attention before I knock off.”

“Do call on me if you encounter serious linguistic problems. By the way, would you consider modifying a set of encephalic attachments for Fidelio, so he can link in with me? He’s a holothete.”

“Huh? I’d no idea.”

“It appears to affect the personality less among Betans than
among humans.” Silence closed in while she tried to say what she wanted to say. Breaking the barrier in a rush: “Dan, it’s wonderful seeing you again. More than being liberated.
You
were the man who did it.”

He became busy charging his pipe. “No, we did, the team of us; and Sergei—We may not have done you a favor. You’re headed into danger.”

“Were we in no danger in the Wheel?”

“Yeah, true… I guess…. I have to keep shoving away this nightmare notion that we’re dead wrong in what we’re trying to do. That I’m putting lives at hazard for naught.”

She managed to lean forward and drop a hand on his knee. “Don’t fret. Politics always confuses me, but you’ve a feel for it and a knowledge. I rely on your judgment, as you’ll have to rely on my calculations. Have faith in yourself, Dan.”

“I’d better,” he said dryly. His fingers remained at work on his pipe. “Well, are you set to make that analysis, Joelle?”

Have I grown too gaunt and gray for him?
She withdrew her touch. “Yes. It’d be easier, perhaps more certain, if Fidelio and I could operate as a holothetic unit and take a complete theoretical structure from a memory bank. However, I did master the physical principles the Betans have found apply to the T machines—those were right down my alley, as you’d put it—and he and I have finished ransacking your ship’s data collection for exact parameters of local space-time. The information appears to be sufficient. I expect I’ll need a preliminary run-through today, then tomorrow work out the guidepath in detail.”

He got worry lines between his brows, the way he’d done when first they met, he an Aventureros engineer consulting her about a thorny design problem. Oh, he’d fallen into such awe of her intellect, though really she doubted it was better than his—differently configured and oriented, but not intrinsically better—except when she was joined to her machine. He’d found excuses to meet her later on, which led to outright dinner dates after he was widowed and had moved to Demeter and made occasional trips Earthside. She enjoyed his company as she enjoyed a gust off the sea. Eventually, impulsively, she let him into her bed, and was astounded…. How young those worry lines made him look.

“Supposing we do reach Beta,” he said, “will they help us? You and Carlos emphasized how they don’t want to interfere,
how careful they’ve always been about respecting less advanced species.”

“Humankind is special to them, though,” she assured him. “We’ll have extensive explaining and persuading to do, I admit. But when we of
Emissary
described our history and sociology, what little we could convey, they found it no more grotesque than what they’d encountered among other races. Their leaders do believe we can help them through their psychosexual crisis.”

“So they’d—m-m-m—what?”

“Make an appearance in the Solar System, I imagine, invincible, but simply protecting us while we broadcast the facts to Earth.”

“And they offer us a fabulous bargain, you said. Their technology in exchange for franchises to exploit Jupiter and Saturn, which we can’t anyway. Right?” Brodersen struck fire to tobacco, peering at her across it. “Of course, that will destroy the Actionists, and every party like theirs. Quite aside from the scandal, I mean. The whole philosophy will be killed.”

“How?”

“Why, it’s obvious. As fast as we acquire that same technology, we’ll skite off through every star gate the Betans have mapped, as well as mounting our own program to chart new ones. The sheer profit to be made, in countless places and ways, must beggar the imagination. Else why would the Betans bother with our giant planets? So even before we start large-scale emigration, the balance of economic power will shift away from Earth. It’ll also shift away from governments, unions, giant corporations, toward small outfits and individuals. There goes the tidy world welfare state the Actionist types hope to build. I daresay Quick foresees as much.”

Joelle frowned, striving to comprehend. “But that isn’t logical, Dan. Presumably welfare measures serve a need. If the need comes to an end, who would want to continue them?”

Brodersen laughed the ringing laugh she knew. Smoke burst from his mouth. It smelled masculine. “Dear, you’re doing it again. Assuming people are logical. They aren’t. The welfare state—any state—is an end in itself. It’s the way for a few to impose their will on the many. And Judas priest, how those few do want to! Need to.” He puffed on his pipe. “Talk with Stef Dozsa if you’re interested. His country’s been through the mill, over and over. Holy Roman Empire, Mongol Empire, Ottoman Empire, Austrian Empire, Soviet Empire, Balkan Em
pire No, maybe you shouldn’t. That history’s made a rabid anarchist of him. Harmless in his case, but if he converted you—well, under your stiffish exterior, J oelle, you’ve got a lot of wildness bottled up. I know.”

You do, Dan!