The D’neeran Factor (18 page)

“Why tamper? This must be new, and of little sense—”

Anja hugged herself for comfort, until Charl hugged her. She said, “Terrifying. That eye!”

“Anja, they can't mean us hurt. What cause have they to pain us? H'ana says aliens are crazy until you join them. If you read a hunting predator it terrifies too, until—”

“That's it,” Anja said suddenly.

“What?”

She looked at him with wide eyes. She said, “When I learned loving animals I went to shadowed wilderness in Garfield Province, the Mason Range Preserve, do you know it? Where the long-clawed wicas are, where foresters place them if they wander deadly through the valleys. And I read a wica patient-stalking a sorrowful pollitt foraging for her young. That's what it was like, the dream-eye.”

“Like a wica?”

“Yes—no. In a way.”

“Show me.”

“I can't. It was dream, I can't recapture it, I remember what I felt but it's distant and I can't project.”

“Maybe you're right. Maybe we should call H'ana.”

“No!” Anja said vigorously, reversing herself. “I won't have Marte Koster laughing-hateful, the way she is when she talks about H'ana so solemnly and respectfully and thinks we don't know it's deceit. What's she got to laugh about anyway?
She
never got a Goodhaven.”

They told no one of Anja's dream and did not attempt to call Hanna, and the next day thought it would not matter;
Endeavor
got to its destination in double-quick time, but nobody was there.

*   *   *

The formal presentation of the Goodhaven Award was made on a cool evening that smelled of mud and water and the secretive growths of spring. Jameson sat in the small audience, one of the few invited guests attending the ceremony in person rather than by remotes, and congratulated himself.

He had not doubted, from his first reading of “Sentience,” that Hanna deserved the award. He had not doubted either that it would take every bit of his influence to procure it for her. Since the announcement of the prize he had made a point of personally complimenting each member of the awards committee on his or her integrity and resistance to popular pressure—and in a few cases refrained from mentioning other forms of pressure which had left the persons in question facing a choice between evils. His conscience, however, was clear. He had no scruples about coercing people to act honorably, nor much inclination to question his own tactics.

Now he studied Hanna as she gave a courteous, diplomatic speech Lady Koroth had written for her. He barely recognized her, which troubled him, and he tried to account for it. She was smaller than he remembered; perhaps that was because her personality, tonight, was muted by good manners. Her voice was different, too, low and a little husky. She was less thin than he recalled, more relaxed, and decidedly unshabby in formal black. Altogether she had little resemblance to the tense, ill-groomed woman he had met on
Endeavor.
She was in fact very pleasant to look at, a dark flower that seemed to rise gracefully from a fanciful backdrop of stars. Jameson was surprised, but he went on looking.

“In closing,” Hanna said, and he snapped out of his bemusement. “I would like to say that ‘Sentience' owes a great deal to Commissioner Starr Jameson, who gave me his support and encouragement—and, of course, his influence with the Academy.”

Jameson felt the ground drop away under him. He was as angry as he had ever been in his life—and then knew no one but he had heard Hanna's last words, if they had been
words. She gave him a smile that had a gleam of malice in it, and malice echoed in his head. Hanna remained the only source of his direct experience with telepathy, and he still could have done without it.

“When the final edition appears you'll see that the book—which has had no dedication until now—is dedicated to Commissioner Jameson. My very deepest thanks to all of you.”

He stood with the others to applaud, and smiled at Hanna in a way she could not possibly interpret as gracious. He supposed the dedication of “Sentience,” no less than that shocking stab in thought, was private revenge for his highhandedness. She would not let him forget the choices he had set before her on
Endeavor,
nor pretend she did not distrust them, and the dedication would be a subtle and permanent reminder of that ambiguous meeting. Her private grievances did not concern him, however. There would be public harmony; he was sure Lady Koroth, who had accompanied Hanna to Earth and stood composedly beside him, would see to that.

“My office,” he murmured to Iledra as the applause began to die.

“Very well. As soon as I can detach H'ana.”

“Did you have an opportunity before the presentation to speak to her of this meeting?”

“No,” said Iledra, “but I will bring her.”

He made a detour to the exit to avoid the Goodhaven Academy's ancient president, who was trying to catch his eye. His path gave him a momentary glimpse of Hanna; she was surrounded by a glittering restless crowd, Iledra bore down on her at speed, and Hanna alone was still, the focus of it all, the center of converging forces. An inexplicable surge of pity for her moved him. Her eyes fell on him and he wondered, meeting that cool blue gaze, dark as a summer sky at twilight, what reason there was for pity; he was in the process of making her career, and the future of her world.

*   *   *

When Jameson chose to make it so, his office in the vast Polity Administration complex, like his home, seemed to have been lifted from another century. Nothing was synthetic; the glow of fine wood was everywhere, and the banks of
electronic equipment he used could be hidden when he wished. They were hidden tonight, and Hanna, for the moment ignored, stood aside and watched Iledra, a forester's child and an expert woodworker herself, admire the woods of Heartworld.

Her eyes moved to Jameson and lingered there. She had been intensely aware of his presence all evening. Now she watched him lift an exquisitely carved head for Iledra's inspection, and saw with sudden clarity the strength of his hands and the controlled delicacy of his touch. A long-absent warmth possessed her.

So that was it…She smiled at herself, acknowledging without self-consciousness an element that might have been in play in their meeting months before, though she had not recognized it then. Like him or not, he was a most excellent male animal. Her body spoke earnestly, approving a likely hunter on an ageless, age-old level. She looked at his shoulders and his movements with simple pleasure.

He had watched her tonight too with discomfiting intentness, but not, she thought, with desire. She had felt something else and more disturbing in the instant of feedback when her barb sank into his brain. Behind his surprise and anger, which she expected, and the dreamlike complexities of any intelligent mind, was something she had not recognized. Shadow and strength, she thought, unable to put more precise words to it; some great defeat, and poised against it an inflexible assertion.

Defeat by what? Assertion of what? She shook her head in confusion. Jameson saw the movement and looked at her curiously. He left Iledra to examine his collection of F'thalian artifacts and crossed the room to Hanna.

“You gave a very good speech,” he said.

“A very bland speech.”

“Precisely.”

She shook her head again, smiling now, and looked past him to the edge of the room, which merged unwalled with the moonlit river. She said, “I thought power would be guarded better.”

“The Polity is an administrative apparatus. It has no power; only influence.”

“And I am a two-headed hornmaster of F'thal,” Hanna answered, and looked up just in time to see him smile. The
warmth of it was glorious; it made him another man; and she was still staring at him when he turned to her, saw her interest, and—was himself again.

He said abruptly, “I think we have found a way to induce explicit contact.”

Hanna forgot immediately about everything but Species X. Iledra turned and came toward them quickly. Hanna said, “What is it? Have you done it?”

“We have not done it yet. It is a last resort.”

“A last—why? What do you mean?”

He looked at her very somberly. He said, “You were terrified after your single clear contact with Species X, were you not?”

“Yes. I was. So?”

“Look,” he said.

He called up a projection of their sector of the Milky Way,
Endeavor
's first voyage a thin green line threading among the stars, the present voyage—an extension of the first—in red. It hovered ghostly in the middle of the room. Hanna put her hand into it, watching the mist glow on her skin.

“
Endeavor
's here?” she said.

“Approximately. You see it has not gone far past the point where you left it. That is because we have been—experimenting.”

Hanna looked up quickly. “Changing the tune?” she asked.

“Yes. We tried inexplicable disappearances, without broadcasting prior information about where the
Endeavor
would go next. When the ship returned to its point of departure, Species X simply took up the chase again. We generated our own coordinates for rendezvous; they followed, and kept their distance. We tried varying the content of our base signal. There was no new response. Your compatriots on the
Endeavor
gave us nothing. Their perceptions were even more ambiguous than yours.”

“What were they?”

“Nothing to the point, believe me. Not to any point. But we have done something, finally, that has made them begin transmitting location signals again. So far we have not responded. I think it is time to do so. On their terms, as nearly as we can guess what those terms are.”

Hanna shoved her hands into the pockets of her short jacket and looked at him, wishing she dared try reading his thoughts. She felt Iledra's perception of her desire, and felt Lee's shock at the boldness and rudeness of the wish. But Iledra had not faced Jameson on the
Endeavor,
and won her way to a kernel of truth through layers of obscurity.

Hanna said, “I think you'd better begin at the beginning.”

“Do you know what it is? I don't.” The wintry amusement with which she was becoming familiar touched his face.

“I think,” Hanna said cautiously, “you can dispense with philosophy.”

“All right. I've told you about the experiments we tried—all but one. That one was more successful. You will remember that one thing, and one thing only, brought a reaction from the aliens while you were aboard
Endeavor.
That was your own approach to them, in isolation from the ship.”

He paused, looking at her without expression. Hanna dug her hands in deeper. She thought she knew what was coming.

Jameson said, “I had them recreate that situation, in form though not in substance. The
Endeavor
's engineering staff modified a shuttle for remote control. The
Endeavor
specified a location for rendezvous, took the shuttle there, and left it—just as you were left behind last year. A starship—to all appearances the same one that came to you—appeared at the proper location. It made a pass at the shuttle and disappeared. Shortly afterward the
Endeavor
began receiving locus references again. Now, it is clear, after so long a time, that the beings do not wish to contact the
Endeavor
itself. They were not interested in the unmanned vessel. I think they may wish to meet with a single representative of humankind, away from a vessel large enough, perhaps, to be threatening. I don't know if it matters who the representative is. But they—” He hesitated. “They know you, as it were.”

Hanna had been very still. Now she moved suddenly, almost convulsively. She said, “I don't like it.”

“Neither do I. I did not want to do this. I did not want to place any human being in so vulnerable a position. In a
sense, of course, every person on the
Endeavor
is vulnerable. But I have not forgotten the intensity of your reaction to the earlier contact.”

“Thank you very much,” Hanna muttered.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing…”

She turned away from him and began to pace, flowing black trousers swirling about her legs. She said, “They veered off from your decoy. Why wouldn't they do it again?”

“They were telepaths. There is no doubt on that score; that is the one thing Zeig and Daru are sure of, without reference, incidentally, to your experience. I think they departed when they learned, telepathically, that the drone was not manned.”

“Because it wasn't—” She froze where she stood. Iledra caught her thought and made a faint sound of protest and disbelief. Hanna turned slowly. She said to Jameson, “It wasn't the bait they wanted.”

He looked at her without expression and said, “That is highly colored language.”

“Is it? When I saw spears and carnivores?”

“Analogs,” he said.

It was her own word. She could not repudiate it.

She moved restlessly to stare into the projection.

“What does Marte Koster think?”

“She does not know what to think,” Jameson said, nearly at her ear. She had not heard him come near.

“Well, for once she and I agree on something.”

She looked up at Jameson and said abruptly, “Send
Endeavor
on and ignore them.”

“Why?”

“I can't give you a logical reason. They're manipulating us.”

“I know.”

“We shouldn't play the game without knowing the rules.”

“We can't ignore them any longer.”

“Why not?”

They spoke rapidly and quietly. They might have been entirely alone. Iledra moved closer.

“
Endeavor
has been in space more than a year. I need results.”

“Don't do it. Don't hurry.”

He said savagely, “I don't have forever.”