The D’neeran Factor (89 page)

“Nestor's got a fleet of its own. This place doesn't. Even on Nestor there's Polity observers walking around. I never saw anybody from the Polity on Gadrah but us. They talk like nobody ever comes there but us.”

“Oversight does,” Gaaf said. What Bakti proposed was unbelievable, so Gaaf did not believe it.

He would see it for himself, and in the meantime he was going to see the aliens.

Hanna's face when the aliens died was painted on his dreams. She had tried to save them. She had suffered for them. Nobody had ever done any of that for Gaaf. Nobody had ever looked at him like that. He did not think anyone ever would.

*   *   *

The journey of the
Avalon
went on for four weeks, which was as long as any point-to-point journey inside human space ever had to last. Then it went on for another week, and another. After that it was impossible for Gaaf to disregard the truth that he was really Outside, and he stopped
counting. The others had, perhaps, less imagination; they were not as disturbed as he. Or maybe they were reassured by Castillo's calmness. The red-haired man was as tranquil as if he were native to Outside, as if the dangers of the flight were insignificant. To be so he must be a masterful pilot. Whenever Gaaf saw him, the empty half-smile was in place on his lips, and his eyes were calm to the point of vacancy. Their light blue was transparent at times. But Gaaf, when he looked into that window (when he dared), looked through it, saw nothing: blank vacuum.

He seldom saw Castillo, or any of the others. They lived on packaged rations and did not come together to eat, only to drink or gamble or watch dramas of human lives from standard recreational programming play out in the walls of the common room for hours on end. Otherwise they moved in separate orbits, colliding accidentally and not often.

The
Avalon
seemed more dark each day. Gaaf secretly brought more lights to his room from other places, and tried to make the shadows flee. But they lurked at the corners of his eyes even when the room was bright as a star. So in the glare of light he closed his eyes and thought of Hanna to keep from thinking of other things. Old habits reasserted themselves and he stopped thinking of the reality of pain which he had witnessed, and remembered the beauty she had been at the very start, an untouchable ideal, like all beautiful women. But they were not untouchable in fantasy, and so she played a part in the limited reach of his sweaty imaginings. There was not much to do on the
Avalon,
and it was a long voyage.

One day when he had gone straight from fantasy into sleep, he woke with a sense of alarm. He knew immediately what had caused it: a change in the background noises of the
Avalon.
It took him a minute longer to realize that the ship had stopped. He went into the corridor with dread. Ta and Bakti huddled in a dark corner and talked in low voices. They fell silent when he came close.

“What happened?” he said.

It was Bakti who answered. “We're there.”

“Where?”—for a minute he thought they meant Gad-rah. That was how little he wanted to go to Uskos.

“Alien country,” Ta said.

Gaaf went to the flight deck. He had been there frequently
throughout the flight, and so had all the others; on this trip it did not appear to be, as Bakti had said of other journeys, forbidden. Castillo and Wales and Suarez were there. Castillo talked. His voice was strange and what he said was a rasping gabble. Then Gaaf saw the transparent shield of an automatic translator in front of his mouth, which damped the vibrations of his voice, twisted them around, and turned them into another language.

Almost as soon as Gaaf came in, Castillo switched off the translator and looked around. “We're landing,” he said.

*   *   *

The
Avalon
was guided to a city of great stone buildings, all identical and so massive they seemed monolithic. Gaaf was on the flight deck for the landing. The
Avalon,
accompanied by (or strategically surrounded by) an escort, glided over the city for a long time. It went on and on, the truncated tops of stepped piles of masonry all alike ticking away beneath them. This was the City of the Center, by which was meant it was treaty ground, and here came the beings of Ell and Sa, of Ree and Naa and other lands, to settle their differences and have peace. Gaaf looked out on the City of the Center with blank eyes. Before the landing Castillo turned off the translator again. He said, “We'll be traveling a lot. I told them we want to. Look out for what we need.”

Gaaf thought that meant there had been a promise, and whatever was asked for would be given. So maybe the crazy scheme would work and Castillo would get what he wanted from the ignorant aliens. He trembled with relief, hoping no one would notice. Quite apart from other dreadful suspicions, after what had happened to the aliens and Hanna, Gaaf had come to understand that Castillo dealt out death casually and apparently without fear. It meant nothing. It only meant something had gotten in his way. Gaaf did not want to see any more of it. He had never thought himself a violent man, and now he knew he could not strike or wound or risk his life even to save someone else's more valuable life. That was why, when they needed him to wake up Hanna, they had had to come and get him after his flight from what the others did, and why his hands had trembled when he lifted her bleeding head.

There was a great commotion at landing. There were translators enough to go around, both ear- and mouthpieces
and the processing modules for the hand or belt. What was the
Avalon
doing with all these translator units?—nobody used them in human space, they were only used by people who had business in places where Standard was unknown. No one on the
Avalon
asked Castillo about that, but Ta said, “How'd we get the program?”

Castillo gave him an amused look, but he did not answer. It was Suarez who said, “Got it soon as we decided. Hook into any relay and tie in with D'neera. Ask for D'vornan library. That's all.”

“They just give it to you?”

“Anything you want.”

They came off the ship all together. They were armed. Just before they went out Castillo said, “Don't answer any questions. Not now, not later. I answer the questions.”

Outside the air was stunning in its brightness and clarity. Gaaf was blinded; he put his hands to his eyes, shielding them from the light of the star. Nothing shielded him from the heat. Yet he was only in the sub-tropics, and they were only a little more hot and more brilliant than comparable latitudes of Earth. But the
Avalon
had been very dark, and Gaaf had sprung from a cool climate.

Finally he took his hands from his face. Eyes blinking and watering, he saw Castillo hand the golden cylinder to the aliens. He called it a token of faith. He said Rubee and Awnlee of Ell would not return, but men who would have been their friends, though too late to save them from beings alien to humans as well as Uskosians, had made this journey in their place and come to initiate friendship. After that they climbed into wheeled vehicles and were taken through the towering city. But Gaaf's eyes kept watering, so that he did not see anything.

*   *   *

It was not so bright in the chambers of Norsa. Norsa, a personage of indeterminate position and age, appeared to be in charge. Gaaf knew that was his name because he said “I am Norsa,” but his description of his function was beyond the capability of the translator. He wore a garment that looked like a brilliant, lavishly embroidered blue barrel. Other Uskosians were there also. They talked with Castillo. At first Gaaf did not listen, but looked in horror at the aliens. They were unutterably ugly. Their skin was dank and
leathery, in color a dirty brown. The depressions of their eyespots were filled with an unstable colloid that made him want to retch, and the agitated cilia round their mouths made his skin crawl. Their hands were variable and blunt; he looked for the long thin strings of fingers that had been wrapped around Hanna ril-Koroth's small human hands, but he did not see any. And they stank. The whole place stank. The walls of Norsa's chambers were golden, except where they were streaked with bands of other colors, some bright and some subtle. The bands were horizontal and strapped them into the room, which seemed to shrink.

Gaaf began to hear the conversation. Norsa said: “It is a strange tale you tell.”

“Your emissaries indeed met with misfortune,” Castillo answered.

“Is it possible to obtain their bodies?”

“We could not find them. They were put into the sea.”

Gaaf's eyes wandered to a sweeping window on the city. It was as impressive from here as it had been from the air. The gleaming towers marched away into the sky, making him small.

He heard a name he recognized and his attention sharpened:

“—and this creature of another people, to whom this gift was made—this Hanna ril-Koroth—betrayed honored Rubee and his steadfast selfing?”

“That is what we learned.”

“But why?” Norsa said, and even in the mechanical impersonality of the Standard words fed into Gaaf's ears, there was a tone of perplexity.

“Zeigans are not like humans,” Castillo said. “They hate those of other species, even humans. Humans do not often go there. Humans went there this time only because there was word of your envoys landing there. But we were too late for anything except vengeance.”

When Castillo finished talking there was silence. But after a time Norsa said, “Your people will have the gratitude of mine for the vengeance you took. Also we must have gratitude that it is you, the human beings, who have come to seek us; rather than those others who would wish us only to die. It was too much to think that we would find only peace in the stars. Yet that was our hope.”

They were given a spacious place to stay, which, however, was well guarded. Surrounding it was a garden. Many of the flowers were tall, coming higher than Gaaf's waist; they had great blossoms made of flat petals; they were in color bright yellow, deep gold, and vivid pink, and glowed so brightly, and were so perfect, that at first he thought they were artificial. Before the first evening was over there would be more meetings, but for a short while they were alone. They left the house and went to the garden, “In case the walls have ears,” Castillo said, and they walked among the flowers.

“All of you listen,” Castillo said. He looked around, shepherding them with his eyes. Some of them were nervous. The reality of their presence on an alien world getting its first sight of humans was sinking in.

“Don't answer any questions unless you have to,” Castillo said. “If you have to, say as little as you can. Don't even talk about it among yourselves, in case they're listening. If you have to talk, keep the story straight. Their envoys first made contact with Zeig-Daru. They got killed there, Fleet heard about it, that's how we got the course and why we're here. They were killed by Zeigans. Remember that.”

“What about the D'neeran woman?” Ta said.

“The name's right on the course module, says she was their friend. I had to bring it up. They think she was a Zeigan and we executed her for what they did.”

“They won't swallow it,” Ta said, “the Zeigans are telepaths, they can't pretend to make friends first and kill you later, they just kill you right away.”

Castillo said, “They don't know that here. So forget you ever knew it.”

Later there was a banquet at which the food looked terrible and tasted worse. Suarez and Wales went back to the
Avalon
and returned with real food, but Gaaf did not eat; the drinks had been all right, and he was asleep. Only in his dreams Hanna protested bitterly, as she had not protested, not once, aboard the
Avalon.

*   *   *

They began traveling at once. Despite Castillo's strictures the men talked among themselves. “He said we don't have much time before the Polity comes,” Bakti told Gaaf.

“He told
them
that?”

“No, no, I don't know what he told
them.
That's what he told Suarez.”

“You heard Suarez say that?”

“No, that's what Ta said Suarez said.”

So it was impossible to know what could be believed. That did not stop the men from talking, and it did not keep Gaaf from listening.

They did their traveling in the
Avalon,
though transport was courteously offered. What explanation could Castillo have given the aliens for this? How did he explain their going armed—and why did he want them to be armed? How did he justify keeping their hosts off the
Avalon?
Why did he keep them off?—Gaaf did not hear all the lies and so he never knew if a lie were at issue, or an omission. It crossed his mind that the same thing was precisely true of what Castillo told/lied about/did not tell the men of the
Avalon.
There was no use listening to words at all. The range of certainties shrank from hour to hour. To: food and drink to go into the mouth. A smelly cubicle on the
Avalon.
The physical existence of the other men of Castillo's crew. Gaaf's own body was less certain than it ought to be; it had tics, twitches, moments when it seemed to fade. As for the outside world, the alien world, it was all a single shining piece, like a peculiar dream to the meaning of which there was no point of entry.

Two beings were assigned to him, him personally, to assist him (or maybe to watch him or both). He was nearly afraid to speak to them at all. Their names were Biru and Brinee, and whenever the
Avalon
landed in its travels they were there, like personal demons. Gaaf dreaded stepping off the ship and seeing them, inescapable. The other members of the crew had their personal devils, too, and Castillo had several. But Castillo's face, unlike Gaaf's, never altered at the sight of them. In their presence he was impassive, and at other times he never spoke of them except to make coarse jokes about the presumed sexual practices of this species.