Trang (27 page)

“
It’s fine, you know, as long as
we can talk.”

“
I’m sorry. I failed you. I’m
sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Philippe and Brave Loyalty agreed to have regular meetings
in a quiet floor of the common area where Philippe could record the Cyclops’
speech.

At first, he tried to imitate it,
much to the Cyclops’ amusement. “I do not think you are physically built to
speak the language,” said Brave Loyalty. “The sense is emphatically affected by
the speed of the quaver, and I do not know if you can control the quaver to the
degree that is necessary to achieve the specificity of meaning you need to be
understood.”

“More practice may help,” Philippe
said. “If it does not, I could program a speech synthesizer and speak that way.”

“Is that an improvement over the
translation technology?” asked the Cyclops. “Were you to record my speech and
use the speech units to speak yourself, you would speak no better than the
Magic Man does, and he is barely comprehensible.”

“I accept this risk, but my people
do not trust other people.” The Cyclops’ expression, as always, was
inscrutable, and any emotional nuance in his speech was obliterated by the
translator.

“Do you want to hear of how we
first came to this station?”

“I am most interested,” Philippe
replied

“It was assumed when the portal was
discovered that the people on the other side of it would be emphatically
hostile,” said Brave Loyalty. “So my people took warriors of extreme loyalty
and asked them to go through the portal in a certain ship. The ship was loaded
with emphatically powerful weaponry. The expectation was emphatically that the
warriors would discover the hostile people and destroy them. It was also
expected that they themselves would perish in this effort.”

Philippe quickly suppressed any
expression of shock.

“What happened?” he asked.

“We had been in contact with the
Hosts before the ship went through,” Brave Loyalty continued. “During that
time, the Hosts had discovered how to patch into our video communications
system. When the ship went through the portal, the Hosts sent the warriors a
friendly video communication. The warriors believed that the Hosts were
truthfully friendly, and they did not use their weaponry.”

“That must have been a big relief
for you,” said Philippe.
A big relief for everyone,
he thought.

“It was considered a shameful
thing,” said Brave Loyalty. “The expected heirs of the warriors considered it a
very emphatically shameful thing. There are Cyclopes who have never forgiven
the Hosts for that historical incident.”

“Yes. The first few times we sent
ships through, they carried explosives, so that they could be blown up if they
were attacked,” Philippe said. He did not add that, to the best of his
knowledge, the ship Cheep and Pinky piloted still had the suicide rigging.

“That is as it is,” said Brave
Loyalty. “We must continue with your lessons.”

In addition to trying to learn the
Cyclopes language, Philippe spoke to the Swimmers about devising an alternative
to the current translation technology. Given the response of Ptuk-Ptik to his
idea, Philippe had assumed that the Swimmers would be highly reluctant to use
translation technology that was developed by anyone else. But he was surprised
to learn that the Swimmers had proposed alternative technologies in the past,
only to have them rejected by the Hosts.

“Our technology was designed to be
used by two peoples from the same planet, whose experiences are more similar
than those of peoples from different planets,” the drone of a language-oriented
Swimmer told him. “But the Hosts are extremely reluctant to accept changes to
the translation technology, even when the changes are improvements. The
Swimmers’ translation technology is explicitly mentioned in the sacred texts of
the Hosts, and therefore any change is resisted.”

It was, as Philippe was
discovering, typical of the way the station was run. The Hosts had their sacred
texts, and everyone who was on the station was expected to live in accordance
with them. There was no group decision-making—if you wanted something that you
couldn’t do for yourself, you went to the Hosts and you asked for it. They
usually were agreeable, but if they weren’t, which could happen if they
considered your request to be somehow in conflict with their sacred texts, you
were just out of luck. So the Swimmers’ improvements to their own translation
technology were ignored, and the Snake Boys coped with overcrowding while
dozens of living areas went empty.

Philippe had to admit that as
theocracies went, this one was far less pernicious than some he had had the
misfortune to experience—Max and Moritz were a far cry from General Jesus. But
it annoyed Philippe nonetheless, especially once he learned that these sacred
texts were nothing more than the prophecy that allegedly had predicted the
opening of the portal and the building of the station. This “prophecy” had
obviously been revised at some point to reflect historical events, and Philippe
didn’t understand why it couldn’t be revised again—although he was not so
stupid in matters of religion as to make this suggestion to the Hosts.

In any case, Philippe was
well-versed enough in the ways of the station that when he decided (and Shanti
agreed) a few weeks after his attack that things were peaceful enough to allow
some scientists to visit, he knew he should run the idea past the Hosts early
on.

He decided first to talk it over
with George, coming into the infirmary to find the doctor in the isolation ward
examining the Cyclops arm.

“Is it real?” asked Philippe.

“Well, you’d have to chop one off a
Cyclops yourself to know for sure,” said the doctor. “But it looks like a
working arm, and there’s what looks very much like a scrambler fragment in it.
The sealant—that lacquer stuff over it—is actually a monofilament. I’m trying
to figure out if it’s synthetic or derived from some natural source.”

Philippe explained that he wanted
to invite some scientists on board. George’s reaction was more subdued than
Philippe had expected: The doctor pointed out that, at the moment, the Union
forbade the transport of alien materials back through the portal, so whoever
came would have to do all their work on the station—and the living area wasn’t
exactly set up for a high-tech lab.

“There are astrophysicists on Titan
already,” said Philippe. “I know that they haven’t been allowed to get very
close to the portal on the Titan side because of all the defenses.”

George nodded. “That might be the
way to go—let them study the portal on this side. They wouldn’t even have to
come onto the station, which is probably a plus as far as the Union is
concerned. You know they still won’t let Cheep or Pinky get off the ship when
they come here? And they’ve been kicking up a stink about me keeping this.” He
waved the Cyclops arm at Philippe with a flourish.

Philippe went to find Max, and
asked him if it would be OK if some humans came to study the Titan portal.

“We always encourage people to
contemplate the portals,” said Max. “They embody the mystery of the universe.”

Philippe felt a need to be fully
honest—better to be told no by Max now than to have him find out the whole
truth later and feel betrayed. “I realize that the portals have great religious
significance for your people, and they are indeed a wonder,” he said. “But
these people would not be priests. They would be scientists who would be
conducting studies.”

“That is a crucial first step,” said
Max. “You will attempt scientific study, and then when those studies reveal no
truths, you will be forced to contemplate the more profound levels of meaning
embodied by your portal. My people would be very happy if your scientists began
their studies at this moment.”

So Philippe was feeling like he was
really accomplishing something when he sent off a proposal to the DiploCorps
telling them that the scientists on Titan had an open invitation to come
examine the portal from the station side. He felt like he was fulfilling a
promise—a promise to humanity that engaging with the aliens and coming to the
station would advance knowledge and make life better, and a promise to Yoli
that he would open doors to exciting new scientific discoveries. It made it all
the sweeter that he knew, however casually, someone who would benefit directly
from his work.

When he got their reply, his
disappointment was profound.
In light of the attack on you . . . security
situation unstable . . . not advisable to expose more people,
etc., etc.
There was a troubling vagueness to the message, as though the Union was not
planning to send anyone else through the portal, ever.

Since the DiploCorps was rejecting
a proposal that Philippe had put time and effort into arranging, they included
copies of feedback on the proposal from other sources. Philippe paged through
the feedback with a sinking heart—not a single positive response from any
quarter, not even from the Space Authority, merely neutrality or negativity.

The last response Philippe read
before giving up the effort stood out for its many layers of cowardice. The
author not only held up and shook the bugaboo of an alien invasion (triggered
by visiting scientists? who had permission to be there?), but managed in the
process to warmly massage every Union department and official responsible for
defending Earth against this nonexistent plague of warriors.

Philippe was unsurprised to see a
familiar name attached to that response—Wouter Hoopen, general manager of the
Titan Station.

“Toady,” Philippe muttered to
himself.

He sighed and put down his scroll.
Of course these responses were all from spineless bureaucrats like Hoopen—the
actual scientists weren’t even allowed to know that this opportunity existed.

He went to Shanti’s office to vent.
“I know for a fact that there are scientists on Titan who would gladly take the
risk, if there actually was one. If we’re not here to find out about the aliens
and the portals, then why?”

Shanti shrugged. “You did get
attacked, you know. Maybe they want to wait a little longer and see what
happens next. Maybe we’re bait.”

Philippe rubbed his forehead. “You
seem awfully philosophical about that.”

She laughed. “I have no illusions
about my standing in the SF. We’re disposable—if they’re planning something really
desperate, we’re gonna be the last to know.”

“What are you talking about?” said
Philippe. “You’re the commander of a unit of highly trained combat
specialists.”

Shanti gave him a puzzled look.
“I’m a freak. Did you forget? I’m a
clone.
”

Philippe was incredulous. “Oh, at
this point surely nobody cares about that.”

Shanti returned his disbelieving
look. “You don’t know the half, Trang. I had to take the Special Forces to
court to get in, and two of my sisters had to do the same with the Union
Police. Trust me, if we get eaten by aliens there are people on Earth, in the
SF even, who will sleep better knowing they’ve got one less Pax kid to worry
about.”

Philippe took her point. “I suppose
you would know more about being a Pax than I would—but you’re not the only
soldier here. There’s the doctor, and your second—”

“George is a freak, too,” said
Shanti. “He keeps running off to school. I mean, medicine they could work with,
but zoology? He almost got kicked out over that one. I know he had to accept
some pretty significant cuts to his package, and the only reason they didn’t
boot him was because the portal opened up, and they decided he might be useful
after all. And Patch spends every off-duty minute in the koffie shops. He’s
careful to keep it legal, but do you really think anyone is OK with that?”

Philippe shrugged. Patch’s off-duty
activities on Earth hadn’t exactly been a factor on the station. “You seem to
be.”

“The fuck I am,” Shanti replied
with vigor. “My mother died in a koffie shop. If it was up to me they’d all be
closed down. I don’t think Patch is a bad soldier, but I wish he’d pick up some
other hobbies. No, I think the only one they’d really mind losing is you.”