Case and the Dreamer (29 page)

“I … I guess I’d have to say, I don’t know. I’d have to say, I’ll look it up.”

“But if I say, modern Terran, does it matter what the issues are? Does it really matter to you?”

“Well, I guess not. Not now.”

“Aha. Now we have it.
Not now
. Altair Two, I submit to you, looking down the long sweep of history, that it did not matter then, those things for which people fought and died and were imprisoned and tortured and burned; that in the deepest sense it did not matter if a man turned his face toward Mecca or Rome or Canterbury or stood alone on a rock on a mountain and poured prayer on the rising sun or paid his tithes to this or that emperor. Yes, of course, it was made to matter to the man, but in the larger sense the issues were issues that had no real significance. I read a story about a man who traced back through three centuries of warfare to find the basic issue, and it turned out to be a quarrel over the king’s breakfast, whether one should break a boiled egg on the big end or the little end.”

“That was, ah, Dean Swift.
Tolliver’s Travels
.”

“Thank you. I’d forgotten. And I submit to you now that your splits here on Medea, with your Nats and Mules and Vags and Truforms, are of the same category and do … not … 
matter!
”

They sat glaring at each other for a moment, Dom Felix less and less as the moments passed, Altair II more and more until he exploded.

“By God it does
matter!
Do you think we can run the risk of the Geng—ah, Truforms—breeding at random, one with superior size and another with a superior logic, a double-dominant, and a brat
who would grow up to be something we couldn’t handle? Do you think we want to repeat the mistake of the Computer Wars, when men had to obey the commands of their own creations? Damn it, Dom Felix, the only reason the issues you just reeled off—Oh hell, man, you do know your history!—don’t matter is that those issues were settled—fought and won and done with, and that’s why they don’t matter. This one is here and now, and we will fight, we will bleed, I will bleed! It’s got to be stopped! Then in another thousand years you can look back and say that only a specialist can even remember what the issues were. But you can’t say it now.”

“I can say it now, and I do. The issues are what they have always been when men turn on one another. You have the power, and I want it. I have the power, and you must obey. I will kill you if you do not give me the power. I will kill you if you threaten to take my power away. It is that
that
does not matter; it is that that is triviality.”

“Well, if you think we’re going to knuckle under to a bunch of … of … why, they’re not even
human!
”

“Altair,
my
history books say that from time to time the Visigoths were not human, the Japanese, the Jews, the Germans, the Irish, the New Jibaros, the—”

“Propaganda talk, Dom Felix,” Altair interrupted tiredly. “But this one time they really
are not human!
”

“And I too really am not human.”

The voice behind them was metallic and not quite a monotone, and synchronized with it was a series of soft grunts, whistles, and squeaks, all but inaudible. Dom Felix whirled around and gasped. Altair whirled around—and laughed.

Squatting against the back wall was the strangest animal? creature? being? monster? that Dom Felix had ever seen. It rose as they turned; it was taller than Dom Felix, though not as tall as Altair. It was covered in gray-blue fur, with large upthrust triangular ears, clawed feet with slender ankles, and extremely massive thighs, shaped rather like those of a wolf, but obviously jointed to what must be something very like a human pelvis, for it could stand upright with its legs almost straight. The arms were long and slender and seemed to be muscled with knotted steel cable. What at first seemed to be a
decoration or even a kind of garment proved to be an inordinately long tail, wound diagonally around the torso upward from its base, just over the small potbelly, and on around and around until its pointed bony tip rested in the area of what would be, in a human, the clavicle. Hooked around the neck was a padded metal band bearing a small grille and a slender curved wire, terminating in a knot the size of a thumbnail, which hovered a few centimeters from the mouth—or was
snout
a better term? A purplish tongue flicked out and in, and Dom Felix was able to see a flash of blue-white teeth, clearly those of an omnivore, with blunted canines and very even, manifestly sharp incisors. The most fascinating feature to Dom Felix was the hands, which bore two two-jointed opposable digits and two very long fingers with small curved claws and, in the palms, a protruding chitinous pair of nippers, or beaks, shaped rather like a parrot’s but more slender. As the two men rose and turned, it was striking and scraping the two sets of nippers together, making a dry, high-pitched chirping sound.

“Laughing,” said Altair aside to Dom Felix, briefly imitating with his own hands the movement of the creature’s. “That’s the way he laughs.” Aloud, he cried: “Aquare, you ol’ long-tailed hop-toad—I’m glad you blew in! This is Dom Felix here at last—he just tripped down. Dom Felix, this is my oldest friend on Medea. Really. He used to bounce me in his arms while my mom was working in the labs.”

The long, thin lips quivered and moved; the strange sequence of whistles and clicks emerged softly while the little metal grille said, “Please be welcome and the happiest, Dom Felix. We have spoken much of you and how you have saved the Terra.”

“I have heard a great deal about you, too. You are quite a celebrity on Terra, you know And please, I have not saved the Earth, not at all. I think the Movement I work in has done a great deal of good; it was doing it before I joined, and all I am doing is to try to return the good it has done me.”

“Ah, please lengthen yourself.”

Dom Felix turned a puzzled face to Altair, who laughed and said, “He means, essentially, don’t be modest. Ask him how old he is.”

“What?”

“Go ahead.”

“Aquare, would you mind telling me how old you are?”

“I have achieved my maturity.”

Altair said, “You know, according to the records, that is precisely the answer he gave more than eighty terrayears ago. Ask him why he is the only Arcan—that’s his city, Arca—the only one who has ever learned our language.”

“Why is that, Aquare?”

“There is no need.”

Altair said, “That’s from eighty terrayears ago, too. Years before that he showed up at the enclave, when it was nothing but a dome and a few fields. He just hung around all the time, didn’t want food, didn’t want anything. Security got very uptight at first, but, thank the powers, we had a Big Chief with the wit not to blast him. Just a tight guard and observers. One day one of ’em, a bright Gen—ah, Truform—called Zylo, noticed those noises he was making and claimed to recognize words. A whole team got to work on it and designed the first version of that computer-translator he’s wearing. It’s been improved a lot since then. And he’s been a great help. He’s arranged a dozen or more tours to Arca over the years, though not much anymore. Nothing changes over there. You’ll see for yourself when you start to move around.”

While he spoke, the Medean stood quite motionless, head turned to one side. Dom Felix realized suddenly that he did not have binocular vision. Like a rabbit or a squirrel or most Terran birds, the averted head meant Aquare was looking straight at him. Altair was saying, “Neither Aquare nor any other Arcan ever asked for or took a thing from us. Even when our engineers thought they had a better way to do something, or some device or gadget to give to them that they might use, they just looked at it and walked off, and old Aquare here just wouldn’t say why. ‘We are content,’ ” he mimicked, and the Medean went
chirp-chirp-chirp
. “And what the hell! We’re just not in competition. There’s plenty of room, we never built near Arca or any fishing or hunting ground we thought they might use; we can’t eat the same food; there’s just no reason for any friction. So as time went on, Aquare became free to come and go any time.
He stays out of the way—he has a real instinct for that—and he never goes into restricted areas or anywhere where he might hurt himself. He’ll talk to you for as long as you like, anytime, and never gets miffed if you have to cut it short. He’ll answer any question—almost—and I just can’t remember his ever asking one.”

“Doesn’t he mind our talking about him behind his back to his face like this?”

“Say no; say no,” said the strange mixed voice. “I am a very pleasant conversation.”

“Another Terran tripped down with Dom Felix, Aquare. Would you like to meet him?”

“He is Kert Row. I have meet him. He and machines and theories all happy harmony together I do not think they harmony with Medea. I do not say him that. I wish he happy until rested. Time then find out.”

Altair groaned. “Here we go again. It’s that damn Occam. Such a great idea in theory, a projective computer that will give you the simplest possible solution using all the data, because, according to ‘Occam’s Razor,’ the simplest solutions have the greatest possibility of being right. But how do you tell Occam that problems on Medea are not simple, that solutions that work are never simple, and that there’s no way to feed the computer all the data?”

“It’s been pretty good at cutting transmission time from Earth to Medea, though, receiving laser as long as the trip is in range, computing probable outcomes, and beaming those ahead,” Dom Felix said. “That’s what brought me here at this time instead of maybe forty years later.”

“That is a truly horrible thought,” said Altair. To the Medean he said, “Dom Felix is going to solve all our problems for us.”

“Going to try,” said Dom Felix, suspecting that the cheerful historian might have a touch of vicious irony in him.

“I hear him solving,” said Aquare. “Waldenses, Adamites, Irgun Zwei Leumi.” A pause. “Altair II, you put you ear far down in mouth of Dom Felix. Leave there.” Pause again. “Could be Dom Felix is very great. Or very very great. Or the greatest Terran yet on Terra. On Medea. Soon I will know.”

Blushing like a schoolgirl, Dom Felix said, “I really don’t think I’m so great, Aquare.”

“True. But could be. Soon I know.”

“I really don’t know what to say,” murmured Dom Felix sincerely.

“Say you sleep now. You more tire than you know. Dream happy.”

“Omigod, yes!” cried Altair. “I shouldn’t have kept you up, got you all stirred up.” He leaped up, swung Dom Felix around, and lowered him gently. Sleep approached with a rush, holding back just long enough for him to hear Aquare intone sagely, “There is no should. There is only is.”

Kert Row, tow-headed engineering genius, lay with his eyes open and started up when Altair came in. “Hi. Hey,” he said, abruptly propping himself up on his elbow, “you know who that is in there?”

“Sure do. Dom Felix. And he just corked off, which is what you ought to be doing.”

“I don’t mean just his name. Do you know who he
is?
”

“Fill me in. It’s hard to know when Occam leaves off on facts and fades in the projections. The projections are pretty impressive, though.”

“I haven’t seen them,” said the engineer, “but, sight unseen, I am here to tell you they don’t do that man justice. You just don’t know what happens when that man turns on … whatever you call it that he turns on.” He laughed. “Words just don’t do it, see? Look, I saw him put a hundred thousand people in a stadium into some sort of a, oh hell, I was going to say trance. It wasn’t a trance. You wake up from trances.”

“He certainly spun my head around.” Altair pursed his lips.

“I know what you mean,” said Kert Row. (Altair doubted that.) “But you have to see him in action, with a crowd, I mean, before you can appreciate what happens when you’re alone with him. After that stadium thing, when I found out I was going to prep with him for two and a half weeks, I thought he was going to burn me to a crisp in the first twelve minutes. But you know what? The whole time he let me talk. He wanted me to talk, and he really
listened
. I was the guru, he was the student.”

“Well, he was,” Altair said. “He told me that. He said he was angry at himself for having so little knowledge, so little talent in your field, and how he wished he had even some of what you had.”

“He
did?
Oh … my …” The “my” came out despairingly, as if he had searched for expletives and found none that would suit and had to fall back on something so pale. Altair hoped he would not actually ask whether he had had the same experience with the man in the black burnoose, and his hope was realized. Kert Row fell very suddenly asleep with a luminous smile on his face. Altair did not know how long he stood there, tanning his heart with the smile.

“Oh.”

He turned around. Wallich. One long stride, and he had her, upturned hands on her elbows. He said, “No more ‘Mule,’ public or private. Ever.”

Tears. There had been tears before, too, but what a difference! He had a mad thought that they must taste different, angry tears and … and these. He slid his arms around her, and she leaned against him for a time He raised his head, then turned it toward the door, a quiet suggestion. She stood back and looked into his face, eyes wide open and certain, and shook her head. “Not now, Altair. And not for a very long time, but thank you.” She tiptoed to kiss him swiftly on the corner of the mouth and went out.

He glanced at the other door, the adjoining room where Dom Felix slept.
Little hairy man
, he thought,
you do move and shake things around here
.

In the weeks that followed (Terran weeks, of course; Medea stubbornly and reverently adhered to Old World time), Dom Felix visited, Dom Felix observed, Dom Felix questioned and listened and studied; he became as ubiquitous as the Arcan Aquare, appearing everywhere, anywhere, at any time at all, while staying out of the way.

He witnessed the departure of the lander that had brought him and experienced the strange mixture of feelings experienced by all Trippers; it was unlike any other departure since men first traveled, boarded, entrained, and emplaned, for there was no waving from
the rail, no message from over a horizon, no captain’s table, flight attendant—none of that. There were seventeen days of psychological and biological preparation, and then immersion in the bioenergetic phase—inversion field—all this planetside. Subjectively, the Trip was instantaneous; objectively, a half-century or so. Between these extremes of time, Occam, the projective computer, drank information until the well ran dry, soaked up by distance. It did its extrapolations, and, when it could, it sought and found its opposite number on the approaching ship (for ships, few as they were, were scheduled to coincide going and coming, so they might pass each other somewhere near Midpoint Turnover). As long as they could, they swapped and shared and then turned their lasered cargoes on their destinations, so that when they arrived, all their news and knowledge were there before them. It was difficult to regard the Trippers as strangers; only the destination was strange, and that only to the Tripper himself. Knowing all this, it was a quite indescribable emotional experience to watch the departure of a shuttle bound for its orbiting interplanetary—a launch that, if one tripped again, one would not feel, a Trip that, from beginning to end, one would not truly experience, in a ship one would never see. For all that, the launch represented the casting off, the burning of the bridge, the lost opportunity to take it all back, cancel the plans, go back home. And then the impact that no amount of prep could ever quite erase:
You can’t go home again
. That poignant truth so often learned by any growing consciousness was multiplied immeasurably: Home wasn’t there anymore. A true-time century would take care of that.