The Avatar (56 page)

“But prepare to leave soon. The forces that made this place and keep it, here at the end and the beginning of a universe, are balanced as on a whirling spearhead. However tiny, the mass of your ship draws hard enough on them that while you stay, the work is at a halt. Nor have you anything left to do among us. You won this far, and thereby won your homecoming—or the right to go back and do battle for your homecoming. More we cannot bid you. At the start of your next watch, we will call upon you to depart.

“In the meantime, make Caitlín welcome. Be good to her.”

“Christ,” Brodersen shouted as he flew, “how could I try to be anything else?”

A few crewmen had gotten to the airlock before him. He elbowed them aside and himself admitted her. An argence
entered, flicked off, and there she was. He caught her in his arms and they floated, ridiculously a-spin. The scent and warmth and lithe feel of her overwhelmed him.
God damn,
he thought, I’
m actually crying
.

“Are you okay? Pegeen, sweetheart, macushla, what happened? So soon—”

“It was long, I think,” she said as if talking in her sleep. Her smile was from Nirvana. “They sent me back through time. Look.” Out of a coverall pocket she pulled the notebook that spacefolk usually carried. “Written down, the patterns we’ll follow, retracing the whole way we came till we get to Danu, where we jump to Beta’s system. We’ll arrive within a month of when
Emissary
left.”

“But you, Pegeen, you!”

“Och, I’m fine. You must give me a while to… climb down—” Abruptly she clawed herself to him. He felt her shudder. “Dan, hold me, please. I should not be weeping after what I’ve had, I should not!”

Out of the pit where her being lay, Joelle radiated:
Won’t you at least say goodbye?

—Yes, and more, was the response.—We have learned from the avatar how stark is your need.

Then take me to you!

—It cannot be. O Joelle, can a tree fly or a bird catch sunlight? You are what you are, and you are what you may become if you will. Be glad in that.

In a few miserable years left me, knowing I will never know what you do, knowing my Noumenon is a shadow?

—If you wish, we can make you forget.

No!

—What else?

If I am not worthy of your company
[There is no special worthiness in this.]
then open Reality for me. Whether it will kill me or drive me mad, show me the Ultimate
.

—We have no Ultimate.

But what do you have
—

—What fragments we possess will not harm you in themselves. [
Would a lecture on relativity harm an ape?]
The avatar could tell you…. But you do have more gift and
background than she does. Therefore hearken, if you will.

—[Mathematics and snatches of what might be direct perception or might not be, and:] Our space-time continuum is not the total Creation. It is a bubble in a hyperdimensional ocean which brings forth more of its kind endlessly, almost as the ancient oceans on Earth and Demeter and Beta begot life over and over, because that was in their nature. Universes die, like stars and flowers; but their stuff goes on too, worked Into something that never was before.

—Here and now, our burnt-out cosmos, expanding, fleeing from itself, has intersected another. From this union, when it is complete, will arise an entire new world of worlds. (Praised be the chance that the other plenum is old itself, that no life—we pray—will perish in the genesis!) What the next cycle will be like, we cannot foretell.

—Already the very laws and constants of physics are changing. Not you nor we could exist for an instant outside this fortress of forces. What is to come will be wholly strange. Yet we will seek to become a part of it, to understand and cherish it. We are building a machine—

—which is only a means to an end, Joelle, the end which has no ending.

After a silence:—Do you still desire a glimpse?

Yes!

—Perceive—

She screamed. That was not from hurt or fear, it was from hopelessness.

—Farewell. Fare ever well.

Caitlín stirred. “I should go to her,” she said.

“Huh? What d’you mean?” Brodersen asked.

“This was laid on me, to help Joelle,” she told him. “They knew what she’d suffer. They can’t heal her. Maybe there is no remedy. But I must try, Dan.”

“What about me?… Oh, I don’t want to pester you, I don’t have to have consolation right this minute, but…you’ve changed, Pegeen.”

“Yes.” She gripped him hard. “Away from you. I’ll be fighting my way back, I will. Now, though—you are more strong than she is.”

“The hour has come for you to leave,” said the voices of the Others. “Bear with you our blessing.”

H
UGE AND RED-GOLDEN
in purple-blue heaven, the sun of Beta stood at late morning. One of the rainstorms which ruled over that part of the long day had just ended. Scattered clouds lingered, softly aglow, and a rainbow bridged the western horizon. The land gleamed wet, as if the deep hues of turf, shrubs, fronds on trees had been bestrewn with diamonds. A breeze blew cool, bearing odors as of spices. Eastward shone an estuary and rose the silhouettes of buildings, but closer at hand there was little to show that here was a chief seat of a starfaring civilization. An ancient tower did rear its bulk of gray, vine-wrapped stone aboveground.

It was the time of growth, between icy night and parched afternoon. Everywhere fresh plant life was springing up and swelling, almost visibly fast. The sky was full of wings, and song resounded from shaw and meadow.

Joelle and Caitlín approached the tower on foot. A gravity less than Earth’s put spring in their stride. Yet they walked through the season unsmiling, the younger woman sober, the older woman somber.

“And why can you not be laying down your woe?” Caitlín demanded. “Aye, a shock did you have, to find what you know is but a drop of spindrift that in a moment will fall back into the sea and be lost. Yet is that any real surprise? Will it be less thrill tomorrow when you make a discovery?”

Joelle shook her head. “Worse,” she said in her bleakness. “I found I am not only ignorant, I’m
stupid
. No, not even that. It would imply something in common with the Others. In spite of our holothetic tricks, we remain lower animals. We’re like monkeys trying to write Shakespeare by random hits on a scriber console and unable to keep at it five minutes in a stretch. Or we’re like blindworms trying to see.”

For a second Caitlín doubled her fists and stared into the wind. When she had her face under control, she replied, “They don’t look down on us. How often must I tell you? To them, every kind of life is noble. It’s our business to be what we are, proudly.”

“Easy enough for you to say.”

Caitlín held back an answer.

“You’re outgoing, physical, sanguine, everything I’m not,” Joelle went on. “And what I believed I was turns out to be an illusion. So what I am is nothing.”

Caitlín flushed, scowled, and snapped, “Are you not overdue for climbing out of that wallow of self-pity?”

“Oh, I’ll perform my duties competently, never fear.”

Softened, Caitlín touched Joelle’s cheek. “Learn to be human again. Brain’s a single facet of existence, neither the largest nor the brightest. I’ll help where I can. All your shipmates will.”

Scorn lifted, an acid taste. “Yes, beginning with plenty of sex. Your pet panacea, isn’t it? Doubtless you can persuade your studs to do the old lady the favor of screwing her on a regular basis. No, thanks!”

“Did I make that suggestion?” Caitlín said quietly. “I’d not be doing so. It’s as ugly to me as to you. Or uglier, maybe. I don’t suppose you will be wanting a man as a man any more, ever. The which is no shame on you, is only your taste and choice. But dreadful it is to see you frozen in that aloneness. Let us warm you free. We can, if you will be warm toward us: if you will
care.”

“I’m still a holothete. The rest of you are still animals to me. Well-meaning, but animals; and I never did care much for pets. As for my colleagues on Earth, how can I like them when I no longer respect them? Or respect myself? Sticky sentimentalism isn’t going to change any of this…. Here we are.”

A flyer was parked outside the building, whose door had been drawn back. The women entered chill, echoey dimness and took a spiral ramp to the second story. There were those linkage units the Betans and the
Emissary
scientists had devised for their joint use. Memories of Fidelio rushed over Joelle.
We would have shared the same loss, aided each other in our pain. But he is dead
.

Three natives waited, a female looming between the lesser forms of two males. Sunbeams struck through a window to sheen off their mahogany fur. The iodine tang of them filled nostrils like the air on a beach. With upper paws and lower
hands, they made gestures of greeting. The humans returned the courtesy as best they were able.

Joelle took her place. Caitlín helped connect her, then stood by. Holothesis awoke. Joelle dismissed any idea of examining the Noumenon, that shabby fiction. She simply wanted full command of the local language. Nonetheless she found the state possessing her, felt its power throughout her being, yes, this was where she belonged.

Through the vocalizing attachment she produced the full-toned, overtoned, sometimes fluting land speech. “Fair weather be yours, matriarch and her steadfast males.”

“May the tide upbear you, female of intellect,” the Betans responded as ritually.

“We regret we are late,” Joelle explained. “The rain delayed us in camp. Our flockmates were using the vehicles lent us, on various errands connected with getting us established, and I wondered about the possibility of a dangerously strong storm.”

“We did not parch,” the female said.

“We spent the time calming the billows within, against what we are going to hear,” added the larger of her husbands.

“You are kind to meet us, as hard at work as you must be,” said his partner.

“It is the least I can bring to the wife and the brothers in household of him who was my friend,” Joelle told them.

Suddenly, blindingly, she realized she meant that. She had granted the request for an interview as a calculated gesture.
Chinook’s
crew needed plenty of goodwill if they were to persuade a whole world to become their ally. But now that she was here, with those whom Fidelio had loved—Her eyes stung and blurred. She wiped knuckles across them, irritatedly, and went on, glad that her artificial voice could be kept level:

“Beside me is a female of our band hight Caitlín. He died in her arms. Before then, he had come to like her company next to mine, for he enjoyed the music she made and giving her his songs in exchange. I will interpret between you and her. Together we will seek to net for you the tale of how he fared. Ask whatever you wish.”

Caitlín stepped forward till the widow bulked over her and she could proffer a box she had been carrying. “Take this, my lady,” she said low. “While still in our ship, I made printouts of what recordings we have of him and enlarged the best views to pictures, for you.”

While Joelle translated, the Betans saw what it was. For a while they looked at the likenesses, silent. Then the female laid claws most gently on Caitlín’s head, stroked her with big unsteady hands, and rumbled and whistled—sea noises—“May you never lack for clean saltwater. May every gale blow you happiness. This in the name and presence of God.”

“Och, it was a sorely little thing to do. One feels so helpless.”

“Perhaps you do not catch what help you lavish if you share your memories of him. You raise those days of his that for us lay drowned.”

—The meeting lasted long, hours, because the Betans wished everything, each glimpse the humans could call back. Their questions flew like raindrops on a strandwind. A camera taped the scene, but Joelle suspected they had no real need of that; what they were doing was evoking Fidelio in themselves. Caitlín unslung the sonador from her shoulder and gave them the songs and tunes she had given him. In the end she laid the instrument aside and sang for them his lullabye.

When she was done, silence dwelt for a while in the tower. Then the widow stirred, lifted an upper arm as in benediction, and said, “Mercy be upon you always, you who are merciful. I will plead your cause before the Sovereign Council, and do believe it will be moved to aid you.”

“What?” exclaimed Joelle, startled. “You?”

“Had you not caught the fullness of truth about me? That bodes well, that you twain would come here only out of kindness. Know, to honor the once-being of him who traveled with you, the League of Spacefarers has lately named me its delegate. Since its members will belike heed my leadership, whatever I say in the Council should carry a full cargo.”

A lucky break. I won’t disillusion her about my motives
…
or, rather, the motives I served, not expecting that anything could really matter to me any more. Besides, the implication here is alarming. If Caitlín understood
—Joelle cast a glance at the younger woman and saw her gazing out the window, face as remote from ordinary emotion as a death mask. Briefly, compassion had brought Caitlín back from those realms wherein her soul had wandered since she left the Others; but now she had returned thither.

Joelle swung attention toward the Betans. “Is there that much doubt your people will help us?” she asked.

“There has been,” the female answered frankly. “The tale you
brought is a terrible one. We were hoping to learn from you how we may become what we must become. Today many wonder if, instead, we—our descendants, our whole race—may not learn treachery, oppressiveness, violence, such as you report without seeming to feel they are anything very unusual. Some among us would quarantine you.”

“Is your species perfect?” Joelle retorted, more in the interests of accuracy than in any defensive spirit.

“Of course not. You know what sickness is in us and what kind of parchedness has brought it about. The riddle is, would the waters you offer be healing or be poison?”