Vale of Stars (47 page)

Iede stared at him with a new reverence—one born not of religion but of genuine respect for his obvious resolve, even if she did not quite understand what he meant.

“Enough of that,” he said suddenly, his voice firm again. “If you are to return to the surface, you’ll need to learn how to pilot the lifeboat. I have some holos for you to watch.”

Aywon swam to his wall control panel and began accessing flight simulator holograms. Iede watched him, wondering what she could possibly do to remove the threat the ruins presented that the gods themselves were powerless to thwart.

Sirra smiled at Fozzoli and added, “For a linguist, you certainly seem at a loss for words.”

The young scientist merely shook his head slowly. “There’s just no way. No way am I letting you do this.”

“Vogel knows what’s going on. We need him.”

“How many ways do you want me to demolish your line of thinking? First,” Fozzoli held up a slender forefinger and violently slapped it with his opposing forefinger, “you don’t know that Vogel knows anything. Second, even if he does, we don’t know if he will tell us anything. Third, even if you’re right and he will tell us all he knows, you don’t even know where he is now. Fourth, assuming that somehow you can find him, you’ll be attacked as soon as you show yourself to the vix priesthood, if not to the ordinary townsfolk.”

“What’s the alternative, Foz? Wait up here for something to happen?”

“Yes!” Fozzoli fairly shouted. “What’s the great rush? We have a lot of data to coordinate—who knows what we’ll come up with? The vix aren’t going anywhere.”

“I wonder.”

Fozzoli’s eyes narrowed, then his voice softened. “Look, Sirra, you and I have disagreed on a lot of stuff. You’re always pushing the limits, trying new things, getting yourself in trouble. I know that I’m cautious. I’d rather think something through than rush in. Maybe I’ve lost opportunities that way—I’ll never really know. But you’ve got to ask yourself—why do you really want to go back down there? Is it really because it will serve our research interests best?”

Sirra frowned. Fozzoli pressed his point harder.

“I’m sorry I have to say this. You’re an old woman, Sirra. Your career is almost over. Are you sure you just don’t want to make one last mark on the world, no matter the cost? Rather than leave the next generation to do it instead?”

“You think I’m that way, Abromo?”

“I’m not sure. But going back down to see the vix again…there’s no sense to it. Other risks you’ve taken at least had a sort of balance between risk and benefit. This, though…what can we gain from this that is worth risking your life?”

Sirra stared at him a long time. His moist eyes stared back at her, unreadable. Fozzoli had always been a loyal assistant—no, more than an assistant. A colleague. He was poised to make some astonishing discoveries of his own and make a name for himself in the scientific community. Could it be true that he was jealous? Was he trying to gently push her aside so that he might shine more brightly?

“You think I should stay up here with all of you youngsters and try to coordinate the data? You said it yourself, Foz—I’m an old woman. I’d just be in the way. Maybe you think I should just retire altogether, is that it?” As she spoke, she watched him carefully. He squirmed at her words but held his composure.

“I never said that. Your input has always been valuable. But maybe you don’t have the patience you once had, since you have so few years remaining in the field. Don’t throw away a fine and distinguished career in a moment of childish weakness. Let’s study the vix for a few months, and if we find we need further data, then we’ll go down and get it.”

“No, Foz. Something happened down there, and if we don’t get back there fast, I think the vix will….” She shook her head. “I’m not sure what they’ll do, but something’s coming. I can feel it.”

“You and your domed intuition.”

Sirra thrust her hands outward, palms up, in a deprecating gesture. “It comes with age, Foz.”

Fozzoli did not answer immediately. Sirra knew that he trusted her hunches almost as much as she did herself. She did not invoke her intuition often, and as a result, a statement that she was “feeling” something carried weight with the linguist.

“Then let me go instead. Or one of the other divers. The vix’re hunting you now.”

Sirra smiled inwardly at his change of tactics. “The vix don’t make much of a distinction between us, you know that.”

“A team, then. Armed. With the launch. No need to go in alone and unprotected.”

“I’ve thought of that, too. I don’t want to cause more of a disruption than necessary.”

“You mean, more than rewriting their entire religious philosophy?”

“Exactly.”

Fozzoli sighed. “Can I ask one thing first, since you are going to go and there’s little I can do to stop you?”

“Short of pulling a gun on me.”

“Oh, don’t think I haven’t thought of that. And I would have too, except that the weapons locker is locked and only holds tranq pistols and there’s only one person with the keycode and she’s a stubborn woman.”

“What was your question?”

“Did I say anything that even remotely changed your mind?”

Sirra laughed suddenly. The note of pleading in Fozzoli’s voice was comical.

“You got me angry with your old woman comments.”

“Yes, well, I’m sorry about that. I was just trying to—”

“It’s all right. But the two of us should know better than to debate one another. Two linguistics experts playing semantic and rhetorical games? What could be more pathetic?”

Fozzoli snorted. “I suppose you won’t object to my monitoring you?”

“Of course not. And have a diving team ready this time. I don’t want to wait around like I had to last time before you and the rest of the research team dragged their carcasses down to get my tired old body.”

“Sirra, I really didn’t mean what I said about your age. I just…well, I was trying to say anything to get you to reconsider.”

“I know. It’s all right.”

“No, I want to tell you. You’ve done more for the study of the vix than any other living person. Including Khadre. I expect you will continue to lead the field for the next…well, for quite a while.”

Sirra found herself welling up. She had dismissed Fozzoli’s remarks on her age as ploys to weaken her resolve, but even though Fozzoli had just confirmed that her intuition was correct, she was nevertheless relieved that he still held her in high esteem.

“That means a lot to me, Foz.” She hesitated briefly to allow her sincerity to sink in. “But before we start crying and painting each other’s toenails, I’ve got to get ready for the dive.”

Sirra checked her gauges again. The surface water temperature was as warm as it had been the last dive, but she still felt a chill as she settled down through the dive pool and swam under the lab.

“No vix in the vicinity down there, Sirra,” Fozzoli’s voice sounded in her ears.

“You’ve shut off active sonar?”

“Yes. We’re listening on passive only.”

Sirra nodded. She did not want any transmissions coming from the lab’s remote sensors below to inflame what she knew were already high tensions among the vix. Passive sonar had a much shorter range, and was limited in resolution as well, but she would be effectively silent.

“Passing nine hundred meters,” Sirra said. “I’m going to go off communications at one thousand.”

“Acknowledged.”

The next hundred meters passed all too swiftly. “I’m switching off, Foz. Stay sharp up there.”

“Good luck, Sirra.”

Sirra turned off her transmitter and her sonar beacon. Fozzoli had suggested they reconfigure her suit’s communications to a higher frequency, but the modifications would have taken days, and Sirra had not been convinced that the vix could not sense the higher frequencies in the same fashion that some humans could sense dog whistles. She had opted for sonar silence instead. Fozzoli had extracted a solemn promise that if she found herself in trouble, she would reactivate her beacon. The lab would pick up her signal and come for her.

As she continued to descend, her own passive sonar began to pick up the conversations of nearby vix. Her suit lamp cast a dim glow a few meters ahead of her, which would provide her with a slight advantage in close range work, but she still was forced to rely on passive sonar for long range “seeing.”

At one thousand and sixty-six meters below the lab her suit’s speakers came to life.

“
Speaker-From-Above. You should not have returned
.”

Sirra did not need to glance at her HUD to know who the vix was.

“I’m glad to see you, Vogel.”

The vix swam into her sonar field. “
The Crusaders
remain vigilant. “

“But I found you first. Why are you so near the Above?”

“I do not fear it as the Crusaders do. The stories my father-by-actions told me drive me ever closer to the surface.”

In all her discussions with Vogel, he had never once mentioned his family. Sirra knew enough of vix family custom to know that a “father-by-action” was not a child’s biological father but one who raised the youngster, sometimes with the help of the mother, sometimes with the help of a mother-by-action, or even with community-parents. But children were never raised by a single parent, and rarely by only two. There were various gradations of intimacy in the words the vix had for family members—in this, the vix were not unlike the humans of the Family.

But Vogel had spoken of stories, too. “What stories do you mean?”

Vogel began swimming in slow circles around her.
“My father-by-action told me stories of his own youth. He told me that when he was a young
[untranslatable utterance]
himself, he swam towards the Above Place. Much farther than any other vix had ever done. He says he left the world for an instant.

Sirra glanced at her translator display. The last sentence had translated directly, according to her computer. More importantly, her own intuitive sense told her Vogel was speaking literally. She could make certain of her translation, if he let her.

“Vogel, may I touch you while you tell me the story?”

The vix stopped circling, his tentacles fluttering smoothly to check his movement. He hovered there before Sirra for a moment before answering.
“You wish to touch me after what we have done to you?”

Sirra started to tap out an answer, started to tell him that she did not hold him responsible for what he had done, started to tell him she did not even understand what had happened a few hours ago, but stopped herself. If he was right about the Crusaders, she might not have long alone with him. “Yes. I must. Please.”

Vogel moved cautiously towards her.
“Will I be…Lifted?”

It was the first time she had heard that phrase. Her translator was little help, even with Fozzoli’s additions—it blinked the question symbol to indicate Vogel’s utterance was an interrogative one but gave no alternate definitions for the final word. But Sirra was close enough to get an impression from him. The word had religious overtones, but she could not tell if he was fearful or eager to be “Lifted.”

She answered in the safest way possible. “No,” she said, and placed her gauntleted hand on his smooth surface. She closed her eyes and tapped out on her vixvox with her one free hand, “Now, tell the story.” She placed her second hand on his body and felt her connection with him deepen.

“My father was, to his friends and townsmates, a simple farmer. But he was much more than that.”
His words came smoothly, easily, and Sirra felt the emotion behind each sonar ping. She could even hear his voice as she knew it would have sounded were he a man—a deep baritone that at once held conviction, wonder and wistfulness.

“He was a seeker of knowledge. Not the knowledge of the worldsea
(her translator had labeled the word an “untranslatable utterance” but Sirra could feel the meaning)
but a forbidden knowledge—the knowledge of the past and of the Aboveplace.

“He built strange devices and placed them as high as he could to listen for the sounds of the Abovefolk. He strove to reach higher and higher, but found his own fear limiting him. He told me he had often felt a pressure building in him as he rose, a pressure that threatened to take his reason away. I asked him if it was like the pressure of the Rite of Adulthood we all face when we descend to the Holy Chasm and behold a tiny part of God. He said it was similar in many ways but inside-out. The pressure came not from outside, crushing him in holy splendor, but from inside, as if he himself were creating the divine pain.”

Sirra caught her breath in sudden realization. Vogel’s father-in-action had felt pressure because of his ascent—or more accurately, a distinct lack of pressure—from the surrounding seawater. The effect must have been unsettling.

“One day, his crude devices told him that there had been a disturbance Above. For quite some time, he had been detecting other strange noises that he could not understand, but this new sound was unique. Something had happened Above that had never happened before. My father called on one of his friends, a younger vix named Vicar.

Sirra knew the name was only her own mind’s approximation for Vogel’s sentiment. The name he had used was, obviously, a mere “untranslatable utterance” to her computer, but the sense of it was “he or she who speaks for the gods.” Vicar seemed to fit.

“The two of them rose higher and higher, despite the mounting feeling of dread, until they had left the world of vixian experience. No creature had dared to rise so high. And still they rose. My father passed the uppermost of his listening devices and began to hear faint sounds of struggle above. There was a battle taking place.

“Vicar told my father that the sounds were of an infernal conflict that was not for vixian ears to hear.

“Then came the Song. My father could not, despite tellings and retellings, fully explain the rapture of the Song. He said it was like hearing a perfect note of music
(Sirra was surprised the translation came so easily to her mind. Did the vix have music? She realized that even after thirty-five years, she and her fellow researchers knew very little about the natives)
sung by every creature that ever existed. The note sounded, and sounded again, and again, over and over, each time perfectly, each time the same duration, the same pitch. The note played and played.