Explorer

by C. J. Cherryh

It went.

  All in high and low beeps.

  Off/on, black/white on a field limited by a burst of black pixels. Next screen. Next image. One didn’t even know if the eyes weren’t compound, but if they communicated in light they had to have some sort of light-reception, which all his reading said added up to eyes of some sort.

  Light-sensitive patches didn’t get a species to communicating starship to starship in light pulses. He hoped.

  They waited.

  And waited.

  “These delays,” he murmured finally, “don’t seem robotic. There’s some sort of thought process that takes time. Living creatures take time. And they’re not transmitting otherwise, are they? I’m assuming they’re doing things on their own, no consultation outside.”

  “Maybe. Maybe they’ll blow us to hell in the next second,” Sabin said. “Is the dowager still passing out hot tea?”

  “She—” Bren began to say.

  Then a series of beeps flooded back.

  “Display!” Jase said.

  One/forty-nine. One/forty-nine. One/forty-nine.

  Then variance. A row with two separated black dots. Like theirs.

  Next row. More image.

  Third row. Image taking shape.

  Techs glanced surreptitiously from their consoles, violating the inviolable rule.

  “Eyes!” Sabin snapped. All motion stopped but the building of that image.

  Two ships met in space.

  “It’s not our image,” Bren said. The ships were further separated. “They’re not mirroring. They’re innovating.”

  Next frame. Next and next and next, and on and on.

  “Display in sequence,” Bren said. “Eight frames a second.”

  Ships blinked into proximity.

  “Two per second,” Bren said more modestly, and the screen gave back a sedate approach, two ships approaching one another.

  The image came in three times.

  “They’ve got the idea,” Jase muttered.

  Then a pause.

  Then another series of animations.

  Not theirs. Again, not theirs.

  Station in space. Ship approaching. Approaching. Slowed. Stopped.

  Stayed stopped. Stayed stopped. Stayed stopped. Blinked. Blinked numerous times.

  Emitted slow-moving black dot toward station.

  Station emitted fast black dot.

  Convergence. Debris tracks. More black dots coming fast.

  Ship emitted fast dot.

  Station emitted debris.

  “Damn,” Bren said. “Damn!” He had no need to translate that. The images spoke for themselves. “What they sent out first wasn’t a shot.”

  “We don’t know that,” Sabin said.

  “They’ve drawn a distinction. What they sent wasn’t what station sent back. And they’re talking to us, Captain: they’re not lunatics. They’re trying to communicate what happened ten years ago, and they don’t know we’re not dangerous.”

  “Good. Let them keep thinking we are dangerous.”

  “Their send is repeating,” Jase said. “Shall we answer?”

  Deeper and deeper into the maze. And one wrong step meant a whole wrong branch—one that might lead them all to destruction.

  “Repeat our own first sequence.” Station evacuation. Departure. Station destruction. He held the pen and the notebook and tried to think what else mattered in the meeting. What else two ill-met species possibly had to say to one another that could reassure, after the disaster . . .

  If they didn’t have fuel—if they couldn’t follow the program he laid down, simply because they’d have to stop for years and mine—what he proposed might be impossible. Might lead the alien to attack.

  “We don’t have fuel enough to get to Gamma if we take the station population aboard,” Bren said. “Am I right in that?”

  “We can’t,” Sabin said, with a sharp, estimating look at Jase. “If we go in, and they don’t have fuel for us—we have to mine, Mr. Cameron. With all that means. Once we take a significant number of people aboard, we’re a sitting target.”

  “Rock and a hard place,” Bren muttered, and still didn’t know what to draw.

  Transmission was coming in.

  New one.

  Black round shape. That developed downward into arms. Snowman shape. Short, thick legs. Alien ship beside it.

  His heart beat fast.

  “That’s them,” he murmured. “That’s them.”

  “Wait on any answer,” Sabin said.

  “We daren’t hesitate. They’ve asked. They’re not shooting. We need to answer them. Give them the man-image again. Refine our image. Make more frames. Make it more lifelike. Stall!”

  “Station may hear this. Don’t mention atevi in your pictures.”

  A lie. The first hour of dealing with a new species, an unknown civilization with unknown parameters, where the ability to show there were two species united here might be a potent argument toward negotiation, and he was supposed to start with a lie that wouldn’t ultimately blow up all communication they might establish once the aliens did find out.

  Of course. The Guild was involved.

  “Transmit the human silhouette,” he said with a sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach. “Then repeat the station evacuation sequence.”

  “Do it,” Sabin said. Quick job. They did that.

  “Amplify that to men, women, children. Refine it.”

  “Yes, sir.” This time without looking to Sabin for confirmation. Several consoles worked, dividing up the task, hauling images out of archive, converting them to silhouettes, to basic animations.

  Meanwhile the alien had been silent. One hoped someone over there on the other ship was applying constructive thought—and not that some sort of politics was debating. They couldn’t penetrate that veil to know which was true.

  “Image ready,” C1 reported.

  “Transmit,” Bren said, and at Sabin’s nod, that happened.

  More silence.

  Ominous silence. At least a pregnant silence. Something was going on over there. One envisioned a furious debate of creatures more or less people-like. Stocky. The images they had showed that. Dared one show a human face in their graphics? Or might it frighten them right out of the dialogue?

  A new transmission began to come in, faster than before, a step by step sequence, a skewed design. More pixels.

  Their techs compensated. The image of human ship and the alien ship refined itself, then refined itself again.

  “They’re pushing a clearer image,” Bren said. “More detail. More data from us. Or to give more to us.”

  “I’m not enthusiastic,” Sabin muttered. “More detail, more information.”

  “Listen to him,” Jase said. “Senior captain, at a certain point this is psychology. A rhythm of cooperation. Don’t break it if he doesn’t advise breaking it.”

  “We get as we give, captain. Silences mean something. They’re thinking, over there. It’s not a robot, I don’t think. Data density means something. They want more. They’ll give more to get it. It’s all communication.”

  “Do it,” Sabin said, not happy.

  Pixels had quadrupled. Animation ran the old image, the ship’s approach to the station. Showed—

  Showed a figure getting into a small craft. Backed off. Showed the craft going toward the station. Showed a missile strike. The wreckage going every which way. A figure spinning toward the station. Beep. Beep. Beep.

  “Hell!” Bren said. “Hell! They sent a manned probe in. Station blew him up. Station blew him to bits.”

  Sabin said not a thing. Neither did Jase.

  Then: “Mr. Cameron,” Sabin said calmly, “I believe this sort of mess is your specialty.”

  Counter that just-transmitted charge with contrition? Regret? The occupants of that ship weren’t guaranteed to feel anything remotely compatible. There was no telling what they felt about the situation.

  But they offered this image, their version of history
. They offered it, evidently passionate about it after some fashion, and they weren’t shooting. For at least six years they’d sat out here.

  Enigma. Passionate in their obstinacy. Watching.

  “Banichi. Jago.” He turned to his bodyguards, to impassive atevi duty-faces. “Advise us, nadiin-ji. What are these individuals saying?”

  “They say,” Banichi answered, “that they have approached in minimal force and have been attacked, nandi.”

  “Why have they waited?”

  “To find out what ships come and go here,” Jago said. “To listen. To learn their enemy and his purpose.”

  “What would you answer them, nadiin? What would you do?”

  “We are not paidhiin,” Jago murmured, “nandi. Our Guild has only certain answers.”

  “On your own. What would you advise a lord in your protection?”

  “We would not advise attacking them,” Banichi said solemnly. “One would advise making a further gesture.”

  The Assassins’ Guild not only delivered redress, among atevi. It delivered justice. It made cold, clear judgements. And Banichi, in his sense of truth and right, had judged this one, that attack against an enigma was folly.

  “Captain. Answer: our ship. Seated human figure.” Communicating non-aggression, he hoped. “Head bowed.”

  The image needed building. C2 wasn’t up to the figure. C3 involved herself, built a seated figure in profile. C2 composed it with the ship. Sent. All in a matter of moments.

  Bren folded his arms and waited, hoping to God it had been the right move, the right expression. Hoping it hadn’t looked like surrender. “Send again. Our ship going in. Evacuation. Destruction of the station. Our departure.” Restatement. We intend to do a job and leave with all humans.

  Which might not matter to an alien fact-finding mission that had been waiting out here, aggrieved and looking for redress in a situation that had started, perhaps, with Ramirez’s intrusion into places he shouldn’t have been and that had gotten far worse in the station’s reception of what might have been an inquiry. It wasn’t a robot over there. And it hadn’t given up. Hadn’t moved. Hadn’t communicated.

  Maybe ten years wasn’t that much to this species. Maybe they were just stubborn. Maybe they’d set up shop and, as station thought, occasionally contacted some higher authority outside station’s view.

  And if this situation had gotten to a second round six years ago—what had been the truth behind the initial damage to the station?

  A reply started coming in. Echo of their own last transmission. But the ending differed. In this version, the human ship took aboard not their string of human figures—but a notably stocky horizontal form, a body.

  “They want him back,” Jase said in a low voice.

  The new ending: the human ship voyaged from the station back to the alien craft. Sent over the body.

  Rites for the dead?

  A determination to get their own back?

  If the station had found the craft was occupied—he could see it—they’d have taken the body for study. They’d have tried to learn from every piece and fragment. There might not be a body in any reasonable condition. Maybe the aliens suspected that to be the case. And notably, the sequence didn’t end, as theirs had, with them collecting the station occupants and leaving.

  It ended with them parked opposite that ship.

  He didn’t like that.

  “Refinement,” he said. “Capture their sequence. Repeat it and splice on our approach to the station, boarding passengers, destroying station, leaving.” We’ll get back your dead. Let us do our job, destroy this outpost, and go.

  Jase gave that order. Sabin simply held her position, arms folded, face grim.

  He waited. They all waited.

  Image came in. Repeat of the former sequence: give us our dead. No mention of evacuation and departure.

  “Do we have a problem, Mr. Cameron?”

  That, from Sabin. And, yes, he’d say they potentially had a problem.

  “We well may. They aren’t getting beyond that demand. Give us our dead. Nothing beyond that. They won’t negotiate until we do that. I think it’s pretty clear.”

  “Hope the station’s got fuel for us,” Sabin muttered between her teeth. “Agree. Tell them we’ll do it. What we’ll really do is go in, get our business done, see what the situation is, and prepare to run for it. If we have fuel. If we don’t, we can’t board the station population. Then we see about negotiating our way out of this.”

  An unthinkable dilemma, then. Destroy the station—destroy the Rosetta Stone. But that did no good if they couldn’t get themselves out. If they couldn’t avoid leading a vengeful alien presence back to the atevi planet . . .

  “No matter what we do, we’re going to have to negotiate this, run or stay, captain. They can track us. Wipe out the Archive, yes, but that’s not all that’s at risk. Everything back at Alpha is at risk.” A terrible thought came to him, that in some measure, Phoenix itself could survive, alone, fugitive that it might be. And Sabin was the ship’s protector, nothing less, nothing closer to her bedrock loyalties. “They’re talking, captain. We can solve this. But we’ve got a hellacious puzzle here. Station was hit ten years ago. If that’s the truth. We don’t even know for sure that this ship represents the ones that did it. We do know this ship’s been involved for six years. That they came here and sent in a probe. And station blew it up.”

  “Four years making up their minds sounds like a committee decision to me.”

  “It may, captain. It well may. It may be a hundred planets making up their minds for all we know, and do we want to take that on?” He wanted to undermine any notion of survival on their own. And took his chance. “Can we say where in this whole universe is safe to run to, if we make a mistake here? We start by cooperating with them, far as seems reasonable.”

  Sabin gave him that patented stare, straight in the eyes. And he gave his own back.

  “And if you’re wrong, Mr. Cameron? What you propose means approaching them after they’ve got what they want.”

  “Can we defend, if they launch an attack while we’re at the station?”

  Lengthy stare. “Point of fact, no. We’ll be as vulnerable as the station.”

  “Then I’m right, captain. Last thing we ought to do is run without satisfying these people.”

  “People,” Sabin scoffed. While Banichi and Jago stood at his shoulder.

  “Yes, ma’am. Whatever shape they come in. Whatever their faces look like. The outline’s of a person.”

  “And the minds, Mr. Cameron?”

  “There’s thought. There’s insistence. There’s forbearance. There’s regard for their dead. There’s an inclination to communicate. That’s all a foundation.”

  “As I recall, you and the atevi lived side by side for quite a while before you went at each others’ throats. The War of the Landing, you call it.”

  “We learn. We come here, my bodyguard and I, the dowager and Gin and I, with all that experience—at your service, captain.”

  “What, then, Mr. Cameron?”

  “Is station going to cooperate with us?”

  “I’m not a prophet.”

  “Station hasn’t sent us anything else.”

  “Not another word,” Jase said.

  “C1,” Sabin said. “Replay the sequence as Mr. Cameron suggests.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” C1 said, and it went out.

  Lengthy wait then.

  “Sequence showing us going to the station,” Bren said. “Let’s not get deeper in. Let’s just go do what we can, captain. Let’s try it.”

  Sabin gave him a cold, speculative look. Then: “Give me general address.”

  “Confirmed,” C1 said, and Sabin took up a mike.

  “Sabin speaking. We’ve conducted a short conversation with the alien craft. Seems it sent a probe to the station and had it blown up. It thinks station has one of their dead. We want answers. We’re going to go over there with a reasonable expect
ation the alien craft is going to stay off our backs in the meanwhile, and we’re going to find out what the fuel situation is before we make any further decisions. So we’re going to takehold in a few minutes, cousins, and we’re going to move very, very slowly about this, so as not to alarm the neighbors. Don’t take anything for granted. Second shift is now in charge. Likely next shift change will not be on schedule, but technical crew, continue to brief yourselves on channel 10. General crew, feel free to get some sleep if you can—”

  God, Bren thought, exhausted—and very far from sleep.

  “. . . and stay to your cabins until further notice. We might still have to move ship far and fast on a few seconds’ warning, but right now, we’re going to start in toward station and see whether refueling is at all an option.”

  The message from the alien craft meanwhile came back, identical to their output.

  “Looks as if they agree,” Jase muttered. “For good or ill.”

  “It secures our backs,” Sabin said. “It gets us there.”

  Sabin was being uncharacteristically charitable. His action wasn’t all a success. It might be a grave mistake to have conveyed regret. Belligerence and indifference wasn’t his native inclination, and he’d mistrusted the notion, incapable of playing the hand the way Banichi, perhaps, would have done. At times Tabini had wisely shoved his translator aside and said, in effect, let me deal with it. And Tabini dealt, hard and fast and with nerves that didn’t flinch at a frown from the opposition.

  Tabini’s opponents fell into Tabini’s sense of timing and didn’t ever recover their balance—ended up negotiating peace because they couldn’t ever get their feet under them. Figuratively speaking.

  He envied that ability. He wished he’d found his balance in this exchange for any given moment. He wished most of all he’d found a way to get a confirmation out of the alien regarding their leaving the scene.

  That could be the greatest failure in his life. Absolutely essential, and for a critical moment he’d doubted he could get it, and balked. Mistake, mistake, mistake.

  “Mr. Cameron.” Sabin.

  “Ma’am.”

  “Good job.”

  Did one tell the plain truth, in the middle of the bridge, if not in the midst of the below-decks crew? “I have lingering concerns, captain.”