The Voices of Heaven

by Frederik Pohl

  She said shortly, "For some people, maybe. Shut up for a minute, will you? so I won't run us into some damn ditch."

  I shut up, and we were both silent for half an hour or so as we climbed along the slope of one of the mountains. I was glad Theophan was doing the driving; if she seemed touchy, I put it down to the difficulty of the job. There wasn't any road. There wasn't really even the kind of primitive track we'd followed to the old hydroelectric dam; Theophan was steering us across meadows and through clearings in wooded areas that became harder and harder to penetrate. Then she put on the brakes and killed the motor.

  She looked around to make sure of her bearings, then nodded. "This is as far as we can go in the car," she said. "Let's unload the gear."

  And so we did, Theophan passing the bits of equipment to me from the back of the car, I handing them down to the leps outside. The leps seemed to know the drill better than I did. They took the sleds and instruments in their little hands and organized them—stringing the harnesses to the sleds, tying the sensor parts securely in place. Then they stopped, looking up at me out of those remarkable eyes.

  Theophan followed me out of the car. She looked up at the hill ahead of us and sighed. "All right," she said, "let's go."

  Nothing happened. The leps stayed there, silent and staring.

  Theophan looked grim but not surprised. "Damn them," she said. "Barry, tell them to get going."

  I wasn't quite clear what was happening, but I tried it. "Let's get going," I said . . . and each of the leps picked up its harness and began tugging the sleds up along the slippery vegetation.

  It was like that all day. Theophan would tell me what the leps were supposed to do. Then I would tell the leps. Then they would do it.

  I didn't have the breath to ask her what that was all about while we were lugging the equipment up the mountain. I hardly had the breath to crawl through the slick, damp undergrowth, with the pack on my back weighing about one ton more with every hundred meters we climbed. The leps didn't seem bothered by the climb. They inched smoothly along, sliding through whatever gaps presented themselves in the brush, pulling those runnered sleds after them as though they were toys. The only good part of that climb was the scenery, and the only word for that was "spectacular." We stopped to catch our breaths at the edge of a huge rock amphitheater, and although I was panting and sore I couldn't help staring at it: vertical walls of something like limestone or marble, a tiny trickle of waterfall sparkling out of a cliff top.

  Theophan noticed it. "Pretty, isn't it? The Millenarists call it The Cathedral—they come up to have their retreats here sometimes."

  "It's a long climb," I said. If I'd been the Millenarists I would have picked somewhere closer.

  She laughed. "I guess that's what they like best about it. Nobody comes to bother them here. Let's go."

  We went. It didn't get easier. When we did finally reach the top I fell flat on the ground, sweating cold sweat—it was windblown and chilly on the peak—and trying to get my heart to stop pounding. I wondered if this sort of exertion were going to accelerate my need for a booster. Then I wondered if Dr. Billygoat would have something for me next time I saw him. Then I wondered what I would do if he didn't.

  Then I got up and got busy, because I didn't want to do any of that wondering anymore.

  If it hadn't been for the chill and Theophan's mood, it might have been real nice to be up high in the Pavan Rockies that day. It was different from the places on the east side of the river. There weren't any traces of human activity here, no roads, no leftover debris from food-gathering parties, nothing but what we had brought with us. And correspondingly there was more wildlife; I saw a couple of jacks, the little kangaroo-like lizards that hopped like bunnies, and heard whistling snakes all around me, and saw flocks of the flyers. I even thought I saw a red-marked third-instar lep looking out from the trees at us once. It seemed to me that it might possibly be Geronimo, but it disappeared before I could call to it.

  We didn't have time to look around much, because the work was hard. It took us two hours to struggle the strain gauges into place, then another hour of Theophan scowling as she tinkered the transmitter into service. It didn't go well. She kept swearing to herself as she made tiny adjustments, and then swore some more after she'd made them and the needles on her test equipment continued to wobble unsteadily. The leps silently handed over the parts needed or went off and whistled morosely among themselves. I wasn't that smart. I kept making what I thought were helpful suggestions. Theophan didn't think they were. She snapped at me until finally I just shut up, sat down, and waited.

  "Shit," she said at last. "That's as good as I can get it. What I really need is a whole set of new instruments, but let's go."

  Then it took us another hour to get back to the car, and when we got there all of the leps simply disappeared.

  Theophan sighed. "Get in, Barry," she said. "I guess we aren't going to have any company for the trip back."

  There it was again. Something between her and the leps, but what?

  I hadn't forgotten any of those questions, but I didn't think that was the time to ask them. It took all her concentration to get us down the hill in one piece. I didn't want to slow her down; the sun was getting low, and I didn't want to face trying to ford that river in the dark.

  Theophan didn't seem to be feeling conversational, but as we were approaching the river she said morosely, "The more I think of it, the more I'm not sure we got that gauge in right, Barry. I'll have to check it when we get home, but I bet we're going to have to come back here, okay?"

  "Any time," I said, though I wouldn't have said it had been a fun trip. I cleared my throat and asked, "Mind if I ask you something? What's the matter between you and the leps?"

  She glanced at me. She shrugged. "They hate me."

  "I kind of suspected they did. Why?"

  She thought for a moment. "You've never seen their main nesting place, have you? There's not much to see now. They had a big quake that diverted a mountain stream, and the new path took the flow right through the nests. A lot of the leps got drowned."

  "Yes?"

  She thought some more, then sighed and began at the beginning. "Do you remember what a fault is? It's a place where you get crustal slippage. It's usually associated with a subducting region, where the edge of one tectonic plate slides down under another. On Earth you usually find subduction along an ocean coast, like California. Oh, there are other places even on Earth—the Rift Valley in Africa for instance—but mainly they're on coasts. Here not."

  "Why is that?" I asked—hoping to keep her going long enough to get to the answer to my question. Which she didn't seem in any hurry to get around to.

  "What do you mean 'why'? I'm not even sure of what, much less why. I'll never know for sure until we can do a complete geodetic survey, and I don't think I'll live that long. All this crap—I'm just scratching the surface! As a minimum, I ought to be setting off acoustic blasts: dig a shallow borehole and blow up a ton or so of explosives to measure the acoustic-wave reflections. But I can't get the explosives, and—" She stopped and bit her lip. "So I theorize. The only decent theory I've got doesn't help. Besides, I've already told it to you: The tectonic activity is linked to the fact that there's just one big continent on Pava. What do you think?"

  That caught me by surprise, because what I'd been mostly thinking about was that she was having a hard time getting to answering me. I fell back on the truth. "I don't know enough to have an opinion."

  "Neither do I," she said gloomily. She was silent for half a kilometer or so, I guess rehearsing her worries. Then she said, still talking around the question I had asked her, "Anyway, there are faults under where we built that dam—we found that out for sure, when it collapsed—and there are also big faults under these Rockies. And now I think they're coupled."

  "Yes?"

  "I mean," she said, sounding as though her patience tank was running low, "when one of the faults lets go—as the one under th
e dam did, probably from the weight of water we impounded behind it—that may trigger the other so it lets go too. The leps' quake wasn't more than twelve hours after the dam burst. Only theirs was worse. The slippage was twice as great, at least eight meters. What I think, I think there's a much deeper fault down under the surface there somewhere that connects the two faults."

  "Oh," I said.

  I waited for her to go on. She didn't. Finally I prompted, "And why does that make the leps hate you?"

  "They blame me for that quake," she said. "They found out that Jake and I were seismologists, and they got it into their heads that the quake that ruined their nests was our fault. That's bullshit, of course. If they want to blame anybody, they should blame the klunkhead who sited the dam there in the first place. But try to tell them that! Now, if you don't mind, I really need to get us across the river."

  That was true enough; and I could see by looking at it that the river had not come down much since the morning. My heart was in my mouth as we lurched across, but practice had improved Theophan's fording skills. She goosed the car across, throwing up a big spray of river water, and we made it safely enough to the other side.

  Then she stopped and hunched over the wheel for a minute before she turned and looked at me.

  "I might as well tell you all of it," she said.

  "Please do!"

  She looked at me in a hostile way, but she said it anyway. "The thing is, most of the leps who died were young. That's what got them so pissed off. Leps have a funny attitude about death. When a six-star lep dies, it happens after it's laid its eggs or fertilized its female. They think that's perfectly all right. It's what a six-star lep is supposed to do. But for a lep to die before the sixth instar is—well—you said you were brought up Western Orthodox, didn't you? Then think back to your early training. You'll understand what the leps believe, maybe, if you think of somebody dying unbaptized."

  "If you die unbaptized you don't go to heaven, is that what you mean? But I didn't think the leps believed in heaven."

  "They don't believe in heaven. Christ, Barry, they don't have to. They see heaven all around them. It's what they get as a reward at the end of their lives. Their sixth instar—the winged phase, when they don't work or eat or have to think about anything anymore, just fly around and make love and die—that's their heaven. Think about it, Barry! Think of angels. The lep sixth instar is exactly what you thought heaven was going to be like when you were a kid—plus unlimited fucking! And so if any lep happens to die before the sixth instar, it's a terrible tragedy. It means they've been cheated out of their final reward, their life has lost its fruition, and when the leps think somebody has done that to anyone, or even just been careless enough to let it happen, it's the one thing they can't ever forgive."

  15

  A QUESTION. Explain Theophansperlie's use of term "angels" as applied to ourselves.

  And?

  The significance of "and" in this context is not understood.

  It signifies I'm waiting for something. Is that really all you want to say? Don't you maybe want to discuss whether you were fair to her?

  No discussion is necessary. We acknowledge that the human female Theophansperlie did not in fact bring about the desolation of our nests through any act of her own. The previous assumption was an error, and the consequent behavior of many of our third-, fourth- and fifth-instar cohorts was therefore unjustified. It was not appropriate to treat her as a nonperson.

  Thanks. I'm sure Theophan thanks you too.

  There remains the question. Why did she refer to us as "angels"? Many of you have stated that "angels" are purely imaginary beings related to some "religious" concepts. We are not imaginary. Explain this.

  Please.

  Please.

  Well, it's not really worth wasting time on, but what the hell.

  The thing is, when she called your old ones "angels" it was just a figure of speech. It's not to be taken literally. I'm sorry you people don't ever take anything any way but literally, but that's actually more your problem than ours, isn't it? Anyway, since angels are considered to be a sort of idealization of all the qualities that are best in human beings, it wasn't any kind of insult to refer to you people as "angels." If anything it's really sort of flattering.

  But of course you don't know anything about flattery, either, do you?

  I finally got to see Madeleine Hartly a day or two later. When I knocked she called to come in, and I found her wrapped up in blankets on a couch in her living room. I handed her some flowers I'd picked on the way and said, "Your granddaughter said you were feeling a little better."

  "You mean Debbie. She's my great-granddaughter. What pretty flowers, Barry!" She looked very small propped up on the couch, big eyes against that dark skin, but she seemed cheerful enough. She didn't want to discuss her health. She sent me to the kitchen for a glass to put the flowers in and, when I said I was hoping she could tell me what the early days of the colony were like, she showed me where to find the carrels of old pictures.

  Most of the people who were laughing and talking on Madeleine's screen were her family and friends. I knew none of them. Even when I saw Madeleine herself, hand in hand with a short, slim black man on each side, all of them laughing, I didn't recognize her at first. She couldn't have been more than twenty when it was taken. In the picture, the young Madeleine Hartly winked at the camera, then turned and gave the man on her left a giant smooch.

  "That's my husband I'm kissing, in case you wondered. The other one's his brother Mai. Mai didn't get along here, though; he gave up and went back to Mars a year or two later."

  I wasn't greatly interested in her brother-in-law, especially since he wasn't around anymore. "What are those things back there?"

  "They're tents, boy. Haven't you ever seen tents before? That's what most people had to live in; we were getting colonists coming in faster than we could build houses for them. I don't think you can tell in the picture, but I was pregnant with Matty then—she was Debbie's grandmother."

  "You were very pretty," I said.

  She studied the picture. "I was, wasn't I? Anyway, I guess you aren't all that interested in my family. Wait a minute; I have some other shots—"

  She fiddled with the controller and the scene changed; we were looking down on Freehold from a hillside. "This is what the town looked like, oh, sixty years ago or so. We hadn't built the main meeting hall yet, but we were getting a start on housing. You can see the communications antenna just beside the creek; we moved it to the top of the hill later. Here we're unloading a parafoil from the factory. Here's the hydrogen-fuel plant down by the landing strip—What's the matter?"

  I had raised my hand for attention. "What I'm really interested in is the factory," I said.

  She looked regretful. "I'm afraid I don't have any pictures of the factory. I was never there—well, Barry, I guess that's the story of my life. I'm not much of a traveler; I was never off the surface of the planet at all. What do you want to know about it?"

  "Anything you can tell me."

  So she told me everything she could. Most of it I already knew, but she filled in a lot of details for me. Like how the computers at the factory orbiter knew what to make. "Why, we all decide that, of course. At the town meetings. Everybody makes up their wish lists, then Jimmy Queng sends the whole thing up to the orbiter to see what's possible. Then at the meeting we set priorities. That's a real mob scene, Barry, everybody fighting to try to get his requisitions approved—you'll see. There's going to have to be one pretty soon. Of course, ninety percent of the requests get turned down."

  She paused, looking at me thoughtfully. "Theophan Sperlie says you think you could help get more production out of the factory for us, with the antimatter Garold brought from the Moon."

  I hadn't known she was a friend of Theophan's, but it was a small community. "That's one possibility," I said.

  "And you've got others in mind?"

  I felt obligated to live up to my growing re
putation, so I told her some of the things I'd been thinking about. She listened patiently. She even agreed that the colony certainly could have done a lot better in a lot of ways; but after a while I thought she was beginning to look tired. I stood up. "Well, thanks, Madeleine," I said, getting ready to go.

  She put her hand on my arm to stop me. "Theophan's a good person," she said, out of nowhere.

  "Well, I think so too."

  She chose her words carefully. "It's none of my business, Barry, and I wouldn't say a word against Theophan. But I wouldn't get too serious about her right away."

  From another person I might have resented intrusion into my private life. Not from Madeleine. "I'm not serious. Matter of fact, I hardly see her except when I'm helping her work. Anyway, she's got—"

  I was going to say "another boyfriend," but that didn't seem fair. "She's got a lot on her mind," I said, and, since Theophan's experiences with the leps were fresh on my mind, I told Madeleine about it.

  Madeleine nodded. "It's been that way," she said regretfully.

  "But the leps act like they hate her, as though the whole thing were her fault."

  "Ah, no. You just don't know the leps very well. Did you ever hear of 'shunning'? It's what some of the religious groups do back on Earth, when they have a member that does something wrong. The leps have the same practice. They shun. Even the leps do have a member now and then who acts in an antisocial way, and these leps are just shunned. Nobody talks to them. Nobody pays attention to them at all. Generally speaking, the shunned ones just go off into the wilderness. That's bad for them, though. When they reach sixth instar they won't breed because there won't be any other lep around to breed with. I guess that's why those genes die out in the leps." She hesitated, then said, "I know about that, because my brother-in-law got shunned."