Vale of Stars

by Sean O'Brien

  “Don’t be. No harm will come to you.” Sirra paused, then asked, “Do you feel anything pressing on you? Squeezing you from the outside or inside?”

  “No.”

  Fozzoli nodded, his lower lip protruding. “That’s good. Pressure’s good. Domeit!” he said suddenly. He half-ran to a small cart and wheeled it over to the tank. “I should have been recording all of this!” He connected a contact microphone from the cart to the side of the tank and shook his head in anger.

  “He’ll talk plenty, Foz,” Khadre said, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder. Then, to Sirra, she added, “Can you ask him about where he thinks he is?”

  Sirra stared at the tank. “I’m almost afraid to. I don’t want him getting too excited. Also, I’m not sure how the translation will hold up.” She brooded for a moment, then tapped out, “Vogel, you say you have been Lifted. If you could see, what would you see?”

  “I don’t understand, Speaker.”

  “I want you to describe what you would be seeing if your eyes could…understand what was around you.”

  There was a considerable pause, during which time Fozzoli leaned over from his position of rapt attention near the recording cart to look at the tank’s indicator dials before Vogel spoke.

  “I would see much like what I would see in my town, but it would be different. I would see with [untranslatable utterance] instead of [untranslatable utterance]. There would be something all around me, but it would not [untranslatable utterance] me. And I would not [untranslatable utterance] but I would [untranslatable utterance] instead, as if I were on the sea bottom.”

  Sirra wanted to stomp her feet with frustration. Khadre looked deep in thought. Fozzoli held his earphones tightly to his skull as if that would help him understand. “Nothing. Not even possibles from the computer. It’s as if he’s using a whole different language.”

  Vogel, try to explain it to me as if I were a child.”

  “Why, Speaker?”

  Sirra tapped out angrily, “Because I command it!” She felt Khadre’s head swivel to stare at her.

  “Godhood has its uses, I see,” Khadre said softly.

  Vogel started to answer. “I would not see like I do now. I would use…new parts of myself to see. Seeing would not take effort, even the tiny effort it now does. And I would use [untranslatable utterance] to see, and it would wash over me like a warm current, but it would not push me. I would not be at the mercy of the waves, but would decide where I want to go on my own. I would look up/down and not be afraid.”

  Sirra cocked her head slightly at his answer. “Is he describing…sight?”

  Fozzoli frowned. “You mean sonar?”

  “No, no…sight. Eyesight.”

  Fozzoli’s face contorted in a grimace. “How? When the vixvox translates ‘eyes,’ he means his sonar. How could he even have the concept of sight as we do?”

  “Through legend,” Khadre breathed.

  Sirra nodded. “I think he’s talking about sight. And something would wash over him like a warm current…that’s got to be light. He said it would not push him. What else could it be?”

  “What do you mean, what else? Who knows what it is? It could be anything!” Fozzoli spread his hands as if to encompass the broad spectrum of possibilities.

  “Sight seems to fit the description, Foz,” Khadre added.

  “Did I do well, Speaker?” the tank’s voice asked.

  “Very well, Vogel. Rest, now.”

  “But I have a question, Speaker, if I may.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why do you torture me?” The simple question coming out of the soft computer voice chilled Sirra.

  “Torture you, Vogel?”

  “You must be She-that-must-not-be-named. What have I done to deserve this torment?”

  Sirra looked helplessly at Khadre, whose confused face revealed no insight. Sirra tapped out, “How are you being tormented, Vogel?”

  “You have Lifted me, and although I would not have believed it, I am here, now. This place is [untranslatable utterance].”

  Fozzoli gasped.

  Sirra spun to face him. “What?”

  “One of the possibles for that last sound was ‘hell.’”

  “Why do you say that, Vogel?”

  “Because you tantalize me with visions that I cannot have, then ask me to describe them to you. Why do you not simply give me the gift of [untranslatable utterance]? I did not truly believe you existed, She-who-must-not-be-named. I believed in science, and reason, and experience. But now I know that Bishop was right. And I will pay the price for my heresy.” The tank voice fell silent.

  “Vogel? Vogel!” Sirra tapped his name, adding exclamation marks so the vixvox would give her words added emphasis. There was no answer from the tank. Sirra glared at Fozzoli. “Can we do something to the tank?”

  “What do you mean?” Fozzoli took the headphones off and stared at her.

  “I don’t know—send something through the oxygenator, anything. Something to get his attention, snap him out of it.”

  “What do you think that will do?” Khadre said gently.

  Sirra whirled. “Get him to talk to me…to us.” Sirra chafed at the correction but made it anyway. She glared at Khadre, daring her to comment upon her diction.

  The old scientist smiled frostily and said, “You’d torture him more? Ask yourself what you’d do in his position. If you prod him, won’t he look upon that as more torture? See this from his point of view.”

  “His point of view? He thinks I’m the devil! How can I pretend to understand what that’s like?”

  “You’re the one with this intuition talent.”

  Sirra gritted her teeth, then relaxed enough to say, “I never claimed I have a psychic talent or anything. I am good with languages, that’s true. But—”

  “Good with languages?” Fozzoli said, half-laughing. “You can practically read the vix’ minds, Sirra. You know you’ve got some innate sense of meaning. I don’t know how you do it, but you do it.”

  “So what are the two of you saying? That I need to use my magic wand and read Vogel’s mind? Well, I can’t. No more than I can read Iede’s mind.” The sudden revelation shocked her. Was that true?

  “You can’t?” Khadre asked.

  “No,” Sirra answered, but she knew it was a lie. She knew why Iede’s behavior had always been enigmatic to her, and why Vogel and Bishop were also closed books. For all her professed atheism, Sirra knew she was deeply afraid. Not of God’s existence or nonexistence, but of her own strength of conviction. She was afraid that if she truly got to understand Iede, she too would start to believe in God. Or gods.

  “What’s funny?” Fozzoli asked. Sirra suddenly realized that she was smiling ruefully.

  “Nothing. I just….” She could not voice her fears. How could she explain that she was afraid that she would not lose her faith in atheism (a contradiction in terms) but would, if she weakened, replace cold reason with wishful belief. She did not want to grasp the crutch of religion, for once it was in her hand, she would never walk without it.

  But there seemed little other choice. Vogel was by far the most progressive and cosmopolitan of the vix Sirra had dealt with, yet even he had plummeted into the abyss of superstition and dogma. Sirra owed it to him to help him climb out, even if it meant a little risk that she, too, would come to understand and accept religion.

  “All right.” Sirra reactivated the vixvox and said softly to Vogel, “Vogel, it’s the Speaker again. I am going to release you back to your town, but I am coming with you. I have to show you something—something that is as close as I can get to what you seek. You will just have to trust me.”

  Vogel did not answer, and after several seconds’ wait, Sirra looked at Fozzoli. “We’re going to have to get him back down there. I’ll try to explain to him what we saw at the ruins and see if that jogs anything in him.”

  “And if not?”

  “I’ll have to go to Bishop with the same thing.”r />
  “That’s crazy. They’ll kill you.”

  Sirra shrugged. “We’ll find out later. Meantime, hook the tank back up to the winch. I’m going down.”

  “I’m coming, too,” Khadre said.

  “No. You can’t help me in this. You’ll only get in the way. I’m sorry, Khadre.”

  For a brief moment, Khadre looked hurt, but she didn’t fight. Without a signal between them, the three made preparations for Sirra and Vogel to descend once more.

  “Vogel, you are safe now. You were always safe, though.”

  Vogel swam around Sirra in a significantly wider circle than before. “Speaker, what are you? Is this more torture? Can I believe my senses?”

  “Yes, as much as you ever could.”

  “Ah. You seek to teach me the first lesson. That I can only ultimately prove my own existence. I am a mere vix, Speaker, but I know that much.”

  “Yes,” Sirra said, impatient to impart her discovery. “Vogel, I’m going to tell you something, but I’m going to do it…differently. Please come here and be still.”

  Vogel hesitated, but complied. Sirra saw his smooth flank hover just a few centimeters from her hand, and she glanced at the suit gauntlet coupling. Fozzoli would have prevented her, using force if necessary, from doing what she was about to do, if he knew about it. Sirra had told neither Fozzoli or Khadre of her intentions. She knew the risks were great—in all likelihood, she would lose her hand to the pressure or the cold, and possibly damage the integrity of her suit and drown, but she had to help Vogel.

  She adjusted the internal suit pressure to maximum and felt the tightening on her skin. Quickly, she released the coupling at her wrist and freed her hand from its armored gauntlet. The deepsuit was multilayered, and there were still two layers of tough elastic-like skin between her and the water, but the armor she had just removed did most of the work. A tremendous stream of bubbles shot out of the wrist where the suit’s air supply rushed to try and equalize pressure. Her suit computer sounded in her helmet: “Warning! Loss of suit integrity! Return to safe depth immediately!” The warning continued, but Sirra ignored it as best she could, holding onto the suit gauntlet with her still-armored hand. She reached out and touched Vogel’s flank; even through the two layers of elastic, the sensation was almost the same as touching with her bare hand. She carefully directed the air stream away from his body.

  She could not immediately tell what she felt. At first, she thought the effects of the rapidly decompressing suit had played with her brain—strange sensations flooded her mind; feelings of gentle floating, of vaguely threatening danger on all sides, but a gnawing curiosity to explore those very dangers; and underneath all, a steady hum of dread at some unidentified but lurking terror.

  She was reading Vogel—not just his thoughts, but his soul.

  She did not stop to wonder why she would be so able to connect with this alien when she had only received gentle impressions from fellow humans, even during extremely intimate moments. She just concentrated and tried to send him the images, thoughts, and emotions that went into the discovery at the ruins.

  She had no idea how long she had until her suit failed completely, nor any idea how long it would take to send her thoughts. What was the speed of telepathy? Or was it empathy? The words did not come. Sirra felt the sensations that she now loosely identified as Vogel’s soul change in subtle but unmistakable ways.

  She could interpret the changes, but not solely because of some mystical, magical force that only she herself and her sister possessed—her training in the vix language, her close association with the race for close to thirty years, Fozzoli’s academic and keen mind, and, yes, Iede’s discovery of the ruins all contributed to her interpretation.

  She knew what had happened on this planet eight thousand years ago. The knowledge was there, in Vogel’s mind, buried under layers of superstition. Only the questing nature of Vogel’s scientific personality had uncovered the barest corner of the secret, and even then, the vix had not known what he had found. Unconsciously, he had reconstructed the truth from observations of his world, from discussions and interviews with countless others, including his father-by-action, and even from legends and myths he had undoubtedly been taught in his youth by his culture and its omnipresent religion.

  He had done all of this alone, with no hard data. Sheer force of reason had led him to doubt, correctly, the stories he had been told and which all other vix believed as a matter of course. He had been prepared to test his theory even at the cost of his soul, if he had one at all.

  Sirra knew she had to save him. Without intending to, she had shattered the delicate, fragile theory he had constructed, reinforcing the lurking religious dogma Vogel barely managed to keep at bay.

  She let her hand slide off of Vogel’s body and watched as the stream of bubbles from the opening at her wrist grew thinner. Somewhere in the back of her conscious mind, she knew what that meant: her air supply, which had drained itself in a frenzy to keep the suit pressurized against the deep, was running out. She had perhaps enough time to return to the lab and save herself, but she realized with sick horror that she had not yet told Vogel what she had promised him. Her message about the ruins was not what he needed to hear—he needed her to reestablish his trust in empirical science. Her Lifting of him had only served to shatter what fragile lattice of rationality he had built against the tempest of superstition, and the knowledge of the ruins would do nothing to rebuild what once was. He had become a worshipper where he had once been a scientist—his world’s first. And Sirra had done that to him.

  She had traveled into his mind and soul, but her journey had been one of discovery for herself only. If she left now, would not Vogel think he had been tortured yet again by his devil? How could she possibly regain his trust in the future? Sirra knew that if she did not repair the damage she had done, he would never open his mind to her in the same way again.

  Logically, she did not need Vogel anymore—he had told her everything she needed to know, and she had a moral obligation to return to the lab and tell the others. If she died down here, no one would ever know what the ruins meant. Besides, she did not know if she would ever be able to convince Vogel that his scientific theories, conceived unconsciously and developed without his true knowledge, were essentially the correct ones. How could she justify staying here to spare the feelings of a barely sentient alien when she had information vital to the survival of her entire planet?

  She could not. She slid the gauntlet back onto her hand and snapped the coupling into place, then set her buoyancy control to maximum rise.

  “I’m sorry, Vogel,” were her last words to the brave, visionary vix who would never understand what he had done to deserve such pain.

  Sirra shot upward towards the lab, only barely managing to get word to Fozzoli of her predicament before she blacked out.

  “You’ll be getting my bill later,” Fozzoli’s disembodied voice said to her. “I’ve picked you up twice now, and that kind of roadside assistance doesn’t come cheap, you know.”

  Sirra managed to smile and opened her eyes. She was in the lab’s infirmary. She tasted plastic and raised an unsteady hand to her mouth. She was wearing an oxygen mask. Her eyes focused enough to reveal Fozzoli and Khadre standing over her.

  “I think you’ll make it. Mild anoxia. Gonna take more than that to kill a tough old bird like you,” Fozzoli said.

  Khadre leaned in closer and said quietly, “I’m not an expert, but I don’t think you were suffocating long enough to give you permanent brain damage. We’ve called in a team from the mainland,” Khadre patted her shoulder, forestalling Sirra’s objection, “and they’ll be here in a few hours to transport you back.”

  “We had to, Sirra,” Fozzoli said. “We didn’t know how bad you were.” He sobered and added, “We know it means they’ll shut us down, and we’ll be censured and all that, but….”

  Sirra started to speak, but her throat burned and she coughed. She regained her composure
enough to croak through the mask, “We won’t. I know about the ruins.”

  Fozzoli’s eyes widened. “You spoke to Vogel?”

  “He spoke to me. I understand it all. Don’t worry,” she added, and closed her eyes again. The simple act of speaking had drained her. She drifted back into sleep.

  The next time she woke up, she was looking into the eyes of a familiar male. His skin was unusually baggy, especially under the eyes, which gave him a somewhat hang-dog appearance. He flashed a penlight at her with clinical precision, and Sirra blinked back water.

  “She’s awake,” the man said, continuing his check of Sirra’s pupils.

  “Yes, she is, and would you mind not shining that domed light at me?”

  The man’s lip twitched, and Sirra recognized him. He was Doctor Franshen Gernallas, one of the people on the physicians’ board who certified researchers as fit (or unfit) for field work. He had done Sirra’s physical half a year before.

  Gernallas moved aside and withdrew the penlight to reveal Coordinator Kiv standing some distance away, in the corridor outside the infirmary, talking with Khadre and Fozzoli. “Mr. Coordinator? She’s awake,” Gernallas said again. Kiv, Fozzoli, and Khadre all tried to enter the room simultaneously. Sirra tried not to smile at the situation—then the memory of what she had done to Vogel sobered her instantly.

  Fozzoli muscled ahead of Kiv and Khadre and approached Sirra’s bedside. “How are you feeling, Sirra?”

  “Much better.”

  “The doc’s confirmed what we told you—no permanent damage.”

  “But there just as well could have been,” Gernallas’ voice sounded over Fozzoli’s shoulder. Fozzoli mouthed the word “asshole” (Gernallas could not see that from behind Fozzoli) and continued. “Kiv’s here, and he wants to talk to you.”

  “I see. We’ll talk later, Foz. Thank you for saving me. Again.”

  Fozzoli grinned. “It’s becoming my life’s work.” He squeezed her hand affectionately, then stepped aside.

  Kiv approached her, his expression cool. “I am pleased you are recovering,” he said evenly.