“Mine?” Gabriel said, startled.
“What did you learn from this encounter?”
“I don’t think I learned anything. Communications confirmed that the translator was working. But the Holy Man didn’t say more than half a dozen translatable words. Was he supposed to be—” Gabriel stopped. “I wonder,” he said. “Speaking in tongues? Do you know what that is?”
“More or less,” Jameson said. “It’s been discredited, but it’s still practiced here and there.”
“Yes,” Gabriel said, “although I’m inclined to the view that special conditions were operating in the early church.”
Jameson nodded as if he had some familiarity with the view. Hanna looked blank.
Gabriel added, “The whole meeting looks pointless. Meaningless.”
“It had to have some meaning to Kwoort,” Hanna said. She did not look at Gabriel; he was forgotten again, by both of them. “He wanted to know about breeding. About conception control. That was what it sounded like, but it doesn’t make sense. A civilization that can develop space travel just has to have done that kind of research. Humans did; all the other Outsiders did. And he showed us what Holy Men become, that’s what he called it. He wanted me to see it. Maybe he did that because of what I said about his sanity, and he wanted to show me what will happen to him, without telling me directly. That babbling idiot is his future. God! I said he reminded me of you,” she told Jameson. “How would you feel if that was your future?”
“It might be,” he said, and Hanna said involuntarily, “No!”—startling Gabriel, who knew something had just been said under the surface but did not know what it was.
Jameson ignored it and said, “What the hell are the dynamics of the change, then?”
Hanna said, “I think the Holy Man I touched originally, the female, is actually in an earlier stage than Kwoort, even if she’s chronologically older. That one is not, fortunately, aggressive toward us. When I looked at her she was thinking only of the planetary war, thinking only of whether we could provide her with something that would give Rowtt an advantage.”
“And when she reaches that final stage? Would she be replaced by Kwoort?”
“What difference would that make? He’s moving toward it himself, how could he replace her? I don’t know if we even need to know the dynamics!” she said with sudden passion. “What if we just file some reports and interdict the place?”
“As we interdicted Zeig-Daru, but completely this time, without the distance contact and automated trade? Leave, and make no further contact?”
“Exactly.”
Jameson looked at her oddly. He said, “What happened to your curiosity? I can remember when you’d do anything to get your hands on an alien civilization.”
“Then you will remember that one of them got their hands on me. Remember, as long as you’re remembering, my apprehension when Uskos first made contact. The fact that contact with Uskos was beneficent did not negate the fear I still carried from the earliest contacts with Zeig-Daru. I’m not afraid, exactly. It’s more that a series of unpleasant incidents are affecting me. How extreme must my fear for Mickey have been that it could break me out of the trance-state like it did? That’s not supposed to even be possible! I hate the way they think about mating. I don’t like it that there’s no art, no poetry. I don’t like it that a young female who wants to look pretty is going to become a Warrior who breeds on some kind of cue with whatever Soldier is getting the same cue. I don’t like what happened to me when that couple was mating. I don’t like—”
“What couple?” said Jameson.
“Didn’t I—ah. I didn’t report that, did I?”
There was an odd silence. Gabriel watched the two of them stare at each other. Finally Hanna said, “I was in contact with a couple that was mating. The pleasure they experienced was so intense that it aroused me. Tremendously. In trance! That’s not supposed to be possible, either! I broke out of trance and damn near had sex with Joseph and Bella on the spot, right here on the floor.”
“But you didn’t?” said Jameson.
Hanna shook her head. They kept staring at each other.
“You don’t have to deny yourself intimacy, you know.”
“You are getting things mixed up,” Hanna said. “If all I wanted was pleasure and release, I could have it with anybody, if I liked him well enough. Why do you think you’re the only man I’ve had since Michael died? I would have entrusted myself to no man in the universe after that, except you. I loved Michael with all that I am, but I did not forget that I loved you first. Remember that, when you speak of intimacy.”
Jameson took a step forward, as if he could really cross into the same space. Then he stopped and looked again at Gabriel, and Gabriel said, “Would you like me to leave?”
Hanna said nothing. Jameson sighed and stepped back slowly, reluctantly it seemed. He said, “No. We can discuss personal matters another time. Hanna, you seem to be suggesting that we close out this mission and never return because you find these beings . . . unpleasant. That’s remarkable, coming from you.”
“Don’t trivialize it,” she said.
“I’m not doing that. But there are good reasons to continue. We might want to carry on reasonable dialogues with Kwoort after he attains ultimate authority. We can’t dismiss that hope. We need to know everything about him you can get. If you can you need to become his friend.”
“His friend! I don’t see why. I don’t see why we can’t leave them to their godforsaken, perpetual warring and hope to make contact with some more rewarding species. Or you could give me a chance to go back to Uskos and do more work there. I like it there. I want Mickey to play with some younglings while he’s little. I’ll bet you could think up a reason to authorize me to do that, couldn’t you?”
“Not immediately,” Jameson said, “and not if you insist on prematurely writing off and abandoning a previously unknown civilization. I urge you to think of this, Hanna. You said the currently dominant Holy Man was interested only in the possibility of our providing some means of advantage in the ongoing war. But by your own account, Kwoort is now fully aware of telepathy, and sees the possible advantage in that. I wonder if, supposing we pull out now, he might, in the future, come looking for us. I think we should deal with him here and now instead of waiting for that.”
“But he said nothing about it today. It’s gotten buried under this obsession with breeding. Anyway, he’ll never come looking for us.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“There’s no reason to think they’ve retained knowledge of interstellar spaceflight. Kwoort won’t come looking for us because he can’t.”
“You don’t know that; so far the evidence is indirect. I think you’re trying to convince yourself—because you don’t want to go through what it will take to get the answers to the questions we’ve been discussing—”
“God damn you,” Hanna said, and got up and walked out.
Gabriel stared after her a moment and turned to see Jameson close his eyes in—exasperation? Pain? He opened them again and Gabriel said, “Is there anything I can do? Should I go and try to bring her back?”
“No. I don’t know.” He looked at Gabriel, expression unreadable. “These people are disturbing her. Has she said anything more about her attitudes toward them than you just heard?”
Gabriel thought about it. “No,” he said. “It was new to me. I’m not sure she was aware of it herself. It might have just now spilled into her conscious mind.”
“It might have,” Jameson said. “She speaks on impulse, acts on impulse, quite often. This is not the first difficult conversation she’s simply walked away from. Throws things, too,” he added, almost to himself. He looked thoughtfully at Gabriel. He said, “You’re an expert in the unconscious mind, are you not?”
“I wouldn’t call myself that, no. I studied it, though, because I
knew I would be working with children who had suffered severe trauma.”
“Have you ever seen a biography of Hanna?” Jameson said. “There are several. They range from Contact’s official version—dry facts—to one or two things so lurid I don’t recognize her in them. Or myself, for that matter. Are you familiar with any of them?”
“Oh, yes,” Gabriel said. “I didn’t waste my time with the prurient ones, but to be frank, sir, she’s almost an idol for me, so I’ve read everything on her that looked like it might be halfway to the truth.”
“Keep—” Jameson stopped, sighed again, and said, “Keep an eye on her, will you?”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Go back to those biographies and read between the lines. Look at the trauma points and the picture that emerges. Then add in another factor: that Hanna is not true-human. In recent years she has spent every minute of her life balanced between D’neeran and true-human modes of perception, and a substantial part of it accommodating alien modes as well. Keep that in mind.”
“I . . . see,” Gabriel said slowly, “I will do that. I think I see what you’re asking of me. But I don’t think the biographies will have the truth about one more factor, and that is the bond she has with you. Will you tell me?”
“Won’t she?”
“She thinks she has,” Gabriel said, “and I’m taking what she said as a confidence, whether she knows her own truth or not. But now I’m asking you. What impact have you had on her life?”
“Far too much,” said the other man. “Or not nearly enough. We disagree on which it is. Good-bye.” He turned his head toward some receptor Gabriel could not see and said “Endit.” And the image was gone.
Chapter XII
“FIND A MORE COMFORTABLE place for her,” Hanna said.
Talk to the historian, Jameson had said. She would talk to Kwek. She would find a reason to abort the mission. She did not want to go back to Battleground again and she did not want to deal with Kwoort.
There is such strangeness in an alien’s mind that one first has a compulsion to withdraw, as if there is a danger of being sucked into insanity. It is only a different reality, a different sanity . . .
She had written that herself, years ago. Then, she had not been concerned with the fine distinction of determining if the alien really was insane. But she was quite certain the question applied to the former Holy Man, and that it would soon apply to Kwoort.
She stood with Arch outside the small conference room she had used for her earlier reports to Jameson, where Arch had been explaining human history to a confused Kwek. He said, “This is as comfortable as any place on the ship. I think she likes flowers, but where would I get flowers? And I don’t—”
“Flowers?”
“She had flowers in her workspace. I noticed because everybody says Soldiers don’t decorate anything, and here she had these flowers.”
“Wait a minute. Let me think. Kwoort—the first time I made contact with him he was remembering a painting on a wall. He painted it himself, I think, a memory he had from New Earth. It’s the only trace of art anyone’s seen. Now Kwek, and flowers—Arch, what is the significance of that?”
He didn’t have an answer. He said, “We can ask Kwek, but I don’t know if she’ll know what we mean. She seems sort of—stunned, I guess, like she’s going through some kind of catastrophe. She’s not really thinking. She’s putting all her energy into holding something back, from herself, I think.”
“When did that start?”
“The minute I said something that challenged their, you’d call it a creation myth, I suppose.”
“They have a creation myth? They have—at least they had—the science to get to New Earth and back, and they believe in myths?”
“She doesn’t, really. I think she’s been trying to hang onto what she’s supposed to believe for a long time, and having a hard time doing it. Here we come along, and she’s already on the edge, and suddenly I make it impossible for her to keep trying. All her doubts, all her suspicions that what she’s been told all her life isn’t true, and bam—suddenly she knows. That’s the catastrophe. If Kwek was a human being I’d say her mind’s in bad shape right now.”
“Mind as in logical thought? Or mind as in emotions?”
“They’re at war. That’s the problem.”
It was a simple statement but took much longer to comprehend than it should have. The time lag told her how tired she was. But Arch waited, expectant. She said, “Go back to her, Arch. I’ll come in a minute.”
He went back into the room and she leaned against the corridor wall. She was cold. Hard rain had started while they were inside the gray building with Kwoort and the raving Holy Man, and they had gotten soaked on their fast passage to the pod—fast, because Hanna thought Kwoort might come after them. Her clothes and hair were still damp in spots, and now exhaustion welled up from her bones. She could not have gotten more than a couple of hours sleep between those mad visits to Kwoort; she could not remember when she had last really slept. It might be time to use a stimulant, regardless of how she felt about it.
Trance was an alternative, though it could not be prolonged indefinitely. The fatigue would not go away, but at least she would not feel it. I will need it with Kwek anyway, she thought, and let herself slide down the wall and settle cross-legged on the floor.
She had barely closed her eyes when she heard Gabriel say, “Hanna?”
She opened her eyes and looked up.
He said, “What are you doing?” and she felt something different in him, a new kind of concern. He had purposefully sought her out, and she wondered: What did Starr say to him?
“I’m going into trance,” she said.
“Do you mind if I watch?”
“Believe me, there’s nothing to see!”
“Well, then, I’ll watch nothing. Why are you doing it?”
“Arch is in there with Kwek.” She tilted her head toward the door. “He’s going to ask her questions. I’m going to watch her thoughts and help him decide what to ask.”
“Do you mind if I join you?”
“I don’t know . . .” She hesitated. “If you promise not to say anything. It will be delicate, Gabriel. Arch will talk to Kwek and I’ll communicate with him about what she’s thinking, and maybe guide her a little, telepathically. He’ll be communicating on two levels at once, out loud with Kwek and telepathically with me. It’s a difficult thing to do. I don’t want his concentration broken.”
“I won’t disturb either one of you.”
“Oh, me . . . Very little can disturb me in trance.”
“Some things can, obviously!”
“Yes, I’ll need to be careful. Still—this is not a child’s mind, so nothing’s likely to trigger that fear for Mickey. You knew about that, didn’t you? I felt no surprise in you when I spoke of it.”
He sat down on the floor next to her. “It was in one of the reports you directed me to when I first came aboard. The other incident, the mating couple, wasn’t. How did you come to hold it back? Were you ashamed of it?”
“Of course not. I just didn’t want to tell Starr about it when it happened. At the time we couldn’t talk without half of Contact and a dozen Commission aides hearing every word. He would have said exactly what you heard when I did tell him, and then I would have said exactly what I did say. I didn’t want that to happen with true-human strangers listening.”
“Thank you—if you mean, by that, that I’m not a stranger.”
“No,” Hanna said. “You’re not. Now that I think of it, you never have been.”
“That’s one of the nicest things anybody’s ever said about me,” he said.
Impulsively, she put her hand on his. “Let me take you with me part of the way,” she said. “So you can see what trance is like. I’ll move away after the first stage, and you’ll feel l
ike you’re waking up—oh, no. No,” she said, suddenly remembering the last time she had taken someone with her. She sensed an instant’s physical pain; it was Gabriel’s, as her nails dug into his hand. She pulled hers away.
“I can’t do it,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
They both looked at his hand. She hadn’t drawn blood, but the crescent indentations were deep. He rubbed at them absentmindedly and said, “Tell me.”
“No, I’m all right. I’m sorry.”
“I know you were in trance with Michael Kristofik when he died,” he said. “It’s in the literature about the events on Gadrah. Is that what you were thinking of?”
“Not now, Gabriel—”
“There are some things in life that you can avoid forever,” he said, “if you want to badly enough. You can decide to withhold parts of yourself, if that’s really best for you. Sometimes it’s a way to conserve strength you need for other things, or a way to survive in a situation that’s otherwise intolerable. And sometimes it’s not the best thing for you at all. But it’s far better to know when you’re doing it, and why.”
“And I’m avoiding . . . ?”
“You’re the only one who can know. Giving something of yourself to another, perhaps? Loving the man you have now?”
And tentatively he thought The men you have now, but if Hanna sensed the amendment, she ignored it.
“What I loved in Starr is going away,” she said. “It’s getting buried. Everything, everything, is going to be filtered through the demands of being a commissioner of the Polity. I met him when he was commissioner before. I couldn’t love him until it was taken away from him. Now he’s got it back again and I look at all our history and—I knew the truth but I needed so badly what he gave me, protection, stability, affection, but—”
Her voice rose and rang through the corridor. “He controls me—!”
She heard herself with amazement. Where had this fury come from? But she could not stop the words either. “He doesn’t try to control what I think or what I feel, but just because of the position he’s in, he shapes how I live my life, he’s shaped it for years! I tell him there’s nothing for humans here, we should leave, we’ll take no good away and maybe we’ll take harm—but even if he believes me, he says I’ve got to go on, I’ve got no choice . . . It’s been that way since the start. I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get back! I want out. I don’t know who I’d be without him, I need to find out—and it’s never going to happen, not the way things are now—”
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