The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

  Leino glared at Caitlín, who sat hands crossed in lap and gave him a small, conciliatory smile. “Yes, you’ll find plenty for her to do, won’t you?” he snapped.

  “Hey, easy,” Weisenberg advised him.

  Brodersen straightened and put the soldier-aristocrat’s whipcrack into his words: “That will be enough, Mr. Leino. If you have a complaint against a person, including the captain, enter it formally. Otherwise accord your shipmate the respect she’s entitled to.”

  The young man bent back in his chair as if slugged in the stomach. I came down on him pretty hard, didn’t I? Brodersen realized. Even if I did get mad on Pegeen’s account, I shouldn’t’ve.

  “Easy, easy,” Weisenberg repeated. “No harsh words from anybody, please. We can’t afford them. Miz Mulryan, you are welcome among us.” Furrows sprang forth around his smile. “I wasn’t looking forward to taking a share of the quartermaster’s job.”

  “I thank you kindly, sir,” she breathed, and let her glance rest on him a seconds more, aglow. He was medium tall, gaunt, craggy-featured, his Adam’s apple large, his eyes small and brown under tufted brows. By habit, he wore a Scotch bonnet on his close-cropped white hair, maintaining to those who inquired that he did hold the rating of ship’s chief engineer.

  I thank you too, Phil, the captain tried to project. It was probably unnecessary. The Weisenbergs and Brodersens were old friends.

  Susanne Granville patted Caitlín’s shoulder. “Yes, welcome,” she said in her French-accented English. “You will understand, spacemen ’ave a ’orror of untrained personnel—true, Martti? But these duties, I am sure you can learn to ’andle them. If I can ’elp, tell me, I pray you.”

  That’s damn good of Su, when she’s so homely and Pegeen’s so gorgeous, passed through Brodersen. He checked himself. What the hell am I thinking? Su’s good people, that’s all.

  Zarubayev raised his hand. The gunner was a big man, strongly built in a rawboned fashion; shoulder-length blond hair and a beard, both unfashionable on Demeter except in his Novy Mir home region, surrounded a Tolstoy countenance. “What about combat drill?” he demanded.

  “Huh?” Brodersen grunted.

  “You have said we should be prepared to fight if we go to the stars. ‘Just in case’ was what you said. Therefore we have built-in weapons like Emissary’s plus a stock of small arms. Now you speak of a possible clash. Piracy was what you said.”

  “Wait a minute,” protested Stefan Dozsa.

  “No, let him go on,” Brodersen told the mate.

  “Skipper,” Dozsa replied in his own accent, “I did not object to the idea, simply to the language. I learned as a boy, government is the natural enemy of the people. If we accept its semantics, we have lost half the battle. We are not pirates, we are liberators.”

  Caitlín stirred. Alarm tinged her voice: “It’s fanaticism you are talking, sir. My country remembers too well, too well.”

  Dozsa laughed. He was a stocky dark man with almond eyes in a wide and rather flat face. “Call us private police, then. Or evangelists. Or lunatics; that is most likely the best. But not pirates. Pirates hope to make money.”

  “Speak your piece, Sergei,” Brodersen urged.

  “I think we should have instruction and practice with small arms,” Zarubayev stated. “Doubtless everybody aboard can shoot, but only you and I, Captain, have served in the Peace Command and know techniques of combat—space combat, too. We can instruct. There will be days to the T machine ahead, days more from the Solar gate to Earth, and who can tell how much beyond? Time to drill in a few basics, a little doctrine.”

  “Well… um-m-m—” Brodersen shifted his haunches around on the pool table. “We are not looking for trouble.”

  “Some training can do no harm,” Dozsa said. “On this trip, most of us will not have much occupation. I would be happy for a thing to help fill my offwatches. What of the rest of you?” He cast a look toward Leino, who sat frozen. “Perhaps it helps unify us better?”

  Discussion broke loose. After agreement to the proposal and details thereof, more matters arose. Two hours had passed when Brodersen dismissed the crew. Those not on duty could have stayed in the common room, but none did. On his way out, Weisenberg murmured, “I’ll see what I can do about Martti, Dan, but it’s really up to you; right?”

  “Whoof!” said Brodersen when he and Caitlín were alone.

  She took both his hands. “Poor dear. Sure, and it’s no sport being a captain, is it, now?”

  He lifted a corner of his mouth. “You’ll find it’s not exactly hilarious being quartermaster either, sweetheart. The job’s more than cook and steward, though that’s aplenty. You issue, you keep inventory, you see that stowage preserves the trim of the ship…. I’d better begin teaching you right away.”

  She slipped close. “Is the hurry that absolute?” she hinted.

  “I’m afraid it is,” he answered.

  She sighed. “Ah, well. Later.” Gesturing at the nearest viewscreen: “Out yonder is always a later, while we live, is that not so, my heart?” He made no reply, being too caught in the sight of her against those stars.

  XIII

  I WAS A GREAT proud salmon, but had no words for greatness or pride; I was them. My flanks were the blue of steel, my belly the white of silver, but all that I knew of metal was a hook that I had bitten upon and then torn my flesh free of. I was one with the water, and had always been. In my hatchling days it rippled and whispered about me as I huddled in gravel while the shadow of a pike slid across yellow shards of sunlight. Later it flowed, bubbled, caressed, enfolded, as I thrust myself downstream toward the sea. When it grew salt, it stung to life a knowledge which I had had in the egg, and I leaped in my joy, upward through a cataract of brightness where the air laid a sharp edge across my gills. Then for years outside of time I prowled the sea, chased, overtook, sank teeth into struggling sweetness, and exulted.

  But at last there came drifting a fragrance which yearned, and I swung mightily homeward.

  We were many, we were many, breasting a river that roared against us while coming alive with the gleam of our bodies. We were prey now ourselves, we died and died, but surely each death was in the same jubilation as the living had. I won through. The life within me clamored.

  Beneath the peace of an upland pool, I scooped with my tail, in the gravel that once had sheltered me, a place for my own young. I did not understand that that was what they would be—I would have eaten any that I encountered but still, then I loved them. And now he sought me, he. It was the farthest upstream moment of my being.

  Before long I was ready to die. Then the Summoner came and took me into Oneness. I was Fish.

  XIV

  DEMETER DWINDLED swiftly in view, from a world to a globe to a small blue sickle to a point of brightness among countless more. Folk settled into their round of duties. Those were mainly just standing watch on the qui vive, when Chinook ran on full automatic like this, except in the case of the quartermaster. While she happily busied herself in the galley, preparing the first meal of the trip that wouldn’t merely be taken from storage for heating, Brodersen sat in the captain’s quarters with nothing to do but be accessible.

  The inner, private cabin was of comfortable size and furnishing: double bed folded up to give ample deck space, chairs, closet, dresser, cabinet, shelves, table, data and communication terminals, sink, hotplate, miniature refrigerator, screens for both exterior and interior scans. Faintly murmuring, ventilators kept the air in motion, fresh despite his pipe; at the present stage of its temperature-ionization cycle, it had an evening flavor. The pale gray, blue-trimmed bulkheads were bare of pictures, the shelves of books, the whole room of almost anything personal, since there had been no chance to bring more along than he and Caitlín carried on their backs. Nevertheless it could come alive whenever they willed, for a goodly percentage of the entire culture of mankind was in the ship’s memory bank.

  Brodersen knew he ought to catch a nap, and a proper nightwa
tch of sleep after dinner. He’d been long in action. Overstrung, he was unable to. Tobacco alone didn’t allay that, and in space he was very sparing of alcohol and marijuana. He decided to renew old acquaintances. Pressing the levers on his chair arms, he emptied the suction cups which held it in place against acceleration changes, and shifted it over in front of the terminals, where his weight re-anchored the legs. Having punched for a display of reference code and studied that a moment, he started Beethoven’s Fifth on the audio retrieve and Hokusai’s “Thirty-Six Views of Fuji” on the visual at intervals he would manually control, and settled back. Maybe later some Monet, or even some van Gogh, he thought, or maybe no pictures but… m-m-m-… a little Kipling? Haven’t read Soldiers Three for years.

  This was about as esoteric as his taste in the arts got. He considered himself basically a meat and potatoes man, though not one who scorned fine food—such as Caitlín and Lis, like most sexy women, could well prepare—or other high subtleties. His parents had seen to his getting a solid education, but his mind stayed quite pragmatic until he joined the Peace Command. Then the wish took him to make sense out of what he experienced, around Earth and on beyond. This led him to read rather widely in history, anthropology, and related disciplines, which in turn raised his awareness of the great creators. His first wife had encouraged that interest in him, his second was still doing so.

  “I’m not an intellectual,” he sometimes remarked. “I prefer thinkers.” Yet he had endowed a chair of humanities at the Universtiy of Eopolis. The species needed to preserve, to understand and cherish its own heritage… in the face of the Others, of the whole cosmos.

  He was beginning to feel neck and shoulder muscles relax when the door chimed. Damn! Hell! Also curses. The captain is never off call. He heaved his mass up, over the deck, into the outer cabin. It was small, strictly an office except for elaborate electronic links to the command center. Seated behind the desk, he punched the admit button. The door retracted, giving him a glimpse of the corridor that ringed this level where people dwelt.

  Martti Leino stalked through and, as if remembering a planned procedure, snapped to a civilian kind of attention. “Requesting a private interview, sir,” he clipped forth.

  Oh, oh. Well, I knew this’d come. “Sure,” Brodersen said, and closed the door. “Only since when has crew of mine needed to get fancy with me, let alone my own brother-in-law?” He waved. “Pick a chair. Any chair.”

  The young man (thirty-seven, Demetrian) obeyed jerkily. Red and white pursued each other across his countenance. His breath was ragged. “You look like the prophet Nahum with a hangover,” Brodersen observed. “Slack off. Since you don’t smoke, care for a drink?”

  “No.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You know what.” The visage before him staying quietly watchful, Leino forced out: “Your, your female!”

  He’s not out of control, not quite, Brodersen realized. Good. I’d hate for him to call her something that left me no choice.

  He drank pungency from his pipe while he chose words. His voice he kept soft. “Do you refer to Miz Mulryan? For your information, she’s nobody’s female but her own. If you think different, just try pushing her in any direction she hasn’t already picked to go.”

  “She’s… openly… moved in with you!”

  “Whose business is that but ours?”

  “Lis’, you bastard!” Leino shouted. He half rose, fists doubled, sank back, and snapped his jaws together.

  “Of course. When I said, ‘Ours,’ I meant ‘ours.’ She knows, and doesn’t mind.”

  “Or is she too proud and loyal to say out what she feels? I’ve known her longer and better than you have, Daniel Brodersen.”

  Longer, aye, the captain thought. Better? Could be, too. Though the family on the farm under Trollberg was large, seven children, Lis the first, Martti the fifth: still, an enormous surrounding wilderness, shared work and pleasure and discovery and sometimes danger, had knit it close. For whatever deep-lying reasons, the bond between those two was always especially strong. When he came to Eopolis to study nuclear engineering, she was newly divorced and they shared an apartment. She went to work for Chehalis, made herself more and more valuable as well as attractive to its chief…and amicably refused his propositions, which was fairly unusual, until at last he married her. Because she wanted it, this brother was best man at the modest wedding.

  “Let me remind you, I’ve been her husband nigh on ten years,” Brodersen said, mildly yet. “Don’t you imagine that’d give me a few understandings of her you don’t have?”

  “Ten years—seven, Earth—is there not a saying on Earth about the seven-year itch?” Leino’s grin was of the challenge kind.

  “Do you imply some casual pickup—?” Brodersen checked his anger. The sardonic confession stirred within him that he had had several. No need to make it aloud. He leaned forward, arms on desk, pipe in right hand with the stem aimed at his visitor and wagged a little.

  “Martti,” he said, “listen. Listen close. You’ve evidently not encountered the fact it’s possible to love more than one person at a time. I’d lay odds you will; but no matter now. What matters between us two is this. Your sister approves of the relationship. She and Caitlín Mulryan are dear friends.” I exaggerate a bit, but surely only because the three of us haven’t so far gotten together often enough. Surely they are good friends, and better will follow. “If you won’t take my word, I give you leave to inquire of her after we return. Okay?”

  Leino swallowed. “No. She’d bravely lie—” he fell into his home dialect—“for toward you whom she gave her oath; for to hide her wounds from me.”

  Brodersen locked eyes with him. “You’ve known me somewhat yourself. Do you seriously think I’m the sort of guy who could deliberately hurt his wife?”

  Leino bit his lip. He tries to be fair-minded, Brodersen thought. He’s harking back.

  Upon graduation, Leino too had become a Chehalis employee. If anything, that was nepotism in reverse, trained professionals being in chronic short supply on Demeter. The sole possible favoritism Brodersen had shown in return was to assign him to a few projects in space—exploration, prospecting, establishment of mining bases on an asteroid and a comet—on which he, Brodersen, went along. He wouldn’t have done it if Leino weren’t competent. Humans get pretty closely acquainted under such conditions.

  The captain pursued his advantage: “Neither Lis nor I feel this is any unfaith. Use your imagination. There are a million different unfaiths one monogamous spouse could practice on another, and too many of ’em do. Petty cruelty. Neglect. Shirking your share of the load. Simple, correctible, annoying slobbishness, year after year. Dishonesty, in some mighty basic ways. On and on. You’re right, your sister would not sit still for betrayal—real betrayal.

  “So calm down. You’ve had a surprise, nothing worse. You’ll get over it.”

  “The humiliation,” broke from Leino. “Publicly parading your mistress.”

  Brodersen’s pipe was going out. He sat back, puffed the fire awake, formed a chuckle. “In this day and age? Why, I’ll agree Lis and I are exceptional. We do our best to keep our private affairs private.”

  “Your affairs?” Leino flared. “How’d you like it if she did the same to you?”

  Brodersen shrugged. “She’s a free adult. I don’t expect she’ll ever betray me either. Anyhow, Caitlín’s aboard on account of an emergency—we might not be under weigh without her help—and none of us, them or me, none of us is much good at being a hypocrite.”

  That, he thought, as far as regards myself, may be my own biggest piece of hypocrisy to date. Well, a totally sincere man is a monster.

  The reflection was fleeting. It ended when Leino leaped to his feet, hands clenched on high, face contorted, and yelled, “Mean you, you swine, you’d corrupt Lis too? I give not a shit what comes of you, but before God Who shaped her, you’ll keep fingers off her soul!”

  Instinct made Brodersen answer,
“Silence!” at an exact loudness. “Be seated. That’s an order.”

  Spacefarers learn early that a shipful of lives can depend on instant obedience. Leino folded. Save for the ventilator and his gasps, the office emptied of sound for a time which Brodersen measured, until he said evenly:

  “Martti, brother of Lis, hear me. You spoke of her pride. You admire her intelligence as well. Then what in the universe makes you assume she could be corrupted? She’s simply chosen to fare a little different way from what you’d have her take.

  “If you worry about her faith and morals, why didn’t you object when she divorced her first husband? She pledged him on a Bible, remember; he’s from the Holy Western Republic.”

  Leino stared open-mouthed.

  “Because you knew that in spite of his impressive brain, he’s an overbearing, inconsiderate, narrow-minded son of a bitch,” Brodersen went on. “If she ever decides I’m as bad, she’ll ditch me too, and you’ll cheer, won’t you? I aim to make sure she never does decide it. However, what’s divorce and remarriage except polygamy in time instead of space?”

  He let his question sink in before he continued:

  “Don’t get me wrong. I respect your principles. Where you come from, they work. Tried and true traditions; the family above self; the house presenting a solid front to the world—shucks, that’s what I grew up with too. I’m not saying it’s mistaken, either. For all I know, it’s the absolute truth. I’m only saying it’s not the only idea people can live by, or do. And you, Martti—not patronizing, merely stating a fact you’ve not been much exposed to alternatives. You came to Eopolis, that calls itself cosmopolitan, straight from the backwoods. Well, Eopolis isn’t cosmopolitan. It’s a clutch of hick towns, alien to each other, huddled in the same few square kilometers. You’ve never seen Earth. Lis has. Besides, you’ve worked hard the whole time, often in space, which has limited your human contacts still more. Repeat: I’m not saying you should change your philosophy. I am saying you haven’t had a proper chance to learn tolerance real tolerance, down where it counts, about things close to people you care for. Try that, my friend.”