The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

  “God’s law—” Leino whispered.

  Brodersen, who had been an agnostic since puberty, shrugged anew. “Never mind about God. Let’s settle with the Others first.” He returned to the attack. “Not prying at you, I seldom noticed you missing your sleep to make divine service after a late poker game or whatever. And I have heard you brag a bit about what you’ve done among the ladies, and seen you squiring around one or two who’ve got reputations. Not to mention those seasonal bacchanals in your home country.”

  Leino flushed. “I’m still a bachelor.”

  “And of course you figure you’ll marry a virgin. And it won’t harm her afterward if you step out occasionally, as long as you’re discreet.” Brodersen laughed aloud. “Martti, I’ve been in the Uplands a fair amount. I’ve told you they remind me of home. Let’s not play peek-a-boo, huh?”

  —The words went back and forth for half an hour. Leino’s quieted as they did.

  In the end, Brodersen summarized: “Okay, you don’t approve, and I didn’t expect you would on such short notice, but you agree our mission’s too important to hazard for the sake of a personal brannigan, and Caitlín’s important to it. Correct?”

  Leino gulped—he had come close to tears—and nodded.

  “Well, that’s as much as she or I could reasonably ask,” Brodersen said. “For your own sake, though, plus ours, I will make one small request. Strictly a request, you understand.”

  Leino’s fingers strained together on his lap.

  “If you can,” Brodersen continued, “don’t hold her at arms’ length, stiff and formal. Remember, Lis doesn’t. Be a little friendly. She’d sure like to be your friend. And I’d like for you both to be. After all, I’ve explained it’s no overnight romp between us; I’m trying to think years ahead.” He smiled. “Give her half a chance and you’ll enjoy her company. For instance, you appreciate ballads. Well, she’s a crackling hell of a balladeer.”

  “I am sure that is true,” Leino said.

  “Find out for yourself,” Brodersen urged. “You’ll have lots of time, even after we start those military drills. Ninety percent of derring-do consists of waiting around for something, anything to happen. Caitlín can liven those hours no end.”

  Afterward, alone, he mused around his pipe and a shot of Scotch he allowed himself: So we make one more monkey compromise that may hang together for a short spell: in order that our undertaking—forget our daily lives—may go on. I wonder, I wonder, must the Others ever do likewise?

  XV

  IF YOU KNEW precisely where to look, the T machine gleamed as the tiniest spark amidst the stars—aft, for Chinook had made turnover and was backing down upon it. Susanne Granville had, however, set the viewscreen in her cabin to scan Phoebus. Dimmed by the optics to mere moon brightness, so that corona and zodiacal light shone at their natural luminosities like nacre, that disc still drove most of the distant suns out of a watcher’s eye.

  “A last familiar sight,” she explained to Caitlín. “The gate will be strange to me. I ’ave never guided a ship t’rough, except in training simulations. You see, we ’ad … figured?… yes, we ’ad figured on several re’earsals between ’ere and Sol before we started for anywhere new.”

  “Is it needed you are at all?” Caitlín asked. “I was taught the passage pattern is exact—no dance measure, nor even a march on parade, but like a chess piece jumping from square to square—and any autopilot can conn a vessel the way of it.”

  “That is true nearly always, and in fact the autopilot does. But the permissible variation is small. Exceed the tolerance, and we will enter another gate. Where we go then, God only can tell, and I do not believe in God. Quite possibly we reach some point in interstellar space, no machine on ’and, vacuum around us until we die. Certainly no probe from Sol ever came back.” Susanne shivered the least bit. “It is a wise rule that a linker must be in circuit during transit, ready to take over wiz flexibility and judgment if anything unforseen ’appens…. The tea is ready. What would you like in it?”

  “Milk, if you please. No, I’m forgetting, we’ve none fresh. Plain the same as you, and my thanks.” Caitlín let her hostess pour and serve, out of ship’s ware. Her own green gaze wandered.

  She found little but the grandeur in the screen. Like everybody else, Susanne had embarked in haste. Aside from the office attached to the captain’s, quarters differed merely in their color schemes, this room being rose and white. Otherwise nothing save the aroma from pot and cups distinguished it.

  Double occupancy would have lent an extra touch, and it had been laid out with that capability in mind; but the computerman seemed likely to stay solitaire. Short, skinny, stoop-shouldered, long-armed, with slightly froglike features from which thin black hair was pulled back into a pony tail, she looked older than her twenty-eight Earth years. A high voice and a dowdy kimono didn’t help. One tended to concentrate on her eyes, which were beautiful: large, thick-lashed, lustrous brown.

  “I would ’ave brought a better tea if I’ad the chance,” she apologized. “What you make for our table from the standard rations, I am cook enough myself to appreciate. Per’aps when I ’ave leisure you could use ’elp from me?”

  “Och, doing for this few is no job,” Caitlín said. “Though if it’s the recreation you’re wishing, why, it’s glad I’d be of your companionship.”

  “I t’ought we should get acquainted,” Susanne proposed timidly. She took a chair facing her guest’s. “This trip may become long or dangerous.”

  “Or both. And we the two women aboard. Besides, you can tell me about the rest of our crew. Devil a chance I’ve had to know any man besides Sergei Zarubayev better than to greet or else ply him with technical questions. Dan’s kept me too busy at learning my duties.”

  Susanne flushed. “’E can explain people best. ’E ’as the, the knack for them. I am not… outgoing.”

  “Regardless, you can give me an extra viewpoint. Furthermore, when we are free together, himself and I do not yet squander time on briefings.”

  Caitlín’s grin faded when Susanne reddened more and sipped noisily. Reaching over, she patted her hostess’ knee. “I’m sorry. Pardon my tongue. I’ll try to stay as little shameless as happiness may allow me.”

  “You and ’e, you are in love, no?” The words were barely to be heard.

  “Aye. Songbirds, roses, and hundred-year-old whisky. But fear not for his marriage. Never would I threaten that, for he loves her too, and she him, and a dear lady she is.”

  Susanne stared from cup to the sun and back. “‘Ow did you meet?”

  “Through Lis, the gods would have it. Doubtless you know she’s active in the Apollo Theater, organizing, fund-raising, smoothing ruffled feathers—especially those feathers! Well, I’ve been on the same stage once in a while, to play a minor role or sing a few songs. Lis gave a cast party at her home…. You’ve not chanced to attend a performance I was in?”

  Susanne shook her head. “I do not go out much.”

  Caitlín softened her tone. “They do say as linkers have interests more high than ordinary folk.”

  “No, simply different, and simply when we are in linkage. Uncoupled, we are the same as anybody else—” Susanne raised a palm and met the steady regard of the other. “Veritably, the years of’ard training, the work lui-même, they ’ave an influence. It is often true what you ’ear about us, we are extreme introverts. The profession attracts that type.” She attempted a chuckle. “Exceptions occur. A minority of us are normal.”

  “I wouldn’t be calling you anything else, I think,” Caitlín assured her. “Shy, maybe, the which I find a charm, brash hussy that I am. Your accent in English is pretty, too. You are from the south of France?”

  “No, my parents are. I was born in Eopolis. You know La ‘Quincaillerie, the big ’ardware store on Tonari Avenue? That is theirs. Well, I was the sole child, and unsociable, and all their close friends French, so—” Having by now set her cup down on the nearby table, Susanne spread
her hands wide.

  “Dan bespoke you as coming from Earth.”

  “’E ’as seen my curriculum vitae, but of course my girldom—girl’ood—why should ’e remember? My parents did send me back to study when I was… sixteen, Terrestrial… and tests showed me ’aving talent. Demeter ’as no facilities for making linkers. I lived with my aunt and uncle, and after I ’ad graduated worked for a firm in Bordeaux, until after six years away I got ’omesick and returned. Soon Captain Brodersen ’ired me.”

  Silence descended, large and clumsy. Caitlín kicked it to pieces:

  “My turn, if you’re interested. [The computerman nodded, anxiously eager.] Though I’ve less to tell than you. I was born in Baile Atha Cliath—Dublin, you’d say. My father being a prosperous physician, he could send his children to famous places on holiday, including your area, Susanne. But mostly I’d rather be tramping of the byways in Eire: a bad, rebellious colleen, I fear, who felt worse and worse put upon till at Earthside age nineteen I applied for emigration. The Irish quota was almost empty—we have half our land to fill again after the Troubles—and they snapped me right up. On Demeter I’ve been ever since.” She sighed. “Ochone, how I long to walk the green, green country once more and kiss my parents. Despite our clashes and the hurts I gave them, their letters have been wistful.”

  “I am surprised you keep your patois this many years.”

  “Well, Gaelic is our main language, you know, and then too we have the way of striving to keep our identity within the Canton of the Islands, and Europe on top of that, and the World Union on top of that.” Caitlín changed intonation. “I can talk Eopolis English when I want. Or British, don’t y’ know, or braid Scots, or daown-east Yankee, or Southe’n…. A ballad collector learns.”

  “You live in Eopolis?”

  “Yes, in a riverside cabin on Anyway Bank, together with a mongrel dog, a pair of scuttlemice, a tank of rainbow moths, a horny old she-cat, and a variable number of kittens. And I work as a paramedic. When I am not adrift elsewhere. Which will be enough about me, I’m sure—You’re looking at me most oddly, Susanne.”

  “Anyway Bank is a bad district,” the linker mumbled.

  Caitlín laughed. “It’s a polyglot district, cheap and raffish and fun, but bad it is not if you make friends and keep your wits about you. What’s left of my virtue has been worse endangered in the orderly room of St. Enoch’s or fashionable homes on Anvil Hill than ever on the Bank.”

  “You travel about the planet, you said?”

  “Aye.”

  “‘Oo takes care of your pets when you are gone?”

  “A grandfatherly ragamuffin by name of Matt Fry. How he got on a transport ship I’ll never be knowing, nor anyone else. He does not tell the same story twice, and he had no special skill to justify his freight save that he’s the most enchanting rascal born since Falstaff. I at least could promise to qualify in medics, for my daddy had given his girl a head start; Well, Matt is sweet and understanding with the animals, and he keeps the place clean and unburgled, and asks no more than the doss itself, plus whatever bottles I leave behind me, none of them ever full.” Caitlín shook her head. “I wish I could give him shelter the whole year, but we’d neither of us ’ave privacy, and then my gentleman friends—” She halted. “Bad cess to me, I’ve embarrassed you again. Can you forgive me?”

  “No, no, no,” Susanne stammered through her blushes. “No offense. I did t’ink…you and Daniel—no, like you say, the privacy—allons, we change the subject, no?”

  “Best we do,” Caitlín agreed soberly. “My tongue is too loose. An Irish failing, like drink. Dan keeps after me to curb it.”

  “Talk and drink, I believe those are species problems, not national.” Susanne spoke fast, directing conversation away from the personal, gaining confidence as she did. “I ’ave never met an Irish before you, I have read some of your people’s works, and screened some of their dramas, and watched Documentaries…. Per’aps on this trip you can show me their land?”

  “Faith, I’d love to.”

  “And then I will take you t’rough Provence. More, if we get time. But first we go to Ireland, because of your parents.”

  “Grand! Which do you prefer, a modern city—they tell me Dublin is exciting these days—or historical monuments and lone, lovely countryside? We may need to be choosing one or the other.”

  “The countryside. Cities on Eart’, they are too much alike. Every countryside is unique.”

  “In ours it rains,” Caitlín warned, “and drizzles, and rains, and mists, and rains, and might snow a little. I’ve forgotten what the season will be.”

  “Cela ne fait rien. I would still like to see. Our French campagne, it is too civilized now, agridomains, parks, communities, and in between a few spots they keep quaint for the tourists.”

  Caitlín smiled sadly. “Hurry then to Ireland, for from what I hear, she’s fast going the same way. Glad I am that I knew her wild, and that Demeter will stay herself while I live.” She hummed a bar or two of music.

  “What was that?” Susanne asked.

  “Oh, it’s said to be an old lullabye. I set words of my own to it not long ago, after my mother wrote to me from Lahinch where she was holidaying.”

  “The words? Would you sing?”

  “When ever did a bard refuse?” Caitlín laughed. “It’s mercifully short.

  Luring tourists to us,

  Luring tourists nigh,

  Luring tourists to us,

  Charging them the sky-y,

  Luring tourists to us,

  Crooning melody,

  To the Stone of Blarney,

  That’s an I-irish industry.

  Thereafter the two of them grew more and more lively.

  XVI

  WHEN Chinook was approximately a million kilometers from the T machine, watchship Bohr established laser contact. Notification of her clearance for Sol had already been beamed here. What remained was a formality or two, and the sending ahead of a small automatic “pilot fish,” which would tell the guard at the far end of the gate that a vessel was coming through and the usual safety measures were to be put into effect. Procedures were completed while Chinook maneuvered for approach to the first beacon she must pass.

  That was not the outermost one. The path she would follow wove among seven glowing globes. It was not similar to the Phoebusward track around the Solar engine, which had ten beacons. Many minds had speculated about the reasons for those variations. The alien spacefarers had probably found some answers, Brodersen thought.

  He sat by himself in the command center. The odds were overwhelming that he would be the merest passenger during transit. Cybernetic systems ought to handle everything. If they failed or looked about to fail, Su Granville at the computer, Phil Weisenberg and Martti Leino in the engine room under her direction—would take over. Nevertheless he felt obliged to be on station, and without Pegeen to distract him, much though they both wanted to experience the hours together. Brodersen never wearied of watching. Visually, approach to a gate was less spectacular than many things in space. But he would think of what the sights meant, and try to comprehend that beings existed who had made this be, and feel his soul drown and soar in awe.

  Each passage was slightly unlike the last, since beacons were always changing their configurations to match the wheelings of stars through the galaxy (and who knew what further protean aspects of the universe?). The shifts were too small for senses to notice in less than decades, they were easily compensated for, and in any event, a ship had a certain amount of tolerance. If she veered off a particular course by a few kilometers, she’d still arrive where she was supposed to, albeit the exact time and position at which she appeared might not be quite what they were meant to be. Even so, space law rightly prescribed a slow tracing out of a path, with ample margin for error.

  After all, a bad mistake would throw you into the unknown. Assuming that a complete transit pattern involved two or more beacons, seven of them gave you 5913 poss
ible destinations. (Robot probes had verified that assumption, departing from here as well as from the Solar System, never to return.) In addition there were infinitely many paths which did not go straight from marker to marker, each of which would also take you somewhere. (Robot probes had verified that likewise, until the authorities decided they’d lost too many.)

  Brodersen knew that a particular track would bring him to wherever the alien ship had gone—and Emissary, which afterward returned in order to vanish into a different kind of trap. Like the rest of the public, he had not been told which track it was. (At the time, he had agreed that secrecy was a sensible policy.) A machine must lie at the end of that gate. One of the human probes must have appeared there earlier. But if the aliens noticed it, they would have no way to tell who sent it from where.

  Like most people, Brodersen took for granted that many, perhaps all of the remaining beacon-to-beacon courses likewise led to T machines. The trouble was, once you’d gone through, what was your route back? You’d blunder blind through gate after gate till your supplies ran out, unless you found an advanced society which could help you. Emissary had set off in that hope, but Emissary knew that such a civilization existed. Yet the next T machine might simply have been at a relay point in an otherwise empty place…. Sure it was that very few tracks led to races that were knowledgeable in these matters. The Phoebean System, for instance, had been devoid of sentience, let alone spacefaring civilization, until the Voice guided men there….

  Hours passed.

  Mostly Chinook fell free, and he floated loosely harnessed to his seat in the exhilarating ghostliness of zero gravity. Then when she reached the prescribed distance from a marker, gyros, softly whirring, swung her about; jets kindled; for minutes he had a slight weight; again he drifted. The silence was vast. He could have used the intercom to talk with Pegeen, but that would have been open for the whole crew to hear. Nobody else had anything to broadcast either, as visions swung majestic across the screens.