The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

  A sphere against blackness, moon-sized to the eye, shining green as Ireland until it dwindled from sight… the T machine at their closest approach, a foreshortened cylinder reaching over a few degrees of arc, white with a hint of pearly sheen athwart the stars, a spine-walking sense of how much mass how tightly gripped in upon itself were here a-spin how furiously … a sphere whose color was not in the visual spectrum … the Milky Way, the nebulae, the galaxies beyond our galaxy….

  And now heaven was altering enough for him to notice: this bright star and that bright star moving closer together or farther part, at last flitting and weaving over the dark like fireflies, as Chinook went ever deeper into that field which the monstrously whirling monstrous mass created….

  The time was long and the time was nothing until a siren called, “Stand by!” Brodersen’s pulse leaped. He caught the arms of his chair. The ship turned heavily, came to rest, hung an instant. Force grabbed him. The final maneuver along any track was a sharp acceleration straight toward the machine.

  He felt no jump, no warp, nothing except free fall when the jet cut off. In his viewscreens, the universe appeared momentarily to stagger. It steadied at once; the effect was an optical illusion due to persistence of vision. Everywhere around, he saw titanic serenity; a cylinder, dwindled by remoteness to a bit of thread, which was not the cylinder he had been seeing; a disc like that of Phoebus, but whiter, fierier, which was the disc of Sol.

  Chinook had passed through.

  He resumed his captaincy.

  “Aram Janigian, commanding watchship Copernicus” the face in his outercom receiver said, heavily accenting the Spanish. “Welcome, Chinook.”

  “Daniel Brodersen, commanding. Thank you,” was the equally ritual response. “All’s well aboard.”

  “Good. Your position and vectors are acceptable, no immediate correction required.”

  Familiar though it was, Brodersen felt impressed anew by the fact that a ship always emerged with the same velocity relative to the second T machine as she had had relative to the first at the instant she jumped. Somehow energy differences between stars were compensated for within the transport fields—unless some conservation law that man knew nothing about was in operation.

  “Here is your update,” Janigian said.

  It went directly from computer to computer, starting with the exact local time. A readout showed Brodersen that he was within two hours of his ETA: pretty good. Solar wind conditions, notices of craft elsewhere in the System, etc., etc., followed. When that was done, Janigian delivered selected items personally. Port Helen, of the Iliadic League, was closed by a strike; a shipment of cometary water and hydrocarbons, inbound for Luna, had been granted A priority; an asteroid from interstellar space, swinging by on its hyperbolic orbit, would make close approach to Mars on 3 February; pending further notice, a sphere of one million kilometers’ radius around the San Geronimo Wheel was interdicted to unauthorized persons and carriers—

  Brodersen started, fetched up against his harness, and bounced back. “Huh?” he exclaimed. “How come?”

  “A scientific project that doesn’t want gas contamination; or so I understand,” Janigian said, bored. “Why do you care? You’re cleared for Earth.”

  “Um-m… I’d hoped to visit the Wheel, as long as I’m here,” Brodersen lied fast. “Reviving happy memories. What is this project?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have the complete announcement fed into your bank if you wish. Perhaps you can arrange permission.”

  “Thanks. Please go on.”

  The briefing completed, the farewell courtesies exchanged, the vectors calculated, Chinook set out at one gee. She would need between four and five Terrestrial days to round Sol and reach Earth. It should be a totally routine voyage.

  Brodersen tapped for a readout of the prohibition. Having glowered at it, he unsnapped himself and paced among the instrumentalities, blank surfaces, and star-crowded screens of the command center. Eventually he activated the intercom. “Captain to chief engineer,” he said. “Phil, would you come up here?” A part of him imagined Caitlín’s disappointment that he had said nothing to her. Later, later—to her and them all. First he needed a consultation with the top technical expert aboard, who was also his oldest friend aboard.

  Weisenberg sauntered through the door. The furrows in his countenance lay easy; he rarely registered excitement. “What’s what, Dan?” he asked in his drawled English. His parents, Neo-Chasidim, had moved to Demeter to escape persecution in the Holy Western Republic.

  “You were listening, weren’t you?” As was customary, Brodersen had put his conversation with Janigian on the intercom. “Okay, check this business on the San Geronimo Wheel and tell me what you think it smells like.”

  Weisenberg placed his lank frame, joint by joint, into a chair before the terminal. Silence followed. Brodersen felt sweat prickle forth on his skin and caught a whiff of it.

  “Well?” he snapped at length.

  Weisenberg looked at him. “It is rather noncommittal, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Noncommittal, hell! Who do they expect will take seriously that goose gabble about turning over a public monument, for months, to research that trivial?”

  “Anybody who isn’t paranoid, Dan. Foundations do underwrite odd undertakings; and the monument in question is monumentally unimportant to just about everyone alive.”

  Brodersen slammed fist against bulkhead, hurtfully hard. “All right, I’m paranoid! You too. The whole gang of us. For good reason. Emissary is being held somewhere, if she and her crew haven’t already been destroyed. Doesn’t the Wheel seem logical?”

  Weisenberg nodded his white head. “Well, yes, if you insist, it does. No vessel would likely pass near the closed zone. If any did, she’d have no cause to turn scanners that way at full magnification, and identify a modified Reina-class ship orbiting close.” Long fingers rubbed a long chin. “Where is the Wheel currently?”

  Susanne had gone off duty, or Brodersen could have had that information straightway upon inquiring. As was, he fumbled out his demand on a keyboard. He and Weisenberg peered at the visual display which accompanied the numbers. “Yeah,” he said. “Not far off inferior conjunction with Earth. Which gives it an extra recommend as a prison.”

  From his chair, Weisenberg considered the skipper, who stood crouched above him. “You mean we should swing around and have a peek,” he said softly.

  “What else?”

  “Why, we proceed to Earth as per our flight plan and alert the Ruedas as per our own plan.”

  “Chancy,” Brodersen growled. “It’ll take time for them to make an excuse to send off a boat, and go through all the preparations and paperwork. Meanwhile anything could happen. If nothing else, Aurie Hancock’s going to get suspicious about me sooner or later—and I’d bet on sooner; she’s a smart old bitch coyote. At present, we’ve got the jump. If that is where Emissary is, we can bring the story to Lima—pictures—why, we can make a public statement and broadcast that will kick the whole miserable conspiracy to shivereens!” He ended on a roar.

  “Easy, easy,” Weisenberg cautioned. “The detour will add two-three days’ travel time, you realize. Suppose we see nothing. How do we explain ourselves when we reach Earth?”

  “Oh, we’ll write a story en route,” Brodersen said impatiently. “Like, well, a freak meteoroid hit that damaged our communications so we couldn’t report it, but went into free fall till we’d made repairs. Improbable as a snake on stilts, yes, I admit that. But not totally impossible, and we can fake the traces, and besides, Aventureros can persuade the board of inquiry to treat it as a trivial incident.

  “Or doubtless we can dream up a better gimmick. We’ll have days.” Brodersen swung away from the terminal, around the deck, hands clutching wrists behind his back, footfalls banging. Whenever he passed by a viewscreen, his brow was crowned with stars. “We’ll consult the rest, of course, but I’m sure they’ll agree. In fact, I’m going to order an immediate
change of vectors, toward the Wheel.”

  “No,” Weisenberg said. “Wait a bit.”

  “Huh?” Brodersen jarred to a halt.

  “Till we’re far enough from the T machine that the watchship can’t notice we’re moving wide,” the engineer explained.

  Brodersen snapped his fingers. “Right you are.”

  “You’re right too, pal. We’ve got to take the chance. This might be our last possible way to reach the Others.” Weisenberg still sat quietly and did not raise his voice; but in his eyes appeared a light which the Baal Shem Tov would have recognized.

  Rain had blown in from the sea to take Eopolis unto itself. Aurelia Hancock, Governor General of Demeter for the World Union, had opened the two windows near her desk that she might breathe the freshness. Cool damp enfolded her and graced her nostrils, together with sounds of water falling, striking, gurgling, odors of wet roses and grass and gingery thunder oak. The sight, framed in pale daphne panels, was of silver-gray that slanted out of blue-black, down onto darkened verdancies and reds. Beyond lawn and fence, cars passed shadowlike. The far side of the street faded into mystery.

  Her phone yanked her from it. “Your call to Miz Leino is ready.”

  “Uh!” she heard herself grunt. There had been no response when she tried an hour ago. Having put the instrument on “persist,” she had riffled through news compendia, fallen into reverie…and not even smoked, her palate reminded her. Her calves tingled, also, and her sacrum protested. I’ve been in this chair too long, she realized. At my age, you turn to lard fast if you don’t move.

  “Connect,” she said, while her mind wandered on: I’ve got to get more exercise. Play tennis again—regularly—I may as well admit I’ll never make myself go through a lot of dull daily gymnastics alone. But who’s to play with? Jim? They used to, she and her husband. Tennis wasn’t all we played, either. He was too far gone into the bottle these days: nothing disgraceful, charming as ever, in him it took the form of indolence, but he plain wasn’t interested in a cure. Then who? The idea of her fat knotty-veined legs capering around the court opposite some obsequious junior official was uninviting. And be damned if she’d beg for an arrangement with any colonial woman member of the club, after the snubs she and Jim had been getting. And here came Elisabet Leino into the screen, slim, sun-tanned, happy in her house and no doubt in her bed, looking politely hostile.

  “How do you do, Governor Hancock,” she said, not inquired. “I’m sorry I missed you earlier. I was working in the conservatory and didn’t hear the chime.”

  Or were you stalling me for a half-plausible hour? The tappers report that mostly you do delay answering. Aurie fastened a smile on her face. “Why the formality, Lis? We’re old enemies across the card table. And in civic affairs, we’ve been allies.”

  Eyes that were slightly slanted and wholly ice-blue scorned hers. “You know why, Governor Hancock.”

  Aurie gathered her spine together. Fingers found a cigarette. “As you will. If I haven’t made things clear by now, no use trying. May I speak to your husband?”

  The Athene visage did not stir more than its lips. “No.”

  “What?” For an instant, it was as if the rain outside flowed upward.

  “He is ill.”

  Attack! “Really? I don’t believe a doctor has visited your place.”

  “Do your agents record every detail about us?”

  Aurie started the cigarette and inhaled its rain-defying acridity while she assembled her retort.

  “Miz Leino, if you prefer that form of address, your husband must have explained to you what the situation is. When I requested his cooperation and he declined, I had no choice but to put him under temporary restriction and you under temporary surveillance.

  “Since then, certain phone conversations—yes, we are monitoring. Once the emergency is past, you have a Covenanted right to sue for damages. Meanwhile, we’re monitoring. Two phone conversations indicated he was staying put as he’s supposed to. It happens, though, the second of those calls came when you’d left the house and evaded the agents assigned to watch you.”

  She drove into the woods, parked her car, entered the bush, and lost her city-bred shadowers. Hours later, the tap recorded an exchange between Dan Brodersen and Abner Croft. Hours after that, Lis Leino returned to her car and went home.

  Were both of those talks with Croft faked? Ira Quick has passed on to me a confidential memo about such a system. Leino could have had her daughter take a call; the kidneedn’t be aware what was happening. And my detectives have not yet managed to prove that Abner Croft exists.

  Aurie thrust her intent forward. “And now, my dear,” she said out of her teeth, “looking over routine documents, I’ve suddenly discovered that Chinook cleared for Sol days ago. I was never informed. The law doesn’t require that I be. But Chinook is Dan’s pet ship, and Commissioner Two Eagles is a good friend of yours. You understand, I’m sure. I must speak to Dan.”

  “He’s ill, I told you,” Lis said, abominably cool. “He needs sleep. I will not rouse him.”

  “Then will you admit police officers to confirm he’s there?”

  For the first time. Lis colored. “Absolutely not. Get your God damned warrant.”

  “I’ll issue it myself,” Aurie warned, “and if he’s absent, charges may be brought against you too, Miz Leino.”

  Arrogance: “Proceed, Miz Hancock. I will be consulting my attorney.” Blankness.

  Aurie slumped. Outside, rain rushed and twilight thickened.

  He’s gone, she knew. He slipped free somehow, and boarded his spaceship, and reached the Solar System.

  How to overhaul him? Or how to repair the harm?

  Inform Ira.

  She should set that in motion this instant; but for a span, her hand could only bring the cigarette up, to parch her inner lips, and down again. Ira, was going through her, beautiful Ira Quick, you made so clear to me how our first human order of business is social justice, and how the Others and the seeking of them are—like Milton’s Lucifer, did you say?—Beautiful Ira Quick, I’ll do what I can for you.

  XVII

  A MESSAGE rode a carrier beam up from Eopolis to a comsat, which passed it on to the big transmitter orbiting Demeter farther out. Thence it crossed interplanetary space to the T machine, near which Bohr received it. The first part was a name and two addresses on Earth, followed by URGENT OFFICIAL; the rest was in cipher. Obediently, the watchship’s communications officer put the tape that had recorded it into a pilot fish, which passed through the gate to the Solar System and homed on Copernicus. The officer there sent it off on a tight beam to a relay station which shared the orbit of Earth and this T machine, ninety degrees from either, and which passed it to the planet. In that vicinity, a series of electronic complexities took place. Eventually—after milliseconds—a telephone chimed and lit up in both of Ira Quick’s offices, Lima and Toronto. Nobody was present at night, nor had he left word where he could be reached. (As a matter of trivial fact, he was enjoying a postprandial cognac with a pretty and ambitious young statistician whose person he would enjoy later on.) Getting no response, the phones filed the message, as directed, in a special playback bank for which only he had the combination.

  It happened that he was in Toronto. He had gone there upon his recent return from the Wheel, taking his family along since it seemed he would be on hand for some time. The necessity was deplorable, of seeing to the national side of his career after overmuch concentration on the international. Winter in central North America felt nastier every year, as if to refute the experts who said Earth was slowly heading into a new ice age. (To cope with that would require an immense government organization. Yet still infatuates of the Others would let people, effort, and resources pour forth uncontrolled to the stars!)

  On the morning after his pleasant occasion, a blizzard shrieked down from the tundras and blinded the city in flying white. Commitments demanded he go to his headquarters. Not even full-length hologramy with ste
reo sound was always a substitute for shaking the hand of a humble constituent or lunching with an important one. From the hotel he could easily have shuttled underground to the Churchill Building; but first he must seek his place in the suburbs for a change of clothes. He’d considered renting a room downtown against these frequent contingencies, but decided not to. If word ever got out, there might be jokes about it.

  His wife gave him breakfast and no questions. He gave her a nice big kiss before he left. She deserved it. Alice McDonough was not only a niece of the man who reunified Canada after the Troubles, and thus a nexus of priceless political connections; she was attractive, an excellent hostess, the mother of his three sons, and devoted to him… or, at least, possessed of the decency to keep her outbursts private between them.

  His car battled its way toward the capitol complex. Wind yelled and buffeted it, snow streamed around the canopy, cold crept in past the heater. He felt irrationally glad to enter the parking garage; the storm roused primitive terrors in him. Greeting his employees as genially as usual, he proceeded to his inner office and switched the giant viewscreen from a direct look outside to a recording of a Hawaiian beach.

  Now the environment felt good: warm scene full of blue and white and surf-boom; comfortable chair; broad, solid, fully instrumented desk; carpet soft underfoot after he’d doffed his shoes; autographed pictures of celebrities, original cartoons, honorary diplomas, certificates of membership, framed letters, each a sign of esteem and affection. The work ahead of him, if less important than what he did for the Union, had its own fascination. Last night lingered piquant in awareness. “Ah-h-h,” he murmured, smiled, and activated the phone playback.