The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

  Later, though, entering their quarters to fetch something, he found her seated silent, the marks of crying upon her. When he asked what the matter was, she said in a near whisper that she was making a song and wished to be alone.

  She was absent, on duty, when he met with Joelle Ky, Carlos Rueda Suárez, and the nonhuman. Presently he would arrange a general gathering at which his entire band could hear the tale of Emissary. However, he must not delay getting a skeleton of the facts for himself, to aid him in planning, and this was most rapidly done when a minimum of people were on hand. Despite his gratitude to Frieda von Moltke, he did not invite her, for their lack of acquaintance might slow down the proceedings. Carlos was a cousin of Antonia, Brodersen’s first wife. Though he was a child when she died and had not often met his in-law, they shared considerable background. Brodersen had first encountered Joelle on business nineteen Earth-years ago; since moving to Demeter, he’d looked her up whenever he revisited the mother planet, and for the past decade—

  Never certain exactly how he felt about her, she being unlike any other woman ever in his life, he was shocked anew when she entered the office. They had birthdays within a month of each other, but suddenly she was fifty-eight, long gone in a place whose strangeness must have helped grizzle the locks he remembered as blue-sheening black, line the brow he remembered as serene, thin the flesh to a cloak tightly drawn over bones which remained as exquisite as before.

  He bumbled to his feet. “Joelle,” he said out of a lumpy larynx, “hello. It’s wonderful having you here.”

  She smiled. That and her voice hadn’t changed either; both were pleasing and a little remote, like compositions by Brancusi or Delius. “Thank you for everything, Dan. I’m so eager to learn precisely what ‘everything’ means—certainly an enormous lot—” They clasped four hands and might have kissed, but Rueda came through the door and, in Peruvian style, hugged the captain.

  “Daniel, Daniel, how magnificent!” His Spanish almost warbled. “Our rescuer, our warrior—I’ve been talking to some of your crew—Do you know, when I was a boy I idolized you. And I was right. By God, but you are a man!”

  Stepping back, he reassumed proper aristocratic dignity. Brodersen studied him for a second. A ghost of Toni lingered in Rueda’s straight-lined, short-nosed countenance and hazel eyes. Of medium height, he had laid a small paunch onto his slimness while he was away, and Brodersen understood how he must resent that trace of early eld: doubtless worse than being left with a mere brown fringe of hair. At least his mustache was the same.

  Then the nonhuman arrived and overwhelmed all other impressions. The chances were that he (she? it?) had no such intention, Brodersen decided. If anything, the attitude of the creature looked diffident, though how could you tell? But the sight—he’d need practice before he made complete sense of those contours—the gait—the smell that was like a seashore, only not really—

  “May I give you a formal introduction to Fidelio?” Rueda said, smiling. The alien extended the lower right arm. Brodersen shook hands. He’d done the same with a tame gibbon once, in Asia during his PC hitch, and been startled; the ape’s thumb was laid out wrong and had no ball to it. Fidelio’s clasp made the gibbon’s brotherlike.

  Brodersen met the eyes, which resembled the eyes of no animal on Earth or Demeter, and forgot about handshakes. It roared in him: This is an intelligent nonhuman being. This is, this is. I’m living the dream that always was in me.

  “Fidelio,” he stammered, “welcome. Bienvenido.”

  “Buenos dias, señor, y muchas gracias,” coughed and whistled out of the fanged mouth. Suddenly Brodersen laughed aloud—not at anyone or anything, simply laughing, his mirth reborn.

  “Come on into the cabin,” he urged after he was through. “What can I offer everybody? Does Fidelio mind if I smoke? We may as well be comfortable.”

  Two hours later, they shared an embryonic idea of what had been going on around Sol, Phoebus, and Centrum.

  Rueda could no longer sit. He paced the room, back and forth, making gestures like karate chops. Blood had withdrawn from his features, turning the olive skin gray, and he stared at the narrowness enclosing him as his ancestors had stared across sword points on a duelling ground.

  “It must not be borne,” he declared. “It will not be. They subvert the Covenant, they would close the star gates, ay, kidnapping and murder are small among their crimes. Daniel, Joelle… Fidelio…. Never fear we may do wrong fighting them. We cannot.”

  Cross-legged in an armchair, pipe bowl hot in his clasp and smoke mordant on a scorched tongue, Brodersen said, “I guess that’s axiomatic, Carlos. The question before this assembly is where we go from here. And how. And whether.”

  Joelle had chosen a straight backed seat opposite him and had scarcely stirred except to talk, for the most part giving a dispassionate account of Beta. Her hands lay quiet on her lap. Fidelio sat beside her on a tripod of feet and flukes and likewise moved little, save that his whiskers trembled. “You must have an idea or two, Dan,” she said.

  “Yes!” Rueda jerked to a halt and stared at the captain. “You were always bold, but never heedless.”

  Brodersen scowled. “Maybe I have been, this time around. Or maybe there’ve been too goddamn many jokers in the deck. I was, well, kind of childishly hoping you from Emissary would have brought back a wild card we could play.”

  Joelle’s lips quirked upward, barely enough to be seen. “If we had that, we wouldn’t have languished in the Wheel.”

  “No, but—” Brodersen shrugged, drew on his pipe, laid it on an ashtaker, and met their gazes head on. “Okay,” he told them, “naturally my shipmates and I have discussed several schemes. None of them appeal much, but see what you think.”

  He ticked them off on his fingers. “We can defy the bastards immediately, veer off, scoot around the Solar System. We can’t prowl forever, but we do have a lot of delta V before our tanks go dry. Food stores are ample for years, and air and water recycling can go on as long as fuel for the migma cells holds out, which is years more…. Oh, of course Fidelio’s limited to—what? Several months?—but we wouldn’t be out in space that long anyway.

  “You see, the watchships can hunt us down. An accelerating craft is a difficult target, and we can doubtless shoot out some of their missiles, but they’d swamp our defenses in the end. Meanwhile they’ll’ve kept us far from Earth or any settlement. That whole effort might turn out to be impractically large and visible for the opposition—they can’t afford publicity which they haven’t doctored—but I wouldn’t count on it. Bear in mind, they’ve got a grip on enough of the levers of power to have already done things like jailing you.”

  “Ah, but wait,” Rueda said. “We can beam our word, can’t we? I suppose your radio transmitter is like ours, not designed to get a message across an astronomical distance. Probably no one would be tuned in anyhow. But the radios are limited precisely because the lasers can reach far.”

  “Two problems there,” Brodersen replied. “First, a message like that to Earth or Luna or the satellites gets picked up by a comsat, you know, and passed on from there to its destination. What you may not know, because it hardly ever makes any difference, is that the program includes censorship. Only certain classes of official communications may go in cipher. Everything else, a computer scans, and if it spots a reference to a ‘flagged’ subject, the message goes to a human, who decides whether or not it’s harmless. The system dates back to the Troubles, and even I have to admit it’s not all bad. For instance, it was what trapped the Finalists before they were quite ready to set off their atomic bombs. But you can bet your bottom sol that when Quick’s bunch started planning what to do in case Emissary returned, a very early order of business for them was to quietly get control of it—put in the right programs and personnel so they can intercept whatever may threaten disclosure.

  “Second, we might be able to get through to somebody else, like a ship or on an asteroid or a Mars base or something. I say �
�might,’ because most such have very limited receiver facilities—we’d have to get fairly close—and only ships are certain to be listening constantly for input. Well, we might, regardless. But if that somebody heard us, would he believe? And if he did, would others believe him? Never forget, we’re not up against a maverick like me, we’re bucking some of the biggest and most respected political figures alive… who got to be that way, most of them, because they’re masters of propaganda and public relations.

  “All in all, I figure the direct attack has a very poor chance of succeeding. Odds are that we’d be killed before we could accomplish anything.

  “What else have we considered? Well, when we’re near the T machine, we’re bound to be in communication with its watchship. Actually, under present circumstances, more than one watchship will likely be near. We presume the officers and crews for the most part are not villains, are simply following orders which may well be puzzling them a bit. If we tell them our story—show them Fidelio—do you see?

  “The trouble here is that the cabal must also have thought of this, and battened down hatches. Else they wouldn’t have told us to go there, huh? They may not know we have Fidelio aboard, but they do know we’ve seen and photographed Emissary. That’s dangerous enough for them. My guess is, one ship will have a couple of key officers who are in on the conspiracy. The moment we start to tell tales, she’ll throw a barrage at us. Explanations afterward are cheap. We are visibly armed, and I’m sure there is indeed a warrant out for us on Demeter. It wouldn’t be hard to claim that in the best judgment of those officers, we were about to open fire ourselves.

  “The third possibility is, we go through the gate to Phoebus and see what’s at yon end. Maybe they’re less well prepared, less equipped, and we can break free or do something else worthwhile. I’ve actually considered—since we’ve got you here, your knowledge—I’ve considered trying to run the pattern that’ll bring us to Centrum from Phoebus, and asking for help at Beta. But it’s a pretty wild notion, because the guardians aren’t likely to grant us much leeway.

  “In fact, what worries me about making the transit we’re supposed to, is… well, Demeter being thinly populated and relatively isolated, news isn’t hard to control. It’d be simple to scrag us. For instance, as soon as we’re well away from the T machine and the regular watch crew, the ship escorting us could fire a missile. Afterward the world would hear about the tragic accident which destroyed Chinook. I’d hate to believe this of Aurie Hancock, but it is possible. Otherwise we’ll be interned indefinitely. The Phoebean System has plenty of sites for a secret prison camp. I daresay we’d be joined by the rest of your crew.

  “And that’s the extent of our thinking to date. My own instinct says we should tentatively plan on returning to Phoebus and doing whatever seems best when we get there, though keeping our eyes and our options open until then. I may well be wrong. I’d sure be glad of any suggestions.

  “Whew!” Brodersen finished. “What a lecture! I could use another beer. Anybody else?” He rose to go to the fridge.

  “Hold,” Joelle said.

  “What?” He checked his stride.

  Seldom—when a problem was unusually arousing, or when things got really good in bed—had he seen a light such as kindled her countenance. “Dan,” she told him, her voice ashiver, “we can go straight from Sol to Centrum.”

  “What?” he yelped.

  “Yes.” She sat forward. “The Betans, they’ve been exploring the gates for a thousand years. They’ve gone beyond trial and error. They don’t have a complete theory; nothing compared to what the Others know—”

  “The Others,” Rueda murmured.

  “—but they have achieved some comprehension,” Joelle went on. “Take three places, three stars if you want. A, B, C, with known gates—T machine guidepaths—from A to B and from B to C. Then the Betans can compute a direct route between A and C.”

  It was like a nova burst in Brodersen.

  “Not with absolute certainty,” Joelle was saying. “They haven’t measured the local curvatures of the continuum that well. But the probability of success is high. Surely higher than for the schemes you’ve described.”

  “And—and—” Brodersen groped through splendors. “We can go to the Sol machine… make like starting for Phoebus… then lie, bluff, threaten, or whatever, till we’re so far into the transport field that we’re nearly an impossible target…. We’ll come out at Centrum. Go to Beta. Come back leading a Betan armada.”

  “Whose only offensive weapon need be the truth,” Rueda said. Whether or not he had heard about the physics earlier, the idea was new to him also. He too stood transfixed by revelation.

  Brodersen snatched the beer glass which had stood by his chair and swung it in circles over his head. “By the honor of the house!” he roared out of his youth. “We’ll do it! We will!”

  “The computation is difficult,” Joelle warned. “Fidelio and I will need to conduct research, and I’ll need to apply holothetics. You do have holothetic capabilities aboard, don’t you?”

  The flame in her now was like nothing he had ever seen. I shall return to what I am, radiated forth. Heat and cold fled across her cheeks. I shall again he One with the All.

  Rueda rested an intent look upon her. It was as if Brodersen could read the Peruvian’s mind. Will you become, for us, what the Others refuse to he?

  They would give Sergei Nikolayevitch Zarubayev a spaceman’s funeral, launching his flag-shrouded body from an airlock, on a bier driven by a signal rocket, while his shipmates stood by and heard their captain read the service.

  First Caitlín took the obligation as medical officer of washing him and laying him out in his cabin. From four bowls which she filled with oil, and wicks of string afloat upon bits of wine-bottle cork, she made lights to burn at his head and his feet. The fluoros she turned off; and she called for a wake for him.

  She met a little surprise, a little objection—barbarous custom; the civilized thing was to gather afterward, with coffee—but Brodersen, Dozsa, Granville, and von Moltke understood, though it was in none of their own traditions, and made the rest agree. (The skipper felt that he and his people needed to get drunk, in this pause between battles, and Sergei would have appreciated being the occasion of it.) They held the party in the common room. Su and Stefan had decorated it somewhat, making paper flowers and the like. Hard liquor and pot appeared, besides the usual refreshments; viewscreens brought in the universe for a larger ornament; music Sergei had favored and ballet he had loved rollicked in playback. Folk stood around and remembered him.

  After several hours, Martti Leino left. By then, a kind of liveliness had entered. Arms around shoulders, Brodersen, Weisenberg, and Dozsa were tunelessly belting out “Ford of Kabul River.” Von Moltke and Rueda snuggled in a corner. Granville and Ky held a serious conversation. Fidelio observed the exotic race.

  Leino walked down the circular hall to Zarubayev’s quarters. The door stood open. He heard a few notes, hesitated, frowned, and went on in.

  As bare as the rest, this room was draped in shadow and yellow lamplight. Zarubayev lay on his bed, attired in his uniform. Hair and beard glowed through dimness; otherwise his face had gone empty. The flames around him threw off a clean odor and the tiniest warmth. Caitlín sat beside him. She wore a blue kaftan, the best gown she had along. Her locks streamed unbound. In her left arm she cradled her sonador while her right fingers drew from it sounds like a muted woodwind.

  She stopped when Leino entered. “Oh,” she breathed.

  “What—” He tightened. “Never mind. I am sorry I interrupted.”

  “No. Wait. Don’t go.” Caitlín made to rise, saw him unbrace a minikin bit, and sank back down. “You came to say farewell. I’d not stand in the way of that.”

  He bunched his fists and hastily released them. “You don’t, Miz Mulryan.”

  “You’ve no kindness for me.”

  “Hoy, this is nil time for hakkerie.”

  “I mea
nt no more than this, Mr. Leino: if it’s alone you’d be with your friend, I can well come back later.” She did get up.

  Startled, he exclaimed, “Stop. Please. I knew you kenned him before, but not that you… cared.”

  She smiled most gently. “Aye, he was the quiet lad, was he not?” Stillness; then, low: “Even when showing me, this voyage, how to handle firearms in combat, he took none of his many opportunities to grow familiar, though he well knew I’d have liked it. For he saw me now as Daniel’s woman, not his captain’s but his friend’s. The which gives away much about him, doesn’t it?”

  He flushed. “When did you first meet him?”

  “Before I met Daniel. He came to the hospital, injured, as you may recall. We bantered amidst his pain. The world thought him humorless, but that was not true. Oh, he spun me the wildest yarn about the trouble he was having, him a Russian who did not enjoy chess…. After he got well, we met when we could, until I started spending my whiles in Eopolis with Daniel. We were never deep in love, Sergei and I, but he meant an oceanful to me.”

  “And to me,” Leino said slowly, staring at her where she stood in front of the dead man. “We were on jobs together in space, the kind where you trust your life to your partner. On Demeter we’d go backpacking, sailing, partying—” His talk trailed off.

  She nodded. “What happens between man and man, no woman will ever truly understand; but precious it is.”

  Half drunk, he threw at her: “What about man and woman?”

  She turned to brush fingertips across the countenance which had been Zarubayev’s. “That’s worse to find words for, however long and hard the poets have tried.” Her glance went back to Leino. “Indeed Sergei and I shared more than simple pleasure.” Again it sought him who did not move. “They never realized,” she said, nigh under her breath. “They took him for dour when he was only shy; but oh, the fun in him when once he felt at his ease! They took him for being practical as a machine; but I recall a night we brought a telescope outdoors, and after we’d lost ourselves in the forever, he began to speak of the Others. He believed they cannot be ignoring of us as they seem to, but most have a care and compassion we are too small to feel—”