The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

  This world outranged the material. He transcended the comet which meson he had become, for he was also a wave intermingling with a trillion other waves, like a crest that had crossed a sea to rise and break at last in sunlit foam and a roar—though these waves were boundlessly more shapeful and fleetly changeable, they flowed together to create a unity which flamed and thundered around an implacable serenity—Bach could tell a little of this, passed through him, for he had his reasoning mind too; that was a high part of the glory—but he alone could, and it would only be a little—

  The atom awaited him. Its kernel, where energies querned, was majestic beyond any telling. Electron shells, elfinly asparkle, veiled it from him. He plunged through, the forces gave him uncountable caresses, the kernel shone ahead, itself an entire creation, he pierced its outer barriers and they sent a rapturous shudder across him, he probed in and in.

  The kernel burst. That was no disaster, it was an unfolding. The atom embraced him, yielded to him, his being responded to her every least wild movement, he knew her. Radiance exploded outward. The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

  “Cosmology,” said Joelle the omnipotent. He fumbled to find her in a toppling darkness. She enfolded him and they flew together, up a laser beam, through a satellite relay, to an observatory in orbit beyond the Moon.

  Briefly he spied the stars as if with his eyes, unblurred by any sky. Their multitudes, steel-blue, frost-white, sunset-gold, coal-red, almost glittered the night out of heaven. The Milky Way rivered in silver, nebulae glowed where new suns and planets were being born, a sister galaxy flung her faint gleam across Ginnungagap. But at once he leagued with the instrumentality which was seeking the uttermost ends of space-time.

  First he was aware of optical spectra. They told him of light that bloomed from leaping and whirling gas, they told him of tides in the body of a sun—a body more like the living cell than he could have imagined before—and of the furnaces down below where atoms begot higher elemental generations and photons racing spaceward were the birthcry. And in this Brahma-play he shared. Next he felt a solar wind blow past, he snuffed its richness, tingled to its keenness, and knew the millennial subtlety of its work. Thereafter he gave himself to radio spectra, cosmic ray spectra, magnetic fields, neutrino fluxes, relativistics which granted a star gate and seemed to grant time travel, the curve of the continuum that is the all.

  At the Grand Canyon of the Colorado you may see strata going back a billion years, and across the view of them a gnarly juniper, and know something of Earth. Thus did Eric learn something of the depths and the order in space-time. The primordial fireball became more real to him than the violence of his own birth, the question of what had brought it about became as terrifying. With it, he bought the spirals of the galaxies and the DNA molecule with energy which would never come back to him, and saw how it aged as it matured, even as you and I; the Law is One. He lived the lives of stars: how manifold were the waves that formed them, how strong the binding afterward to an entire existence! Amidst the massiveness of blue giants and black holes, he found room to forge planets whereon crystals and flowers could grow. He beheld what was still unknown—the overwhelming most of it, now and forever—and how Joelle longed to go questing.

  Yet throughout, the observer part of him sensed that beside hers, his perception was misted and his understanding chained. When she drew him back to the flesh, he screamed.

  They sat in the office. Her desk separated them. She had raised the blind on the window at her back and opened it. Shadows hastened across grass, sunlight that followed was bright but somehow as if the air through which it fell had chilled it, the gusts sounded hollow that harried smells of damp soil into the room, odors of oncoming autumn.

  She spoke with all her gentleness. “We couldn’t have talked meaningfully before you’d been there yourself, could we have, Eric?”

  His glance went to the empty couch. “How meaningful was anything between us, even at first?”

  She sighed. “I wanted it to be.” A smile touched her. “I did enjoy.”

  “No more than that, enjoy, eh?”

  “I don’t know. I do care for you, and for everything you taught me about. But I’ve gone on to, to where I tried to lead you.”

  “How far did I get?”

  She stared down at her hands, folded on the desk in helplessness, and murmured. “Still less than I feared. It was like showing a blind man a painting. He might get a tiny idea through his fingertips, texture, the dark areas faintly warmer than the light—but oh, how tiny!”

  “Whereas you respond to the lot, from quanta to quasars,” he rasped.

  She raised her head, challenging their shared unhappiness. “No, I’ve barely begun, and of course I’ll never finish. But don’t you see, that’s half of the wonder. Always more to find. Direct experience, as direct as vision or touch or hunger or sex, experience of the real reality. The whole world humans know is just a passing, accidental consequence of it. Each time I go to it, I know it better and it makes me more its own. How could I stop?”

  “I don’t suppose I could learn?”

  She knew he cherished no hope. “No. A holothete has to start like me, early, and do hardly anything else, especially in those formative young years.” Her eyes stung. “I’m sorry, darling. You’re good and kind and… how I wish you could follow along. How you deserve it.”

  “You don’t wish you could go back, though, to what you were when we met?”

  “Would you?”

  He could never truly summon up what had happened this day. However—“No,” he said. “In fact, I dare not try again. That could be addictive. For me, nothing but an addiction, and to lunacy. For you—” He shrugged. “Do you know the Rubáiyát?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” she said, “but I’ve had no chance to become cultured.”

  He recited:

  Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,

  And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,

  Were’t not a Shame—were’t not a Shame for him

  In this clay carcase crippled to abide?

  She nodded. “The old man told truth, didn’t he? I did read once that Omar was a mathematician and astronomer. He must have been lonely.”

  “Like you, Joelle?”

  “I have a few colleagues, remember. I’m teaching them—” She broke off, leaned across the desk, and said in a renewed concern: “What about us two? We’ll be collaborating. You’re strong enough to carry on, discharge your duty, I’m certain you are. But our personal lives—What’s best for you?”

  “Or for you? Let’s take that up first.”

  “Anything you want, Eric. I’ll gladly be your wife, mistress, anything.”

  He was quiet a while, seeking words—she supposed—that might not hurt her. None came.

  “You’re telling me that you don’t care which,” he said. “You’re willing to treat me as well as you’re able, because it doesn’t greatly matter to you.” He raised a palm to check her response. “Oh, no doubt you’d get a limited pleasure from living with me, even from my conversation. If nothing else, I’d help fill in the hours when you can’t be linked… until you and those fellows of yours go so far that you’ll have no time for childish things.”

  “I love you,” she protested. A pair of tears broke loose.

  He sighed. “I believe you. It’s simply that love isn’t important any more, beside that grandeur. I’ve felt affection for dogs I’ve kept. But—call it pride, prejudice, stubbornness, what you will—I can’t play a dog’s part.”

  He rose. “We’ll doubtless have an efficient partnership till I go home,” he ended. “Today, though, while something remains of her, I’ll tell my girl goodbye.”

  She sought him. He held her while she wept. But when at length she kissed him, her lips were quite steady.

  “Go back to your link for a bit,” he counselled her.

  “I will,” she answered. “Thank you for saying it.”

/>   He walked out into a wind gone cold at evening. She stood in the doorway and waved. He didn’t turn around to see. Maybe he didn’t want to know how soon the door closed on her.

  XXIV

  THE NEWCOMERS were naturally much in demand aboard Chinook. It was thus a small surprise to Weisenberg when Rueda Suárez invited him to stop by for a drink before dinner. Entering at the agreed time, the engineer heard a folk song from the Andean altiplano throbbing at low volume and saw that the leader was screening a page of verse.

  Rueda followed his glance. “Garcia Lorca,” the Peruvian said. “I am pleased to find the data bank here is well stocked: my favorites, him, Neruda, Cervantes, everyone, not to speak of music.”

  “Well, we planned against possible years of being away, the same as you did,” Weisenberg answered. “Moreover, like you, we hoped we’d be showing some of the human culture to nonhumans.”

  “Years… in your case, sir? Are you not married?”

  “Yes, with five good kids. But the youngest is starting in the university, the rest are entirely on their own. Sarah was slated to come along on the expedition, quartermaster. Of course, when we had to scramble as we did, I wouldn’t let her.” Weisenberg chuckled, though pain stirred beneath. “More accurately, I didn’t tell her—I skipped out, leaving a message—because a person needs a nice safe black hole to shelter in when Sarah gets her Jewish up.”

  “I see. Won’t you sit down? What would you like? I drew a ration of each type of liquor in the stores.

  “Scotch, then, thank you. Neat; water chaser.” Weisenberg folded his leanness into a chair. Rueda poured the same for both and settled opposite.

  “I thought we should get a little acquainted,” the host said. “In forty hours we will be at the T machine, and God alone knows what will happen. If Daniel’s scheme succeeds and we reach Beta, we still have a long, hard effort before us. If it does not, we may well be in instant danger of our lives. We had better know the ways in which we can depend on one another. And… perhaps you can find duty for me. I feel useless, I worry, I drink too much.” His smile was rather sour. “Frieda might keep me occupied, but she’s exploring the new men around her.”

  Weisenberg took a smoky sip. “Can’t you ask the skipper for a job?”

  “I hate to add to his burdens. Besides, you are our general technical expert. If you could give me a suggestion for me to make to him—do you see? You and I may communicate better than most. I heard you spent years in Peru, working for Aventureros.”

  Weisenberg nodded. “I studied nuclear engineering in Lima. There was no school of it then on Demeter. Afterward, yes, I did take a job with your company. That was what got me hooked on being in space. But I loved the city too. It’s beautiful, and gave me many glorious moments. I was there when the Covenant was signed!”

  “Why did you return, if you don’t mind telling me?”

  “Oh, mainly for my parents’ sake. It was not easy working groundside, though raising a family kept me reasonably cheerful. When Dan started Chehalis, I jumped into his employ.”

  Rueda stared at his tumbler, drank, and stared again, as if it held an omen. “Space,” he murmured. “Yes, we must each of us be obsessed with space, no? W hy else would we be here? I think I was first caught in boyhood, on a cold and brilliant night at Machu Picchu. The stars above the Incan ruins were like a host of angels.”

  “Or of Others,” Weisenberg said as softly.

  Rueda gave him an examining look. “Are you among those who make the Others into God?”

  “No, not really.” The conversation was becoming intimate fast; but only forty hours of peace remained. “However, I went to Neo-Chasidic rabbinical school in Eopolis. A man can bear the marks of that his whole life, no matter if the faith has gone.”

  “Well, I am a Catholic of sorts, I think, but I must admit those years at Beta made me wonder a lot. Until then, I’d almost taken the Others for granted. But when the Betans, with their fantastic capabilities, turned out to be mortal and troubled, the same as us—mystified and awed by the Others, the same as us—yes, it upset a great deal in me.” Rueda grimaced. “I was a political conservative too. Now I see how things I never dreamed of have been infecting government, and that faith also shakes.” He knocked back his whisky. “It continues possible to believe in the power, wisdom, and benevolence of the Others. May it always continue possible.”

  Having taken a sip of water, he lifted the liquor bottle off the table beside him and made an offering gesture toward Weisenberg. The engineer shook his head. Rueda glugged forth a refill for himself and started on it.

  “I am not a cultist about them,” Weisenberg said. “For instance, I do not believe they are working secretly to guide us and the whole universe. Maybe they are, but their Voice denied it, also to the Betans. By and large, I’m agnostic about them, and will stay that way till we get some direct information, which may well be never.”

  “Still, they are important to your soul,” Rueda observed.

  Weisenberg nodded anew. “Fundamental. Especially when I’m watching the sky in space. Though they probably do not play at being gods, it does seem impossible—well, impossible for me to accept, at least—that they’re indifferent to us… that they let us use their gates merely because we can’t hurt anything of theirs, and show us a single path to a new planet in idle kindliness, like a man feeding pigeons bits of a sandwich he isn’t going to eat. No, obviously they did, somehow, study us closely before ever Fernández-Dávila left Earth. Can they since have lost interest in us?”

  “They may have gone elsewhere,” Rueda said. “Remember, nobody, including the Betans, nobody has seen a ship of theirs.”

  “Maybe they keep their ships invisible. Maybe they don’t need ships. It does not make sense they would abandon those T machines—think of the investment of energy and resources—or, I’m certain, that they would abandon us. I can easily imagine they keep out of our sight. We could be overcome by their presence, crushed. But damn it, they must be benign. They must care.”

  “This is a big galaxy. Apparently millions of intelligent races, or billions. Could they spare the time?”

  “If they can build T machines around—how many suns?—they can follow what happens on the planets.”

  “Like God? His eye is on the sparrow.”

  “Oh, the Others hardly have infinite powers. We might not be able to tell the difference, though.”

  Rueda turned grim. “They’re not doing much in the way of helping us, aboard this ship, are they?”

  “They never passed any miracles for individual benefit that I heard of,” Weisenberg admitted. “I’ve tried and tried and failed and failed to guess what their relationship is to us, how their concern expresses itself. I’m only convinced to the marrow that they do care—that the Voice didn’t lie when it said they love us.”

  It was time to prepare yet another meal. Caitlín entered the common room on her way to the gallery, and stopped short.

  The alien… the Betan… Fidelio stood, or sat, or squatted, or poised before one of the big viewscreens, staring out. Interior lighting dimmed the sky for her eyes, but she saw the Milky Way stream past his head. He was alone.

  “Oh,” she blurted. “Good day to you.”

  Though he didn’t glance around, he answered in a hoarseness that whistled, “Buenos dias, señora Mulryan.”

  Caitlín went to Spanish. “Do you know me, then, already, not even looking?”

  “My race has ears more keen than yours.” Without practice, a gifted hearing was necessary to follow most of what Fidelio said. But he spoke fluently and grammatically. It was just that nature had never quite meant him to utter sounds of this kind. As if realizing he might have been too curt, he went on: “Each individual has a distinct odor, too. This is something else you are not evolved to notice. However, your eyesight in air is much better at long range than mine, and I can only helplessly admire your tactile sensitivity.” He turned, now, in a single fluid motion—light gleamed
along his fur—to confront her.

  She strode across the deck until she stood before him. “I like your smell,” she said. “It brings me back to my homeland, and me a child at play where the sea made the shingle grind together like millstones… but it’s different enough, too, that I am also a child at dream on the same shore, seeing fairyland in the clouds…. Pardon. You could not understand that.”

  “Perhaps I could. My folk too have myths and phantoms, which are strongest in the young.”

  She laid hands across his webbed and clawed paws, because his own hands were further back, gripped their knobbliness, and said gladly: “I was sure of it. But I didn’t know you would be so learned about us. To recognize a word like ‘fairyland’!”

  “My work has been with other sapient species. That aids me in guessing what might matter to yours.” The altogether blue gaze grew intent upon her. “I own to being surprised at your immediate comprehension of me. My accent seemed much too thick for everyone who is not off Emissary.”

  Caitlín disengaged and shrugged. “Well, I collect songs in several languages.”

  The big brown form reared up, the whiskers quivered. “Do you mean that you sing, yourself? And not formal music, such as the expedition’s people played for me, but an ordinary kind?”

  “Why, did they never sing?”

  “Yes, once in a while, but—” Fidelio hesitated. “I remarked that my race has comparatively discriminating ears.”

  Caitlín grinned. “I know what you are trying to be tactful about. Well, if nonetheless you got interested in our music, from recordings—I’d never call myself an outstanding performer, but—”

  “Good day,” said a new voice.

  Fidelio had no need to see who spoke. Caitlín did. Joelle Ky stood in the main doorway.

  “Oh, good day, señora!” Caitlín made haste to give her a soft salute. “Can I be doing anything for you?”

  “No. I happened by.” The holothete held her lean form as rigid as her tone.