The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

  “The hazard is too great,” Joelle objected. “We’re safe in orbit. We can keep signalling.”

  “Till we start starving?” Dozsa snorted. The effort to get a response had been his. “We could, you know.”

  “Really?” Caitlín asked. “And why should that be? Have you not been sending on their wavelengths, and a mathematical signal they cannot mistake?”

  Dozsa smiled through the weariness on his broad features. “You’ve been too busy to hear the news, no, my dear? Well, the basic problem is the sheer size of that world. And, yes, the natural background at those frequencies, the noise level. Without holothetics, we might never have strained the information-carrying fraction out. It’s a mere by-product of broadcasts. The natives, whoever they are, have no reason to listen for calls from outside, I am sure. We must use a tight beam, to get a power they cannot miss picking up and identifying. But then we touch just a very small area.” He gestured at the tawny globe. “The whole of it is huge. And the broadcasting sources aren’t fixed, they appear to be constantly moving around.”

  “I’d like to know how that’s done,” Brodersen remarked, “or how electronics is possible there.”‘

  “At any rate, I have been making the attempt on the—off chance, do you say?” Dozsa went on. “Although mainly to pass the time while others collected more planetological data. The probability of our striking a receiver which happens to be tuned to the precise right band is—” he released his handgrip for a moment to shrug the more eloquently—“about like the probability of our guessing the path around that T machine which will get us back to the Solar System.”

  “Besides,” Rueda pointed out superfluously, “we’re under a time limit. Exercise will not maintain our health indefinitely in free fall. We must soon have weight. Our reaction mass is limited, and if we go into spin mode, that’s irreversible; we’ll lie in orbit forever.”

  “Therefore, either we quit here and jump through a random gate, or we make an effort to contact the natives,” Brodersen summarized. “I vote for sticking with what we’ve got till we know it’s useless.” He could give tactical orders to be obeyed on the spot, but in a loneliness like this, a captain who did not consult the strategic wishes of his followers would not long remain captain. “There is thinking, technologically sophisticated life here. And it’s a life that maybe rates high with the Others, since they didn’t put the T machine in a Lagrange position, but right in satellite orbit before God and everyman.” He paused. “The dwellers could be Others themselves.”

  Silence fell, until Caitlín whispered, “Marvel on marvel, dear darling, if that be so!” Planetlight shone golden in her eyes.

  “The conditions there,” Joelle protested.

  “Williwaw should be able to meet them,” Brodersen replied. “She was tested out at Zeus—robotically, of course, because of the radiation, but still, she could take everything that hit her.” The biggest attendant of Phoebus was actually larger than Jupiter by the mass of a few Earths or Demeters. “I figure a crew can stand several hours at a crack. Sure, it’ll be hazardous, but I’ve seen worse hazards and I’m still around to lie about them.”

  He got scant argument.

  When it was done, Brodersen said, “Okay, next question. Who goes with me?”

  Caitlín snapped her head “up,” but it was Rueda who exclaimed, “With you? What are you talking about?”

  “Since it will be risky, we’ll send a minimum crew,” Brodersen told them. “Pilot, co-pilot doubling as communications officer, and—well, they’ll both be busier’n a one-armed octopus, so I figure a third as well, to be lookout and whatever else is required.”

  “I!” Leino and Frieda practically shouted.

  Weisenberg cleared his throat and said louder than he was wont: “Hold on, everybody. Hold on. Let’s talk sense. Which you are not doing, skipper, if you really mean it about going down yourself.”

  “Huh?” Brodersen grunted. “I’m qualified for co-pilot, at least. Do you suppose I’d send men into danger I don’t go into?”

  “Dan, that’s chemically pure horse shit.” In Weisenberg’s mouth the vulgarism had shock value. “The captain does not do such things. He has no right.”

  “True, true,” Rueda put in. “You are too important to our survival.”

  Brodersen flushed. “Oh, come on!”

  “No, you come off—off that nonsense,” Weisenberg snapped. “Aye, aye, if something happened to you we’d elect a new chief and carry on. But we’d not carry on as well, would we, now? You’re no superman, Dan. You do have a talent for coordinating people’s efforts, though. Besides, you tote around a lot of knowledge about your responsibilities, the kind of knowledge that never gets written down.”

  A murmur of assent answered him. He thrust his Rameses face in the direction of it. “We’ve got to be cold-bloodedly rational about this,” he said, rapid-fire. “Those who go must be competent to go, and at the same time be those whose loss wouldn’t cripple us. Besides Dan we have three who can pilot the boat, and we need two. Stef, Carlos, Frieda, right? Which two?” His hand chopped off their yeas. “Shut up. Think straight. Carlos could readily replace Stef as mate. But you could too, Frieda, with a bit of strain, and you’re the only gunner we’ve got. That’s a real specialty. I’m not saying we’ll run into a fight out here. Most likely we won’t, unless against nature; but that might require placing a ray or an explosive exactly where it’s needed. True? True.

  “Very well, Stef and Carlos pilot. They can squabble between them who gets top billing.”

  His glance darted back and forth. “Who’ll be the third? Certainly not either of our holothetes. Nor Martti or me—shut up, I told you, Martti! I’m the CE and he’s my assistant and backup. Without proper maintenance, and repair at need, this ship is dead. Who’s left? Su and Caitlín. Su has much better technical training. But gravity on that planet is about two and a half times Earth normal. You’re not strong, Su.” His lips creased momentarily upward. “Tough, I’d say, tougher than you have the reputation of being; but not very strong in the muscles and not too fast in the reflexes either. Caitlín—“

  “Wait a flinkin’ minute!” Brodersen roared.

  “No!” Leino yelled.

  “Do you mean that?” Caitlín cried. She released her handhold, kicked off, arrowed to Weisenberg, and cast her arms about him. The impact knocked him loose and they drifted away together, gyrating, while she gave him kiss after kiss and outrage boiled around them.

  XXVIII

  GUIDED BY HER HOLOTHETES, Chinook dropped easily down to a synchronous orbit which kept her above the region her boat would seek out. That put her below the radiation belts. Indeed, the field warded off most of the particle flux that she encountered in free space.

  Conveyor and cranes swung Williwaw clear and the daughter vessel blasted free. “O-o-oh,” Caitlín breathed, a sound like a prayer. She had watched approach on the viewscreens and been awed, but now she was out in flesh and bone before a terrible splendor.

  Optical systems in the control cabin opened on one entire hemisphere and elsewhere on large sections of heaven. The planet filled almost half. When she looked its way, there was nothing else to see; amber and gold, the inward-flooding light bore every star out of vision. To the right, unutterably distant, red bands along the rim of the world deepened into purple and thence into the cosmic blackness. The sun stood yonder, a tiny coal. To left was the nearer edge of night, a dark which lived with faint sheens, remote flashes, and orange streaks that were high clouds catching dawn-glow. Between stretched the daylit face, bright zones, richer-hued bands, in a thousand shifting shades, they themselves ever changeable, streaming, undulating, forming whirlpools, tides, rivers, an endless dance, majestic and joyous.

  The boat murmured and throbbed. Recondensing jet vapor made a ruddy fog-bank aft, small to see—it dissipated as fast as it formed—but soon veiling Chinook’s globe from sight. Weight held the farers steady in their seats. Though less than a gee, acceleration
was considerable, in order to get them down shortly after local sunrise. Rueda’s exchange of information with the ship was a dry obbligato, unreal-sounding.

  He ended it as if in relief. Thus far everything was satisfactory. For a while he sat quiet, like his companions. Radiance made a halo of his baldness. At last he said softly, “Mother of God, a man might die quite happy after this.”

  Dozsa grinned, not too mirthfully. His accent thickened. “If you wish. Me, I have a wife and children at home. Here is the kind of experience I like to have had.”

  Rueda looked surprised. “And still you came along?”

  “What else? I agree we must go search, and I am best qualified.” Dozsa was piloting, since besides past practice, he was a martial arts enthusiast, trained into strength and speed. “Don’t get me wrong, Carlos. I am not afraid. In fact, I relish the challenge. But I will relish it more in retrospect.” He crossed himself. “Or in the afterlife, if God does not will we succeed. Our death ought to be clean and quick.”

  “Aye.” Caitlín was barely audible. “A shooting star in a sky like that—sure, and there are many harder fates, there are.”

  “One feels near to God on this mission, no?” Rueda said, almost as muted. “But He is not the kindly old Father the sisters told me of in school, nor the just Lord our priest called on.”

  “He is those and more,” Dozsa replied. “Caitlín, you pagan, even you must be hearing Him out of your childhood.”

  She shook her head. Braided, her hair was a chiaroscuro around it. “No. Perhaps they were too Catholic in Ireland for me, a part of their seeking to rebuild after the Troubles and keep the faith after the Others… and I a rebel born. I’ve no anger in me any more, though.”

  Dozsa smiled. “Well, let’s not argue. We have not the energy to spare. If you don’t mind, I will include you in my prayers. Most likely I shall be thinking a few.”

  Rueda looked behind him to where she sat. “What do you believe in, if I may ask?” he inquired.

  “In life,” she said.

  They fell silent, watching the planet draw closer, night recede across it and brightness grow. Presently a fresh set of demands for readings and confirmation of flight plan details rattled forth. Having complied, Rueda added, “That was unnecessary, my friends.”

  Brodersen’s voice replaced Joelle’s. It was almost unrecognizable: “My fault. I insisted. You’re really okay?”

  “Never better, my darling,” Caitlín made bold to answer, “save for not having you here. And this cabin is rather craned for sports anyhow. Make up our bed before I come back. It needs it, you will be remembering.”

  “Pegeen, please—”

  “I’m sorry.” She reached toward the loudspeaker as if toward him. “You fear for me. But would I not be fearing for you, were you bound off like this? Ah, don’t be selfish, be glad for me on such a grand adventure.”

  “I’m… trying….”

  “No, more than an adventure. Magic they never dreamed of in Tír na nÓg. Do you know, I was thinking we’ll need a name for our planet, do we win to its people. We can scarcely pronounce theirs, whatever it be.”

  Brodersen hesitated. “And?”

  “I thought of Danu, the mother goddess of the Tuatha de Danaan, they who became the great Sidhe.”

  “Done, by thunder!” he decreed.

  Williwaw entered perceptible atmosphere more abruptly than above Demeter, for this air was compressed hard by gravity. Her path and vectors had been computed with that in mind. She got continuous guidance from Joelle, holothetically linked to instruments whose operators Fidelio had told what to probe for. Else her mission would have been suicidal.

  As was, in the first hour Dozsa used himself to limits beyond what he had been sure were his. Rueda was nearly as busy, handling communication back and forth, often helping steer. The cabin soon stank from their sweat. It filled with monstrous roars, shrieks, rumbles, whistlings. Their own weight hauled at the humans, two and a half times what their race was evolved to bear. Every finger grew heavy, an arm was a burden, necks strained to keep heads positioned, guts sagged, hearts toiled, ribs ached from breathing, mouths dried out and throats went raw.

  That would not have happened on a test centrifuge or aboard a watchship under full thrust, where a person could sit or lie at ease. Danu raged. Stratospheric impact made the boat shudder, bounce about, buck like a mustang. Deeper down, at low relative speed, she encountered winds to send her tumbling. If not skillfully met, they might have torn her wings off. Designed for Earthlike worlds, she was aerodynamically poor on this one. Nor did skill alone compensate, when the whole sky was strange. More than once, Joelle herself was taken by surprise, as some violence erupted which she had not had the data to predict. However swift her response, it must be spoken, which ate seconds. From a Betan mother ship she could have piloted directly, could virtually have been the vessel. Dozsa and Rueda, though, must cope however they were able, till they got a word to help them.

  Twice they passed through storms. Blindness clamped down, until lightning turned flying cloud wracks incandescent. Thunder followed; it was like being inside a cannon. The gales racketed and snatched. Each drop through turbulence ended with spine-jarring force. Roll, pitch, and yaw flung bodies against harnesses. Once hailstones crashed against the hull, once a Noah’s rain engulfed it.

  Throughout, Caitlín watched. She could do nothing else, except now and then tap a shoulder and point to a thing in the distance that looked sinister—mountain-tall cloud, vortex of turbulence, snake’s nest of lightning, or a wildness for which humans had no ready word. Otherwise she refrained from bothering the men. She watched, she sent her whole being outward, she laughed for happiness.

  Williwaw won through. Occasionally it seemed doubtful she would, despite computations giving her favorable odds, but she did. Reaching the altitude whence the broadcasts originated, more or less, she found peace. Here the air was thick and warm and had no haste. Thermal currents welled from below to help upbear her. The autopilot could take over. She lazed through a broad circle and began a broadcast of her own, taped signals on various Danaan wavebands. A beam carried Rueda’s dull tone aloft: “We are safe. Repeat, we are safe. Give us a few minutes to rest, and we’ll report.”

  Like Dozsa, he slumped, chin falling on chest. Caitlín leaned forward to touch both men. “Oh, my poor tired dears—” She stopped, for she grew aware of what was around her.

  Without light amplification, she would have been blind. Given it, she saw widely. The foreignness was such that she needed a while before vision could truly register; but an onrush of beauty came at once.

  Above, heaven was indigo at the horizon, lightening to violet at the zenith. Single clouds wandered there, faerie shaped, colored for a Colorado sunset. The sun itself stood high in a rainbow ring. Below, a cloud deck lay like an ocean, but no ocean that men had ever sailed. Its reach was imperial; it had peaks, canyons, smoky plains, great slow cataracts, infinitely intricate yet never twice the same. Aureate, it was touched with reds, streaked with blues and greens and browns, shadowed where it plunged into mysteries.

  A flock went by afar. Were they winged, were they finned? They were gone too fast to see; but they had gleamed.

  There came a lulling sound from outside, from the calmly flowing wind.

  Caitlín reclined her chair and let aches begin to drain away. The heaviness upon her was only like a strong, over-kindly hand.

  After a while the humans recovered enough to talk with their ship, take readings, record views, and talk some more. A while after that, certain Danaans arrived.

  Caitlín saw them first. Her partners were busy again, not as frantically as on the descent, but worriedly. Communication to space had cut off. The speaker gave nothing but crackle, buzz, chaos, no matter what Rueda tried. Somewhere above them, in that serene-looking heaven, some electric event had somehow made the upper atmosphere opaque to every frequency at his command. This was not a possibility, or at least a likelihood, that the
holothetes had foreseen. They were not gods, they had had less information to go on than a Betan expedition would have gathered, and besides, every world in the universe is unique. Dozsa feared the trouble portended an equally sudden change in the air. Dense as it was, its pressure close to the limit of what the hull could withstand, might not currents go through it, Gulf Streams of gas whose borders were roiled and dangerous? Without overmuch hope, he sought hints from instruments and from the feel of the boat.

  Thus they might well have missed the newcomers, gone by entirely, had Caitlín not been on the alert. She cried out—sang out—and pounded their backs while her other hand pointed, tuned screens to magnification, pointed afresh. Rueda whistled. “Marvelous,” he said. “Make for them, Stefan.”

  Dozsa scowled. “I’m not sure,” he replied. “Under these conditions, to break our holding pattern—”

  “Down, you amadán!” Caitlín shouted. “I swear they are what we came here for!”

  “How can you tell?” the mate demanded.

  “Do you mean to say you cannot?”

  “Well… well—all right. I suppose if we don’t investigate, we’ll have had our trouble for nothing.”

  Caitlín rumpled his sweat-gummed hair. “Now you talk the way Dan would be wanting.”

  Between buoyancy and updrafts, stalling speed for Williwaw was low. Downward bound, Dozsa slowed her as much as he dared, or maybe a little more. The sight before her sprang into clarity, and dazzled.

  By the woman’s count, nineteen forms, traveling by twos and threes, had risen from the clouds beneath to converge well ahead of the vessel, a kilometer lower but precisely on its projected track. They were the size of sperm whales and had the same basic torpedo shape, the same blunt snouts—in which the mouths(?) were set foremost, circular, closable by sphincters—and flukes at the after end—though these were fourfold, both horizontal and vertical, and seemed to be flexible control surfaces rather than propellers. Short tendrils and long antennae encircling their muzzles doubtless held, or were, sense organs. From their middles bulged a pair of intricate muscular structures, out of which sprang smooth, narrow wings that exceeded the body in length. Forward of these were two arms (or trunks, since they appeared to be boneless) ending in what humans could only call hands.