The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

  He knotted his fists. “If you think—simply a friend—”

  Frieda nodded to herself. She checked their flight as they passed a chair, hooked an ankle behind it to hold them, kept him by her left hand, and used her right to cup his chin. “You are being no use to anybody, you know,” she said mildly.

  “Yes? Who is not? The whole crew is waiting, only waiting. What else can we do?”

  “We can hearten us, to be ready for tomorrow,” she said. “We can comfort each other. I came to you for that. Cry if you want. It will not make you small. I saw my father cry more than once, when we went to lay flowers in the cemetery for his old guerrilla corps.”

  “Frieda, Frieda,” He clasped her, buried his face in her bosom, and shuddered. She stroked him.

  “ATTENTION!” the intercom boomed. “All hands! Listen!”

  Both heads snapped that way.

  “Listen.” Brodersen’s tones came raw, gulped forth, as if he was weeping. “Message from Williwaw. They, they, they’re okay. Bound back to us. Arriving in two-three hours. They didn’t find any help for us, but… they’re alive! Well! They’re coming back!”

  “Ya-a-a-ah!” Frieda screamed, and grabbed Leino’s whole body against hers. He floated like a rag doll, mouth working. Between sounds she did not know, she heard: “Lord, I thank… Christ, I thank….”

  After a few minutes Brodersen made a calmer announcement. Joelle could talk the boat home, and he personally would handle the chores of docking. Everybody else might as well sleep. The three from Williwaw would certainly be needing to. In about twelve hours, or however long it took, there’d be breakfast call, followed by a general debriefing. Then probably Chinook would boost back to the T machine for another jump. That would take more than an Earth day. Meanwhile they could throw a proper wingding to celebrate. “Good night. A real good night, ain’t it? A real good night.”

  (Chinook entered the shadow cone of Danu, and half of heaven was blotted out.)

  “We celebrate right away,” Frieda laughed, and kissed Leino.

  He jerked back. “What do you mean?”

  She widened her china-blue eyes. “Why, what do you suppose, luffer? We are both glad.”

  He thrust clear of her. Floating off, he held denying palms in her direction. “No. Not right. I will thank the Lord.”

  “Oh, yes. Afterward—”

  “Get out!” he yelled. “You slut!” He struggled. “No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. But—-well—please go, Frieda. You mean well, but please go.”

  She regarded him for several seconds, and went.

  Brodersen had restlessness to work off. (Pegeen, Pegeen.) Usually at such times he did exercises, but that would now have been intolerable. Therefore he made a tour of inspection. Everything was in order, he knew it would be, but the gesture helped him, gave him a sense he was doing what he could for the worldlet that would most likely be his and Caitlín’s till they died. Not that he was its God—Judas priest, no! (The juxtaposition tugged a brief smile from him.) He merely needed to give whatever he was able.

  Goodbye, Lis, he thought as he flew down silent corridors. Goodbye, Mikey, boy. You ought to do all right, and you may not even remember me. Goodbye, Barbara, dear darling. You may…. Why do I worry most about you, Babsy? You’ll grow to be like your mother, a free-standing woman who can shove the world up its own south pole if it dares to threaten you.

  I’ll miss you, my kids. I really don’t want you to miss me, but it’d be nice to believe you’ll remember me kindly.

  He rounded a corner, catching the metal to swing himself about. Lis—God damn it, Us, I love you!

  I love you too, Pegeen, and how the hell can I measure between the two of you, and why should I? Us sits forsaken; but she can have another man if she wants, or men, and live out a long and full life. Pegeen is here; but chances are she’ll die young in space along with the rest of us, and I’m not worth that.

  Brodersen mustered a grin. I do not feel guilty. I was in a war, and this was how things worked out, and if I made mistakes, the opposition did too. It’s a shame what’s happened, but Lis and Pegeen both would whop me in the chops if I started whining about it. They’d tell me just to keep on trying.

  Triumphantly went through him: Pegeen’s alive. I’ll see her again in a couple of hours.

  The broad door to the common room appeared. He knew no reason to check inside, but did anyway. As he passed through, he heard sobbing.

  He snagged a table whereon miscellaneous games were played, felt the reaction surge through his muscles, and hung anchored by his fingers. The viewscreens showed a total eclipse. Danu—which Caitlín had named—stood monstrous, not quite black but mysteriously ashimmer and ringed in crimson, while elsewhere the stars blazed and a visible pair of sickle moons went by. Mumbling ventilators underscored the stillness. The normal, health-reinforcing temperature and ionization cycles had brought a chill to the air, with a subliminal smell of night.

  The inkblot shape of Susanne Granville huddled in a corner. She clasped a chairback while her free hand covered her face. The brightness from heaven was enough to be merciless.

  Brodersen kicked off and speared through the cold. “Hey, Su, what’s wrong?”

  “Oh! Monsieur le capitaine….” She snatched for breath while he halted by the same chair. “I am sorry. It is no never-mind,” she coughed.

  “Aw, come on.” He realized anew what a sweet person she was, how much he liked and, yes, respected her. Almost shyly, he laid an arm across her shoulders. “You got troubles, Su.”

  “I… I am sorry…. I should ’ave gone to my cabin—”

  “But?” He held her a little closer.

  “It is empty there. ’Ere is the galaxy for to see.” She sank her head on his breast.

  In a short while she lifted it—he discerned her homely countenance by starlight—and confessed, “I, I make the apology, Daniel, good friend. It is wrong I cry when they come back safe, no? But—” Her eyes, her really beautiful eyes, caught his. “One thing. You ’ave n-n-no need for ’urrying about this. You ’ave more urgent matters. But—” She gasped. “We are lost in eternity. Tell me, please, when you ’ave time—what can I do?”

  “Ah-h,” he murmured, scenting that she also was a woman (without desire, when Caitlín was scheduled soon to disembark, but with a sudden extra affection), “you’re left out of the linkage, right?”

  “Not forbidden. ’Owever, Fidelio and Dr. Ky, they do everyt’ing—” He felt her tense in his arms, saw in the ring of the Milky Way how she mastered her lips. “What is left for me, Daniel? ’Ow can I ’elp you?”

  He made kindly noises, and eventually took her to her cabin, where he gave her a sedative and a brother’s kiss before he left. As the door closed behind him, he wondered what the devil he could find for her.

  XXXI

  ON AUTOPILOT, which observation had shown to be safe, Chinook accelerated toward the T machine. En route, her crew had a party. Brodersen recommended going all out, no stinting of booze or pot or anything else. First Caitlín, assisted by Susanne, made a tableful of canapes, and Weisenberg turned out some new ornaments for the common room, colorful objects of metal and plastic, in his machine shop.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain stated when his folk were gathered, “we have before us the serious business of getting drunk—stoned—high as a kite, boiled as an owl. I refer, of course, to the International Standard Kite, flown under one gravity in air at STP, and to the International Standard Owl, whose condition is determined by encephalogram after it has consumed one liter of hundred proof Scotch.”

  “No, Irish,” Caitlín required, and lifted her glass of the same to his. “Slainte go fail leat.” They grinned at each other. Though she had ached from high weight and battering flight, she had seldom given him a finer time than when she awoke after arrival, unless maybe he compared subsequent times.

  “Here’s to our noble selves,” Brodersen toasted the company.

  Most of the
ir responses were nominal. He considered them. The viewscreens held splendor, Danu’s dayside receding in the sky but still large, the sun like a ruby, stars and the galactic river and stars. Nobody watched—not that that was the purpose, but it seemed as if they were turning their backs on the cosmos.

  Carlos Rueda appeared cheerful. Frieda von Moltke had made him royally welcome. However, tonight she played more to Stef Dozsa, though he was pretty dour. Phil Weisenberg wore a calm, polite smile. Su Granville had gained back a little morale from helping Caitlín; nevertheless, beneath her face Brodersen discerned woe. Joelle Ky had taken a chair offside and was devoting her attention to Fidelio—almost ostentatiously, which wasn’t her style. Martti Leino had, plain to see, not been sleeping well and, no matter how he tried, could not keep his gaze of Caitlín.

  He’s in love with her, Brodersen thought. Understandable. Maybe she ought to—Or maybe not. I don’t know. It could raise more trouble than it ends, he’s such an intense kind of guy…. And what should I do about Joelle? She’s got something eating at her too. I’m not sure what. He laid an arm around the girl beside him, felt her supple slenderness, inhaled her fragrance of youth. I hate to give up any time I might spend with Pegeen.

  He laughed.

  “What’s funny, my heart?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Brodersen said in haste. Ha! There I was, taking for granted I’m such a God’s gift to suffering womankind that a night with me will instantly make Joelle purr. Joelle! “Uh, how about some music? From you, I mean. Now that we have you back.” He brushed his mouth across the wonderful softness of her cheek; and practically felt Leino’s look stab him; and no doubt Leino wasn’t the only one. I’d better stop flaunting this that I have and they don’t. Only how can I?

  “Well, if people want.” Caitlín paused. “No, instead of a recital, what do the lot of you say to a dance? Sure, and there’s naught better for loosening sadness.”

  “We’re a tad short on women,” Weisenberg pointed out. “Four. Ah, well, Fidelio and I’ll be the wallflowers.”

  “Three,” Joelle said. “Leave me out.”

  “Shucks, no,” Brodersen requested. “Why?” When she sat obstinate, he went over to her, leaned close, and whispered, “You always enjoyed ballroom dancing when we were together. What’s gone wrong?” Her gaze upon his seemed doubly dark. “We need you. The disappointment at Danu was a stiff blow. If we don’t cheer ourselves up, we’ll be too goddamn low to cope. Please, Joelle.”

  “What about Fidelio?” she answered in the same English. “Nobody worries about his feelings.”

  As if she had overheard, Caitlín called, “Och, we don’t need exact partners. A square dance, a jig—yes, Fidelio too. Why not? They must jump about for fun on Beta.” She chuckled. “Faith, it’s very special this will be. The first interspecies dance in human history.”

  Brodersen queried the alien about it in Spanish. He was surprised at the eagerness of the positive response.

  “Then it’s settled,” Caitlín said. “Let’s be seeing how best we can unsettle it. Give me a few minutes to work out steps to suit us.” Taking up her sonador, she programmed it for accordionlike sounds and played while she skipped about the deck. Her yellow dress billowed out from the swift slim legs, the bronze hair tumbled free.

  Somehow the sight, followed by instruction, did break the mood that was upon them. When the actual dancing began, to music from the data bank, persons even laughed—at first at their own unpracticed clumsiness, as when Rueda tripped over Fidelio’s tail; later at jokes and japes, lame though most of those were. Blood pulsed warm again; light sweating made them smell each other as flesh; stamping feet, clasping hands, driving rhythms set them wholly aware they were alive.

  After a few rounds, they began to drop out for drinking and talking and different recreations. A ping pong game got under weigh. Caitlín sang her “Midsummer Song” for Weisenberg, Rueda, Susanne, and Frieda. Later on, couples formed in more leisurely dances. (Brodersen and Susanne were decorous, Dozsa and Frieda anything but, other combinations varied. Leino grew alcoholically gleeful when Caitlín was in his arms, and Joelle pressed hard against Brodersen.) It became a good party.

  Around the middle of it, Caitlín found herself telling the rest: “Aye, we’re lucky, that we are. You’ve seen the tapes from Danu. If you did not thrill, we might as well bung you out the airlock, for you’re already dead. And they are nothing beside the reality. I had that, but I’ll not be selfish, I’ll give you your turns at the next marvel, and the next and the next. If we never come home, still the gods will have bestowed more adventure on us than ever our kind had before.” She struck a ringing chord from her instrument. “And who says we will not? The universe is ours, and I see no bounds for us at all, at all.”

  “Haven’t you been composing a ballad on that theme?” Brodersen asked, a trifle muzzily. “Seems to me I’ve caught you at it in odd moments since you returned.” He had not pursued the subject then, for she didn’t like to talk about art in progress. That took away the mana, she said. Besides, she had immediately turned his mind elsewhere.

  She nodded. “Yes, I have.”

  “Is it finished?” Leino blurted. “For everything’s sake, Caitlín, let’s hear it!”

  “If you desire,” she said. A burst of applause replied. “Well, now, it’s not about us, you understand, but about the future, when humans all fare freely as we are doing today. For they will, they will.”

  She hitched herself onto a table, sat swinging her bare feet, and made a strong guitar of the sonador. The Milky Way in a viewscreen crowned her uplifted head.

  A bugle wind is blowing.

  It’s time that I be going

  From summer clouds

  In gentle skies

  Where light comes lancing through,

  From nights of moon and dew.

  However far I wander,

  My song will yearn out yonder,

  A note, a tune,

  A melody

  In memory of you.

  The stars are stark that shone so soft

  Above our darling land;

  But I must fare away, aloft,

  And hope you understand.

  Where unknown suns are burning,

  Their living worlds are turning.

  A dance from dawn

  To day to dark

  On mountaintop and sea

  Goes everlastingly.

  Though, ignorant, we blunder,

  So death may drag us under,

  A note, a tune,

  A melody

  Till then will sound from me.

  What miracles abide out there,

  What wise and foreign mind,

  What enterprises man may dare,

  We can but go to find.

  Yet still, in all the wonder,

  The tolling of the thunder

  That quickens in

  Those virgin skies

  When first they know our ships,

  A longing strikes like whips.

  Til sing while founding nations

  Among the constellations

  A note, a tune,

  A melody,

  Remembering your lips.

  And when at last your runaway

  Comes back from the abyss

  Of starful dark to common day,

  Forgive me with a kiss.

  Hours later, Weisenberg explained he was an old man, and made a not altogether steady way to his bed. Fidelio soon followed. (Did every sentient race need a periodic retreat into dreams?) Frieda led Dozsa off. Brodersen took Joelle into a corner, where they sat down and spoke quietly and earnestly. Leino engaged Caitlín. After he had made a point of ignoring Rueda and Susanne for a time, though she kept talking to them, the Peruvian smiled wryly and suggested to the linker that he and she refresh their drinks—after which he nudged her, his hand on her elbow, to the viewscreen where Danu glowed, and they drew chairs side by side. Lights were dimmed; most illumination came from without, soft and shadow
y. A speaker, also turned down, gave forth Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.

  “Listen, will you?” Brodersen’s pipe chopped through an arc. A pungent cloud trailed after. “You’ve been treating poor little Su goddamn shabbily. She’s bleeding from it. We can’t afford that, not in any of us.”

  “What would you have me do?” Joelle retorted. “I admit I yelled at her once when she’d done no wrong. I apologized afterward, didn’t I? What else am I obligated for?”

  “Well, stop shoving her out of her job. Assistant quartermaster isn’t enough. Caitlín’s told me—uh, this is strictly confidential—she’s told me how she’s had to pretend she can’t handle any number of tasks, to make Su feel needed. That’s hard on Caitlín; she has her own pride. Anyway, there are pretty narrow limits to what’s possible along those lines.”

  “Are you asking me to make work likewise? Dan, I can’t. She’d see right away what I was doing and be twice wounded—wouldn’t she? Besides, I can’t deprive Fidelio. It was plenty bad when I took over the guidance of Williwaw because his Spanish was too heavily accented.” Joelle caught Brodersen’s wrist. “I promised him he could handle every computation which was feasible for him, from elementary linkage on up. He has nothing else left, Dan; and he’ll soon die.”

  He regarded her in silence, the haggard features, the sculpturing beneath that had not changed. “You know,” he said at length, “you aren’t really the steel-jacketed intellect you claim to be.”

  “Did I ever? Not on purpose, I swear.”

  “N-no, I guess not.” He pondered. “Suddenly, after all these years I’ve known you …Joelle, I begin to think you’re the most innocent person I’ve ever met.”

  She leaned against him, not with the deceptive smoothness of Caitlín or the heartiness of Lis but with the jerkiness he remembered; she had never learned nuances. “And … you… aren’t exactly tough inside… either, are you?” she stammered.

  Rueda and Susanne traded recollections of Europe. They had many cathedrals and museums to share. The real pleasure came when they learned also they had small inns and cafes mutually. As she bespoke those, she grew vivid. She had visited Peru as well, but only seen the standard places. He relished telling her about others.