The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

  “If we get back—we might, you know, we might—I’ll take you there,” he promised.

  “You are very kind,” she said.

  He spread his palms. “No, I’d enjoy it. To be quite frank, until this evenwatch you seemed, well, rather colorless to me. I am delighted to discover how wrong I was.”

  She flushed and dropped her glance.

  Seeing that she had grown confused, he turned more serious; that mood was easier for her. “We’re in the same boat too, aren’t we? Both of us essentially superfluous—at best, spare parts.”

  She turned toward Danu. “No, you went planetside.”

  “Precisely because I am an expendable. It’s by no means certain I’ll be needed for anything similar again. Or if I am, we’ve days and weeks to fill in between those occasions—we two—no?”

  She winced. “‘Ow?”

  “We must figure that out.” He snapped his fingers. A new idea kindled him. “See here, Susanne. What this ship does not have aboard is trained scientists. Laboratory—and field-type, that is. What she does have is a data bank holding most human knowledge; not to mention Fidelio, who’d doubtless like to pass on his education. Why can’t we make ourselves into experts?”

  She lifted her eyes. “Norn de Dieu!”

  “We’ll have to think a great deal,” he rushed on, “and study, and experiment, and—You a chemist, perhaps, I a planetologist… or whatever useful talents we find are ours…. Su,” he hurrahed, “we’ve work ahead of us!”

  Leino had gained the boldness to tease Caitlín where they sat. “About that latest song of yours,” he said. “I thought you were dead set against any notion of sex-specific roles. But your verse describes ‘man’ going into space. Shame on you.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “For your information, me bhoy, ‘man’ in that context does not mean ‘adult human male’ but ‘humanity.’ Why should the lines not be from a woman outbound, and him left behind?” She pretended to brood. “Oh, I’ll get back at you for this, Martti Leino, so I will. Only wait for my next song.”

  “I’m sorry,” he exclaimed. His features stretched into lines of pain. “I didn’t meant to offend you.”

  She took his nearest hand between both hers. “No offense! Honestly. Don’t be that vulnerable, love.”

  He bent his neck and muttered, “I am, to you.”

  She brought her right hand to his head, along temple and cheek and jawline and ear to the back of it, where her fingertips moved through his hair. “Ah, it’s a sweet lad you are.”

  He grew incoherent. His free fist hammered his thigh. “Caitlín, I—I resented you—I’m Dan’s brother-in-law, you remember, and Lis—But you aren’t what I thought. You’re lovely. You give. You’re adorable.” He grabbed for breath. “Pardon me. The whisky was talking.”

  “Were you not, then?” she asked tenderly.

  “What’s the use?”

  Caitlín moved to embrace him. Across his shoulder she spied Brodersen, his own arm around Joelle. They exchanged a look and, after an instant, swab-0 signs which nobody else saw.

  Susanne and Rueda were the last to leave. They had been conversing too animatedly to stop, until finally nature required yawns. He escorted her to her door.

  “Goodnight, Carlos,” she said. “Good mornwatch, rather.” He heard the nervousness in her tone, bent, and kissed her hand. “Goodnight, Susanne,” he said, and departed.

  As per program, Chinook’s autopilot set her in orbit at a distance from the T machine. The transition back to weightlessness woke some individuals who had been sleeping off their carouse. More experienced ones merely shifted dream-gears.

  Brodersen was in his office, running computations—Williwaw had expended a hell of a lot of reaction mass on her trip, and he wanted an estimate of how much more such he dared allow—when Caitlín came through the doorway. “Well, hi,” he said, gladdened. “How’d things go?”

  He saw the trouble that rode her, unbuckled from his chair, and catapulted himself to grasp her. She grasped back. “Hey, honey, what’s wrong?”

  “Och, I don’t know, I don’t,” she said against his shoulder. They floated together. “Tell me first how it went between you and Joelle.”

  “Oh… all right. Two or three bouts. Nowhere near as good as with you, macushla, but all right. I don’t expect it’ll repeat often. Frankly—no turndown of her—frankly, I hope it won’t. I’d a lot rather have you.”

  “And I you.” She shivered.

  “Wait, you don’t mean to say Martti hurt you?”

  “No, no, no. He was clumsy drunk but tried to treat me like a glass princess. He could do nothing else, though, Dan, nothing. No matter what I did. This past hour too, after we’d slept and the liquor was mostly out of him. He wept. You’ll not be letting him know I told you this, will you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Do you think I should keep on? He told me no; but she’s a rotten mistress who can’t help her lover overcome—” Caitlín felt Brodersen go tense. “No, maybe I’d best leave him in his grief for a time.”

  “I suppose the same. Tell me I’m not just being greedy.”

  “You aren’t, my dearest, you aren’t.”

  He laughed and hugged her. “Well, Pegeen, I am the captain of this Flying Dutchman, and I can dictate schedules. Okay, we take an extra rest before we pick up our duties…. M-m-m-m.”

  XXXII

  AS THE SHIP DREW DEEPER into the field that made the star gates, and the sight of Danu blurred into shining shapelessness, Brodersen wondered if Caitlín said a wistful goodbye to the world that had enchanted her, that she would surely never see again. Or was she too caught up in her ardor of exploration? How he wished she could be here in the command center beside him, where he sat idled. Was there really a good reason for her not? Well, yes, in her role as medical officer she ought to be standing by in sickbay where she was, just in case. Yet any “in case” was apt to be immediately lethal to everybody.

  Low weight came on a whisper of chemical rockets, for a few minutes. Chinook moved toward the final beacon. It was silvery in hue. Fidelio had strongly suggested touching every base before making the jump. All those markers taken together must have a purpose, must lead to other T machines, whereas it was possible—even likely—that the builders had not found reason or time to establish a construct at the end of every shorter guidepath. Many of those might give on empty interstellar space, as a purely random course around the cylinder almost certainly would. True, the order in which you went by the signal points made all the difference. Nine of them, the total around this transport engine, gave more than a third of a million destinations. Had the Others themselves visited each one?

  Chinook went on the simplest and most obvious route, from the outermost inward along those zigzags which involved the minimum total expenditure of energy. It ought to lead to something—if the Others appreciated engineering elegance—if they weren’t constrained by external factors—

  Well, if nothing lay beyond this gate, the castaways would simply have to settle down to life in the void. Zero gee could only be tolerated for so long in a stretch, then weight became essential to health. Under continuous boost, reaction mass would presently give out. So it would be necessary to put a spin on the ship, with a large radius in order to minimize centrifugal variations and Coriolis effect.

  Foreseeing that need as a possibility, designers had included provisions against it when they worked out their modifications of the Reina class. The hull could be split in two, its forward and after halves separated. That involved a lot of work, only part of which could be done by explosive seams, but the capability was there. A cable (of whisker filaments, for the tensile strength) would connect them still. Under the impetus of the lateral jets, they’d move a couple of kilometers apart, and the same motors would set them rotating. Earth-normal pseudogravity would thereafter prevail inboard. The cable would carry power from the reactor to the living quarters. And another Wheel would go whirling off through
space: another prison.

  Brodersen grimaced, not for the first time, at the prospect of carrying out such a job with his inadequate crew. It was a sizzling hell of a lot more complicated than it sounded. Merely balancing masses in the hemispheres, let alone scrambling around outside in spacesuits—

  We’ll do it, though, somehow, if we must, he vowed. And junk that rattlebrain word “prison,” huh? Pegeen will be here!

  To die at last.

  He made a gesture of thrusting away, and hauled his attention outward. The cylinder gleamed near. He wondered how it felt to Joelle and Fidelio, perceiving directly through the instruments while they piloted the vessel through forces that negated space-time. He’d never know. That experience lay beyond words; it was mystical, maybe transmystical. He’d better stick to practicalities. Both holothetes were in linkage because they themselves had no idea what they would emerge into, what they might instantly have to understand and do.

  And here comes the beacon, hard off our port bow.

  The siren whooped warning. The hull swung about and plunged. Chinook passed through.

  First he stared wildly around after a T machine. The heart drummed in his breast. He saw it afar, a staff laid across blackness, and the breath gusted from him in a shout.

  Next he grew aware of how much blackness there was. No stars shone behind that rod. Well-nigh every line of sight was empty of all but night. In one burned a lurid blue-white spark, at the middle of a pearly haze which spread out on either side like wings. Elsewhere, well apart, he discerned faint points of light and a few small, cloudy glows. Motors off, the ship fell silent through the dark.

  “My God,” Brodersen mumbled. “Where are we?”

  Action snapped to life in him. He got on the intercom. “Captain to crew. Report by stations.” Shaken voices told him nobody had come to harm, yet.

  Joelle spoke last, as if in dreams. “Fidelio and I think we know already what’s happened. It is very strange—“ Abruptly machine-like: “We need more data. Accelerate at about forty-five degrees to our present radius vector around that sun you see, inward. Commence the planned observational programs and be prepared for further instructions.”

  “Aye, aye,” Brodersen said. A small part of him wondered why his obedience was so automatic. The Joelle he recalled, who liked him and indulged his wish for her company—even for what little of her knowledge he could comprehend—but always remained at heart aloof: she was no more. What he had embraced a few nightwatches ago was an oldish woman, yes, spinsterish, pathetically eager for him at first, then wistful in her stiff fashion, and helpless-looking after she fell asleep. Since, she’d busied herself discussing contingencies with those who’d man the instruments, spent most of her spare time in her cabin, and been shortspoken at mess—embarrassed, he speculated, though he couldn’t figure out why she should be.

  However, her brain is still good, and right now its enhanced beyond my poor imagining.

  Weight returned. Brodersen knew at least a trio of grounds for building up speed. Doppler measurements; improved sampling of ambient conditions, such as solar wind; cameras detecting planets as streaks across the background of the stars. But where are the stars? This system holds nothing for us.

  Until sure that everything was okay, he ought to stay put in the command center. However, unless an emergency came up, he was supernumerary. He fiddled with controls and peered at meters, trying to learn what he might.

  The blue-white fierceness which Joelle had called a sun was really brilliant; the optics stopped its radiance way down. It was giving Chinook illumination comparable to what Sol gives Earth, but even at high magnification the disc showed tiny, suggesting it was far and far distant. By selective scanning and amplification, he managed to find a lesser companion, yellow, nearly lost in the glare.

  The fuzzy patches scattered around heaven turned out to contain points of light enmeshed in luminous mist and intricate filaments. They must be Orion-type nebulae, close by, where new suns were forming out of dust and gas as he watched. For the most part, what had appeared to be individual stars were in fact star clusters, widely separated.

  Reports from the astrolab started arriving. Beyond range of ordinary viewscreens, but plentiful within the reach of the observatory equipment, were more nebulae. In a particular direction was a huge region, invisible to the eye, violently radiating in the infra-red and radio wave length. Throughout the entire sky was no trace of the familiar external galaxies, though it held sources of similar radiation.

  More and more of these results, as the hours wore on, were reached under Fidelio’s management. He told the humans what to look for, and they found it. He must have a damn good idea of what kind of place Chinook had gotten into.

  Brodersen puffed his pipe. He believed he could guess the answer himself. It boomed through him like the toning of a great bell.

  Su being co-opted to do scutwork for the researchers, Caitlín was preparing dinner solo. Hitherto no one had had more than a sandwich, hastily snatched on station. She’d gotten the Old Man to decree that a decent meal under relaxed conditions was necessary.

  In the ordinariness of the galley she sang while she worked, cheerful songs from unpretentious corners of Earth. When she began carrying things out into the mess hall, her music faltered. That chamber adjoined the common room; the doors between were rolled back; from the big viewscreens beyond, primordial blindness leaped out at her, the blue star ablaze at its core.

  “You do give a lovely light,” she murmured. “I’ve seen the same in glacier crevasses and once a nuclear furnace. But what does it shine on?”

  She stopped in her tracks. Joelle had entered the common room. After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded greeting. Caitlín went out to meet her.

  “Hello, there. Why are you not in linkage?” the younger woman asked. “Food won’t be ready for an hour, and I was thinking that then I’d need a crowbar to pry you loose.

  In face and body, Joelle grew rigid. “I am not required any longer.”

  “O-ooh, I see. Fidelio wants to be alone.” Caitlín reached out, caught the other’s shoulder, and squeezed gently. “Leaving you the more alone.”

  Joelle yanked free of the clasp and made to turn around. Caitlín touched her and said, “Please, have I offended you? I’m sorry. I was never meaning it. You came in here to see the view where it’s best, is that not right? Don’t let me drive you out.”

  Joelle halted. “You weren’t.”

  “I fear I was, me such a hoyden. I simply felt sad and But why should I ever feel sad for you that I admire so much?” In a rush: “Dr. Ky, if it’s worried about Dan you are, don’t be. My faults outnumber the stars, but jealousy is not among them.”

  The chance phrase took them both aback, brought both their gazes outward into night. In the muteness that followed, a drift of curry odor seemed doubly lost.

  Joelle said at last, harshly, still staring away, “Thank you. You understand we have had a relationship before, don’t you? Very well. I don’t wish to continue the discussion.”

  “Aye, how petty we are, and our trouble, in this universe.”

  Joelle came close to sneering. “You were eager to quest further, weren’t you? Well, Miz Mulryan, what do you think of what we’ve come upon?”

  “How can I give you an honest answer when I don’t know what it is? You’ll be telling us in due course, and it will be grand to learn.”

  Joelle’s expression softened a trifle. “No secret. Doubtless several people have already realized, while you’ve been too busy to hear them talk. Don’t plan on staying long. The captain will soon insist on a report, then order us back to the T machine for a new jump. Fidelio and I are keeping us going meanwhile, partly on the microscopic chance we’ll find some trace of something that may be helpful, but mainly for… for his sake. Fidelio’s. It is fascinating.”

  Caitlín reached for her again. “And you barred from it.” She didn’t venture to complete the gesture, but dropped her arm.

&n
bsp; “I’ll play the data back later for myself.”

  “Not the same, is it?”

  Joelle’s look lost itself in the blue star. “No telling where we are in space,” she said low. “Besides, that’s really a meaningless phrase… under these circumstances. Let’s call it somplace in the embryo galaxy, and date it from ten to twenty billion years before we were born.”

  Air whistled in around Caitlín’s teeth. “We’ve come through time?”

  “Why not? Emissary did. Ships going between Sol and Phoebus do to a lesser, variable extent. For all we know, the Danu that Chinook found may be millennia in the past or future of the Wheel that Chinook raided—though from a relativistic viewpoint, I’m being very imprecise in my language.

  “What theory we have says that a transport field cannot take you any farther back in time than the moment of its own generation. But I hardly imagine that Danu exists yet. Therefore, either the T machine around it is… was… will be extremely old, or else that field meshes somehow with the field of the machine here. The second seems much likelier.

  “And in any event, the Others must have originated even earlier than this.” Joelle smiled without humor. “We’re early enough, however, aren’t we?”

  “Aye,” Caitlín whispered, “if the stars haven’t yet been made.”

  “Few so far. Not many atoms more complex than hydrogen and helium. The gas clouds are still collapsing inward to form the galaxies. The suns will condense from them—”

  “—like dewdrops from dawn mist.” Caitlín’s being glowed.

  “—and higher nuclei form within those—”

  “—air for our breath, iron for our blood, gold for a wedding ring.”

  “—but the process has scarcely begun. What you see yonder is a young star. It’s so big that it could take shape with a single companion, out of a Bok globule, rather than as part of a cluster within nebula—a type O supergiant, fifty thousand times as luminous as Sol. If we were much closer, its radiation would kill us. It hasn’t long to live on the main sequence: a few million years at most, till it erupts as a supernova. For a short while it will be as bright as the entire galaxy was—is—in our day… before its remnant sinks down into a neutron globe or a black hole. The heavy elements created in that explosion will be blown into space; they’ll become part of the later generations of suns and planets.