The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

  “And you returned, and hung around patiently in love with Dan—oh, I saw, I saw—till Carlos and you—What you fear is pregnancy.”

  “Yes. Abortion is ’omicide. When it is not necessary for the saving of the mother’s life or ’ealt’, it is murder.”

  “Agreed. Furthermore, we’re not equipped to perform it safely. Infanticide, no! Sooner would I throw myself out an airlock.”

  “And we c-cannot bring children… into this lost ship… to need rations and shorten the few years our mates probably ’ave left to them—” Su straightened in her chair. The hand Caitlín was not holding smote the tabletop, a lonely noise. “I told ’im no. ’E wanted to talk more, but I ran away. Per’aps now I can meet ’im again. Tank you. Do you know Dan was kind to me in this same room?”

  “Hold on.” Caitlín tugged her chin and frowned at the universe. “Let me think. Faith, many an agonizing human dilemma has turned out to have what our skipper calls an engineering solution…. I’ve not the kit or the competence to sterilize either of you. But there were once mechanical contraceptives. Maybe Phil and I between us can reinvent a thing that won’t be too unpleasant.” She felt resistance. “Don’t get bashful. Would you not sacrifice a grain of what you consider your dignity, for your happiness and your man’s?”

  Susanne must struggle before she could say, “Yes. Yes.”

  “And it may not be needed.” As ideas came to Caitlín, enthusiasm arose and bloomecl intojcsy. “I’ll ask the data bank. It may well know of procedures—aye, vasectomy ought to be simple enough surgery if I can fincl out how to do it and reversible by a bit of cloning if ever we get home or I seem to remember reading once about intrauterine deviccs or something in the chemistry—Och, we carl consider details later. The point is, you poor innocent you are not helpless. Go on! Wed him and be blessed!”

  The linker seemed stunned. “No, what if we do fail and ’ave a conception’?”

  “Why, then,” Caitlín replied and a trumpet might have spoken, “it’s no failure at all, at all. It’s a triumph. It says we do not surrender to death, no not though he offer to let us march forth with full military honors. We fight on live on, search on-your child beside us!”

  Slowly began to grow in Susanne a brightness to equal the stars.

  XL

  JUMP.

  The stellar host was less myriad and brilliant than before, though more than around Sol or Phoebus-save that in one direction towered vast thunderheads of night, relieved only by a few gleams in their foreground. No sun was in view. The T machine had for satellite a great ellipsoid much like that at the pulsar. It orbited something which the eye perceived as a quivering blue-white spark, Joelle and the instruments as a hellish fountainhead of hard radiation.

  Her judgment came to them like God’s: “We’ve approached the core of the galaxy. Those are the dust clouds that have always hidden it from us. Here is a black hole.”

  The ultimate collapsar, a supernova remnant so massive that its gravitational force upon itself compressed it to a smallness, a field strength, such that light could no longer escape…. The known laws of physics were superseded, and matter shrank down and down toward a geometrical point, a singularity, atwhich no laws whatsoever would prevail. But none of this might the seekers observe. Nothing but an infinitesimal wavemechanical leakage could return from that all-devouring potential well. Interstellar material, sucked in, gave up energy asa last despairing cry before it vanished-for eternity?

  I suspect eternity is a human superstition and the Others know better, Brodersen thought. Aloud: “Yonder must be an observatory, similar to what we found earlier, except I’ll bet with a lot of damned enlightening differences. We’ll investigate. The background count isn’t too high for us to stay a while.”

  “No.” Joelle’s voice grew urgent. “Don’t. Go on. Right away.”

  “—Why?”

  “Ican’t tell you. A hunch…. We holothetes work on hunches. Dan, often as not and here—Forces, energies, the very shape of space, everything feels too strange. I’m afraid we can’t cope.”

  Without more knowledge, her stelf-respect said. The Others can teach me OM’ to come back and learn, when I find them, if I find them.

  XLI

  JUMP.

  Again the sky was thronged with stars, almost as thickly as two leaps ago, nearly all of them a red hue, from that of blood to that of roses, but crystalline sharp. Most showed less bright than those of the cluster, more bright than those of the inner spiral arm, which fact bespoke their distances and spacings. No trace of nebulae, exterior galaxies, or Milky Way appeared. In one direction the stellar density grew greater and greater, until vision saw it melt into a ruby globe like some huge talismanic sun.

  The T machine was alone, light-months from the closest astronomical body and that a dimness which merely happened to be passing by. Whatever path it followed was made for it by the entire multitude. The cylinder was twice the size of any that the voyagers had seen before. Twenty-three beacons attended it, spread across a hundred thousand kilometers.

  “We are near the center of the galaxy, inside the clouds.” Joelle’s tone had regained steadiness, a dreamlike tranquility. “Here are many more stars than it holds elsewhere, and the survivors we see are its oldest, formed close to its beginning. There may be a black hole of monster size which has swallowed up millions of them and is still doing so. If that is true, then the rate of it has become very low—for the radiation background is only moderate—and we must have come far into our own future, when none but the longest-lived dwarfs remain shining.”

  Weightless in his command seat, in silence and wonderment, Brodersen heard himself ask, “Why didn’t the gate we took lead to any of them?” Pegeen might find words for what I feel right now, but my dumb brain can only bring up flat quackings—could only do that even if I weren’t stunned.

  “The T machines cannot have infinte range. Relays must be necessary, placed at the optimum space-time locations for their purpose. This one could serve more places by orders of magnitude, than the galaxy has members. That, and its dimensions, and what I have already observed and calculated while we traveled make me believe that the longer paths it generates go extremely far.”

  “A junction—Wait!” Brcbdersen roared. Revelation exploded in him. His pulse became a war-drum.” Listen, listen! A civilization, a whole set of civilizations or, or likelier somethingwe’ve no word for, no idea of—and the Others themselves—their people must pass through here. If we stay, we’ll meet them!”

  A shout and a babble rang through the intercom from every station in the ship. Weisenberg let it subside before he uttered his caution: “Hold on. How often does anybody come by’! Probably most transits get, made directly, just because the average machine can take you to more worlds than you could exhaust the possibilities of in a million-year lifetime. Maybe this is used once a century or thereabouts. On the time scale the Others know, that’d make constructing it worthwhile.”

  “We can’t tell before we’ve tried,” Brodersen said, calmer.

  “We can’t lie in free fall the whole while,” Caitlín warned. “Indeed, our latest boost was much too short for keeping us healthy.”

  Brodersen considered. “Right.” In sheer exuberance: “You’ve got to kick that foul habit of yours, Pegeen of being always right.

  “Okay, we need weight, and we clon’t want to go into spin mode before we must, but keep our options open as long as possible. So we’ll boost back and forth in the neighborhood. Say—um—four hours outward, turnsover, and four hours back decelerating. That way we’d never be more than a million kilometers off, nor have too high a relative velocity. Shouldn’t be any problem to detect a spacecraft appearing and punch a signal at her.”

  “Why should they use electromagnetic waves for communications?” Dozsa objected. “I’m told the Betans don’t.”

  “The Betans do keep the capability of’receiving it, in case of need,” Rueda said. “Moreover, our jet radiation ought to
register on instruments.”

  “And we could rig a big, fat, blinkrng light on our hull.” Leino added excitedly.

  “Well,” Brodersen called. “how about it?”

  Chinook flew. She went at three-fourths of a gee, less than her captain had assumed. Caitlín had pointed out that that wassufficient and would make reaction mass last longer. Folk walked lightly, on their feet and in their hearts.

  Entering Joelle’s cabin, the paramedic found the holothete standing amidst its bleakness. Everybody else usually kept something on the data retrieval, be it simply music or a static work of art. Here the screen was blank and mute. Unless you counted the neatly made bed, the room held no trace of personality.

  In a loose blue kaftan Caitlín had made for her, Joelle seemed like a sculptured Boddhisatva. Her untidiness was gone, she waswashed and groomed and reasonably well rested; but gone, too, was the last real earthliness. Huge-eyed within a coif of gray hair, her face was ivory pale, nearly fleshless, sexless, inhumanly serene. The hand she lifted and the smile she gave in greeting traced abstract curves. Her vbice was melodious oncemore, but the melody was for no mortal ear.

  “You are most obliging to come,” she said: a formula.

  “No trouble to me,” Caitlín replied. “We do need you built up physically, and if you’d liefer begin in privacy, why, the first exercises I suppose I’ll be prescribing for you require no gym equipment.” She set down her medikit and opened the case. “We start with a checkup.”

  Joelle pulled her garment over her head and dropped it on a chair. Caitlín studied the scarecrow form, circled about, ran searching fingers across the skin. Joelle stayed quiescent save to move her arms out of the way on request.

  “No harm in reasonable underweight,” Caitlín remarked. “I could wish my arse were a tad less veritable. Yours, though, is positively ethereal.” Her conversational gambit failing, she turned brisk. “We do have to restore the wasted muscle tissue, the which means you will eat more proteins; and a slight layer of fat is normal in a woman. Tell me, what are some of your favorite dishes? I can try to make meals you find appetizing.”

  “It makes no difference,” Joelle said. “Inform me of how mucti to consume of what and I will.”

  A frown flickered over Caitlín’s forehead, but she had no immediate answer. Proceeding with the examination, she found basic good health. That included neurological signs. The tensions, tics, and twitches were gone, reflexes were excellent a slow and even cardiac rhythm maintained blood pressure that a person two decades: younger might covet.

  “End of the routine,” she said at last. “You can dress. I’ll be doing the standard tests on cell and fluid samples but I make nodoubt they’ll prove fine.”

  Joelle slipped the kaftan back on. Then I may as well commence your program if you’ll spell it out.”

  “M-m-m, I’m not through yet. Have a chair. I want to talk with you.”

  When they were seated and Joelle had passively waited for Caitlín to speak, the latter did. “I can prescribe for your body, but that may be slim use when I know nothing of your mind. For instance, how faithful will you be about instructions?”

  “Very.” The prornise was neither fervent nor reluctant. “I assume they won’t interfere unduly with my work, and appreciate that their purpose is to keep a breakdown from interfering.”

  Caitlín’s mouth tightened. “There’s what frets me the most. How much holothesis can you take before something happens to you’! What might that be’? would it be irreversible? Has italready begun’? Joelle, none of’ your Emissary mates claim they ever knew you intimately but they agree you’ve turned into a complete stranger. I’ve never heard tell of anyone spending well-nigh every waking hour in linkage. No at home the time is limited by rules, and I wonder mightily whether Dan should enforce them on you.”

  “Do you fear damage?” the other woman asked, unruffled.

  “Aye, Induced schizophrenia maybe, or a condition that mocks it or Who can say? I’m hardly more than nurse who’s had some extra training. The medical references aboard swamp me in technicalities on this subject, then give no diagnostic symptoms nor prognoses for the siluation is unprecedented. Nevertheless, you are behavilng more iind more…autistic.” Caitlín leaned forward. “Be honest Arc we, the rest of us anything else to you than part of thc: machinery?”

  “Of course,” Joelle responded, still placid. The smile crossed her like a moonbearn briefly through clouds. “I like all of you wish you well, aim to doeverything in my power to get you safely home. To that end, I had bettcr develop the power. I assure you, far from going crazy, each day I beco’me more sane than any of our species has been before in its whole existence.”

  “Och, a whale of a claim to be making.”

  “Yes, it does sound grandiose when put in that ape-chatter man calls language. I wish you could have the experience. You’re a poetess, who might be able to convey a hint of the feeling, if not of the reality. I have no eloquence, and have had less practice than average throughout my life at expressing myself to ordinary people. Furthermore, unlinked, I am, well, less than half alive.” Joelle paused to search for phrases. “I suppose Susanne Granville has tried to explain how linkage is for her. That’s the palest shadow of what it is for me. You don’t think she’s mentally ill, do you? Or—when you’re composing—when you’re making love, you surely more fully than most—those are transcendental experiences, aren’t they? You seek them over and over, every chance you get. They don’t unhinge your reason, do they? On the contrary, aren’t you the stronger and stabler for them?”

  “They’re natural,” Caitlín argued. “They evolved in us from the earliest life ever to stir on Earth. And you’ve renounced them altogether. That can’t be wholesome. Oh, yes, priests and nuns and saintly mystics, utterly dedicated scientists and artists, they’ve sometimes kept a balance. Maybe asceticism suited their temperaments better than common pleasures. Yet they did keep within the human world, seeking human goals, surrounded by things human senses can respond to—not wired in a machine. I’d never be forbidding you your holothesis, Joelle. I’m but thinking you should use the rest of yourself, too.”

  For the first time, pain touched the countenance before her and the voice that answered, though barely. “I tried. Harder than you know. Year by year, the rewards of that shriveled and the hurts grew, till I was a silly, scrabbling crone when I was out of my linkage.” Calm returned. “Meanwhile, on this flight, I began really using, really mastering what I’d learned on Beta. And Fidelio taught me more. And the incredible inputs, the whole cosmos opening to me, facets of the Noumenon that neither Betan nor human had dreamed of. Trying for insight, I’ve been discovering new techniques-ways to discern, think, understand-philosophies-and they give me deeper insights, which lead me onward—”

  The peace in Joelle rose to a quiet ardor. “Caitlín, believe me, I’ve never been so happy, and the farther beyond what you call humanness, the happier and saner I become. No, I’m not better than you, but I am different, and how would you feel if a command robbed you of your gift for making songs and making love’? I … I will soon be able to overcome a thing in me that I know is wrong: that I pity you. Poor sweet beautiful animal. I pity you. But I don’t think the Others would, so I should not either.

  “The Others—We may not find them. We may die in space, or on the world of some species that merely has superior technology to us. I can endure those things if either happens. But I’m convinced that every race, when it becomes able to, goes in search of theothers, as we’ve blundered into doing. What higher purpose can it have?

  “And… if we should find them, if we should… I will be ready to speak with them.”

  —Only later, having left a pledgc: behind her not to limit Joelle as long as no danger signals appeared, did Caitlín think of the last sentence, the unspoken one. I will be ready tojoin them.

  Chinook flew.

  The common room was asparkle with newly made decorations. Organ tones pealed fro
m a data retrieval, through whose hologrammic screen glimpses, of Earth and Demeter slowly paraded, a flower garden, an ocean sunset, a mountain peak, a tree in a meadow. Elsewhere, the stars and the galactic heart shone. Clad in their best, Dozsa, Weisenberg, Leino, Frieda, and Caitlín flanked a table behind which Brodersen stood. In front of him, Rueda and Susanne were hand in hand. At the rear of the chamber waited a feast which had been days in the preparing.

  Joelle alone was absent, but aware in her ascendancy of what went on. She had given the party her awkward benediction. A permanent watch must be maintaineld against the chance of an alien vessel emerging, to set instantly in action everything programmed, and she could replace the two who ordinarily were posted.

  Brodersen lifted the papers he needed. He being neither priest nor magistrate and the couple not sharing the same faith, it wouldn’t have felt right to look up and use a traditional service. Caitlín had written this, and inscribed it with calligraphic flourishes as an extra gift for her friends.

  Sheshould’vepresided, roo, he thought. She’dput ona better show. I’m a slouch of a parson. I … damnation, my eyes are stinging and blurring, I’m not about to cry, am I? Lis. Lis, the sunbeams through the chapel window when we—

  “Dearly beloved,” he began, “upon this day of our exile we are gathered to create a home. Lost, but lost among splendors; imperilled, but charged with hope: we ask the blessing of God, or we ask the blessing of life, on these two of us, Carlos andSusanne. We thank them for thecourage they have renewed, the spirit they have brightened. Shipmates, may joy be always yours! Now let us witness your vows, the while that we pledgeanew to each other—”

  A siren screamed.

  Chinook was not far from the T machine, moving outward, to make a whole four hours available for ceremony andfestivities before turnover interrupted. At electronic speed, Joelle switched the proper viewscreen to full magnification. The querning cylinder and a pair of its beacons seemed to leap into the room. But nobody glimpsed more than a blur, that whippedpast sight and was gone. After a moment wherein music was obscene against thesilence, Joelle’s voice came, flat: “A ship. She completed transit in thirty-seven seconds.”