The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

  —Already the very laws and constants of physics are changing. Not you nor we could exist for an instant outside this fortress of forces. What is to come will be wholly strange. Yet we will seek to become a part of it, to understand and cherish it. We are building a machine—

  —which is only a means to an end, Joelle, the end which has no ending.

  After a silence:—Do you still desire a glimpse?

  Yes!

  —Perceive—

  She screamed. That was not from hurt or fear, it was from hopelessness.

  —Farewell. Fare ever well.

  Caitlín stirred. “I should go to her,” she said.

  “Huh? What d’you mean?” Brodersen asked.

  “This was laid on me, to help Joelle,” she told him. “They knew what she’d suffer. They can’t heal her. Maybe there is no remedy. But I must try, Dan.”

  “What about me?… Oh, I don’t want to pester you, I don’t have to have consolation right this minute, but…you’ve changed, Pegeen.”

  “Yes.” She gripped him hard. “Away from you. I’ll be fighting my way back, I will. Now, though—you are more strong than she is.”

  “The hour has come for you to leave,” said the voices of the Others. “Bear with you our blessing.”

  XLVII

  HUGE AND RED-GOLDEN in purple-blue heaven, the sun of Beta stood at late morning. One of the rainstorms which ruled over that part of the long day had just ended. Scattered clouds lingered, softly aglow, and a rainbow bridged the western horizon. The land gleamed wet, as if the deep hues of turf, shrubs, fronds on trees had been bestrewn with diamonds. A breeze blew cool, bearing odors as of spices. Eastward shone an estuary and rose the silhouettes of buildings, but closer at hand there was little to show that here was a chief seat of a starfaring civilization. An ancient tower did rear its bulk of gray, vine-wrapped stone aboveground.

  It was the time of growth, between icy night and parched afternoon. Everywhere fresh plant life was springing up and swelling, almost visibly fast. The sky was full of wings, and song resounded from shaw and meadow.

  Joelle and Caitlín approached the tower on foot. A gravity less than Earth’s put spring in their stride. Yet they walked through the season unsmiling, the younger woman sober, the older woman somber.

  “And why can you not be laying down your woe?” Caitlín demanded. “Aye, a shock did you have, to find what you know is but a drop of spindrift that in a moment will fall back into the sea and be lost. Yet is that any real surprise? Will it be less thrill tomorrow when you make a discovery?”

  Joelle shook her head. “Worse,” she said in her bleakness. “I found I am not only ignorant, I’m stupid. No, not even that. It would imply something in common with the Others. In spite of our holothetic tricks, we remain lower animals. We’re like monkeys trying to write Shakespeare by random hits on a scriber console and unable to keep at it five minutes in a stretch. Or we’re like blindworms trying to see.”

  For a second Caitlín doubled her fists and stared into the wind. When she had her face under control, she replied, “They don’t look down on us. How often must I tell you? To them, every kind of life is noble. It’s our business to be what we are, proudly.”

  “Easy enough for you to say.”

  Caitlín held back an answer.

  “You’re outgoing, physical, sanguine, everything I’m not,” Joelle went on. “And what I believed I was turns out to be an illusion. So what I am is nothing.”

  Caitlín flushed, scowled, and snapped, “Are you not overdue for climbing out of that wallow of self-pity?”

  “Oh, I’ll perform my duties competently, never fear.”

  Softened, Caitlín touched Joelle’s cheek. “Learn to be human again. Brain’s a single facet of existence, neither the largest nor the brightest. I’ll help where I can. All your shipmates will.”

  Scorn lifted, an acid taste. “Yes, beginning with plenty of sex. Your pet panacea, isn’t it? Doubtless you can persuade your studs to do the old lady the favor of screwing her on a regular basis. No, thanks!”

  “Did I make that suggestion?” Caitlín said quietly. “I’d not be doing so. It’s as ugly to me as to you. Or uglier, maybe. I don’t suppose you will be wanting a man as a man any more, ever. The which is no shame on you, is only your taste and choice. But dreadful it is to see you frozen in that aloneness. Let us warm you free. We can, if you will be warm toward us: if you will care.”

  “I’m still a holothete. The rest of you are still animals to me. Well-meaning, but animals; and I never did care much for pets. As for my colleagues on Earth, how can I like them when I no longer respect them? Or respect myself? Sticky sentimentalism isn’t going to change any of this…. Here we are.”

  A flyer was parked outside the building, whose door had been drawn back. The women entered chill, echoey dimness and took a spiral ramp to the second story. There were those linkage units the Betans and the Emissary scientists had devised for their joint use. Memories of Fidelio rushed over Joelle. We would have shared the same loss, aided each other in our pain. But he is dead.

  Three natives waited, a female looming between the lesser forms of two males. Sunbeams struck through a window to sheen off their mahogany fur. The iodine tang of them filled nostrils like the air on a beach. With upper paws and lower hands, they made gestures of greeting. The humans returned the courtesy as best they were able.

  Joelle took her place. Caitlín helped connect her, then stood by. Holothesis awoke. Joelle dismissed any idea of examining the Noumenon, that shabby fiction. She simply wanted full command of the local language. Nonetheless she found the state possessing her, felt its power throughout her being, yes, this was where she belonged.

  Through the vocalizing attachment she produced the full-toned, overtoned, sometimes fluting land speech. “Fair weather be yours, matriarch and her steadfast males.”

  “May the tide upbear you, female of intellect,” the Betans responded as ritually.

  “We regret we are late,” Joelle explained. “The rain delayed us in camp. Our flockmates were using the vehicles lent us, on various errands connected with getting us established, and I wondered about the possibility of a dangerously strong storm.”

  “We did not parch,” the female said.

  “We spent the time calming the billows within, against what we are going to hear,” added the larger of her husbands.

  “You are kind to meet us, as hard at work as you must be,” said his partner.

  “It is the least I can bring to the wife and the brothers in household of him who was my friend,” Joelle told them.

  Suddenly, blindingly, she realized she meant that. She had granted the request for an interview as a calculated gesture. Chinook’s crew needed plenty of goodwill if they were to persuade a whole world to become their ally. But now that she was here, with those whom Fidelio had loved—Her eyes stung and blurred. She wiped knuckles across them, irritatedly, and went on, glad that her artificial voice could be kept level:

  “Beside me is a female of our band hight Caitlín. He died in her arms. Before then, he had come to like her company next to mine, for he enjoyed the music she made and giving her his songs in exchange. I will interpret between you and her. Together we will seek to net for you the tale of how he fared. Ask whatever you wish.”

  Caitlín stepped forward till the widow bulked over her and she could proffer a box she had been carrying. “Take this, my lady,” she said low. “While still in our ship, I made printouts of what recordings we have of him and enlarged the best views to pictures, for you.”

  While Joelle translated, the Betans saw what it was. For a while they looked at the likenesses, silent. Then the female laid claws most gently on Caitlín’s head, stroked her with big unsteady hands, and rumbled and whistled—sea noises—“May you never lack for clean saltwater. May every gale blow you happiness. This in the name and presence of God.”

  “Och, it was a sorely little thing to do. One feels so helpless.”<
br />
  “Perhaps you do not catch what help you lavish if you share your memories of him. You raise those days of his that for us lay drowned.”

  —The meeting lasted long, hours, because the Betans wished everything, each glimpse the humans could call back. Their questions flew like raindrops on a strandwind. A camera taped the scene, but Joelle suspected they had no real need of that; what they were doing was evoking Fidelio in themselves. Caitlín unslung the sonador from her shoulder and gave them the songs and tunes she had given him. In the end she laid the instrument aside and sang for them his lullabye.

  When she was done, silence dwelt for a while in the tower. Then the widow stirred, lifted an upper arm as in benediction, and said, “Mercy be upon you always, you who are merciful. I will plead your cause before the Sovereign Council, and do believe it will be moved to aid you.”

  “What?” exclaimed Joelle, startled. “You?”

  “Had you not caught the fullness of truth about me? That bodes well, that you twain would come here only out of kindness. Know, to honor the once-being of him who traveled with you, the League of Spacefarers has lately named me its delegate. Since its members will belike heed my leadership, whatever I say in the Council should carry a full cargo.”

  A lucky break. I won’t disillusion her about my motives…or, rather, the motives I served, not expecting that anything could really matter to me any more. Besides, the implication here is alarming. If Caitlín understood—Joelle cast a glance at the younger woman and saw her gazing out the window, face as remote from ordinary emotion as a death mask. Briefly, compassion had brought Caitlín back from those realms wherein her soul had wandered since she left the Others; but now she had returned thither.

  Joelle swung attention toward the Betans. “Is there that much doubt your people will help us?” she asked.

  “There has been,” the female answered frankly. “The tale you brought is a terrible one. We were hoping to learn from you how we may become what we must become. Today many wonder if, instead, we—our descendants, our whole race—may not learn treachery, oppressiveness, violence, such as you report without seeming to feel they are anything very unusual. Some among us would quarantine you.”

  “Is your species perfect?” Joelle retorted, more in the interests of accuracy than in any defensive spirit.

  “Of course not. You know what sickness is in us and what kind of parchedness has brought it about. The riddle is, would the waters you offer be healing or be poison?”

  “We have more to offer than just ourselves.”

  “Yes, the chart of the ways you have come. Those do buoy your cause. Nevertheless—” The widow held out both hands in an embracing gesture. “Well, this day you showed us three how much decency is in your kind. Should we of this world not help it to flourish as best we can? So I will ask the Council.”

  Joelle was astounded at her own relief.

  A few minutes later, the family said a quiet adieu and departed. They would have given the Terrestrials a ride, but the latter preferred walking.

  When she left holothesis, Joelle felt none of the depression that usually followed. She couldn’t think a fraction as well, but she was not driven to. Amplified reason had been holding down what began to flow up within her.

  —The sun had scarcely stirred. Thunderheads were blue-black and lightning-runed in the west, clouds blew off them and across heaven before a shrill, swift air, a new storm was bound here. It wouldn’t arrive before the women reached camp, though, and meanwhile it was a breath of freshness. The living landscape moved in waves before it.

  Caitlín took Joelle’s arm. Again the girl’s countenance, her entire manner, held a quite mortal concern, with only a hint that most of her was elsewhere. “Go on and cry,” she said.

  “What?” Joelle blinked.

  “I saw you struggle not to, often and often. Your machine lent you the strength. But why not yield? You know I dropped a few tears.”

  “You are different.”

  “How much, at heart?”

  I wonder, thought Joelle.

  “I’d not see you grieving for grief’s own sake,” Caitlín went on. “Yet a dear sign it is to me this day, that shows you can still love.”

  “Well—I—” Joelle swallowed. “Those were Fidelio’s kin. Not human.”

  “What matter that? They are beings with awareness. They wish for your friendship. Grant it, receive it back, and come alive again.”

  No, damnation, I don’t want to bawl! I—

  “Our races will be in closer and closer contact,” Caitlín said thoughtfully. “Earth will need a sort of ambassador on this planet, who would best be the chief of a permanent scientific mission. Sure, and nobody has qualifications to match yours.”

  “If the Betans will accept us.”

  “They will; be certain of that,” Caitlín said. What wordless knowledge lay beneath her confidence? “Not only because they feel a need to study us in our lives. Indeed, while that ought to prove valuable, it will hardly be the single simple medicine they expected in their first joy. Such medicines don’t exist, do they, now?

  “But between us and the new races we can lead them to… why, worlds stand open! The Others would not have shown us how to go back through every gate we took on our search, did they not feel we are trustworthy enough—the whole of humanity and Beta. We must leave them in their outpost, aye, but elsewhere—”

  Caitlín’s voice trailed off. Her stride broke. She stood for a moment rigid, eyes turned skyward, mouth stretched out of shape, fingers hooked as if to grasp the wind. Joelle could well-nigh read her mind: We must leave them be. Never again can we know them.

  With a rough gesture, as if calling pain to heel, Caitlín resumed walking and talking. Her tone even held some enthusiasm:

  “The dancers of Danu. The Teachers of Pandora. The Oracle of the pulsar, and those from outside who come there. The navigators of that ship we saw go by at the hub of the galaxy. And more and more! Joelle, I could envy you, such adventures of mind and spirit can be yours… will be yours. I swear to you, the Others also live at their highest when they are questing. What else can you ask for? And—those two of them we met—children of humankind—in a way more deep than blood, they descend from you.”

  It may be thus. She may be right. Here on Beta, challenge, affection, inner peace.

  “And from Fidelio,” Caitlín finished.

  Then Joelle wept.

  XLVIII

  THE EYE SAW NO CHANGE. Sol stood radiant against a darkness where stars never winked in their countless brilliances, the Milky Way rivered silver, the nebulae and the sister galaxies glimmered remote, and the gigantic cylinder of the T machine whirled among its beacons, a-circle in the path of Earth but forever hidden therefrom. Any sense that anything irretrievable had taken place could only be a foolishness begotten of uncertainty and emotional exhaustion. Several hours ago, a ship manned by fugitive criminals had tried to escape, blundered through a random gate, and lost herself till the end of time. That was all. Nothing that mattered had happened. Nothing.

  Except lives put at hazard. Except mutterings in the crew—something is being kept secret from us, but what, and why? Except a conscience too uneasy to let me sleep.

  Afloat alone in the control center, in silence, Aram Janigian, commanding watchship Copernicus, stared out through the viewscreen. Is Lawes awake aboard Alhazen? Does he wonder if we did right, and find what we’ve been told is not easy to believe, and curse himself for lacking the guts to put his career on the line, make the incident public, try to get an inquiry started? Or does he know the truth and rest soundly, in the expectation that by mornwatch he’ll get his orders to come home?

  Did this truth occur to him, that important things had happened, were happening, would go on happening for as long as there was a future? It was merely that their time scale was cosmic. The stars evolved without cease; after millions of years, most of those that showed brightest would have flared and died. Meanwhile the Orion Nebula a
nd its kin would have engendered new suns, new planets. In five billion years or thereabouts, the slow death throes of Sol would commence. By then it would long since have lost yonder constellations, having swung—how often? about twenty-five times?—around in a galaxy that was itself unrestingly changeable. Afterward—

  Before Janigian, a ship appeared.

  Automatic alarms whooped. Men on duty yelled over the intercom. No pilot fish had warned. Nor should any have. That great blunt cylinder with the cryptic protrusions and the blue haze around it was never built by humans. But pictures of its kind lay manyfold in libraries and data banks on Earth and Demeter. A vessel much like that had passed through the Phoebean System.

  “All hands to stations!” Janigian shouted. “Stand by! Not a move by us till directed, but stand by! Outercom, get me Alhazenr

  The stranger accelerated smoothly off. A sister craft emerged and moved out of the way. A third arrived.

  “Lawes, is that you? Lawes, hold your fire, do you hear?”

  “D’you think I’m insane? Certainly I will. I’ll beam my superiors. You try if you can raise those, those creatures. Notify me instantly and cut me in if you do.”

  A fourth, a fifth, a sixth—A pause, and the aliens maneuvering into a formation that might be defensive but—

  The seventh vessel was different, smaller, spherical, awkward by comparison as she boosted at a standard gee… a Reina. “Lawes, Emissary’s come back. Holy Mother Mary, she’s led them to us!”

  “Against every order—”

  “No, wait, wait. That isn’t Emissary. Magnify your image; look close. That’s Chinook. Chinook, returned from the dead.”

  Is this a dream? No, too much solidity, harness that holds me, meters whose dials do not melt, familiar inertia of my body, though the universe explode outside.