by Nancy Kress
Kaufman evaded. “That’s not clear yet. We may do some on-planet tests. And, of course, we may be wrong.”
“You are wrong,” Ann said bitterly. “You’re wrong to think you can just remove at your pleasure something that’s holding together the entire fabric of Worlder society!”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do!” She jumped up from her pillow, forcing Kaufman to also stand. They stood facing each other, inches apart. “The shared-reality mechanism has evolved here and nowhere else in the galaxy. When Enli was in the dead ‘eye’ of its field, right above it, she had no head pain no matter how many unshared concepts were discussed. When you went into the thickest part of its field, your brain stopped thinking entirely—yes, Dieter told me that, too. The buried artifact affects thinking, Lyle! And these people have had it affect theirs throughout their entire evolution. What will happen to them if you remove it, and they no longer have operable shared-reality in their brains?”
They’ll get fewer headaches, Kaufman thought, but didn’t say it aloud. Ann Sikorski had genuine empathy. She cared what happened to the aliens.
He suddenly wondered what Marbet would be feeling about them if she were planetside.
“Ann, let me just make two points,” he said quietly. “First, let’s assume you’re right and the aliens have evolved their shared-reality mechanism because of some planet-wide field generated by the artifact. If it’s truly an evolved brain pattern, then it’s in their genome and will continue just as if the artifact were still there.”
“No! It’s an evolved mechanism designed to operate only in the presence of the field! Otherwise, Enli wouldn’t have felt no head pain in the field’s eye!”
“Second, if what you just said is true, then removing that field will have no more effect on all the Worlders than it did on Enli. She wasn’t harmed in what you call the ‘eye.’ She merely didn’t have head pain. But she still felt healthy, acted normal, thought without difficulty. She wasn’t harmed, and neither will the rest of the aliens.”
Ann’s pale face flamed with anger. “You’re being deliberately obtuse, Lyle, and you know it. It isn’t their individual selves that will be destroyed if you remove that artifact, although I’m by no means convinced that they’re all as mentally resilient as Enli. What will be destroyed is their entire society. Every single one of their social patterns is built on shared reality. Every single one. If you remove shared reality, you destroy their patterns of interacting, of trading, of raising children, of mating, of all economic and political structures. Violence will emerge, with no social controls on it, because none were ever necessary before. Can you imagine what that will mean?”
“Nothing happened to Voratur when the first wave effect, the one that destroyed Nimitri, hit World. You just told me that at least at first look, Voratur’s Lagerfeld scan matches the one you took of him on your first expedition.”
“If they match, it’s because the artifact was there! It protected the Worlders from the wave effect!”
“Now that you don’t know. That’s speculation. We have no proof it was the buried artifact that resulted in no change in brain scans.”
She was silent; he was right about that. Kaufman pressed his advantage. “Have you discussed this with Dieter?”
She said, so bitterly that Kaufman knew husband and wife had quarreled over this, “Dieter’s not an anthropologist. He’s a geologist.”
And I’m a soldier. “Ann, we’re at war. And we’re losing.”
“Does that justify destroying another race’s entire civilization?”
“Yes,” Kaufman said, and knew he believed it, and disliked himself for believing it and Ann for making him aware of the fact. He looked at her with distaste.
“You’re finally registering emotion, Lyle. Look at you. You don’t think removing the artifact is right, either.”
“I think it’s necessary.”
“It’s not ours! It’s theirs!”
There was no answer to that, and nowhere else for the discussion to go except into personal acrimony. Kaufman turned to leave. But Ann surprised him.
“Wait. I want to make a request.”
He turned back to face her. “What is it?”
“Before you remove the artifact, let me take Enli, Voratur, and at least six other Worlders away from the field, to see what happens to them. For at least twenty-four hours, so I can observe their interactions when they no longer have shared reality. Let me take them up to the Alan B. Shepard.”
It was the last thing Kaufman had expected. “It’s against all regs. And a full-scale contamination of their society, too. You even objected to giving them comlinks.”
“That was before I was sure you were going to do far worse damage by removing the artifact.”
Kaufman was thinking fast. Grafton would have a fit, of course. But this clearly came under Special Projects authority. If the aliens came up out of their “field” and didn’t kill each other, it might get Ann on Kaufman’s side. On the other hand, if they did end up killing each other, he would definitely lose support. How would it play at Headquarters? Probably that he had gathered all possible information before making his decision, which was always good.
Stalling, he said, “You suspected this might happen, Ann. That’s why you bargained for a Lagerfeld scan for Enli as well as Voratur. You wanted additional baseline data.”
“Yes.”
“To get—how many?—eight or ten aliens to agree to go into space, we’d have to give Voratur … I don’t know what. A lot of trade goods. I thought you didn’t want to further contaminate their culture.”
“Better to contaminate it than wipe it out completely,” Ann said. God, she was stubborn. One of those people who lose all mildness when they believe they’re on the side of the angels.
“Besides, Lyle,” she said, and now she looked not furious but shrewd, “don’t you want to know how the Worlders will react? In the name of science? Aren’t you the big science worshipper?”
She had let shrewdness slide into sarcasm. But she was right; Kaufman wanted to know. And if he lifted the artifact into space with no human observer on the planet (no reason to leave anyone behind), he would never know.
“All right,” he said. “If you can get the aliens to agree, a maximum of ten of them can be lifted to the ship for an observation period of no more than thirty-six hours, confined to a secure area that has been cleared of all advanced technology.”
“Thank you,” Ann said, and from her smile, Kaufman saw suddenly that he had made a bad mistake. She was certain that if the Worlders were badly affected by being away from their artifact, Kaufman would change his mind about removing it from World. She was wrong. Kaufman knew he would not change his mind.
He didn’t tell her that. Never enrage an ally—even a deluded ally—until you absolutely had to. Instead, he went to comlink Grafton that there were going to be more aliens aboard his strictly regulation, severely Navy ship.
THIRTEEN
IN THE NEURY MOUNTAINS
Capelo didn’t know what to do with Amanda and Sudie while the artifact was being lifted out of its hole.
Even he recognized that this was a bizarre reason to hold up the greatest scientific find in human history. But the problem was real. He couldn’t keep them with him in the valley; nobody knew what this alien son-of-a-bitch would do when they hoisted it. Even base camp was too close, not to mention having its perimeter down. That left only sending them back up to the Alan B. Shepard, which would move to the relative safety of the other side of the planet. Just in case. But Capelo cringed at asking Kaufman to send the shuttle up just for Sudie and Amanda. Kaufman, who didn’t have kids and didn’t like kids and had told him not to bring his kids down from the ship in the first place.
Nonetheless, Capelo had no choice. He comlinked Kaufman. “Lyle? I have a favor to ask. I don’t want my daughters here for the artifact hoist tomorrow, or even at camp. Can they go back up on the shuttle?” More curt than h
e’d intended. But Capelo hated asking favors.
To his surprise, Kaufman said, “Sure, Tom. The shuttle’s leaving anyway in a few hours.”
It was? That was not according to plan. But Capelo was too tired for questions. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days. Well, the plan was to get one tonight and then hoist the artifact out of its hole tomorrow morning. And he’d certainly sleep better if he didn’t have to worry about the girls. Still, it wasn’t like Kaufman, that supreme diplomat, to simply agree to requests without negotiating something in return.
“Thanks, Lyle. We’ll be there.”
Now all he had to do was stay awake long enough to walk the girls through the tunnel system to the shuttle. He shambled to the shallow cave which camping out had made their temporary home. Amanda sat at the cave mouth working on her schoolscreen, her shadow long from the lowering sun. Sudie, farther back with Jane Shaw, was playing some kind of game with glittery rocks. Capelo knew what those were. The girls’ possessions lay scattered all over the ground.
“C’mon, Mandy, we’re moving house. Pack up your old kit bag.”
Amanda looked up. “Moving? Where, Daddy?”
“Back to base camp.”
“Why?” Amanda said. Always the logical child. Capelo looked with exhausted love at her smooth fair braids. The older she grew, the more she looked like Karen.
“Back to base camp. And then on the shuttle up to the ship.”
Jane Shaw had heard. She looked inquiringly at Tom. “For safety?”
“Yes.”
Jane—what would he do without Jane?—immediately began gathering up clothing and toys. But Amanda said, “I don’t want to go up, Daddy. I want to see the artifact lifted out of the hole.”
“It’s too dangerous, honey. You’ll be safer aboard ship.”
“Safety is not the primary fact of a scientific life.”
It was something he had said to her. Pride fought with irritation. “You’re not a scientist.”
“I want to be one someday!”
“Well, you’re not one now. Pack up.”
Sudie started to cry. “I want to stay with Daddy!”
“Sudie … not now, for the love of God!”
“You don’t believe in God,” Amanda said primly.
“I want to stay with Daddy!” Sudie rushed forward and threw her arms around his knees, almost knocking him over.
Capelo glared down at the top of her head, which was dirty. Sudie had taken to camping out like the small savage she was. She’d exuded hectic, extravagant squalor. In the last light of the sun, her springy filthy hair stood out from her head, glinting like iron filings.
Amanda said, “I know! We could stay in the vug!”
“The vug! The vug!” Sudie cried. “I want to stay in the vug!”
“You can’t stay in the vug,” Capelo said firmly. The vug had already caused enough problems.
Gruber had discovered the vug on his first expedition. He offered to lead them to it, promising a fairly easy trip through ample tunnels and a spectacular surprise at the end. Capelo had agreed only because Amanda and Sudie had been so bored, confined to their camping cave in the upland valley. He hadn’t expected much.
Gruber had kept his powertorch trained unusually low until they were traversing a medium-sized cave. Then he abruptly stopped, turned the torch to maximum light, and swung it toward the ceiling. “Look!”
Capelo gasped. The children screamed with delight. Jewels sparkled on the cave ceiling, on the walls, in heaps on the floor. As his dazzled eyes adjusted to the bright light, he saw that the jewels were millions of gold crystals. Spattered among them were glowing flakes of pure gold as big as thumbnails. Gold nuggets glittered on the floor. Piles of white quartz sand glowed like spun glass.
“This is the vug,” Dieter said happily. “The biggest one I have ever heard of!”
“What … how…” Capelo sputtered.
“It is the inside of a geode. There must have been the caldera of a volcano right here, once. The gold precipitates out from circulating water heated by magma.”
Capelo touched a wall. Gold flaked over his fingers like shining rain.
“It’s incredible.”
“Is it not?” Gruber said, swinging his torch proprietarily around the walls.
Amanda and Sudie raced to the walls. Gruber was so pleased with the effect of his surprise that he let the girls stuff the pockets of their miniature s-suits with gold and jewels.
Capelo said, “How long has this been here? When did it form?”
“Hundreds of thousands of years ago.”
“And the natives haven’t ever found it and mined?”
“It is forbidden for them to enter the sacred mountains. Also, they would have learned centuries ago that the mountains gave them radiation sickness. A good example of religious taboo guarding health!” Gruber laughed.
“That’s enough, girls,” Capelo said. “Don’t be greedy.” But he had taken a sparkling diamond for himself. It would be valuable on Mars, but not as valuable as the glittery gems were right here on World. They kept Amanda and Sudie absorbed, inventing endless games that occupied them and saved Jane Shaw’s sanity.
The problem was that ever since that trip, the girls had begged constantly to return to the vug. Kaufman, mildly tight-lipped, had vetoed this. “Tom, Dieter never should have taken you three there in the first place. We’re trying to physically disturb World as little as possible. Certainly not to thieve from it.”
“We’ve strip-mined their so-called sacred mountains!”
“I know,” Kaufman said wearily. “Unavoidable necessity. Carrying off native wealth is not. Your daughters can keep their gems, but no more trips to the vug. I’ve told Dieter so.”
Sanctimonious hypocrite. Capelo had been half tempted to take Amanda and Sudie back anyway, by himself. But he’d been too busy, and he wasn’t sure of the tunnels, and the faithful Jane had been the one to take the brunt of Sudie’s wheedling and begging.
Now Jane said briskly, “We’re going on the shuttle, girls, just as your father said. Sudie, are you forgetting that Marbet’s aboard the ship? She’s been there all this time. I wonder what she’s been doing?”
Sudie instantly unclasped Capelo’s knees. “Marbet?”
“Do you think she’s programmed that halo lion she promised you?”
“I want to see,” Sudie said, and began picking up her things and stuffing them in her bag, a model of obedience.
“I’ll go,” Amanda said, “but I don’t like it.”
“Understood,” Capelo said, somewhere between gratitude and exasperation.
The trip through the mountain tunnels was uneventful. By now the route between valley and base camp had been used so much that it had developed litter and graffiti, both against orders. Capelo passed a scrawl that said PHYSICS AIN’T PHYSICAL ENOUGH FOR ME. He grinned; no wonder he liked crew better than officers. The crudely scratched grumble cheered him up.
The cheer faded when they emerged from the last tunnel, walked to the shuttle area, and found Ann Sikorski and Lyle Kaufman inexplicably standing beside the shuttle with nine aliens.
With nine aliens.
“Wait here,” he snapped at Jane. “Kaufman! Wait!”
The colonel turned, spotted Capelo, and hastily walked toward him and away from the aliens.
“What the hell’s going on here!”
Kaufman said, “These natives are going up to the Shepard as part of Dr. Sikorski’s research.”
“Boarding a Navy ship? What kind of research is that?”
“Dr. Sikorski’s. Tom, stop shouting.”
“My kids are going on that ship!”
“And so are the aliens, and Ann, and me, and a security team, and you, if you want to. The shuttle will return in plenty of time for tomorrow’s hoist.”
“I don’t want my daughters traveling with a bunch of aliens nobody knows anything about.”
“Then leave your daughters here,” Kaufman sa
id. “And as it happens, we know a great deal about Worlders, including the fact that they’re peaceful. Aboard the shuttle they will be strapped in. On ship they will be segregated from everyone but Ann and her security team. And if you don’t like it, Tom, either stay here or stay quiet. I have enough to contend with without flack from you. And the natives are nervous enough already.”
Rage filled Capelo. He struggled to hold it in check, to speak calmly. “But why are they going up?”
“To see how they behave away from the buried artifact. Out of its field.”
“Oh, God, not this again. Not the undetectable-field-affects-all-Worlders’-brains theory again.”
Kaufman said nothing. Capelo said, “Then how do you know the absence of this hypothetical field won’t drive them all berserk? God, I can’t believe I’m even discussing this lunacy.”
“Then don’t discuss it. I didn’t come several hundred light years to argue with you.”
“I did. Arguing was my sole purpose in coming to this rat’s ass end of the galaxy. Okay, Kaufman, you win. But let me know that the aliens are all strapped in before I bring Amanda and Sudie aboard.” These same aliens had once slit the throats of two human kids.
“Of course,” Kaufman said. A gracious winner. Damn him.
Capelo walked back to the girls. “There are going to be aliens—natives—going up to the ship with you.”
“Really?” Amanda said. “Great! Can I talk to them?”
“They don’t speak English.” Was that true? Of all of them?
“Come on, Daddy, let’s hurry up!”
He held them back, with Jane’s help, until Kaufman signaled from the shuttle ramp. The aliens filled the passenger chairs, grimacing horribly, wrinkling their bald skulls, and singing. No, chanting. Capelo kept a firm grip on Sudie, who wanted to rush over and make friends. Amanda studied the aliens carefully. Capelo let Jane do all the work of strapping the kids in. He was so tired.
“They’re chanting a ritual song requesting strength in undertaking some dangerous task,” Ann Sikorski explained.
“I thought there was no danger among the ever-peaceful Worlders,” Capelo retorted.
