Probability Sun

by Nancy Kress

  “Good-bye, Lyle,” she said abruptly. She mounted a bicycle, already laden with her personal belongings, and started toward the native village, Gofkit Jemloe.

  “Ann,” Kaufman called after her, “are you at least armed? It may not be safe for you … afterwards.”

  She didn’t even turn her head to look at him. Kaufman watched her until the bicycle was a slowly moving speck on the rolling plain.

  “Colonel, we’re ready to go,” DeVolites said on comlink.

  “I’m there,” Kaufman answered. Once aboard, he avoided looking at Gruber. His first concerns now were Capelo’s tests on the artifact and Marbet’s revelation, whatever it was.

  * * *

  She waited for him in the anteroom beyond the Faller’s prison. On the viewscreen Kaufman saw the Faller looking the same as always: a short leathery stump with three arms, a powerful tail, and an utterly alien head. Most of his body was still secured to the padded back wall, but one hand hung free. The Faller’s face was as unreadable as ever.

  Marbet turned as Kaufman entered. She wore a robe knotted loosely at the waist. Kaufman saw what she held in her hand and stopped dead.

  It was a model of the artifact.

  “Lyle,” Marbet said, but he hardly heard her. He stared at the model. Made of hardened foamcast, he guessed. Colored accurately, faithfully reproduced surface sheen, about thirty centimeters in diameter. Detailed with all seven protuberances, each with depression and nipples to scale.

  “You showed it to the Faller,” Kaufman said.

  “Yes.”

  “And no one stopped you?” He heard his voice scale upward.

  “The security team didn’t know what it was.”

  Of course not. Information about the artifact was given on a need-to-know basis; the security team aboard ship for a POW and his interpreter had no need to know about a secret alien artifact on the surface of the planet. Not what it looked like, nor what it allegedly did. But Marbet had come down to the surface with Ann, deliberately, to see the artifact that Ann had, as a fellow project-team member, described to her. Marbet had listened to the techs and scientists in the upland meadow. She knew as much as they did about what the artifact was and what it could do.

  Kaufman said, “What have you shown him?”

  “This. And—”

  “What else?”

  She didn’t flinch at his tone. “This.” A portable holostage sat against the wall; she turned it on. She’d programmed it well. A simulation of the artifact floated in one corner. It emitted a beam, traced only in dots. The dots struck a simulation of a human shuttle, and after a few moments—she’d even learned about the time lag, probably from either Rosalind or Albemarle—the tiny shuttle began to glow. Radioactivity. At the bottom of the stage flashed clusters of dots in consecutive order: one dot, two, three. All the clusters above seventy-five glowed the same as the shuttle. The hologram repeated, on a continuous loop.

  “You’re off the project,” Kaufman said. “As of now. Permanently. And you’re under arrest.”

  She didn’t react at all. “Lyle, you have to see the recordings. He recognized the artifact. It was implicit in his entire body language, his expression … he recognized it! The Fallers must have one, too!”

  “Marbet, did you hear me? You’re under arrest for treason.”

  “Lyle, didn’t you hear me? The Fallers already have an artifact like ours!”

  And that was how they’d derived the principles to create the beam-disrupter shield. From setting prime two. Capelo needed to know that. But first, Kaufman did what was necessary. He opened a comlink. “Commander Grafton, this is Colonel Kaufman. We have had a serious security breach among my people, I’m sorry to say. Instruct Security to arrest Marbet Grant, currently with me in the anteroom to the prisoner’s quarters. The charge is treason.”

  Marbet looked at him. Her smooth brown skin flushed with underlying color. Her bright green eyes glittered. “Lyle, you don’t want to do this. I can read it all over you. The work is too important.”

  “Don’t attempt to move until Security arrives, or I’ll restrain you myself.”

  “Do you know what you’re throwing away?”

  “Do you know what you’ve given away to the enemy?”

  “He’s a prisoner who’s never going to be released! What’s he going to do with the knowledge, send it by telepathy?”

  Before he could answer, two MPs burst through the door. Marbet didn’t try to resist them. As they led her away, Kaufman’s comlink shrilled and he closed his eyes, trying to think what to tell Grafton, tell Capelo, tell himself.

  * * *

  Later, after difficult sessions with both Grafton and his security chief, Kaufman returned to Marbet’s workroom and accessed her session records for the hours after she’d returned aboard ship.

  Marbet alone with the Faller, carrying nothing, going through a series of weird, unintelligible postures and gestures to which the prisoner made no apparent response. Apparent to Kaufman, anyway. What was she communicating to him? Reassurance that even though she hadn’t seen him in nearly a day, she was back now?

  Marbet carrying the model of the artifact, holding it up to the invisible barrier for the alien’s closer inspection. Kaufman replayed the first few minutes of this session, over and over. It seemed to him the alien did react. His body weight shifted, there were muscle movements in his face (involuntary?), his free hand curled oddly. What was he thinking? Feeling? Marbet had interpreted his behavior as recognition of the artifact, and Kaufman had no reason to believe her wrong. Or right.

  Marbet wheeling in the holostage. Activating it. The simulated beam striking the simulated shuttle, destabilizing all elements with more than seventy-five protons in their nuclei, as clearly indicated by the number diagram along the bottom. Did the Faller react again? Yes, although not as strongly. Maybe he had himself under greater control.

  Kaufman listened to her session notes. She described in minute detail every communicable change in nonverbal behavior which indicated to her that the Faller indeed recognized both artifact and its use as a weapon. Kaufman switched off the recorder. Most of what she relied on, he knew, could not be described in words. She was a Sensitive, and she was sure about the enemy recognition.

  The Fallers had already found an artifact, or artifacts, and had discovered its property as a shield against proton beams. (That almost made Capelo’s projected test irrelevant, although the physicist would never see it that way.) They had either installed multiple artifacts aboard selected ships, or had deduced the principles behind the shield operation and used them to create similar shields. They were using these shields in various theaters of war. Because of that, they were winning the war.

  Did the alleged artifact in enemy hands have the same additional settings as the one humans had found buried on World? There was no way to tell. If it had settings prime one and prime three, the destabilizing beam and the destabilizing spherical wave, they would not be very useful. Their range was too limited for long-range ground or space battles, the only kind the Fallers engaged in. Proton beams were far more effective.

  That left settings five, seven, eleven, and thirteen. What did they do? Could Capelo find out? If he did, would he be able to figure out any way to use the knowledge to build better weapons or better shields or better somethings? Because if he didn’t, there was every indication that humans were going to lose the war, to an enemy that did not take prisoners.

  * * *

  Kaufman stood on the observation deck, which was once more assigned to the project team and their eclectic clutter of equipment. This time, robots for EVAC work augmented the array. They had fixed sensors onto everything within ten thousand clicks: the ship, orbital satellites, tethered probes, and the artifact itself, now in orbit behind the Alan B. Shepard like Mary’s lamb trailing obediently behind her.

  “Now,” Capelo said, and Kaufman relayed the command to the bridge, making it official: “Commence firing.”

  The proton
beam shot out from the ship, reached the artifact, and vanished. It looked exactly like the recordings Kaufman had seen, over and over, of beams hitting Faller ships that were equipped with the beam-disrupter shield. In fact, after Marbet’s revelation, the scene was almost anti-climactic. They’d all been pretty sure what setting prime two, which apparently activated automatically, would do to the proton beam.

  Rosalind, Albemarle, and their herd of techs fell on the sensor data, assessing and interpreting. Capelo stood a bit apart. He looked directly at Kaufman.

  Capelo said, “Setting prime one: directed-beam destabilizer, short range,” he recited. “Setting prime two: local shield against whatever low-quality energy we can throw at it: laser, proton beam, presumably directed-beam destabilizer, if we had one.”

  Kaufman said acidly, “A proton beam is ‘low-quality energy’? It could blow up this ship.”

  Capelo ignored the interruption. “Setting prime three: spherical wave destabilizer, short range. Setting prime five should therefore be a longer-range shield. How long a range? Ann Sikorski thinks it affected the whole planet. Maybe that’s what it does—shield the planet from any dangerous energy attack. Including the destabilizing wave that resulted from the destruction of Tas, the wave effect that fried Nimitri. That would explain the fall-off at six billion clicks—roughly the radius of an average star system.”

  Startled, Kaufman said, “A planet-wide shield?”

  “The pattern is weapon, shield, weapon, shield. Escalating in strength.”

  “But a shield strong enough to protect an entire planet? Against a planet-endangering attack? How are you going to test that?”

  Capelo said, without a trace of irony, “There’s only one way to do it. We have to put the artifact back.”

  NINETEEN

  GOFKIT JEMLOE

  When the Terran cart approached the Voratur household gates, Calin Pek Lillifar walked ahead of it.

  Enli watched the approach with her neckfur rippling, her skull ridges almost flat. It was a coincidence, of course. Calin would reach the household several minutes before the Terrans. He must have come from Gofkit Shamloe by the capital road, which joined the path from the Terran compound just before Gofkit Jemloe. But why was he here?

  Something had happened to her sister Ano or to Ano’s children.

  Enli dropped her brush—she had been applying a fresh coat of wash to the household gate, because she couldn’t stand doing nothing—and ran toward Calin. “Calin! What is it? Ano … Fentil…”

  “No, no, all the soils of your sister’s family are rich. Nothing grows crooked, nothing wilts.”

  “But then … why are you here?”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  A little thrill rippled across Enli’s skull. She saw that Calin noticed; he grinned and said, “Breathe deeply, Enli, you pant from running.”

  “And you look a mess.” He did, hot and sweating and dirty from travel. To come all that way on foot, not even by bicycle, to see her! Pleasure flooded her, shared with his pleasure at seeing her.

  She said, “Where is your bicycle?”

  “Broken. And that fool of a mender, Pek Hobbifir, is worse than inept. He cannot get it fixed until tomorrow, if at all. I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow.”

  Again the grin; again the shared pleasure. They stood looking at each other until Enli said, “I can give you a bicycle.”

  “Give me a bicycle! How could you do that?”

  “Much has been happening here. I have much to tell you, Calin. But first, come inside and have a cold drink.”

  “In a moment. Enli … what is that?”

  The cart had nearly reached them. It was an ordinary World farmcart, its load covered by a blanket, but it was pulled by a Terran servant. Alongside walked another Terran, Captain Pek Heller, frowning as always. Somewhere on Pek Heller, Enli knew, would be a gun, and maybe even other strange, deadly Terran weapons.

  “Those are Terrans.” Calin, she realized, had probably never seen a Terran before. There was only time to add in a low voice, “Don’t be surprised if their manners are bad,” before the little procession reached them.

  Enli plucked a wildflower, a pretty yellow vekifir growing by the side of the road, and held it out. She said in Terran, “Pek Heller, you are welcome to Gofkit Shamloe. This is Calin Pek Lillifar.”

  Pek Heller shook her head up and down curtly. She offered no gift flower, although surely the cart must be laden with them, nor did she introduce her servant. Terrible manners. All Pek Heller did was say to Enli, “You speak English. Good. These are for Mr. Voratur, from Colonel Kaufman. Trade goods. Where shall I leave them?”

  Enli was glad that Calin couldn’t know what Pek Heller was saying. Leave trade goods! Without drinking pel with Pek Voratur to water the bargain newly come to flower! Without exchanging hospitality flowers, without ritual wishes for a flourishing garden that rejoiced one’s ancestors! But Calin knew no Terran and so confined himself to staring politely at Pek Heller without blinking.

  “I will take the trade goods, Pek Heller, to Pek Voratur.” Better that than cause more unshared reality between the household and the Terrans.

  “Fine,” Pek Heller said. “Crewman, transfer cargo to this receiver.” Enli could see that Pek Heller didn’t really care, possibly didn’t approve of the entire bargain. Well, it was not her place to disapprove of a bargain planted between Pek Voratur and the head of her own household, Pek Kaufman. Different realities were one thing, but bad manners quite another.

  “Transferred,” the servant said.

  “Return to base.” And the two of them turned and walked away, just like that.

  Calin’s eyes had begun to pucker and his skull ridges to crease. The beginnings of head pain, Enli knew. To Calin, the Terran behavior must seem like unshared reality, not a different reality. Calin didn’t know, as Enli had been forced to know, about different realities. There were many things she knew that he did not.

  For just a moment, she was afraid.

  Then she said, “Come, let us go inside and get you that cold drink. And I must take these trade goods to Pek Voratur.”

  “Trade goods? Pek Voratur planted another bargain with the Terrans?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what?” Calin lifted the blanket over the cart and let out a whoop. Masses of Terran flowers, the strangely beautiful flowers Enli had seen in the garden aboard the big flying metal boat. Below the flowers, a neat pile of the square, ugly Terran boxes, containing the other trade goods Pek Voratur had bargained for. Even now, even after so much living with Terrans, it astonished Enli that people who could “make” such wonderful flowers would also make their boxes so ugly.

  Calin said, “Pek Voratur planted a bargain for all these Terran blossoms? They are far more beautiful than the rosib he got last time. What did he trade for all this? And what’s in those ugly boxes?”

  “Let’s go inside first, Calin. I must bring this cart to Pek Voratur.”

  His attention returned from the cart to her. Enli felt her neckfur stir. He said softly, “I missed you, Enli.”

  “And I, you.”

  “Gofkit Shamloe was not the same for me after you left; I think it will never be the same, unless you come back with me.”

  She said falteringly, “Go back to Ano, you mean. To live again with Ano.”

  “Not to live with Ano.”

  It was a gift from the First Flower, a miraculous blooming. Enli knew she was plain (not like Ano), too big, too old for a first mating. And there was her history … she had once been declared unreal for a great crime, mating with her brother. They had both been declared unreal, Tabor kept from the world of his ancestors after he killed himself, Enli saved from the same everlasting death only by becoming an informant on the Terrans for Reality and Atonement. Enli had earned both their reality back again, hers and Tabor’s, and once again shared the sweetness of reality. But Calin knew all this history, and her age, and still he stood there, a man whom any woman w
ould be proud to mate, and he’d said to her …

  It was a gift from the First Flower, a miraculous blooming, an unfolding beyond any dreaming.

  “Enli—” he began, and she said at the same moment, “Not now, Calin. Later. I must take these things to Pek Voratur!”

  “I will help you,” he said and picked up the cart handle. Practical Calin, turning his hand to the task of the moment, whatever task and whatever moment that might be.

  He pulled the cart inside the compound, telling Enli the news of Ano, of small Fentil, of baby Usi and almost-grown Obora, of all the village. Pek Voratur himself, reality having been shared with him by servants, came bustling through the vast courtyards and gardens. “Yes, yes, here they are! Enli, these are the trade goods from the Terrans?”

  “Yes, Pek Voratur.”

  “But where is Pek Kaufman?”

  “He did not come.” Pek Voratur’s skull ridges creased, and Enli explained as well as she could. She introduced Calin, and flowers were exchanged. But Pek Voratur was clearly eager to examine his new acquisitions.

  “Enli, ask the others who share in this bargain to come to my personal room. Your visitor can wait for you in the gardens, perhaps, or in your room.”

  She led Calin to her room, watching his awe at the richness of the Voratur household: the magnificent flowerbeds, swooping curved walls, arched windows hung with the finest fabric from the Seury Islands. Had Calin ever been away from Gofkit Shamloe? Perhaps not. Again Enli felt that prickling of her neckfur. There were so many things she knew that he did not …

  In her room, a pretty guest room with curving designs painted on the floor and an expensive carved wooden table, Calin took both her hands and pressed them to his stomach. “Enli, I want to say something to you.”

  “Calin, I must go find some other members of the household, Pek Voratur asked me—”

  “I heard what he asked you. You can share the full reality of it with me later. But I want to say this now, before you tell me anything more. I don’t understand what you have to do with Pek Voratur’s trading. But whatever it is, when it’s over, I want you to come back to Gofkit Shamloe with me and unfold in the mating ceremony before the First Flower. I want our gardens to be planted together, our children to dance on the village green, and our petals to intertwine in the land of our ancestors.”