I had already had enough. I had already decided to quit and get out and go somewhere where the action was stone cold and people weren’t dropping dead or hanging worlds in the balance on all sides of me. This came on top of my having had enough. It was adding injury to insult.
The purring in the walls of the ship was dying slowly and progressively. There was no big bang, no convulsions, no screaming. The Varsovien died as quietly as had Ecdyon. Discreetly.
The light in the airlock was out. I had a light mounted on my backpack, along with a spare air-bottle, but I didn’t bother to switch it on. We waited in the pitch darkness, saying nothing except for the occasional remark about how much time it might take, or was taking.
I had taken command back from the wind. We weren’t reckoning on needing any more Gallacellan. Everyone except Eve would take it for granted that it was Ecdyon who had done all the talking. He wouldn’t be arguing the point. I reckoned that if I never said another word about it, Eve would never be sure enough of herself to start talking. That had worked before. She still didn’t know what had happened aboard the Lost Star. All attempts to find out had simply been met with stony silence. She had dropped the matter eventually—what else could she do?
It was a long wait. I almost wished that I’d left the wind in the hot seat, so that I wouldn’t have had to feel the passing of time minute by minute—I could have felt it all at once. But that would have been a sort of suicide, a preference for non-existence. Unlike the wind, I am exclusively a creature of body-and-soul. I don’t have his versatility. Backseat driving was his way of life, but to me it was more a way of death. One can’t just opt out of bad and boring moments of life. That’s futile. So I did my own waiting, and my own worrying, and I lived within my own misery.
Eventually, we heard them. My helmet was resting against the metal casing of the lock, and I heard them outside the lock. They weren’t opening the lock—they didn’t do that for quite some time. At first, I couldn’t figure out what they were doing, but eventually I realized they were connecting the locks. They were running a corridor from their ship to this one. I wondered if they knew whether the lock was cracked and that if they tried to flood it with air they’d have to patch it up pretty smartly. It didn’t matter much—they’d have it to spare.
It wasn’t until they actually began to open the door that I realized what their lights were going to show them.
One dead Gallacellan, with a gunshot wound in his chest. One Grainger, still holding the gun. I couldn’t even drop the damn thing, because we were in free fall owing to the ship’s switching off. It would just float around the lock with us, like a big ugly wasp.
The lock swung open, and the Gallacellans came in. There were two of them—suited. About ten meters of white corridor was behind them, and then another lock, outer door open, inner closed.
We had to take turns going through the Cicindel’s lock—two at a time. Eve and I went first. I didn’t look either of our rescuers in the face. I just couldn’t. I stuck the gun out of sight, in the pack, but my hand still felt hot, as if it were carrying the mark of Cain, or something.
Beyond the lock there was light aplenty, gravity (a fraction more than E-normal), and air (the same sharp air that we breathed aboard the Varsovien). There were also Gallacellans. Two more of them. Waiting for us. I took my helmet off, and this time I couldn’t help looking at them.
I couldn’t tell by looking what caste they might be.
“Anybody speak English?” I asked. There was no answer.
Eve and I stood to one side to let the lock open and close again. One of the Gallacellans came through, carrying Maslax as if the little man were just a rag doll. The alien deposited his burden on the floor, conveniently to one side. I didn’t bother to go to him, and neither did Eve. Just at that moment, we didn’t particularly care what was going to happen to Maslax in the near future or at any other time up to and including the day of judgment. We had had enough of Maslax.
We waited, until the last Gallacellan came back, carrying Ecdyon.
I wished that Gallacellans changed expression, so that I could know what one or more of them might be thinking. But they stood there as if they were movie props made out of rubber.
“We tried,” I said, pointlessly. “We really did try.”
Ominous silence. They looked at me, and I felt accused, even though there was nothing in their faces but the usual blank features.
One of them turned his back on me and clicked.
What did he say? I asked the wind.
He wants to know how come you speak Gallacellan, he said.
And I laughed. I don’t really know what I’d been expecting. Accusations, questions, just sarcastic comments. I don’t know. But not this.
“I don’t,” I said, in English, then realized that it was a silly thing to say, and corrected it to: “I don’t understand.” I spread my hands wide and tried to look ingenuous.
It’s no good, said the wind. I think he knows.
How?
I really did try, he said. I tried, but there just wasn’t any way. I just didn’t sound like a Gallacellan. I got all the caste-forms right, I’m sure about that. But you haven’t got the voice for it. They must have figured us out right away. Even over the circuit.
One Gallacellan sounds pretty much like another to me, but I had to admit that they handled their language a lot better than the wind had. He was right. I wasn’t built for it.
OK, I said tiredly. You’d better tell them what happened. But keep in touch, hey? Just once now and again, if you have a moment, give me a quick summary.
It was so easy just to pass back inside my own skull. I surprised myself. My body didn’t even stagger. A perfectly smooth operation. I knew I was getting used to it and I didn’t like it. But playing a completely passive rate is like riding a bicycle—you don’t forget how to do it. The level of control remains the same—one slip and your body is in trouble—and it never becomes easy. But you get used to it. You acquire the touch. I didn’t particularly want to acquire the touch. Privately, I swore that it would never happen again—that I would never get into a situation where I needed it to happen again. I promised myself, faithfully.
After the clicking had gone on for a few moments, I asked the wind whether the Gallacellan believed us. It seemed to me likely that he wouldn’t. It was a long and complicated and fairly incredible story.
I don’t think he even cares, the wind told me. He doesn’t give a damn about Ecdyon—he’s too high caste for that. He hasn’t even bothered to ask who shot him, let alone why. He doesn’t want to know what we were doing on the Varsovien, or why. He just wants to know who taught us Gallacellan.
What’ve you told him?” I asked.
I’m telling him, he assured me. Worry not, I’m telling him.
The truth?
You have to be joking. He wouldn’t believe it. I’ve told him we learned it by listening, by studying, by watching. I’ve told him that the Library has put together all that the human race knows about Gallacellans, and that we’ve found out quite a lot. I’m going to talk to him some more, about mutual understanding and the benefits of communication.
Who the hell do you think you are? I said. Titus Charlot?
But I got no answer. He was clicking again.
We didn’t have to stand in the corridor long. They took us into a cabin—a big cabin, fitted out so finely and neatly that it just had to be the captain’s cabin. They only wanted me—or, to be strictly accurate, they only wanted the wind. But Eve was nervous, and she wanted to stick with me. They didn’t object. Maslax they took somewhere else. I never saw him again. I believe that his interest in the world revived after a period of time in Iniomi, but they never gave him back his job in the Library, nor even sent him back to Pallant. I think he ended up on Airn, the second world of the system, but whether he was in jail, in the hospital, or what the hell I simply do not know. I never wanted to know enough to find out.
The wind talked to th
e captain for several hours while the Cicindel flew to Iniomi. Occasionally, he slid back some small packet of information about what he was trying to do, or what the captain was telling him. But I never got a full transcript of the conversation and I guess I never will.
The wind wanted to be the human race’s first diplomatic mission to the Gallacellans. He wanted to do Charlot’s work for him and set up a basis for negotiation. He had big plans, did the wind. But he always was an optimist.
He hadn’t got a cat in hell’s chance. I guessed that pretty soon, and I think he probably knew it all along, but wanted to try anyway.
The Gallacellan wall of indifference hasn’t come into being simply because they don’t like humans. Basically, the Gallacellans are an indifferent people. They’ve cultivated it in their civilization, and no doubt it was there for them to cultivate. A defensive mentality. They owned to no priorities except survival, and their chief priority was ensuring that survival—ensuring it against all possible eventualities. Fair enough. That’s the name of the game. That’s evolution for you. He who survives is the fittest, by definition. Man is an evolutionary gold-medal winner because he is an active survivor. Some people might claim that he has a basically nasty mind. He is an omnivorous grabber—a possessor. But that’s not the only kind of fitness that wins out in the good old struggle for existence.
The Gallacellans were gold-medal survivors as well, only the Gallacellan is a passive survivor.
He is always around to fight another day (but never today). He runs away. When caught, he is difficult to kill, but basically he is difficult to catch. The Gallacellan would far rather live in peace than not. He likes to know where he stands. He likes to know he is safe. The Gallacellan society is carefully structured, and so is the language, to allow maximum communication where it is needed, and none at all where it is not. The caste system is absolute. The notion of privacy is central to the Gallacellan civilization. That such a civilization is imperfect is manifestly obvious. But it is just as manifestly obvious that the human civilization is totally unstable, and just as imperfect, and contains just as many contradictions. That it works is also manifestly obvious.
There is, as they say, more than one way to skin a cat.
But when all the analyzing and philosophizing is done, there remains one simple fact. The Gallacellans are not interested in talking to one another, save for definite social purposes. They do not indulge in merry chitchat. All their communication is functional, helping to keep the race in good condition and surviving as well as possible. There is no conceivable reason why they should want to become interested in talking to humans, except insofar as it is strictly functional. And the Gallacellans have a caste to decide what is and is not strictly functional.
They are narrow-minded. So are we. The overlap is very slight indeed.
The wind argued for a long time. I know that he argued hard, and I believe that he argued well. But he could not break caste. Whatever he said that was outside what the captain wanted to hear the captain simply would not and did not hear. Despite the fact that they were speaking the same language, they failed to communicate. Except insofar as it was strictly functional—as the captain defined function.
The wind made not the slightest dent in the wall of indifference. The situation remained the same. It had a certain deadly irony. The only Gallacellans with whom we could really communicate were the ones who could speak human languages. That was because it was their designated function to communicate. But their communication with other Gallacellans was strictly limited, defined by other functions. They couldn’t use their understanding any more than I could use mine. Titus Charlot, not for the first time, was simply going to have to reconcile himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to unite the contents of the human and the Gallacellan minds inside one of his analogue machines. It was just not on.
If they knew you weren’t a Gallacellan all along, I said, why did they rescue us?
In the interests of peaceful coexistence, the wind told me. And because they needed to know how come I could make myself understood.
So none of us got what we wanted. We set down on Iniomi without being able to tell the captain how we knew his language, but without convincing him it was a good idea to promote interracial relations. Out of the hours of talk came precisely nothing.
But we did get home safe. Well, perhaps not home exactly, but back to terra firma. Back to Titus Charlot.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Get me a ship,” I said.
He looked tired. I didn’t see why it should have put years on him. Years on me, sure. But not years on him. He’d done nothing but sit and wait.
“Are you going to tell me about it?” he inquired.
“Not now,” I said. “I want a ship. A good ship, with a good pilot and a good engineer. I don’t care where you find them, but get them fast. I want to talk to the Hooded Swan.”
We were in the boss’s office, on Iniomi. The boss was there, but he was just so much decoration. Charlot was running things in Iniomi and had been for some time. Stylaster wasn’t there. I wasn’t particularly interested in where he’d gone. I could catch up on the news about Stylaster while Charlot was catching up on the news about the Varsovien. All in good time.
They had a circuit rigged up right there in the office. Charlot just waved me to it.
I beeped the Swan.
“Captain delArco speaking,” came back the answer. Right away. He was on hand, waiting for me. He must have been waiting for me for some time.
“It’s Grainger,” I said.
“Are you OK?” he asked.
“Just great,” I said. “But you’re in a mess. You know what goes on?”
“You lifted the other ship,” he said. “After that, it gets confused. But you’re up there and we’re down here, right?”
“That’s it,” I said.
“But we aren’t blown to bits,” he added. “Just lucky, I guess.”
“Sure,” said, “we’re on a real lucky streak.”
“Are you going to tell me how to lift this thing?” he asked. His voice was taut. That wasn’t what he wanted. He was scared. He wanted me to be a hero and go down to get him. But he was too much of a gentleman ever to say so. And besides—he didn’t figure me for a hero.
Neither did I, much.
“You wouldn’t stand a chance,” I told him.
“So what do we do?” he said.
“That depends,” I said coolly. “It depends on your friend and employer Titus Charlot “
There was a silence. Neither Nick nor Charlot knew whose prerogative it was to ask me what the hell I meant. Perhaps they knew—Charlot, anyhow.
I filled the silence myself.
“This is the way it is,” I said. “The only ship good enough to go down is already down, and the only pilot good enough to bring it up is already up. Now we have two choices. You can risk your life, and Johnny’s life, and the ship, trying to lift. Or I can risk my life trying to drop. Now that might look like two to one your way, but it’s really three to two. If you try, and fail, you both die. If I try, and fail, we all three die. That’s the way it is.”
“Nobody’s quarreling,” said Nick. His voice was very dry.
“The difference is,” I said, “that I think I can do it and I know you can’t. So I think maybe I ought to come get you. The only question I ask myself is—is it worth it? See? Now you know that I’m a real son of a bitch. But you also know that I owe you a favor or two, and that Johnny’s grandfather was a very good friend of mine. I’ll bring you back for free, and I’ll bring Johnny back for free. But for the Hooded Swan, I want a salvage fee. You know why and you know how much. You see my point, Nick, don’t you?”
“I know,” said Nick.
I turned to Charlot. “You do see what I mean, now, don’t you? You own me. You have a two-year lease on my soul. Because of a salvage fee. Because of a nasty little joke that Caradoc played on me after they rescued me by mistake. You bought that joke, Tit
us. You paid twenty thousand for a lousy joke. Well, I never laughed, and I’m not laughing now. I quit, Titus, and that’s final. Absolute. You can send me right to jail, right now. You can have me put away for so long that I’ll be finished—never fly another ship. But your ship is down on Mormyr, Titus, and it has half its crew aboard. So the joke’s on you, isn’t it? How do you feel?”
“You wouldn’t leave them down there,” said Charlot. “You’d go down to get them no matter what I say. I know you, Grainger.”
“You know I’m no hero.”
“I know you’re no hero. But that isn’t what’s important. You’re a hard-minded man, Grainger. You don’t bend. You place yourself outside it all. If you were a hero, I wouldn’t have had to buy you in the first place. If you’d have been a hero, you wouldn’t have been rotting on that rock so that one day you could be bought. You’re an isolated man. Untouched by human hand. You live inside yourself. Nothing else matters but you. And your mind’s already made up. You know you can bring them back. And you’re going to do it. For your own reasons. For your own self-importance. For your own tiny omnipotence. So you can continue to place yourself outside it all. So you can leave it alone with a clean sheet. Because if you left them there, you’d be involved.”
“I want twenty thousand salvage fee for bringing up the Swan,” I said. “Do I get it?”
“You’re a member of her crew,” he said. “You can’t claim it.”
“I already quit,” I said. “And whether I can claim it or not doesn’t figure. You can give it to me out of the goodness of your heart.”
“All right,” he said simply. “If that’s what you want. Bring back the Swan and you’re free. I’ll get a draft covering every hour you put in on your contract. Every penny. It won’t be enough to buy a ship.”
“Never mind that,” I said. “What about a ship to take me down?”
The Fenris Device Page 13
