The Starry Rift

by James Tiptree Jr

  “Kathy has been inconspicuously photographing everything of interest. All of a sudden she pushes the camera into my hands and runs after the aliens as they start getting back in their car.

  “ ‘The Ritual!’ she cries. ‘Remember the Ritual!’ And she pulls the top of her suit open, and we see she’s drawn big spots all over chest and shoulders, too. She looks up and calls out something in a strange voice—alien words, like. I feel I half-understand. Like she’s calling to the sky over their heads.

  “The robed aliens turn back to her, seeming to understand. One of them replies something, bowing his head. And the officer says their ‘yes.’ Then they get in and drive straight off.

  “The port official has kind of faded into the background while we talked with the others. Now he says something to Kathy, pointing to the sun and moving his hand like he means afternoon. Then he gets in his car and leaves, too.

  “By this time Kathy is kneeling on the hot ground with her face to her hands. We think she’s crying, but when Captain Asch goes out and helps her up, we see she’s smiling, like trembling, as if she’s crying for joy. Her face has a weird exalted look.

  “ ‘What was that about, Kathy?’ I ask when she comes in the ship. And yet I feel like I almost know.

  “ ‘The Thanksgiving,’ she says. ‘We reached here.’

  “ ‘That’s right,’ Dinger says. Then he like shakes himself and blinks.

  “ ‘There are strange influences here,’ Shara says, putting her little cassette on the voder. ‘I want to practice these alien sounds. I’m sure we got a “Who are you?” ’ Shara’s good.

  “Then Asch indicates he has something to say. I’ll put it on the recorder.”

  The captain’s voice comes on, deeper and grave.

  “This seems to be a world where things that are nonrational in our terms go on. I’m not certain that we, including myself, are entirely ourselves here. Now, there’s some explanation for all this. We just don’t know it yet. We just have to keep remembering who we are, and that we’re contacting something totally new in Human experience. And that nothing suspends the laws of nature. Then we simply go on and play it as it comes.

  “However, I feel it best that we remain prepared to take off unexpectedly. A lot depends on whether they locate somebody here who can communicate with us. At the moment it looks unlikely. If they don’t, I think we should take off tomorrow noon. Federation can send a second, better-equipped expedition now we know what’s here.

  “Meanwhile we should collect as many observations of this place as we can. It might even be worth making an expedition to the port office to collect more speech samples for Shara’s base, so the experts back home will have something to work with.”

  The voder clicks, and then Torrane’s voice comes back.

  “Later. Well, that settled us all down. And nothing happens for a while. Dinger and I made a trip outside to collect specimens of the lichen and any insect life he could catch. We’re all feeling the effects of the total dryness everywhere. Even the ground acts funny; if you spit on bare earth, it boils.

  “Dinger’s preliminary analysis of the plant life shows it just the reverse of Terroid: it gives off CO two, carbon dioxide. Maybe that accounts for the high percentage of CO two in this atmosphere. Dinger says you can smell it if you put your nose down at plant level. I’ll bet Life Sciences will love the biochemistry here.

  “We watched some ships take off or land and picked up their transmissions, and we were thinking of going over to the port office, when a heavy vehicle drives up beside our ramp. It’s loaded with construction equipment. The boss shouts something to Captain Asch, and then his crew gets out and starts building something just beyond our gangway. Since it isn’t touching the ship or in our way, the captain doesn’t interfere. It turns out to be an obviously temporary low scaffolding, not menacing as far as we can see. On the scaffold they set up a big basin, like a child’s wading-pool. Then they lift out of the truck several carboys of clear liquid, like you’d store chemicals in, and start filling up the basin. That’s what they’re doing now. To judge from their cautious behavior, the stuff must be corrosive.

  “Captain and Shara are going down to check on it... Crew are waving them to keep back. Shara has a piece of sample cloth, and she manages to dunk one end in the liquid. They’re bringing it back to the ship.”

  “If it wasn’t for the way these people are acting,” comes Captain Asch’s voice, “I’d say it was water or some mild basic solution. Dinger’s doing a quick electrophoresis.”

  “Look, Captain,” says Torrane, “here comes another delegation. Why don’t I just record live?”

  “Green. Dinger, you finish that. The rest of you come out with me.”

  “Five aliens are getting out. Looks like the same two in robes—no, these look bigger and older. Three more types holding gadgets of some sort—could be musical instruments? Everybody’s out now.

  “The aliens are lined up by the scaffolding. You’ll hear—” A definitely alien voice speaks, or intones, from farther away.

  Then—Moo-oo Hoo-La-La-LAA-AA-Hoo —a blast of what must be music comes from the voder. Over it Torrane is shouting:

  “Two of them are singing to musical accompaniment—Oh, by the gods—” And there is a rising babble of Human voices while the music wails on.

  “I feel funny—Oh, no—”

  “The music! Stop the godlost music!”

  “My Ritual! It’s my Ritual, can’t you Let me by!”

  “Kathy! Kathy, stop! Oh—”

  “Kathy, you can’t go down there stark naked—”

  “Lieutenant Ku!” roars Asch’s voice. “Halt!”

  “Stop her!”

  A confusion of voices and sounds, moving farther away amid the braying music. “Kathy, Kathy—”

  “It’s just water,” Dinger’s voice shouts. “Plain water!” Clamor of voices, slap and slosh of splashing, the hoots of music, and through it a high female voice yelling, “Help! Help! Hold me down, I can’t—” More splashes. “Get her out! Get her out!” shouts Asch. “Here, I—” The music gets louder.

  Far away, in Exec’s office at FedBase 900, the hearers look at the voder, look at each other, while the minims tick away filled with incomprehensible uproar.

  Then come heavy footsteps on the ramp. The music quits.

  “Get her to the med station,” says Asch’s voice.

  “She hasn’t been breathing for—for—”

  As the footsteps pass, someone clicks off the recorder.

  In a minim it clicks on again.

  “It is now about three hours later,” says Torrane shakenly. “Captain Asch will speak.”

  “Lieutenant Ekaterina Ku is dead,” Asch says stiffly. “Dead by drowning. We were unable to revive her before irreversible brain damage had occurred. The cause of her death was partially self-induced. When she jumped into the water-pond, she first attempted to drown herself by holding herself facedown in the relatively shallow tank. When she failed in this she called to us to help her by holding her under water. Some of her words were, ‘Help me, I must die so the Ritual will be right! It’s my chance!’ She seemed to feel some good end would be served by her death.

  “We on the contrary attempted to pull her out, or at least hold her head out. But in the crowded quarters and the slippery tank, and the clumsiness of our actions—and not helped by Kathy’s—by the lieutenant’s”—his voice chokes—“long dark hair, we somehow pressed her upper body farther into the water, facedown. The influence of the alien music on our perceptions and actions was very great. I consider we were temporarily deranged by it.

  “After too long a time we realized that her lungs were full of water—she must have deliberately inhaled while she was under—and she was no longer breathing. At that point the alien music stopped. We quickly got Ka—Lieutenant Ku into the ship’s emergency apparatus. But as I said, it was too late.

  “We have placed, her body in the appropriate refrigeration compartmen
t and held a brief service. In ending I should say that there is no question that Lieutenant Ku perished in the line of duty. Her dedication to our mission was complete, and as a high-order Sensitive she was subject to inimical influences peculiar to this area. The disaster that befell her should be taken as a warning in selecting personnel for future missions here. This is not to say that Sensitives should be avoided; on the contrary, her perceptions have, I feel, been invaluable. But great care must be exercised by the commanding officer in the event that self-destructive patterns become imprinted on the mind.

  “It is clear in retrospect that something of this Ritual pattern was perceived or imprinted on Lieutenant Ku as far back as Beacon Alpha. And it was not confined to her. All of us in some degree expected and both welcomed and feared just some event. It appears to be the alien custom of ritual sacrifice in thanksgiving for a safe voyage. Lieutenant Torrane was also heard to say, when the alien influence was strong, The spotted ones are preferred.’ There was also the general idea, in all our minds, of joining with, or rejoining in death, some great supernal power—call it the Oversoul—under conditions of great honor. Thus the vital force of these aliens is such that their psychic patterns are to some degree imprinted upon all our minds.

  “Except under extraordinary conditions, however, such as the playing of that music, I believe we are still capable of functioning Humanly and carrying out our mission. I propose to depart tomorrow, which should give them time to come up with a Galactic translator, if one exists here. I may say that none of us have any premonitions of further alien happenings ahead.

  “In closing, I blame myself very severely for not having faced and taken seriously the earlier presentiments about this Ritual by Lieutenant Ku and others. My negligence in this matter must be considered an indirect cause of her death... Asch out.”

  Exec’s eyes are grave.

  “To lose a crew member like that, the first day,” says her deputy.

  “He shouldn’t blame himself,” Realune protests. “Who could guess she intended to try to die in a kid’s wading-pool?”

  “That’s what captains are for,” says Exec shortly, and they turn back to the voder, where Torrane’s voice has come on.

  “—wants me to tell you. We couldn’t help noticing even in the—the confusion, and our sort of paralyzed minds—that the aliens were also very excited. Both the big shots and the construction crew crowded in close, like they couldn’t believe their eyes, pointing at our wet legs and arms and all, and confirming we were actually in the tank. They themselves jumped back to avoid every splash, and took extreme care not to step on any damp, boiling places. Water is evidently dangerous to these people. We think they expected Kathy to die just by going in it. And we think they were confused and thought that the Human shape of Lieutenant Ku’s, uh, nude body was damage caused by the water. We still had our work suits on, see, with the tails, and, like extra arms folded in.

  “I don’t think we’ll try any more contact today, unless somebody comes to us. We’re taking in the gangway, and making use of the one-gee-minus here to grab a little real sleep. None of us rest too good in zero-grav. This is all for this cassette, I’ll start a new one. Torrane out.”

  Pauna gets up. “I have the second cassette here.” She opens the voder.

  “I don’t know,” says Exec thoughtfully. “Asch appears perfectly functional, and yet... I feel he’s somehow not a hundred percent himself. Don’t ask me why. Unless possibly I’d have been happier to see him lift off right then and forget about waiting for a nonexistent translator... But yet they’ve come all that way, it would seem a shame to leave without learning more about this great new alien complex. If only its size and extent.”

  Fred nods understanding. “This does confirm all that was implied by the third message prelanding. That warship is operational. If it’d been converted to civilian use, it wouldn’t go about with planet-breakers racked up. Hence they are fighting, or preparing to fight, somewhere. Perhaps they are still having religious wars, as we did.

  “On the other hand, we have those reports of vanished planets from down Sector Three hundred way, and here’s a live alien ship with probable world-blasters at about the same time. And only the gods know what’s been happening down there since we heard... Our hope is that they have enough on their plates not to desire more hostilities. Or even to welcome a possible ally. It would be good if our people are able to depart as they came, apparently unnoticed.”

  “Umm,” says Exec. “Fred, what do you make of the first group’s reaction to the crews’ claim that they were Human? Does somebody there know what Humans look like? Is it even common knowledge, say, that we don’t have tails?”

  “We’re ready to go, ma’am,” says Pauna. “The second half.”

  And the voder starts to spin.

  On far Zieltan, it is evening of the day Kathy Ku died. Zillanoy of Alien Languages is recording a courier letter to her friend Kanaklee, chief of Messages, who is home with an inflamed eye.

  “Oh, Kanak, my dear, f shall simply explode if I can’t vent this! Maybe it’ll amuse you on your bed of pain. I know you can’t read so I’m doing this. Give my love to Leiloy and the little one and prepare to listen to an outrage.

  “It’s about what’s happening with that alien ship that just landed, what Admin has done—or rather, not done! Honestly, it’s so shameful it makes me stamp, but I’ll try to be coherent. And we do have quite a puzzle on our hands, you’ll be interested.

  “You know your office sent me a transcript of that hailing broadcast they put out on their way in—thanks, dear Kanak, without you this place would go straight to max entropy! Well, I could actually get some of it, although the accent is strange as can be.

  “I recognized several instances of the word which could be a form of ‘Zhuman. ’ And they referred to a federation, which I picked up as something those eastern Zhumanor were afraid of. A bad thing. And we come in peece may mean that they’re just a piece or part of a group of ships out there. Definitely, it’s similar to the Zhuman tongue, or, as I’m beginning to think, of a larger language the Zhumanor and others use. Anyway, I sent a flash up to Admin saying that I recognized a Zhuman affinity, and to send every bit of recorded speech to me, top priority. Our good boss Kenta Graveen authorizing. And, since the Zhumanor are such bad actors, to watch themselves—of course I said it in officialese.

  “Well, I guess that flash is still moldering in some upper official’s in-pot—Really, that whole top echelon below the Council is purely useless and hopeless and ought to be fired. They just slow everything to a standstill—’Scuse, where was I? Oh, yes.

  “So the port heard nothing, and they just went ahead with a Class D reception—the aliens refused arms inspection, by the way—until the aliens demanded a Ritual. They’ve clearly come a long way. They claim to be from across the River Darkness, I don’t believe that, of course. They haven’t got the fuel tanks for it. But I’m jumping ahead.

  “Anyway, at the Ritual—with only three musicians, and a pool so small it looked like a child’s sandbox. Which it probably was, Reception is conserving funds for the big All-Harmony Conference next Dusedan—at their Ritual, the aliens got into the water with the Ritual person. Just hopped in and splashed! Imagine!

  “That’s tolerance to water, see—a Zhuman trait. The Zhumanor claim they and all life on their worlds originated in water—Did you know that? Weird. So, when I heard this, I thought, Zhuman for sure. And what goes on? Here we are hunting them all around the east of the River, and a shipload of them lands right on our door-pads!

  “But I got Kenta Graveen to get me some pictures—the driver had been taking pictures to sell to the news services—and these aliens aren’t Zhumanor at all. They look like little cartoons of us, kind of limp and sickly.

  “But I’m forgetting the main thing, Kanak. The aliens presented Reception with two sets of the most marvelous artifacts! In each set was a packet of wide-angle holographs of the whole skyfield at intervals on
their trip. I’ve seen one group over at Charts, that’s where they finally ended. The Charts person told me the early ones seem to show the sky from the far side of the River, but of course that’s a hoax or an extrapolation. But the things are of superb quality. Charts says they’re priceless. I don’t know where the second set is, or rather, I can guess. I only hope they’re both the same.

  “But it’s the second artifacts that are the marvel and the crying shame. Each one is a little folding cassette, with a speaker at one end and a shiny plate at the other. And when you press a button, the speaker says a word, several times and—listen!—the plate lights up and shows a moving picture! Showing what the word means, see? Some are holographs, some are diagrams, or drawings. About a hundred and fifty different ones, at a wild guess. Absolutely exquisite, way beyond the state of any art here. And what it is, it’s both a teacher and a message, I’m positive.

  “Now here’s the crying part. Reception sent these things up to the Council, probably by slow freight. And when they finally got them, the stupid Councillors spent the time playing with them! Just playing with them. As if they were personal gifts! Punching buttons in any order, to see the pretty pictures, not learning anything and not getting their message! Oh, Kanak—how do you bear it? The little Administrator was with them, but you can forgive him, he’s a real boy. But the others are grown-ups—supposed to be our wisest people!

  “So here sits the alien ship, and there lies their messages, being played with by a covey of ancient dolts and a little boy! Honestly.

  “Well, the gods know how long this would have gone on, but my good chief Graveen got wind of them, and he just kept boring in till he got through the dust layer—that’s what I call the upper echelon—and a couple of the Councillors finally had the bright idea that maybe some, expert ought to get a look at these things. So they sent a packet of holos down to Charts. And one cassette went to Research, who tried to take it apart and promptly broke it. And Graveen brought the second cassette to me, and I’m about to start a night’s work on it. Kanak, I think this thing has over a hundred words and pictures in it! Oh, I hope the two were identical—but we’ll never know now, will we?