by Steve White
"Yes," she finally replied. "Of course we've thought of it. The fact of evolution became inescapable long ago . . . even before the First Global War. But we've never been able to fit ourselves, and many other Raehaniv species, into it! The fossil record cannot be denied: there is no evidence of four-limbed animals on Raehan before"—she paused and spoke a sentence in Raehaniv, and her eyes seemed to focus on a point a few inches in front of her; DiFalco recalled Varien's offhand comments about data displayed directly through the optic nerves by an implanted micro-computer communicating with more sophisticated computers—"about thirty-two thousand of your years ago. None of our clever attempts to account for this have held up."
DiFalco felt a prickling at the nape of his neck. "But homo sapiens was already around on Earth by then! Do you realize what this means? Humanity, and all those quadrupedal animals, must have evolved on Earth! They can't be native to Raehan!"
"But how did they get to Raehan?" she challenged. "Is there any evidence of a space-travelling civilization on Earth in that era?"
"No," he admitted ruefully. "And there would be! As we've found out, high-tech civilization produces by-products that are permanent; you can't get rid of them if you want to! All our legends of advanced prehistoric civilizations like Atlantis are bullshit." (Aelanni recalled the vulgarism without recourse to her infallible implanted memory.) "And the notion of an ancient nonhuman starfaring civilization doing it is at least as silly. Such a civilization would have left the same kind of traces. And it should still be around! I mean, even if it collapsed on one planet, it would have others to fall back on . . . and I've never bought the notion of a far-flung interstellar civilization chucking technology and going back to the home planet and becoming philosophy professors! And, finally, just why should super-advanced starfarers be chauffeuring stone-age humans around the galaxy in the first place? No, it just doesn't make sense."
"You have just summed up centuries of Raehaniv scientific speculation," Aelanni said solemnly. "Our conclusions are essentially the same as yours: it doesn't make sense."
They looked at each other for a long moment. Then, wordlessly, they walked side by side toward the briefing room, past the viewport and its suddenly sinister stars.
Chapter Six
Sergei Kurganov finished the report and leaned back with a deep sigh. The selection process still took up more time than he had to give it, but it had reached a point at which he was not so much choosing the fit as weeding out the unfit—a simpler job, given the dossiers that Kuropatkin and Tartakova had accumulated. It could, he reflected, have been far worse. There were no political commissars here. The people who would have been interested in such a job were the very people who viewed the entire concept of spaceflight with revulsion, if not with the ideological equivalent of holy horror, and were scarcely inclined to inflict it on themselves for a period of years. And they were also people without the kind of skills and training which could have justified the transport and life-support costs of sending them past Mars. So Kurganov and his predecessors had successfully resisted the never-very-intense pressure to assign a zampolit to RAMP.
And there weren't even many party stooges. The growing social rift between Earth and its space colonies, and the unattractiveness of the Social Justice ideology to competent people, saw to that. Oh, there had been a few in the past—that fatal accident several years ago, under General Carlson, had seemed awfully odd, but the investigation had pretty much died on the vine. Kurganov remembered it well; as second-in-command, he had been in charge of the investigation . . . .
He shook off the thought and turned to another report. Yes, the personnel problem was becoming quite manageable. Soon he might be able to get away more often to the heavily stealthed site, not far away in the Belt, where the work of refitting had commenced under the direction of Varien and his people and where every moment was a new encounter with the unknown. He allowed himself an instant's envy of DiFalco, now out there with Andrew Jackson.
* * *
It was like being inside a multistory Christmas tree ornament, gazing out through wide-curving transparency at heaven. Fleecy wisps of cloud drifted past in the brilliant blueness here above the low cloud cover the passenger module had passed through earlier in its ascent up the orbital tower—the beanstalk, as he still thought of it, although explaining why to Aelanni had taken some doing. Below, through rifts in that cloud cover, vivid tropical greenness blended with vast swathes of cityscape. Above, where the geostationary spaceport facility that was their goal and the tethered asteroid beyond (where, surely, the giant lived!) were still invisible, the intense blueness shaded to royal and then to navy, and the brighter stars winked.
He dragged his gaze inside and looked around at the lounge, bathed in the intense (if, to his eyes, slightly yellow-hued) sunlight of these altitudes. A throng dressed with colorful but somehow restrained elegance conversed in low tones, a musical murmur which conveyed nothing to him. In the background, unfamiliar instruments played a tune that was stately, highly abstract and, he thought, slightly atonal. He would, he decided, probably never grow to like Raehaniv music.
A figure detached itself from a group, back toward him—a woman, tall and slender like most Raehaniv but more muscular than most, in a clinging dress of some intensly emerald-green material that included a kind of hood. She set down her oddly shaped wine glass and pulled back the hood as she turned to face him, smiling impishly. Aelanni!
"Have you had enough for now, Eric?"
DiFalco nodded reluctantly, feeling slightly foolish, and reached up and fumbled with the wraparound goggles. Aelanni's smile was unchanged, though she was sitting behind a desk in her small shipboard office and wearing her usual shipsuit.
"That," he said accusingly, "was sneaky!"
She laughed softly. "One tries to come up with something more original than a message that seems to float in midair—and the computer isn't programmed for written English anyway. Besides, it was fun setting up the illusion; I haven't had a chance to dress like that in years! Of course, it isn't perfect, or you would have recognized me before I turned around."
"Oh, it'll do until perfection comes along," he assured her, running a hand through his dark hair (touched with gray at the temples, to her surprise inasmuch as he was less than fifty Raehaniv years old). "We've experimented with virtual reality ourselves—the concept has been around for some time, but neither the software nor the sensory input are up to it yet." He shook his head slowly. "You sure can't beat it for a travelogue! But . . ." He hesitated, embarrassed. "I imagine anything can be simulated. And you've mentioned that there's a suit-and-helmet rig that allows the sensation of full physical interaction. Doesn't it become, well, a problem?"
"Oh, yes, virtual reality addiction became a very real social problem in the era of the Fourth Global War—one of the many in those days. I gather it practically put an end to drug abuse among the affluent; how could chemicals compete? And escape from the real world was an irresistable temptation in those days." Somberness crossed her face like a cloud-shadow. "Since the Unification, of course, social pressure has worked against excessive and self-destructive indulgence in anything. It is a source of . . . guilt? No, that's not it. I think the English word is 'shame.' "
It occurred to DiFalco that the Raehaniv might have found more in common with the Sino-Japs after all, but he decided nothing could be gained by saying so. "Well, at any rate it's given me a feel for your world. It's as if I've been there. I can come a little closer to appreciating what you've lost . . . at least for now," he added hastily.
"Yes: for now. Just as you are preparing to lose your world for now." She sighed. "We never risked a landing; I have no . . . feel for your Earth. Of course you've told me of your memories of it. Indeed, you've made them live. But you've never really said anything of your own life there. What—or, perhaps, who—will you miss personally?" She stopped as if annoyed at herself. "Forgive me. I had no wish to pry into what you may consider inappropriate subjects .
. . ."
He waved a hand absently. "Oh, no offense taken. There's just not very much to tell. Those of us out here generally don't have many deep attachments Earthside . . . ." He trailed to a halt, as a long-shut door swung open to reveal memories that were dappled with late-afternoon sun like his grandmother's kitchen. Then, too late, he remembered why he always kept the door shut. As always, he could recall for just a fleeting hurtful instant what it had felt like with Nicole . . . at first. And from there it was always the same futile, compulsive quest for the precise point at which it had gone irretrievably wrong—not when he had stopped trying but when he had admitted to himself that he no longer wanted to try. It must have been after Erica arrived, of that he was certain. Erica, who according to hallowed cliche was supposed to "bring us closer together" and had, in fact, merely been another thing to bicker over. Erica, who to Nicole was just one more weapon with which to exact vengeance for all her dreary little grievances . . . no, that wasn't fair. Fuck fairness! I did my best, even when I no longer really thought it was worth it—when I couldn't even ask her a question without getting the "what's-that-supposed-to-mean?" look, and all I really wanted to know was . . . why didn't she ever smile anymore?
He blinked once, and gazed across the desk at the woman from another star. "Not very much," he repeated. "A daughter, back on Earth, by a previous marriage. Seven . . . no, eight years old. Calls somebody else Daddy now. How about you?"
She shook her head. "I had a few relationships when I was younger, of course. But our customs discourage lasting attachments at an early age—a long history of overpopulation, you see." (She was, he recalled, slightly over forty Earth years old; he would have guessed late twenties—maybe thirty, tops.) "And more recently I haven't had the time. My father can be . . . demanding. Not that I can complain; he's given me opportunities beyond the dreams of most. And, to be honest, the men I've known have been . . ." She stopped, at a loss for words. "Our culture encourages a certain uniformity, possibly even blandness; we've always seen it as part of the price of peace, a price we've gladly paid. Still . . . every one of the men I've known as an adult has seemed like a book I've already read." She reached across the desk and placed a hand lightly over his, and their eyes met. "Am I making sense at all?"
He started to speak, cleared his throat, and tried again. "Yes, I think I understand. But look on the bright side." His lips quirked upward. "You can't say you're not in a position now to find . . . exoticism. Novelty."
"Yes, I believe I've found that, Eric."
Her hand didn't move. And, belatedly, he remembered how much more physical intimacy, even on the level of a touching of hands, meant to the reserved Raehaniv than to his own people.
Moving as if with a dream's protracted time-scale and lack of volition, he took her other hand and stood, raising her to her feet. Their eyes were almost level.
This is crazy! It's a complication we don't need! I'm not a goddamned horny teenager anymore! And even if we're technically the same species, the cultural differences . . . ! And isn't there something in Leviticus . . . ?
None of which seemed to matter very much . . . .
The door chimed a request for entry. It seemed very loud. Abruptly, time resumed its accustomed pace, and their hands snapped apart as if from an electric shock. But their eyes held each other for a bare, knowing instant before Aelanni spoke a Raehaniv word and the door slid soundlessly open.
"Ah, Colonel DiFalco! So glad you're here!" Varien smiled benignly as he bustled in. "I need both of you. Your Major Levinson has run into a problem with computer interfacing. It seems that certain problems are proving thornier than we had originally anticipated. He needs a command decision from you on structural modifications. And, Aelanni, you are far more up-to-date on cybernetics than I am . . . ."
"Of course, Varien. Lead the way." He turned toward the door, then stopped and faced Aelanni. "Oh, and . . . thank you again for the orientation regarding your world."
"Think nothing of it," she spoke just as emotionlessly. But they held eye contact just an instant longer. Varien still looked bland to the point of obliviousness as the three of them left the office.
* * *
"It is becoming increasingly apparent," Varien spoke briskly to the half-dozen people in the briefing room a few weeks later, "that not all our Raehaniv ships are needed here at any one time. Security requirements limit the number of American or Russian ships that can be here for refitting simultaneously. Even after General Kurganov arrives on Earth and begins to expedite our arrangements at the highest levels of RAMP, there will be only so many absences that can be plausibly accounted for.
"I have therefore decided that two of our ships equipped for survey work can, for the time being, be better employed investigating the nearby stars known locally as Sirius and Altair." He turned to Kurganov and DiFalco, clearly in lecture mode. "The nature of displacement points is such that the more massive stars are more likely to possess them than the relatively small main-sequence stars which can have life-bearing planets." His expression suggested a certain annoyance with the universe. "So these two stars are the most likely possibilities in this stellar neighborhood. The Sirius and Altair expeditions will be commanded, respectively, by Nuraeniel and—" the briefest of pauses "—Aelanni."
"But, Varien," Kurganov inquired, slightly puzzled, "I recall you saying that displacement points occur at great distances from each other—normally a minimum of a hundred light-years. How likely is it that there would be others so close to the one at Alpha Centauri?"
"Actually, General, I said that displacement connections are that far apart. But it is not unheard of for unconnected pairs of displacement points to be relatively close to each other in realspace. You see, the displacement network is a product of the gravitational interrelationships of stellar masses . . . oh, yes, you already know that, don't you? Well, as a result the long displacement chains tend to run more or less parallel with each other, up and down the galactic spiral arms where most such masses are found; and they sometimes intertwine."
"Still, Varien," DiFalco spoke more stonily than was his wont, "what is the probability of these particular stars having any displacement points?"
"Quite small, actually," Varien replied with disarming frankness. "But if there are any accessible displacement points that might give alternative access to Raehaniv space, it would certainly be worth our while to find out. And, since it can be done without delaying our work here . . ." He let his voice trail off, and his eyes held DiFalco's for just an instant.
You know, you old buzzard! And you've found an excuse to send her out of harm's way, light-years from the primitive savage! Wouldn't do to let her get sacrificed to a volcano or something, would it? And she could never face the relatives with a bone through her nose!
No, let's be reasonable. He's just thought of all the same arguments against it that I have. And he's probably thinking more clearly than I am.
Still, Varien, may you roast in hell!
His eyes slid away from Varien's and met Aelanni's across the room. She knew.
* * *
The docking area that was the largest open space with life support in Phoenix Prime was full to capacity for the change of command. The honor guard dressed its ranks repeatedly under the eyes of Sergeant Thompson and his Russian opposite number, as the technicians counted down to the playing of the two national anthems. And beyond the spectators rested the shuttle that would take Kurganov to Aleksandr Kerensky for the voyage to Earth. They'd had some bad moments when the Earthside brass had wanted to change plans and have him take Yeltsin, which was in the process of refitting. A little creativity in accident reports had turned the trick, and the general confusion had enabled them to transfer several unreliable people to Kerensky.
Behind the sliding access doors, Kurganov and DiFalco awaited the signal to make their entry and mount the podium, unconsciously checking each other over. DiFalco's mood had not been improved by the older man's ribbing: surely, if he really trie
d, he could get his new full colonel's eagles even shinier!
Now, though, Kurganov had turned serious.
"No, Eric," he said quietly, "it is impractical. There would be no conceivable excuse for me to come back here just for the ignition of the Phoenix engine. And you will have no way to approach Earth; if one of Varien's ships came into detection range it would defeat our entire purpose of secrecy. And what about the pickup itself? Are you going to land a fusion-drive shuttle in Red Square? No, I must remain on Earth."
"To hell with that! I'll think of a way to take you with us."
"Ah, Eric, never stop being an optimist! I wouldn't recognize you." The general glanced at his wrist chrono. "It's almost time. I think this must be our real farewell. Remember me, however far you travel—you, and Varien, and Aelanni."
DiFalco blinked a few times—some damned crud in the air system! "Farewell . . . Seryozha."
Kurganov turned mock-pompous. "I've told you a thousand times: the familiar form is not used by a junior to a senior! And for another minute or so I'm still in command of this great ugly rock!" He shook his head sorrowfully, eyes twinkling. "You Americans have no respect—no sense of the proprieties."
"Just maybe," DiFalco heard himself say, "that's what will save us yet."
Kurganov looked at him for a long moment. "It always has in the past, Eric, but . . . I think not this time." His smile seemed to hold all the world's sadness. "In my grandfather's time, I could have watched with equaminity what your country is doing to itself. I might even have been tempted to indulge in what I believe Americans call the 'horse laugh.' But now my country has become a cultural dependency of yours, and if you go down into the dark you'll take us with you." He gripped his friend's shoulders, hard. "Come back, Eric! You must come back, carrying the stars in your hand! That's all that can save us now."
