3xT

by Harry Turtledove

  "Why didn't this thing get bombed along with the rest of the planet?" Jennifer asked.

  "Something else we do not know," Dargnil Dargnil Lin said. "For your knowledge base, though, you should also observe some of the first of our people to come close enough to the artifact to feel its effect." He spoke into the microphone again.

  After a few seconds of viewing, Jennifer had to turn away. Greenberg had been right; the Foitani who got too close to the Great Unknown weren't pretty. They hadn't just been damaged—they'd been destroyed. They drooled and shook and sucked on their toes and relieved themselves wherever they happened to be. Their muzzled faces gave not the slightest indication of surviving intelligence, nor could Dargnil Dargnil Lin's translator make sense of the shrieks and growls that sprang from their throats.

  "This happened to all your people who got too close?" Jennifer said, gulping.

  "All. The precise radius at which the Great Unknown began to grip them varied with the individual, but within it no one was safe."

  "Hmm." Jennifer thought for a while. "And we know this didn't happen with Bernard. Does it happen to Foitani from worlds other than Odern who come to Gilver?"

  "We do not know," Dargnil Dargnil Lin said. "We do not want to find out. To an alien such as yourself, all who still inhabit the Great Ones' sphere may rightly be known as Foitani. Well and good. But those who spring from other worlds are untrustworthy at best and outright abomination at the worst. Only we of Odern are the true descendants of the original race."

  "Oh, my aching head," Jennifer said softly.

  "Your head still distresses you? Perhaps it is an aftereffect of the ray Thegun Thegun Nug used to stun you. I hope you have an analgesic available."

  "Never mind," Jennifer said, not surprised the translator had been too literal. All the surviving Foitani had been separated from one another for more than twenty thousand years. No wonder they'd have trouble getting along. After so much time, they wouldn't even all be of the same species any more. She asked, "When you deal with these other Foitani, what language do you use?"

  "That of the Great Ones, so far as we understand it. It is the only speech we have in common, after all. Some worlds, among which Odern takes the lead, also use this tongue in everyday life in place of our former degenerate jargons. Others barbarously insist on maintaining the primitive languages they employed before coming into contact with more civilized Foitani."

  "All right; thanks. I think I've seen enough for today, if that's all right with you." What with the spectacle of completely deranged Foitani and the realization that the Foitani of Odern were just one small part of a much bigger puzzle, Jennifer was sure she'd seen enough.

  Bernard Greenberg clapped a rueful hand to his forehead when she told him what she'd learned. He said, "I should have thought of that. It's too easy to forget how long they spent isolated on their own planets."

  "With luck, it won't matter," Jennifer answered. "After all, the Foitani from Odern are the only ones who know about Gilver, so they'll be the only ones we have to worry about."

  "I suppose so," Greenberg said. "But if they learned of the place from records they dug up, there's always the chance some other bunch will, too."

  Jennifer had tried not to think about that. "Bite your tongue."

  The more she researched the Great Unknown, the more she concluded that was a good name for it. Fusion bombs had all but sterilized Gilver. They'd fallen all around the mysterious artifact, but not a single one had landed inside what she'd taken to calling the radius of insanity. The planet's ecosystem was still struggling to repair itself; parts of that continent had become almost lush with greenery. Within the radius of insanity, nothing grew. Mere life, apparently, was not allowed to disturb the Great Unknown.

  "I can imagine achieving that effect for a limited time, with periodic maintenance," Dargnil Dargnil Lin said when Jennifer asked him about it. "But to continue since the Suicide Wars . . . no, human Jennifer, it is but another of the wonders the Great Ones left behind for us to marvel at."

  Jennifer was sick of marveling at the Great Ones. She wanted answers, and the Foitani records on Odern held precious few of them. "I never would have believed it," she said when her last allotted research day was done, "but I'll be glad to go to Gilver, just to try and figure out what's really going on."

  "More power to you, if you can do that on Gilver," Greenberg answered. "If you think Odern is boring, you haven't seen anything yet."

  "I haven't seen anything of Odern, except the spaceport and the library. Neither one of them is likely to drive Earth or Redford's Star off the tourist itineraries."

  He smiled at her. "You've changed; do you know that? You're not nearly the same person you were when you flew with me aboard the Flying Festoon."

  Jennifer mentally prodded herself. "It hasn't been that many years, Bernard. I don't feel different in any particular way."

  "You are, though. Back then, when anybody said anything to you, you were as like as not to pull back into your shell and not even answer. You don't back away any more; you're a lot surer of yourself than you used to be."

  "Am I?" Jennifer thought about it. "Well, maybe I am. I'm older now, after all. I was just a student when I took my first trading run." She laughed, mostly at herself. "All I wanted to do was get something out of the ordinary on my vita. I did that, all right. I've been to places most Middle English professors would run screaming from. Come to think of it, I wouldn't blame them. If I thought it would do any good, I'd run screaming out of here."

  "It wouldn't do any good. But Odern is lively, next to Gilver. Here at least you have a whole planet full of people doing all the normal things people do. There are only two kinds of people—well, Foitani, but you know what I mean—on Gilver. They have soldiers, to guard something nobody else is supposed to know about, and they have scholars, to try to understand something they don't dare approach. Aissur Aissur Rus is from Gilver—he was the head of the research team there."

  "I like him better than a lot of the others," Jennifer said.

  "Yes, he's sharp," Greenberg agreed. "He thinks for himself, and that's unusual among the Foitani. They usually just go around trying to figure out what the Great Ones would have done. I suppose that's one of the reasons he got the job. Nobody here had any idea what the Great Ones were doing with the Great Unknown, so they had to get someone who could put his own slant on things. But that's not the point I was trying to make. Aissur Aissur Rus was so glad to get away from Gilver that he volunteered to be part of the team that brought you back here."

  "That's great," Jennifer said. "But he's going back there with us, isn't he?"

  "So he is, but I don't think it's because he really wants to. The Foitani run more toward a strong sense of duty than we do."

  "After what they put themselves through with the Suicide Wars, it sounds like a survival characteristic for them. To pull themselves back up after something like that, they'd have to have been able to stick together."

  "I suppose so." Greenberg yawned. "We'd better get some sleep. If your research is done, we'll probably be leaving for Gilver early tomorrow, or maybe even late tonight. The Foitani don't believe in wasting time. They could be in here any minute now, to install the course tape and the electronic countermeasures they hope will get us there without being blasted by something left over from the Suicide Wars."

  "Of course, they have their own bomb aboard already," Jennifer said.

  "There is that, yes. But we don't have to worry about it as long as we're good little boys and girls." Greenberg's voice was dry.

  "That's great," Jennifer said again. She walked into the refresher cubicle. When she came out, Greenberg went in. She undressed, lay down on the foam pad—it never had gotten moved to the storeroom—and pulled the blanket up over her. She closed her eyes, but discovered that, though she was tired, she wasn't ready to sleep. The faint ammoniacal smell of the foam pad reminded her of the one she'd had on the Foitani ship, which in turn made her feel all over ag
ain how very much alone she was. But for Greenberg, she was the only human for too many hundred light-years. The Harold Meeker's temperature was perfectly comfortable. She shivered under the blanket even so.

  Greenberg came out of the refresher. He yawned again, stepping toward his sofa bed. If he had any worries like Jennifer's, he didn't show them. She suspected they were there; back aboard the Flying Festoon, he'd been good at keeping things to himself so his worries wouldn't worry others. It was one of the several traits for which she admired him.

  She nodded to herself. "Bernard," she called softly, "do you really feel like sleeping right away?"

  He stopped in midstride. His voice was controlled and careful when he answered, "Does that mean what I think it means?"

  She nodded again, this time for him. "I think it means what you think it means."

  "Jennifer, any man who didn't want to go to bed with you the minute he set eyes on you would need his vision correction adjusted. You know that," Greenberg said. Jennifer did know it. The knowledge had not always brought happiness; men found it too easy to separate her body from her, to want the one without caring about the other. But Greenberg was going on: "We have enough other things to worry about right now, so I want to know if you're sure. If it's going to complicate our lives a lot, it's more trouble than it's worth."

  "If you have the sense to say something like that—and I was sure you did—then we should be able to manage, don't you think?"

  "I hope so," he answered. He pulled off his shorts. The cabin of the Harold Meeker was small; two quick steps brought him to the foam pad. He got down beside her. She wadded up the blanket, threw it against the wall. He smiled. "I forgot just how lovely you are. I'd sort of kept from looking at you a lot—I didn't want to make a nuisance of myself, or more of a nuisance than I've already been for getting you dragged to Odern in the first place."

  "That's foolish," Jennifer said. "It's not as if we haven't seen each other before. Trading ships are like that. And we're friends already, and more than friends, even if it was a while ago now."

  "Quite a while ago now—getting close to ten years, isn't it? I didn't want to impose, and you were still upset about being here. But—" He didn't go on, at least not with words.

  Jennifer savored what he was doing. She remembered from the Flying Festoon that he was seldom in a hurry—a rare virtue in men, she'd since found. Since he was about twenty years older than she was, she wondered if it was just that he was more thoroughly mature. More likely, it was that he was simply himself. Whatever it was, she enjoyed it.

  Some considerable while later, she arched her hips so he could slide down her underpants. "Be careful with them," she said. "I only have the two pairs, and yours aren't made for the way I'm put together."

  "I like the way you're put together."

  "I noticed." Her hand closed on him.

  "And I'll be careful," he promised. "How's that—and that—and that?"

  Her underpants had only gotten as far as her knees, but she didn't care. "Mmm. That's—nice. Oh, yes. Right there, right there—"

  The communicator buzzed harshly. "Oh, no," Jennifer said. Greenberg was a good deal more eloquent than that. The communicator ignored both of them. It kept on buzzing.

  "Open your ship at once, humans. This is Pawasar Pawasar Ras speaking. I shall brook no delay." The electronic translator's tone was flat, but the words could hardly have been more peremptory. Pawasar Pawasar Ras went on, "We need to install important gear aboard the Harold Meeker immediately. Refusal to open the ship will be taken as evidence of conspiracy against the Foitani species."

  "What do you suppose they do to conspirators against the Foitani species?" Jennifer asked.

  Greenberg stroked her one last time. "I'm tempted to find out." But the moment was broken, and they both knew it. He got up from the foam pad and called out, "We will open the ship in a moment, Pawasar Pawasar Ras. You roused us from our rest, that's all."

  "What rest?" Jennifer said. Then she giggled. "I was certainly roused, though."

  "Shut up," Greenberg said over his shoulder as he dressed. She put her clothes back on, too. He ordered the air lock open. The alien, faintly spicy smells of Odern's air filled the cabin.

  Two Foitani technicians came in. They filled the cabin, too, to overflowing. They installed their gadgetry, then ran some checks to make sure their artificial-intelligence system meshed with the Harold Meeker's computers. One of them wore a translator. He said, "If you try to disable this system, you will also disable your own electronics. If by some accident you do not do that, you will remain altogether vulnerable to weaponry from the days of the Suicide Wars. I tell you this for information's sake. You may die if you like, but you should be aware of how and why this will come to pass."

  "Thank you for being generous enough to warn us," Greenberg said.

  "You are welcome." Like most Foitani, the technician was irony-proof. "You will lift off as soon as is practicable, which is to say, at once."

  Greenberg drew himself to attention and spoke to the air: "Commence lift-off sequence."

  "Automatic checklist commencing," the ship's computer answered.

  "Wait for us to leave this cramped vessel, you fool," the Foitani technician exclaimed. "We are not ordered to fly to Gilver." For once, Jennifer saw an agitated Foitan.

  "Sorry. Computer, cancel lift-off sequence," Greenberg ordered. He turned back to the technician. "You did tell me to lift off at once, did you not?"

  "Yes, but—" The Foitan gave up. Along with his companion, he hastily departed from the Harold Meeker.

  Greenberg grinned at Jennifer. "The best way to confuse them is to take them perfectly literally when they don't want you to. Only trouble is, they're so literal-minded themselves that you don't get as many chances as you'd like." The grin changed shape, just a little. "Which is true of other things as well. Where were we when we got so rudely interrupted?"

  Jennifer stepped close to him, took his hand, and guided it. "I think," she whispered, "you were right about here."

  * * *

  The trip from Odern to Gilver was about as long as the one from Saugus to Odern had been. Other than that, the two journeys held no similarity. This time, Jennifer had pleasant human company aboard a human ship. All the facilities were designed for her species; she'd been glad to discover that the Harold Meeker's sanitary supplies did include tampons.

  She studied the material Dargnil Dargnil Lin had taken from Odern's library. The Foitani of Odern did very much seem to be spiritual descendants of their long-destroyed imperial ancestors: they were stern, humorless, efficient, and basically unwilling to recognize other species as anything but creatures to be exploited. I can testify to that, she thought.

  Nothing in the data gave her any great insight into the Great Unknown. If the Foitani thought she'd step off the Harold Meeker with the answer to their problem all wrapped up with a bow around it, they were going to be disappointed. She took malicious glee at the idea of disappointing them, glee tempered only by the realization that disappointed Foitani were also liable to be dangerous Foitani.

  The idea of stepping off the Harold Meeker without the answer made something else occur to her. "What became of the Flying Festoon, Bernard?" she asked. "Why aren't you still flying it?"

  "I sold it after that first trip you took with me," he said, shrugging. "Marya and Pavel both reached master status after that run, and they wanted commands of their own. I could have kept it and hired on some less experienced crewfolk, I suppose, but I didn't feel like it. So I sold it and got this smaller ship. I'm a jack-of-all-trades and I like my own company pretty well, so I thought I'd make a few runs by myself. I was turning a profit till this mess with the Foitani blew up. If we can figure out the Great Unknown, I'll make one yet. So will you."

  Jennifer sighed. She'd been a trader long enough that turning a profit was important to her, too. She wondered if it was important enough to mean she had to satisfy the Foitani after all. Maybe it was. If they
kept their bargain and let her take her pay in trade goods, she was more confident than ever that she could squeeze them till their black, ball-bearing eyes popped.

  But she was not just a trader; and she didn't want to be a full-time trader. She spent a lot of time with her reader in front of her face, going through Middle English science fiction both to keep her grasp of the language sharp and to see if any of the science-fiction writers, with their elastic minds, had imagined a race analogous to the Foitani. That was a better hope than wading through the xenanthropology manuals: a glance there had told her what she already knew, that none of the other races with which humanity was acquainted resembled the blue-skinned aliens at all. Besides, Middle English was more fun to read than the manuals.

  "Any luck?" Greenberg asked hopefully when she came up for air one day about halfway through the trip to Gilver.

  She had to shake her head. "Nothing so far."

  "Keep looking. I know how I used to sneer at you for reading that stuff, but the ideas you got from it really came in handy on L'Rau."

  "I used ancient literature to help me on Athet, too: Sherlock Holmes it was that time, not properly science fiction at all. As somebody—Niven, I think it was—said back in the twentieth century, abstract knowledge never goes to waste."

  Greenberg knew something about the twentieth century, but not enough. "Niven? I thought he was an actor, not one of your writers." The misunderstanding took several minutes to clear up. Finally Jennifer projected pictures of both men. "No, they're definitely not the same fellow," Greenberg admitted.

  "There, you see?" she said. "They—" She stopped with a squawk, grabbing for the back of the sofa bed—the Harold Meeker was lurching under her feet as if caught on the ground during an earthquake. She felt the hair on her arms and at the back of her neck prickle up in alarm. Ships in hyperdrive had no business lurching. What was there to run into?