by Frank Borsch
But since she had chosen Lemurian history as the main focus for her research, what had been a stony path had become an obstacle course littered with innumerable hazards. She felt as though someone was just waiting for her to carelessly tangle herself up in one of the subtle traps in order to have her quietly dismissed and packed off back to Shaghomin. Her home world. The Establishment could not have invented a worse exile.
At first, Solina had refused to believe. Could it be that no one was interested in the truth? Did no one else care about the struggle that had reached its shattering climax in the Sol system more than fifty thousand years ago? The Beasts had very nearly exterminated the Lemurians. If the Lemurians had perished in the onslaught, no human beings would exist today—neither Akonians nor Terrans, Arkonides or any of the other humanoids. Billions upon billions had lost their lives in that war. Didn't their descendants owe the dead at least an effort to uncover the truth about their fate? An accounting of the indescribable terror, capturing it in numbers, in the hope of one day being able to comprehend it?
The answer, Solina had quickly discovered, was simple: No one had any interest in learning that truth.
Some avoided that truth because thinking about the catastrophe was depressing. They were afraid that they might fall victim to a similar cataclysm some day. Others, because they sensed that Solina's research could shake the very foundations of their identity. Akonians were Akonians, and for centuries that had been synonymous with aversion, if not outright hatred, for all non-Akonians, especially those upstart Terrans. The old Lemurians were an inconvenient reminder that they all belonged to the same family.
Solina's career ground to a halt. In helpless anger she watched as far less talented historians were promoted and honored. No wonder: they were doing something useful. They sang the glory of the Akonian people and of its most excellent and wise nobility, and reinterpreted history to suit their theories. Bitter defeats at the hands of the Terrans were transformed into heroic deeds, in which the vastly outnumbered Akonians were overwhelmed only by the sheer strength of the Terrans. Victories, really.
These historians strengthened the Akonian community, did their part for the success of the whole.
And Solina? Despite her family history, she could not be declared an enemy of the state. The era was fortunately past in which the regime's opponents—genuine or imagined—were poisoned out of hand or exiled to desert planets. Akonian society had discovered subtler ways to rid itself of members who had fallen out of favor.
For example, by sending them on months-long research expeditions to regions where, by virtue of their field of study, they were completely out of place.
The Ochent Nebula was uninhabited. By a whim of chance—as her colleagues in the astrophysics section certainly would have explained to her, had they any inclination to speak with her—there were hardly any worlds that bore life at all, let alone intelligent life. Solina had always been of the opinion that a good historian should be prepared to practice archaeology, and had been ready to continue her research with a folding spade in hand. But even that had been denied her. None of the few life-bearing worlds the Las-Toór visited had ever been inhabited by intelligent beings.
This whole trip had been one big miserable disappointment.
But Solina had had to swallow many disappointments throughout her life and had learned to get around them. The trick was being flexible, always ready with an alternative strategy. So they sent her to the backside of the galaxy, to a place where there was guaranteed to be no work for a historian? No problem—she brought some with her!
There was an enormous amount of original documentation in the galaxy on the Lemurians, and the amount grew almost daily, both as the result of dedicated searching by archaeologists and historians and by chance discoveries. This mountain of documents, many in written form and in a widely varying assortment of data-storage media, had to be recorded, evaluated, interpreted and placed within the overall context of all other findings to date—a Sisyphean labor often delegated to assistants or syntrons. Yet this mountain served as the foundation of their historical knowledge.
On board the Las-Toór, Solina had the leisure to delve into Lemurian history. Above her desk floated an array of holos. Displayed in the middle was the original document, with which Solina had already struggled for three days. It was a private letter written on a paperlike material. She had never held the original. It was located in a Terran archive to which the Akonian historian had no access. To gain access, her superiors would have had to make an official request to the appropriate Terran authorities. Solina Tormas knew her superiors. The Vakt'son would have sooner pulled out their manicured fingernails with tweezers than ask the filthy Terrans for anything.
Solina had dispensed with the formal request and instead contacted her Terran counterpart directly. Ten minutes later, she had the scan on her syntron and had made a new connection in the galaxy-wide community of historians.
Much to her delight, her colleague had already done much of the preliminary work. He had dated the document, which originated from the time between the years 51,389 and 51,378 before the beginning of the old Terran calendar, the common dating system used by all Lemurian researchers. Solina's superiors would throw a fit if they discovered the historian was working with the Terran calendar, but Solina didn't care. It was necessary to have a common dating system, and any one would do. Why should she ignore the existing one just because the Terrans had founded Lemurian research?
Solina's Terran colleague had also run the document through his institution's syntron. The computer had taken an image of the document, cleaned it up, converted the handwriting to Lemurian standard script and suggested several translations. Though Akonian had evolved from Lemurian, the passing millennia left only rudimentary similarities between the two languages. The results of the syntron's work were incorporated in several holos surrounding the original document.
She couldn't have wished for a better overview—and yet she understood almost nothing. The problem began with the simple challenge of interpreting the handwriting. Several words remained unclear. Did the second sentence of the letter start with "vecktran" or "vecktron"? The difference in the pronunciation and the spelling of the two letters was minimal, but the difference in meaning was huge. The sentence could mean either, "I write these words with a heavy heart" or "The words I write to you should not make your heart heavy." And it was still this difficult when the writer of the letter (it was unclear whether it was a him or a her) had included the vowels in the words. All too often, the Lemurians left out the vowels and simply assumed the recipient would mentally add them in while reading.
In moments like this, she cherished a ludicrous wish that people would be more considerate of the poor historians who would attempt to make sense of original sources tens of thousands of years later. If they thought ahead, they would never again so carelessly scrawl their letters. They would type them and store them in some medium that would still be viable in the future.
But even if that miracle occurred, there would still be the difference in meanings! Almost every word in any language had different meanings depending on context. And that was only the beginning of the problem for historians, because words also changed their meaning over time. "Bailff," for example, meant "fishcatcher" in the oldest surviving texts, but later also came to mean a petty criminal. Then, just before the onslaught of the Beasts, the term referred to a fashion craze among youth for clothes with a herringbone pattern. And those were the meanings that had been identified so far. Bailff might mean a dozen other things according to context.
Solina's Terran colleague had also supplied her with a database of Lemurian terms that he had compiled himself—a favor that she of course had returned by sending her own compilation—but in this case it didn't help. She wasn't going any further with the resources she had at hand.
It was time to ask for help. "Syntron," she said, "connect me to HistNet!"
The holos of the aggravating letter moved t
o the side and made room for a new one, the trademark for HistNet. For several long seconds, the logo hung over the desk: a pen guided by an invisible hand over the page of a book, leaving behind symbols in a fantasy language. The pen filled the page and then began a second.
Was her access being blocked? Researchers on Drorah—and many other worlds in the galaxy—were discouraged from participating in HistNet. HistNet was, as was immediately apparent from the name, a Terran invention and thus automatically suspect. And HistNet offered unrestricted access. Any inhabitant of the galaxy could use it to exchange views, opinions and knowledge with others. And, of course, anyone could lurk without being noticed, which was precisely the reason why the high Akonian officials didn't like it: The Enemy Could Be Listening.
Why let others have a look at your cards? It was much smarter to listen in anonymously and integrate any useful information into one's own work than to take an active part and reveal your line of research. Accordingly, Solina, like all the other historians in her institution, had received read-only access. Like all the others, she used it aggressively. But unlike all the others, she had hacked it.
It was easy. No one considered historians, who concerned themselves with things as unworldly as the past, to be potential hackers. So the read-only access restriction was relatively poorly secured. It took her less than two weeks of careful work to crack the access block; after that, she made full use of her new freedom.
A good historian was resourceful in any situation.
The pen in the HistNet logo wrote an additional page, leaped up as the page turned by itself, then went back to work.
Still no connection. She hoped it was due only to the Las-Toór's remote position. The Ochent Nebula was unpredictable in terms of energy transmission, and the ship had just detoured around a hyperstorm raging through the sector. Perhaps a remnant of the storm was affecting her access.
She hoped that's all it was. Life on board the Las-Toór was very different from life at the Institute. With its dozens of departments, the Institute offered anonymity, like a city within a city with no fixed boundaries. There, she could count on being overlooked; the barely noticeable trickle of the data stream that connected her with HistNet traveled from the Institute over a plethora of constantly changing connections and communications channels. By comparison, the Las-Toór was a tiny village around which a high-energy fence had been erected. The ship was relatively spacious, but it was a microcosmos nonetheless. Everyone knew everyone else and kept a sharp eye out for peculiarities and odd occurrences. And all the data that reached or left the ship traveled through a single hyperantenna.
Early on, Solina hadn't dared manipulate the Las-Toór's syntron. Patience! she admonished herself. You can live without HistNet for a few months. It isn't worth the risk.
She hadn't been on the ship even two weeks before Solina felt like a fish stranded on dry land and desperately snapping at the air. She simply couldn't make any progress. None of the documents on which she was working would yield to her efforts, and she felt that she needed only a small hint here and there from a qualified colleague in order break through to her goals. And she missed the company. She often felt that the bodiless beings who populated HistNet were more real to her than the people with whom she was riding through space in this steel cage.
It's for the sake of the work, she had told herself. Akon needs good work! Then she had attacked the syntron like her life depended on it. It had taken her several long days to gain access—days in which she went weak in the knees every time she saw the flamboyant figure of Eniva ta Drorar, the Las-Toór's network specialist, even from a distance. But at last she had done it. She was back in HistNet.
She thought.
The stupid logo didn't budge. What was going on here? Solina was tempted to kick the tiny box under her desk in which her personal syntron was housed. She had read in the old documents of many races that in their early periods of technological maturity, this strategy was considered a proven means of getting a balky machine to perform its function. As though there was a universal constant behind it.
Solina pushed back her chair, stood up and aimed her foot at the syntron.
"Solina Tormas!"
The voice issuing from the syntron startled her into missing her target, and she painfully slammed her big toe into the solid material of the desk.
"Ouch! Damn, that hurt!"
"Solina! What are you doing?"
The historian raised her head and faced the image of Jere von Baloy, commander of the Las-Toór.
Blast! Does he know? Never mind, just pretend nothing happened!
"I ... I ... uh ... the clasp on my shoe came loose, Maphan. I was about to fasten it when you called, and I was so startled I stubbed my toe."
"I see." Jere von Baloy glanced up for a moment, as though praying to an unseen god to deliver him from the plague of this hopelessly clumsy and incompetent Yidari.
Good! Underestimate me!
"How badly are you injured?" the commander asked.
Solina searched in vain for a trace of irony in his expression. It was convenient for her that the commander considered her impractical, but still ... .
"I'm all right," she replied.
"Can you walk?"
"Of course, Maphan. What—"
"Then proceed at once to the bridge! You are needed."
She continued to stare at the empty space in the air for a moment after the holo dissolved, then shook off her surprise and ran to the nearest teleporter.
The commander had urgently requested her, the useless historian Solina Tormas, to report to the bridge.
She would have given her HistNet access to know what was going on.
11
The position of communications officer was by far the best job on the Palenque. Alemaheyu was firmly convinced of that. More than that: communications officer was the best position anyone could have at all.
It didn't bother Alemaheyu that his rank commanded little respect. He even received condescending smiles when he got into conversations with the locals at spaceports during brief layovers.
"Communications officer, eh? Doesn't ... " Doesn't the syntron take care of that? was what they meant to say, but most managed to swallow that comment and babble instead, "Oh, communications officer! Interesting. What ... uh ... does a communications officer do, exactly?"
"He communicates," Alemaheyu would answer casually, giving the other person his patented What a stupid question look. So far, no one had ever dared ask a follow-up question.
Which was a shame, Alemaheyu thought, since they missed hearing a lecture on the greatest job in the universe. On the wonderful feeling of being a spider in a web, the center of a community. All the Palenque's lines of communication ran through Alemaheyu, both internal and external. Nothing escaped him. He knew about the constantly changing love affairs and relationships on board, about the prospectors' prior lives—usually turbulent and not exactly crowned with success. Alemaheyu knew who was with whom, what for and why, or why not and with whom else. He only had to close his eyes and think of the individual crew members in order to rattle off an exact description of their strengths and weaknesses, their characteristics and moods.
Admittedly, the multiple redundant syntronic systems did relieve him of a large part of his work as comm officer. But any series of redundancies had its limitations, and in such cases human sensitivity was required that not even the most refined personality simulation could replace. And besides, the syntrons performed only the routine tasks—the requirements, so to speak—leaving Alemaheyu the electives: tending the network of relationships between the crew members, strengthening it to withstand the most powerful forces that could be arrayed against it.
Alemaheyu was convinced that he was a good net weaver. Why else would the crawler crews have nicknamed him "Mama?"
No, Alemaheyu never would have traded his job, even though he earned the smallest share of the Palenque's profits. Sharita Coho might earn a hundred times more than he
did, but what did the commander get out of it? A podium in the center of the bridge from which she could bark her orders, and a whole lot of aggravation that followed her around like a contagious disease. No thanks. Alemaheyu could do without that. And what did he care that the commander nearly had saved enough capital to buy her own ship? For Sharita it would just mean a new podium that isolated her from her shipmates, and an ulcer when she had to watch some gang of bungling amateurs called a crew mistreat her hard-earned property.
Perhaps she already had the ulcer.
Sharita sat in her seat as stiffly as though she had swallowed one of the Palenque's landing struts, her head rigidly facing forward as she waited for reports from the hyperdetector.
The suicide of the shipwrecked stranger had affected her. Alemaheyu, who just by being the comm officer knew the commander better than anyone else on board—even better than Pearl Laneaux—knew there was a soft core beneath the hard shell. You had to look for it, but it was there.
Sharita was reproaching herself. Rhodan was breathing down her neck, yet she was condemned to inactivity until the hyperdetector came up with something.
"Hyperdetection!" she snapped in the direction of Omer Driscol. "When will I get some results?"
"Soon, Commander," the stocky black man replied with his trademark calmness. "You want me to be thorough, don't you?"
The commander declined to answer.
Alemaheyu kept in constant contact with the eleven remaining crawlers combing the sector in which Crawler Eleven had presumably collided with the shuttle fragment. The reports coming from the crawlers were unusually terse and businesslike, an expression of the pain that the crews felt at the loss of their comrades. Alemaheyu answered in the same tone.
Later he would try to come up with a good joke, but not now. A good mother knew the moods of her children.
"We have the analysis," Driscol announced. "No sign of your hypothetical attacker."
"Are you sure? Not even a cloud of particles coming from impulse drive engines?"
