Universe 4 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Terry Carr

  ‘I will begin,’ Jonathon said, ‘and you must excuse my impreciseness of expression. My knowledge of your language is limited. I imagine you have a special vocabulary for the subject. ‘

  ‘A technical vocabulary, yes.’

  The alien said, ‘Our star is a brother to yours. Or would it be sister? During periods of the most intense communion, his wisdom-or hers?-is faultless. At times he is angry, unlike your star, but these moments are not frequent. Nor do they last for longer than a few fleeting moments. Twice he has prophesied the termination of our civilization during times of great personal anger, but never has he felt it necessary to carry out his prediction. I would say that he is more kind than raging, more gentle than brutal. I believe he loves our people most truly and fully. Among the stars of the universe, his place is not great, but as our home star, we must revere him. And, of course, we do.’

  ‘Would you go on?’ Reynolds asked.

  Jonathon went on. Reynolds listened. The alien spoke of its personal relationship with the star, how the star had helped it during times of individual darkness. Once, the star had assisted it in choosing a proper mate; the choice proved not only perfect but divine. Throughout, Jonathon spoke of the star as a reverent Jewish tribesman might have spoken of the Old Testament God. For the first time, Reynolds regretted having had to dispose of the tape recorder. When he tried to tell Kelly about this conversation, she would never believe a word of it. As it spoke, the alien: did not blink, not once, even briefly, for Reynolds watched carefully.

  At last the alien was done. It said, ‘But this is only a beginning. We have so much to share, Bradley Reynolds. Once I am conversant with your technical vocabulary. Communication between separate entities-the great barriers of language ...’

  ‘I understand,’ said Reynolds.

  ‘We knew you would. But now-it is your turn. Tell me about your star.’

  ‘We call it the sun,’ Reynolds said. Saying this, he felt more than mildly foolish-but what else? How could he tell Jonathon what it wished to know when he did not know himself? All he knew about the sun was facts. He knew how hot it was and how old it was and he knew its size and mass and magnitude. He knew about sunspots and solar winds and solar atmosphere. But that was all he knew. Was the sun a benevolent star? Was it constantly enraged? Did all mankind revere it with the proper quantity of love and dedication? ‘That is its common name. More properly, in an ancient language adopted by science, it is Sol. It lies approximately eight-’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jonathon. ‘All of this, yes, we know. But its demeanor. Its attitudes, both normal and abnormal. You play with us, Bradley Reynolds. You joke. We understand your amusement-but, please, we are simple souls and have traveled far. We must know these other things before daring to make our personal approach to the star. Can you tell us in what fashion it has most often affected your individual life? This would help us immensely.’

  Although his room was totally dark, Reynolds, entering did not bother with the light. He knew every inch of this room, knew it as well in the dark as the light. For the past four years, he had spent an average of twelve hours a day here. He knew the four walls, the desk, the bed, the bookshelves and the books, knew them more intimately than he had ever known another person. Reaching the cot without once stubbing his toe or tripping over an open book or stumbling across an unfurled map, he sat down and covered his face with his hands, feeling the wrinkles on his forehead like great wide welts. Alone, he played a game with the wrinkles, pretending that each one represented some event or facet of his life. This one here the big one above the left eyebrow-that was Mars. And this other one-way over here almost by his right ear-that was a girl named Melissa whom he had known back in the 1970s. But he wasn’t in the proper mood for the game now. He lowered his hands. He knew the wrinkles for exactly what they really were: age, purely and simply and honestly age. Each one meant nothing without the others. They represented impersonal and unavoidable erosion. On the outside, they reflected the death that was occurring on the inside.

  Still, he was happy to be back here in this room. He never realized how important these familiar surroundings were to his state of mind until he was forcefully deprived of them for a length of time. Inside the alien starship, it hadn’t been so bad. The time had passed quickly then; he hadn’t been allowed to get homesick. It was afterward when it had got bad. With Kelly and the others in her dank, ugly impersonal hole of an office. Those had been the unbearable hours.

  But now he was home, and he would not have to leave again until they told him. He had been appointed official emissary to the aliens, though this did not fool him for a moment. He had been given the appointment only because Jonathon had refused to see anyone else. It wasn’t because anyone liked him or respected him or thought him competent enough to handle the mission. He was different from them, and that made all the difference. When they were still kids, they had seen his face on the old TV networks every night of the week. Kelly wanted someone like herself to handle the aliens. Someone who knew how to take orders, someone ultimately competent, some computer facsimile of a human being. Like herself. Someone who, when given a job, performed it in the most efficient manner in the least possible time.

  Kelly was the director of the moon base. She had come here two years ago, replacing Bill Newton, a contemporary of Reynolds’, a friend of his. Kelly was the protégée of some U.S. Senator, some powerful idiot from the Midwest, a leader of the anti-NASA faction in the Congress. Kelly’s appointment had been part of a wild attempt to subdue the Senator with favors and special attention. It had worked after a fashion. There were still Americans on the moon. Even the Russians had left two years ago.

  Leaving the alien starship, he had met Kelly the instant he reached the air lock. He had managed to slip past her and pull on his suit before she could question him. He had known she wouldn’t dare try to converse over the radio; too great a chance of being overheard. She would never trust him to say only the right things.

  But that little game had done nothing except delay matters a few minutes. The tug had returned to the moon base and then everyone had gone straight to Kelly’s office. Then the interrogation had begun. Reynolds had sat near the back of the room while the rest of them flocked around Kelly like pet sheep.

  Kelly asked the first question. ‘What do they want?’ He knew her well enough to understand exactly what she meant: What do they want from us in return for what we want from them?

  Reynolds told her: They wanted to know about the sun.

  ‘We gathered that much,’ Kelly said. ‘But what kind of information do they want? Specifically, what are they after?’

  With great difficulty, he tried to explain this too.

  Kelly interrupted him quickly. ‘And what did you tell them?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Why?..’

  ‘Because I didn’t know what to tell them.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever happen to think the best thing to tell them might have been whatever it was they wished to hear?’

  ‘I couldn’t do that either,’ he said, ‘because I didn’t know. You tell me: Is the sun benevolent? How does it inspire your daily life? Does it constantly rage? I don’t know, and you don’t know either, and it’s not a thing we can risk lying about, because they may very well know themselves. To them, a star is a living entity. It’s a god, but more than our gods, because they can see a star and feel its heat and never doubt that it’s always there.’

  ‘Will they want you back?’ she asked.

  ‘I think so. They liked me. Or he liked me. It. I only talked to one of them.’

  ‘I thought you told us two.’

  So he went over the whole story for her once more, from beginning to end, hoping this time she might realize that alien beings are not human beings and should not be expected to respond in familiar ways. When he came to the part about the presence of the two aliens, he said, ‘Look. There are six men in this room right now besides us. But they are here only for show.
The whole time, none of them will say a word or think a thought or decide a point. The other alien was in the room with Jonathon and me the whole time. But if it had not been there, nothing would have been changed. I don’t know why it was there, and I don’t expect I ever will. But neither do I understand why you feel you have to have all these men here with you.’

  She utterly ignored the point. ‘Then that is all they are interested in? They’re pilgrims and they think the sun is Mecca. Mecca. ‘

  ‘More or less,’ he said, with the emphasis on ‘less.’

  ‘Then they won’t want to talk to me-or any of us. You’re the one who knows the sun. Is that correct?’ She jotted a note on a pad, shaking her elbow briskly.

  ‘Reynolds,’ she said, looking up from her pad, ‘I sure as hell hope you know what you’re doing.’

  He said, ‘Why?’

  She did not bother to attempt to disguise her contempt. Few of them did any more and especially not Kelly. It was her opinion that Reynolds should not be here at all. Put him in a rest home back on Earth, she would say. The other astronauts-they were considerate enough to retire when life got too complicated for them. What makes this one man, Bradley Reynolds, why is he so special? All right-she would admit-ten years, twenty years ago, he was a great brave man struggling to conquer the unknown. When I was sixteen years old, I couldn’t walk a dozen feet without tripping over his name or face. But what about now? What is he? I’ll tell you what he is: a broken-down, wrinkled relic of an old man. So what if he’s an astronomer as well as an astronaut? So what if he’s the best possible man for the Lunar observatory? I still say he’s more trouble than he’s worth. He walks around the moon base like a dog having a dream. Nobody can communicate with him. He hasn’t attended a single psychological expansion session since he’s been here, and that goes back well before my time. He’s a morale problem; nobody can stand the sight of him any more. And, as far as doing his job goes, he does it, yes-but that’s all. His heart isn’t in it. Look, he didn’t even know about the aliens being in orbit until I called him in and told him they wanted to see him.

  That last part was not true, of course. Reynolds, like everyone, had known about the aliens, but he did have to admit that their approach had not overly concerned him. He had not shared the hysteria which had gripped the whole of the Earth when the announcement was made that an alien starship had entered the system. The authorities had known about it for months before ever releasing the news. By the time anything was said publicly, it had been clearly determined that the aliens offered Earth no clear or present danger. But that was about all anyone had learned. Then the starship had gone into orbit around the moon, an action intended to confirm their lack of harmful intent toward Earth, and the entire problem had landed with a thud in Kelly’s lap. The aliens said they wanted to meet a man who knew something about the sun, and that had turned out to be Reynolds. Then-and only then-had he had a real reason to become interested in the aliens. That day, for the first time in a half-dozen years, he had actually listened to the daily news broadcasts from Earth. He discovered-and it didn’t particularly surprise him-that everyone else had long since got over their initial interest in the aliens. He gathered that war was brewing again. In Africa this time, which was a change in place if not in substance. The aliens were mentioned once, about halfway through the program, but Reynolds could tell they were no longer considered real news. A meeting between a representative of the American moon base and the aliens was being arranged, the newscaster said. It would take place aboard the aliens’ ship in orbit around the moon, he added. The name Bradley Reynolds was not mentioned. I wonder if they remember me, he had thought.

  ‘It seems to me that you could get more out of them than some babble about stars being gods,’ Kelly said, getting up and pacing around the room, one hand on hip. She shook her head in mock disbelief and the brown curls swirled downward, flowing like dark honey in the light gravity.

  ‘Oh, I did,’ he said casually.

  ‘What?’ There was a rustling of interest in the room.

  ‘A few facts about their planet. Some bits of detail I think fit together. It may even explain their theology.’

  ‘Explain theology with astronomy?’ Kelly said sharply. ‘There’s no mystery to sun worship. It was one of our primitive religions.’ A man next to her nodded.

  ‘Not quite. Our star is relatively mild-mannered, as Jonathon would say. And our planet has a nice, comfortable orbit, nearly circular. ‘

  ‘Theirs doesn’t?’

  ‘No. The planet has a pronounced axial inclination, too, nothing ordinary like Earth’s twenty-three degrees. Their world must be tilted at forty degrees or so to give the effects Jonathon mentioned. ‘

  ‘Hot summers?’ one of the men he didn’t know said, and Reynolds looked up in mild surprise. So the underlings were not just spear-carriers, as he had thought. Well enough.

  ‘Right. The axial tilt causes each hemisphere to alternately slant toward and then away from their star. They have colder winters and hotter summers than we do. But there’s something more, as far as I can figure it out. Jonathon says its world ‘does not move in the perfect path’ and that ours, on the other hand, very nearly does.’

  ‘Perfect path?’ Kelly said, frowning. ‘An eight-fold way? The path of enlightenment?’

  ‘More theology,’ said the man who had spoken.

  ‘Not quite,’ Reynolds said. ‘Pythagoras believed the circle was a perfect form, the most beautiful of all figures. I don’t see why Jonathon shouldn’t. ‘

  ‘Astronomical bodies look like circles. Pythagoras could see the moon,’ Kelly said.

  ‘And the sun,’ Reynolds said.’ I don’t know whether Jonathon’s world has a moon or not. But they can see their star, and in profile it’s a circle.’

  ‘So a circular orbit is a perfect orbit.’

  ‘Q.E.D. Jonathon says its planet doesn’t have one, though.’

  ‘It’s an ellipse.’

  ‘A very eccentric ellipse. That’s my guess, anyway. Jonathon used the terms ‘path-summer’ and ‘pole-summer,’ so they do distinguish between the two effects.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ the man said.

  ‘An ellipse alone gives alternate summers and winters, but in both hemispheres at the same time,’ Kelly said brusquely, her mouth turning slightly downward. ‘A ‘pole-summer’ must be the kind Earth has.’

  ‘Oh,’ the man said weakly.

  ‘You left out the ‘great-summer,’ my dear,’ Reynolds said with a thin smile.

  ‘What’s that?’ Kelly said carefully.

  ‘When the ‘pole-summer’ coincides with the ‘path-summer’-which it will, every so often. I wouldn’t want to be around when that happens. Evidently neither do the members of Jonathon’s race. ‘

  ‘How do they get away?’ Kelly said intently.

  ‘Migrate. One hemisphere is having a barely tolerable summer while the other is being fried alive, so they go there. The whole race.’

  ‘Nomads,’ Kelly said. ‘An entire culture born with a pack on its back,’ she said distantly. Reynolds raised an eyebrow. It was the first time he had ever heard her say anything that wasn’t crisp, efficient and uninteresting.

  ‘I think that’s why they’re grazing animals, to make it easy even necessary-to keep on the move. A ‘great-summer’ wilts all the vegetation; a ‘great-winter’-they must have those, too freezes a continent solid.’

  ‘God,’ Kelly said quietly.

  ‘Jonathon mentioned huge storms, winds that knocked it down, sand that buried it overnight in dunes. The drastic changes in the climate must stir up hurricanes and tornadoes.’

  ‘Which they have to migrate through,’ Kelly said. Reynolds noticed that the room was strangely quiet.

  ‘Jonathon seems to have been born on one of the Treks. They don’t have much shelter because of the winds and the winters that erode away the rock. It must be hard to build up any sort of technology in an environment like that. I suppose i
t’s pretty inevitable that they turned out to believe in astrology. ‘

  ‘What?’ Kelly said, surprised.

  ‘Of course.’ Reynolds looked at her, completely deadpan. ‘What else should I call it? With such a premium on reading the stars correctly, so that they know the precise time of year and when the next ‘great-summer’ is coming-what else would they believe in? Astrology would be the obvious, unchallengeable religion-because it worked!’ Reynolds smiled to himself, imagining a flock of atheist giraffes vainly fighting their way through a sandstorm.

  ‘I see,’ Kelly said, clearly at a loss. The men stood around them awkwardly, not knowing quite what to say to such a barrage of unlikely ideas. Reynolds felt a surge of joy. Some lost capacity of his youth had returned: to see himself as the center of things, as the only actor onstage who moved of his own volition, spoke his own unscripted lines. This is the way the world feels: when you are winning, he thought. This was what he had lost, what Mars had taken from him during the long trip back in utter deep silence and loneliness. He had tested himself there and found some inner core, had come to think he did not need people ‘ and the fine edge of competition with them. Work and cramped rooms had warped him.