“Did she say anything?” Sara asked.
“No. It all happened too fast.”
“How much do you think she saw?”
“No idea.”
David completed his initial medical check, and straightened up. “We’d better get her down to the clinic. She’s going to come to pretty soon.”
He raised the sides of the stretcher’s isolation tent and sealed the girl inside. To Atlabatlow he said, “Tell your guards to clear the halls between here and the clinic.” The colonel spoke into his radio, then nodded for the doctor to proceed.
All the way down the illogically angled halls to the clinic, Sara could feel eyes on them from the intersecting corridors, curiosity hanging like static electricity in the air. This was what everyone had come for—contact with the alien. But no one had expected it to come in the form of an ordinary little girl.
At the clinic, David motioned Sara and Atlabatlow to wait outside the double-seal doors of the biohazard suite. “I want to run some quick tests while she’s still out,” the doctor said.
“I need to be there when she wakes,” Sara said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll call you.”
Ill at ease, she watched the stretcher disappear with Bakai and the doctor through the decontamination lock into the next room. Atlabatlow posted himself just inside the clinic’s outer door, arms crossed. Voices came from the hall beyond it, but no one tried to enter.
Sara was thinking feverishly about how to conduct a First Contact with a captive, injured alien. She was in a situation that few exoethnologists could ever hope to encounter—dissertations would probably be written about it someday—but she had only minutes to map out a course of action. At last she stripped off her isolation suit. Until they could decipher the language, gesture was going to be the best method of communication, and the girl needed to know they were human, not beings with skins of plastic. Besides, if any biohazards were on Iris, Sara had already been exposed.
The door sucked open, and the doctor reappeared alone, his plastic suit unzipped. “Not yet,” he said to Sara’s expectant look. “They really gave her a dose.”
“Will she be all right?”
“I don’t know why not. She’ll have some tourist-attraction bruises, but nothing’s broken. She’s young and healthy.”
Beyond the double doors there was a muffled shriek, and a thump. For an instant David and Sara froze, staring at each other; then he dived for the door. But the red light was on, meaning the lock was cycling, and it refused to open. They waited, on edge, till it completed the cycle and Bakai tumbled breathlessly out. Her plump, pretty face was full of fear.
“She attacked me,” she blurted.
David made a move as if to rush into the next room; Sara put a restraining hand on his arm. “Attacked you? How?”
“I didn’t even know she was awake,” Bakai said, stumbling a little in her nervousness. “I was passing the bedside when she lunged at my face.”
Sara looked at David. He said, “I gave her a mild stimulant before I left, to help her over the effects of the stun. I’ve never heard of it making a patient violent.”
“She’s probably scared out of her wits. David, prepare a sedative, but don’t use it unless absolutely necessary. I want to try communicating.”
The two of them stepped into the air lock together. There was a window in the inner door, and as the chamber cycled, they pressed forward to look. The native was crouched in the far corner, feeling the walls. Her hands ran back and forth over the smooth ceramoplast surface with an air of intense concentration.
At last Sara signaled David to open the door. The girl did not turn to face them, but her body stiffened, listening.
Sara spoke gently, knowing her tone was all that would come through. “We won’t do you any harm.”
The native took her hands from the wall and rose from her crouching position. She had the awkward posture of someone not quite grown into her lanky body. Her eyes were closed. She wavered a moment, as if debating whether to bolt for an escape. Sara was about to speak again, in a soothing tone, but the native spoke first.
“Why hast thou beminded me?”
Sara was too surprised to answer. The girl spoke perfect, though antiquated, Universal.
Though she understood the words, Sara couldn’t make sense of her question. “What do you mean?”
“Do I know thee?”
“No. My name is Sara Callicot. Don’t be afraid, you can open your eyes. Are you feeling all right?”
“Aye.” As soon as she said it, the girl swayed dizzily. Then she drew herself up with the dignity of an ambassador and said, “I am Moth-Das Torobe.”
“I am honored to meet you,” Sara said. “Do you want to sit down?” She gestured at a chair, but the girl’s eyes were still closed, and she didn’t react. Something crucial occurred to Sara then. “Are we recording this?” she asked. David pointed up to a security camera on the wall and nodded.
With the linguistic problem so unexpectedly resolved, Sara had to abruptly discard most of the plans she had scrabbled together. “I apologize for the way you were brought here, Moth-Das,” she said. “It was an accident.”
Moth seemed to be listening for something. “What manner of place is this?” she asked.
“It’s a place we call a questship,” Sara explained. “We have come from very far away to visit your people and be your friends. This is our home.”
“You are Thora’s people!” Moth exclaimed.
At first Sara was speechless with surprise. Then she said, “You have met Thora?”
“Aye,” Moth said. Then, proudly: “I succored her.”
Sara felt a surge of relief that she hadn’t utterly failed her assignment. “We are grateful,” she said. “We have been looking for her. Is she all right?”
Moth hesitated. “Nay, helpless as a babe. She cannot walk, but must needs be led.”
That did not sound good. “Where is she?”
“In Torobe, with my sister Hanna.”
“We would like to fetch her back. Can you show us the way to Torobe?”
“Now?” Moth asked uncertainly.
“No, when you are ready.”
“Oh aye, of course.” Then, recollecting something, “But first I must ask the elders. They are already wroth with me for bringing Thora back.”
“We don’t want to do anything without the consent of the elders.”
Ordinarily, a First Contact group spent months doing long-range observations so they knew something of the culture before revealing their presence. That chance was already gone, but Moth offered a new opportunity. In Sara’s mind, the urgency of getting the girl back to her family—and Thora back to medical treatment—warred with the need to extract as much information as she could beforehand. She crossed the room to where Moth still stood with her eyes closed. “You can open your eyes,” she said.
Moth obeyed, but her dark eyes were fixed and staring. “Why?” she said.
Sara realized the problem then. She asked, “Moth, can you see?”
“See what?”
“Me.”
Moth hesitated. “The good dame who came by erewhile was discomfited when I did greet her.”
“How do your people greet one another?”
Without a word of warning, Moth reached out for Sara’s face. Instinctively, Sara pulled back. The girl cried out contritely, “Alas, I have offended thee.”
“I was startled, Moth, that is all,” Sara said. “I didn’t know what you were doing. Please, greet me.”
A new thought must have struck Moth, for she asked in a small voice, “Are thou human?”
“Yes,” Sara said.
Now she seemed positively reluctant, so Sara took Moth’s right hand and placed it on her cheek. Slowly the girl explored Sara’s face with her fingers.
Sara looked back at David. He shrugged, looking as surprised as Sara felt. “Her pupils reacted normally,” he said. “There was nothing to suggest…”
&nbs
p; “Moth, are you … unlike the others in your village?” Sara was wondering if Moth were an outcast for her disability, but was trying not to ask a leading question.
Moth’s expression didn’t change, but her voice took on a new tone of frustration. “I want to be a wender. ’Tis not an unworthy part to be a wender. What would we do without them, survive on snails and crayfish?”
This was not the answer Sara had expected, so she tried again. “Do they think you can’t be a wender because you cannot see?”
Part sulky and part defiant, Moth said, “Nay, they want me not to see. They want me like unto them, cooped up in Torobe, never venturing past their noses.”
“I understand that. But do they use their eyes in ways you cannot?”
“Nay, what mean you?”
Sara said, “It may be that we newcomers have another sense than your people have. Sight.”
Moth was silent, though she looked alert. At last she said, “Does it give thee great power, this sight?”
The question surprised Sara, but she said, “I suppose it does, in a way.”
“Can thou give it to me?”
Sara looked at David. He shrugged. She said, “I don’t know. We’d have to find out … learn more about you, and your people.”
“Oh, please! I will do aught thou command.”
Sara couldn’t help smiling. The girl was clearly thinking mythically. Here she had been spirited away to another world by incomprehensible powers—no wonder she thought the beings she met had magic gifts she might earn by performing some task. But wasn’t it true, in a way? If the people of Iris were blind, sight would seem like magic to them. It struck Sara that this might be one of the most ethically daunting First Contacts any Capellan expedition had faced. And they were totally unprepared for it.
Moth was sagging back against the wall, and Sara came to her senses. “Where are my manners? We need to offer you food, and drink, and rest. We need to welcome you to our village.” She took Moth’s hand in hers, and squeezed it. It was small, damp, and a little sticky.
“Welcome to Escher, Moth,” she said.
* * *
On the screen, five isolation-suited figures urgently wheeled a sealed gurney down the hall. The music was low and pounding; the recording was slightly speeded up to make them walk faster. “No one knew what mysteries they would find,” a deep-voiced male narrator said. “But the Epco explorers could never have guessed the strangeness of the discovery waiting for them.”
The scene shifted to Moth’s face, a little grainy from the security camera. She said, “What manner of place is this?”
The music had fallen expectantly silent. “Moth, can you see?”
“Nay, what mean you?”
“It may be that we newcomers have another sense than your people have. Sight.”
“Can thou give it to me?”
A cut to a scene of the sun rising over the planet, a swelling chord of music as the light spread. The narrator said, “This would be the Epco mission of mercy: to bring light to a planet of the blind.”
The Epco logo glowed with a slogan, CREATING NEW FRONTIERS.
Groans of protest went up all around the table. “Get that man something useful to do,” Magister Sarcodan said.
“You’ve got to have an angle,” Mr. Gibb said defensively. “It’s not dramatic otherwise. If people knew how boring you scientists really were—”
“This crap undermines our professional credibility,” Sarcodan said. He turned to Sara. “Don’t give him permission to use your image.”
“Our images are all Epco’s property,” Sara said. “It’s in our contracts.”
There was a startled silence around the conference table. Apparently no one had read the commercial-use addenda.
“You mean we’re really actors in an Epco advertisement?” Magister Prem said.
“If they’d wanted actors, they would have sent me attractive ones,” Mr. Gibb grumbled in an undertone.
“All right.” Director Gavere closed down the discussion. He was clearly nettled that his attempt to unite them all in support of Epco had instead bonded them in opposition to Mr. Gibb. “Our mission is the overriding purpose here. The potential of a medical market in optical implants is the first good news we’ve generated for Epco so far. It might help underwrite some of your more … esoteric interests.”
Sara had come to this meeting thinking that it had been called to discuss how the discovery of natives on Iris had altered the mission. She was astonished to find that she was virtually the only one concerned. All the other scientists were still competing to persuade the Director to allow them back down to the planet.
Sandhya Prem stood to introduce Hua Ming, the botanist, who had come to make a presentation advocating his studies of the native ecosystem. “Magister Hua has made extraordinary progress, considering the short time he had on the planet,” she said.
As the botanist showed picture after picture of Irisian plants, Sara gathered that she had missed a raging controversy among the biologists about taxonomy. She concluded that Ming’s viewpoint had prevailed when he showed a picture of a plant like a globe on a stalk, crowned by a ring of sharp spikes. “This is the type specimen of the first new species discovered on Iris,” he announced. “We have named it a brickle, species name Brickellia.”
Nelson Gavere, who had been stifling a yawn, sat forward. “So this is new, never before discovered?”
“Yes,” Ming said, pleased at the reaction. He then showed a slide of a seemingly identical plant. “This is Impedomia. The difference, you see, is that there are five spikes instead of seven.”
Everyone was silent. Hua Ming was about to continue when Sara spoke up. “What’s the significance of having five spikes?”
Ming stared at her a second, then explained, “It’s the difference between two otherwise identical plants.”
“But why is it so meaningful?” Sara pressed.
“Because it puts them in different species.”
“But you just made up those species.”
“No, I didn’t. The plants are different, can’t you see?”
“Couldn’t there just be five-spiked brickles and seven-spiked brickles?”
“No, because the five-spiked ones are impedomia.”
Sara gave up, and Hua Ming continued on with his pictures of brickle meadows. Sara found herself mentally sorting out the species in his pictures. It was satisfying, because the comprehension-defying mix of Irisian plants was now composed of known things, brickles and impedomia. Known things about which nothing was known but their names—still, it gave her a sense of mastery.
Director Gavere was looking pointedly at his watch, so Penny Sutton spoke up. “Thank you, Magister Hua, that was very informative. Are there any other matters to bring up?”
Sarcodan said, “When can we get back down to the planet?”
Penny turned to Atlabatlow, who was sitting sphinxlike, arms crossed. “I cannot authorize that yet,” he said.
Sarcodan started to argue, and so Sara waved her hands to get everyone’s attention. “I’m really sorry to have to break this to you,” she said, “but the discovery of natives on Iris changes our whole legal situation. In Capellan law, the natives have copyright on all the knowledge generated from their planet. Until they give us informed consent, we can’t take any more information. If we do, they could sue Epco to get it back, and all our work would be for nothing.”
The scientists were staring at her in shades of disbelief and outrage. Clearly, none of them was familiar with First Contact protocols. How could they be? A lifetime had passed since the last First Contact. “Even information we discover ourselves?” Hua Ming asked.
“Even that,” Sara said. “It’s proprietary, until we have permission.”
“Well then, how do we get permission?” Sarcodan said briskly.
“We’ll have to negotiate a deal.”
“How quickly can you do that?”
Sara rolled her eyes. “We’ve got
to establish trust and friendship. Our having kidnapped one of their children hasn’t gotten things off to a very good start.”
Atlabatlow’s attention was focused on her like a laser weapon. “We can return her as soon as the doctor gives clearance. The less she learns about us, the better.”
“You think Moth is a threat?” Sara said.
“The first thing out of her mouth was a lie,” he said. “My men have searched the entire area where they found her, and there is no village within walking distance, even for a sighted man, much less a blind girl. She clearly has unknown abilities that allow her to survive in a hostile environment, despite her handicap. Her first question on hearing of our sight was whether it gives us power. And her people are currently holding one of our expedition members. I think that is all significant.”
His paranoid revision of events left Sara breathless. She scarcely knew where to start. “They’re not holding Thora; they rescued her.”
“So the native says. I still think it is fortunate we have a hostage to exchange.”
Sara was speechless.
“Well, if we’re going to exchange her, let’s do it quickly,” said Sarcodan. “Get together whatever beads and trinkets they want for their informed consent, so we can get back to work.” Then, seeing Sara’s horrified expression, he said, “It’s a joke. Don’t be so humorless.”
Sri Paul spoke up in his gentle, earnest voice. “My department is deeply concerned about the natives, and our impact on them. We do not wish to see the natural concord of their world disturbed by our greed and our technology. We think they ought to be protected, since their simplicity may be the salve our souls need.”
Once again, Sara barely knew what delusion to address first. There was no evidence that the natives were simple, or in concord. She finally settled for saying, “This is why First Contacts are so complicated. We have to balance all these concerns, and the wishes of the natives themselves. It takes time, everyone.”
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