“I’d come to know you. Orichalc’s now confirmed my understanding, but it wasn’t necessary. I knew. What mattered to you above all else—the only thing that mattered—was your own redemption.”
“No,” he croaked, and reached for her.
She denied the wish to lay her head on his breast. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, never fear. You’ll receive the honors you’ve earned, and I’ll speak never a word against them. But I can’t stay with any creature so selfish. Please leave me alone.”
She dodged by him, into her cubicle, and shut the door. The light came on. She doused it and lay down in the kindly darkness.
XXX
HEBO sat on the verandah of a lodge in what was once Nepal. A mild breeze bore a fragrance of jasmine and flaunted the brilliant hues of rhododendrons against cloudless blue. Birdsong blew on it. Before him woodland climbed upward, and beyond it shone the mighty snowpeaks. The scene and this small house belonged in the days of his first youth; he’d backpacked hereabouts. He suspected the place had been sited and shaped as it was just for him. Easily done, after those memories had been read. His stay here, these past two or three weeks, must be as much a part of the healing process as the mental exercises programmed for him. He didn’t mind.
His head had felt so strange at first, a whole new landscape, blindingly clear, but with sudden emptinesses to come upon as he felt his way around. Yet there’d been a coolness too, a sense of detachment, as if somehow he stood aside watching himself. He’d wondered if somebody waking from a fever delirium had felt like that, long ago, before even his own time. Then bit by bit he settled in, coming to realize not only with his awareness but with his whole identity that he was still the same old person, simply with a lot of fog and underbrush cleared away. Yes, there were gaps in his memories, but nothing that mattered too much; he could look up the records of those experiences whenever he cared to, and meanwhile everything he had kept stood sharp and vivid, his life story ready to hand.
Including enough memories of blunders to give a healthy ruefulness. He dared hope he’d be thinking and behaving better for the next few centuries.
[160] Though when could he start? He surged from his chair and paced to and fro, growling. Yep, he thought, the same old fiddle-footed Hebo. He wanted a drink. Bad idea, pouring this early in the day, but what the hell else was there to do? Oh, yes, a hike through the woods, something like that. Sensible. He was getting mighty tired of being sensible.
A light footfall brought him around on his heel. Avi had come out onto the verandah. His impatience didn’t altogether fall from him, but cheer blossomed. “Well, howdy!” he exclaimed. “Welcome back!”
“How’re you doing?” she asked. She spoke with him not only in Anglay, but in the dialect he’d grown up with.
“Lonesome,” he admitted. “Bored. Restless. Christ, but it’s good to see you!”
He strode over to embrace her. She was worth embracing, for sure, slim, chocolate dark, with luminous eyes in delicate features. A sari-like dress was exactly right for her. Her garb always was, whatever it might be.
She responded willingly, but less ardently than before. “I wish you didn’t have to flit away so much,” he said when they came up for air.
She stepped back and murmured, “That’s been more on your account than mine, dear. You’ve needed solitude.”
“Yeah, to do the drills and straighten myself out and so on and so forth. I couldn’t have managed without you, however.”
After the clinic and the machines, human companionship, consoling, heartening. Great sex, also lively talk and shared music and rambles around the countryside and—
Avi smiled. “I’ve enjoyed it.”
How much does she mean that? he wondered, not for the first time. Oh, somewhat, I suppose, otherwise why’d she bother? But with how much of her attention on it?
In his regained clarity he saw how skillfully she’d always evaded his questions about where she went and what, she did when she wasn’t here. Her flitter seemed to drift away and back [161] as lightly and meaninglessly as thistledown. Nevertheless, she was absolutely not a creature of impulse. Now and then he’d touched, barely touched, on enormous underlying self-control, before she fended him off with a word or a caress.
And seeing her stance, her gaze upon him, he understood: “You’ve got something new for me today.”
She nodded. Light shimmered slightly on the coiled midnight hair. “Yes. Haven’t you seen it coming? The verdict. Everything shows you’re whole, ready to go back and take up your own life.”
In spite of the warmth in her tone, he had a sense of impersonal kindness. Briefly he imagined stopping a minute to put a fallen fledgling back in its nest. Oh, yes, they’d charged for their services, a draft on one of his bank accounts, but very reasonable. When he’d asked what was worth their buying on yonder world, Avi had said that humans were too apt to misuse whatever they perceived as free goods.
The train-of-thought recollection gave him a moment’s chill. “Humans?” Isn’t she as human as I am? Biologically, yes—I suppose—maybe. In her head and heart—well, maybe, too; but what else is in there?
He pushed that aside. The tidings were not unexpected. “Hey, wonderful!” With even more sincerity: “I’ll miss you, though, Avi.”
Her eyelashes fluttered. “Thank you, Torben.” Then she looked straight at him and said, “You’ll do best to take up your life again as soon as possible.”
“No argument there,” he must agree. “One thing I won’t miss is all this sitting around on my ass.”
She raised her brows. “Why, what would you rather use?”
He grinned and shrugged. She did have a sense of humor, or, at least, she knew how to put one on, like a dress. Like anything purely human?
She turned earnest. “Have you considered what you’ll do?”
“N-no. Been turning some notions over, but I never was one [162] to think really far ahead. Except—” he blurted, “I’d like to come back here once in a while and see you again.”
She shook her head. “No,” she told him gravely. “That would be very inadvisable, Torben.”
“Why?”
“For you.”
Heartbreak? he wondered. Or confusion, or what? Would she even exist anymore as this woman I’ve sort of known? She’s maybe been only one—well, incarnation of her whole self. I don’t know. I doubt if I ever will.
Once, when they’d grazed seriousness, she’d said, “The future is intellect.” Thereupon she’d glided off the matter. Harking back, he suspected the remark had not been accidental. They, or it, or whatever reigned on Earth, had probably judged—one of their carefully reasoned, millisecond judgments—it was best not to let the patient get above himself, not to give him hopes that were bound to be broken. Old-fashioned, purely organic life had reached its limits.
Or so they believed.
Maybe they did.
As if directly sensing his flicker of resentment and rebellion, Avi smiled anew, took his hand—how slender hers was!—and said, “You won’t care about that when you’ve heard what I’ve got to tell you.”
He let go of all larger questions—did they matter to him, anyway?—and stared. Yeah, he thought through a quickened pulsebeat, there’s no sort of regular interstellar news channel, but word does get around, and I imagine Earth keeps alert, the way I’d keep alert for outside things while I’m mainly piloting a ship. “Say on. Please.”
Her steady voice overwhelmed him: the black hole collision, observed at close range by Susaians and by humans from Asborg, preliminary data speeding forth over the scientific grapevine. “Hey, Judas priest, sensational!” burst from him. “Have you folks sent a mission out for a good look?”
[163] Her voice cooled. “No, that’s not necessary.”
Why not? tumbled through him. Did the Earth-mind have the whole thing figured out beforehand? Or doesn’t it give a damn anymore about anything but its quantum navel?
No, that’s unfair, downright
stupid. I’m like a rat in a maze wondering why the experimenter doesn’t want to run it too and find the cheese.
The sheer archaism of his symbol was a shocking reminder.
He heard Avi: “But I daresay that in the next several years there’ll be quite a bit of activity in the neighborhood. Somebody like you could find a way to make a profit off that.” Her laugh trilled. “And have fun.”
Again his misgivings died down. And see Lissa Windholm, he thought. Though what I could actually do—
It struck him like a fist. He stood amazed.
Avi cocked her head. “Seems like you’ve suddenly had an idea.”
“Uh-huh,” he mumbled. “I, I’d rather not say anything. It’s too vague yet. Probably too far-fetched.”
“I understand,” answered the warmth he had come to know so well.
Do you completely? he couldn’t help wondering. If I can get this notion, others can. If the Earth-mind is interested at all, it will have already. Has her link with it told her?
He pulled himself away from that, back to the allurement before him. “Yes,” she said low. “An adventurer, a loner. You’ll want to take off straightaway, I’m sure. But—Torben, could you wait to make ready till tomorrow? We ought to have a little farewell party first, the two of us.”
“You betcha!” he answered half gladly.
XXXI
HOW often had she stood with her father on the watchtower at Ernhurst while they talked—casually, merrily, sadly, intensely, starkly, always lovingly—just the two of them? Lissa had not kept count, any more than she kept count of her heartbeats.
It hurt to see the hurt on his face. “This is—very sudden, dear,” Davy Windholm said low.
“I only got the message yesterday,” she answered. The invitation to join a new voyage, back to Jonna.
“And you’re accepting? With no questions, hesitations, conditions?” He paused. “I’d been informed of the plan. They’d like to have the Dagmar along. I haven’t mentioned it here because the answer was too obvious. So soon after the black hole business, who’d want to leave home? Nor would the House ever agree to tie up our ship so long.”
“We have others,” she said automatically, uselessly.
“All committed elsewhere, except the Hulda, and of course she’s not only too small but it’d be a downright waste to send her off with a destination like that.”
Perforce Lissa nodded. The exploratory scout could venture into extreme conditions—high radiation backgrounds, deep gravity wells, or less foreseeable hazards—better than Dagmar could, and make planetary landings to boot; but she was meant for preliminary missions, gathering basic data, and had berthing and life support for no more than four crewfolk.
“It didn’t cross my mind,” Davy went on in quiet amazement, “that these people would then approach you personally, or that you’d even consider going.”
[165] “The message to me was from the Gargantuan Karl,” she said. “I’ve told you about him.”
“Oh, yes, a good person. But not human. The expedition will be nonhuman, do you realize that? A consortium of Gargantuans and Xanaduans—with, I understand, some Sklerons, interested in the colonization possibilities. But the main objective, to study that ... Forerunner thing.”
“I know. Karl explained.”
“What can you contribute, dear?”
“Nothing to that part, I suppose. However, other kinds of scientists will go too. Pure scientists. A whole world to study! We didn’t make a decent scratch in the surface, our little group.”
Davy attempted a smile. “A deep enough scratch for quite a few research papers and theses in the next several years.”
“I know,” Lissa now snapped. “Though the black hole sensation seems to have driven real, detail-work science out of nearly everybody’s mind, here on Asborg. We should be thankful that a few beings haven’t gone cosmology-crazy but want to learn about matters that can be dealt with.”
“Nonhumans.”
“Yes. Not given to stampeding after the newest fashion like our breed.”
He regarded her for a while before he asked softly, “Are you bitter about your own triumph? In God’s name, why?”
She couldn’t stay irritated with him, nor bring herself to lie to him. “Oh, I’m restless again, and here’s a chance to work it off doing something worthwhile.”
“Already? After all that stress and danger, you don’t want any more peace and quiet”—he gestured at the lovely late-summer landscape—“than the little bit you’ve had?”
“If I don’t grab this opportunity fast, it’ll be gone.”
“I’ve told you before about the trip I was on, away back in my second youth, the one man in a crew of Arzethi. Perfectly decent, yes, fascinating beings, who tried hard for fellowship with [166] me. I may never have made clear to you how lonely I got. And that was for a single year.”
“Karl informs me they hope for two or three humans. Versatility.”
He raised his brows. “Would any besides you come from Asborg?”
“I suppose not,” she said indifferently.
“Then they’ll be foreign to you in their own ways. Besides, I can’t see so few, in a setting like that, not getting on each other’s nerves. More than with the aliens. During five years!”
She had thought about that, and how to cope, but didn’t want to talk about it. “Long enough, maybe, to start actually understanding the biosphere.”
“You’re no biologist.” Did she catch a note of desperation?
She sought to ease him. “No, I’ll play the same role as I did before. I’ve got a bagful of woodcraft skills, and I’ll improve them as regards Jonna. Dad, don’t be afraid for me. I’ll stay careful. I like living, really I do.”
“If it’s wilderness you want to study, Freydis is right next door.”
“I’ve been there, over and over. Have you forgotten?” she couldn’t help throwing at him.
“It’s still far from being well-known,” he persisted forlornly.
She nodded, “Yes. Our sister planet. I could call home every day, take furlough home every couple of months.” Scorn spoke. “Anybody could.”
“And still do good science. But to more purpose. You know I expect the cession of New Halla to your friend Orichalc’s people will soon be approved.”
She tossed her head. “It had better be. We owe him enough. Everybody does.”
“Don’t you want to help them get established?”
“I’m not indispensable for that. Plenty of Asborgans know the region, the whole planet, better than I do.” Her mood began to soften. “Maybe after I get back. Yes, I’ll certainly look in on [167] them then. But here’s a—a challenge for me that I can’t resist.” At once she wished she’d found words less pretentious.
He stood silent. A breeze murmured across the land. Its sunny odors tugged at her from the depths of childhood. She braced herself against them.
“A chance to go away, be away, for those years, don’t you mean?” he asked most quietly. “Altogether away.”
Her eyes stung. “Oh, Dad—”
He nodded. “Like Captain Valen. The hero of the magnificent rescue. He can have any berth he wants. But he’s leaving too. Taking an offer from a company on Akiko, I’ve heard. Humans there, yes, but—also far away. Another language, other lifeways for him to learn.”
Her tenderness congealed. “I imagine he’s sick of the publicity and the fawning and the journalists prying into his life. I certainly am. And maybe he hopes to prove himself.”
Davy’s gaze narrowed. “He didn’t, there at the black holes?”
Lissa clamped her lips together.
“Something happened yonder,” Davy said, gently again, “something that nobody’s speaking about.”
She squared her shoulders and met his eyes. “Some things are nobody else’s business.”
He sighed. “I know you too well to keep arguing with you, dear.” His hand reached for hers. “But if ever you’d like a symp
athetic shoulder and a tongue kept on a tight rein, here I’ll be.”
She took his grip and, for a moment, clung. “I know. Give me time, Dad. Only time.”
Time for healing, she thought. No, that’s another smarmy word. Smacks of self-pity. I just need to get out from under and keep busy for a while. A few years. What does that count for, when we’ve all got hundreds or thousands ahead of us?
With luck. Well, you have to assume you’ll be lucky.
Yes, indeed, I’ll be fine. Why, already I can start looking forward, vaguely, to my homecoming. And new surprises.
She didn’t know that they would begin with a new rescue mission.
XXXII
ARRIVING on Asborg, Hebo was surprised at the depth of his disappointment on learning that Lissa Windholm had lately departed and wasn’t expected home for several years. He considered going back to Jonna himself.
But no, he couldn’t make any further profit yonder. His capital had dwindled substantially. If he wanted to accomplish anything, he’d have to set in train the lengthy, complicated processes of transferring what valuta he had banked on other worlds to this one.
As for women, Inga was a lively town.
He found a small apartment in it and settled down to collect the information he needed. The database on the colliding black holes was public, huge, and rapidly growing. Most of it was quite beyond his comprehension. Interpretations of the material gathered yonder were streaming out, highly technical articles on this or that aspect, occasional popularizations interspersed.
More would be coming in. Two or three Houses, notably Windholm, were preparing in partnership to send some robotic probes that would conduct further observations. Probably a few of different origin were “already” there, though the Susaian Dominators, for one, would play such cards mighty close to the vest. However, it’d take a large fleet of those little craft, and an indefinite time span, to follow the course of post-collision evolution reasonably well.
Any proper expedition, crewed and in a big ship, would cost a bundle. Even what he had in mind, if it was feasible at all, would take more than he could pay for at the moment.
For Love and Glory Page 15
