Omega к-4

by Джек Макдевитт

  But she encouraged him and told him he was doing fine. And he took pride in the fact he was light-years ahead of his peers. Bergen, Wally Glassner, and the others couldn’t have gotten the time of day.

  They were still having trouble with the syntax. But there was plenty of time, and Judy was more than satisfied with their progress, so Collingdale was pleased.

  They were at a point at which most of the data coming in from the Jenkins was repetitious, but Judy’s team was becoming more practiced at setting it aside, at finding the constructions that helped them solve the inner workings of the language.

  There were all kinds of sites where they’d have liked to see pickups. But the quantity of units was limited. And they were all in Brackel. They had only verbal descriptions of the other cities.

  Requests to Digger not only indicated target sites, but also designated which surveillance units could be moved elsewhere. A transmission still took several days to reach the Jenkins, and moving the pickups around took more time. It was cumbersome, but they were making progress.

  There was no information yet about local religions. Collingdale had no idea how old the civilization on the isthmus was. Had it been preceded by something else? What did the Goompahs know about the rest of their world?

  Digger wanted to know whether he should use his own judgment about the pickups. Plant them, let them sit for a bit, and then move them around rather than wait for instructions.

  Yes, you nit. Do whatever you can to get as much coverage as possible.

  But that didn’t work out either. A feed that had become interesting suddenly went dark and by the time they could direct him to get it back up and working, the line of inquiry had dried up.

  Most of the cities seemed to have a library. They were getting pictures of Goompahs sitting down to read, but Collingdale and Judy couldn’t see the materials. Invade one of those places, they told Digger. We need to find out what they’re reading. Send pictures of the scrolls. Sometimes he wondered whether Digger had any imagination at all.

  Judy made suggestions where the surveillance units might be placed for maximum effect. She pointed out that they’d gotten next to nothing whatever from the interior of the temple. Nothing ever happened on the main platform, the altar, whatever it was, except that one of the worshipers occasionally got up and stood on it in a pious manner and looked around.

  Inevitably they ended back on Collingdale’s beach, where he stared out at the dark sea—the wine-dark sea—while she stood by to ensure he wasn’t alone.

  A few cities along a seacoast. Widespread literacy. Sailing vessels. A peaceful society. Probably participatory government. Apparently universal education. Not bad, actually.

  He wondered whether the human race had just encountered its first serious competitor. The Korbs would need an industrial revolution and all that. But if they could skip the Dark Ages, and the assorted other imbecilities that people had come up with, they might leapfrog ahead pretty quickly.

  And the omega. They’d have to get past that too.

  “They’ve got a lockup,” Judy announced without warning.

  “A jail? How do you know?”

  “Somebody got tossed in.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “No. I think he was trying to steal some fish. Got caught, the shopkeeper chased him down, and somebody came and took him away. So there is a police presence of some sort.”

  They also had a series of terms for what seemed to be political leaders. There was a kurda, and a krump, and a squant. But they were unable to get equivalences for them. They were in charge, but whether a kurda was a king, a representative, a ward boss, or a judge, there was simply no way to know.

  WITH SO MANY young people on board, social life on the al-Jahani was active. It didn’t usually get rowdy, but there was a fair amount of partying and VR games. The older members of the mission, anxious to get away from the noise, took to congregating in a storage area on C Deck, near the shuttle bay, where they talked about the mission, their careers, and the omegas. They worried about whether they’d get to Lookout in time, and reminisced about the old days.

  Collingdale had traveled with most of them before. And if they’d become cranky over the decades, they were nonetheless good people. They’d endured months and sometimes years digging on Quraqua and Pinnacle, or cataloging the systems within a couple of hundred light-years of Earth until we knew the diameter, weather, and mass of every world in the neighborhood. A couple had been at Deepsix when it had blooped into the gas giant Morgan. They had a history of getting results. Melinda Park, for example, had served four years on Serenity, a space station assignment that would have driven Collingdale completely around the bend. But she’d directed efforts to determine the laws of planetary formation and had won an Americus for her efforts.

  Ava MacAvoy, who’d been with him at Moonlight, was there. And Jean Dionne, with whom he’d once conducted a romance that had been a kind of shooting star, lots of flash and then an eruption and nothing left. Except regrets. Nevertheless, or possibly because of that fact, they’d remained friends. Their captain was Alexandra Kyznetsov, who had also been at Moonlight, lobbing nukes from this very ship. She’d been embarrassed at the way things had turned out and assured Collingdale immediately after departure that she’d brought no bombs this time.

  It would not have been correct to say that during the passing months they’d become a tightly knit group. In fact they didn’t agree on much. Some thought the basic mission was to study the society on Lookout (before it got obliterated?) while others thought the intent of the mission was to get ready to set up a rescue effort. Although how the latter was to be done was unclear.

  Some argued that, under the circumstances, they should forget the Protocol and make contact with the Goompahs, while others maintained it would do far too much harm. There was disagreement over how the basic research should be handled, who should be allowed down on the surface, what the priorities were, and how best to make decent coffee using the onboard equipment.

  “Basho,” said Collingdale.

  “I’m sorry?” said Elizabeth Madden, who’d been complaining about the coffee in Alexandra’s presence, but who had no idea what Collingdale was talking about.

  “Basho. Coffee. You’ll have to get the language right if you want to prosper on the surface.”

  Madden was the most outspoken of those who wanted to maintain the isolation policy. She was a small woman who always spoke in a level tone, never got excited, and seemed to have a mountain of facts to support any position. There was a quality in her manner that implied, without her saying so, that her opponents merely needed to hear the reality of a situation to see the foolishness of their position. She occupied the Arnold Toynbee chair at King’s College, London. Her husband Jerry, also a xenologist of considerable reputation, had accompanied her, and usually led the opposition.

  She was alarmed when she first heard that Judy Sternberg was having the pickups moved around.

  “Unconscionable risk,” she maintained. “We were lucky the first time. It would have been prudent to wait until we were on the scene.”

  Judy shrugged. “I can’t see that any harm might be done.”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “If the Korbs so much as become aware that we exist,” she said, “their entire worldview will change.” Their natural development would be set aside, she argued, and they would become dependent, at least in their philosophy and probably in their development of technology.

  “Ridiculous,” said Judy.

  “They’ll wind up on reservations! There has never been an exception to the general law.”

  Madden didn’t explain which law, but there was no need to do so. Somebody-or-other had laid down a manifesto that a civilization could not survive collision or integration with, or even a bit of jostling by, a more advanced culture.

  “If we don’t intervene directly,” said Judy, “there won’t be enough of them left for a reservation.”

  “That’s
an exaggeration, Judy. You know it and I know it. We’ve survived at least one of these things at home, and other worlds have survived God knows how many. It kills off individuals, and that’s regrettable. But it will not kill off the culture.” They were sitting in the area they’d fixed up in cargo, which someone had nicknamed the Oxford Room. “Our obligation is to save the culture. To give them their chance to evolve.”

  Well, maybe she was right. But Lookout was not a global civilization. It was a handful of cities, positioned on a narrow strip of land between major oceans. The cloud was coming and when the destruction was over, maybe the archeologists could go in and look at what was left of the culture. And the xenologists could go home.

  RAW DATA POURED in. Collingdale sent his analyses on to Hutchins, with information copies to the Jenkins.

  The package went out daily at the close of day. They were, he thought, making excellent progress.

  He had just finished sending off a message to Mary, exulting over how well the effort was going, when Judy asked him to come by the workroom.

  He hurried up to the B Deck conference room that the linguists had taken over. Judy was there with a couple of her people, Terry MacAndrew from the Loch Ness area, and Ginko Amagawa from Yokohama.

  She handed him a printout. “We just found this,” she said. “Thought you might be interested. It’s from a conversation on a park bench.”

  It was in Goompah, but using English letters. Nobody tried to translate it for him, and Collingdale felt the force of the compliment. He had to translate it however word by word:

  “ROM, HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT HARKA AND KOLAJ ARE MISSING?”

  “YES. THREE NIGHTS NOW. WHAT DO YOU THINK?”

  “I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO THINK. I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF ANYTHING LIKE THIS.”

  “IT SCARES ME.”

  “IT SCARES ME TOO, ROM.”

  Collingdale’s first thought was that two of the young ones had been kidnapped. Or two lovers had eloped. Did Goompahs elope?

  “We’re not sure what Harka and Kolaj refer to. But we think they may be stars.”

  “Stars?”

  Judy glanced at Ginko. Ginko’s eyes were dark and worried. “We think they’ve just seen the cloud, Dr. Collingdale.”

  ARCHIVE

  Nobody here can understand how it happens that a race virtually confined to a limited land area, sealed off both north and south by natural impediments, has managed to maintain what is clearly a peaceful existence. There are no armies, no walls, no battle fleets. No indication that anyone even carries weapons other than what might be expected for hunting purposes.

  We are not yet certain, but early indications suggest the cities are independent, that there is no formal political framework, but that somehow they coexist peaceably.

  This framework is difficult to understand in light of the fact that the Goompahs are clearly carnivores. Hunters. They do not appear to have a history extensive enough to explain the amity in which they live. We would also like to understand why they find Digger such a fearsome creature.

  We share the sense of loss at Jack’s death. But I would be remiss not to commend Digger and Kellie, without whom we’d be flying blind.

  — David Collingdale

  Hyperlight Transmission

  June 9

  chapter 21

  On the ground at Lookout.

  Friday, June 13.

  …INVADE ONE OF the libraries. We need to find out what they’re reading. Get access to the scrolls.

  The Frances Moorhead arrived in the middle of the night with the industrial-size lightbender, which would hide the lander. Kellie and Digger thanked the captain, and transferred Jack’s body. That was an ordeal that reopened wounds and left Digger wandering aimlessly through the ship after the Moorhead had gone.

  He’d received a sympathetic message from Hutchins shortly after the incident. She was sorry, shared their grief, don’t blame yourself, bad things happen. But she didn’t know everything, didn’t know Jack had warned him to stop, didn’t know Digger was going to lift the coin.

  “She never really asked for the details,” he told Kellie. “She must know I left stuff out.”

  “I’m sure she does. But the Academy needs heroes.” She looked at the lightbender and looked at him. “She’s giving you a chance, Dig.”

  Kellie saw to it there was no time for him to sit around feeling sorry for himself. They tied the unit into the lander’s systems, connected field belts around the hull, ran a successful test and headed for the surface.

  KELLIE TRUSTED HIM. Had it been someone else, she might have been frightened. The prospect of being caught out there alone, weeks away from the nearest base, with a guy who was coming emotionally apart, would have been unnerving for anyone. But she’d known Digger a long time.

  This wasn’t their first flight together, and though she’d been aware from the beginning of his interest in her, she hadn’t taken him seriously until the beginning of this mission. She wasn’t sure what had changed. Maybe she’d gotten to know him better. Maybe it was that he hadn’t embarrassed her by becoming persistent. Maybe it was that she’d simply realized that he was a good guy. In the end, she’d come to enjoy just being with him.

  But the way in which Jack had died was a nightmare. And the ironic aspect of the event was that she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have made a grab for the coin herself. Mistakes happen. And if you get unlucky, there’s a price to be paid. It doesn’t make you culpable, she told herself, and occasionally, when it seemed necessary, Digger.

  She was glad to see the library request come through. It provided a challenge and gave him something else to think about.

  THE MOST ACCESSIBLE means of entry into the center of Brackel was through the harbor. But she couldn’t simply set down in the water, even with the lightbender field protecting the lander. Its treads would create twin depressions in the water, an effect that would startle any witnesses. So they waited until the sun went down. When it was reasonably dark, Kellie came in over the harbor, past a vessel anchored just offshore (there was a light in a forward cabin but no other sign of life), and descended a few meters away from a deserted pier.

  Digger was beginning to feel like an old hand. He slipped into the gear, turned on the Flickinger field, switched on his converter, put his laser cutter into a pocket, and activated the lightbender. Kellie climbed into her own gear and followed him out the airlock onto the pier.

  He looked back at the lander. Its ghostly silhouette rose and fell in the incoming tide. Kellie directed Bill to move it well out into the harbor. They watched it go, then turned toward the city.

  It was a bright, clear night. The big moon was overhead; the smaller one was rising in the west. It wasn’t much more than a bright star.

  Digger led the way through the harbor area. Lights were going on, cafés filling up, crowds roaming the streets. They had four pickups, two for the library, and two, as Digger said, “for a target of opportunity.”

  The target of opportunity showed up when they passed the two structures they’d thought of as theaters-in-the-round. Both were busy. Oil lamps burned out front, signs were prominently displayed, and the locals were pushing their way in.

  “Care to stop at the theater first, my dear?” asked Digger.

  “By all means,” she said. “We can do the library in the morning.”

  They chose one and took pictures of the signs, several of which featured a female Goompah with a knife, her eyes turned up. (When a Goompah turns those saucer eyes to the heavens, one knew that great emotions were wracking his, or her, soul.)

  They waited until most of the patrons were inside before they joined the crowd.

  The circular hall was three-quarters filled. Most of the patrons were in their seats; a few stood in the aisles holding conversations. Most Goompah conversations were animated, and these were no exception. That they kept looking toward the stage indicated that they were discussing the show. Stragglers continued to wander in for several minutes. Kell
ie and Digger stayed near the entrance, where they had room to maneuver.

  Oil lamps burned at the doors, along the walls, and at the foot of the stage.

  “What do you think?” asked Kellie, pressing a finger against the pickups, which were in his vest.

  “I think Collingdale would kill to have a record of whatever’s about to happen.”

  “My feelings exactly.”

  They waited until everyone seemed to be settled, then picked an aisle, moved in close, and squatted. An attendant went through the auditorium extinguishing some of the lamps. There was no reasonable place to attach a pickup, so Digger simply aimed it manually.

  THE SHOW WAS a bloodbath.

  At first Digger thought they were going to see a love story, and there was indeed a romance at the heart of the proceedings. But all the characters other than the principals seemed angry with everyone else for reasons neither of the visitors could make out. An early knife fight ended with two dead. Swords were drawn later and several more perished. One character was hit in the head and thrown off the stage to universal approval.

  The action was accompanied by much music. There were musicians down front, manning wind and string instruments and a pair of drums. Onstage, the characters danced and sang and quarreled and made love. (Much to Digger’s shock, there was open copulation about midway through. The audience, obviously moved, cheered.) Later there was what appeared to be a rape. With Goompahs it was hard to be sure.

  The music jangled in Digger’s ears. It was all off-key. It banged and rattled and bonked, and he realized there was more to it than the instruments he’d seen. There was something like a cowbell in there somewhere, and noisemakers clanked and clattered.