“Daddy was extremely brave,” Nammett was bold enough to remind them.
“Oh he certainly was. And lucky.” He shook off the unpleasantly stern demeanor, which was a little out of character anyway. “The outside worlds are merely dens of vice, my children. This existence that the Five Stars have seen fit to provide you is the only way for beings like us to live.” The class nodded; it was another familiar refrain. “Discipline, order and an absolute acceptance of the plans our Great Five have laid. Within those boundaries lies the only harmony we can know.”
The red-shirted boy returned from the rear bathroom, face as red as his shirt, but more comfortable.
The professor was sitting now, stirring a large cup of green tea “I apologize, class. Julius’ comment grated with me... it is no fault of yours, boy,” he reassured Julius. “But having seen what I have seen, I can never express it plainly or forcefully enough.” Julius nodded. “Banish such thoughts. A cruiser is a conveyor of evil.”
“I can only apologize, professor.”
“Come, come. If I touched on something close to your heart, you might react the same, eh?”
Nammett was confused, and kept unusually quiet for the rest of the morning. Over lunch, eaten communally in a tented area beside the school’s tiny kitchen, she whispered her worries to her brother.
“He was just warning us,” Julius said. “He’s seen the vices of the outer worlds, and he knows only The Five can keep us safe.”
Nammett ignored her bowl of sweet porridge and looked Julius straight in the eye. “You remember our dice, the seven and the eleven?” Julius nodded, unnecessarily; it was a multiplication game they played every day. “If our Five stars have a dozen planets around them, and there are hundreds and thousands of stars, and each of those has planets, and... “ Julius whirled a finger; he got the point. “Then perhaps there are millions of planets with life on them, and even more which have been colonized by people like the ones who brought our culture to Qelandi.”
“Many millions,” Julius agreed, scraping his bowl with a wooden spoon.
“And the professor told us that every single one is just... bad, evil, a ‘den of vice’.”
“Don’t you believe him?”
She marveled at the thought. “I don’t... I don’t have to believe him.” She was wide-eyed, as if exploring brand new terrain. “I can ask other people who have been to the outer worlds. If they’re not corrupted and murderous, or addicted to some drug, or fresh out of jail, then we’ll know the professor is wrong.”
An eavesdropping classmate decided to step in. “Don’t let him hear you say that!” he warned sternly. “We’ve all known the Professor since we could walk. Have any of us ever known him to be mistaken?”
They pondered this together for a few moments and then, with time pressing, offered a quick prayer to the second star as it reached its zenith, and filed back into their classroom. The afternoon passed with that aching slowness known only to children who desperately wished to be elsewhere.
****
Chapter 11: Outbound
Onboard the interstellar cruiser Daedalus, three days out of Takanli
The lecture ended with a warm round of applause, and then most of the audience made for the exit and the promise of dinner. ‘Earth’s Biosphere and its Fecund Variety’ had been a good title. The audience had learned much about the anatomy and habits of animals which roamed the seabed, made a living in subterranean caves, swooped out of the sky for prey, grazed peacefully in herds, and even slept for nearly a quarter of the year. The orangutan had been Falik’s favorite; others had been attracted by the bashful panda, the intelligent, seemingly ever-smiling dolphin, or the graceful, powerful leopard. What was certain, they came to understand, was that Earth’s animal life would be a major highlight of their visit. The ship was abuzz.
Falik relished this time – just a week, they had all agreed – which was set aside for study, lectures, discussions and simulations. It was a schedule designed to suit the Takanlian temperament: a well-organized and rigorous educational program with time for reflection and further enquiry. The ship’s one hundred and eighteen passengers gratefully filled their minds and began the process of selecting specialisms which would focus their study of the Earth and its biosphere.
More than anything, they would try to understand its people.
Although remarkably similar to their own, human society had never been vaccinated against addiction, violence, selfishness and the other fetters to peace and development. According to the latest news, humanity was making strides in these directions without recourse to a vaccine. Instead, Paul and Hal had crafted economic systems which diminished the importance of material wealth, as well as providing enormously increased resources for education. If it can be done among a those descended – very recently, mark you – from the lowly primates, then surely Takanlians could achieve the same, or better? It never hurt, Falik found, to invoke planetary pride, especially when the results promised to be so spectacular.
Amid the excitement, there was a strand of tension. Only a handful of Takanlians had ever ventured this far from home. The crew of the Lawrence were all living legends, even as they slept on their long light-speed journey back to Takanli. After three years surveying Paul’s system and those nearby, their survey mission was completed. Awards would be given, both in gratitude for their long service to Takanli’s scientific community, and for their having selected Paul as the specimen to be conveyed back to Takanli. Only Garlidan’s illegal involvement threatened to tarnish the mission’s achievements, and certainly no one blamed the crew of the Lawrence for his typically outlandish behavior.
Falik often wondered how, once she reached Earth, she might try to explain Paul’s significance to Takanlians. The only comparable figures in mankind’s history appeared to be mythical or religious – messiahs, prophets and the like – or scientists of global standing, such as Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr or Stephen Hawking. Even they, though could not claim Paul’s most dizzying achievement: he helped us learn how to feel.
She chuckled. Was it truly an achievement, in all honesty, to be strapped to a table and analyzed? To have your genetic code sequenced while you stared in amazement at the technology around you? Paul’s genome, so familiar and yet so exciting, had offered a reversal of Takanli’s self-imposed emotional exile. It promised an end to the willful limitation of emotional response. The means for a response had always existed, but it was repressed and confined, assumed to be dangerous. The loss to her species bothered her deeply. More each day, in fact, as the shackles steadily fell away from her own emotional system and she began, for the first time, to truly feel.
It had begun with passion. Paul had ignited within her emotions which she had initially found immoral and depraved. Once she gave herself to him, though, during that illicit moment in the testing suite, everything became clear. Bodies were made to experience pleasure. Her experience at the astronomical festival, that unrestrained and deeply controversial orgy which offered the entire gamut of sensorial bliss, left her certain of that fact. And Paul’s own mastery of the bodily pleasures had pushed her to understand the true wonders of being a humanoid. After that, there could have been no going back. And so, she was accelerating through space in a journey to find out more, to see where this road might lead.
There was time to think about the those who had made this possible, including that ancient, inexplicable mystic, Garlidan. She came to strongly support his opposition to any kind of genetic vaccine. It is through challenge that beings are measured, was his oft-quoted summation. Without such challenge, were they not simply automatons, blithely following a dull pathway of uninspired conformism? Takanli was peaceful, for sure, and boasted an enviable society full of cultural riches, architectural wonders and scientific marvels. But if you spend a month with Paul, Takanli begins, for all that it can boast, to seem just a little dull.
‘The grass is always greener on someone else’s yard’, went the Earth saying, she had learne
d. What if the yard was green only through the aggressive use of chemical fertilizers? What if it retained its perfection by banning any visitors? Garlidan would adore such an argument, she knew. Perfection is one-third beauty and two-thirds ugliness, was another of his sayings.
“Dr. Falik?” She had been staring into space. Falik rubbed her eyes.
She turned to see Carpash and his amiable grin. “Good evening,” she said, returning the smile.
“Thinking of home?”
“Of Earth,” she said. “While I still can.”
The two had spent a good deal of time together in the weeks leading up to their departure from Takanli. A respected researcher, and one with valuable first-hand experience of Paul’s genome and physiology, Carpash had been promoted within the Institute of Sciences, and was one of the first to volunteer for this remarkable journey to Earth.
“I find myself daydreaming about it, too,” Carpash told her. With his work finished for the day, he’d exchanged his lab coat for a baggy, comfortable two-piece outfit which resembled, to Falik’s eyes, a pair of earth pajamas.
“There’s no harm in that” Falik said, wondering whether it was truly wise to give scientists access to Replicators which would realize any clothing design they chose, however outlandish or functionary. “I think about Earth all the time. I like to do so,” she added, “while I still can.”
Carpash led her to the Nova Bar, a relaxed hangout for those taking a break from this intensive week of studies and preparation. “Well, I’m told that in hypersleep,” he said as he found them a quiet table, “one dreams as one ordinarily does.” The bar was half-full of passengers enjoying a pre-dinner drink.
“Dreams? How can they be possible?” Falik asked skeptically. “Brain activity is nearly nil.”
“The rumor has it,” he confided, “that we still dream, but we do so just as slowly as we breathe.” In hypersleep, Falik recalled with a slight shudder, her respiration would reduce to a single, deep breath every three minutes. “There are hugely elongated dream sequences,” Carpash had heard, “tremendously slowed down, so that every detail is vividly available.”
A waiter brought them water while they chose from a scrolling menu displayed on a lime-green LCD. “I guess that might depend on what kind of drugs you took before the hypersleep process began.”
Carpash had no romantic interest in Falik, but he found that he adored spending time with her. No one else in their community had such... what did the Earth people call it? Spunk. He remembered learning the expression, but then becoming very confused when he ran it through his translator. He had wondered then as he wondered now: what do idiosyncratic vivacity and male ejaculate have to do with each other? It still made no sense.
“I think we’ve heard the same rumors,” Carpash said, glancing around. “That some people are planning to take learning drugs,” he muttered, sotto voce. “They believe that they’ll emerge from hypersleep with whole theses locked away in their minds, ready to write down. I was giving it some thought, myself.”
More glasses arrived. Falik’s cocktail brimmed red in a slender, octagonal glass. “There will be plenty of work to do, once we get to Earth,” she reminded him. “I intend to write extensively on human social interaction and sexuality.”
This made Carpash blush, as it always did. “Oh, Dr. Falik, really.”
“My dear friend,” she chuckled, “I do wish you’d learn to loosen your tie every now and again. Not all learning is done in the lab, you know.”
Carpash awkwardly fingered the stem of his own cocktail glass. It was a pale yellow creation whose surface fizzed very slightly, producing a delectable perfume. “And which aspect of it interests you the most?” he asked, mostly out of politeness. These topics left him feeling shaken and subject to emotions he felt powerless to fully control.
Falik launched into the description with unconcealed gusto. “I’m interested in the social effects resulting from widespread acknowledgment of the female orgasm.” A theory was emerging, she explained, that in advanced societies, female sexual liberation was a critical step for the securing of equal rights. “They say,” she said, relishing both the pungency of the cocktail and her colleague’s crimson embarrassment, “that if a woman knows how to ‘come’, she might get others ideas, and become open to other emotional heights.”
Carpash had almost stopped breathing. “Like what?” he stuttered.
“Like leadership, and the freedom of self-expression,” Falik replied. “Like a determination to stand up for their her and to argue for equality in all things.”
“Some would call that heresy,” Carpash warned.
“They’re idiots,” Falik shot back.
“Oh, not I,” he assured her. “I think it’s fascinating, what you’re working on.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I’ll be counting on your support, certainly in the data gathering stage.”
The thought of this sent Carpash an even deeper shade of red. “It seems,” he said after taking a massive gulp on his perfumed cocktail, “that you’ve learned more than a little from the Erosine Raptors.”
Falik raised an eyebrow, but then nodded. “And why shouldn’t I? They’ve become the most powerful political force in the Outer Rim. Without their sexuality, they’d have remained a slave species, doing the murky bidding of the priest class.” By the time she and Paul had encountered the Raptors, during the complex negotiations to bring peace to the Outer Rim, they had become a hyper-confident race of intellectuals, intent on restoring balance to a badly broken society.
“Powerful or not, I’d still spend a year in hypersleep to meet one,” Carpash admitted.
Falik let out a disarming giggle. “Finally, you old lab rat, you’re starting to relax. You’ll see a lot of new behaviors on Earth,” she told him. “There, it’s a curse to call someone ‘uptight’. And who can say who you might meet?” she said, wiggling her eyebrows.
“Temptress,” Carpash chided. His drink was almost gone and, rather uncharacteristically, he motioned to the bar for another. “I suppose we’ll be a great curiosity to the Earth people. Their very first alien contact.”
Falik often thought about that strange moment where humanity would come face to face, not only with alien technology, but with real, live alien beings. “Paul will be there to soften the blow somewhat,” she reminded him. Or at least I hope he will.
“Ah, yes!’ Carpash exclaimed. “You have your cherished Earth-Boy to look forward to.”
“And what about you?” Falik asked, deliberately changing the subject. “We’ve been aboard for three whole days now. Is there no one among this bevy of young intellectuals to stir your romantic faculties?” The waitress brought new drinks and caught a little of their conversation, smiling winningly at Carpash before heading off to serve the next customer.
“I have romantic faculties?” he gasped in feigned amazement, following the waitress with his eyes. “I thought I was just supposed to get my head around women, not get ...”
“On top of one?” Falik finished for him. “Well, I hope you do. Forty years in hypersleep is a long time without any sensory input. I would cram in as much as you can. It’s almost a shame there isn’t an Erosine Raptor on board.”
“Oh, please no! I know I joked about it, but those things terrify me. She’d eat me for breakfast and then move on to the next poor sap.”
That’s the idea, pencil-pusher. Let yourself be eaten. “Well, what about the three delegates from the Science Ministry? Paul found them quite wonderful companions.” The three girls – Annabelle, Beatrice and Catherine – happened to be seated at the bar, gossiping together and attracting a good deal of attention, as usual. “Why not finish your drink, then wander on over there, all smooth like? What’s the worst that could happen?”
Carpash smiled shyly over the rim of his cocktail, glanced into the glass, and then gathered his resolve and swallowed half of the rink. “Woah,” he spluttered, “that’s smooth stuff.”
My God, that sound
s like sarcasm! He’s truly learning! “Get over there, Loverboy, before some horny researcher snags them.”
Falik rose, hugged him quickly, and then stood by the table with her arms folded until he relented and tottered, a trifle unsteadily, to the bar. She glanced at the bar’s clock – there were still twenty-five minutes until dinner – and drank down the rest of her aperitif. Her rooms, a bedroom with a small, en suite study, were three minutes’ walk from bar, in a secluded part of the ship. So much the better, she mused to herself as she entered and quickly undressed. No one else needs to hear this.
She quickly stripped down to her panties. Relaxing on her bed, Falik brought up a directory from her personal Red Cube on the bedside display. Paul had been filmed a hundred thousand times during his time in the Pleaos system - giving speeches, meeting delegations, signing treaties and, rather inevitably given his fame and popularity, having sex. Even Takanlians, with their limited sexual response, were intensely curious about this visitor, and files of Paul’s sexual exploits were extremely popular.
Falik called up her favorite file, a high-resolution video filmed at some distance using an impressive telephoto digital camera. The shot was framed by the window of her apartment in a tower overlooking the central park in Takanli. Falik was naked, her breasts pressed against the glass as Paul took her from behind. She remembered it as one of their most delicious moments together, and one of the longest, despite it being their third liaison of the day.
She slipped off her panties and lay back, parting her thighs. She adored these quiet moments of reminiscence. Gentle fingers found her lips already swollen and moist, her clit emerging shyly from under its hood. She lavished attention on her secret place, lovingly stroking herself and spreading her moisture liberally before a finger probed just inside her entrance.
She let the image fill her. The memory of him, inside her, thrusting up hard and deep, pressing her against the glass, so very publicly but oblivious to the countless millions below. It sent her into a dizzying orgasmic spiral. Her body reacted urgently, almost too quickly - her mind craved a long approach, but her fingers took over, bringing a sheen of wetness to her soft, dark curls.
Clarion: The Sequel to Voyage (Paul's Travels) Page 13
