"We did not parch," the female said.
"We spent the time calming the billows within, against what we are going to hear," added the larger of her husbands.
"You are kind to meet us, as hard at work as you must be," said his partner.
"It is the least I can bring to the wife and the brothers in household of him who was my friend," Joelle told them.
Suddenly, blindingly, she realized she meant that. She had granted the request for an interview as a calculated gesture. Chinook's crew needed plenty of goodwill if they were to persuade a whole world to become their ally. But now that she was here, with those whom Fidelio had loved- Her eyes stung and blurred. She wiped knuckles across them, irritatedly, and went on, glad that her artificial voice could be kept level:
"Beside me is a female of our band hight Caitlin. He died in her arms. Before then, he had come to like her company next to mine, for he enjoyed the music she made and giving her his songs in exchange. I will interpret between you and her. Together we will seek to net for you the tale of how he fared. Ask whatever you wish."
Caitlin stepped forward till the widow bulked over her and she could proffer a box she had been carrying. "Take this, my lady," she said low. "While still in our ship, I made printouts of what recordings we have of him and enlarged the best views to pictures, for you."
While Joelle translated, the Betans saw what it was. For a while they looked at the likenesses, silent. Then the female laid claws most gently on Caitlin's head, stroked her with big unsteady hands, and rumbled and whistled-sea noises- "May you never lack for clean saltwater. May every gale blow you happiness. This in the name and presence of God."
"Och, it was a sorely little thing to do. One feels so helpless."
"Perhaps you do not catch what help you lavish if you share your memories of him. You raise those days of his that for us lay drowned."
The meeting lasted long, hours, because the Betans wished everything, each glimpse the humans could call back. Their questions flew like raindrops on a strandwind. A camera taped the scene, but Joelle suspected they had no real need of that; what they were doing was evoking Fidelio in themselves. Caitlin unslung the sonador from her shoulder and gave them the songs and tunes she had given him. In the end she laid the instrument aside and sang for them his lullabye.
When she was done, silence dwelt for a while in the tower. Then the widow stirred, lifted an upper arm as in benediction, and said, "Mercy be upon you always, you who are merciful. I will plead your cause before the Sovereign Council, and do believe it will be moved to aid you."
"What?" exclaimed Joelle, startled. "You?"
"Had you not caught the fullness of truth about me? That bodes well, that you twain would come here only out of kindness. Know, to honor the once-being of him who traveled with you, the League of Spacefarers has lately named me its delegate. Since its members will belike heed my leadership, whatever I say in the Council should carry a full cargo."
A lucky break. I won't disillusion her about my motives... or, rather, the motives I served, not expecting that anything could really matter to me any more. Besides, the implication here is alarming. If Caitlin understood- Joelle cast a glance at the younger woman and saw her gazing out the window, face as remote from ordinary emotion as a death mask. Briefly, compassion had brought Caitlin back from those realms wherein her soul had wandered since she left the Others; but now she had returned thither.
Joelle swung attention toward the Betans. "Is there that much doubt your people will help us?" she asked.
"There has been," the female answered frankly. "The tale you brought is a terrible one. We were hoping to learn from you how we may become what we must become. Today many wonder if, instead, we- our descendants, our whole race- may not learn treachery, oppressiveness, violence, such as you report without seeming to feel they are anything very unusual. Some among us would quarantine you."
"Is your species perfect?" Joelle retorted, more in the interests of accuracy than in any defensive spirit.
"Of course not. You know what sickness is in us and what kind of parchedness has brought it about. The riddle is, would the water you offer be healing or be poison?"
"We have more to offer than just ourselves."
"Yes, the chart of the ways you have come. Those do buoy your cause. Nevertheless-" The widow held out both hands in an embracing gesture. "Well, this day you showed us three how much decency is in your kind. Should we of this world not help it to flourish as best we can? So I will ask the Council."
Joelle was astounded at her own relief.
A few minutes later, the family said a quiet adieu and departed. They would have given the Terrestrials a ride, but the latter preferred walking.
When she left holothesis, Joelle felt none of the depression that usually followed. She couldn't think a fraction as well, but she was not driven to. Amplified reason had been holding down what began to flow up within her.
The sun had scarcely stirred. Thunderheads were blue-black and lightning-runed in the west, clouds blew off them and across heaven before a shrill, swift air, a new storm was bound here. It wouldn't arrive before the women reached camp, though, and meanwhile it was a breath of freshness. The living landscape moved in waves before it.
Caitlin took Joelle's arm. Again the girl's countenance, her entire manner, held a quite mortal concern, with only a hint that most of her was elsewhere. "Go on and cry," she said.
"What?" Joelle blinked.
"I saw you struggle not to, often and often. Your machine lent you the strength. But why not yield? You know I dropped a few tears."
"You are different."
"How much, at heart?"
I wonder, thought Joelle.
"I'd not see you grieving for grief's own sake," Caitlin went on. "Yet a dear sign it is to me this day, that shows you can still love."
"Well- I-" Joelle swallowed. "Those were Fidelio's kin. Not human."
"What matter that? They are beings with awareness. They wish for your friendship. Grant it, receive it back, and come alive again."
No, damnation, I don't want to bawl! I-
"Our races will be in closer and closer contact," Caitlin said thoughtfully. "Earth will need a sort of ambassador on this planet, who could best be the chief of a permanent scientific mission. Sure, and nobody has qualifications to match yours."
"If the Betans will accept us."
"They will; be certain of that," Caitlin said. What wordless knowledge lay beneath her confidence? "Not only because they feel a need to study us in our lives. Indeed, while that ought to prove valuable, it will hardly be the single simple medicine they expected in their first joy. Such medicines don't exist, do they, now?"
"But between us and the new races we can lead them to...why, worlds stand open! The Others would not have shown us how to go back through every gate we took on our search, did they not feel we are trustworthy enough - the whole of humanity and Beta. We must leave them in their outpost, aye, but elsewhere-"
Caitlin's voice trailed off. Her stride broke. She stood for a moment rigid, eyes turned skyward, mouth stretched out of shape, fingers hooked as if to grasp the wind. Joelle could well-nigh read her mind: We must leave them be. Never again can we know them.
With a rough gesture, as if calling pain to heel, Caitlin resumed walking and talking. Her tone even held some enthusiasm:
"The dancers of Danu. The Teachers of Pandora. The Oracle of the pulsar, and those from outside who come there. The navigators of that ship we saw go by at the hub of the galaxy. And more and more! Joelle, I could envy you, such adventures of mind and spirit can be yours... will be yours. I swear to you, the Others also live at their highest when they are questing. What else can you ask for? And- those two of them we met - children of humankind - in a way more deep than blood, they descend from you."
It may be thus. She may be right. Here on Beta, challenge, affection, inner peace.
"And from Fidelio," Caitlmn finished.
Then
Joelle wept.
XLVIII
The eye saw no change. Sol stood radiant against a darkness where stars never winked in their countless brilliances, the Milky Way rivered silver, the nebulae and the sister galaxies glimmered remote, and the gigantic cylinder of the T machine whirled among its beacons, a-circle in the path of Earth but forever hidden therefrom. Any sense that anything irretrievable had taken place could only be a foolishness begotten of uncertainty and emotional exhaustion. Several hours ago, a ship manned by fugitive criminals had tried to escape, blundered through a random gate, and lost herself till the end of time. That was all. Nothing that mattered had happened. Nothing.
Except lives put at hazard. Except mutterings in the crew- something is being kept secret from us, but what, and why? Except a conscience too uneasy to let me sleep.
Afloat alone in the control center, in silence, Aram Janigian, commanding watchship Copernicus, stared out through the viewscreen. Is Lawes awake aboard Alhazen? Does he wonder if we did right, and find what we've been told is not easy to believe, and curse himself for lacking the guts to put his career on the line, make the incident public, try to get an inquiry started? Or does he know the truth and rest soundly, in the expectation that by mornwatch he'll get his orders to come home?
Did this truth occur to him, that important things had happened, were happening, would go on happening for as long as there was a future? It was merely that their time scale was cosmic. The stars evolved without cease; after millions of years, most of those that showed brightest would have flared and died. Meanwhile the Orion Nebula and its kin would have engendered new suns, new planets. In five billion years or thereabouts, the slow death throes of Sol would commence. By then it would long since have lost yonder constellations, having swung- how often? about twenty-five times?- around in a galaxy that was itself unrestingly changeable. Afterward- Before Janigian, a ship appeared.
Automatic alarms whooped. Men on duty yelled over the intercom. No pilot fish had warned. Nor should any have. That great blunt cylinder with the cryptic protrusions and the blue haze around it was never built by humans. But pictures of its kind lay manyfold in libraries and data banks on Earth and Demeter. A vessel much like that had passed through the Phoebean System.
"All hands to stations!" Janigian shouted. "Stand by! Not a move by us till directed, but stand by! Outercom, get me Alhazen."
The stranger accelerated smoothly off. A sister craft emerged and moved out of the way. A third arrived.
"Lawes, is that you? Lawes, hold your fire, do you hear?"
"D'you think I'm insane? Certainly I will. I'll beam my superiors. You try if you can raise those, those creatures. Notify me instantly and cut me in if you do."
A fourth, a fifth, a sixth- A pause, and the aliens maneuvering into a formation that might be defensive but- The seventh vessel was different, smaller, spherical, awkward by
comparison as she boosted at a standard gee...a Reina. "Lawes, Emissary's come back. Holy Mother Mary, she's led them to us!"
"Against every order-"
"No, wait, wait. That isn't Emissary. Magnify your image; look close. That's Chinook. Chinook, returned from the dead."
Is this a dream? No, too much solidity, harness that holds me, meters whose dials do not melt, familiar inertia of my body, though the universe explode outside.
The aliens had englobed her, a shield-burg.
"Standard call," Janigian directed. "Switch any response straight to me."
In less than a minute, the comscreen bore Daniel Brodersen's visage. The days since last he came through to Sol had deepened the furrows therein, spread more gray across the coarse black hair, and given something else, indefinable, a look of farawayness... How was that possible?
He smiled and drawled his Spanish the same as before: "Good day, Captain, or night if that's what the clocks say. Listen, please. We are not unsuspecting innocents that you can blow out of space before they know it. But we come in absolute peace. If you shoot, we won't shoot back. No need to. I hope you won't squander the taxpayer's ammunition on us. We're proceeding to Earth. However, since we have a story to tell the entire human race, we'd like to begin with Copernicus and Alhazen. We hope you'll hear us out and send a message- to official headquarters- bearing witness. Will you?"
It trumpeted in Janigian. "Yes," he said.
Lawes took over the auxiliary set. "No," he groaned. "They're insurrectionists, I tell you, who must have recruited a fleet of monsters."
"Who told you?" Brodersen snorted.
"Lawes," Janigian said, "shut up. And let your men watch."
Brodersen began. He had recordings to project, and live scenes from inside the Betan ships. As he went on, Janigian's shock became anger and mounted toward berserk rage. Lawes, incredulous at first, started after a time to show wrath of his own: until he must leave his post to forestall a mutiny.
The bedside phone hauled Ira Quick out of nightmare. A crumbled house, a small dead girl accusing the sky, still holding her teddy bear, blood impossibly scarlet... Sweat was chill upon him. As he raised himself on an elbow and switched on a light, he saw how snow hissed by a nighted window. Beside him, a warm bundle, his wife moved, swimming toward wakefulness.
He accepted. A face entered the panel, a voice began to rattle forth news received. Within seconds, Quick said: "Hold. Stop. I want to take this on another line. Record whatever else comes in till I recontact, and make sure your circuit is secured."
He swung feet to floor. Alice sat up. "What is it?" she asked.
"Confidential," he replied. "Wait here." He rose.
Odd, thought a section of him, how one doesn't feel the catastrophes immediately. Like the leg I broke skiing, or the blackmail attempt, or Bergdahl's demand for a vote recount and investigation. I met those quite well. A person becomes temporarily an efficient automaton. The anguish comes later. He regarded Alice, judged her beautiful, regretted he would probably lose her, wished vaguely he had paid her more heed.
"Darling, it must be awful," she whispered. "Let me be with you. Please."
"No. Wait here, I told you."
In his study, he heard the report at length. It was confused, and incomplete but quite unambiguous. He made the obvious rejoinders, left the instrument on special call, and went back upstairs to knock on the door of his incognito house guest.
Simeon Ilyitch Makarov let him in. The short stout figure was attired in outrageously gaudy pajamas. "Well, what is it?" snapped the premier of Great Russia.
Quick urged him back and closed the door behind them. "Bad news," he said. "The worst, in fact."
Makarov gnawed his mustache and stood his ground.
"Seems Brodersen's returned. Leading a Betan fleet," Quick jerked forth. "Alhazen tried to reach me, but they entered too fast. The word is from Copernicus to the Astronautical Control Board. Palamas notified me. She's rattled, doesn't know what to think, but guessed I deserve a chance. What could I tell her? Essentially, 'Lies. Fraud. Preserve secrecy till we know more.'"
"But it is not a fraud," Makarov said slowly.
"I hardly think so. Somehow that devil-" Quick gulped, headed off an attack of the shakes, and went into detail.
"Well," Makarov said. "Well."
The shakes resumed, worse. "What are we going to do?"
"I go home, of course." Makarov wheeled, stumped to the clothes keeper, opened it, and picked up his suitcase. "You will lend me a car to the airport."
"But- sir-" Quick fought himself. "We have to plan, coordinate, alert the organization."
"Yes. Meanwhile, deny. Keep tough, is that what you North Americans say? We have a few days until the enemy arrives at Earth."
"When he does-"
"We must be ready." Makarov sagged. For a moment he looked gray all over. "Politically I am terminated, like you. And my hopes." He squared off, laid the suitcase on the bed, and commenced his packing. "I will try to get in position where I can bargain for my personal survival. Or else I arrange to disappear. I ad
vise you do same."
No, I'm not prepared, I'm not the type, this isn't that kind of country and I don't have the right connections abroad, my time is up. Quick stared at the snowstorm. The public will turn on me. My choices are prison or a pistol.
"God damn them!" he screamed. "The ingrates! God damn them to hell!"
XLIX
There were few street lamps in Eglise de St. Michel, none in sight of the Brodersen house. As Elisabet Leino opened the door, she saw her lawn, flowerbeds, treetops frosty with moonlight. Both Persephone and Erion were aloft; double shadows reached across early dew. The air which entered was cool and quiet.
She checked a sound of surprise and waited for the person to speak who had chimed for admittance. Light from within was less kind to Aurelia Hancock than the glow from heaven must have been. The Governor General of Demeter stood a while, staring downward, twisting fingers together. At last she raised her eyes and begged, "May I come in?"
"Yes," replied Lis, and stood aside.
Hancock passed through. "Please, would you close the door? I'm here secretly."
Lis obliged, turned about, and confronted her visitor. The living room, carpet and hardwood floor, wainscot, picture window, fireplace that Dan had built, no longer felt serene. It felt alert. Even the cat on the sofa awoke and sent forth a yellow stare.
"Won't you sit down?" Lis invited automatically.
"I don't know if I can," the other woman said in her wretchedness. She groped in her pouch for a cigarette.
"A drink, then?"
Hancock gave Lis a startled glance. "You'd drink with me?"
"I offered you a drink."
"I see... No, thank you."
Lis crossed to the hearth and leaned an elbow against the mantel above. Thereon rested a few souvenirs- heirloom candlestick from her parents, a rack of his pipes, a trophy from a figure skating contest which they had won together, the kind of things that belong in a home. Secure beside them, Lis demanded, "Why have you come?"
Hancock started trembling. "To, to ask you for your help, your forgiveness, and-"
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