Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (49 page)

The next shots are from atmosphere, they show horizon and sky. The sky of Lory’s planet is violet-blue, spangled with pearl-edged cirrus wisps. Another view shows altostratus over a clear silver-green expanse of sea or lake, reflecting cobalt veins—an enchanting effect. Everything exhales mildness; there is a view of an immense smooth white beach lapped by quiet water. Farther on, a misty mountain of flowers.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Alice Berryman murmurs in his general direction. She’s flushed, breathing strongly; the medical fraction of Aaron’s mind surmises that her constipation problem has passed.

They move on together, following the display which goes on and on across the Commons’s normal hobby bays and alcoves. Aaron cannot get his fill of looking at the great vegetable forms, their fantastic color and variety. It is hard to grasp their size; here and there Photolab has drawn in scales and arrows pointing out what appear to be fruits or huge seed-clusters. No wonder Akin’s crew has sore eyes and stubbed toes, Aaron thinks; a tremendous job. He goes around an aviary cage and finds a spectacular array of night-shots showing the “plants’” bioluminescence. Weird auroral colors, apparently flickering or changing continuously. What the nights must be like! Aaron peers at the dark sky, identifies the two small moons of Lory’s planet. He really must stop calling it Lory’s planet, he tells himself. It’s Kuh’s now if it’s anybody’s. Doubtless it will be given some dismal official name.

The mynah bird squawks, drawing his attention to another panel in the chess alcove: close-ups of the detached fruit-clusters or whatever they are, with infrared and high-frequency collations. It was one of these detached clusters that Lory brought back, along with samples of soil and water and so on. Aaron studies the display; the “fruits” are slightly warm and a trifle above background radiation level. They luminesce, too. Not dormant. A logical choice, Aaron decides, momentarily aware that the thing is out there on a line with his shoulder. Is it menacing? Are you giving me bad dreams, vegetable? He stares probingly at the pictures. They don’t look menacing.

Beyond the aquariums he comes upon the ground pictures taken before the computer was dumped. The official firstlanding photo, almost life-size, showing everybody in suits and helmets beside
China Flower’
s port. Behind them is that enormous flat beach and a far-off sea. Faces are almost invisible; Aaron makes out Lory in her blue suit. Beside her is the Australian girl, her gloved hand very close to that of Kuh’s navigator, whose name is also Kuh; “little” Kuh is identifiable by his two-meter height. In front of the group is a flagstaff flying the United Nations flag. Ridiculous. Aaron feels his throat tighten. Ludicrous, wondrous. And the flag, he sees, is blowing. The planet has winds. Moving air, imagine!

He has been too fascinated to read the texts by each display, but now the word “wind” catches his attention. “Ten to forty knots,” he reads. “Continuous during the period. We speculate that the dominant life-forms, being sessile, obtain at least some nourishment from the air constantly moving through their fringed ‘foliage.’ (See atmospheric analyses.) A number of types of airborne cells resembling gametes or pollen have been examined. Although the dominant plantlike forms apparently reproduce by broadcast methods, they may represent the culmination of a long evolutionary history. Over two hundred less-differentiated forms ranging in size from meters to a single cell have been tentatively identified. No self-motile life of any kind has been found.”

Looking more closely at the picture, Aaron sees that the foreground is covered with a tapestry of lichenlike small growths and soft-looking tufts. The smaller forms. He moves on through to a series of photos showing the crew deploying vehicles out of
China Flower
’s cargo port, and bumps into a ring of people around the end of the display.

“Look at that,” somebody sighs. “Would you look at that.” The group makes way, and Aaron sees what it is. The last photo, showing three suited figures—with their helmets off.

Aaron’s eyes open wide, he feels his guts stir. There is Mei-Lin, her short hair blowing in the wind. Liu En-Do, his bare head turned away to look at a range of hills encrusted with the great flower-castles. And “little” Kuh, smiling broadly at the camera. Immediately behind them is a ridge which seems to be covered with vermilion lace-fronds bending to the breeze.

Air, free air! Aaron can almost feel that sweet wind, he longs to hurl himself into the viewer, to stride out across the meadows, up to the hills. A paradise. Was it just after this that the crew ripped off their foul space suits and refused to go back to the ship?

Who could blame them, Aaron thinks. Not he. God, they look happy! It’s hard to remember when we lived, really lived. A corner of his mind remembers Bruce Jang, hopes he will not linger too long by that picture.

The crowd has carried him half around the toroid now; he is entering a wide section full of individual console seats that is normally the library. With the privacy partitions down it is used for their rare general assemblies. The rostrum is at the middle, where the speaker’s whole figure will be most visible. It’s empty. Beyond it is a screen projecting the star field ahead; year by year Aaron and his shipmates have watched the suns of Centaurus growing on that screen, separating to doubles and double-doubles. Now it shows only a single sun. The great blazing component of Alpha around which Lory’s planet circles.

Several people are using the scanners while they wait. Aaron sits down beside a feminine back he recognizes as Lieutenant Pauli, Tim Bron’s navigator. Her head is buried in the scanner hood. The title-panel on the console reads: GAMMA CENTAURUS MISSION. V, VERBAL REPORT BY DR. LORY KAYE, EXCERPTS FROM. That would be Lory’s original narrative session, Aaron decides. Nothing about the “argument” there.

Pauli clicks off and folds down the scanner hood. When Aaron catches her eye she smiles dreamily, looking through him. Åhlstrom is sitting down just beyond; unbelievably, she’s smiling, too. Aaron looks around sharply at the rows of faces, thinking I’ve been shut away three weeks, I haven’t realized what the planet is doing to them. Them? He finds his own risor muscle is tight.

Captain Yellaston is moving to the speaker’s stand, being stopped by questions, Aaron hasn’t heard so much chatter in years. The hall seems to be growing hot with so many bodies bouncing around. He isn’t used to crowds anymore, none of them are. And this is only sixty people. Dear god—
what if we have to go back to Earth?
The thought is horrible. He remembers their first year when there was another viewscreen showing the view astern: yellow Sol, shrinking, dwindling. That had been a rotten idea, soon abolished. What if the planet is somehow no good, is toxic or whatever—what if they have to turn around and spend ten years watching Sol expand again? Unbearable. It would finish him. Finish them all. Others must be thinking this too, he realizes. Doctor, you could have a problem. A big, big problem. But that planet
has
to be all right. It looks all right, it looks beautiful.

The hall is falling silent, ready for Yellaston. Aaron catches sight of Soli on the far side, Coby is by her with Tighe between them. And there’s Lory by the other wall, sitting with Don and Tim. She’s holding herself in a tight huddle, like a rape victim in court; probably agonized by her tapes being on the scanners. Aaron curses himself routinely for his sensitivity to her, realizes he has missed Yellaston’s opening words.

“. . . the hope which we may now entertain.” Yellaston’s voice is reticent but warm; it is also a rare sound on
Centaur
—the captain is no speechmaker. “I have a thought to share with you. Doubtless it has occurred to others, too. One of my occupations in the abundant leisure of our recent years”—pause for the ritual smiles—“has been the reading of the history of human exploration and migrations on our own planet. Most of the story is unrecorded, of course. But in the history of new colonies one fact appears again and again. That is that people have suffered appalling casualties when they attempted to move to a new habitation in even the more favorable areas of our own home world.

“For example, the attempts by Europeans to settle on the Northeast coast of America. The early Scandinavian colonies may have lasted a few generations before they vanished. The first English colony in fertile, temperate Virginia met disaster, and the survivors were recalled. The Plymouth colony succeeded in the end, but only because they were continuously resupplied. from Europe and helped by the original Indian inhabitants. The catastrophe that struck them interested me greatly.

“They came from northern Europe, from above fifty degrees north. Winters there are mild because the coast is warmed by the Gulf Stream, but this ocean current was not understood at that time. They sailed south by west, to what should have been a warmer land. Massachusetts was then covered by wild forests, like a park if we can imagine such a thing, and it was indeed warm summer when they landed. But when winter came it brought a fierce cold like nothing they had ever experienced, because that coast has no warming sea-current. A simple problem to us. But their technical knowledge had not foreseen it and their resources could not meet it. The effect of the bitter cold was compounded by disease and malnutrition. They suffered a fearful toll of lives. Consider: there were seventeen married women in that colony; of these, fifteen died the first winter.”

Yellaston pauses, looking over their heads.

“Similar misfortunes befell numberless other colonies from unforeseen conditions of heat or drought or disease or predators. I am thinking also of the European settlers in my own New Zealand and in Australia and of the peoples who colonized the islands of the Pacific. The archaeological records of Earth are filled with instance after instance of peoples who arrived in an area and seemingly vanished away. What impresses me here is that these disasters occurred in places that we now regard as eminently favorable to human life. The people were moving to an only slightly different terrain of our familiar Earth, the Earth on which we have evolved. They were under our familiar sun, in our atmosphere and gravity and other geophysical conditions. They met only very small differences. And yet these small differences killed them.”

He was looking directly at them now, his fine light greenish eyes moving unhurriedly from face to face.

“I believe we should remind ourselves of this history as we look at the splendid photographs of this new planet which Commander Kuh has sent back to us. It is not another corner of Earth nor an airless desert like Mars. It is the first totally alien living world that man has touched. We may have no more concept of its true nature and conditions than the British migrants had of an American winter.

“Commander Kuh and his people have bravely volunteered themselves to test its viability. We see them in these photographs apparently at ease and unharmed. But I would remind you that a year has passed since these pictures were made, a year during which they have had only the meager resources of their camp. We hope and trust that they are alive and well today. But we must remember that unforeseeable hazards may have assailed them. They may be wounded, ill, in dire straits. I believe it is appropriate to hold this in mind. We here are safe and well, able to proceed with caution to the next step. They may not be.”

Very nice, Aaron thinks. He has been watching faces, seeing here and there a lip quirked at the captain’s little homily, but mostly expressions like his own. Moved and sobered. He’s our pacemaker, as usual. And he’s taken the edge off our envy of the
China
crew. Dire straits—wonderful old phrase. Are they really in dire straits, maybe? Yellaston is concluding a congratulatory remark for Lory. With a start, Aaron recalls his own suspicion of her, his conviction that she is hiding something. And ten minutes ago I was ready to rush out onto that planet, he chides himself. I’m losing balance, I have to stop these mood swings. A thought has been percolating in him, something about Kuh. It surfaces. Yes. Bruised larynxes croak or wheeze. But Kuh’s weak voice had been clear. Should check on that.

People are moving away. Aaron moves with them, sees Lory over by the ramp, surrounded by a group. She’s come out of her huddle, she’s answering their questions. No use trying to talk to her now. He wanders back through the displays. They still look tempting, but Yellaston has broken the spell, at least for him. Are those happy people now lying dead on the bright ground, perhaps devoured, skeletons left? Aaron jumps; a voice is speaking in his ear.

“Dr. Kaye?”

It’s Frank Foy, of all people.

“Doctor, I wanted to say—I hope you understand? My role, the distressing aspects. One sometimes has to perform duties that are most repugnant, as a medical man you too must have had similar –”

“No problem.” Aaron collects himself. Why is Frank so embarrassing? “It was your job.”

Foy looks at him emotionally. “I’m so glad you feel that way. Your sister—I mean, Dr. Lory Kaye—such an admirable person. It seems incredible a woman could make that trip all alone.”

“Yeah . . . By the way, speaking of incredible, Frank, I know Lory’s voice pretty well. I believe I was able to spot the points that were bothering you, in fact I’m inclined to share your—”

“Oh, not at all, Aaron,” Foy cuts him off. “You need say no more, I’m entirely satisfied.
Entirely.
Her explanation clears up every point.” He ticks them off on his fingers. “The fate of the recording system, the absence of the welder and other tools, Commander Kuh’s words, the question of injury—he
was
injured—the emotion about living on the planet. Dr. Kaye’s revelation of the, ah, conflict dovetails perfectly.”

Aaron has to admit that it does. Frank goes in for chess problems, he remembers; a weakness for elegant solutions.

“What about welding that alien in and being afraid to look at it? Between us, that thing gives me willies, too.”

“Yes,” Foy says soberly. “Yes, I fear I was giving in to my natural, well, is
xenophobia
the word? But we mustn’t let it blind us. Undoubtedly Commander Kuh’s people stripped that ship, Aaron. A dreadful experience for your sister, I felt no need to make her relive all that must have gone on. Among all those Chinese, poor girl.”