H.M. Hoover - Lost Star (17 page)

Dr. Farr did not. "I'm sure you were rather discreet, handling such beautiful items, especially since none of us had yet seen them," he said to Vincent. "Yet the— uh—Toapa knew you had them. If I were you, I'd think about that. This could be an object lesson."

Vincent was going to protest, but then he saw Lian and the lumpies looking at him. He swore again and walked off through the rain.

"Are you going to dismiss him?" the professor asked nervously.

"No. Without Earth passage booked he'd be stranded in Limai for months. Talking too much. He's a very good photographer . . . and I want him where we can keep an eye on him."

That evening, like the good host he was, and in
spite of the rain, Dr. Farr joined Lian beneath her tree to stand and watch twilight come over the mountains. The lumpies were swimming in the river below, but for the first time none of the staff had gone down to watch them.

"Why do you suppose that is?" she asked when he commented on that fact.

"Because of you," he said when she had almost given up hope of getting an answer. "Like the serpent in the garden, you've made us aware. Before you came we saw them as animals, innocents. Now they are sentient-—with a past and dignity and a name. Long ago there was great magic in names. It was believed you could be destroyed by anyone who knew your true name. They were sacred words of gseat power. . . ."

Lian shivered.
^es
Do you believe that?" she asked.

"That's superstition. Ages ago, worlds past."

"But was it true?"

"There is some truth in most myths."

"My mother said lost tribes seldom survive discovery."

"And you're afraid that sort of thing will happen here?"

"Aren't you?"

"It had occurred to me," he admitted.

"If I'd never come here, maybe—"

"Don't assume too much responsibility, Lian," he said quickly. "Granted, discovery represents risks for them. But to avoid it, all they had to do was hide. There is more than enough room to hide on Balthor.

"My theory is they knew time was running short— that if they hid and continued to play stupid for another generation, they might truly become so—or they might die out. I suspect they chose to take the risk of exploitation or death rather than to continue to deny their intelligence."

Or the Counter chose to, thought Lian, but why through me?

"In any event," Dr. Farr continued, "we have discovered them. That can't be changed. If their things are all of beauty equal to those gifts they gave us today, then there is great wealth here. Wealth attracts greed. I will do what I can to protect them. So will Klat and his people. And the tolats will protect that engineering marvel in the dome until they understand it. For that they need its owners—and so they will protect them. But a lot of their future will depend on the lumpies— and perhaps on you, if you choose to accept it. They trust you. I don't pretend to have a theory as to why —or perhaps there is no
why
but only circumstances."

"Listen," said Lian, who was not quite ready to consider the responsibility implied by the man's last remark.

Unlike other evenings, the swimmers in the river had begun to call to one another, their voices floating rich and clear in the still air. As if hearing the sounds inspired confidence, the phrases grew louder, more elaborate, and the hills gave back an echo. From down-

river a voice sang out and another answered. The first repeated and then joined the second. Two more joined in, repeating the same phrase.

"They're singing!" There was wonder in his voice.

"Shhh!"

"Can you understand the words?"

"No," she whispered. "Just listen." There were voices in the camp behind them, and she turned to see the staff gathering, shushing one another, curious to hear. A tolat was jumping to the equipment shed, probably to get a recorder. She wondered what they would make of this music in translation.

The song was short and happy. It no sooner ended than another began; more voices joined in. Across the water by the shell beds, Poonie stood waist high in the river and began to sing. The others fell silent to listen. Poonie's voice was high and sweet, and the song was haunting. Then at intervals, individually or in chorus, other voices joined in.

Lian heard the music as a tale of good and evil, in times long past with people long gone, sung now not for its moral but for its beauty and their joy in at last being free to sing again.

The clouds broke, the wind shifted, and one by one the stars glittered. Still the music drifted across the water and traced memories in listening minds.

When it was almost night, the lumpies left the river and gathered on the beach. All in a company, they melted into the darkness of the forest, their voices echoing back and back again from the wet hills.

With the singing ended, the staff headed toward the dining room. Soon the only sounds were forest noises and a burr of distant conversation. Lian and Dr. Farr still stood leaning against the tree, each lost in private thoughts. Then with a sigh the man said, "I guess we should go eat."

"I guess so."

"I expect we'll hear from your parents soon."

"Either that or they'll just send Max to pick me up."

"Are you sure you want to go back?" And then to

soften the bluntness of his question, "Being here seems to agree with you. Like the lumpies, your expression is changing, your face is becoming more open. You're not quite the same too-serious young person you were the day we met."

"That seems like a long, long time ago," Lian said, and smiled. "I don't want to go back, to be honest. I'm not even sure now if I want to be an astrophysicist. I want to stay here—so much that it feels wrong even to think about being anywhere else. I know this might not be a forever thing—like a career—but maybe . . . maybe I could become the leading expert on the Toapa? Would you mind?"

"I'd be very glad—and so would Scotty and your tolat friends. You can help with the translation problem and act as liaison . . ." By the camp lights she saw him frown. "But I think you'd better call the observatory. Your parents might not approve at all."

"Not at first," she agreed, "but when they understand what it is we've found here, they will."

"Are you sure?"

"Not positive. But I think so. They're very intelligent," she said, and wondered why Dr. Farr began to smile and then controlled the urge.

"Perhaps so," he said, "but I have visions of an irate visit from them."

"Never irate. Never
a
scene," she said. "They aren't like that at all."

"What are they like, Lian? I'm curious."

She looked up at the supernova, thinking over her answer. "They are bright, rather remote—absentminded people. They enjoy their work so much that I don't think it has ever occurred to them that it is work. To them it's fun. They care very much for each other; they are friends and collaborators. They've spent so many years looking into deep space . . . that their sense of perspective is different. They seldom see what's going on around them.

"I remember once my mother was holding my hand before I went back to sleep after a bad dream, and to

comfort me she said. There in your small finger is an iron atom born in the death of a star. It passed through the gaseous clouds of space, whirled into and out of Earth's sun to Earth, passed through mountains and prehistoric seas, dinosaurs, a fish and a fisherman, the north wind, a rabbit, a river and steel and rust. It is immortal. We are all immortal atoms.'"

"And were you comforted?" Dr. Farr said gently when she fell silent.

"In an odd way, yes. Because she meant it to comfort. She is not a once-upon-a-time person ... my small left finger has always seemed very special to me. I used to look at it under a microscope to see if I could find that immortal atom . . . now I know it will always be there, whether I see it or not"

When all the little minds warped into sleep,
the Counter ceased to' monitor. It seldom listened in on dreams, not from discretion, but because the dream content of mortals was often painful, reminding some of its components parts of past dreams of their own-before they became the Counter and were trapped forever in this form. For the Counter, no dream was a sweet dream.

Throughout the night it occupied itself with work Lessons were sorted through and selected. The adults would first learn practical skills; the young could begin at the beginning. Care must be taken to avoid rousing alien fears of the unknown. A theater within the still-private section of the ship was readied as a classroom.

Here and there within the system, machine repaired machine. Robot arms jerked to life. Scanning eyes lit up. Drone arms pulled rover units Into charge. Cleaner units roiled to maintenance and tidied up the ship. Squeaking like bats In the dark, three rover units

traveled down the ramps to the deep holds. There they located equipment, silicon converters, molders, extruders. The people would need this soon. At long last the people were planning to build!

They would need surveyors and drafters and diggers. And where was that foaming machine? All the work could be done by drone robots and—the Counter came to a halt. It was doing it again—planning to take total care of its people. It remembered how that had worked out before. It would not make that mistake again.

The Counter had opened up the ship, and the people would not enter until they could share it with the Guardian—who seemed as much at home in their ship as they did. The Guardian sketched a crude outline of a house and with it set Toapa minds to dancing, and because of that they planned to build.

The Counter considered the over-all results of its testing and analyses of the sixty-three that morning. These people were not like the landing generation. During the years of the Counter's quiescence, they had become an altered strain. Toapa still, but made different by a new world. Like the Guardian, they were survivors. They planned to go on.

At the lowest point in its life, the Counter had chosen the Guardian. Looking back on that now, with twenty-nine percent energy capacity, the Counter thought perhaps that had been an act of desperation. But no mistake. The form was alien but the mind was somehow akin. Like the Counter and its people, the Guardian had lived in isolation and imposed innocence, enduring the present by memories of a secure past. And survived almost whole. Between Guardian and people there was now a common bond, although none knew it but the Counter. They would grow up together.

The Counter would watch and provide, not as much as it possibly could—but only as much as was good for its people, enough to allow them to become independent and self-sustaining and whole.

When these sixty-three were established, perhaps it

could call in the others, the lost and wild ones, make them sane again. Considering the greed of some aliens and the indignities suffered from others, and projecting over the months ahead, there would be a need for defense. Rover units could be disguised as rocks and placed at strategic points around the site. The Counter had never had to consider defense against living creatures; it was unsure what measures were needed. Possibly it had something to do with anger—although that seemed very inefficient. Prevention, more likely. There was so much to learn!

The pure mind that was the Counter considered the implications of that thought.

For the first time in three hundred years it sang to itself in the darkness.