H.M. Hoover - Lost Star (8 page)

other lumpies picked up dirt from the floor and began to rub it against the picture, covering it up again.

Lian wanted to protest, but she understood why they were doing it. The picture was too revealing. The model was the computer.

She stood there, torn between wanting to shout with joy at this discovery and wanting to cry for these creatures patting dust over their identity.
No
one would have dared to call the creatures in that picture a name like "lumpie." What had happened to make them afraid—or were they ashamed?—to have others know of their intelligence?

If only they would talk to her. She did not doubt they could, for if they could sing
they
could talk. But if they talked they might be overheard. It had been almost fifty
years
since Earth discovered
Balthor.
Perhaps others had been here before, had in some
way
terribly harmed them. Or had they been the cause of their own downfall? The computer might be able to tell her.

"There has to be a terminal still operating somewhere in the dome," Lian said. The lumpies went on working. "Maybe I can't talk to you, but part of that computer is still operative. Maybe the library is too. If I can find the buttons that activate it . . . Excuse me."

She set off down the hall, and her three special friends followed. As they hurried along, she flashed the beam from wall to wall. The light revealed what appeared to be directional signs above many doorways. Elsewhere were plaques covered with script.

One wide door opened onto an auditorium full of row upon row of molded yellow seats. She stopped to see if her light would reach the stage. It
did
not. After a moment Naldo tugged her sleeve as
if
to say, "Come on."

"Just a minute." She checked the seats; they were designed for smaller lumpie bottoms and backs and stood no more than a foot off the floor. They also showed signs of recent use.

When they reached the end of the corridor, as before,

it was Naldo who activated the switch that opened the ramp gate. The camera eyes turned to focus on Lian and her followers. The greeting signal sounded.

Then for no reason Lian understood, the signal stopped. The cameras' lens covers closed. There was much finger signaling and nervous rustling of feet.

When she started down the ramp, Poonie caught her hand and pulled her back.

"It's all right. I'm not going to the computer. I'm going over there." She pointed to the glass panel they had opened the day before. Poonie's grip tightened around her fingers. "It's all right!" Lian said impatiently and pulled free. The lumpie followed her, its eyes troubled. Cuddles came after the two of them.

"Perhaps you're right, Poonie," Lian said as she crossed the floor of the dome. "I don't really know what I'm doing. Maybe it was only luck that I came out of that black hole yesterday. . . ."

There was a scuffling noise behind her. She turned to see Naldo coming at a full run and stopped to wait for him. He swerved past without slowing. By the time Lian saw where he was going and began to chase him, it was too late. He touched the switch and the panel closed as she reached it. Through the window she could see the dials quiver and then jerk upward. Panel lights blinked where nothing had flashed yesterday. It was very strange.

No amount of pleading either by word or thought would make them open anything for her. No switch operated at her touch; she tried them all before giving up the idea of finding a terminal. The dials continued to quiver and jump; there was power, but it wasn't going to help her now. She sighed and turned to go.

As Naldo closed the gate, the other two kept peering into her face. They looked worried, as if afraid they had offended her.

"I'm not angry," Lian told them. "I am thwarted. I wanted to go to Dr. Farr and tell him how you built this place and why you are as you are now. I wanted to..."

She fell silent as she realized that part of what she wanted was selfish. She wanted a discovery of her own as important as the supernova. Like a disappointed child, she had wanted to say to her parents, "I'll show you!"—which was silly, since they had no interest in things like this and wouldn't care much at all.

"My parents are right about one thing," she said aloud. "I need to grow up."

The lumpies smiled at her.

Once outside, they left her almost at once and hurried off into the woods. She had walked nearly half a mile before realizing the jackhammers were silent.

There was a lot of commotion at the digging
site. Long before she could see what was happening, she could hear the crackle of static and shouts of translators on full volume. A slight wind ruffled the leaves and brought the smell of ozone and something else. She paused to sniff—burnt hair? Something with calcium in it, something alive. She began to run.

The entire staff seemed to be down there. They stood in ragged clusters; those at the pit bank did the most shouting; the others surrounded something lying on the grass. She could hear Dr. Farr repeating over and over, "Don't touch them! Don't touch them!"

Scotty was standing apart from the crowd, looking up toward the camp, as if waiting for something. Following her line of sight, Lian saw one of the airtrucks lift off and head toward the dig. It was setting down by the time she was close enough to the linguist to be heard.

"What happened?" she called over the rush of air-jets.

"Accident," Scotty answered. "They're going to be flown into the medical center at Limai."

If the medicom couldn't handle it, that meant a severe injury. "Who?"

"Two tolats," Scotty said. "They hit something with the drills. It threw them up there." She sounded incredulous.

There was a break in the crowd, and Lian saw the victims. They lay with their bowllike bodies resting on top of the sod piles. Their eye stalks dangled; their eight legs hung as limp as chitinous-sheathed legs could hang. What made Lian take a deep breath was the injured tolats' color. Instead of their normal gleaming pink and white, they were a pallid ivory.

"What
threw them up there?" she asked.

"We think a massive electrical charge, from that." Dr. Scott pointed to the black boxlike building they had been working on. "But we can't get any power reading on it now. We thought they'd cut a power line, but there's no penetration."

"The computer," Lian whispered to herself. "That's why the dials jumped!"

"What? I can't hear you."

"I was just wondering if they were going to be O.K."

"We don't know. Dr. Farr and Tsri Zahr are going with them to Limai. Not that those poor creatures will know they have company."

Lian nodded, not really listening. She was trying to understand how the computer had done this. And if it was deliberate. It must all still be connected, this old city, all the power lines intact. But why would it have defenses like this, against what enemies?

From the airtruck a tank of gas and other apparatus were being rushed over to the injured tolats, and triangular helmetlike sheaths were being fitted over the top end of them. Other tolats and humans were readying a sling device as a stretcher. In a few minutes the victims were hoisted up and carried, legs dangling, into the airtrucks. One of them had regained enough con-

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sciousness to try tearing off its oxygen mask. The color on both looked more normal.

"Tolats are a tough breed," said Scotty. She drew a deep breath and pulled her lab coat around her as if chilled. "That was very frightening! We heard this odd crackling noise, and I smelled something hot. They were dancing in blue light, and they still managed to shut off those drills so no one else would get hurt when they let go." The woman blinked rapidly. "I've never liked tolats much. I still don't. But I never saw anyone act with such courage. Once the drills' power went off, the incoming charge really hit them. That's when they flew—"

A silly grin stretched Scotty's mouth and wavered there. Lian saw the woman was either going to cry or go into a fit of laughter as a release from shock.

"Let's go up and get something to drink. Come on." Lian took Scotty's cold hand and tugged as the lumpies did. "There's nothing we can do here. Maybe we can have lunch and then you can show me the lumpies' place. O.K.?"

Scotty nodded, freeing her hand but not trusting herself to speak. The airtruck took off when they were halfway down the road. The woman stopped, turned, and followed it with her eyes until it had disappeared. Lian got the impression she was saying a prayer for the tolats.

To protect the lumpies, Lian felt she had unwittingly subjected this crew to grave danger; if she had told Dr. Farr what she had found yesterday, this accident would not have happened. But she did not regret her decision; it would have happened if she had never come here, and in any event it could not be changed now. There was one bright spot in the situation; no one would doubt her sanity when she told them about the computer.

The dining room quickly became a babble as the rest of the staff arrived to discuss the accident over lunch. The most popular opinion was that either the jackhammers or the cutting torches had somehow built

up a charge in the metal. The tolats loudly expressed the opinion that all nonengineers on this expedition were ignorant untranslatables. But all seemed to agree that this morning's incident was the most interesting discovery they had made to date. They just weren't sure what they had discovered.

It seemed to Lian that ninety-five percent of all this chatter was totally unnecessary and repetitious, that they were all talking in order to avoid thinking about what had really happened, that two of their number had come frighteningly near death in a manner they did not understand. She wondered if that was the source of most social noise—the need to avoid thinking about what really mattered.

"If you're through eating, can we go outside?" she said.

"Noise bothers you, doesn't it?" Scotty guessed later when they were walking along the top of the earthwork en route to the lumpie colony's sleeping place. "Perhaps that's the lumpies' attraction for you—their silence?"

Lian grinned. "Maybe. Maybe lumpies talk only when they have something to say worth hearing."

"Humans can't go by those rules," said Scotty. "Whole weeks would pass in silence." She hesitated, then asked, "Why does noise bother you?"

"It's probably because of the observatory," said Lian. "Everybody works pretty much alone—well, I do anyway. If you talk, it's to the computer—and that's what talks to you. The loudest noise is the wind. For months it's never still."

"Do you have any friends there?"

"Everyone's friendly."

"That's not what I asked."

"No." It bothered Lian to admit that, and she resented having to do so.

"I thought so."

"Why? Am I that unpleasant?"

"Oh, no! You're very nice," Scotty assured her,

"But you seem to take solitude for granted. You go off exploring by yourself for hours alone and apparently content. So I guessed you were accustomed to it. I'm not. I have friendly acquaintances here, but no real friends. Loneliness bothers me." She smiled to dismiss the pathos of the remark. "When I left Earth I had no idea what this sort of trip really would be like—how lost it could make you feel to watch your home planet fade in the distance—to see how small Earth is in space. . . ."

"How long will you be here?" asked Lian.

"A year on Balthor, another year in return travel time. It's a working sabbatical for me. And you?"

"I don't know. Until my parents are reassigned, I guess. Or . . ."

"Or what?"

"I decide I want to be assigned someplace else."

They were down at the far end, not far from the entrance to the halls, when Scotty turned off on an angled path that led away from the site. "It's over here someplace. I found it the first day we were surveying."

Unlike the lumpie routes within the site, which followed gentle parabolas, this path meandered into the deep woods, circled massive tree trunks, dipped down along a creek to follow its banks, and then swung uphill.

"Where does this path go?"

Scotty shrugged. "Miles. Going nowhere." She stopped and pointed. "There's a hammock—see it up there?"

Hung from a heavy branch, the hammock fell a yard above ground, too high for a lumpie to climb into without great effort. Lian examined the intricately braided mesh. It was far too beautiful a skill to waste on peeled vines and hang out in the weather. The ground below it bore no tracks, no crushed plants, no signs of wear.

"Have you ever seen them sleep here?" she asked casually.

"No. I've always been here in the daytime. There are more up here." Scotty forced her way through a thicket,

and Lian followed. In the next hour she counted thirty hammocks. None showed any sign of use. Although they had gone to great effort to make it look otherwise, wherever the lumpies slept, it was not here.

There was a pok-pok game in progress when the
airtruck came back in late afternoon. Scotty and Lian were playing mixed doubles with amalfis. Tolats watched from the sidelines.