Starfarers (22 page)

Dayan smiled. “I’m not geared to be forever the pure scientist and bold explorer. Every once in a while I want some girl talk.”

Yu returned the smile, wistfully. “Well, I also. Humans, apes. We do not groom each other with fingers. We use words. But it is the same instinct.”

Dayan nodded. The red locks stirred on her shoulders. “We are what we are. Maybe we do our great things not in spite of, but because of it.”

Save for
lacking a moon, this planet, even more than the one in the cluster, recalled Earth, blue laced with white clouds, lands ruddy-brown on shining oceans, ice caps whitening the poles. Studies revealed unlikenesses in mass, axial inclination, rotation period, precise atmospheric composition, spectra and therefore composition of vegetable life—on and on, a catalogue that was never completed. They did not lessen the beauty.

They did not lessen the revelation. Down on the ground stood buildings, and artifacts more enigmatic: about a score of groupings spread around the globe, untenanted, often overgrown, like the relics of the other spacefaring age at the other world. These, though, were not wreckage; time had not much gnawed at their clear, strange lineaments.

It was as if an angel had unsealed and opened a book in a language none could read—yet.

Envoy
lay in low orbit. Instruments would search and probe, machines descend on sampling expeditions, more machines analyze, computers and brains sift the data for meaning, before any human set foot on yonder soil. None would, were it deemed too hazardous. The crew accepted this. It was standard exploratory doctrine. For the time being, they had ample fascination of discovery, and the space and comfort of their regular decks.

Dayan finished helping Yu prepare an observer assembly and returned to quarters. She found Zeyd at prayer, prostrated toward a Mecca he could not face and that by now perhaps existed only in his heart. Respectful, she waited till he was done. Then, as he looked up, she grinned and jerked a thumb at the bed. He laughed and scrambled to his feet.

Mokoena knelt in prayer of her own. From a simulation of stained glass above the altar in the little Christian chapel, Jesus smiled down at her. She whispered not to him but to the spirits of her kinfolk, should they survive and remember her, using the dear tongue of her childhood. Afterward she walked to the park and worked with the flowers. Poor things, two weeks aslant had not been easy on them; and though robotic service was adequate, they must have missed the touch of living hands.

Brent looked his fill at the planet, sought his cabin, and bioconnected. In full-sensory, interactive simulation, hardly distinguishable from reality if he avoided thinking about it, the program sent him riding and conquering beside Pizarro.

Cleland busied himself in the flood of information. For this while he was quite happy.

Sundaram savored the view of the world outside.

Nansen sat in his own cabin. It was no different from the rest, spacious, with a sliding partition that could divide it in two and a bath cubicle. Furnishings were likewise the same, chairs with lockable gripfeet, bed convertible to double width, built-in cabinets and large desk, viewscreen and computer
terminal and virtuality unit and other standard items. His possessions made it his. On the deck he had laid down a multicolored carpet from the
estancia
of his family. Crossed sabers hung on a bulkhead. Framed opposite was a faded photograph of an ancestor, Don Lucas Nansen Ochoa. Picture screens displayed views from parts of the Earth he had known, mostly still although in one grass billowed and trees tossed on the plains of home. Another, currently reproducing Monet’s
La Meule de Foin
, seemed no less alive. Shelves held a few mementos from planets where he had walked, together with a codex Spanish Bible. Otherwise the ship’s database could provide him with anything he might want to read or watch or listen to. Most of humankind’s entire culture as of the year of departure was in it.

He sat at the desk, beneath a small ancient crucifix, fashioning a statuette of a horse. It reared, mane and tail flying. Once he might have gone on to cast it in bronze, but here he must be content with the clay. It gave beneath his fingers, stiffly voluptuous.

The door chimed. “Open,” he bade it, and turned around.

Kilbirnie stood clad in shorts and skinshirt. “Hi,” she greeted. “Are you busy?”

“Not to notice.” He rose and approached. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, I thought I’d be appallingly brutal to a handball. We’ve been cramped such a long time. But I can’t find anybody who wants to play. Are you interested, skipper?”

The wide white smile suggested that she had not tried very hard. He considered for a moment, then said, “I would be delighted. Let me change clothes.”

He ducked behind the partition. She wandered about. It was not her first visit—everybody came now and then, for this or that reason—but three of the scenes were newly on display, a Parisian sidewalk café, a toucan perched on a tree she did not recognize, the view forward from the tiller of a sailboat heeling to a hard wind. She gestured at them as he came back. “Are these from your personal life?” she asked.

“Yes, recordings that happened to come out well,” he answered. “Souvenirs.”

“I have some myself.”

He did not respond to the implied invitation. They went forth.

Their game was brisk and merry. At the far end of the gymnasium, Ruszek silently and doggedly lifted weights. To them he seemed askew, for the chamber was so long that its curvature neared the bounds of sight. Markings on the deck, hoops and whirlers on the bulkheads, assorted equipment in the corners, gave a wide choice of exercise or sport.

After a while Nansen and Kilbirnie were ready for a breather. Sweat sheened on her skin, darkened her shirt, and livened the air around her. Beneath a headband, the light brown hair was in elflocks. “What’s got Hanny so excited?” she asked out of nowhere.

Caught off balance, he replied awkwardly, which was unusual for him, “Why, what—what makes you suppose she is?”

“I know her. And I saw you and her huddled together, buzzing. You’re excited, too, skipper.”

He cast a glance toward Ruszek and lowered his voice, though the other man was out of ready earshot. “A … preliminary indication. Possibly false. We shouldn’t make any announcement before it’s confirmed.”

She quivered. “Aw, come on. I won’t wilt if it turns out negative. Nor will I blather.”

“The scientific tradition,” Nansen said. “One does not publish until one is reasonably sure of one’s results.”

Kilbirnie looked aside, as if outward to the stars. She laughed. “Publish, here? Skipper, I’ve said it before, pomposity does not become you.” He flinched just enough for her to see. She touched his arm. Admiration abruptly colored her words. “Yes, you do maintain traditions.”

He yielded. “Well, if you promise not to tell or hint—”

“I do. I’d never break a promise to you.”

“It is possible—it will take time and effort, given the low
signal-to-noise ratio, and it may prove to be nothing more than a normal variation in the background count—it is possible that Dr. Dayan has acquired a nonstellar source of neutrinos. Within this region. But it is only a—it could be only a blip. She has not placed the source, if it is a source, more closely than several arc minutes.”

Kilbirnie whistled.

Then she said, “Aweel, maybe no muckle surprise. I didna believe a civilization that went starfaring could die just overnight. I didna care to believe that.” She looked up at him. “If ’tis true, will we go there?”

“Of course,” he said. “Remember, though, confirmation—or disconfirmation—will take time. Meanwhile we should investigate what is here. If nothing else, it may give us some pertinent information.”

“Aye.” Eagerness flared. “If only we can land, our own selves!”

“I hope so.” Nansen’s eyes shifted from hers. He forced them back. “You understand, do you not, in that case Pilot Ruszek goes first? We cannot risk both boats, and he is senior.”

“Give him that,” she agreed. “He needs it. Just don’t keep me waiting too long, please.”

“You are patient, Pilot Kilbirnie.”

“Not very. But I understand.”

“Thank you.”

“And you—” It burst from her. “You’re a saint.”

“What?
Disparate
. Nonsense.”

A sudden intensity pressed at him. “You want to go yourself, don’t you? The way you once did. Now you’re the captain, and the captain does not personally make exploratory flights.”

“Well, when we find the Yonderfolk, if we do, that may be different.”

Her smile gave way to something like tenderness. “It matters tremendously to you, this, doesn’t it?”

“To our whole race,” he said. “Otherwise why would I
have accepted the mission? Alienation after my few short voyages wasn’t reason enough.”

Kilbirnie’s head drooped a little. “Alienation. When we come back, will they care?”

“I like to imagine they will. That whatever they have become, we’ll bring back what will make them care.”

“Knowledge?”

“Yes, but more. New arts, new ways of thinking and feeling and living.” All at once, though his demeanor stayed calm and his arms remained at his sides, he spoke more passionately than she had ever heard him do. “Creativity was dying in humans, before we left, before we were born. The modes were exhausted. Nothing original was being done. Science and technology were on a plateau, with no higher ranges in sight. Government, political and social thought, was devolving through Caesarism toward feudalism. Yes, one could paint in the manner of Rembrandt or Renoir, compose in the manner of Bach or Beethoven, write in the manner of Tolstoy or Joyce, and many did, but what was new, where were the, fresh worlds? Yes, the fractal school sparked artists for a while, but it depended on machines, and it, too, was sinking down into sterile selfimitation. Perhaps colony planets have begotten dynamic civilizations, perhaps humans have met aliens who inspire them, but if not, or even if so, the works of an old and great foreign society would give us a renaissance.”

He stopped.

“You’ve never said much about that,” Kilbirnie murmured.

“No, I did not want to lecture.” Nansen half smiled. “My hobbyhorse ran away with me. I’m sorry.”

“Is enthusiasm unbecoming Don Ricardo,
el Capitán
Nansen? I do wish you’d open up more, skipper.”

He eased. “Oh, come, now. I am not—what is the word?—not that standoffish.”

“Prove it.”

“How?”

“Well,” she purred, “you did say something once about teaching me an old South American dance.”

Cast free.
Herald
drifted out between the wheels, in the harsh radiance of the sun and soft glow of the planet. When she was safely clear of her mother ship, Kilbirnie swung her into the proper orientation and wakened the jets.

From low orbit she fell swiftly. The globe before her—huge, blue and tawny under marbling clouds, rimmed with night—swelled, was no longer ahead but below, an ocean and a land. A shrilling of cloven air grew into thunders. The boat bucked and shuddered; heat blinded the viewscreens with fire.

Slowed, though still ahurtle, she came through that barrier and her riders saw a mountain range sweep far beneath them and fall behind. Kilbirnie’s fingers gave commands. Wings and empennage, folded into the hull, molecularly remembered their former shapes and deployed. Under the wings were two airjet engines. The shock as they hit atmosphere at this speed thudded through metal and bones. “Heeyi!” she shouted, and started the motors. The boat leaped. Hills, amber with forest, reached after her. The target site rushed over the horizon, a thinly vegetated mesa without too many boulders. Braking in a roar, Kilbirnie turned the nose aloft, extended the landing jacks, and set down with a flourish.

Ears rang in the sudden quietness.

“Merciful God, Jean,” Mokoena gasped. “Did you
have
to arrive like that?”

Cleland chuckled. “Her style, Mam. How well I’ve learned. Don’t worry. She and I are both alive yet.”

Kilbirnie had already unharnessed. She bounced up.
“What are we biding for?” she cried. “Out wi’ ye, slowbellies!”

There was indeed no reason to linger. Zeyd, analyzing specimens in his quarantine laboratory, had found no danger of infection; the life, proteins in water solution, was otherwise too different from Earth’s. Observation from orbit had revealed few large animals and no sentient inhabitants—only the relics of them. Then Ruszek in
Courier
had shown it was safe to land.

Just the same, explorers had better be careful. Poisonous leaves and stings were simply among the obvious possibilities. The three emerged in boots, hooded coveralls, and gloves. The equipment they carried included firearms and medical kits.

For minutes they stood silent, breathing wonder. Weight was noticeably lessened and the air blew mountain-top thin under a sky of deeper blue than Earth’s. It was hot and laden with odors, some spicy, some suggestive of wet iron. The fronded blades that sprang from the soil, a few centimeters high, were yellow. The membranous foliage(?) on the oddly shaped trees(?) that covered the downslope and the surrounding hills was in darker shades of that color. Tiny creatures flitted by, gauzy-winged, bright as burnished copper.

“People could live here,” Cleland said at last, as if he needed to break the spell with any banality that came to hand.

“People did,” Mokoena replied. “Not our kind, but people.”

Kilbirnie brought a portable transmitter to her lips. “We’re about to go for a preliminary look,” she told Nansen.
Envoy
would soon swing past the horizon, but had planted relays in orbit.

She put the transmitter back at her hip and strode off. “Poor skipper,” she murmured. As pilot, she should perhaps have stayed at the boat, like Nansen in the ship. However, she had argued successfully that Ruszek could descend in
Courier
at short notice if need be, and remote-steer
Herald
into space. The contingency seemed remote. Meanwhile, a third member of the scouting party might make a sudden critical difference.