The Avatar (40 page)

“I… I
am
sorry…. I should ’ave gone to my cabin—”

“But?” He held her a little closer.

“It is empty there. ’Ere is the galaxy for to see.” She sank her head on his breast.

In a short while she lifted it—he discerned her homely countenance by starlight—and confessed, “I, I make the apology, Daniel, good friend. It is wrong I cry when they come back safe, no? But—” Her eyes, her really beautiful eyes, caught
his. “One thing. You ’ave n-n-no need for ’urrying about this. You ’ave more urgent matters. But—” She gasped. “We are lost in eternity. Tell me, please, when you ’ave time—what can I
do?”

“Ah-h,” he murmured, scenting that she also was a woman (without desire, when Caitlín was scheduled soon to disembark, but with a sudden extra affection), “you’re left out of the linkage, right?”

“Not forbidden. ’Owever, Fidelio and Dr. Ky, they do everyt’ing—” He felt her tense in his arms, saw in the ring of the Milky Way how she mastered her lips. “What is left for me, Daniel? ’Ow can I ’elp you?”

He made kindly noises, and eventually took her to her cabin, where he gave her a sedative and a brother’s kiss before he left. As the door closed behind him, he wondered what the devil he could find for her.

O
N AUTOPILOT
, which observation had shown to be safe,
Chinook
accelerated toward the T machine. En route, her crew had a party. Brodersen recommended going all out, no stinting of booze or pot or anything else. First Caitlín, assisted by Susanne, made a tableful of canapes, and Weisenberg turned out some new ornaments for the common room, colorful objects of metal and plastic, in his machine shop.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain stated when his folk were gathered, “we have before us the serious business of getting drunk—stoned—high as a kite, boiled as an owl. I refer, of course, to the International Standard Kite, flown under one gravity in air at STP, and to the International Standard Owl, whose condition is determined by encephalogram after it has consumed one liter of hundred proof Scotch.”

“No, Irish,” Caitlín required, and lifted her glass of the same to his.
“Slainte go fail leat.”
They grinned at each other. Though she had ached from high weight and battering flight, she had seldom given him a finer time than when she awoke after arrival, unless maybe he compared subsequent times.

“Here’s to our noble selves,” Brodersen toasted the company.

Most of their responses were nominal. He considered them. The viewscreens held splendor, Danu’s dayside receding in the sky but still large, the sun like a ruby, stars and the galactic river and stars. Nobody watched—not that that was the purpose, but it seemed as if they were turning their backs on the cosmos.

Carlos Rueda appeared cheerful. Frieda von Moltke had made him royally welcome. However, tonight she played more to Stef Dozsa, though he was pretty dour. Phil Weisenberg wore a calm, polite smile. Su Granville had gained back a little morale from helping Caitlín; nevertheless, beneath her face Brodersen discerned woe. Joelle Ky had taken a chair offside and was
devoting her attention to Fidelio—almost ostentatiously, which wasn’t her style. Martti Leino had, plain to see, not been sleeping well and, no matter how he tried, could not keep his gaze of Caitlín.

He’s in love with her,
Brodersen thought.
Understandable. Maybe she ought to
—
Or maybe not. I don’t know. It could raise more trouble than it ends, he’s such an intense kind of guy
….
And what should I do about Joelle? She’s got something eating at her too. I’m not sure what
. He laid an arm around the girl beside him, felt her supple slenderness, inhaled her fragrance of youth. I
hate to give up any time I might spend with Pegeen
.

He laughed.

“What’s funny, my heart?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Brodersen said in haste.
Ha! There I was, taking for granted I’m such a God’s gift to suffering womankind that a night with me will instantly make Joelle purr. Joelle!
“Uh, how about some music? From you, I mean. Now that we have you back.” He brushed his mouth across the wonderful softness of her cheek; and practically felt Leino’s look stab him; and no doubt Leino wasn’t the only one.
I’d better stop flaunting this that I have and they don’t. Only how can I?

“Well, if people want.” Caitlín paused. “No, instead of a recital, what do the lot of you say to a dance? Sure, and there’s naught better for loosening sadness.”

“We’re a tad short on women,” Weisenberg pointed out. “Four. Ah, well, Fidelio and I’ll be the wallflowers.”

“Three,” Joelle said. “Leave me out.”

“Shucks, no,” Brodersen requested. “Why?” When she sat obstinate, he went over to her, leaned close, and whispered, “You always enjoyed ballroom dancing when we were together. What’s gone wrong?” Her gaze upon his seemed doubly dark. “We need you. The disappointment at Danu was a stiff blow. If we don’t cheer ourselves up, we’ll be too goddamn low to cope. Please, Joelle.”

“What about Fidelio?” she answered in the same English. “Nobody worries about his feelings.”

As if she had overheard, Caitlín called, “Och, we don’t need exact partners. A square dance, a jig—yes, Fidelio too. Why not? They must jump about for fun on Beta.” She chuckled. “Faith, it’s very special this will be. The first interspecies dance in human history.”

Brodersen queried the alien about it in Spanish. He was surprised at the eagerness of the positive response.

“Then it’s settled,” Caitlín said. “Let’s be seeing how best we can unsettle it. Give me a few minutes to work out steps to suit us.” Taking up her sonador, she programmed it for accordionlike sounds and played while she skipped about the deck. Her yellow dress billowed out from the swift slim legs, the bronze hair tumbled free.

Somehow the sight, followed by instruction, did break the mood that was upon them. When the actual dancing began, to music from the data bank, persons even laughed—at first at their own unpracticed clumsiness, as when Rueda tripped over Fidelio’s tail; later at jokes and japes, lame though most of those were. Blood pulsed warm again; light sweating made them smell each other as flesh; stamping feet, clasping hands, driving rhythms set them wholly aware they were alive.

After a few rounds, they began to drop out for drinking and talking and different recreations. A ping pong game got under weigh. Caitlín sang her “Midsummer Song” for Weisenberg, Rueda, Susanne, and Frieda. Later on, couples formed in more leisurely dances. (Brodersen and Susanne were decorous, Dozsa and Frieda anything but, other combinations varied. Leino grew alcoholically gleeful when Caitlín was in his arms, and Joelle pressed hard against Brodersen.) It became a good party.

Around the middle of it, Caitlín found herself telling the rest: “Aye, we’re lucky, that we are. You’ve seen the tapes from Danu. If you did not thrill, we might as well bung you out the airlock, for you’re already dead. And they are nothing beside the reality. I had that, but I’ll not be selfish, I’ll give you your turns at the next marvel, and the next and the next. If we never come home, still the gods will have bestowed more adventure on us than ever our kind had before.” She struck a ringing chord from her instrument. “And who says we will not? The universe is ours, and I see no bounds for us at all, at all.”

“Haven’t you been composing a ballad on that theme?” Brodersen asked, a trifle muzzily. “Seems to me I’ve caught you at it in odd moments since you returned.” He had not pursued the subject then, for she didn’t like to talk about art in progress. That took away the
mana,
she said. Besides, she had immediately turned his mind elsewhere.

She nodded. “Yes, I have.”

“Is it finished?” Leino blurted. “For everything’s sake, Caitlín, let’s hear it!”

“If you desire,” she said. A burst of applause replied. “Well, now, it’s not about us, you understand, but about the future, when humans all fare freely as we are doing today. For they will, they will.”

She hitched herself onto a table, sat swinging her bare feet, and made a strong guitar of the sonador. The Milky Way in a viewscreen crowned her uplifted head.

Hours later, Weisenberg explained he was an old man, and made a not altogether steady way to his bed. Fidelio soon followed. (Did every sentient race need a periodic retreat into dreams?) Frieda led Dozsa off. Brodersen took Joelle into a corner, where they sat down and spoke quietly and earnestly. Leino engaged Caitlín. After he had made a point of ignoring Rueda and Susanne for a time, though she kept talking to them, the Peruvian smiled wryly and suggested to the linker that he and she refresh their drinks—after which he nudged her, his hand on her elbow, to the viewscreen where Danu glowed, and they drew chairs side by side. Lights were dimmed; most illumination came from without, soft and shadowy. A speaker, also turned down, gave forth Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.

“Listen, will you?” Brodersen’s pipe chopped through an arc. A pungent cloud trailed after. “You’ve been treating poor little Su goddamn shabbily. She’s bleeding from it. We can’t afford that, not in any of us.”

“What would you have me do?” Joelle retorted. “I admit I yelled at her once when she’d done no wrong. I apologized afterward, didn’t I? What else am I obligated for?”

“Well, stop shoving her out of her job. Assistant quartermaster isn’t enough. Caitlín’s told me—uh, this is strictly confidential—she’s told me how she’s had to pretend she can’t
handle any number of tasks, to make Su feel needed. That’s hard on Caitlín; she has her own pride. Anyway, there are pretty narrow limits to what’s possible along those lines.”

“Are you asking me to make work likewise? Dan, I can’t. She’d see right away what I was doing and be twice wounded—wouldn’t she? Besides, I can’t deprive Fidelio. It was plenty bad when I took over the guidance of
Williwaw
because his Spanish was too heavily accented.” Joelle caught Brodersen’s wrist. “I promised him he could handle every computation which was feasible for him, from elementary linkage on up. He has nothing else left, Dan; and he’ll soon die.”

He regarded her in silence, the haggard features, the sculpturing beneath that had not changed. “You know,” he said at length, “you aren’t really the steel-jacketed intellect you claim to be.”

“Did I ever? Not on purpose, I swear.”

“N-no, I guess not.” He pondered. “Suddenly, after all these years I’ve known you …Joelle, I begin to think you’re the most innocent person I’ve ever met.”

She leaned against him, not with the deceptive smoothness of Caitlín or the heartiness of Lis but with the jerkiness he remembered; she had never learned nuances. “And … you… aren’t exactly tough inside… either, are you?” she stammered.

Rueda and Susanne traded recollections of Europe. They had many cathedrals and museums to share. The real pleasure came when they learned also they had small inns and cafes mutually. As she bespoke those, she grew vivid. She had visited Peru as well, but only seen the standard places. He relished telling her about others.

“If we get back—we might, you know, we might—I’ll take you there,” he promised.

“You are very kind,” she said.

He spread his palms. “No, I’d enjoy it. To be quite frank, until this evenwatch you seemed, well, rather colorless to me. I am delighted to discover how wrong I was.”

She flushed and dropped her glance.

Seeing that she had grown confused, he turned more serious; that mood was easier for her. “We’re in the same boat too, aren’t we? Both of us essentially superfluous—at best, spare parts.”

She turned toward Danu. “No, you went planetside.”

“Precisely because I am an expendable. It’s by no means certain I’ll be needed for anything similar again. Or if I am, we’ve days and weeks to fill in between those occasions—we two—no?”

She winced. “‘Ow?”

“We must figure that out.” He snapped his fingers. A new idea kindled him. “See here, Susanne. What this ship does not have aboard is trained scientists. Laboratory—and field-type, that is. What she does have is a data bank holding most human knowledge; not to mention Fidelio, who’d doubtless like to pass on his education. Why can’t we make ourselves into experts?”