We All Died at Breakaway Station (19 page)

“What is not foolishness?” Denise asked hopelessly, knowing that she would get no answer from the Jillie that made sense in any human terms. For six weeks now she had tried to establish some kind of communication with the alien, six weeks cooped up in this space station interrogating the captive. Oh, she thought, it has some grasp of Anglo-western, and I have none at all of its language. I even think that it has begun to grasp something of the way we think, and I’m still as ignorant of it as I was before I ever met a living Jillie. Where does that leave us?

An unpleasant thought went through her mind and sent a chill down her back. What if… she thought What if the Jillies really are more intelligent than we are? What if they actually are more suited for survival than mankind? Maybe‌—‌maybe they are our superiors.

The thought had struck her before, but never had she allowed herself to verbalize it. She could not accept the fact that the race of Jillies were more deserving, from a purely biological sense, of survival. If so‌—‌if so, then perhaps mankind was doomed. Maybe we never could hope to defeat them. Maybe the end of humanity is as inevitable as the rising of the sun, but we just don’t realize it yet, she said to herself.

No! she told herself, that isn’t necessarily so. Maybe
this
Jillie is smarter than
I
am, but that doesn’t mean that the whole race is. I’m not the most intelligent human being alive, not by a long shot. And maybe it’s a Jillie genius.

Dr. Denise Lesson sat peering at the desk before her for a few moments, then pulled a happystick from her desk drawer, touched the end of it with a lighter, and carefully inhaled its rich odor. That isn’t my job anyway, she told herself. I’m a psychologist, not a philosopher. Leave those questions to the philosophers. My job is just to try to learn something of the way their minds work, not whether they’re superior or not.

“Sabal R’han,” she said at last, feeling a very mild sense of euphoria from the happystick, “are you willing to talk with me today?”

“Being willing,” the Jillie answered after a pause, both eyes coming to her face briefly. “Talking.” The final word was almost a command.

“Very well,” Denise said, awkwardly pausing. Now that she had gotten him to agree to talk, she wasn’t sure what it was that she wanted to talk about. There were so few avenues down which they could follow each other’s minds. For the last few days Denise had been attempting to get the alien who was at this moment Sabal R’han to discuss art. She had shown it a varied selection of human art reproductions, ranging from Lascaux cave paintings to the null-G mobiles of Cynthia, and virtually everything in between, and had attempted to get it to explain to her something of the art of its people. This last had led to a dead end, for it seemed totally unable to get across to her what its kind considered art. However, by seeing what it appreciated in men’s work, she was beginning to suspect that perhaps she was gaining some small insight into what the Jillies thought to be beautiful.

“Would you like to see the ‘Paragon’?” she asked at last. “Liking,” Sabal R’han answered.

“Good,” Denise answered, smiling at it and wondering if it had yet begun to understand what a smile meant.

Rising from her chair behind the desk, she crossed the room and opened a large cabinet. She took out a small anti-grav plate and a large box and carried them both back to her desk. Sitting the anti-grav plate down on the desk, she turned it on, and then opened the box. From the box she took nearly a dozen multicolored objects of abstract shapes and carefully placed them one by one within the field of the anti-grav plate. When they slowly began to sink toward the plate, falling at speeds so slow that the word “falling” seemed hardly appropriate, she adjusted the power level of the anti-grav plate until they hung suspended in the air above it. Denise turned to see the Jillie’s reaction. Its face showed no expression that she could read.

One of the objects contained a tiny force field generator of sufficient strength to hold the group of objects in a rough sphere, though the tiny repulsion units in the other objects prevented any of them from touching. Finally, when all the microgenerators were working, she gave one of the objects a push. It began moving within the confines of the fields, exerting a repulsive effect upon all the other objects. Soon, influenced by the tractor and repeller fields, all the objects were in motion, spiraling in and out, above and below, a meaningless, random, abstract motion.

Now there was an expression, if it could be called that, coming onto Sabal R’han’s face.

Denise dimmed the room lights sufficiently for the natural glow of the abstractions to be visible, and then sat back down behind her desk to watch both the alien and the null-G mobile.

The secret was in the motion, Denise thought. It was something about movement, the constantly changing relationships of the objects that attracted the alien, in which it found beauty. And this fitted with what little else she understood about it.

Earlier she had shown it paintings, drawings, lithographs, photographs, tri-D’s, and in none of these had the Jillie shown any interest at all. Static, motionless works of art were not art to it, were apparently without any meaning at all. But movement did have meaning.

She looked at the moving system that Billian Atlamon of Cynthia had called “Paragon” for no reason that she could see, but she reminded herself that there was very little in contemporary art that she did appreciate. She was rather old-fashioned in her tastes, really, and still thought that Jackson Pollock was the greatest artist who had ever lived.

“What do you see there, Sabal R’han?” she asked at last.

“No being Sabal R’han, woman-thing,” the Jillie said in what she believed to be a friendly tone. “Being D’ra H’bib.”

Denise sighed. “Very well, D’ra H’bib, can you tell me what you see in this.”

“Am thinking you
shibeeesh
are having no expression for this.”

“Oh? Could you try to tell me?”

“Am trying,” the Jillie said after a while. “Being like the
dja
”‌—‌Denise suspected that the expression could be translated as “clan” or “hive” or something of that nature‌—‌ “in life. The
dja
is moving like this, always moving, woman-thing. This is being of the stomach-brothers, can you
ih’wka
this?”

“
Ih’wka?”
Denise asked. “Can you explain this?”

“Having no expression, woman-thing,” D’ra H’bib said, fixing both his eyes suddenly on her. “It being like believing in something you do not touch. It being like‌—‌” the alien fumbled for a word, “like love.”

“Love?”

“Am not sure I am understanding expression ‘love’,” the Jillie said. “Loving is being a part of. Is this being so, woman-thing?”

“Yes,” Denise said hesitantly, astonished at this being, whom she had almost come to regard as the ultimate in evil, trying to speak of love. “Yes, love is something like that. Love is wanting to keep and possess.”

“No, not possessing,” the Jillie said suddenly. “
Ih’wka
is not possessing. It is
being.
There is no possessing.”

“What do you mean?” Denise asked, having turned her eyes back to the moving forms and almost finding herself swept into them in an attempt to understand both it and the creature who sat across the desk from her.

“Shibeeesh
believing in possessing,” D’ra H’bib said.
“Shibeeesh
believing in God. It is being the same. Things that are not being real.”

“Are you trying to say that there is no such thing as possession?”

“There is no possessing. There is
ih’wka
and there is aloneness. Aloneness is being like dead.
Ih’wka
is being like alive.
Ih’wka
is being the
dja,
the dja is being
ih’wka
.
Shibeeesh
are being aloneness.”

Denise shook her head, rose from behind the desk and crossed to the port that looked out into the depths of space, out to the great globe of blue-white Earth and the glittering specks of the great warships that orbited along with the space station.

“There is being pity in me,” D’a H’bib said slowly.

“What?” Denise demanded, turned back to the alien.

“Pity,” it repeated.

“Why?”

“Poor
shibeesh’ant
woman-thing,” D’ra H’bib said.

“How can you pity me? How can a thing like you even feel pity?”

“You shall never be knowing
ih’wha.
For this I am pitying you. It is better that your kind are never being.”

“Is that why you hate us?”

“Hating?” the Jillie asked, the smile-like expression coming back to his face. “Am not hating, woman-thing. Hating is for
sorts.
Of the
dja
is no hating.”

“Then why, for God’s sake, do you want to destroy us?”

“There is being no expression, pity woman-thing.”

Denise turned back to the port, looked down at distant, lovely Earth, and felt something like infinite sadness within her. Perhaps, she thought, I am beginning to understand, perhaps…

She did not see the Jillie, who was no longer D’ra H’bib, but now Prata K’pal the Surgeon, reach into the moving cluster of objects within the mobile, grasp the heaviest of them, jerk it from its pattern and turn toward her, something unknowable in its eyes.

Denise slowly turned away from the window, a question on her lips, when Prata K’pal hurled the now-heavy object at her head. It struck between her eyes, shattering the bridge of her nose and the bone of her forehead, sending a sliver of bone into her brain.

She died still not understanding who and why and what this being was. Perhaps she never would have understood had she lived.

It was nearly an hour before communications were re-established between the
Iwo Jima
and the
Pharsalus
, an hour that was one of the longest in Absolom Bracer’s life.

“Signal, sir,” Comm Officer Cyanta cried at last.

“Put it on the main forward tank.”

Seconds later an image formed in the large tank at the forward end of the bridge. Marine Colonel Carrighar smiled grimly, his spacehelmet thrown back, his face smudged and singed by an energy blast that had just barely missed its target.

“It’s all over, admiral,” he said.

“How bad is it, colonel?”

“Eight dead, sir, including Captain Davins. Four of them were mutineers, the others were marines. Another half dozen or so wounded and injured.”

“Commander Bugioli?”

“She’ll be okay, sir,” the grim marine colonel said. “The medical officer and a prosthetics technician are with her now. Her support cylinder was damaged, but not seriously.” The colonel paused briefly and smiled. “She really didn’t need us, sir. I think she could have handled it herself. She’s a damned competent officer.”

“Thank God it was no worse than it was,” Bracer said, more to himself than to the colonel. “You and your men remain there until Commander Bugioli feels that she has no more need of you. Tell her I’m putting her in command of the ship, and I’m going to ask for a promotion to captain for her. And have her call me as soon as it’s convenient.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll expect a full report on this from both you and Commander Bugioli as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

“Bracer out.”

The next day, ship’s time, there was a funeral service for two of the dead crewmen of the
Pharsalus.
The ship’s medical officer had decided that there was little hope of being able to restore them, now or ever. Captain Davins and the five other dead were placed in cold-sleep coffins aboard the
Cragstone.
It might be possible to save them once they got to Earth, if that ever happened.

Following the somber service, which he viewed by tri-D from the bridge, Bracer returned to his cabin and slowly, carefully reviewed the reports sent to him by Acting-Captain Bugioli and Colonel Carrighar. It was all very simple and very bloody, and now he could feel only remorse and guilt for having allowed it ever to happen at all.

But, at least, the crisis on the
Pharsalus
seemed to be over now. Neither Acting-Captain Bugioli nor Colonel Carrighar believed that there would be any further attempts at that sort of thing. The bloody events aboard the starship had been too sobering to everyone, including Hansey and his followers.

Maybe, Bracer told himself, that’s what it took to save us all. A little bloodshed. But to save us from what‌—‌and for what?

These questions he did not like to ask, and now he certainly didn’t want to answer. Not yet. Time enough to answer them when‌—‌when the time came, whenever that might be.

A slide rule! A goddamned slide rule!

Hybeck sat before the small desk in the rear of the scout ship, shoving papers aside, turning the viewing dial on the ephemeris and jotting down a series of figures. Then he slipped the inner scale of the slide rule, adjusted the runner, read the figures below the hairline, approximated a couple of additional decimal places, and jotted his new readings down on a sheet of paper.

Who in God’s holy universe ever heard of navigating a starship by slide rule? he asked himself. Then he looked over at the dead console, a jumble of circuit modules that was now only so much dead weight, and cursed the stupidity of chance.

Why the hell the computer? he asked himself. Why not the communications gear? It’s not worth a damn out here. I’d never miss it. But the computer!

He turned and glanced down the length of the single cabin. Naha lay sleeping peacefully at last, the plastiskin bandages covering her forehead and shoulder contrasting oddly with the new healthy glow of her skin. The automedic, independent of the ship’s main computer, hummed quietly, monitoring the functioning of her body, assuring itself and Hybeck that Naha was still alive and improving. In a few more standard days she’d probably be okay. Now if Hybeck could just get the damaged scout back into human inhabited space, maybe they had a chance.

As he looked back at the sheets of figure-covered paper, he tried to tell himself that they had been pretty damned lucky at that to have survived at all. If the Jillies hadn’t been in such a hurry to catch up with the admiral, if they had thrown just one more nuke or plasma torpedo, Hybeck wouldn’t even be around worrying about how to get them home. He and Naha and the scout would be just so much vapor and wreckage. As it was, his drive units, both sub-light and star drive, functioned, life support systems still operated, most of his instruments were still in working order. The main damage done by the nuke that had almost tom away their shields had been on the outer hull, just exactly where the computer sat against the bulkhead. The hull had been breeched and he and Naha had almost suffocated before Hybeck got a patch on the hull. Even at that, the concussion had thrown Naha across the cabin, against the far bulkhead where she had lacerated her head and face and broken a shoulder‌—‌a very nasty break through which bone had protruded until the automedic had reset the bone and covered the injuries with plastiskin and injected her with sedatives and healing drugs. She had a pretty nasty concussion too, the automedic said, but a few standard days’ rest would clear that up.