WE (24 page)

‘Why did you ask me that?' she said.

‘What?'

‘About my name.'

‘You called me Paul, didn't you?'

She hesitated. Then she said, ‘It's not because you own me now?'

‘
Own
you?'

‘Because of what I did.'

He looked blankly at her. She looked away.

‘I've been wondering,' she said. ‘I think about you so much. Why you are really here. Why you say the things you do. You always seem to have reasons. I look at each thing you do and say, and I think, Yes, this is why … But that doesn't tell me why I've felt so afraid of you …'

‘You are afraid of me?' he said, bewildered.

‘Sometimes … Sometimes, yes I am. And yet when you come through my door I want you to stay and talk to me. When you stay in your chamber I want to go in to you …'

‘What makes you afraid of me?'

She laughed – a nervous little laugh. She put her head in her hands. ‘Is it going to be meaningless to you? Or are you being very clever? I don't know. I've no way of knowing … Do you know what Lewis calls this place sometimes? He
calls it “Eden”. You've heard him say that, haven't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘He likes the name because that was the place in the story where the first man and woman met – the father and mother of all men. He wants a new race of men in this place, of course …

‘What he's forgotten is that the man and woman were not alone in Eden. There was – someone else – there with them. The Serpent. That's who I'm afraid of.'

‘Serpent?'

Paul blinked slowly. Nothing came. Groaning aloud, he reached for the keyboard.

‘How do you spell it?' he asked.

She told him. He called up the Knowledge Store. The entry he found was one she herself had written. He read it. It was the story she was talking to him about.

‘What did you do?' he asked.

‘About what?'

‘You did something that made you think I owned you. What was it?'

‘I told May what you said. You remember – about her child being alone here after we had all gone. Of course she's been telling herself it won't be and of course she fears it will. It hit her when I said it. Very hard. I meant it to.'

‘I heard, I think. Lewis said you were not kind.'

‘Kind! I wanted to punish her. I
knew
that was what I was doing. And I was so pleased with myself for resisting you! And I fell at once. She's been miserable ever since. You must have noticed.'

Paul nodded. He had noticed. Today he had, when they had been preparing the message.

He dismissed the entry from his screen.

‘I am not that,' he said.

‘What are you, then?'

‘Maybe I am Change. Change can make you afraid too.'

She seemed to think about that.

‘I should tell her I'm sorry,' she said. ‘But I can't. It just sticks in me. I can't!'

After a moment Paul put his hand on hers. Through the thickness of their two suit gauntlets he could just feel the shapes of fingers, remote but there, alive within the protective layers. He thought she might take her hand away, but she did not. Neither of them spoke.

It was cold. He was shivering in his suit and his face felt numb. He thought that they should both put their helmets back on. But he did not want to take his hand from hers. Just at the moment the levels on the screen seemed to be falling, anyway. That was another alert cancelled. Well done, Lewis. How long would this go on?

‘Do you remember Earth?' said Erin.

‘Yes, of course.'

‘No, but really remember it? Can you remember the dampness and coolness of the air in the early morning? I can't. I know it was like that but I can't remember what it felt like.' She sighed. ‘I was looking at a picture of clouds, a couple of watches back. I'd forgotten the way their undersides looked when it was about to rain – all dark and feathery, and those dark streaks below them slanting towards the ground.'

‘Yes, I remember,' he said.

‘Sometimes I dream of it,' he added.

‘It's a strange thing to worry about,' she said. ‘If this is the last hour of my life, I should be asking for forgiveness – from May, from you, from everybody. But that's what I really feel. Some little cell in me containing that memory has died, and I can't bring it back. That's what—'

‘I don't think it is.'

‘What?'

‘The last hour of your life.'

‘I'm glad you're so sure.'

He pointed to the screen. The wave of activity was still falling. The alerts had stopped.

‘
I
can find no pattern in the waves,' said Paul. ‘Nor can Hunter. It was not trying to communicate.'

They were in the common room again, bathed in the warm cream light of the walls. The temperature was normal. The unnerving cold was gone. The damage checks had been carried out, the results analysed, repair tasks prioritized. In the sky above them the crescent of the planet would be swelling again as the moon swung away from the tail.

But the signs of the last hours were written on their faces. No one had slept. No one – not even Erin – had gone off to shut themselves in their room. They had clustered together in the common room as if for comfort, taking turns to work on the main screen, making each other coffee and bringing in food at odd times. The schedule of watches, set mealtimes and rest periods was ignored and no one mentioned that they were ignoring it. It was as if that too had been shattered by some stray particle back in the passage of the tail.

‘Maybe it can't communicate,' said Lewis. ‘Maybe its
intelligence is enough to recognize words but not to use them. Like a dog's, say.'

‘A very big dog,' said Erin. ‘And wild. You still want to talk with it?'

‘If I can.'

‘Why? You want it to sit up and beg?'

Lewis threw up his hands. ‘Because it's intelligent! Because we're sharing its space. Because it knows things we don't, maybe. We should treat it like a person, with respect!'

‘It
attacked
us. And this station wasn't designed for high levels of radiation.'

‘High?' said Lewis. ‘I mean, yes, it was more than advisable, certainly. And over a sustained period—'

‘Lewis,' said Paul. ‘We shouldn't be risking
any
more exposure than we must. May should not at all.'

May said nothing. She was sitting with her knees tight together and her elbows held close against her sides. She was looking down at her hands, which were tucked in between her thighs. A pink spot had appeared upon her cheeks, just as it had when Lewis had handed around Earth's response to Paul's message about her child. She was angry because she was helpless. She had written about cradling her child, even as particles fell from space. But the womb could not protect the embryo from electrons moving with the energy imparted by thousands of volts. If that were repeated and repeated,
every six days, some price would have to be paid. She knew that. The embryo was the most vulnerable of them all.

‘All right,' said Lewis, frowning. ‘There is that. So what do you think we should do?'

‘We should shut down all transmissions,' said Erin. ‘We send nothing to anything by radio. Not to crawlers, not to Earth, not to each other. Let it think it's killed us.'

‘For how long?'

‘Indefinitely.'

Lewis raised his eyebrows. ‘Total radio shutdown? That's impractical. We have to control the utilities somehow.'

‘We use it as little as possible, then. We suspend all search operations – why should I go on searching if we know we're not going to report what I find? We suspend the active experiments too. And we only use the utility crawlers when we absolutely have to. We communicate with Earth only by laser. In the meantime we try to map how the field works – what's keeping it stable. We interfere with it as little as possible, at least to begin with. In time maybe we can try stimulating it again. But I'd want to be very gradual, both for its sake and ours.'

‘Earth will complain,' said May.

Lewis shrugged. ‘I'm not worried about Earth. We'll tell them the transmitters were damaged in a magnetic storm. It's pretty well true. If it's a question of our survival—'

‘I am worried about Earth,' said Paul.

‘What do you mean?'

They were looking at him – all three of them. Lewis was frowning a little, as if the very mention of Earth was enough to cause suspicion. May had a lock of her long hair caught in the corner of her mouth. And Erin – her eyes were widening as she turned to him on the seat beside her. Somehow she knew what was coming from his mouth.

‘Erin was right,' he said. ‘We must think again. We must report what we have found.'

‘We've taken that vote, Paul,' said Lewis, with a dangerous softness.

‘We must take it again.'

‘
Why?
For what
possible
reason? Earth is eight years' travel away! Even if we called it now and confessed everything it would make no difference! We would still have to find a way of living with this thing. There's nothing Earth can do to help us and everything it can do to destroy us and the way we think!'

‘No. Not for help. I know that …'

He leaned forward because Lewis was leaning forward. He looked into Lewis's red face.

‘I thought about this during the attack. About the people who made this place and how we depend on what they did.
Lewis, you want to cut us off from Earth. To do that you must make everyone who will ever live here think Earth is evil. You will raise your children and say to them Earth is evil, evil, evil! Earth is not evil. Things have changed, yes. But things are always changing. Look at Hunter and see how far we've come! Now the “I” is weaker and the “We” is stronger. Is that evil? And Lewis – you said the We was a feral child, because for it there was no one else. If you cut us off from Earth, we will be the same. We will need someone else in the universe. We always have done.'

‘How can you say that?' cried Lewis. ‘They've no moral choice any more. They're slaves! And if it comes here, we'll be slaves too!'

‘Lewis … When I woke and found I was without my World Ear, I wept. Didn't you?'

‘And that was done to you, and you were sent out here. You call that
human
?'

‘I suppose – yes,' said Paul. ‘Just now you said “moral choice”. I know what you mean. It's rules for living with others …'

‘It's more than that,' said Erin.

‘I've lived on Earth, and with you, and I've been alone. There are rules on Earth. They are different from what we have here – very different. But they are still rules, even if everyone follows them without thinking. Only when you are
alone are there no rules.' He grinned sourly. ‘I know that now.'

‘I see,' said Lewis, watching him. ‘But you agree we have rules here too. Do you mean that if we vote again, you will be bound by whatever we decide?'

Paul hesitated.

‘Yes,' he said.

‘And if we cannot agree – if it's two against two – then we must do nothing. Because doing nothing keeps the option open but sending the message is irrevocable?'

‘Yes,' said Paul slowly.

‘I agree with Paul,' said Erin.

‘I thought you would,' said Lewis irritably. ‘But May and I—'

‘Paul's right,' said May.

There was a moment's silence.

‘Don't
look
at me like that!' she snapped. ‘He's right. We need more people out here. Set any rules you like for them. Tell them that no one lands with a working World Ear – anything. But they've got to come.'

‘We can't stop them importing the World Ear,' said Lewis firmly. ‘The first ones might respect the rule but it would quickly get too important—'

‘Then I don't care. We need more people here.'

‘There will be, May! Before any ship can get out here—'

‘What – from just the four of us? Two of us, even?'

‘It's the only safe way—'

‘
Safe?
' May's voice rose. ‘How old is Van now? How long are you going to wait for her to come out of herself? Can she have a child? What'll happen to it? Will she survive? Will I? What if they're the same sex? Will we have to try again?'

‘Leave me out of this!' snapped Erin. ‘Leave me
and
Paul out of this.'

‘We
can't
leave you out of this, Van!' said Lewis – and at the same time May cried, ‘I
am
leaving them out! And even if I don't … You heard what she said. It needs thousands!'

‘That's in the long term,' said Lewis. ‘This is just a population bottleneck. Humans have had them before—'

‘This won't work!'

‘You don't know that!' cried Lewis.

‘I don't need to
know
it! I can look at the chances, can't I?
I don't want my kid to die alone!
'

‘Look, we've had a scare,' said Lewis. ‘Our confidence has been shaken. This is the wrong time—'

‘I want to take the vote now,' said May. ‘Paul – you said we should contact Earth?'

Paul drew breath. He let it go again. ‘Yes,' he said.

‘Van?'

‘Yes,' said Erin. ‘On that one point, yes.'

‘And so do I,' said May. She faced Lewis.

‘That's it, then,' she said. ‘That's what we'll do.'

She skipped away across the common room.

‘May!' Lewis cried. She did not look back. ‘
May!
'

She reached the door to her chamber. She opened it. When the seal hissed shut behind her they were left in silence. Lewis's face was dark. His eyes turned to Paul. Paul shook his head, just slightly. He would not lock anyone out of the communications. Nor would he let Lewis do so – not this time.