Alien Contact Page 5

  “A hair brush.”

  “Boar bristle?”

  “Wood handle.”

  “Art. Definitely.”

  She smiled at him. “You’re confusing ornamentation with art. But why not? It’s as good a definition as any,” she told him. “Eat your boxty.”

  They spend the whole afternoon alone, uninterrupted. Taki transcribed the morning’s notes into his files, reviewed his tapes. Hesper recorded a letter whose recipient would never hear it and sang softly to herself.

  That night he reached for her, his hand along the curve at her waist. She stiffened slightly, but responded by putting her hand on his face. He kissed her and her mouth did not move. His movements became less gentle. It might have been passion; it might have been anger. She told him to stop, but he didn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. “Stop,” she said again and he heard she was crying. “They’re here. Please stop. They’re watching us.”

  “Studying us,” Taki said. “Let them,” but he rolled away and released her. They were alone in the room. He would have seen the mene easily in the dark. “Hesper,” he said. “There’s no one here.”

  She lay rigid on her side of their bed. He saw the stitching of her backbone disappearing into her neck and had a sudden feeling that he could see everything about her, how she was made, how she was held together. It made him no less angry.

  “I’m sorry,” Hesper told him, but he didn’t believe her. Even so, he was asleep before she was. He made his own breakfast the next morning without leaving anything out for her. He was gone before she had gotten out of bed.

  The mene were gathering food, dried husks thick enough to protect the liquid fruit during the two-star dry season. They punctured the husks with their needle-thin teeth. Several crowded about him, greeting him with their fingers, checking his pockets, removing his recorder and passing it about until one of them dropped it in the dust. When they returned to work, Taki retrieved it, wiped it as clean as he could. He sat down to watch them, logged everything he observed. He noted in particular how often they touched each other and wondered what each touch meant. Affection? Communication? Some sort of chain of command?

  Later he went underground again, choosing another tunnel, looking for one which wouldn’t narrow so as to exclude him, but finding himself beside the same lake with the same narrow access ahead. He went deeper this time until it gradually became too close for his shoulders. Before him he could see a luminescence; he smelled the dusty odor of the mene and could just make out a sound, too, a sort of movement, a grass-rubbing-together sound. He stooped and strained his eyes to see something in the faint light. It was like looking into the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. The tunnel narrowed and narrowed. Beyond it must be the mene homes and he could never get into them. He contrasted this with the easy access they had to his home. At the end of his vision he thought he could just see something move, but he wasn’t sure. A light touch on the back of his neck and another behind his knee startled him. He twisted around to see a group of the mene crowded into the tunnel behind him. It gave him a feeling of being trapped and he had to force himself to be very gentle as he pushed his way back and let the mene go through. The dark pattern of their wings stood in high relief against the luminescent bodies. The human faces grew smaller and smaller until they disappeared.

  “Leave me alone,” Hesper told him. It took Taki completely by surprise. He had done nothing but enter the bedroom; he had not even spoken yet. “Just leave me alone.”

  Taki saw no signs that Hesper had ever gotten up. She lay against the pillow and her cheek was still creased from the wrinkles in the sheets. She had not been crying. There was something worse in her face, something which alarmed Taki.

  “Hesper?” he asked. “Hesper? Did you eat anything? Let me get you something to eat.”

  It took Hesper a moment to answer. When she did, she looked ordinary again. “Thank you,” she said. “I am hungry.” She joined him in the outer room, wrapped in their blanket, her hair tangled around her face. She got a drink for herself, dropping the empty glass once, stooping to retrieve it. Taki had the strange impression that the glass fell slowly. When they had first arrived, the gravitational pull had been light, just perceptibly lighter than Earth’s. Without quite noticing, this had registered on him in a sort of lightheartedness. But Hesper had complained of feelings of dislocation, disconnection. Taki put together a cold breakfast, which Hesper ate slowly, watching her own hands as if they fascinated her. Taki looked away. “Fork,” she said. He looked back. She was smiling at him.

  “What?”

  “Fork.”

  He understood. “Not art.”

  “Four tines?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Roses carved on the handle.”

  “Well then, art. Because of the handle. Not because of the tines.” He was greatly reassured.

  The mene came while he was telling her about the tunnel. They put their dusty fingers in her food, pulled it apart. Hesper set her fork down and pushed the plate away. When they reached for her she pushed them away, too. They came back. Hesper shoved harder.

  “Hesper,” said Taki.

  “I just want to be left alone. They never leave me alone.” Hesper stood up, towering above the mene. The blanket fell to the floor. “We flew here,” Hesper said to the mene. “Did you see the ship? Didn’t you see the pod? Doesn’t that interest you? Flying?” She laughed and flapped her arms until they froze, horizontal at her sides. The mene reached for her again and she brought her arms in to protect her breasts, pushing the mene away repeatedly, harder and harder, until they tired of approaching her and went into the bedroom, reappearing with her poems in their hands. The door sealed behind them.

  “I’ll get them back for you,” Taki promised, but Hesper told him not to bother.

  “I haven’t written in weeks,” she said. “In case you hadn’t noticed. I haven’t finished a poem since I came here. I’ve lost that. Along with everything else.” She brushed at her hair rather frantically with one hand. “It doesn’t matter,” she added. “My poems? Not art.”

  “Are you the best person to judge that?” Taki asked.

  “Don’t patronize me.” Hesper returned to the table, looked again at the plate which held her unfinished breakfast, dusty from handling. “My critical faculties are still intact. It’s just the poetry that’s gone.” She took the dish to clean it, scraped the food away. “I was never any good,” she said. “Why do you think I came here? I had no poetry of my own so I thought I’d write the mene’s. I came to a world without words. I hoped it would be clarifying. I knew there was a risk.” Her hands moved very fast. “I want you to know I don’t blame you.”

  “Come and sit down a moment, Hesper,” Taki said, but she shook her head. She looked down at her body and moved her hands over it.

  “They feel sorry for us. Did you know that? They feel sorry about our bodies.”

  “How do you know that?” Taki asked.

  “Logic. We have these completely functional bodies. No useless wings. Not art.” Hesper picked up the blanket and headed for the bedroom. At the cloth curtain she paused a moment. “They love our loneliness, though. They’ve taken all mine. They never leave me alone now.” She thrust her right arm suddenly out into the air. It made the curtain ripple. “Go away,” she said, ducking behind the sheet.

  Taki followed her. He was very frightened. “No one is here but us, Hesper,” he told her. He tried to put his arms around her but she pushed him back and began to dress.

  “Don’t touch me all the time,” she said. He sank onto the bed and watched her. She sat on the floor to fasten her boots.

  “Are you going out, Hesper?” he asked and she laughed.

  “Hesper is out,” she said. “Hesper is out of place, out of time, out of luck, and out of her mind. Hesper has vanished completely. Hesper was broken into and taken.”

  Taki fastened his hands tightly together. “Please don’t do this to me, Hesper,” he pleaded. “It�
��s really so unfair. When did I ask so much of you? I took what you offered me; I never took anything else. Please don’t do this.”

  Hesper had found the brush and was pulling it roughly through her hair. He rose and went to her, grabbing her by the arms, trying to turn her to face him. “Please, Hesper!”

  She shook loose from him without really appearing to notice his hands, continued to work through the worst of her tangles. When she did turn around, her face was familiar, but somehow not Hesper’s face. It was a face which startled him.

  “Hesper is gone,” it said. “We have her. You’ve lost her. We are ready to talk to you. Even though you will never, never, never understand.” She reached out to touch him, laying her open palm against his cheek and leaving it there.

  aptain Togram was using the chamberpot when the Indomitable broke out of hyperdrive. As happened all too often, nausea surged through the Roxolan officer. He raised the pot and was abruptly sick into it.

  When the spasm was done, he set the thundermug down and wiped his streaming eyes with the soft, gray-brown fur of his forearm. “The gods curse it!” he burst out. “Why don’t the shipmasters warn us when they do that?” Several of his troopers echoed him more pungently.

  At that moment, a runner appeared in the doorway. “We’re back in normal space,” the youth squeaked, before dashing on to the next chamber. Jeers and oaths followed him: “No shit!” “Thanks for the news!” “Tell the steerers—they might not have got the word!”

  Togram sighed and scratched his muzzle in annoyance at his own irritability. As an officer, he was supposed to set an example for his soldiers. He was junior enough to take such responsibilities seriously, but had had enough service to realize he should never expect too much from anyone more than a couple of notches above him. High ranks went to those with ancient blood or fresh money.

  Sighing again, he stowed the chamberpot in its niche. The metal cover he slid over it did little to relieve the stench. After sixteen days in space, the Indomitable reeked of ordure, stale food, and staler bodies. It was no better in any other ship of the Roxolan fleet, or any other. Travel between the stars was simply like that. Stinks and darkness were part of the price the soldiers paid to make the kingdom grow.

  Togram picked up a lantern and shook it to rouse the glowmites inside. They flashed silver in alarm. Some races, the captain knew, lit their ships with torches or candles, but glowmites used less air, even if they could only shine intermittently.

  Ever the careful soldier, Togram checked his weapons while the light lasted. He always kept all four of his pistols loaded and ready to use; when landing operations began, one pair would go on his belt, the other in his boottops. He was more worried about his sword. The perpetually moist air aboard ship was not good for the blade. Sure enough, he found a spot of rust to scour away.

  As he polished the rapier, he wondered what the new system would be like. He prayed for it to have a habitable planet. The air in the Indomitable might be too foul to breathe by the time the ship could get back to the nearest Roxolan-held planet. That was one of the risks starfarers took. It was not a major one—small yellow suns usually shepherded a life-bearing world or two—but it was there.

  He wished he hadn’t let himself think about it; like an aching fang, the worry, once there, would not go away. He got up from his pile of bedding to see how the steerers were doing.

  As usual with them, both Ransisc and his apprentice Olgren were complaining about the poor quality of the glass through which they trained their spyglasses. “You ought to stop whining,” Togram said, squinting in from the doorway. “At least you have light to see by.” After seeing so long by glowmite lantern, he had to wait for his eyes to adjust to the harsh raw sunlight flooding the observation chamber before he could go in.

  Olgren’s ears went back in annoyance. Ransisc was older and calmer. He set his hand on his apprentice’s arm. “If you rise to all of Togram’s jibes, you’ll have time for nothing else—he’s been a troublemaker since he came out of the egg. Isn’t that right, Togram?”

  “Whatever you say.” Togram liked the white-muzzled senior steerer. Unlike most of his breed, Ransisc did not act as though he believed his important job made him something special in the gods’ scheme of things.

  Olgren stiffened suddenly; the tip of his stumpy tail twitched. “This one’s a world!” he exclaimed.

  “Let’s see,” Ransisc said. Olgren moved away from his spyglass. The two steerers had been examining bright stars one by one looking for those that would show discs and prove themselves actually to be planets.

  “It’s a world,” Ransisc said at length, “but not one for us—those yellow, banded planets always have poisonous air, and too much of it.” Seeing Olgren’s dejection, he added, “It’s not a total loss—if we look along a line from that planet to its sun, we should find others fairly soon.”

  “Try that one,” Togram said, pointing toward a ruddy star that looked brighter than most of the others he could see.

  Olgren muttered something haughty about knowing his business better than any amateur, but Ransisc said sharply, “The captain has seen more worlds from space than you, sirrah. Suppose you do as he asks.” Ears drooping dejectedly, Olgren obeyed.

  Then his pique vanished. “A planet with green patches!” he shouted.

  Ransisc had been aiming his spyglass at a different part of the sky, but that brought him hurrying over. He shoved his apprentice aside, fiddled with the spyglass’ focus, peered long at the magnified image. Olgren was hopping from one foot to the other, his muddy-brown fur puffed out with impatience to hear the verdict.

  “Maybe,” said the senior steerer, and Olgren’s face lit, but it fell again as Ransisc continued, “I don’t see anything that looks like open water. If we find nothing better, I say we try it, but let’s search a while longer.”

  “You’ve just made a luof very happy,” Togram said. Ransisc chuckled. The Roxolani brought the little creatures along to test new planets’ air. If a luof could breathe it in the airlock of a flyer, it would also be safe for the animal’s masters.

  The steerers growled in irritation as several stars in a row stubbornly stayed mere points of light. Then Ransisc stiffened at his spyglass. “Here it is,” he said softly. “This is what we want. Come here, Olgren.”

  “Oh, my, yes,” the apprentice said a moment later.

  “Go report it to Warmaster Slevon, and ask him if his devices have picked up any hyperdrive vibrations except for the fleet’s.” As Olgren hurried away, Ransisc beckoned Togram over. “See for yourself.”

  The captain of foot bent over the eyepiece. Against the black of space, the world in the spyglass field looked achingly like Roxolan: deep ocean blue, covered with swirls of white cloud. A good-sized moon hung nearby. Both were in approximately half-phase, being nearer their star than was the Indomitable.

  “Did you spy any land?” Togram asked.

  “Look near the top of the image, below the ice cap,” Ransisc said. “Those browns and greens aren’t colors water usually takes. If we want any world in this system, you’re looking at it now.”

  They took turns examining the distant planet and trying to sketch its features until Olgren came back. “Well?” Togram said, though he saw the apprentice’s ears were high and cheerful.

  “Not a hyperdrive emanation but ours in the whole system!” Olgren grinned. Ransisc and Togram both pounded him on the back, as if he were the cause of the good news and not just its bearer.

  The captain’s smile was even wider than Olgren’s. This was going to be an easy one, which, as a professional soldier, he thoroughly approved of. If no one hereabouts could build a hyperdrive, either the system had no intelligent life at all or its inhabitants were still primitives, ignorant of gunpowder, fliers, and other aspects of warfare as it was practiced among the stars.

  He rubbed his hands. He could hardly wait for landfall.

  Buck Herzog was bored. After four months in space, with five and a ha
lf more staring him in the face, it was hardly surprising. Earth was a bright star behind the Ares III, with Luna a dimmer companion; Mars glowed ahead.

  “It’s your exercise period, Buck,” Art Snyder called. Of the five-person crew, he was probably the most officious.

  “All right, Pancho.” Herzog sighed. He pushed himself over to the bicycle and began pumping away, at first languidly, then harder. The work helped keep calcium in his bones in spite of free fall. Besides, it was something to do.

  Melissa Ott was listening to the news from home. “Fernando Valenzuela died last night,” she said.

  “Who?” Snyder was not a baseball fan.

  Herzog was, and a Californian to boot. “I saw him at an old-timers’ game once, and I remember my dad and my grandfather always talking about him,” he said. “How old was he, Mel?”

  “Seventy-nine,” she answered.

  “He always was too heavy,” Herzog said sadly.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  Herzog blinked. No one on the Ares III had sounded that excited since liftoff from the American space station. Melissa was staring at the radar screen. “Freddie!” she yelled.

  Frederica Lindstrom, the ship’s electronics expert, had just gotten out of the cramped shower space. She dove for the control board, still trailing a stream of water droplets. She did not bother with a towel; modesty aboard the Ares III had long since vanished.

  Melissa’s shout even made Claude Jonnard stick his head out of the little biology lab where he spent most of his time. “What’s wrong?” he called from the hatchway.

  “Radar’s gone to hell,” Melissa told him.

  “What do you mean, gone to hell?” Jonnard demanded indignantly. He was one of those annoying people who thought quantitatively all the time, and thought everyone else did, too.

  “There are about a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty, objects on the screen that have no right to be there,” answered Frederica Lindstrom, who had a milder case of the same disease. “Range appears to be a couple of million kilometers.”