She came back to consciousness all at once in a breathless rush. There should not have been any consciousness; she was supposed to be dead. She had charged the alien to make it fire its hand weapon, force it to kill her, because now there was no question of its hostility and she was afraid her mind would be open to it, all her knowledge of human science and defenses and government written out for it to see. The suicidal leap for its throat was the last thing she remembered, and she did not welcome this wakening.
Without opening her eyes or moving, she explored what her senses told her. She was spreadeagled on her back on a hard, smooth surface. Her wrists and ankles were tightly bound, and her clothing had been removed.
Sweat began to bead on her skin. This is impossible, she thought, and pushed against the bonds. They were metal; there was no play at all.
This cannot be happening to me. Can’t be. Can’t be.
She did not want to open her eyes. Through closed lids she saw bright light. It gave no heat and she was cold. Around her there was silence except for the subliminal hum of machines.
A voice of terrible power and clarity said to her thought: Whowhat are you?
She opened her eyes at last. She had never wanted less to do anything.
The alien stood near her, big as she remembered, half again her size. Its face was gray, and above that the skull was tufted with scales or coarse feathers. Two eyes were set very far apart in the flat face. Running nearly the length of the face and part-way to the top of the skull was a narrow strip of bony plating set a little out from the face, and under that a wide mouth that bulged outward, almost a muzzle. The skull was higher than a human’s, but more rounded than the shape of the helmet had indicated. At the sides of the neck were organs that looked like gill slits, but they were armored with bone. A red tunic hid its upper body and arms. It also wore a garment something like a kilt; she could not see its legs.
She only stared at it, paralyzed with disbelief and unsureness and the beginning of a fear she did not recognize. Cold choices between life and death did not frighten her, and what else had there been to fear?
It said again, meaning the personal “you”: Whatwho are you?
Her mind was blank in the face of the impossible. There was no emotional content in the thought at all, only the inquiry. D’neeran Adepts could do something like this, with rigorous concentration and discipline, but it was only a shadow of what this being did without effort. Yet there were overtones also of hard certainties, of things it thought it knew and echoes of other thoughts, and they were deadly.
It lifted a heavy four-fingered hand, and she saw that the fingers ended in thick curving claws. It laid the tips of the claws between her breasts and moved its hand, and there was a stinging as her skin tore. She trembled, but the slight pain roused her.
It said: I am the Celebrant-Questioner and the triumph that dissolves you. Show me truth!
Shaken, struggling to comprehend through fear and strangeness, she answered with an image: I am Wildfire.
Because that was how her own people sometimes thought of her when they spoke directly to her mind.
A rivulet of blood trickled down her sweating skin. She said to the being, without trying to hide her fear because she could not: What do you want with/from me?
I will know the heart of our danger: the place/strengths/ safeguards of the beasts: their tools of death, their watchfulness: fulfillment and prediction all at once: the use and proper end of Wildfire. This is what I will have.
Hanna moved convulsively against her bonds, knowing at last and too late, an hour too late, a year too late, that this was what she had ignored, this was what she had been swayed from: the plain fact that the hunter’s eye was no analog, but literally real. The end of courage and birth of fear had their reasons. She had not trusted herself or dead Anja enough. The being’s thought made it plain it was interested only in military intelligence and—a horror she did not yet understand and therefore, in extremity, dismissed. It did not care about culture or history, art or philosophy or any of the other things Endeavor had gone into space to exchange. It did not care about her luminous vision of all the rich varieties of life. Her own senses had warned her, and she had turned away from them. She had failed, spectacularly and dangerously.
She thought in despair: I cannot in rightfulness tell you those things. Peace follows me. My people will not harm you.
But the strength of her own conviction was lost in fear, and the being knew that in this moment she would, if she could, harm it or kill it or anything else to escape.
It said: You are not-People: clever treecubs come of old to ground awash in blood. You will show me what I ask, for I will hurt and force you.
It meant raw pain, so clearly her body twisted of its own accord in anticipation. It would come if she spoke or did not speak, inevitable, but still she could not accept that and thought in familiar terms of interrogations. She did not know what to do. No one had ever taught her what to do. Human questioning could not be resisted; there were drugs to free a prisoner’s tongue; there was no need for systematic pain and no one had ever spoken of it to her, except in whispered tales of forgotten hell-holes.
She whispered, “I cannot tell you anything,” and it took the negative from her terrified thought.
It said confidently: You will.
It also heard her incredulous question—why pain?—and answered: Will strength and spirit must end thus ending birth of the beast.
What it meant had nothing to do with questions. But when she tried to see the meaning, it added: Thought is chaos, drugged thought worse, lest shaped by will. You will shape it as I ask until will fails.
I will not.
You will.
She licked her dry lips and thought: You will kill me. You know not my physical being.
We do know. We have met not-People, the treecubs, before. Not like you; not outward-bound in space; lost, their ancestors abandoned. How did this happen?
It showed her a handful of people, half-primitive, half-sophisticated, settled in mist yet adrift as an uncaptured moon. Distracted by wonder, she thought: There is a story that when my ancestors began to go into space, for a time small groups went from star to star and of some all traces were lost; yet some survived. I did not think it true.
It is true.
It turned away and she tried to understand. A Lost World was real. Myth was truth. Had been truth. She thought: the humans they knew. They are all dead.
Accumulated shock made an abyss and for a little while she fell through it. All the universe had changed in these few moments and there would never be a foothold again. She would not need footholds; the dead do not need them. When this thought crystallized into certainty she saw The Questioner had returned. It showed her and explained to her a picture in its thoughts. It said: Do you know this instrument?
I know. I know in shame. I know.
She had not seen a neural stimulator that looked like this before, a square of silvery fabric, but she knew its principle. Her experience of it had not been pain, and the being added that knowledge to its store.
It looked away from her. It said: My companion is the Questioner’s Assistant.
Hanna turned her head and saw the other one coming toward her with the shining cloth. It thought of triumphs and transformations. The questions it would ask were secondary. Hanna did not understand and did not care. Her mouth was dry. The neural stimulator could cause excruciating pain, and although it did not damage tissue directly, the indirect effects were frightful. Convulsions of agony, she had heard, could tear muscles, break bones.
There would not be time to think about this or decide what to do, if there was anything left to do. Endure, said the deep voice of instinct. It was hard to hear past the clamoring crowd of things she did not want to give up. Protect, it said. Endure.
The Questioner said: Show me the space of your Home.
The image was strange and shadowed and wrapped in on itself, but Hanna understood. She said: I will not tell you.
The Questioner’s Assistant stood over her for a long moment, perhaps reviewing its knowledge of human anatomy. Then it leaned over and carefully molded the gauze over her belly.
The Questioner thought to a hidden control, and she screamed.
* * *
Tonight Henriette had worn a pale golden gown that glowed where it touched her skin. It lay near her now on the thick soft carpet, still shining a little with its own light. Henriette, chin propped on hands, looked up at Jameson in a way he knew well.
“Now?” she said, and he smiled at her from his chair.
“In a little while,” he said.
“It’s almost four in the morning. I have to go home and start working in a few hours. You just mean you’re still too high.”
“Possibly. Possibly.”
But it was only that he had no inclination to move for any reason. Moments when the universe was orderly and forgiving of pleasure were rare, and he was balanced now between pleasure past and pleasure future. Henriette, who was now future, would be present. Soon. Whenever he wished…
The Imagos in his blood was living up to its name. Nothing had disturbed his weekend on the waters of the rich and wind-chopped bay, and its blinding blue and gold still framed Henriette’s long graceful body. When he closed his eyes the bowl of scarlet roses at his elbow drifted before him, and everything was heavy with their scent. In a few days he would go home to Heartworld, his first visit in several months. The great Siberian tigers flourished there under greenleaf skies, not knowing and not caring by how narrow a margin they had escaped extinction. He thought he saw Henriette’s gown stir and become sunlight dappling pale fur. He felt the shaft of a spear in his hand, and forgot for a moment that he was no longer young enough or foolish enough to hunt tigers with the spear only.
He got up with a sigh and pulled Henriette to her feet and against him. Her hands moved on his back, and he felt a tremor begin in her thighs almost at once. It was one of the things he liked about Henriette.
In his ear Rodrigues’s voice said clearly, “Priority one,” and followed it up with a series of tones guaranteed to wake him if he were half-dead.
He cursed the transmitter implant violently. Henriette said, “Oh, no!”
“House! Tell Rodrigues to shut up!” The noise stopped. He said, “Be a good girl and get some clothes on, and bring me the Imagos antidote, would you?”
Tucked away behind an elegant bronzewood door was a private communications center. He disliked using it; it was a cold reminder that chaos was no respecter of his working hours. It would not open for anyone but him, and required palm, voice, and retinal identification. He gave it a slap, a curse, and a glare; there were certain liberties one could take with machines. Inside the lights were too bright, and a sharp reflection from somewhere shaped itself into a spearpoint before his eyes.
He said, “All right, Paul,” and blinked to focus the other man’s face.
Rodrigues said without preamble, “Anja Daru and Charl Zeig are dead. XS-12 is out of contact.” His face changed briefly to something else and back again. Jameson ignored it.
“What happened? Oh—”
Henriette was back. She injected the Imagos antidote with practiced fingers. She’s used to this, he thought.
“Out,” he said, and made sure the door locked behind her.
Rodrigues said, “Apparently Zeig and Daru died about two hours ago. I tried raising XS-12 myself, no luck. I got General Steinmetz out of bed and he’s got Fleet Communications trying.”
“How did you find out about it?”
“Lady Koroth. D’neerans know when somebody they’re close to dies, you know. She got a call from Daru’s current, uh, spouse? He’d already been in touch with some of her other relations and they all thought she was gone. Lady Koroth then talked with Zeig’s mother—same thing was going on in his circle. It took her a while to get to me. Central didn’t know what to do and passed her on to Martinson first, and he put her through to me.”
Jameson’s head was clearing. He let the blue-and-gold go without regret. He said, “Has there been any alarm from XS-12?”
Rodrigues shook his head. “They checked in Sunday morning as usual—twenty-two hours ago now. Nothing to report. No contact since.”
“Have you still got Lady Koroth holding?”
“Yes. I thought you’d want to talk to her.”
“I do. Get back to Steinmetz and see if he’s having any luck. If he’s not, get on to the Commission. Let me talk to Lady Koroth.”
It was midday at Koroth. Iledra, who must have been jolted hard by the news, appeared calm, but the younger woman at her shoulder looked anxious. Cosma ril-Koroth: Jameson remembered she was likely to be Iledra’s heir if anything happened to Hanna.
He bit back the obvious question and said instead, “Rodrigues has filled me in. Did he tell you he’s been trying to reach XS-12?”
“No, he didn’t. We have not tried. It would go through Central, and be stopped. He has had no answer?”
“We’re still working on it. Tell me what happened.”
It was only a more detailed account of what Rodrigues had told him. She recited it with precision, filling in names, times, circumstances, but she moved restlessly as she did so and once Cosma touched her hand. When she finished he said finally, “You have no reason to think Lady Hanna also is dead?”
“None. I would know; so would her parents and cousins. I’ve spoken with them, too.”
Jameson found it hard to picture Hanna with a family. She had grown up with her mother, he remembered, but likely had been close to her father; such relationships were common on D’neera. “Cousins” could be siblings or half-siblings or entirely unrelated people with whom one had intimate ties; D’neerans often did not distinguish among the categories.
He said, “Would you know if she were injured? Unable to respond to us, for example?”
“Probably not. It’s nearly always clear and unmistakable when someone you love ceases to exist, no matter where they are. You seldom know of any trauma short of that, unless they’re close at hand. It sometimes happens; not often.”
“All right.” The antidote had taken full effect now. He did not have to think about what to do next. “Unless we get some word from her in the next few minutes I’m going to get a search underway.”
“There is already a D’neeran ship on the way. Estimated time of arrival is seventy-two hours.”
Jameson blinked, taken by surprise. She was not supposed to know XS-12’s location. He remembered Hanna’s insistence on finding it out. She must have passed it on before she left Earth, probably without even thinking of security. It could not be undone, however. He said, dismissing it, “We’ll have something there sooner. Can you keep this quiet until we know more?”
“No.”
There was no point in arguing about it. He could exert little influence on D’neeran public information policy. But it meant the news would be known on other human worlds in a few hours, and he would have to deal with that problem sooner than he would have liked.
He closed the call and paused, thinking. Hanna had not known, and Lady Koroth could not know, that XS-12 had not been entirely unsupported. Sadam Aziz Khan in the Fleet warship Mao Tse-Tung was hours away. Clearly the communications blackout no longer was necessary. Better check with Steinmetz and get the Mao moving.
It was fruitless to consider what this disaster would mean to him personally. If XS-12 had only blown up by itself it would not be so bad. If the aliens had something to do with it it would be the worst crisis for humanity since the plague years of the twenty-fourth century. And there would have to be a scapegoat, and he would be it. He would be lucky to end up an assistant to some village mayor in the wilderness; very lucky.
It was going to be a bad Monday.
* * *
The Questioner’s Assistant shoved a nipple against her mouth, but it was still too short a time since the last red bout of pain, and the water dribbled unnoticed onto the tabletop, already slick with her body fluids. She could not scream any longer and her right arm, broken in some massive convulsion, hurt all the time now. Her body twitched and jerked uncontrollably even when they were not doing anything to her.
Her mind began to work a little again in a slow daze. She licked a drop of water from her lips with painful concentration. Her vision cleared for a moment and beyond the scarlet shape of The Questioner she saw others like him. They were not even trying to block out her pain; they were drawn to it, hungered for it, ate it, absorbed it. Always outside her own agony she felt their gluttonous satisfaction, and sometimes, dimly, savage flashes of joy and ancient victory.
When she could think—less often now—she knew it was impossible. Everyone knew it was impossible. She had accepted unquestioning the common wisdom that star-traveling aliens could not do things like this, that xenophobes do not take to the stars, that compassion and intelligence are inextricably linked. No telepath would know her suffering without sharing it, nor disbelieve her assurance of harmless intent. She had said so in “Sentience.” She did not think she would live to write a retraction.
The Questioner saw her limbs quiet, and felt the fog clear from her thought. He said (she knew now it was “he”): Where in misted stars do the unPeople lair?
The thought was a glimpse of bloody fangs, and she shook her head weakly. A hank of sweat-soaked hair clung to her cheek.
We are not beasts, but People like yourselves.
With what arms would the not-People kill us?
It was utterly and absolutely impossible to avoid telling him something. Her perception of each question carried a partial answer within itself. The common barriers of her kind, which were all she knew, were nothing to The Questioner. She did not even have the privilege of thinking of the meaning of her death; there was nothing safe to think of for distraction.
Therefore she counted; did sums, remembered logarithms, cherished listings of the elements; that was all they would get, unless pain broke her. This death was slow and hard and worse than anything she had ever imagined, but she thought it could be endured. She was stubborn, adamant. Such qualities had given her trouble in life; they would serve her well in dying. The core of her was strong and inviolate. As long as it stayed so, she could keep silence. And no matter what they dripped into her veins to keep her alive, sometime she would die.
The Questioner said: This tool has other uses.
She knew that. She remembered them very well, from one riotous trip to Valentine that had left her shaken and unsure and forced to the conclusion that D’neeran sexual mores, notoriously flexible, had their own rigorous limits for her.
She thought the being was going to try bribing her with pleasure, since pain so far had failed. It made her angry; but that would not work, either.
When she understood its intent, however, she wanted to scream again, and could not.
* * *
The commissioners of the Polity rarely all met together in the flesh; for once all of them were here. Andrella Murphy had been a little distance from Earth when Rodrigues called her, going home to Willow, and was breathless from a last-minute rush to Admin. Not only the six of them knew what was going on. After Lady Koroth’s announcement some hours before, everyone knew.
Struzik gave Murphy time to settle in a chair before he called the meeting to order. Murphy’s single glance at Jameson was anxious; the others were nervous or resentful, angry or triumphant. He knew that all of them, even Murphy, had already taken steps to dissociate themselves as thoroughly as possible from the Endeavor Project. The groundwork would be laid—had been laid for months, no doubt—and all the subtle machinery would begin working as soon as they had a little more information. They would have it in a minute now, and he would be left to face the storm alone. He had never expected anything else, and had accepted the risk from the beginning.
“I think,” Struzik said, “Starr has a new report for us.”
From long habit Jameson spoke calmly, his face betraying nothing.
“I spoke a few minutes ago to Aziz Khan on the Mao,” he said. “I’m sorry to say he had a worst-case confirmation. XS-12 has been destroyed by enemy action.”
He looked past them to the end of his career, and waited for the frozen silence to end.
al-Nimeury leaned forward and said, “What weapons?”
“Simple lasers, Aziz Khan said.”
“Why? If these aliens have Inspace capability, why not anti-gravity derivatives?”
Jameson resisted an impulse to inquire how he was supposed to guess why aliens used one weapon and not another. He said, “Aggies are very destructive. It may be they wanted to preserve the vessel for study. Aziz Khan said there’s very little debris, not nearly enough to account for XS-12’s full mass.”
Murphy said, “Is there any trace of them?”
“No. You know how easy it is to disappear using Inspace. They know too, evidently.”
Katherine Petrov had not been listening. She said, “They’ve taken it away, then?”
“It appears so.”
“Then they’ve got everything…”
Her old hands hovered anxiously. Jameson said, “Maybe not, Kate. They might have made a mistake. Aziz Khan says the nature of the debris indicates central control took a direct hit. Main data storage almost certainly was destroyed, and the backup may have been damaged.”
“Why?” said Murphy. “It doesn’t make sense. Why waste the computer?”
“The theory is that their prime target was a human prisoner. It’s likely that Lady Hanna, as the logical contact, was the first to come into their hands. It would not make sense to us, but when I notified Lady Koroth—” His eyes were on Murphy, but he found he was seeing Iledra’s face, with its barely hidden pain. “Lady Koroth said if they are indeed telepaths they may find it easier and less time-consuming to interrogate a prisoner than to analyze human language and mathematics and hardware.”
“You’re sure Lady Hanna’s alive, then?” Murphy looked worried but far from hysterical—and not nearly so thunderously angry as al-Nimeury.
“Quite sure.”
Arthur Feng said, “How much does she know?”
“Too much,” Jameson said wearily, thinking of that intent young face. “She has detailed knowledge of D’neeran defense capabilities. She’s state-of-the-art where Polity defenses are concerned, although she’s never been in a position to know the details.”
Petrov said, “We’ll have to assume she tells them. And that they’re hostile.”
Jameson said nothing. According to “Sentience,” a defensive posture to a newly encountered intelligent species was inappropriate when a telepath made the contact. But according to “Sentience,” not to mention humankind’s cherished beliefs about intelligence, such a species would not, as its first act of contact, destroy a human space vessel.
Struzik murmured, “It’ll have to be max security.”
A storm of voices broke out. Jameson listened without comment. Probably it should be max security. He would speak with Damon Taylor, president of his own world’s general council and the man responsible for Jameson’s presence on the Commission, but he thought “maximum security” would be Taylor’s first words. It was expensive, it was frightening, it interfered with commerce and lawful travel and it was of questionable value, given the nature of Inspace transit, but probably it should be max security. Until they found out what was going on. If they ever found out what was going on.
“But—” Feng’s voice rose above the babble. “Three conventions next month in Foresight alone. Foresight alone! And anyway they don’t have the computer data. And Lady Hanna might not tell them anything.”
al-Nimeury growled, “I do not want to count on that.”
There was an overtone in his voice Jameson recognized, something more than the bruise to pride the Endeavor Project had been. al-Nimeury simply disliked D’neera, and violently distrusted D’neerans. It was only an extreme form of a widespread prejudice; Coopers had made themselves into a human unity and combined a checkered assortment of settlers into a human whole against great odds. They were hard on outsiders.
Maximum security was the only realistic choice. It would take days to implement; there was no time to waste; even in this room, which was supposed to hold humanity’s coolest heads, there was a shadow of fear. Jameson cast his vote without a word, knowing it might be his last.
When they got up to leave, Struzik nodded to Jameson, who recognized the signal to wait until the others were gone. But Struzik, who gently pried whenever he had the chance, only wanted to gossip, and Jameson was in no mood for gossip.
“You know everything I know,” he said.
“I know. Still…” Struzik hesitated. “We’ve never had to do this before.”
“No.”
“Dust off the contingency plans…We never really expected hostile aliens.”
“Somebody did,” Jameson pointed out. “That’s why the plans are there.”
“But I never thought we’d have to use them.”
Jameson shrugged. “You take your chances,” he said.
“Your chance. Your idea.”
Jameson waited, watching his oldest Earth-born friend.
Struzik said, “How much did you know?”
“Nothing,” Jameson said, understanding the question perfectly.
“Tell me the truth, Jamie. You thought she might have been right all along, didn’t you? Being scared of them as she was?”
Jameson did not answer. Struzik said. “This puts you in a spot, doesn’t it?”
“You might say that.” Jameson had made mistakes before, but he could not recall another that had endangered the whole human species. In a day or so the pack would be in full cry. It would be folly to dispense with his experience in a time of crisis, but he did not know if Taylor would be able to avoid it.
Struzik began, “All the fuss about Endeavor in the first place—”
“Seems to have been justified.”
Jameson started out the door. Behind him Struzik said, not without sympathy, “You really put your foot in it this time, Jamie.”
“Don’t call me that,” Jameson said automatically, but his heart was not in it.
* * *
Hanna found humiliation could do things simple pain could not. The boundary in her mind between rape and the pleasures of love had been clear; that made it worse. Rape was a true-human crime which she had heard of but never met, and she had faced the possibility of the start of war with Nestor with a certain equanimity. If it happened she would endure it, and when there was a chance—even if years passed before the chance came—she would kill the man who did it. The principle was as clear to her as anything in her life, her mastery of this part of herself indisputable and a foundation of her existence. In this matter there were no gray areas.
What happened to her now was different, and beyond enduring. Bad enough, insane enough, to have the paths of pleasure charted by some monstrous being unmoved as the tool it used; but each time, at the end, to want what it promised! The instrument was forbidden everywhere except Valentine; her own experience had shown her why; it took away your humanity. The body had its own imperatives, and no matter how she set her will the moment would come when she gave in to them, and her will would be broken. And when she wept in shame and self-hatred the pain would come again, and it would be harder to resist that too.
Stop. Stop. Oh please, I beg, oh please.
I will not. Thus were beasts destroyed before you time-ago; in this and other ways: We learned.
Abject I crawl, I beg, implore, I will do anything save speak!
That too. How not? Ask when. There is no escape. Of all agonies that is the worst: no ending nor escape.
Pain merged with pleasure, she got them mixed up, the creature was as close as her self, the bond was irresistible. Yet she resisted.
Answer, if thou lovest me. A single flame. The heavens thus. Knowest thou this benchmark?
I know….
And this? No? Then this?
No! I will not.
You will.
The universe contracted to Hanna and The Questioner. She resisted, surrendered, forgot she was human, remembered. The past died in the evil present. The little certainty that was left her blurred and dissolved; but The Questioner was certain. In an unguarded moment he let her see his sureness that he hammered at a fracture point, that she would split cleanly as a crystal, and he would not let her shatter into dust.
* * *
On Tuesday night Jameson went home and immediately broke an ampoule of a high-powered tranquilizing drug under his nose. After a minute he did it with another and the world slowed around him, and the muscles of his back and legs reluctantly, lingeringly relaxed.
He was leaning against the wall of his study, his breath clouding its shining surface, when the room said, “Ms. Guilbert is calling.”
“Just give me audio in here…Henriette?”
“Hello. You told me to call you today.”
“Did I?”
“Umm-hmm.”
He shook his head, a gesture she could not see.
“I’m sorry, Henry. I haven’t had any sleep for a couple of days and I don’t know when I’ll be able to get free.”
“I thought that was probably—Starr?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
He smiled in spite of his weariness. “You know the rules about answers.”
“You’ll either tell me the truth, not answer, or lie to me.”
“That’s right.” He had laid the rule down solemnly early on, and Henriette rarely asked about the Commission.
“Are you worried?”
“No,” he lied.
After a pause she said. “They’re saying President Taylor is going to recall you.”
“Who’s saying that?” (Besides half the Heartworld council and sometimes Taylor too, he thought.)
“It’s on all the newsbeams. They’re saying—well. Somebody said you’re a megalomaniac and you shoved the Endeavor Project through, knowing how dangerous it was.”
She sounded uncertain. Very likely she believed it. Damned if he was going to defend himself to Henriette; she had never listened to a word of his public statements before she met him, and rarely did so now.
“Cut your losses, Henry.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Henry, my appointment will not be revoked. A minority faction in the council will try to pass a resolution demanding my resignation. They won’t have nearly enough votes. That’ll be the end of it. It happens all the time, Henry, in one form or another.”
“All right.” She sounded dissatisfied. A village mayor’s assistant would not suit her.
“I must go now. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
He went to his bedroom, thinking the last thing he wanted right now was Henriette beside him in the big bed. No, not quite the last thing; he could do without partisan politics just now too.
He barely had time to get his clothes off before the dope put him to sleep.
Not crystal
but steel.
It is stronger
than Lost Ones
and beasts.
There is more to protect.
Much more. Worlds and
weapons unsuspected
it has shown us.
Not enough! It
cannot die
will not die.
Not yet.
The promise and the threat were nothing to Hanna, nor had she the clarity of mind to wonder what could follow. She could not move. When she was sick from time to time they turned her like a slab of meat so she would not choke to death; she could not and would not have done it by herself. Her mind also had retreated. For some time she had not felt anything; blessedly detached, for a little while she wandered the golden hills of her home. Once it was night, the moonless star-clouded night of D’neera. It seemed that at some time she had wanted to soar into the bright cloud, borne by her own wonder and curiosity. That could not be right. The stars were too terrible. Her mother said, H’ana, when will you be home? Soon, darling, she answered.
And where is this place? someone asked in her dream.
Here, you see, not far from the gentle sea.
And if I wish to go there from another star how may I find it?
Dutifully she began to think of astrogation. And remembered in a surge of terror what asked the question.
stronger than
We. Pierce its heart.
No! Lost We
lost the vessel
knew not Our aim
and Our goal and
destroyed it
unknowing; now
nothing
useless
metal
twisted
unspeaking.
Wildfire is all.
They did not bother to hide their thoughts. Hanna understood none of it. Their new agitation only threatened her precarious peace. An ocean’s slow pulsebeat rocked her.
This was not the
purpose of the
purpose of the Rite.
Time is changed We
are changed. They too.
And they. The
old records the
Lost Ones the
Students knew the
key
which is death
which is madness
We will try.
A new and powerful voice said: One star may be all that We need; its Home, whence it returns: first known, last to fade in the end-of-self. We will try.
We will try.
They were specialists in their way. They knew what mutilation did to the human spirit and made a ruin of her breasts. They knew what disfigurement did to identity, and destroyed her face. They knew what sudden blindness did to courage, and put out her eyes. They knew about humans and their children, and did things in her belly that made her pass out again, but not for long, because they never let her stay unconscious for long.
* * *
Wednesday night Jameson recalled the Endeavor. There was no choice. It was too vulnerable, too tempting a target, sailing space with its computers chuckling to themselves and blithely inviting the aliens to come say hello. So he was told, anyway, and reluctantly he believed this much at least: now was not the time to expound on the philosophical arguments in favor of alien contact.
Another name for the Endeavor Project was current in certain circles. It was “Jameson’s Folly.”
Erik Fleming asked to be reassigned to the hopeless search for XS-12 and Hanna. Jameson had no direct authority in the matter, but he still bore his precarious title and his hint to Fleming’s Fleet superiors would go a long way. He said he would see what he could do.
When he was done with Fleming he poured a drink and stood at the edge of his office for a while, looking out at the river as Hanna had done not long ago.
He did not think he would see her again, and in memory, memory of a time so separated from the desperate now that it might have been a distant past, she came before his eyes with her odd blend of adamant and innocent. He had thought: she needs only a little shaping to be a precious tool; a little patience with compromise, some skill in the way things work. Now he thought: she did not want to go. And did not even think about the courage that took her out there. And neither did I.
He had spent his life in public service. He was responsible for humanity first, then Heartworld. If he were to accept responsibility for every individual who came into his work the burden would crush him. He could not afford to forget the fact, and now he was reminded of the reasons he had learned it in the first place. He had begun to like Hanna ril-Koroth; and he had personally sent her to her death.
* * *
You know this configuration. I see that you do. And from here to your Home?
She was quite mad. When she thought of something they wanted they cut off another bit of her. That was her reward. Sometimes it was the other way around. It seemed proper and gratifying. When it was finished there would be nothing left of her. An orderly and needful procedure.
In a moment of vague anxiety she asked, it’s all right, isn’t it, Iledra? Yes, Iledra answered.
This being is your Leader? But there are others. What are you?
I am nothing. Nothing does not live, therefore I do not live, therefore kill me.
We will not. Show me the Homes again in your thought. Not that one. The others. The others!
I have no eyes, no hands, therefore no thought.
Have you learned any more?
No. No. No. Too late.
We must know.
Cannot know.
At the last….
Was it true? Its Home a mote
defenseless. The rest
beyond power. It is true. There is
more than We thought.
Then We must
We cannot
Yet I will.
Experiment only
new as the new-things
as Treecubs
as Renders
as old
but We are equipped and
supplied for the
bending the
shaping insertion
command
I will try.
We will try.
Iledra sat up in bed and called “H’ana?” but there was no answer. Dawn showed at her windows. It was night in Namerica, she could talk to Jameson if she wished, but what was there to tell him? Hanna was still alive. Iledra could not explain the shock that had waked her. She was not even sure it was real; perhaps she had been dreaming about Hanna, and only her own anxiety had roused her.
She lay down again and pulled the feather-stuffed quilt over her shoulders.
* * *
Four days later the mayday from XS-12 reached the Mao Tse-Tung and the D’neeran light cruiser Voltaire, which haunted space where the scout had disappeared. It carried position referents which were arrogantly clear. The Voltaire had no chance in the race that followed. The Mao plunged through uncharted space much faster than was safe, and in a steaming empty place with an atmosphere that could just be breathed, Aziz Khan found the wreck of XS-12, the pieces of Charl Zeig and Anja Daru, and something he did not at once recognize as H’ana ril-Koroth, which still barely lived.