Forge of the Elders, page 14
"That I can believe." Coming to a decision, she stood. "But cracking up or not, he said you'd answer my questions. Only let's take a walk, so I can enjoy my schizophrenia in privacy." They followed the route Eichra Oren had, slipping between two shuttles—she checked the contents of the chamber and magazine of her Witness, mindful of another colonel, whose uniform she wore—far enough into the trees so she could still see by half a dozen lights Sebastiano had strung around the camp.
" `Wise guy' is the correct idiom," she told the dog when they were out of human earshot, "although it's a bit dated. Your English is actually very good. So is Eichra Oren's. He also knows a lot about Earth's current and not-so-current history."
"Why shouldn't he?" Sam asked. "That's where we both come from."
Reille y Sanchez found a spot at the base of one of the giant growths where the ground was fairly dry despite the recent rain. She kept her pistol in her lap. "Yes, but what I've learned here—almost the only thing I've learned—is that there's Earth and then again there's Earth. Which version are you and Eichra Oren from?"
Sam stretched and lay down on the ground. "That's an assumption, isn't it, that he and I are from the same Earth? You don't know, Estrellita, maybe I'm from the Planet of the Dogs."
She chuckled. "Like Aelbraugh Pritsch is from the Planet of the Birds?"
"Birdbrains," he corrected, "and you're from the Planet of the Apes. But no, in this case your assumption's correct. It's an Earth where, for uncounted millennia, no sapient—including Eichra Oren, although I seem to be the cynical and worldly member of the firm—has ever known domination by, or of, another sapient. That's what scares you about him, Estrellita."
"What?"
"Didn't think I'd noticed, did you? I'm a dog, remember? I can smell fear. It smells like shit. You're frightened whenever he laughs. But, speaking of shit, with your political education, you've no way of realizing that it's merely the uncalculated laughter of a free individual, something you've never had a chance to see. Or be."
"There's a much simpler explanation than that, Sam." She took a deep breath. "Shit's all I seem to be wading through on my way to the truth. `Uncounted millennia,' you say. Eichra Oren says `fifteen thousand years.' On my Earth, fifteen thousand years ago, people were pretty much limited to stone knives and bear skins. What makes your Earth so different?"
Sam took several moments to answer. Deeper among the trees, Reille y Sanchez thought she saw fireflies winking. "Look," he told her, "suppose one of your space shuttles accidentally landed on some primitive island where people are still limited to stone knives and bear skins. There are still places like that on your Earth, aren't there?"
She nodded. "I suppose so. Jungles in New Guinea, maybe."
"All right, now suppose for some reason you had to explain fully and accurately where you'd come from and how you'd gotten there. The natives' view of the universe revolves around magic and mythology. It doesn't include things like science or spaceflight. They don't even know the world is round. You'd have to do a lot of preliminary educating before you got around to things like airfoils and rocket engines, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, you would." She frowned. "What're you driving at, Sam?"
"New Guinea primitives mightn't like what you tell them. They might get scared and burn you at the stake or shrink your head or something. I'm trying to warn you, Estrellita, that a full and accurate understanding of, well, of Eichra Oren's origin, or mine, requires that you unlearn a lot that's taken for granted—mistakenly—by your own civilization."
This time it was her turn for a long, thoughtful pause. I'm having this conversation, she told herself, with a big white shaggy animal. "Sam, I've been trying to cut down on burning people—and dogs—at the stake. It causes cancer. And I've given up shrinking heads for Lent. Will you please tell me what this is leading up to?"
"Simply that Eichra Oren's the descendent of an ancient civilization."
"That much I've managed to gather on my own, thank you."
Sam sat up. "Yes? Well, it's a civilization which existed on your very own alternate version of Earth, Estrellita. By a long, indirect route, he and I come from exactly the same place you do. Unfortunately, it happens to be a civilization none of your historians ever heard of and your archaeologists would maintain never existed." Observing her confused expression, he added, "Any questions, so far?"
"Sure. Lots. At the moment, I find the most important is this: is it at all smart to believe any of this nonsense you're telling me? Let me rephrase that: how can one tread safely between intellectual flexibility and foolish gullibility?"
"Between having an open mind and holes in your head?" he asked. "In my off moments, I've often pondered that never-ending conflict, myself."
She grinned at the dog and started, from reflex, to reach down and pat him on the head, stopping herself only at the last moment. "Most of all," she told him, "I wonder about myself, my own potential for both of those attributes. Would I have believed Galileo when he told me what he'd just seen through his telescope? Or William Harvey, claiming that the human heart is merely a mechanical pump?"
"Or whoever it was in your culture " Sam suggested, "who discovered that most human evils are caused by invisible plantlife?"
"Louis Pasteur." She nodded. "On the other hand, would I have been able to spot Piltdown Man or the Giant of Cardiff as hoaxes, or would I have been taken in with the rest of the crowd? Would I have dismissed truly revolutionary and valuable information as . . . as—"
"Having been decanted from a cracked pot?"
"Pretty good, Sam. You know, I remember reading somewhere that Sir Isaac Newton believed in astrology and numerology. He once conducted `scientific' experiments with what he thought was the powder of ground unicorn horn. What was it you said? An Earth where, for uncounted millennia, no sapient being has dominated, or been dominated by, another sapient being? My Earth, Sam, the distant past, that's what you were talking about. And you're right, it does scare me. It also sounds a lot like powdered horn of unicorn."
"There's your answer, Estrellita, don't believe me. See for yourself. Excuse me." He reached up with a hind foot, scratched behind one ear, and Reille y Sanchez was reminded all over again what sort of creature she was discussing politics with. "You came to the right place for it."
"Well," she answered, giving it visible consideration. She'd meant her remark about unicorn horn, but maybe this was a way to draw him out. "I haven't seen any evidence of military discipline among the Proprietor's people—so many different weird and wonderful creatures. They don't seem to display anything resembling the legendary capitalist corporate loyalty. As far as I can tell, there isn't any clear-cut hierarchy of authority, no official table of organization, not even much of the minimal social pecking order I'd expect to see among intelligent and competitive beings."
"No distemper, worms, or rabies, either."
"Have it your way. Obviously you and Eichra Oren share the Elders' peculiar philosophy. Or is that an assumption, too? But it also means you're sitting ducks—you know that idiom?—for anybody better organized. You have no sense of internal security, no solidarity which would tend to protect you or your company secrets."
"Right again, Estrellita, try it for yourself. None of the Elders, nor any of their many associated species, will demonstrate even the slightest reluctance to tell you anything and everything you want to know."
She shifted the Witness in her lap, then discovered that some ground dampness was beginning to creep through her clothing after all. She decided to stick it out for a few more minutes. "The single exception being the precise reason or reasons for their presence on the asteroid to begin with, apparently at the order or suggestion or request, I can't tell which, of the one identifiable authority figure, the so-called Proprietor."
"The big fat bum."
She leaned forward, concentrating. "And even that secret, I'm inclined to agree with General Gutierrez, seems to have religious undertones about it which make me doubt the value of ferreting it out."
"Didn't one of your own greatest philosophers once observe that one man's theology is another man's belly laugh?"
"Wait," she held up a hand, "let me think. I'll make a bet with you, Sam. If the people here turn out to be anything, it'll be too goddamned cooperative, won't they? As the expedition's—and Earth's—official investigator, I'll find myself in the worst imaginable position, inundated with more information than I can evaluate. That kind of generosity might be a clever tactic, in itself, mightn't it?"
Sam grinned and wagged his tail. "You say that with what sounds like grudging admiration."
"It's true," she replied distractedly, still thinking, then shifted her focus back to here and now. "But it's also true that I pride myself on being a practical, efficient type at heart, afflicted with very little unbridled imagination or useless curiosity." She leaned back against the tree.
"Anyway," he suggested, "that's what you've always wanted to believe about yourself."
"Sam! I thought you were going to be nice if I was."
"A point, Estrellita, but I can smell other things besides fear, you know. Intelligence. Curiosity. Imagination. They smell nice. You reek of them, if you don't mind my saying so."
She crossed her arms. "That's a hell of a compliment. I'll just have to take immediate and stern measures to control them."
"Do that, Estrellita, it'll be interesting to watch. I'll—" He lifted his head, ears perked rigid. "But you'll have to excuse me, I'm being paged. `His master's voice' and all that. Can you find your way back?"
"Thanks, I'm a sapient, too, you know." A bit stiff from dampness, she climbed to her feet. He grinned, turned, and ran off into the jungle.
But not very sapient, she thought, I hardly found out anything I wanted to know, especially about where Eichra Oren came from. Shrugging to herself, always the practical, efficient type, she simply added the task of discovering more about the mystery man to a long list of other chores she saw, in her incurious, unimaginative way, looming ahead of her.
FIFTEEN The Empty Millennia
To sleep, perchance not to dream—if she was lucky.
Now, in Vivian Richardson's continuing absence, the expedition's second-highest-ranking officer, Reille y Sanchez remembered that she rated a better place to toss and turn: a folding cot and sleeping bag—one of three available—in the relative privacy and luxury of the crew deck, either aboard the Dole or the McCain.
After being outdoors so much the last couple of days, her skin crawled at thought of the alternative. For most of the past year, eight hours a "day," she'd occupied thirty vertical centimeters between folding bunks arranged in a stack of six in the cargo bay insert, inboard the former vessel. Even as she strode alone through the trees on her way back to the camp, the idea of wedging herself once again into such confinement, of breathing air exhaled by others, of smelling their smells, gave her a feeling of suffocation.
Entering the lighted area around the shuttles, she brightened in more than a literal sense at a third possibility. She could follow the example of many of the crew who'd scrounged blankets and bags and were sleeping under the wings and hulls of the spacecraft. The idea appealed to her. She'd gotten almost nothing in the way of rest during the previous period of darkness, with Semlohcolresh's unexpected visit to the camp and the subsequent flap over the disappearance of the expedition's second-in-command. A few minutes, here and there, was all she'd had, sitting propped against the tandem-tired nose-gear of the Hatch, Witness in hand.
Glancing down now at the same kilo of Czech steel and plastic hanging in her numb, aching fingers, she smiled sheepishly to herself. She was exhausted and becoming careless, forgetful. She slid the weapon into its holster, fastening the flap. At that, she thought, it hadn't been bad last night, all things considered, particularly after the three-hundred-odd worse nights which had preceded it. It was warm enough outside that she shouldn't need much in the way of bedding. Maybe she could still find something fresh in the Dole's emergency stores.
After a brief search, equipped with a lightweight silver-and-red plastic "space blanket" and a cup of tea courtesy of Corporal Owen's welding torch, Reille y Sanchez settled in under what was being called the "girl's wing" of the flagship, between Marna and Pulaski. She was too worn out for any conversation and grateful that both young women were already sound asleep (the latter, she observed, with her thumb in her mouth again, as had been her unconscious habit throughout most of the journey to the asteroid). As tired as Reille y Sanchez was, disturbing thoughts and vivid images kept circling inside her head. Her mind wouldn't shut itself off.
Among other things, until now, she hadn't really had time to feel the full loss of Piotr Kamanov. For most of her life, all of the people around her had been just like she was: sober, literal-minded, duty-oriented. She'd never met a man quite like the geologist, who seemed to live life simply for the fun of it. She knew now that she'd miss him very badly; his silly joking, his habit of collecting and redistributing strange stories and ideas, his astonishing lack of respect for authority and established wisdom.
Most of all, she couldn't get the Russian's stupid, senseless death out of her troubled mind, the horrifying sight of him, silent and slack-faced for the first time since she'd met him. She could think of a hundred individuals for whom the world would have been better off, had they died in his place. Now more than ever she understood that the general was right. The solution to their bizarre situation—to her own in particular—lay in somehow learning to think the way Kamanov had.
But Reille y Sanchez was a soldier. This sort of morbid preoccupation was unusual for the no-nonsense, action-oriented Marine officer, and she knew it. Finishing her tea, Reille y Sanchez set the cup aside, along with what she realized (with a small start of surprise) was her grieving. Likewise, she abandoned the speculation over the reliability of Sam and Eichra Oren which had filled her mind before these thoughts of Kamanov had intruded, and simply promised herself that she'd try her best to evaluate the amazing information they'd given her as objectively she could—tomorrow.
* * *
"Colonel?"
In a shorter time than seemed possible, the butterscotch-colored light of day had returned to the human encampment and sought out Reille y Sanchez where she lay, sweating under her plastic blanket, twitching occasionally in her sleep and mumbling to herself.
"Pulaski?" Blinking, Reille y Sanchez sat up, stiff and sore in every muscle, her mouth tasting like her idea of some nameless, ancient evil. Her right hip seemed particularly painful, as if she'd slept on a big rock. Pushing the blanket aside, she discovered that she'd fallen asleep still wearing her knife-and-pistol belt.
"Yes, ma'am. It's 0600, as near as anybody can figure, and I wondered if you'd like some coffee." The sergeant held a steaming cup under her nose, constructed neither of paper nor plastic, but of something somewhere between metal and ceramic, probably another gift from the strangely generous creatures Washington wanted them to kill. The colonel's initial nausea at the aroma was immediately smothered in a wave of irresistible craving. She took a sip and swallowed.
"Thanks—stick around. You're just the person I want to see."
"Me, Colonel?"
Reille y Sanchez struggled to her feet, brushing at her uniform with one hand while she held onto her cup with the other. "No, Pulaski, me colonel, you sergeant." She grinned self-consciously. It wasn't as bad as one of Kamanov's, but at least she was trying. "Get yourself some coffee, if you want, while I go inside for PTA drill." She watched the girl blush, as she always did, at the figure of speech, peculiar to the female Marine Corps, which stood for those parts of her anatomy she intended giving a cursory rinse. The A stood for armpits. "We're going to talk over all these ancient matters you're supposed to know so much about."
Pulaski actually threw her a salute. "Yes, ma'am."
Minutes later, they were sitting back outdoors in sunshine which came, surprisingly strong, through the asteroid canopy. For a bench, Pulaski had commandeered a fair-sized log, fated for this evening's fire. They were somewhat startled to be watching their commander, stripped to the waist and sweating, laboriously cutting kindling with the almost useless saw-toothed back of a big hollow-handled knife exactly like her own.
Adversity must be good for some people, Reille y Sanchez thought. The man seemed a lot less flabby than she recalled from their pre-voyage physical training. Brigadier General Gutierrez was being assisted by Second Lieutenant Gutierrez (if the younger man had been a Marine, he'd still be in the brig for losing his pistol to Richardson, but the Aerospace Force was infamous for gentle discipline), the first she'd ever seen them like this, father and son. It was a pleasant picture. For some reason, it made her want to cry.
"Let me see," declared the expedition's amateur paleontologist, answering the first question Reille y Sanchez had asked her. "I think the oldest known fully human remains are about a quarter of a million years old. They were discovered a long time ago, somewhere in the British Isles. I don't remember exactly where or when."
"How about," the colonel asked, "the oldest known civilization?"
Pulaski frowned. "In what sense do you mean `civilization'?"
"I don't know, Toya, what do I mean?" No "ma'am" when answering questions in her field, observed Reille y Sanchez, who hated the word, let alone being called by it. I'll have to remember that. "Houses, buildings, cities? Doesn't `civilization' mean cities?"
Pulaski blinked. "The most ancient known cluster of habitations which might—generously—be called a city, are about eight thousand years old. They were located somewhere in the Middle East, the so-called `cradle of civilization,' before that whole area got slagged in '23."
Reille y Sanchez reflected without self-pity that these were items she might have learned about if she'd had anything resembling a normal growing up. Instead, on the basis of aptitudes she'd unknowingly demonstrated in written and athletic tests at the age of eight or nine, she'd been selected for special attention, taken from her family—tearfully proud to let their daughter go—and enrolled in a strictly supervised Soviet-American training academy.
