Murasaki, page 24
Huddled in racketing gloom, Byrne waited. It seemed long before his voice reached her, faint and dull through the hatch. Nonetheless, she heard the excitement.
“I’m going off with Japheth. It has ... invited me ... to witness something, I think. Sit tight. Don’t fool with the boat. It’ll keep station by itself.”
She let fury flare, though she spoke the words under her breath. When she had finished and emerged, she was alone. The berrypicker had filled a woven basket and de-parted. Byrne settled onto a bench and glowered across the whitecaps. The schooner had drawn nearer.
Time dragged by. The murkiness under the hills grew higher as the enormous tide receded. When the mud flats were exposed, they’d be full of stranded sea life and the Ihrdizu would come down to scavenge. Doubtless they had long since wiped out competing animals. In many respects they resembled humans. Was that why Holden disliked them? He couldn’t reasonably blame them for what their ancestors did to his beloved himatids—to the himatids on which he was fixated.
Not that the creatures weren’t fascinating. What did they think, feel, dream, create? Had such questions any meaning?
Once. Byrne had read about a flurry of enthusiasm on Earth a few centuries ago, for a notion that the cetaceans, the big aquatic mammals, possessed intelligence compara-ble to the human. Facts soon killed it. Was Holden similarly deluding himself? Most Ihrdizu who thought about the sub-ject at all maintained to this day that the himatids were merely clever animals. True, they made simple tools; but other beasts made nests, burrows, traps, artifacts often in-tricate, designs cunningly adapted to ambience. Need the himatids be more sentient than, say, Australopithecus was? That would explain why Ihrdizu who tried—whether as slavers or otherwise—never managed to communicate be-yond the most elementary signals, never got more perfor-mance than a skilled trainer could get out of a dog.
Certainly the himatids had nothing like a brain. How much thinking was possible in that diffuse a nervous system?
Some Ihrdizu did believe the carpet whales, the sex-ually mature stage, attained mystical insights during their long lives at sea. (How long? Unknown.) What was Hol-den’s opinion? Byrne smiled. She could well imagine. On the other hand, could he plausibly claim that the adults kept anything of calf culture, even of calf sapience? Pasturing on equivalents of krill and plankton, too huge for natural enemies except hypothetical disease germs, synapse paths grown fifty or more meters long, wouldn’t they placidly lose whatever consciousness they once had? In truth, they showed scant wits when Ihrdizuan hunting ships came upon them. Harpooned, held fast, they were cut to pieces. Oc-casionally a seine trapped one in shoal water till the tide went out; then the Ihrdizu began eating it while it was alive.
Byrne grimaced. She had seen visuals taken from aloft by early explorers. If Holden hated the cruelty, she agreed, and regretted the infeasibility of putting a stop to it. How-ever, she suspected his resentment was of interference with his research. The more himatids for him to study, the better; and their numbers were shrunken.
Lightning flared among the clouds. A line squall swal-lowed vision as it swept up from the south bay.
Byrne re-treated to the cabin. Humans didn’t have Ihrdizuan skins. That rain would be downright painful, striking her. Let Hol-den endure it, since he chose. It roared on the overhead.
The boat pitched and rolled. She was immune to seasick-ness, but dank chill gnawed through her clothes. How had Holden’s wife enjoyed living, existing, in this environment, year upon year upon year?
The record showed the couple seldom taking a vacation among what amenities moonside offered. Well, maybe he wasn’t such a grouch in those days. But he should have seen how Farland was wearing her down. Although no autopsy was done, it was obvious from the laconic statement he entered that her heart gave out. Why hadn’t she quit in time? Didn’t she notice? Did she choose to stay regardless? What for? She’d already lost her child. Did she love Malchiel that much? In God’s name, why?
When the storm had passed and Byrne went back top-side, the sky was half clear. Murasaki light blazed and shat-tered on waves still high. The wind had lessened and warmed, shifting easterly; now the ship yonder must tack across it. Given a thick atmosphere with a steep density gradient, a large bowl among hills often bred its own weather.. Byrne was hungry. She assembled a sandwich from her rations while she spent a little charge on a bottle battery to make some coffee. Just a little; Genjian wilder-nesses taught frugality. The trick was to flash a small amount of water to its boiling point under this pressure, then use that to extract the essence and heat the rest.
No sign of Holden yet. Damn him for’ a lead-plated boor. She squinted against the brilliance around her. Some-thing in the west, an extra turmoil,, a dark movement—Decision. She appropriated a length of line, rigged a safety harness, and climbed the crane. Doing that alone wasn’t the best idea in the universe, when the launch reeled through a good fifteen degrees of arc and the acceleration downward was almost as many meters per square second. The hell with it. If Holden caught her, she’d point out that he ha-bitually went partnerless. She had slung his optical around her neck. Raising it to her eyes, she magnified and amplified.
Yes, a whole school of calves, all sizes up to the one about which the others writhed, dived, made spyhopping-leaps. .. danced? It was much the biggest. Estimating distame as seven klicks, she deemed its length five meters. That was about as large as they got during their thirty-some Earth years of calfhood, she remembered.
Hold on. Wasn’t a black shape bound away from them, toward her? A wake roiled behind its swiftness. That wouldn’t ordinarily happen, as smoothly as himatids moved. A metallic gleam. Uh-huh.
The great Dr. Holden deigned to return. Byrne clambered back down and waited for him. Her back felt stiff enough to ache between the shoulder blades.
The swimmer, half again the man’s length, gripped his belt with six rear arms and towed him. For the most part he was submerged, but his snorkel stuck erect. Thus equipped, he could stay under more deeply than an Ihrdizu. His time must be limited by heat loss, if nothing else, but as he neared she saw that he had changed into a wet suit while she was below. He probably kept it in a locker under a bench, wanting to be prepared for a dive on short notice, and had left his coverall there. Byrne had seen scuba gear in the cabin. With this kind of help, he’d rarely need it. His reports never mentioned such details.
They were altogether impersonal. “It was observed that—”
At the hull, the himatid let go. Treading water, Holden raised an arm. “Thanks, Joshua,” she heard.
So he was capable of gestures toward that species, if not his own. A ripple passed through the broad thinness; a response? Byrne noticed spots of somewhat lighter black scattered along it. By such marks, among other tokens, Holden told his indi-viduals apart. Joshua didn’t turn around. Double-ended, it headed straight back toward the commotion among its kind.
Holden came up the Jacob’s ladder amidships. Water ran off him into the cockpit. The launch absorbed it in the pores of its fabric and spewed it off. Byrne tried for po-liteness. “How did your excursion go?”
–It’s just begun,– he said, no less brusquely than be-fore. “Now, I have to peel this thing off me.”
Byrne grinned. “I’m not shy. If you prefer, I’ll turn my back.”
He acted indifferent. That might well mean he’d rather not display an aging, knobbly frame to a young woman who had no sexual interest in him. Byrne looked outward. Sunlight and cloud shadows swept over the whitecaps. “Would you like me to heat you some soup?” she ven-tured. It was all the food he could take in that helmet of his.
“No. No time. I’ll lose too much as is, letting you off.”
Her fingers closed on the coaming. “What?”
“I’ll transfer you to yonder ship. I know it, a coast-wise packet, it’ll take you ashore. I need to speak with the captain anyway.”
Almost, Byrne swung around and glared. She curbed herself. “Why? Where are you bound?”
“To sea. A piece of serious work ahead. Can’t have an outsider underfoot.”
Byrne clenched her;jaws before she said, “For your information, I’ve been on eleven xenological expeditions, four of them to littorals. You know who Elena Sarbiewski is, I trust. She recommended me for this job. In fact, she talked me into it. I will not get in your way. I may well be of help. Do you want me to enter an honest, complete report on your activities and what they’re worth, or don’t you?”
For the first time, she caught hesitation in his tone. “I didn’t foresee ... what this situation would prove to be. Things may get ... a bit dangerous. No, I don’t question your courage or competence.” Was that reluctance, or was she being unfair? The wet suit smacked on the floor. She heard a locker opened and brisk toweling. “But I am the only man alive who’s got any fractional familiarity with what’s here. Would you want me along in the jungles of Southland when you knew things were about to go critical?”
“Will you explain to me what you mean?”
“It’s—complicated. I’ve learned that this is a special occasion indeed. Call it sacred if you choose. I, well, I’ll have trouble enough avoiding, uh, faux pas. You know nothing about their, their mores.”
Byrne relaxed very slightly. “A point. I can stay well inboard, though.”
“No, no. It’s ... too subtle. That’s part of the reason my reports have grown, uh, brief. What I’m beginning to discover—the language of science doesn’t reach to that sort of thing.”
Byrne nodded. “I can empathize. Among the Ihrdizu, too, we get into areas where all we have is intuition, for whatever little it is worth.”
“Yes,” he said eagerly. “That’s what I meant. You wait ashore. When I get back we can talk at leisure.”
She couldn’t argue. Somehow she didn’t feel he was quite sincere. Hermits got scant practice in lying. However, what could she do? She stared west, marshaling her thoughts.
“I’m ready,” Holden said. She joined him at the wheel. Again he was coveralled. He opened the engine up and steered for the ship. Athwart wild silvery clouds his head, inside the helmet, lifted like a brush-bristling crag. Wind skirled, sharp with salt. Waves crashed.
“Can you tell me anything of what this is about?” Byrne asked.
He scowled forward awhile. When he answered, each word was chosen beforehand. “I suppose you’ve met Christians. But do you know what their faith really is—originally was? Not milksop goodwill and vague self-de-lusions about some pink-and-white hereafter. It was, as stern a religion as Earth ever saw. What it dealt with was death, judgment, and transfiguration.” The majestic phrases rolled off his tongue:— For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.”
A hand chopped air. “Men lived and died by that for centuries before they learned better. Now what if it were true?”
He glanced at her. “I don’t say the himatids have any—thing we’d call a religion. What do we mean by that noise, anyway? But they do know transfiguration, not as some-thing a preacher tells them, not as metaphysical gabble, but a fact. The calf becomes a whale and moves from the tide-water to the deep sea. It is never heard from again, seldom and barely glimpsed. But from it arises the new, blind life, which gains awareness among the calves. What further comes, once the creature swims beyond the horizon?
We’ve read our anthropology, you and I. Can you imagine how it must be not to need myths, because life itself is the myth?”
Her skin tingled. “Rite, of passage,” she whispered.
He nodded. Once more his voice came hoarse and dry. “Solomon, the oldest of them, is going out.
It’s not quite so big yet that it can no longer live in the bay, but it soon will be. And today the carpet whales are passing by, bound for the arctic—which the calves know only is a mystery somewhere northward. Solomon will join them. It is dying as a calf, being born as a whale. Because that is happening right after the tads came ashore, Solomon is—especially blessed. I doubt we have any concept that fits.
“They’ll let me escort him to the pod.”
The wind shrilled.
Byrne’s mind leaped. “Your chance to make contact with the whales?”
“You do catch on fast,” he granted. “Not that I haven’t tried before.”
“I know. You’d go out, and signal them according to what you’d learned from the calves. They ignored you.”
“Correct. My guess is that the personality, the lan-guage, changes even more than the body. They ...
put childish things behind. My attempts at communication mean nothing to them. If I could find one or two that, used to live in Gunnunggung Bay, individuals who actually knew me—that may not be too many years ago for them to remember and be interested. But I never have. A pod keeps moving, and it’s widely dispersed over an enormous area. Long before I get close to more than a few, my fuel runs low and I’ve got to turn back. Today I’ll be with Solomon. I don’t know what difference that will make.
Maybe none. But at least I’ll see something I never did before, and, and Solomon may come ... say hello to me in my boat, when it returns here.”
“Revelations aren’t common in science,” Byrne said. “I envy you this possibility.” She wished she meant that a hundred percent.—It wasn’t his unpleasant character, she told herself. Well, it shouldn’t be.
But he was hiding some-thing from her.
The cruiser met the schooner and matched speed, three meters off. Holden shouted. An Ihrdizu who must be the skipper pushed through several crewfolk at the rail and re-plied. The cries went back and forth. Byrne saw Holden’s fingers whiten on the wheel spokes. What news had he received? What reply did he give? She realized that he could form those sounds better than she when he cared to. Between her own unfamiliarity with the dialect and the noise from sea, wind, creaking tackle, she caught no more than fragments.
He turned to her. “All right,’’ he said. “They’ll take you. Can you get aboard in a sling?” Grimly, she declined to resent that. “Fetch your pack. I’ll transfer it first. Settle yourself in ashore.”
Power-operated, the crane lowered her to the other deck. Nonetheless, she needed agility when everything swung and jerked under Genjian weight. She waved at Hol-den. He sheered off without response. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. His propeller left a white tumult aft as he made for the himatids.
The Rockridge sailors were friendly, excitedly curious. In the three hours that followed, Byrne struggled toward communication with them. Those pilots who had talked more easily in the past knew the patois from which this derived. She did not. Near the end, she had acquired suf-ficient vocabulary that she could ask questions. “What did you tell the male of my kind?” The captain broke in, belch-ing and gobbling words strange to her. Slang? The crew hesitated a moment. Then, oh, yes, they would be delighted to show her around.
She didn’t believe they had misunderstood her. But what was the use? Holden had ordered them to keep mum. They probably didn’t know why. That the trade goods came through him gave him ample authority. Besides, otherwise humans were essentially an unknown quantity. Discretion was the better part of valor.
The differences from moonside vessels made her tour interesting, though the cargo of salt ichthyoid smelled like a sewage processor in Okuma. Meanwhile, Holden’s craft disappeared out the gate.
The ship lay to at the dock. Two sailors brought her ashore in a dinghy. Well, not quite. Twin outriggers sta-bilized it against waves that traveled faster and struck harder than on Earth. Ihrdizu were ill-suited to rowing; one took the helm, the other walked a treadmill that drove small paddlewheels.
The climb to the heights was long, stiff, wet below and hot above. She reached the house very ready to put her feet up near a cup of coffee with a shot of whiskey in it. Later she’d find her things among the shipment boxes. Bringing them into the living quarters would require several tedious depressurizations in the lock.
To take off her, mask and breathe cool, odorless, Earth-type air was like a benediction. She spent a minute savoring it before she rummaged about. While the coffee brewed she investigated further.
Snooping? No, she’d be here a while, she needed to scout the territory.
Nothing private came to light. The main , room in-cluded the kitchenette. Behind it were a lesser chamber with a double bed, a bath cubicle that promised her a shower, and a laboratory equipped for basic biological, chemical, and geological work. She could spread her pad and sleeping bag there.
Holden wouldn’t likely offer her the bed.. She’d decline if he did. His wife had shared it, and a crib must once have stood close by.
Should he make a pass, he’d be sorry. Byrne held a black belt. She felt certain he had no such intention. If nothing else, he’d never willingly reveal that much vulner-ability to her.
She reentered the main room. It was as impersonal as a cell. Whatever decoration his wife put in, he had re-moved. Maybe he didn’t care to watch it gather dust and decay, year by year. His desk stood equally devoid of everything nonfunctional. Audiovisuals of people and past scenes must be in his database, along with recreational reading, shows, music, and, to be sure, his references and files. Yielding to an impulse, she keyed the computer. It required a password. She suspected it was programmed to wipe its entire contents in case of any other entry mode.
She lingered at the phone. How about calling HQ? No.
They knew she’d arrived safely, and she had no hard in-formation for them. When might she? When Holden gave her some cooperation, damn it. Couldn’t he see how he damaged his cause? He was no fool. Could they be right and he actually cracked?
The reason he gave for not taking her along to sea was ... paranoid. He had no cause to suppose her incapable of discretion, tact—assuming he knew what the words meant! If somehow she did jeopardize his mission, he was the cap-tain, he could order her below and she was legally bound to obey. Instead, he left her on that ship, after getting some news from its crew and laying silence about it on them.
