Murasaki, page 25
Byrne frowned. The fortified coffee comforted her mouth and cleared weariness from her mind. Let her think.
She’d taken him more or less unawares. That he car-ried on’as planned, on this special day for his himatids, was understandable. But did the invitation to accompany Solo-mon out catch him quite by surprise? Hardly. Again and again and again, his reports had dwelt on the difficulty of communication. He believed the whole basis of language—not the kind of signals, but their semantics, their structure—was unlike the human, the Ihrdizuan, or, probably, the Chujoan. That was plausible, as alien as the himatids were. In fact, it was grounds for closing down the project. If he couldn’t really talk after all this time, if he couldn’t even prove the creatures were fully intelligent, then hadn’t he gone past the point of diminishing returns?
A sideline question. Byrne hauled her attention back to the main issue. Supposing that Holden was not merely reading into their behavior what he wanted to find and that the himatids did possess minds, then they could not sud-denly have sprung their proposal on him. He must have angled a long while for something of the kind, they striving to grasp what it was he meant, Probably there was never any breakthrough of comprehension. This simply became the day when the plan was finally agreed on.
What was in it for the calves? Could the original re-quest have been theirs? They might see an opportunity to learn something about those beings whom they only knew were their elders and parents—like Christians given a chance to send a living emissary to the afterworld—
What if he came back and told them the ancient Ro-mans had been right and the departed were feeble-minded shades? What if the carpet whales lost sapience? Another sideline question.
It still didn’t make sense that Holden dismissed Byrne. She would in fact have been a genuine, perhaps vital help, as crew, assistant, independent observer. Did he want to hog the entire credit? No, that was crazy; everybody would know how subordinate her role had been, and he could well hope for a glowing encomium from her. Was he crazier yet, unable to see plain logic? In either case, he had no business out there.
Or perhaps
Byrne snatched a breath. A spurt of coffee flew along. She dropped the cup in her lap, choked, sputtered, dabbled futilely at the mess.
Somehow that became a sign unto her. Nobody is per-fectly competent, completely sane. We need s
to watch over each other. She had the capability; therefore, she had the duty.
Hours had passed. Holden had traveled far. Neverthe-less, Byrne went through the drill step by conscious step. The least failure of preparation might kill her, or more than her.
When she went forth, Murasaki burned close to noon-day height. Windless heat baked acrid odors from the soil. Leaves on shrubs and low trees hung as if cut from brass. Few clouds remained overhead, but in the west, above the ocean, they raised a darkling rampart where lightning flick-ered and, faintly across distance, thunder mumbled. Near the thorp, half a dozen Ihrdizu stared her way. She knew by their stance how uneasy they were. Well, she too. She crawled into her aircraft, sealed it, depressurized the cabin, slipped her mask off, strapped in. Her fingers roved the controls. Engines droned. She lifted.
Gain altitude. If nothing untoward was going on, she didn’t wish to disturb Holden’s subjects, his work. Get in-visibly high.
The bay dwindled to a mercury pool between golden and dun contours. Outside it stretched arrays of rock and white chaos, a dangerous passage for a man to dare. Be-yond, the planet curved vastly westward, sea gleaming wrinkled, until the storm front raised its wall. Byrne saw it white above, blue-black and flameful below.
Close by—yes! Byrne set the robot to fly slowly in a circle and activated her main viewscreen.
Magnified, the scene leaped at her.
A score of carpet whales swam within a reach of sev-eral square kilometers. The titanic black forms—the largest easily a hundred meters long, twenty-five broad—flowed on the waves; she saw how each billowed up and back down, in different sectors, as the surges passed beneath. Windblown scud hazed the sight, but she also made out their own long undulations, which drove them ever north-ward.
The pace was as slow, a few knots. It never slack-ened, though, it went on and on, it would march like the tides or the days and nights or a Bach fugue until the giants were home in their waters around the pole. Abrupt tears stung her eyes. She had seen visuals, but here she met the elemental reality.
And Holden was down there amidst it. She thought that now she might begin to comprehend him.
Holden. Where was he? She reduced magnification, broadening the field. Yonder? She redirected the instrument and magnified afresh. “No!” ripped out of her.
Blood made a spreading inkblot across the gray, green, white stampede that was the sea. A whale writhed to and fro at the middle. In her mind she heard wind-hoot, wave-rush, the crash when that body heaved and fell back. Through the cold she tasted salt and blood in spindrift, smelled agony in the air. A ship lay by. Its sails were furled except for a jib and a main reefed to the last point Masts swayed wildly.
They slammed to a halt at one end of their arc, as the harpoon lines binding hull to prey drew taut.
Humans would be mad to make thus fast in such weather. Ihrdizu could swim ashore, come worse to worst. Holden had called the Gash folk bold sailors.
Holden, Holden. She turned the dials in frantic search.
A second ship appeared. Its mainmast floated in a tangle of rigging, to batter at planks already chewed. Flames licked over the deck, smoke blew off in rags. The ship listed ever more heavily to starboard. The sea must be pour-ing in through some hole such as a launched high-explosive grenade would blast.
Holden’s cruiser roiled water; bound for the first whaler she had seen. It was tiny in the viewfield, a horrible toy. Stop it, stop it.
Byrne drew breath after breath. She willed steadiness. Slow the, pulse, cool the heart, sharpen the eyes, quicken the brain. After a minute she took over control and dived.
No use radioing. He was on deck, the murderous lu-natic, at the wheel, at his guns. Put the fear of the Lord into him. Her engines drummed, louder than the nearing thunders. Ocean swelled till she could have counted every maned crest and cavernous trough.
The screen had locked onto the cruiser. Beneath her Holden turned into a human figure. And there came an Ihr-dizu. He (?) must have jumped from the doomed ship while Holden lay close and fired on it.
Behind him swam two more. Their tentacles held knife, ax, boat hook—weapons. Oh, the brave idiots!
The leader intercepted the boat. As it rolled to port, he reached up a forepaw, caught the rail, started to pull himself aboard.
Holden saw. He drew his pistol and shot. The Ihrdizu fell back into the sea. Holden left the others in his wake.
The aircraft raged toward him. He looked aloft. Byrne stabbed touch pads. Sight dimmed when acceleration dragged blood downward. A hundred meters high, the flyer swung back heavenward.
Panting; she leveled off at one klick, circled about, and peered. He was still clear in the screen. His left hand gripped the wheel. He raised his right fist and shook it.
“You son of a bitch!” she screamed uselessly into the transmitter. “Get away! Return! Next time my jets will make a cinder of you!”
He, increased power. The launch skimmed over wave tops, tore through their masses, onward. A
‘
fountain spouted at either bow.
Vomit rose bitter in Byrne’s gullet. She swallowed it but could not altogether quell tears. Her threat was not only unheard, it was empty. Safe herself, she couldn’t loose her sole weapon, because it was lethal. She’d go on trial for manslaughter at least Not that her hands would obey, did she command them to attack. And Holden knew it. Did he laugh aloud, into the oncoming storm?
“All right,” she gulped. “For your information, sir, in case you’ve forgotten, the law makes killing of any sa-pient, human or nonhuman, the same. It’s got to, or we’d soon be hated and overwhelmed. We have no jurisdiction over what aliens do to each other, but we have over our own kind. You’ve committed murder, Holden.”
A faint hope fluttered. She kept her altitude and cir-cled, waiting. Back and forth she swept the viewfield.
The cruiser lanced toward the first ship. Byrne found its deck and magnified. “Thanks, thanks,” she gasped. She must, though there be nobody to say it to. That crew was casting loose from the whale. A second jib and the mizzen were going up.
Clouds had boiled eastward across the sky. Rain ca-taracted from them. Byrne tossed about in blind, lightning-riven gray. Hailstones banged on metal.
When the squall had passed, the main storm hulked very near. Byrne saw the Gasher ship close-hauled, beating north. Holden trailed at a distance. So he didn’t intend to sink it. He’d just make
,
sure it went home, bearing its story. His fanaticism recognized some limit. But how many sail-ors from the foundered vessel would reach land alive?
Byrne focused on the wounded whale. Two of its fel-lows had swum to its side. She wondered what passed around the herd—those sounds traveled tens of kilome-ters—and what it meant. Pledge of help?
Consolation for the dying? She didn’t know whether the creature was mor-tally hurt or not. Nor did she know whether the clicks and thrums and boomings were aught but animal noises. Sil-verbucks, fenrises, skyrangers, and more rallied to their dis-tressed kindred. Documentaries from Earth told of apes, wolves, dolphins, and their big cousins, Instinct. Some con-sciousness, too, yes, but dim, unreasoning.
“I hope you survive,” she whispered.
The storm was almost upon her. She must either run from it or rise above it; else it might break her wings and dash her into the sea. A well-found watercraft could better ride it out. Nevertheless, Holden was crazy reckless to keep dogging the ship.
Maybe best would be if he sank. Byrne winced. She brought her aircraft about and fled east.
Land. Make the vehicle secure. Genjian winds were usually slow, but density gave monstrous momentum. Get inside.
While the weather brawled around, she paced, lashed by her thoughts. What to tell them at Okuma?
A police squad couldn’t arrive till well after Holden had probably returned here. Of course, she could leave before then.
She wouldn’t. She’d come to do a job. Too much was unexplained, unfinished. Holden should keep sense enough not to menace her, unless he had turned into a homicidal maniac. If he had, she expected she could cope.
In any event, the information needn’t perish with her. She didn’t want to divulge it, not yet. That would take matters out of her hands. The authorities themselves would have little choice. There were depths and subtleties here, and maybe a hermit’s stubborn pride to placate. There were issues larger than one man’s fate, or one woman’s. She needed to explore them.
In the end, she made a satellite relay call to Carlos Villareal. He was out; she got his machine, which was a disappointment. Some talk, private jokes, pet names would have been welcome in this wanly lit, chilly room where walls trembled under the wind. However, she would have concluded regardless by logging an encrypted message, putting him on his honor not to decode for fifty hours and to wipe it if she called back sooner.
‘thereafter it was a matter of waiting. She helped her-self from the cupboards and cooked a meal.
Holden ate adequately but dully. She napped. When the storm had passed, she went out, brought her things from the store-rooms, and arranged them in the house. She had another meal. She resumed her mask and strolled to the thorp, where she talked with the natives, bit by bit mastering their dialect.
Either they shied from saying much about Holden or they didn’t know much, after these many years.
His concern was with the himatids, they said. A himatid could catch tasty ichthyoids, reap useful sea vines, search for glow-pearls, if you gave it a knife or something like that; but it was stupid. Making clear to it what you wanted was hard work, and possible only for simple tasks. No wonder the forebears had quit catching and training them. Why he cared, well, who knew what goes on in the bellies of you io-hyumanai? Yes, he often ranted against the Gashers. Might he want the carpet whales to multiply freely for eventual harvesting by his own kind? No? Well, doubtless you fathom him. We are content to give him help now and then in exchange for rotproof cloth, rustproof steel, such things ... That was as far as Byrne got before exhaustion overwhelmed her.
She slept. She made breakfast. She prowled. Murasaki stood about twenty degrees above the western ocean when Holden returned.
She glimpsed his cruiser through a port. Externally, her preparations were scarcely more than securing her pistol to her hip before she masked and went out. Most were within herself.
The tide was flowing, the bay rising. It glared steely beneath a cloudless slate-colored sky. Shadows were long in the yellow of the hills, bringing forth their folded and scarred intricacy. Air steamed. As if they sensed something amiss, the Rockridgers had withdrawn from sight. Byrne stood on the path where the hillside bent sharply down-ward, so he would see her from afar. She kept her hands clear of her weapon. As he trudged upward, she saw he wasn’t armed.
He reached her and stopped. The features inside the helmet were hueless, sunken, a mesh of lines and creases; his eyes laired in dark hollows. Shoulders slumped. His coverall hung stiff with salt.
Pity smote. “Come inside,” she said gently. “I’ve got a pot of coffee on. Or there’s your whiskey, and I can rustle some food if you like.”
He nodded. She stepped aside. A slight, crawling cau-tion told her to let him go first.
They cycled through and removed their headgear. “Sit down,– she proposed. He sagged onto a threadbare lounger. She poured the coffee and set it on a table beside him, adding the bottle and a shot glass. He picked up the mug and sipped noisily. She smelled the old sweat on him.
Standing in front, she asked, “Would you rather sleep first?”
“Oh, no.” The gray head lifted. A bit of life entered the words.”1 let the cruiser take me back while I bunked down. We should settle what’s between us right away.”
“As you wish. I’ve entered a report, but under seal unless I don’t call in again. Talk as freely as you want. Be warned, though, I’ll decide what I pass on to headquarters.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. You’re honest.” Stillness, until: “And maybe you aren’t the officious bungler I sup-posed. To me, headquarters is mostly complaints, demands, and begrudging me my necessities.”
“Your isolation has cost you your perspective. We have two planets to think about. Three, if you count Earth.”
“Therefore you wonder whether my work is still worth supporting.” He sighed. “I would need long to ex-plain why. Quite likely I can’t. I’m not a poet.”
“What you shall have to show,” she told him. is that your work, is important enough to justify murder.”
His visage went empty. For a moment he seemed help-less. Resolution welled into him. His voice stayed low, but the tone strengthened. “No, you saw me preventing mur-der. Doesn’t the law permit that?
Memory whetted her reply. “I saw you’d started a ship to the bottom. I saw you shoot a crewbeing who tried to climb aboard your boat.”
“Self-defense. They would have killed me.”
“For cause,” she clipped. “What about Ihrdizu that didn’t live’ through the storm and the surf, to get ashore?”
“They brought it on themselves. You must have seen. They were out to slaughter sapient’ creatures.–
“Indeed? They surely didn’t think so. What proof have you?”
A fist knotted on his thigh. Blue veins bulged among white hairs. “Were you an intelligent being as a child,” he grated, “and are you a dumb animal now?”
–The calves are... controversial.”
“Because of the language problem. Entirely because of it. Civilized humans on Earth, in the age of discovery, they found other humans who were in the Stone Age, but they could soon talk together. Look at the himatid tools. Think how in the water they can’t have fire, houses—Think how remarkable it is they make as much as they do. If we could talk with them, there’d be no doubt.
“I can’t teach you what little I’ve learned of their lan-guage. You’d need years of the same experience. I myself, I haven’t gotten much further than the fact that it is a lan-guage, and this is something I know more in my guts than my brain, the way I know how to walk.
“Byrne, have you never read the linguists, the school of linguists who trace back to Chomslcy? Our ways of per-ceiving and describing the world are hard-wired into us. We were led astray by the accident that the croakers are wired pretty similarly. Maybe the Chupchups are, too; we don’t know yet. But the himatids certainly are not. That’s the barrier between them and us.”
He was harmless now, save perhaps to himself. Byrne felt the physical alertness unwind in her. A deeper tension took its place. She poured a shot, drew a chair opposite him, and sat down. The whiskey smoked warm across her tongue. Into the haggardness she said: “Maybe. As far as the calves are concerned. Did they want you to go halt the whaling? If so, how did they know about it?”
Startled, he took a moment to answer, slowly, “They may well not have. There was a ... a feeling that it’d be good if I accompanied Solomon out. More than that I can’t say. Give me another ten Earth years, and maybe I can.”
Keep him on the defensive. “Your motives for going. then?”
“Why, to see what Solomon did yonder, and the pod did, and take advantage of any opportunity that might come up.”
“But you already suspected Gashers were in the vi-cinity,” she flung at him. “You’d have caught word, a rumor, from the Rockridgers. In spite of your threats, you’d never taken action against whalers; they wouldn’t expect you to. That’s why you got rid of me. You thought you might do so. The ship you unloaded me on, its crew con-firmed the rumor.”
