No One Goes There Now, page 11
“But, couldn’t you yourselves deduce this?”
“Perhaps we could by now,” drawled Roberts, “had we not fallen into the lazy habit of allowing machines to do our really important thinking for us. Some sliver of information buried in this mass of seeming irrelevant data has allowed the computers to formulate an answer of sorts. That is important. Knowing the clue is there, we will dig until we find it.”
“Very interesting.” Director Grey began pacing between the glass wall and his desk, pausing to look out at the rain. “We have a sketchy picture of what is happening. At least overtly,” he said slowly. “Whatever agency or instrumentality is ultimately responsible, it’s our immediate duty to find some sort of stopgap solution.
“You were all asked here for advice. It lends a perspective no single individual can hope to own.” Grey stopped, his hand poised over the recorder panel. ‘You realize the decision will be mine alone.” He covered the switch plaque.
“Hour seven point two, Universal Time,” said the Director formally. “Director’s conference. Attendees: Director Grey, commander Garrigues representing the military arm, ser Roberts and ser Morrow as personal advisers to the Directoracy.
“Gentlemen, I ask you each to ponder quickly and give your opinions as to some immediate solution to our problem and to its implementation. Please be specific. What you say here will go no farther than these walls. You may begin, Commander Garrigues, when you are ready.”
Garrigues heaved his bulk from the lounge. “Ser Director, I shall try to be objective about this fearful crisis,” he declaimed. “It is hard, ser. Difficult”
“Get on with it,” Holt told him boredly.
“Er, in a nutshell, my solution would be to bring in one of these natives who are responsible for the outrageous violations of the Code of Life to which our Empire subscribes. The Danii are kidnapers or, er, worse. They are responsible, ser Director. Obvious! And force must always be used to counteract force. A firm rule.
“After all, why does the Star Council provide force if it is not to be used when the occasion demands? Why am I here, heading a force second to none?”
“I’ll bite?” growled Morrow.
“If you please.” Garrigues assumed his full stature, pulled in his middle, touched the grip of his sword, thought better of it, and turned his back on Holt “What I was attempting to put across, ser Director, is that these natives should be treated as they, er, deserve. I have never been one to use harsh methods indiscriminately, but this seems an occasion when answers could be found rather, er, quickly. After all, we have the dignity of the Imperium to uphold. Centuries of precedent to…er, uphold.”
Grey thanked him before he could think of something else. “I will give your suggestions careful consideration. Holt,” he called, “you next, please.”
Morrow lolled back, placed his hands at the nape of his neck, and blinked. “I’m not a deep-thinking man,” he said, “but I’ve learned one thing well: when you’re visiting hell, you accommodate yourself to the warm climate or go home.”
He smacked his lips. “I’ve been around some. I’ve seen eighty-three star systems and all the wide spaces in between.
I’ve come across umpteen kinds of misbegotten creatures, most of which you’d think twice about camping next to. But after living on strange lumps of mud for a while you tend to forget appearance. Not easy, I’ll grant you. But, show me a spaceman and I’ll show you a freewheeling, carefree, ‘you go your way and I’ll go mine’ type. They have to be or they’d go nuts.
“Me, I like the Danii just fine. Have some trouble understanding their singsong lingua, but they seem real decent. They’re slow-moving, slow-talking, gentle, and pretty durned neighborly taking in a bunch of jerkjollies like us. Roberts tells me they have lots of smarts, too. Okay; what more can we ask?
“He says they hold intelligent life most precious. Not a new idea, is it? We do too, but we’re so stuck on ourselves we restrict it to Man Almighty, his life, though we hold that pretty blasted cheap too when you think about it.”
Holt squirmed uncomfortably. “Now, let’s suppose you owned a nice house and some kids came by one period asking if they could play in your yard. ‘Sure,’ you say. ‘Nice little fellows.’ “When they make a habit of it, kind of move in on you, you say to yourself, ‘Be good to have ’em around. They’re not such hot companions now, but might be when they grow up.’
“One period you catch them playing with fire. You warn them, saying your house is what you hold most dear. They ignore you and bum down your fancy house.
“You’re way past yelling at them. You pull the automatic whatzit and it takes the culprit out and drowns him in the lake.” Holt cocked one eye at Garrigues. “And if the others gang up on you, thinking to stick pins in your hide until you come clean on what happened to their pal, you don’t waste time pulling the super automatic whatzit which takes them all out and drowns them in the lake.
“It’s a cinch to figure out why they’re sore,” said Holt sourly. “If I’d been living peacefully on this pretty lump of mud, minding my own business, and a pack of kill-crazy bucks wandered in, skewering each other just for the fun of it, it’d make me wonder when they’d get around to attending to me. Trouble is, I can’t think of any way to correct it. To tell the truth, I’m not sure I’d want to.
“Why do you want any of those lice back? Good riddance, I’d say!”
The Director’s smile was lame. “I’d not thought of it in that light, Holt, but what you say is perfectly true; those taken were certainly those we could spare.
“What are your views, Roberts?”
* * *
The slender patrician raised tired eyes. “I shall be brief, Pierce. I have come to be very interested in the Danii. I’ve given serious thought to devoting the rest of my life to studying them, should they allow it. My superficial acquaintance with their manners and mores does expose aspects of this riddle better left unmentioned in present discussion. Best, as you have already said, to alleviate the untenable situation of here and now before proceeding with the prima facie investigation as well as research among the Danii themselves.
“I will advise you directly, since you have requested it: establish an immediate planetary quarantine against further colonization of any sort. It will probably be insufficient, but it’s the only step within your emergency powers at this time. I must also warn you that the Planners will undoubtedly overrule you, and that any such pre-emptory step will certainly jeopardize your tenure as Director of Dan.”
Grey nodded, folding his arms across his chest and surveying the clearing skies over Sharax. “Thank you,” he said. “I will not answer any of your comments at this time.”
The Director paced the chamber, hesitated, then turned to the desk, covering a switch plaque which read “Director’s Log.”
“My decision,” he said slowly, “involves two courses of action. I direct you, ser Garrigues, to interdict the planet to all vessels as of hour twelve, Universal Time. I log such instructions as of hour nine point three, U.T. All inbound transports will be offered the choice of returning to any specific point of embarkation, or being shunted to the fourth body of this system, Carthia.
“Furthermore, any ship’s master who takes it upon himself to waken and land cryothermic hibernates is to be placed under Directoral arrest. Are the instructions clear, Commander?”
Garrigues rose and bowed ceremoniously. “Ah, quite dear, ser Director,” he huffed self-importantly. “It is a wise move; well thought out.” He made as if to leave.
“Stay, Commander,” added Grey. “Secondly, I hereby order you to instruct all officers and men under your command to continue assisting Public Assassins in any way possible.
“Effective hour twelve, U.T., an emergency edict proscribing all forms of honorable combat—public, private, and professional-will be posted in all public places—”
“What!” exploded Garrigues. “Prohibit dueling?”
“Precisely.”
“But, ser Grey; you have not the power. No!”
“Please be kind enough to let me finish, ser Garrigues. The news media will be given copies of the edict in question. I log such instructions as of hour nine point four, U.T. Any form of honorable combat is to be subdued—with energy weapons, if necessary.
“The ratio of disappearances wherein the subject was involved in an affair of honor seems to be one to one. Stop the one, stop the other. We will hope that it is so.”
“But, ser Director, it is unheard of,” spluttered Garrigues. ’This is the, the…most inviolable Convention,” he choked. “It is not for you or I to overthrow Convention.”
Holt and Roberts exchanged long looks.
Grey’s demeanor was stern; there was a hoarseness in his voice. “It is not for you to question my decision, Commander.” “But, ser Grey, I cannot—”
“Are the instructions quite dear, Commander?”
Garrigues donned outraged dignity by drawing his cape more tightly about his portly frame. “The orders are quite dear, ser Director.” He made a red-faced bow and clomped out almost before the rising door cleared the end of his nose.
Pierce seated himself with a wry expression. “Well, it was a mistake, of course—”
“But a grand one,” enthused Roberts. “I thought of it only in passing.”
“You’re in deep yogurt now,” said Holt, jerking his thumb at the portal. “You know where that jonny’s headed, don’t you?”
Grey smiled. “To report to Lovelock, I should imagine.”
“Give the gentleman a cigar!”
“He will be late, though,” said Grey calmly. “I intend to dispatch a communique before Garrigues can get back to the cruiser. Weldon will learn of it from me.”
Holt rubbed the side of his nose. “But you can’t tamper with sacred cows, Pierce. That was the prize heifer you just chopped up.”
“He’s correct,” affirmed Roberts. “You are throwing yourself into a hopeless battle.”
“Then you will have a new Director,” said Grey with a twinkle.
“Unless you were to back down at once and rescind the order,” Roberts warned, “it is a certainty.”
“I second that,” agreed Morrow.
“Roberts, you are a hypocrite,” announced the suddenly jovial Director. “When this odd business began you told me you would forfeit your own life rather than allow destruction of the Danii. Shall I be less faithful to my ideals? The Planners can’t be put off indefinitely, true. But they can be stalled. Remember: time is our objective, is it not?”
‘Well…yes.”
“As Director,” continued Pierce, “all official communication must pass through me. Garrigues is mulish, not altogether bright, but obedience to orders is ingrained in his very soul. I, and only I, am the voice of the Planners on Dan.
“It is a configuration the Founding Fathers might have spent more time thinking through.”
Roberts came to him and clasped his arm, glowing with the warm, patient smile that was particularly his own. “We can do no more than try, Pierce. I am very proud of you.”
Holt made a disgusted noise, rolling his eyes upward. “Save us,” he prayed sarcastically, “from all idealists and hidebound do-gooders!”
VII
. . what wilt thou do
To entertain this starry stranger?
Richard Crashaw. Ante Bellum,
pre-industrial Briton. Circa A.D. 1600
(old style).
It was all city!
To the limit of Gailen Van Maar’s vision—and his suite in the north tower of the Palace provided the finest imaginable vantage point—the natural face of Earth had been obscured beneath a megalopolitan colossus.
A forest of lesser towers, separated by multilevel pedestrian malls, parkways, and esplanades, spread toward hazy purple mountains perhaps twenty kilometers to the north. The mountain skyline was itself serrated by distant buildings. Southward to the sheen of ocean, and into it for some distance, enormous steel and glass structures rose in diminishing glut. Eastward they enveloped the valley floor, and westward.
Air traffic was lighter than he would have imagined. Thin streams of vehicles shuttled to and from the offshore landing site several hundred kilometers seaward where he himself had first set foot on legendary Earth. Over the city he could see only a few aircraft; none, he noted, braved the airspace over the reservation surrounding the Palace.
Gailen was still tired from the ordeal of interrogation. Teams of medics, working in relays all through the afternoon, had figuratively lifted his brain from his skull, squeezed it thoroughly in both the somnolent and waking states, and replaced it with some doubt as to their own sanity. He had not been hypnotized, drugged, was not given to hallucinations or mystical beliefs, nor did bis psychomotor index, personality profile, height-for-weight-for-glandular-functions, sexual adjustment, et cetera, vary by any significant amount from long established normal parameters.
Gailen Van Maar had, in other words, seen what he had seen.
Yawning, he wandered the length of the large table, idly picking up and replacing objects he knew had been put there expressly for his inspection and admiration. The Palace staff was accustomed to making outworlders comfortable.
Most of the pieces were commonplace. They were of Earth, and as such more or less kindergarten lessons out of his past studies toward the much more diversified xenoarchaeology degree he held from Channus University. But they were interesting; the unknown curator had chosen literal gems from those cultures he wished to represent.
There was a striking scarletware vase, one of the celebrated Blau stele, and an exquisite statue of a he goat standing with his forefeet on a pedestal of gold, all from Sumer in the second and third millennia b.c. Dynastic Egypt offered a strong entry: kneeling King Pepy, holding a small libatory jar in either hand, while behind him stood the deathless bust of Nefertiti. A beautiful checkered pot with a swooping handle from Phrygian Gordium, a faience statuette of the snake goddess of ancient Crete, a terracotta humped bull from the Indus Valley, and a Roman legionary’s gladius completed the collection—almost. At the end of the table was an oddment.
It was an electric voicewriter which had been restored to A.D.1989 Grandeur. It had been recovered, so the label told him, from extensive Chicago digs in the late thirtieth century.
The voicewriter was the only authentic antiquity on the table, of course. The remainder were simulacra, reconstructed from ancient photographs surviving in archives scattered here and there around the Earth. With the exception of a few thousand luckily placed paintings, sculptures and manuscripts, Earth’s art treasures, the masterworks of her many-historied past, had vanished along with most of her seven and one-half billion citizens during the Holocaust Fantastic to think that the few survivors had fathered the fifty-odd billions crowding every square meter of the land masses of both hemispheres now. Not that Earth seemed overcrowded to Van Maar. Here on the reservation, amid diplomats and envoys from hundreds of outworld colonies, it was much more congested than either Dan or his homeworld, Channus. That was to be expected. But living out among the swarms would be difficult to endure, he imagined.
Lights were beginning to pop on in the monolithic towers as dusk descended. Gailen moved restively to the glass wall, wishing himself back on Dan supervising the dig and collating finds. He could visualize the flurry of activity going on without him and worried across the nearly eighty fight-years about damage to something irreplaceable while he was off on this ridiculous errand.
Not that he was bored with Earth. It was interesting to visit, though much of it was foreign and not at all to his liking. Almost every man wore a sword, for instance; wore a sword and looked as if he would like to use it Gailen had lost interest in sword waving when still an adolescent, which caused him to feel naked while strolling about the Palace.
And this constant pressure of being at loose ends was maddening. He had rushed to the stereo tank in his suite after learning of subsequent disappearances on Dan from one of the medics. Minutes of frustrated experiment had finally netted something other than one of the interminable dramas of bedroom intrigue, swordplay, or revenge which seemed to fill the programming: a newscast, or what passed for one here.
The announcer, polished, urbane, and icy, had treated the Dan incidents as mysterious jokes, devoting less than one minute to them and intimating that charity be shown the poor, sequestered inhabitants of the outworlds.
He had quickly covered the “Amplify” plaque, being rewarded by a seriocomic portrayal of a “typical” disappearance which made him want to simultaneously laugh and be ill. He learned it to be a standard newscast feature; all one had to do to view a playlet was to cover the “Amplify” plaque. What a world!
Gailen would have liked nothing better than to board the first vessel outbound for Dan, yearning for the study opportunity afforded by two quiet months in transit There were hundreds of stereographs in his valise: the tell from all angles, some implements, a few crumbling chairs and other incidentalia of furnishing, some crystalware—and the black statue.
His second crew had discovered the statue. It made all these carefully gleaned objects from Earth’s antiquity pale by comparison. Of a Danite form of obsidian, it depicted a pair of Danii kneeling, not touching, embracing one another with their great, liquid eyes.
“Is ser Van Maar at home to callers?” inquired the portal in feminine tones.
Startled, he called, “Who’s there?”
“Minor Lovelock,” answered the door primly.
* * *
She entered sheathed in dark green shimmering gauze which came only to mid-thigh, a stiff, high collar, and firm, provocative bare breasts.
Van Maar flushed to the roots of his blond hair, gaped at her and made a strangling sound.
“Good evening,” smiled Minor. “I haven’t been stared at in that manner for cycles, ser Van Maar. Are you just a flatterer, or aren’t girls permitted on…Where was it you were from, if one might ask?”
“Perhaps we could by now,” drawled Roberts, “had we not fallen into the lazy habit of allowing machines to do our really important thinking for us. Some sliver of information buried in this mass of seeming irrelevant data has allowed the computers to formulate an answer of sorts. That is important. Knowing the clue is there, we will dig until we find it.”
“Very interesting.” Director Grey began pacing between the glass wall and his desk, pausing to look out at the rain. “We have a sketchy picture of what is happening. At least overtly,” he said slowly. “Whatever agency or instrumentality is ultimately responsible, it’s our immediate duty to find some sort of stopgap solution.
“You were all asked here for advice. It lends a perspective no single individual can hope to own.” Grey stopped, his hand poised over the recorder panel. ‘You realize the decision will be mine alone.” He covered the switch plaque.
“Hour seven point two, Universal Time,” said the Director formally. “Director’s conference. Attendees: Director Grey, commander Garrigues representing the military arm, ser Roberts and ser Morrow as personal advisers to the Directoracy.
“Gentlemen, I ask you each to ponder quickly and give your opinions as to some immediate solution to our problem and to its implementation. Please be specific. What you say here will go no farther than these walls. You may begin, Commander Garrigues, when you are ready.”
Garrigues heaved his bulk from the lounge. “Ser Director, I shall try to be objective about this fearful crisis,” he declaimed. “It is hard, ser. Difficult”
“Get on with it,” Holt told him boredly.
“Er, in a nutshell, my solution would be to bring in one of these natives who are responsible for the outrageous violations of the Code of Life to which our Empire subscribes. The Danii are kidnapers or, er, worse. They are responsible, ser Director. Obvious! And force must always be used to counteract force. A firm rule.
“After all, why does the Star Council provide force if it is not to be used when the occasion demands? Why am I here, heading a force second to none?”
“I’ll bite?” growled Morrow.
“If you please.” Garrigues assumed his full stature, pulled in his middle, touched the grip of his sword, thought better of it, and turned his back on Holt “What I was attempting to put across, ser Director, is that these natives should be treated as they, er, deserve. I have never been one to use harsh methods indiscriminately, but this seems an occasion when answers could be found rather, er, quickly. After all, we have the dignity of the Imperium to uphold. Centuries of precedent to…er, uphold.”
Grey thanked him before he could think of something else. “I will give your suggestions careful consideration. Holt,” he called, “you next, please.”
Morrow lolled back, placed his hands at the nape of his neck, and blinked. “I’m not a deep-thinking man,” he said, “but I’ve learned one thing well: when you’re visiting hell, you accommodate yourself to the warm climate or go home.”
He smacked his lips. “I’ve been around some. I’ve seen eighty-three star systems and all the wide spaces in between.
I’ve come across umpteen kinds of misbegotten creatures, most of which you’d think twice about camping next to. But after living on strange lumps of mud for a while you tend to forget appearance. Not easy, I’ll grant you. But, show me a spaceman and I’ll show you a freewheeling, carefree, ‘you go your way and I’ll go mine’ type. They have to be or they’d go nuts.
“Me, I like the Danii just fine. Have some trouble understanding their singsong lingua, but they seem real decent. They’re slow-moving, slow-talking, gentle, and pretty durned neighborly taking in a bunch of jerkjollies like us. Roberts tells me they have lots of smarts, too. Okay; what more can we ask?
“He says they hold intelligent life most precious. Not a new idea, is it? We do too, but we’re so stuck on ourselves we restrict it to Man Almighty, his life, though we hold that pretty blasted cheap too when you think about it.”
Holt squirmed uncomfortably. “Now, let’s suppose you owned a nice house and some kids came by one period asking if they could play in your yard. ‘Sure,’ you say. ‘Nice little fellows.’ “When they make a habit of it, kind of move in on you, you say to yourself, ‘Be good to have ’em around. They’re not such hot companions now, but might be when they grow up.’
“One period you catch them playing with fire. You warn them, saying your house is what you hold most dear. They ignore you and bum down your fancy house.
“You’re way past yelling at them. You pull the automatic whatzit and it takes the culprit out and drowns him in the lake.” Holt cocked one eye at Garrigues. “And if the others gang up on you, thinking to stick pins in your hide until you come clean on what happened to their pal, you don’t waste time pulling the super automatic whatzit which takes them all out and drowns them in the lake.
“It’s a cinch to figure out why they’re sore,” said Holt sourly. “If I’d been living peacefully on this pretty lump of mud, minding my own business, and a pack of kill-crazy bucks wandered in, skewering each other just for the fun of it, it’d make me wonder when they’d get around to attending to me. Trouble is, I can’t think of any way to correct it. To tell the truth, I’m not sure I’d want to.
“Why do you want any of those lice back? Good riddance, I’d say!”
The Director’s smile was lame. “I’d not thought of it in that light, Holt, but what you say is perfectly true; those taken were certainly those we could spare.
“What are your views, Roberts?”
* * *
The slender patrician raised tired eyes. “I shall be brief, Pierce. I have come to be very interested in the Danii. I’ve given serious thought to devoting the rest of my life to studying them, should they allow it. My superficial acquaintance with their manners and mores does expose aspects of this riddle better left unmentioned in present discussion. Best, as you have already said, to alleviate the untenable situation of here and now before proceeding with the prima facie investigation as well as research among the Danii themselves.
“I will advise you directly, since you have requested it: establish an immediate planetary quarantine against further colonization of any sort. It will probably be insufficient, but it’s the only step within your emergency powers at this time. I must also warn you that the Planners will undoubtedly overrule you, and that any such pre-emptory step will certainly jeopardize your tenure as Director of Dan.”
Grey nodded, folding his arms across his chest and surveying the clearing skies over Sharax. “Thank you,” he said. “I will not answer any of your comments at this time.”
The Director paced the chamber, hesitated, then turned to the desk, covering a switch plaque which read “Director’s Log.”
“My decision,” he said slowly, “involves two courses of action. I direct you, ser Garrigues, to interdict the planet to all vessels as of hour twelve, Universal Time. I log such instructions as of hour nine point three, U.T. All inbound transports will be offered the choice of returning to any specific point of embarkation, or being shunted to the fourth body of this system, Carthia.
“Furthermore, any ship’s master who takes it upon himself to waken and land cryothermic hibernates is to be placed under Directoral arrest. Are the instructions clear, Commander?”
Garrigues rose and bowed ceremoniously. “Ah, quite dear, ser Director,” he huffed self-importantly. “It is a wise move; well thought out.” He made as if to leave.
“Stay, Commander,” added Grey. “Secondly, I hereby order you to instruct all officers and men under your command to continue assisting Public Assassins in any way possible.
“Effective hour twelve, U.T., an emergency edict proscribing all forms of honorable combat—public, private, and professional-will be posted in all public places—”
“What!” exploded Garrigues. “Prohibit dueling?”
“Precisely.”
“But, ser Grey; you have not the power. No!”
“Please be kind enough to let me finish, ser Garrigues. The news media will be given copies of the edict in question. I log such instructions as of hour nine point four, U.T. Any form of honorable combat is to be subdued—with energy weapons, if necessary.
“The ratio of disappearances wherein the subject was involved in an affair of honor seems to be one to one. Stop the one, stop the other. We will hope that it is so.”
“But, ser Director, it is unheard of,” spluttered Garrigues. ’This is the, the…most inviolable Convention,” he choked. “It is not for you or I to overthrow Convention.”
Holt and Roberts exchanged long looks.
Grey’s demeanor was stern; there was a hoarseness in his voice. “It is not for you to question my decision, Commander.” “But, ser Grey, I cannot—”
“Are the instructions quite dear, Commander?”
Garrigues donned outraged dignity by drawing his cape more tightly about his portly frame. “The orders are quite dear, ser Director.” He made a red-faced bow and clomped out almost before the rising door cleared the end of his nose.
Pierce seated himself with a wry expression. “Well, it was a mistake, of course—”
“But a grand one,” enthused Roberts. “I thought of it only in passing.”
“You’re in deep yogurt now,” said Holt, jerking his thumb at the portal. “You know where that jonny’s headed, don’t you?”
Grey smiled. “To report to Lovelock, I should imagine.”
“Give the gentleman a cigar!”
“He will be late, though,” said Grey calmly. “I intend to dispatch a communique before Garrigues can get back to the cruiser. Weldon will learn of it from me.”
Holt rubbed the side of his nose. “But you can’t tamper with sacred cows, Pierce. That was the prize heifer you just chopped up.”
“He’s correct,” affirmed Roberts. “You are throwing yourself into a hopeless battle.”
“Then you will have a new Director,” said Grey with a twinkle.
“Unless you were to back down at once and rescind the order,” Roberts warned, “it is a certainty.”
“I second that,” agreed Morrow.
“Roberts, you are a hypocrite,” announced the suddenly jovial Director. “When this odd business began you told me you would forfeit your own life rather than allow destruction of the Danii. Shall I be less faithful to my ideals? The Planners can’t be put off indefinitely, true. But they can be stalled. Remember: time is our objective, is it not?”
‘Well…yes.”
“As Director,” continued Pierce, “all official communication must pass through me. Garrigues is mulish, not altogether bright, but obedience to orders is ingrained in his very soul. I, and only I, am the voice of the Planners on Dan.
“It is a configuration the Founding Fathers might have spent more time thinking through.”
Roberts came to him and clasped his arm, glowing with the warm, patient smile that was particularly his own. “We can do no more than try, Pierce. I am very proud of you.”
Holt made a disgusted noise, rolling his eyes upward. “Save us,” he prayed sarcastically, “from all idealists and hidebound do-gooders!”
VII
. . what wilt thou do
To entertain this starry stranger?
Richard Crashaw. Ante Bellum,
pre-industrial Briton. Circa A.D. 1600
(old style).
It was all city!
To the limit of Gailen Van Maar’s vision—and his suite in the north tower of the Palace provided the finest imaginable vantage point—the natural face of Earth had been obscured beneath a megalopolitan colossus.
A forest of lesser towers, separated by multilevel pedestrian malls, parkways, and esplanades, spread toward hazy purple mountains perhaps twenty kilometers to the north. The mountain skyline was itself serrated by distant buildings. Southward to the sheen of ocean, and into it for some distance, enormous steel and glass structures rose in diminishing glut. Eastward they enveloped the valley floor, and westward.
Air traffic was lighter than he would have imagined. Thin streams of vehicles shuttled to and from the offshore landing site several hundred kilometers seaward where he himself had first set foot on legendary Earth. Over the city he could see only a few aircraft; none, he noted, braved the airspace over the reservation surrounding the Palace.
Gailen was still tired from the ordeal of interrogation. Teams of medics, working in relays all through the afternoon, had figuratively lifted his brain from his skull, squeezed it thoroughly in both the somnolent and waking states, and replaced it with some doubt as to their own sanity. He had not been hypnotized, drugged, was not given to hallucinations or mystical beliefs, nor did bis psychomotor index, personality profile, height-for-weight-for-glandular-functions, sexual adjustment, et cetera, vary by any significant amount from long established normal parameters.
Gailen Van Maar had, in other words, seen what he had seen.
Yawning, he wandered the length of the large table, idly picking up and replacing objects he knew had been put there expressly for his inspection and admiration. The Palace staff was accustomed to making outworlders comfortable.
Most of the pieces were commonplace. They were of Earth, and as such more or less kindergarten lessons out of his past studies toward the much more diversified xenoarchaeology degree he held from Channus University. But they were interesting; the unknown curator had chosen literal gems from those cultures he wished to represent.
There was a striking scarletware vase, one of the celebrated Blau stele, and an exquisite statue of a he goat standing with his forefeet on a pedestal of gold, all from Sumer in the second and third millennia b.c. Dynastic Egypt offered a strong entry: kneeling King Pepy, holding a small libatory jar in either hand, while behind him stood the deathless bust of Nefertiti. A beautiful checkered pot with a swooping handle from Phrygian Gordium, a faience statuette of the snake goddess of ancient Crete, a terracotta humped bull from the Indus Valley, and a Roman legionary’s gladius completed the collection—almost. At the end of the table was an oddment.
It was an electric voicewriter which had been restored to A.D.1989 Grandeur. It had been recovered, so the label told him, from extensive Chicago digs in the late thirtieth century.
The voicewriter was the only authentic antiquity on the table, of course. The remainder were simulacra, reconstructed from ancient photographs surviving in archives scattered here and there around the Earth. With the exception of a few thousand luckily placed paintings, sculptures and manuscripts, Earth’s art treasures, the masterworks of her many-historied past, had vanished along with most of her seven and one-half billion citizens during the Holocaust Fantastic to think that the few survivors had fathered the fifty-odd billions crowding every square meter of the land masses of both hemispheres now. Not that Earth seemed overcrowded to Van Maar. Here on the reservation, amid diplomats and envoys from hundreds of outworld colonies, it was much more congested than either Dan or his homeworld, Channus. That was to be expected. But living out among the swarms would be difficult to endure, he imagined.
Lights were beginning to pop on in the monolithic towers as dusk descended. Gailen moved restively to the glass wall, wishing himself back on Dan supervising the dig and collating finds. He could visualize the flurry of activity going on without him and worried across the nearly eighty fight-years about damage to something irreplaceable while he was off on this ridiculous errand.
Not that he was bored with Earth. It was interesting to visit, though much of it was foreign and not at all to his liking. Almost every man wore a sword, for instance; wore a sword and looked as if he would like to use it Gailen had lost interest in sword waving when still an adolescent, which caused him to feel naked while strolling about the Palace.
And this constant pressure of being at loose ends was maddening. He had rushed to the stereo tank in his suite after learning of subsequent disappearances on Dan from one of the medics. Minutes of frustrated experiment had finally netted something other than one of the interminable dramas of bedroom intrigue, swordplay, or revenge which seemed to fill the programming: a newscast, or what passed for one here.
The announcer, polished, urbane, and icy, had treated the Dan incidents as mysterious jokes, devoting less than one minute to them and intimating that charity be shown the poor, sequestered inhabitants of the outworlds.
He had quickly covered the “Amplify” plaque, being rewarded by a seriocomic portrayal of a “typical” disappearance which made him want to simultaneously laugh and be ill. He learned it to be a standard newscast feature; all one had to do to view a playlet was to cover the “Amplify” plaque. What a world!
Gailen would have liked nothing better than to board the first vessel outbound for Dan, yearning for the study opportunity afforded by two quiet months in transit There were hundreds of stereographs in his valise: the tell from all angles, some implements, a few crumbling chairs and other incidentalia of furnishing, some crystalware—and the black statue.
His second crew had discovered the statue. It made all these carefully gleaned objects from Earth’s antiquity pale by comparison. Of a Danite form of obsidian, it depicted a pair of Danii kneeling, not touching, embracing one another with their great, liquid eyes.
“Is ser Van Maar at home to callers?” inquired the portal in feminine tones.
Startled, he called, “Who’s there?”
“Minor Lovelock,” answered the door primly.
* * *
She entered sheathed in dark green shimmering gauze which came only to mid-thigh, a stiff, high collar, and firm, provocative bare breasts.
Van Maar flushed to the roots of his blond hair, gaped at her and made a strangling sound.
“Good evening,” smiled Minor. “I haven’t been stared at in that manner for cycles, ser Van Maar. Are you just a flatterer, or aren’t girls permitted on…Where was it you were from, if one might ask?”
