“We will take you to our students,” said Look/Find, leading us across the platform. “You may talk with them if you desire.” He laughed again.
We entered a large room partitioned off by vines. There were no aliens in sight, only a bunch of large leather cases suspended from the overhanging branches. One of the cases moved. Then another. They seemed almost alive.
“These are our Students,” said Look/Find.
“Students?”
“Yes. Those-Who-Are-Learning. Students. It is a stage of our life just as it is a stage in your life. We must be Students to learn. Then we Change and take our work/name.”
One of the other aliens walked to one of the suspended cases. I guess they might have been cocoons. He growled and Look/Find translated.
“He will show you the Teaching and sing the songs of learning. Perhaps it will induce a Change. This Student is nearly ready.”
The alien approached the cocoon and spread his folded skin. On the underside of the folds were thousands of small discs like suction cups. In the center of each disc was a tiny barb. He wrapped himself around the cocoon and attached himself to it. Then he started a rhythmic series of grunts and growls in a low, soft voice.
“He is singing to the Student, Teaching it what it will need to know as an adult. It will be a Builder/Forager, skilled in woodworking and gathering food. The Student sings back as it learns, but that can only be felt as vibrations through the growing-sac. The Teacher is also injecting the growing-sac with nutrients and a fluid that helps transmit knowledge.”
The “song” grew louder and louder. It raised in pitch until it hurt my ears. Sounded more like an animal whining than any language. The cocoon was writhing around now, twisting on the strand that suspended it from the branch.
“Fortune is yours,” said Look/Find. “You are about to see a Change.”
Suddenly the cocoon burst open, spilling a greenish fluid on the floor. A pale white mass slid to the ground. It took me a moment to realize it was a partially developed Savrotian.
“He has Changed, now he can grow,” said Look/Find as two aliens carried off the small wet bundle.
One of the Teachers walked toward me, spreading the folds on his skin. I got a good look at those suction cup things with the sharp points inside. Too good. They looked dangerous. I backed away.
“He would like to Teach you,” said Look/Find. “It is considered to be a great honor. If possible, he would induce a change in you so that we may observe.”
It took some fast talking to get out of that one. Eventually I convinced him that their Students were just a whole lot different from our students. Once I got this across their Teachers lost interest in us. Look/Find apologized for their lack of interest, but not for the problem about the definition of a student. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he still didn’t understand and was kind of disappointed that he couldn’t see us Change,
As he led us back down through the trees he explained a little about their home planet. They had no enemies and food was abundant and easy to get. The weather on Savrot was remarkably constant — always warm and calm. Consequently, they’d never developed much in the way of a technological society. Hadn’t needed to. Everything on their planet was there for the taking. Competition in any form was unheard of. They didn’t have the background to understand the concepts of war and strife.
Personally, I didn’t think they had much of a handle on “student”, either.
Making our way toward the exit, I caught a glimpse of the Lobster in the underbrush. Ten years in one place seemed like a long time to me, but I had no idea what their life spans were like. I could swear it was watching us.
When we arrived at the airlock, Look/Find showed us how to call for a sled using the key. We said our goodbyes, and when a sled came we got into it.
The first thing I did was take several breaths of the clean air. After the foul atmosphere in the Savrotian sector, it was pure pleasure just to breathe again.
“That was close, amigo mio,” said Pancho as we strapped ourselves in. “I thought you were in line for an early graduation back there.”
“It was just a misunderstanding,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed by the whole thing.
“A misunderstanding like that can kill you,” he said.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked, anxious to change the subject.
Pancho looked at his digital. We had a coupe of hours before we were due back at the dorm. “Let’s just look around,” he said.
“Suits me.” I shifted the position of the lever beside me and we started moving.
The first two places we stopped didn’t work out. The key casually informed us we would suffer immediate irreparable physical damage if we entered. It didn’t try to stop us, though.
We wandered around and eventually found a promising sector on the 0.8-g level. The key told us we would be able to stay a week without being harmed. Seemed like a good, safe bet. We entered the airlock together.
Even before the inner door opened, I had an uneasy feeling that something was wrong. It was a vague sensation, though, nothing I could put my finger on. The inner door opened and we stepped inside. The uneasy feeling intensified.
We faced a desolate landscape. The earth was barren and scorched, covered here and there with clumps of dead grass. Gnarled trees stood in sharp relief against the pale, cloudless sky. Everything seemed to be tattered, old, dying. There were no aliens in sight.
This world was depressing, not only from a human viewpoint, but from any way I could imagine. It spoke of death, of pain, of loss. It spoke of once grand things now gone forever. Life became death, beauty became chaos. It all led to this, a scarred world of infinite sadness and broken dreams.
I choked back a sob; it affected me that much. I could feel the promise this land once held, now gone for al eternity. I stood at the edge of a dead and dying race and it filled me with sadness.
A song entered my mind, a song without words, a song without music. It sang of the glories of a race much older than mankind. A populous, far-flung race that had touched more star systems than there were people on Springworld. They’d had their eons of splendor, centuries of golden life. It was gone now, a mere flash in the endless fabric of time, hardly noticed, hardly remembered. Their dreams were dust scattered in the wind.
I thought of mankind as the song of futility filled my head. Was it always this way? Did it always crumble and fall?
The answer came: yes.
Battered dreams, crumbled hopes. All dust and ashes.
I turned to Pancho. He was sobbing openly, tears running down his cheeks. He, too, heard the song.
It is the only song there is.
I wiped the tears from my eyes, tried to talk. The words caught in my throat. I grabbed Pancho, pushed him back toward the airlock. He didn’t protest. He was far beyond that. It took all my will to simply slip the key in the door. I was torn, drawn to the song of inevitable death. It grabbed at the very fabric of my soul, drawing me in, trying to destroy me. The door slid open. With a last desperate move, I entered, dragging Pancho along with me.
The door slid shut and the song stopped. Yet even though the song was no longer being sung, it echoed through my mind with unbelievable intensity. Pancho just sat on the floor, eyes full of despair. We sat for a moment as if in shells, numbed by what we had been through, wrapping our emotions tightly around us. The sled was still there.
We entered it silently and drove back to the dorm without speaking.
* * *
Alegria’s excitement helped drive away the overpowering despair that Pancho and I felt. She and B’oosa had been to a sector inhabited by butterfly-like creatures with voices that tinkled like bells or rang like chimes depending on the speaker and the emotion. Their world was light and airy, their structures incredibly fragile looking, yet more substantial than permasteel. Even B’oosa had dropped his aloof attitude. He had clearly been impressed.
Pancho and I asked Guide about the se
cond sector we had visited, the one that so unsettled us.
“That is the realm of the Talubar. Did you enjoy your stay there?”
“No,” I said. “It was depressing. Frightening.” I explained to the others what we had seen, how it had affected us.
“That is the reaction most life forms experience in that sector,” said Guide. “It is inhabited by a single Talubar, the last individual of his race. His existence is maintained by a complicated life-support system in such a way that he is not likely to die for several centuries. He tends to be quite melancholy. This is compounded by the fact that he is a projecting empathy. Many visitors to that level have committed suicide.” He covered his face and whistled again. “They make good joke, acting like animals.”
“It didn’t seem like a joke to me,” I said. “It was an overwhelming experience.”
“You humans lack a finely developed sense of humor. Do not feel badly about that, it is typical among the younger, more primitive races.”
I had a few questions about a race that snickers about death and sadness, but I kept them to myself. Miko started talking about a place he’d been, a cold world of ice and slush. He was telling us about the people that lived there when something suddenly occurred to me.
Dean M’bisa was missing!
Miko was talking as if he and Guide had been alone all the time. I knew for a fact that the Dean had gone with them. I interrupted Miko the first chance I got.
“Where’s the Dean, Miko?” I asked. “Didn’t he come back with you?”
Miko looked at me with a funny expression on his face. “He didn’t come back with me, I thought he went with you.”
I looked at Pancho. He was staring at Miko, not believing what he was hearing.
B’oosa spoke up. “We all saw him leave with you and Guide. What happened?”
Miko seemed confused. “I … I don’t remember,” he said. “I’m not sure. I think he was with us at the beginning, that much I know. I seem to remember he was with us part of the time and not during the rest of the time. Maybe he went somewhere by himself. I just thought he had gone to find you two or maybe he had something else to do. There was some reason for him to be gone, I’ve forgotten exactly what it was. It must have been good, though, because it seemed natural that he wasn’t there. I didn’t worry about his absence until just now.”
B’oosa turned to the Linguist. “Where is the Dean?” he asked.
“I cannot tell you things that you should find out by yourselves,” said Guide.
“He left with you, right?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
“Did he return with you?”
“No.”
“Then he must have left somewhere along the way,” I said.
“That is a reasonable assumption.”
“Where?”
“I might know the answer to that or I might not. At any rate, I cannot tell you things that you should find out by yourselves.”
“Did he leave of his own free will?” asked B’oosa.
“That is a reasonable assumption.”
Guide was evading the question again. “Was her forced to leave?” I asked. “Was it against his will?”
“That is also a reasonable assumption.”
“I don’t understand,” said Pancho. “Which is correct? Did he go someplace else or was he kidnapped?”
“I cannot tell you things that you should find out by yourselves,” repeated Guide.
“If somebody took him, don’t you have an obligation to at least tell us about it?” asked B’oosa.
“You humans have odd ideas about obligation and duty,” said Guide. “They are not consistent. If another race desired to kidnap the entity known as Dean M’bisa would you say that I had an ‘obligation’ to help them?”
“Of course not,” said B’oosa.
“But that is precisely where your train of so-called logic leads. If I am assumed to have an ‘obligation’ to help one race, then I should have a similar ‘obligation’ to help all other races.”
“But that is different,” said Pancho. “Kidnapping is wrong.”
“You humans also have strange ideas about right and wrong. These terms are ambiguous and subject to highly personal interpretation. We prefer to dispense with them entirely.”
“But kidnapping is illegal, against the law,” said Pancho.
“You do not understand. There are no laws here, no rules save those you impose upon yourselves. Therefore there are no laws to be broken. It is that simple.”
It didn’t seem simple to me, but that didn’t help much. The Linguists seemed to have everything pretty much their own way.
We talked with Guide — argued with him, really — for almost an hour. We got nowhere. He wouldn’t tell us anything. Finally he left and we discussed it for another hour. I was ready to go look for M’bisa, but Pancho was afraid that if he wasn’t really missing and we went poling around after him, we’d end up in big trouble. Miko was totally confused about what had happened. Possibly someone — or something — had manipulated his memory of the day. After experiencing the sadness projected by the Talubar, I was willing to believe anything was possible on Construct.
B’oosa suggested that we wait and see if he came in during the night. That way if we had to go find him at least we’d all be rested. It sounded like a good idea.
I got very little rest. What fitful sleep I found was troubled, filled with the heartbreaking dreams of a dying race.
IV
Morning came, and still no Dean. The terminal in our dorm room was crammed with messages for him; he’d missed several evening appointments. It had to be foul play.
The five of us sat down and sketched out a rough plan. We would go back to Level 8, which was where Miko’s memory got fuzzy. The Dean was definitely not with him when he left the Kaful area there, though he may have been with him when he entered. We also might be able to find out from the Kafulta where they had gone before. Guide was no help, of course. (B’oosa: “There must be some record of where we go during these excursion.” Guide: “Probably.”)
Helpful or not, Guide was waiting for us at the loading dock. It was a short trip up to Level 8, 0.7-g; our keys told us we could survive indefinitely in the Kaful region, if we were careful of the gravity holes.
The Kafulta were gliders. Their torso and heads were humanoid, but their arms and legs were skeletal members a couple of meters long, supporting floppy membranous wings. They used gravity holes to get around.
Miko explained. “It’s something like the artificial gravity we use aboard Starschool, but greatly miniaturized. Every twenty or thirty meters there’s a cube marking a gravity hole; the color of the cube tells how strong the gravity is. They use the holes the way a bird uses air currents, sort of. They gather speed by falling into it, then spread their wings and lift themselves out. Very graceful.”
“But dangerous to us,” Pancho said.
Miko shrugged. “We have to stay away from the holes. They’re five or ten gravities; if you tried to walk over one you might break both legs, or worse.”
But there didn’t seem to be much danger of walking over one unawares. The Kaful area was all formal garden, ornate beds of flowers and sculptured hedges. The gravity holes were isolated in the middle of large circles of polished rock, like marble.
The air was damp and heavy with perfume. Hundreds of tiny suns glared from the ceiling; the Kafulta’s home was in the middle of a globular cluster, and they lived in perpetual light. It was inhumanly bright but chilly.
There were dozens of Kafulta drifting within sight of us — Miko said that’s all they do, “fly and think” — and eventually one spotted us. He folded his wings in and dropped headfirst, catastrophically fast. Close to the ground, the wings snapped open; he arced back up, slowing, to pause overhead, then spilled air and floated down to join us. Guide translated.
“Back with friends, Miko … should we be flattered?”
“I did want them to admire your beauty
,” he said tactfully, “but we’re also seeking another friend, who is lost. Tell me, did I come in here alone yesterday?”
“Have you lost your memory?”
“Something like that happened. Was there anybody with me besides Guide here?”
“No, not when I talked with you. But I don’t know how long you’d been here. If you had a companion, he could have wandered away.”
“Are there any other humans here now?” B’oosa asked.
“I can easily find out.” The Kafulta stepped away from us, took a short run and sprang into the air. He beat his wings a couple of times and spiraled down into a gravity hole, then banked out and upwards. I lost sight of him in the brightness overhead.
“I guess he’s taking a look around,” Miko said. Suddenly there was a terrible shrieking, a high-pitched squeal loud enough to make me wince.
“He is communicating,” Guide said. “The creatures are not telepathic.” The shriek was echoed, more and more faintly, as other Kafulta relayed the message,
“What are they saying?” Miko asked.
The Linguist looked at him, his eyes rolling back in a slow blink. “Exactly what you should expect. If you know the creatures at all.”
“He is a regular mine of information,” Pancho said. “An inexhaustible well.”
Less than a minute later, the answer came back around, a single syllable hoot. The Kafulta returned.
“You are the only humans here,” he said. “And no one saw any but you yesterday, Miko. So your friend must have been lost before you got here.”
“I was afraid of that,” Miko said. “When we talked yesterday, I didn’t happen to mention where we’d been before, did I?”
“Let me think.” The alien flapped his wings and shot up a couple of meters, and settled quietly to the ground, folding up into a complicated pile of bony limbs. “You didn’t say. But you had evidently walked here — no sleds stopped at the dock; I would have noticed — and the fur on top of your head was damp. From this I deduce that you came from the Bawex region.”