It took a long time, but Sudie finally fell asleep in her father’s arms. Capelo whispered to Amanda, “What are her nightmares about?”
Amanda whispered back, “I don’t know, Daddy. She says she can’t tell anybody.”
“‘Can’t’?”
“That’s what she says.”
“When did they start?”
“Right after the aliens were aboard, and Sudie played with the alien girl in the ship garden.”
Capelo shifted Sudie against his shoulder and tried to keep his voice under control. “Jane, why was Sudie playing with an alien?”
Jane said, “I didn’t know about it until afterward. In fact, I didn’t even know that natives were aboard. I let the girls go to the garden with Marbet Grant … you remember that you got them to come aboard without you by promising they would see Marbet again.”
Capelo nodded.
“Marbet took them to the garden, and then Ann Sikorski showed up with three aliens, one a little girl.”
Amanda took up the story. “Yeah, and I was talking to the nice alien that spoke English, her name is Enli, and Sudie and the native girl were awful. They were running and playing hide-and-seek and dropping leaves and nuts on people from the tops of trees. She always embarrasses me in public, Daddy. It’s not fair.”
Capelo pushed Amanda back on track. “Did this alien child hit Sudie? Or hurt her in some way? Or give her anything to eat or drink?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. They just played. Sudie seemed fine, until nighttime when she had her first nightmare. And she’s had them ever since. Lots of them.”
Jane said, obviously reluctantly, “She cries out, and sometimes she talks. But the only word I can distinguish is ‘Mommy.’”
Capelo looked at Amanda. Her eyes had filled with tears. He took one arm off Sudie and put it around Mandy.
Jane said, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Capelo said, because clearly it wasn’t. Still, rage filled him. His girls had been through enough with the death of their mother. Karen’s body sliced in two by the sweeping laser weapons from the Faller skeeter, the bastards too cowardly to even land and fight against soldiers. His peaceful wife and his two children … Sudie had screamed for her mother for months. Gradually she had calmed down, laughed again, slept through the night. And now the nightmares all over again, set off by more aliens even if they weren’t Fallers …
“Here,” he said to Jane, “take Sudie. I’m going to have a little talk with Marbet Grant.”
* * *
Capelo hoped to find Marbet in her quarters. She wasn’t there. Nor was she in the wardroom, the garden, or the exercise area. He glanced into the chapel—her subjective Sensitive art didn’t seem to him all that far from mysticism. Certainly you couldn’t call it science. She wasn’t in the chapel. He headed for the observation deck.
But she wasn’t there, either. “Hello, Tom,” Kaufman said. “Come to see the show?” Outside the viewport, robots were hauling the artifact back into the shuttle bay.
“It’s a routine operation,” Capelo said. “Where’s Marbet Grant?”
Kaufman turned. Was there tension on that bland face?
“Marbet?”
“Yes. You know, diminutive Sensitive that nobody’s seen for weeks.”
Kaufman smiled. “Well, not exactly. She did come down to see the artifact, remember. And I’ve seen her.”
“Then where is she?”
Somehow they had edged away from the rest of the group, out of earshot. How had Kaufman managed that? Capelo felt his anger growing. He was being manipulated.
Kaufman said, “You’re looking for Marbet Grant.”
“A man of insight. You look directly into my soul. Where the hell is she?”
“Can I ask why you want her?”
“No. Where is she?”
Kaufman said easily, “She’s indisposed.”
“‘Indisposed’? You mean she’s sick? In quarantine?”
“I didn’t say that. But it might help, Tom, if you could tell me why you want to see her. It might be something I could help you with just as well.”
Capelo put his hand on Kaufman’s arm. He looked directly into Kaufman’s calm brown eyes. He said softly, “I want to talk to Marbet Grant. Not you. Marbet. Now stop fucking around with me and tell me where she is.”
Kaufman pressed the door; somehow they had moved all the way over to it. He stepped into the corridor, forcing Capelo to follow, and pressed the door closed. “I can’t tell you where she is, Tom. It’s a matter of security. Special Compartmented Information. Believe me, I would answer you if I could. But Marbet is working on a separate project involving the aliens—you knew that much, of course—and she really can’t be disturbed.”
“Security? SCI? What have those flower-mad aliens got to do with security? They’ve given us no trouble whatsoever!”
“No, they haven’t. Yet,” Kaufman said, and Capelo felt that the man was telling him the truth.
“So?”
“Again, I can’t explain her project. But she really cannot be disturbed. If I can help—”
“You can tell her to stay away from my kids. She took them into the garden when Ann brought her aliens there, and something happened that’s sent Sudie straight into nightmares and screaming.”
Kaufman’s eyes sharpened. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. Sudie’s too upset to say. But I don’t want it to happen again. Marbet Grant stays away from Sudie and Amanda. And Ann Sikorski does, too.”
“I think I can guarantee both those things, Tom. Ann stayed behind on World, did you know that?”
“She did?” So that explained Gruber’s uncharacteristic gloom. God, the ways people messed up their lives.
Kaufman said, “She was very opposed to moving the artifact off-planet and destroying shared reality.”
“We don’t even know for sure if the damn thing causes your so-called shared reality!”
“Yes, I told her that,” Kaufman said.
You couldn’t get anywhere with the man. He agreed, and smiled, and politely digressed, and all the while he manipulated you and everything else around him. It was like arguing with the wind. Capelo had gotten what he wanted. His kids would be kept away from Marbet, aliens, and upsetting encounters. But he still felt as if he’d lost.
Kaufman’s comlink rang. The OOD’s voice said, “Colonel, the object is re-secured to the shuttle. Descent in forty minutes.”
“Thank you,” Kaufman said. To Capelo he said, “Commander Grafton has agreed to your test. Ninety minutes from now is the ideal gunnery position.”
“Fine,” Capelo said.
“Thanks, Tom,” Kaufman said, as if Capelo had done him a favor. Wind.
“You’re most sincerely welcome, Lyle,” Capelo said, but Kaufman ignored the sarcasm and merely smiled.
* * *
Kaufman watched the shuttle leave the ship with its cargo in the net of dislocation-free monofilament cables. In a moment it had dwindled to a dark dot.
He had successfully diverted Capelo from tearing the ship apart looking for Marbet. Which, Lyle was convinced, Capelo was capable of doing. But, the larger problem of Marbet remained, twisting Kaufman’s gut. He needed to know exactly what she had learned from the Faller, if anything, about the artifact. And he needed to make a decision on how much more might be learned, versus a further breach of security from her.
Not a breach of security. Call it what it was; he’d done so when he had her arrested. Treason. She had knowingly communicated valuable, classified military information to an enemy in time of war.
Kaufman had ninety minutes. He went to the brig.
On a ship like the Alan B. Shepard, this consisted of two rooms, an anteroom and a cell. When there were no prisoners, which was nearly all of the time, the anteroom was used for storage. When there was a prisoner, the packing crates became desk and chair for the MP who monitored security, although for petty offenses the formalit
y of a guard was usually skipped. Both anteroom and cell were e-locked. Kaufman had been given the codes at Marbet’s arrest, a piece of information he had not expected to need on this expedition.
The MP got to his feet and saluted as Kaufman entered the anteroom. “Sir!”
“At ease, Sergeant. Has Commander Grafton authorized my visit to the prisoner?”
“Yes, sir! The special project team has been cleared for entry, sir!”
Kaufman looked again and saw how young the MP was. A first tour of duty, most likely. The newbies always got the boring assignments.
Kaufman passed into Marbet’s cell. It was three meters by two, with a bunk, toilet, and sink. She sat on the edge of the bunk, dressed in green coveralls, writing on paper with a pencil. Not even e-tablets were allowed in the brig. Beside her on the bunk was an untouched tray of food.
“Hello, Marbet.”
“Hello, Lyle.” Her voice was neutral—a good sign. Kaufman had hoped to avoid hysteria or fury. He realized now that she wouldn’t indulge in either one.
“I’ve come to ask you some necessary questions about your work.”
“Am I going to be allowed to continue it?”
Brief and direct. “That’s not decided yet.” He was lying, of course. Military treason, which giving critical and classified weapons information to enemy personnel certainly was, fell under Grafton’s purview no matter who committed the crime. There was no way Grafton would release Marbet Grant to anyone but a Solar Alliance high court.
“You’re lying,” Marbet said. “Look at you … you’re lying and you hate it.”
“All right.” He sat beside her on the bunk, not too close. “You can’t resume your work, you can’t see the prisoner again, and you’re in the brig until we arrive back on Mars. But meanwhile, I need to know everything you’ve learned about how much the Faller knows about the artifact. This is an official inquiry, Marbet, but it’s also an appeal for the good of the project. Will you cooperate?”
“Of course. I never intended anything but the good of the project.”
“I believe that. Others won’t.”
She smiled wanly. “At least now you’re being honest. There isn’t too much to report. Yes, the Faller recognized the artifact, immediately. He recognized the holo I programmed, too, which suggests to me that they’ve discovered how to use the directed-beam destabilizer at setting prime one. That was as far as I got. I’d planned on programming a holo to demonstrate the spherical wave-effect destabilizer, too, to see if he recognized that. But you came in before I got to it.”
“Was there anything in his nonverbal or sign language that told you anything more than that he recognized it?”
“Yes. He was disturbed that we knew about it, or had it. Very disturbed.”
“What else?”
“Nothing else. I didn’t have time.”
Her nearness was beginning to disturb Kaufman. She looked at him so levelly, without bitterness, seeming to understand his position as well as her own … There was no other woman like her. Her scent came to him, distinctively Marbet.
She smiled, and he knew she knew his thoughts. To his intense annoyance, he felt the blood rise in his cheeks.
She said, “It’s all right, Lyle. I like you, too. If things were different…”
Was it another manipulation? No, not now. Or maybe he just wanted to believe that. He said stiffly, “Anything else?”
“Just one thing. But it’s important. You have to convince Grafton to let me talk again to the Faller.”
“That’s not possible, Marbet. Can’t happen.”
“It has to. The Faller was very disturbed that we have this artifact, Lyle.”
“You’d expect that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. But as far as I can estimate, his disturbance went beyond his discovering our new strategic advantage. He was trying to hide something, Lyle. Something important, that we might need to know about the artifact.”
“Could you tell what?”
“Not a clue. But I’m positive I’m right. You shouldn’t have had me arrested so quickly. You should have listened to me first, and weighed all the alternatives, and made your usual careful decisions. But you didn’t. You went off half-cocked because your personal feelings for me overwhelmed you with disappointment that I did what I did. It was a mistake, Lyle. And if what you say about Grafton is true, I don’t see how you’re going to rectify it.”
* * *
On his way back to the observation deck, Kaufman stopped at the secret cell where the other prisoner was being held. In the corridor Grafton’s MPs stood guard. Inside the anteroom, Kaufman saw on the viewscreen that the Faller’s free hand had again been manacled.
He asked the computer for a five-minute summary of the Faller’s behavior since Marbet’s arrest. The program didn’t need five minutes. It told him that the Faller had done nothing unusual: feed, sleep, stare straight ahead. Analysis of real-time recordings had revealed to the computer no significant body movements or changes of expression.
But, then, the computer wasn’t Marbet Grant.
TWENTY-ONE
GOFKIT JEMLOE
Enli sat with Calin in her room in the Voratur household. The door and window tapestries, fully unfurled, shut out the sunshine, and so Enli had lit a lamp. Throughout the household most tapestries were unfurled; people huddled in small groups, as though the loss of shared reality were somehow easier if fewer people were around.
Calin said, “Tell me again, Enli.” She had washed away the blood from his fight with Justafar and bandaged his head and arm. Below the head bandage Calin’s honest, bewildered eyes gazed at her like a child asking why a beloved pet had died. Occasionally a cry came to them through the tapestries, an outpouring of anguish from someone whose reality had been stretched so far it had temporarily broken.
Perhaps temporarily. Perhaps not.
Enli held Calin’s hand tightly. “Once more. Then I must go to Pek Voratur to explain.”
“Once more.”
“This is what Pek Sikorski told me.” Pek Sikorski—was she still asleep in the guest court? Enli must rouse her before she went to Pek Voratur. She spoke faster to Calin.
“Our shared reality comes from something invisible in the air, as the perfume of flowers is invisible. We breathe in shared reality with the air. And like flower fragrance, the shared reality we breathe in comes from an object. Perfume comes from flowers; shared reality comes from a manufactured object that for all of history has lain in the Neury Mountains. It—”
“If it lay in the Neury Mountains, it is a gift from the First Flower.”
“Perhaps. But now the Terrans in the large flying boat have taken the manufactured object away in their smaller metal flying boat. And so shared reality no longer perfumes the air of World.”
She watched him struggle with this. “But why did they take it? It was our gift from the First Flower! Why do they want our shared reality? Haven’t they any of their own?”
“No,” Enli said. “They don’t. And when the nine of us Worlders went up to the large metal flying boat, we didn’t, either.”
“If they have no shared reality of their own, then they are unreal! They have no souls!”
“I was not unreal when I went to the flying boat. I retained my soul. So did Pek Voratur and Pek Forbin and Essa Criltifor.” Again she saw the little girl running and laughing with the human child Sudie. “We are real, we still have our souls, even if we do not share reality any longer, Calin.”
“You’re speaking unrealities against the First Flower!”
She was silent. Could he embrace this new strangeness, this blasphemy? Eventually, he must … They all must. But if he blamed her for telling him about it, then their mating would not happen. Enli’s chest tightened.
He said, “But you’re only repeating what the Terrans told you, aren’t you, Enli? They’re the ones with no souls. They did this terrible thing to us.”
“Yes,” she said, and could have wept with
relief. He was going to blame the Terrans, not her.
He took her in his arms. “How can we get the manufactured object back?”
“I don’t think we can, Calin. They took it away from World, out into space. We have no metal flying boats to follow them.”
“True. Oh, those filthy unreal soulless people! I would kill them all!”
Pek Sikorski.
Fear clutched Enli. She jumped up and pulled Calin with her. “Come with me. Now. Please, Calin, don’t ask questions yet, it’s very important…” She tugged him up, ran with him through the deserted courts and gardens to the guest court.
Pek Sikorski still slept, unharmed. Few in the Voratur household knew she was here, and fewer still gave her a thought in their own bewilderment. And, Enli belatedly realized, no one but her knew that the Terrans were the cause of the loss of shared reality, of the unmaking of the world.
Except Calin. When he saw Pek Sikorski asleep, his skull ridges creased and his neckfur bristled. “There is one of them! This one at least I can kill!”
“No!” Enli cried, appalled. She should not have brought him here, what was she thinking, none of them could think anymore …
She threw herself on Calin, between him and Pek Sikorski. He had little experience of violence. He stopped instantly. “Enli? What?”
“She didn’t do it, Calin. She wanted the other Terrans to leave the manufactured object here. For us. She didn’t go away from World with them because she hated that they took away our shared reality.”
He shook his head like an animal, a jik shaking off water. “I don’t understand.”
“I know. It’s all hard,” she said, and something in her voice must have touched him. He was a tender man.
“It is hard, dear one. And especially for you, who had … who must … who lived with these Terrans. But if you say this one is real, then that is shared reality.”
Enli moved into his arms. Grateful … she was so grateful. He had held. It was going to be all right.
He said, brokenly as a child, “Enli … I … don’t know how … to live like … this.”
None of them knew. “We’ll learn, my Calin,” she whispered. “We’ll learn.”