When the conference broke up, Mirrik reverently scooped the globe up on his tusks—it weighs about as much as a man, he says—and carried it to the lab. That was three hours ago. Dr. Schein, Dr. Horkkk, and Pilazinool have been in there all this time. With them is 408b; Saul Shahmoon has been going in and out. Each time he comes out he looks more excited than the time before, but he isn't saying a thing except that nothing definite has been learned yet.
Mirrik, Kelly, Steen Steen, and Leroy Chang have gone back to the dig. Leroy's face is a little bruised and he looks pretty sour about things. Jan and I were assigned to cleanup detail for the afternoon, she in her shack and I in mine.
That's a great reward for making a big find, isn't it?
Two hours later. The conference in the lab is still going on. I'd love to know what's up, but if they wanted apprentices in there, they'd invite us. Saul hasn't come out for a long time. The diggers are still at work, though they haven't found anything unusual. Kelly and Mirrik would dig all night, if we'd let them.
When I finished my cleanup I went across to talk to Jan.
She was less interested in discussing the strange ancient globe than she was in talking about Leroy Chang's uncouth behavior. I'd say that that's just like a girl, but I'd probably offend you, and besides I'm not sure I'm right.
"You saw him pawing me," Jan accused. "Why didn't you do something?"
"I didn't realize anything serious was going on."
"Serious? How much more serious could it have been? He practically had my clothes ripped off!"
"Good old Leroy. He sure knows how to coax a girl along."
"Very funny. Suppose he had raped me?"
"He didn't get very close to succeeding, did he?"
"No thanks to you. Down there in the pit digging like a madman, and me screaming for help."
I said, "You know, they say that rape isn't really possible unless the victim cooperates. I mean, all she has to do is defend herself, and if she's a girl of normal strength and her attacker isn't some kind of superman, she'll be able to fight him off. So when a rape happens, it's either because the girl is paralyzed with fear, or else because she secretly wants to be raped. Besides, I don't remember hearing you scream."
"I don't find your two-credit psychology very convincing," Jan said. "I don't know where you got that half-baked theory, but I can tell you it just isn't so. Like most men you don't have the first idea of what a woman's viewpoint is in such things."
"I suppose you've been raped a couple of times, so you know all about it."
"Can we change the subject? I can think of several hundred thousand subjects I'd rather discuss. And, no, I haven't been raped, and I mean to keep it that way, thank you."
"How did you discourage Leroy?"
"I hit him in the face. I didn't slap. I hit. Then I kicked."
"And he gave in. Which proves my theory that—"
"We were changing the subject."
"You were the first one who started talking about rape," I said.
"I don't want to hear that word again!"
"Right."
"And I still think it was foul of you to go on digging when Leroy began to—to attack me."
"I apologize. I got wrapped up in what I was doing."
"What was that thing, anyway?"
"I wish I knew," I said. "Shall we go over to the lab and see if they have any answers yet?"
"We'd better not. They don't want us there."
"You're probably right."
"I didn't mean to do so much cranking just now, Tom," she said. "It's just that Leroy scared me. And when nobody helped out—"
"Are you going to complain to Dr. Schein about him?"
She shook her head. "Leroy won't bother me again. There's no sense making a scandal out of it."
I admire Jan's attitude. I also may as well admit here that I admire Jan, too. So far in these letters I've been a little sketchy about that. Part of it is because I've only been slowly discovering how interesting a girl Jan really is, as well as being attractive in a physical way and all that. The other part is—well, forgive me, Lorie —I've always been uneasy about discussing my love life with you. Not because it embarrasses me to share such things with you, but because I'm afraid of hurting you.
There. It's out. Though maybe I'll blot this from the cube before I give it to you.
What I'm trying to say is that I don't want to touch on certain aspects of life that are closed to you on account of your condition. Like love and marriage and such. It's bad enough that I can lead an active physical life, going places and doing things, and you can't. But the whole social and emotional thing—dating, falling in love, taking out a temporary or a permanent marriage—you're cut off from that, and it makes me queasy to remind you of it by talking about my own adventures with girls, which are adequate and numerous enough, even if Mom thinks that at my age I ought to be more serious with somebody.
Isn't that great? How tactfully I explain to you why it is that I don't want to tell you certain things—even going out of my way to say that I don't like reminding you of matters which I proceed to remind you of. Swell. I will certainly blot this section of the cube as soon as I can figure out some more roundabout way of making it clear why I'm vague about such stuff.
Do you know why I'm more interested in Jan than I was at the beginning of this expedition?
No, wise one, it isn't because I'm getting hard up after all these weeks. It's because she told me last week that she's part non-human. Her grandmother was a Brolagonian.
Somehow that makes her more exotic. And more desirable than if she were an ordinary Swede. I've always been fascinated by the slightly unusual.
Brolagonians are humanoid aliens, you know, with shiny gray skins and more toes and teeth than we have. They are one of about six or seven alien races in the galaxy that are able to mate successfully with Homo sapiens, owing to extremely close parallel evolution. It takes a lot of DNA manipulation and other genetic surgery to bring about a fertile mating, but it can be done, and it is done, despite the agitation of the League for Racial Purity and other reactionary groups.
Jan comes from a long line of diplomats. Her grandfather was our ambassador to Brolagon about sixty years ago and fell in love with a local girl. They married and had four children, and one of them was Jan's father. Who married a fellow Swede, but the Brolagonian genes are in the family for keeps.
Jan showed me some of the signs of her mixed blood. I blush to say I hadn't noticed any of them before.
"I have dark eyes," she said. "Instead of blue ones to go with the blonde hair. That isn't all that strange, really. But this is." She opened her sandals. She has six toes on each foot. Lovely toes, too. But six. "I also have forty teeth," she went on. "You can count them, if you don't believe me."
"I'll take it on faith," I said, as she gave me a dental yawn.
"My internal organs are also a little different. I don't have a large intestine. Take that on faith, too. The Brolagonian digestive process is different from yours. Also I have the Brolagonian birthmark, which is genetically dominant and is found on all Brolagonians and also all mixed-breeds. It's a very pretty birthmark, sort of geometrical and an interesting color, and if I ever get into trouble on a Brolagonian-controlled world all I have to do is show it, and it's as good as having a Brolagonian passport."
"Can I see it?" I asked.
"Don't be a lecher. It's in an embarrassing place."
"I have purely scientific curiosity. Besides, there aren't any embarrassing places, only embarrassed people. I didn't know you were so prudish."
"I'm not," said Jan. "But a girl's got to have some modesty."
"Why?"
"Beast!" she said, but she didn't sound very angry.
So I won't see her birthmark.
But I'm glad to know she has one. Call it snobbery, but I'm much taken by the news that Jan isn't entirely human. It seems so dull to confine yourself just to girls of your own species.
Of course, s
he's still desperately in love with Saul Shahmoon. Or says she is. I'm. not sure she means it. Just as a scientific experiment, I kissed her. To see if a girl who is one-fourth Brolagonian kisses in an exotic way.
I didn't detect anything in the least Brolagonian about her kissing. However, she did seem remarkably enthusiastic, considering she keeps brooding over her unrequited love for Saul. Maybe she's losing patience with him. Maybe the rig-a-dig with Leroy this morning got her temporarily unhinged in the libido. Maybe—
I definitely am going to blot all this stuff before Lorie hears it. Right now I'm simply talking to myself, which is as good a way as any of sorting out one's feelings and emotions and things on a day when one has not only made a major scientific discovery but also fallen at least slightly in love with an unusual and very attractive female-type vidj. But I don't want to make things any tougher for Lorie by giving her these little sidelights on archaeological romance. How lousy it must be to be stuck in a hospital room for your whole life, with a million different monitoring instruments taped to your skin or hooked right into your nervous system, and knowing that you'll never walk, kiss or be kissed, go on a date, marry, have a family, anything! She's got her TP . . . but is it enough? All this gets blotted.
* * *
Holy holocaust! Mirrik just galloped into view. He must have quit digging a couple of hours ago and gone off to his frostflower grove for some refreshment, because he's as looped as I've ever seen him. He came thundering by, gleaming with sweat and shouting what I suppose is Dinamonian poetry, and right now is doing a kind of war dance in front of the lab. I'd better get over there and steer him away before—
Oh, no!
He went into the lab! I can hear things crashing and smashing from here!
* * *
An hour later. Mirrik made quite a mess, but nobody cares about that now. Because it has also turned out that the machine I found is still in working order. It's a kind of movie projector.
Which is showing, right now, billion-year-old movies of the High Ones and their civilization.
SIX
September 6, 2375
Higby V
Mirrik has fool's luck. That caper yesterday afternoon should have finished him. Instead it made a hero out of him, in a zooby way, because everyone is now forgiving past sins.
It looked like disaster when he burst into the lab. The lab's a smallish bubble to start with, and it's set up for work, not to accommodate the leapings of a drunken Dinamonian. When I got there, Mirrik was trying to prance, which is a lost cause for a creature built like a rhinoceros, and with each clumsy bound he was knocking things off tables and breaking them. Dr. Horkkk had scrambled to the top of the bubble and was clinging there in terror. 408b was sitting on top of the computer; Dr. Schein had picked up one of the little lasers and was holding it like a dangerous weapon; and Pilazinool was hastily screwing his legs back in place and getting ready to defend himself. Mirrik loudly tried to explain that he had had a profound spiritual experience in the frostflower grove. "I have seen true wisdom!" he cried. "I have known revelation!"
He swung around and his rump knocked my High Ones globe to the floor.
It bounced. It gave off a sickening ringing sound.
And it turned on. Mirrik had loosened a jammed control.
We didn't know that, at first. We couldn't imagine what was happening. Mirrik's immense haunch was suddenly green instead of its usual blue, and figures appeared to be moving on his skin. That made no sense at all; but a moment later I began to see that he was serving as a screen for projected images, and that the images were coming out of the globe.
Then the field of projection widened to fill the entire lab. Strange, bizarre shapes flowed and coalesced along the walls. Nightmare scenes glistened in the air.
"Out of here!" Dr. Schein ordered. "Everyone out! Fast!"
The way he said it, I got the impression that something was going to explode. Mirrik must have thought so too, because he turned and fled at full gallop; the rest of us followed, all but Dr. Schein, Dr. Horkkk, and Pilazinool, who slammed the lab door shut behind us. Outside, we formed a stunned little group and tried to understand what had happened. Even Mirrik was sobered by it. He tottered off and plumped dismally to the ground, shaking his head and tapping his tusks.
An hour later we were allowed back into the lab.
"Here he is," Dr. Schein called out, as I entered. "The discoverer himself!" Then Mirrik came in, looking around a little sheepishly. "And here's the one who switched it on!"
So at last I was getting a little credit. And was forgiven, I guess, for the breathless way I got the globe out of the ground. Mirrik, too, had won amnesty for his chimpo behavior. At a time like this, who could hold grudges?
The globe was sitting on the workbench in the part of the lab where they had stacked up the inscription nodes. It was perfectly round, and looked more like some kind of sculpture than a machine, except for the control dials on one side. In the smooth parts between the raised strips and the buttons and knobs I could see my own reflection, with my face drawn out and narrowed like something in a funhouse mirror.
Dr. Schein had summoned everybody to the viewing. He had a This-Is-Something-BIG look on his face; fussy little Dr. Horkkk seemed positively aglow. Pilazinool had not only taken himself apart, as he usually did in moments of stress, but had absentmindedly put himself back together the wrong way, with his left hand on his right arm, and so on. It took me a moment to figure out why he looked so strange.
408b ambled forward at a signal from Dr. Schein. Its eyes were blinking rapidly in groups of three, which meant that things must really have been fissioning inside the Bellatrician's brain. It nodded jerkily, opened and closed its beak a few times, and finally said, "I have very little to explain, since I understand very little. The device you see before you functions as a projector but has no visible lenses or optical outlets. Nor does it require a screen for reception of its image. We also are unaware of its power source. It is controlled by this lever"—it tapped a little stud—"which we discovered only through accident. Darken the room, please." 408b picked up a movie camera and used several of its tentacles to focus and start it. "Since we do not know how long the globe will continue to function, nor whether we will be able to induce it to repeat any of the scenes it plays for us, we are making a complete film record each time we use it."
It touched the stud.
Greenish light blossomed from the globe. The zone of light expanded until it became a sphere more than twenty meters in diameter, practically filling our section of the lab. Suddenly we saw figures moving along the surface of the sphere of light.
High Ones.
What we were getting was a 360-degree movie, with ourselves inside the projection field. The globe was showing us five or six different sequences, each blurring imperceptibly into its neighbor. As we turned, certain sequences vanished and were replaced by others; but a few remained constant. It was a struggle to take in anything, because so much was going on. In the first few minutes I went spinning round and round in my place, trying to scan everything at once, and unhappy because one scene was vanishing even while I was trying to figure out what another one was all about. I didn't envy the scholars who would have to make sense out of all this. At least there was a camera with a fisheye lens stationed right next to the globe, filming the whole giboo in all 360 degrees. The only way to deal with an information glut, you know, is to make a record of all incoming data and then cope with each item, bit by bit, at your own data-handling speed.
After a little while I stopped rotating and concentrated on viewing each sequence at length, despite the frustration of having to miss all the rest of what was going on. I'll try to describe some of the pictures I saw.
One scene took place in a city of the High Ones. I think so, anyhow. I saw figures moving around, the dome-headed, six-limbed humanoids familiar to us from the plaque designs. Their skins were a deep, rich green in color and were covered by shining overlapping scales, h
inting at some kind of reptilian ancestry, perhaps. They glided rather than walked, seemed almost to float; I can't explain why they looked so graceful.
Their city consisted of sky-high pillars set perhaps fifty meters apart—I had no way of judging scale. High overhead, a kind of netting was strung to connect the tops of all the pillars. Buildings dangled from the netting like spiders from a spiderweb, each swaying gently at the end of a long cable, each at a different distance from the web above and each far from the ground. These suspended buildings mainly had a teardrop shape, although there were spherical, octagonal, and cubical ones too. Smaller cables provided transport from one dangling building to another; the air was full of High Ones riding up, down, or sideways, clinging to cables that appeared to move of their own will. A golden-green sunlight filtered through the top of the web, giving everything an undersea look. As I watched, night came; and suddenly the light of a thousand stars blazed down, and the buildings themselves began to move, sliding upward or downward on their cables, while High Ones in great numbers passed from one to another. I have seen alien scenes, Lorie, but nothing so alien as this. Those huge, graceful beings (somehow I think of them as much bigger than humans), those dangling houses, that eerie daylight and that dazzling starlight, all blended into something immensely strange.
The camera angles added to the effect. I would have thought that just about every way of filming a scene has already been used in the four centuries or so since Edison rigged up his first movie camera. But whoever had taken this billion-year-old flick had not seen things remotely the way a modern cameraman would; and so we had a constantly shifting viewpoint, now from above, now from underneath, now from within, the camera drifting around that weird city so freely that I had to grab the edge of the lab bench to keep from falling over in dizziness.