Probability Sun (12 page)

Kaufman had a sudden unsettling thought. “You got him to react to Commander Grafton, the highest-ranking officer aboard.”

“Yes. It was a failure. The Faller’s reaction was fear and anger, not increased willingness to communicate. We’re the enemy, after all.”

Kaufman couldn’t resist. “What were Grafton’s body reactions?”

Marbet laughed again. “The same fear and anger. Neither of them knew it, and if you ever repeat this I’ll deny it, but that’s actually the moment human and Faller most resembled each other.”

I’ll bet they did
, Kaufman thought, remembering Grafton’s stiffness and outrage at Marbet’s work. But all he said aloud was, “So what was your breakthrough?”

“I went the other way. The Faller wouldn’t communicate with human power. He disdained human inferiors. None of us could ever be equal to Fallers, in his mind. That left only one option.”

All at once Kaufman knew what she meant. His stomach clenched.

Marbet said, “You don’t like it, I can see. And nobody knows anything about Faller females, not even whether they’re sentient. But I had the computer create various female holos based on the sex differences most common among galactic species, if not exactly universal. Smaller body. Softer wherever the Faller seemed hard. That sort of thing. I left the female holos unclothed, to eliminate rank considerations, and sort of blurry, since I had absolutely no idea what the sex organs themselves might look like. And the Faller responded, with the first body signs of pleasure I had observed. Fleeting, of course, and involuntary … he knows perfectly well that it’s a holo. But enough reaction for me to build a partial vocabulary of pleasure and lust, and to see what bodily vocabulary on the part of the holo provoked it.”

“And then you learned the vocabulary yourself.”

“Yes.”

Kaufman didn’t like it. Marbet, presenting herself as a Faller female, or a slavish clumsy copy of one, probably naked … He strove to hide what he felt, and knew he failed.

She watched him keenly. Finally she said, “Grafton doesn’t know I’m doing this part.”

“No.”

“He would react the same way you are, only more so. A lot more so. But, Lyle, I’m not pretending to be a Faller female. The prisoner isn’t stupid. I’m merely trying to present myself in the way that will least arouse his instinctive hostility, and most create a possible willingness to communicate. Animal handlers on Earth do the same thing, you know. In fact—” She hesitated, decided to go ahead “—so do you, in your work in diplomacy.”

True enough. Kaufman nodded, reluctantly. “Did it work? Was he more willing to talk to you?”

“Yes. I’m still the enemy, of course, but I’m an enemy that arouses positive physiological responses rather than hostile ones. And make no mistake, Lyle—the instinctive physiological component in Faller behavior is much stronger than in humans. The Fallers are much less adaptable than we are. In a real sense, they’re prisoners of their biology.”

“Which is why they kill us without negotiation in the first place. All right, Marbet. What has he told you?”

“He hasn’t ‘told’ me anything yet.” She sounded exasperated. “I thought you understood, Lyle. It’s a nonverbal channel of communication, and so far a tenuous one. But I’m using it to tell him things.”

“Like what?”

“To convey that humans want to talk, to stop the killing. I use holos, pantomime, anything I can think of. In a few minutes I’ll show you.”

“Marbet…” Appalled, Kaufman couldn’t think how to go on. “Marbet, you—
we
—aren’t empowered to negotiate peace!”

“I know that,” she said, with dignity. “I understand that I’m supposed to learn what I can of Faller culture and, by implication, Faller military strategy. And if I get really lucky, uncover the secrets of the beam-disrupter shield. Oh, and it would probably also be nice if I walked on water.”

Kaufman tried to imagine what discussions had looked like between her and Grafton.

After a moment she said, “I’m sorry. Tension, I guess, plus lack of sleep.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Kaufman said. “You’ve done amazing work, Marbet, and of course you’re right when you say there’s no telling where it will lead. It’s a stunning achievement, and a real contribution to both science and the war.”

She said flatly, “You’re very good at your job.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did. But I like you better when you’re being straightforward. I’m going in to him now. You can observe on this viewscreen.”

“All right,” he said, but she’d already vanished through a side door. Kaufman stepped up to the viewscreen.

Behind it, the Faller looked as Kaufman remembered, a deformed log-like human with three tentacle-like arms, tied to the back wall. Kaufman studied the noseless face, but could see no change of expression. A door opened and Marbet entered the prisoner’s cell.

For a suspended second Kaufman wasn’t sure it was her. Or even human. But of course it was Marbet, a Marbet moving somehow differently, with an alien gait, her arms held at a peculiar angle and her fingers splayed. Bent-kneed, somehow fatter … she couldn’t be fatter. It was an illusion. She wore nothing but a yellow strip of cloth around her hips, hiding her genitals … maybe the cloth was padded and that’s why she looked fatter. No, it was something in the way she held herself, the way she moved. And what he’d thought was cloth wasn’t. It was a blurred holo projection suggesting cloth without being specific about texture, composition, or draping.

Marbet moved very close to the Faller. She must be right up against the invisible barrier that separated her atmosphere from his. The viewscreen recorders were placed such that Kaufman had a clear three-quarter profile of her face. It looked even stranger than her body. She was moving her facial muscles in ways that looked grotesque to him, contorting her features.

The alien contorted his, although not as much as she did. Still, Kaufman felt his breath catch. He was seeing the first human-Faller conversation in twenty years of war.

No, he had to remind himself, not a conversation. No ideas were being exchanged, not even basic nouns on the level of “Me Tarzan, you Jane.” Even as Kaufman watched, the alien’s face returned to passivity. No, not completely … there was still something, some twitches, some meaning he had no way of beginning to read.

Then Marbet held up one arm and began to gesture.

A genuine shock ran through Kaufman’s body. The angle Marbet held her arm, the way she splayed her fingers, the awkward way one finger remained folded back (the aliens were four-fingered) all looked strange and grotesque to him. But the movements he recognized. Between remedial genemods and nanomeds, there were no deaf people on Mars. But Mars was not the Solar System. In the slums of Earth, and on religious colonies where settlers forbade both genetic engineering and nanotech, Kaufman had seen deaf children do what Marbet did now. Marbet was teaching the alien American Sign Language.

Or a version of it, anyway.
I-want-not-hurt-you
.

The alien’s face moved slightly, muscle shifts Kaufman could not interpret. Could Marbet?

She went on a few minutes more, then executed a sort of dipping bow. Something happened, then. A crest began to rise at the back of the alien’s neck, a thin layer of flesh that rose rigid a few inches and then abruptly collapsed. But Kaufman had seen it, and seen things like it in other species, some of them Terran. It was an involuntary mating display, quickly suppressed.

Lust.

The alien missed the females of his own species.

Kaufman closed his eyes. When he brought Marbet Grant here, he’d never expected anything like this. Not that he’d had clear expectations, but still … alien mating behavior did not form a part of military weapons-project reports. They were a long, long way from beam-disrupter shields and probability wave functions.

Marbet stood beside him. She said quietly, “So you see how it is, Lyle. I wanted you to see for yourself. There’s no way he can answer me with his hand tied like that.”

Kaufman waited.

“You have to convince Grafton and his xenobiologists to let one of the Faller’s hands go free.”

There was no diplomatic way to say it, no quibbling or evasiveness that she would not see through. Kaufman braced himself.

“No, Marbet. It’s impossible.”

“But—”

“No.”

TEN

GOFKIT JEMLOE

E
nli Pek Brimmidin watched the Terrans walk toward the gate of the Voratur household and felt the headache begin between her eyes. They were not yet in hearing distance, and still the head pain began. That was what Terrans did to people.

No one else felt it, of course. Pek Voratur and his wife Alu Pek Voratur, their grown sons, the household priest—all stood calmly, smiling above their armloads of hospitality flowers. The servants of the First Flower had declared Terrans real, the possessors of souls, and so there was no unreality here to bring on head pain. All were in harmony, sharing reality.

Except Enli.

Enli, who had spent time alone with the Terrans of the previous expedition, who had learned their difficult speech, who had seen them at their worst, and their best. Terrans were so frightening! They could deny reality to each other, fight with each other, love those of each other they should not … all apparently without head pain. But only Enli really understood this, because one of them had died to save the others and to save World, and so the servants of the First Flower had declared all humans real. Thus, they
were
real. And they presented no break in shared reality for anyone except Enli, who had hoped to never set eyes on any of them again.

And yet—see what the Terrans did to people!—her heart leapt in gladness when she saw that Ann Pek Sikorski was one of the Terrans making their way to dinner at the house of Pek Voratur. Gentle Pek Sikorski, kind and soft-spoken, with the same long fair headfur looped in shining curves. Enli had always secretly liked the Terrans’ headfur, weird though it was. And somebody—probably Pek Sikorski—had told the humans to hide their lack of neckfur. High curving collars—rather pretty—decently covered their naked necks.

“You are welcome to the house of Voratur!” boomed Pek Voratur, and Enli translated. Masses of hospitality flowers, orange and yellow, were exchanged. There were four visitors: Pek Sikorski; Lyle Pek Kaufman (they had such strange names!), the head of the Terran household who had spoken to Enli yesterday; and two servants, a man and a woman. The woman was the hard-faced servant who had pointed a
gun
at Pek Voratur yesterday. Only Enli had known the word, or the reality; she was the only person on World who had ever seen a Terran
gun.
Pek Voratur had not even recognized it as a danger.

The head pain grew worse.

But not intolerable. Enli had been afraid it would be, but something had happened to her during the Terrans’ previous visit. They had changed her. They had shown her other realities than the one shared on World (who had imagined such a thing!), and made her live in them for a time, and left her knowing that she could tolerate the existence of those other realities if she had to. No one else on World lived knowing those things. Only Enli Pek Brimmidin, real and yet not of shared reality, because of the Terrans.

It was possible she would never forgive them.

*   *   *

“It is good to see you, Enli,” said Ann Pek Sikorski, as the two walked side by side, a little behind the others. “How is your soil?”

“The soil is good today, Pek Sikorski.”

“Ann. Please.”

Enli did not want to call this alien by her childname. And yet Pek Sikorski asked her to, setting off mild head pain. See what the Terrans did to people!

“We have not seen each other for three years,” Pek Sikorski said, sharing reality. She always did have the best manners of all the Terrans.

“Yes, three years,” Enli said. “You will want to see David Pek Allen’s grave.”

Did Pek Sikorski look startled? Yes. Why? Surely she knew Pek Allen had died on World. And yet, the other Terrans had left so abruptly in their flying boat …

“Will you take me to his grave tomorrow?” Pek Sikorski said.

“If Pek Voratur wishes. I am temporarily in his household.” Yes, and resenting it. She missed Gofkit Shamloe. She missed her sister Ano and Ano’s children. She missed Calin, dancing with Calin, whatever else might have happened between her and Calin if she had remained a few days longer in Gofkit Shamloe … But the servants of the First Flower had seen that shared reality was otherwise.

“Does David’s grave have a flower altar?” Pek Sikorski asked.

“A beautiful flower altar,” Enli said, “as befits one who died for others.”

“I would like to share that reality fully with you at his grave, Enli.”

“We will share the garden of our heart,” Enli said formally. They walked through an open arch into one of the tens and tens of rooms in the Voratur household. Pek Voratur gestured, and everyone sat down. Only Enli and Pek Sikorski spoke both Terran and World, however imperfectly, and Enli prepared herself to translate.

“This room is very beautiful,” Pek Kaufman said.

“You are welcome to the best flowers of my household,” Pek Voratur said, and indeed they sat in the loveliest and most expensive room Enli had ever seen. The curving walls represented the fullest bloom of the wallers’ art, covered with thousands of preserved and flattened flowers faded to soft subtle colors. The flowing curves of the low wooden table, the rich embroidery on the floor pillows (they had to have come from the Seury Islands), the heavy pewter dishes—all created by master artisans. Nowhere was there a straight line, or an ugly blunt corner. And beyond the open arched windows flourished the magnificent Voratur gardens, famous for fifty villages around and even in the capital itself.

Rich dishes were served, foods Enli rarely saw in her own village of Gofkit Shamloe. How Ano would love this food! Greedy Ano, who ate and ate and never got fat. Well, Ano was beautiful anyway. Enli tried to eat, but found she could not. Being around the Terrans wilted her stomach.