Six Moon Dance (27 page)

The Questioner had anchored herself to a supporting member at the first sound. After a vertiginous moment during which everything outward and inward seemed to be in simultaneous though uncoordinated transit, everything quieted.

“Settle, settle, settle,” demanded the communicator, belatedly. “Taking passengers.”

The Questioner did not settle. She went to the viewport and stared outward as the ship slowly turned. The new passengers were an anonymous pod of light moving away from a smaller ship. Their own ship turned slightly; there were scraping sounds, thuds and clatters; then a puff of vapor marked the disconnect. It had been done well, so undoubtedly the Gablian commander had been at the helm. The Gablians were the only personnel aboard who could be trusted to do anything right. Every mankind individual on board had been politically appointed, as part of her entourage, and none of them were qualified for anything.

The other ship grew larger as it moved toward and above them, off on some tangent of its own. Some time later, two voices were heard in the corridor, interrupted by a third at the door: the horn-headed Gablian purser, saying in his formal way: “Great Discerner, may I present Honorable Ellin Voy, Honorable Gandro Bao.”

The Questioner turned toward the door, nodding slightly to acknowledge the deep bows of the two newcomers.

“Unimpeachable One,” murmured Gandro and Ellin in duet.

“Well come in, come in. Let me look at you.” She did look at them, from head to foot, each and both. They were dressed in simple tunics and soft shoes, he dark, she light. “Dancers, are you?”

“Yes, Spotless One,” murmured Ellin.

“Though we are still having no idea what that has to do with anything,” commented Bao.

“All in good time,” said the Questioner. “I set out the specifications myself, and I always have reasons for everything I specify. Also, you may drop that Spotless, Unimpeachable stuff. The Gablians allow no informality, but I find that even imaginative honorifics soon pall. If I am what those titles proclaim, it is purely good design.”

“We are wondering how to address you,” murmured Bao.

She shrugged. “I am a Questioner. Or, as the Gablians call me, a Discerner. I am an examiner and judge. My official role is as ethics monitor of human worlds, but I was designed to be more than that. Haraldson the Beneficent framed the existence of humankind—which category includes some mankind—as arising from intelligence, civility, and the pursuit of justice. He wanted justice pursued with beauty and joy. I was created as a means toward this end. It is my task to find out how mankind can live most justly, most beautifully and joyfully, assuming intelligence is capable of such a discovery. What you call me is irrelevant, but I do hope you enjoy cards.”

“We are being very good at cards, both!”

Questioner nodded. “Your ability with cards is one reason I picked the two of you from a lengthy list.”

“Hold fast, hold fast, hold fast,” blared the ship. “Entering wormhole, entering wormhole, entering wormhole, now …”

Gandro picked Ellin up from the floor.

“Sorry,” Ellin muttered. “I’m not used to that, yet.” She took a deep breath. “Questioner, Ma’am, before we forget. We have a package for you.”

Gandro Bao nodded, burrowed into his pack, and came up with a small packet which he passed to Questioner with a humble bow.

Ellin said, “It’s from a Flagian trader, Ma’am. He left the ship the last stop back, but he said to tell you it contains the information in which you expressed an interest.”

Wordless with surprise, Questioner took the packet and turned it over in her hands. It wasn’t large. From the size and shape, she judged it was a data cube, one capable of some experiential recording. Well. This could be enlightening.

She put the packet in one of her capacious storage pockets while giving them both a long looking-over.

“Let us see if you can be more amusing than the rest of my so-called staff.”

She moved from the bench to a large, padded chair that had obviously been made to fit, pressed a button on its arm, and waited while a table emerged from the floor and rose into position before her. She gestured at them to bring chairs, while she herself took a deck of cards from a compartment in the table and began shuffling it with lightninglike speed.

“Are you always able to solve problems?” Ellin asked.

“Sometimes I solve them,” said Questioner, “even when I don’t.”

“This is being conundrum,” murmured Bao.

“Not really. In all humility, I assert that great peace of mind has been brought to the settled worlds by the mere fact of my existence! Divisive matters, the discussion of which had previously led to widespread civil disorder, are now referred to me for decision, and my decision is often so long postponed that people become accustomed to the status quo.”

“You delay on purpose?” asked Ellin.

“I do.” She nodded. “On matters which have no solution, I offer no solution, though I always claim to be on the verge of one whenever the matter comes up. Though Haraldson did not foresee that his Questioner would serve the function of conflict damper, perhaps it is as well that I do. Trouble is forestalled when both law and custom are required to await my decisions.”

She stared pensively at the two newcomers. “Do sit down. I’ll deal. I picked up these cards on Fanancy. They are in all respects similar to Old Earthian, Western-style decks, except for the names and colors of the suits. Here the four suits are labor, management, love, and death, signified by the shovel, the club, the heart, and the coffin, the colors silver, black, red, and brown.” She dealt rapidly, four hands, the fourth to an empty chair.

Ellin picked up her hand. She seemed to have an ace of labor and an ace of management, together with three face cards in love and death, and an assortment of minor management cards. “What game are we playing?” she asked.

“Three-handed Whustee,” said Questioner. “I bid one shovel.” Then, without waiting to hear their bids, she continued on the prior topic. “I sometimes grow weary of delay, however, and at such times I am tempted to rule arbitrarily, as God is said to do, to put an end to matters.”

“It is possible, tempting you?” asked Bao, his jaw dropped. Catching her peremptory gaze he murmured, “Two … ah, coffins.”

“It is not possible to tempt me,” said Questioner. “It is possible only for me to imagine the consequences of temptation.”

“Pass,” said Ellin.

“How long have you been the Questioner?” Bao asked.

“I bid three shovels.” She folded her hand and tapped it significantly on the tabletop. “We are the second assembly to hold the office. Two hundred sixty years ago, Questioner I was melted down in the cataclysm known as the Flagian Miscalculation, somewhere out near the Bonfires of Hell. The Flagians’ attempt to prove that matter was illusory succeeded only in redistributing that matter rather widely. We, Questioner II, took the place of our vaporized predecessor. Together, we have been questioning for over seven hundred standard years. We have learned a great deal about health and contentment, prosperity and pleasure, and we have found no reason to change Haraldson’s edicts defining opinion and providing for justice, though there are races that think differently.”

“Pass,” murmured Bao, into the momentary silence.

“Are there really?” cried Ellin, eyes wide. “Pass.”

Questioner chuckled, a mechanical sound. “My hand to play, I think. Turn up the other hand, please, it gets to be the macarthy. Fah. I hoped it would have the ace.

“To answer your question, yes. A century or so ago we encountered the Borash, no two of whom agree on anything, but who tell us it is their destiny to rule all other races. Luckily, they lack either the weapons or the will to enforce their doctrine. Before that it was the Korm, a hive race of absolutely uniform opinion. Only their worker class ‘think,’ and they can only think one thing at a time. The Korm believe they have been created to travel to another galaxy with a great message. They devote all their resources toward that eventuality, and they don’t even talk to us unless we have something their engineers say they need for the ships they have been building for the last four millennia. The ships have yet to be tested, and the great message, so I understand, is still to be determined by the committee that has been working on it for several thousand years.”

She paused for a moment, scanning their play thus far. “… three, four, and five are mine. Now I will regret that ace!” She smiled. “Then, of course, there are the Quaggi.”

Bao frowned in concentration. “May I be asking what is Quaggi?”

“The Quaggi are an interstellar race of beings who, I infer, need the radiation in the vicinity of a star in order to reproduce. As a matter of fact, we may get to see the remains of one on this trip.”

“Remains?” faltered Ellin.

“Of a Quaggida, or Quaggima. I think this one was killed during mating. Or perhaps only injured so badly that she died. Whichever, she should be lying on a moonlet of the outmost planet of the system we’re about to visit. There’s no atmosphere, and if it hasn’t been blown apart by meteorites, it should still be there.”

“I don’t think I’ve even heard of Quaggi,” said Ellin.

“I have heard it suggested that the Quaggi, a star-roving race, have succeeded in reinventing Euclidean geometry, and, since they have no actual experience of plane surfaces, consider it an arcane lore fraught with metaphysical significance.”

“But,” murmured Ellin, “you’re not suggesting we should change our ways to emulate any of those races, are you?” She placed her ace of management on the Questioner’s CEO, took the trick and led with the queen of labor.

“Clever girl. You had the ace all along. No, we should not emulate other people. We probably couldn’t emulate the Korm. Any mankind person worth his salt can simultaneously incubate whole clutches of ideas that are either contradictory or mutually exclusive. For instance, mankind has persuaded itself that its race is perfectible, though it hasn’t changed physically, mentally, or psychologically since the Cro-Magnon. Mankind has also persuaded itself that each individual is unique, though each person shares ninety-nine and ninety-nine one hundredths of his DNA and roughly the same percentage of his ideas with thousands or even millions of other persons.”

Bao, with a sidelong glance at Ellin, said with an ironic grin, “It is being true that persons want very much to be singular and individual.”

Ellen made a face at him. “I have complained about being a clone, that’s all.” She took the next trick, leading with the jack of labor, a union organizer.

The Questioner nodded ponderously. “Individuality is more imagined than real. Persons are more alike than they care to admit. On Newholme, however, their social structure is based upon the theory that each family line is unique.”

“Is that what we’ll ask about on Newholme?” asked Ellin. “Individuality?”

The last few cards clicked down, with Ellin the undisputed winner of the hand.

“Among other things.” The Questioner rocked slowly in her chair, considering. “Very nicely played, my dear. You deal the next hand.”

Bao took a deep breath, shaking his head. “The briefing documents are also mentioning an indigenous race. Precolonization reports are saying no indigenes. This is most confusing.”

Questioner smiled grimly, with determination. “Confusing, yes. The entire surface of that planet had supposedly been examined up and down and sideways before any settlement was allowed. If there are now indigenes, someone falsified a report, or failed to file one, or the confusion is intentional, designed to mislead me. I always find the truth, however, no matter how many red herrings colonists drag across my path.”

She picked up her hand and smiled a tigerish smile. “It is likely there have been grave infractions of the edicts on Newholme. Every few years I do find a planet that must be punished for its infractions, with all its people.”

“Would you really punish a whole world?” Bao asked with some trepidation.

“If it were indicated. It is too early to know what is indicated. We are going to Newholme to see what is true and what is false, and in either case, what can be done about it.”

“I’ve read every document, but I don’t understand what any of them have to do with us,” murmured Ellin as she picked up her own cards. “Why did you ask for dancers?”

The Questioner nodded. “It wouldn’t be in the documents because it was an informal report, but one of my spies has mentioned that the indigenes are dancers.”

Ellin drew in a deep breath. “So?”

The Questioner said sagaciously, “Trust is strengthened by similarity of interest, either apparent or real. If they are dancers, they may talk to other dancers. If they dance for you, you will dance for them….”

Ellin frowned, unconvinced. “If nobody knows anything about this indigenous race, how does anyone know that they dance?”

The Questioner shrugged, an unandroidish movement. “How did my spy find out? He probably sat in a tavern, listening to drunken conversation and putting two and two together. Or he bribed someone. Or, he planted a few mobile sensors. I didn’t ask how, specifically. I do know he is a reliable source.”

They played out the game, which Questioner won, putting her in a good humor, after which Bao and Ellin were shown to their own quarters, where they huddled together in their salon, whispering.

“You were dealing her a very good hand,” said Bao.

“I was dealing her from the bottom of the deck,” mimicked Ellin, with a smirk. “I learned cheating from one of the actors. What do you think of her or it?”

“She is being obdurate, I think. Very severe. And while you are being so free with the cards, she was winning from me five credits.”

“Poor thing. I’ll owe it to you.” She paused, looking at him thoughtfully. “Gandro Bao, will
we
have to do something dreadful? Like recommend the wiping out of all the mankind on the world?”

Gandro Bao shook his head, though he was no less troubled than she. “We are not recommending, Ellin. She is doing that. All we are doing is finding things out.”

They stayed together a while longer, taking reassurance from one another’s company, before seeking the equal comfort of real beds after shower baths in real water. Though the Questioner needed neither, she made sure that her assistants were well looked after.