H.M. Hoover - Lost Star (15 page)

She shrugged and meandered up along the ramp, looking at the spots of light, trying to imagine what this place had been like when it was alive.

Where had they gone? Had they been outdoors the day the flood rushed down the valley? Did they all drown, or were they shut out when the hatches sealed in a final unexpected exile?

There was room here for hundreds of lumpies, maybe more, she thought. Now there were sixty-three.

The moongate door of an apartment lit as she passed. She checked; there was no one else about. The door split in half and slid open. Suspicious now, she looked for one of the computer's camera eyes and found it. The door was meant for her. She walked back, ill at ease but curious. What was Eteral to her?

One glance inside and she thought of the photographer and his kind. There was so much here that they could steal. The room was spacious but cluttered with belongings. It looked as if the occupants had just

stepped out and might return at any moment—until you saw the dust. She edged inside, feeling like an intruder in a stranger's home.

There was no furniture as such; floor and wall space were contoured into resting places. Anything not electronic was carpeted in the glowing stuff she'd seen throughout the ship. Sculpture and artwork delineated areas. One wall contained a viewscreen. In a ledge below the screen there was a bowllike depression full of beautiful glass marbles.

To keep from thinking much too much, she picked a dusty red marble from the bowl and polished it. As it warmed between her. fingers, it began to sing, a faint sweet song somehow off-key. A book? She put it back, knowing if she did not do so quickly she would keep it, and it was not hers. And yet it seemed to be.

Through a low arch was ... a bathroom? It contained a sunken oval vat the size of a small swimming pool, nacre-surfaced and iridescent. The hall was plainly a photo gallery. What must have been family, friends, and pets smiled out at her from the sunshine of a world long gone. Was this what the computer wanted her to see? She studied them a long time and turned away, saddened.

These things had belonged to vital, intelligent creatures. Now all were artifacts, museum pieces to' be analyzed by strangers. Their very discovery would limit their existence. That seemed wrong to her, this meddling in past lives one could never understand and only coarsen by interpretation.

In the last room everything was small. Built-in shelves held toys, small lumpie dolls, spacecraft, mounted leaves and insects, and strange stuffed toy animals. Lian stood in the doorway, imagining the child who had lived here, who had tried to bring its small world along. Suddenly it all became very personal. It was as if she were seeing her own room and all the precious possessions she couldn't leave behind.

"Did they tell
you
that you weren't going back?'

she whispered to the child across the years, remembering, never quite forgiving the fact that no one had told her. "Did you ever quit saying, 'Let's go home now'? Or did you just whisper it inside yourself, too, when you finally figured out the truth and knew there was no hope?" And then she began to cry as a child cries, in great heartbroken sobs for which there is no comfort.

Afterward, when she could think again about that morning, about that child's room, she knew it had all in some way shifted time for her and ended her own childhood. When she entered here she had walked back into the past, her own as well as theirs, had seen it whole, unalterable, and gained understanding. By the time she could return to Earth a generation of Earth time would have passed. What she longed for would be gone.
Things
might remain, a house and garden, artifacts, but all who lived within that human past lived now only in her mind. Like the lumpies, she had to start from
now,
to keep and to use what was good from the past, and forget about the rest.

She absentmindedly searched her pockets for a tissue and blew her nose, thinking that perhaps her choice of astrophysics had been her way of becoming a lumpie —of pretending to be what she was not in order to
¹
avoid—

There was a muffled thumping, and she started from her thoughts, then tiptoed down the hall. In the outer lounge stood Cuddles and Poonie, wide-eyed with worry. Naldo appeared in the entrance and gestured with both hands, then saw her. The relief that lit their faces was touching.

"Where were you?" each said in their language, and then everyone was smiling. The rest of the group was outside waiting, restless and eager to leave.

They walked the length of the sere and dusty garden. One by one the lights went out behind them. The smaller lumpies walked together now, detouring here and there, still curious, still excited. But the adults walked alone, reflectively. Like herself, Lian thought,

they Had been shaken by this place. She wondered what it was they had expected "Eteral" to be. And why?

The doorway out opened for them and automatically closed in their wake. The computer was still watching. Two passageways, another hatch, and they emerged into the hallway near the dome.

The Counter evaluated its efforts. It had provided access, atmosphere, and illumination. It had monitored its people and the Guardian. Energy draw: four percent with cells recharging. The minds had responded with interest, some historical recognition of equipment and places and the desire to learn. Enough power now existed to operate the training centers.

Considering the shock experiment: the people had reacted as expected, with unease and aversion. But, the Counter noted, the Guardian had thought of the
pleasure
the alien-with-white-fur-on-its-head would derive from seeing this tomb. It was this type of knowledge the Counter sought. There was no accounting for alien tastes.

If the Guardian's supposition was correct, perhaps the existence as well as the contents of this tomb could be used as a gift. Such a gift might serve two purposes: it would satisfy alien anatomical research curiosity without subjecting the living to danger; it would also clear out debris. The Counter had never condoned those deaths; if death had been the objective, much effort could have been spared by merely remaining on their home world.

The next move must be calculated. Note that the Guardian learned quickly and was worthy of some degree of trust. Note that its people feared humans more than other aliens. Note that the Guardian feared some humans for the people's sake. . . .

Like the lumpies, Lian had had enough of en-
closed spaces. She was on her way out when Scotty called from the dome. "Lian, is that you?"

"No."

"Can you come in here and listen to this? Bring your friends."

Only the trio would come with her. The others wandered away down the corridor.

Scotty, Zorn, and other tolats had set up shop to translate in the dome itself. Lian saw a folding table and a chair for Scotty, a portable terminal and other equipment.

"You're going to work in here?"

"We thought we'd try it. The lumpies never come into camp, except Billy, so we'd never hear them if they did talk," Scotty explained. "And I thought maybe playing this recording might inspire them or their computer to help us."

"Also it is raining. Roof of our workshop drips," said Zorn. "Tolats do not like wet equipment."

"No. I imagine not." Lian's mind was not quite witK them as she looked up at the rain-streaked glass overhead. The sight of clouds and living trees moving in the wind outside made her feel better.

"I'm sorry," said Scotty. "Did I intrude? Were you going someplace with the group?"

"We were going out for air. We've been exploring."

"I guessed that. You're all grubby as miners. Find anything interesting?"

"Talk later," suggested Zorn. "Tsri Scott said you heard gray people speak and maybe understand. Listen." He turned on the recorder. The lumpies smiled at the sound of their own voices and sat down to listen. Lian joined them. "Can you slow it down?" she said. "As slow as possible without distortion."

"Who knows distortion?" said Zorn, but did as she asked. The voices deepened but became no more intelligible to her.

"Is that gray Cuddles' voice?"

Before Lian could answer, Cuddles smiled and nodded.

"What is gray Cuddles saying?"

"I don't know," Lian admitted. "Scotty, how long will it take you if you have to translate the hard way —word for word?"

"The hard way?" Scotty grinned. "A year, perhaps longer. I'm not sure of one printed symbol so far—"

"Display screen," Zorn interrupted. His gripper claw pointed to the Counter, where the panel was sliding open.

"Lis-son!" The hidden amplifiers boomed the sibilant word, and everybody jumped at the volume. "lis-son!" it repeated. "I will talk and you can all smile. . . As it spoke, those odd, sporelike characters appeared on the screen, and Scotty's forehead furrowed in attention. "Are those words—printed words—or an image of the sound?" she wondered aloud to herself.

"It's repeating something I said—" Lian started to explain when the word, "Lis-son," boomed again. She obediently shut up.

Several tolats edged closer to the golden machine and peered at it as if searching for its mouth. The other staff members came hurrying into the dome. They were followed by lumpies and Dr. Farr, struggling to get through the sudden crush at the gate. "You're going to have to lower your speakers," the man said. "You're deafening the entire—

"Lis-son!" the Counter repeated. "I—will—translate!" Camera eyes focused on Lian and on the crowded ramp. The volume lowered. "I—-will—translate!"

Dr. Farr stopped short.
A
tolat had to jump over him to avoid a direct crash. The man's face went pale.

The Counter spoke in singing tones and the lumpies answered. Then Naldo held out his hand to Zorn, took the recorder, and pressed the proper buttons.

At first haltingly and then with greater confidences, the Counter translated into Lian's language and in tones oddly close to her voice the recording Cuddles had made when the trio had borrowed the recorder.

"... I am the prime historian and retain the images,
old
and vivid, perspectives
down
remembered corridors
of
time. . . . We are Toapa from a world that circled Ohran."

Cuddles told of a time in flight, long before any
of
this generation was born. Just how long ago he
could
not say, but it was remembered as peaceful and safe.

"The peace ended with the landing on this world."

The Counter brought the great ship down with almost pinpoint accuracy, but even so, its bulk grazed the river and plowed across the valley. Its jets denuded and pulverized a wide strip of land between the river and the landing site. Its great mass depressed the soil and rock beneath it.

The rainy season came. Water draining from the mountains swelled the river. It overflowed at its weakest point and made a channel of that strip. A wall of rushing water, mud, and tree trunks swirled down upon them. The main hatch was open and twisted off.

Water poured into the ship. Many drowned or were swept away to die.

"Illness came, and bidernecks, and despair."

Cuddles was not sure, but he thought the flood came many times in those early years.

Before the flood the people used the planet's surface as a park, a place to play, to escape the confines of the ship. They did not want to believe they would have to live out there, to take care of themselves. But they began to try because they had no choice. They planted orchards from the ship's dying gardens. They computer-analyzed and tasted plants. They learned of hunger, cold, and fear—things no amount of empathy could cure.

Mud gradually buried the ship. The Counter's power waned. It could not function properly, could not care for them. Hatches shut and remained shut for lack of power. The ship was vacated as a death trap. Only a select few had ever entered the dome. Within a generation those few were dead. The existence of the dome itself was almost forgotten. The Counter remained in the songs and oral history of its people as a sort of god that failed, through no fault of its own.

In time, said Cuddles, many of their people left the area of the ship. Other races discovered the world. His people tried to communicate with them and failed. But. they could understand the aliens' thoughts. Some of them died, killed by despair. They had known they were helpless, but not that they were contemptible, that their very appearance put them beyond consideration as sentient beings. Some were shot for sport and some for their beautiful soft hides; others were shipped to zoos. Some went mad and wandered off into the wilderness.

The few who remained and were sane came back to this place. They taught themselves a sign language. They never sang again where they might be overheard, never showed any sign of feeling, any kind of thought or intelligence.

'To survive they tried to become what other aliens wanted to believe they were—fat and stupid animals."

When she heard that part, Lian began to cry. Scotty gave her a paper hankie, then on impulse gave one each to the three lumpies and used one herself. All five wiped their eyes while the tolats stared.