Sanctuary in The Sky (5 page)

IX

Shaken,
Vykor withdrew. His head was whirling. It was indubitably Ferenc—though he looked very different dressed as he was now, in high gold lam6 boots, rust-colored pants and a shirt of red and green shot silk that changed color as he moved. He had had his hair dressed in another style, too. But it was certainly Ferenc.

The Pag to whom he was talking was a civilian, and had her hair instead of shaving her scalp as the military did. She was somewhat smaller than the average—about Ferenc’s own height—and wore a severe black blouse and the inevitable Pag tights. There were silver symbols on the lapels of her blouse that probably indicated her official status. Only one of her front teeth was filed.

Straining his ears, Vykor managed to catch scraps of the conversation.

“. . . see things differently from outside,” Ferenc was saying. "When one’s compelled to stand on one’s dignity all the time, it’s easy to accept attitudes which are officially authorized and not to see that they’re basically unsatisfactory.”

The Pag laughed. She had a rich contralto voice. “As a matter of fact,” she said, “it works on both sides. We won’t ever settle our disagreements by trying to out-shout each other; we’d do better to . .

A blast of music from a nearby dancing floor interrupted her words. Vykor waited, but this was a loud and energetic dance that was being played, and it would be some minutes at least before he could hear more.

He didn’t know whether to be furious at Ferenc for his double behavior, or pleased to discover that what he had taken for a typical dogmatic Cathrodyne officer was proving to be a comparatively tolerant human being.

He looked around him cautiously. He was fairly certain that even after seeing him daily during the twelve-day trip, Ferenc would fail to recognize him in his blue and red mask. Cathrodynes often did not trouble to distinguish between individual members of the subject races. He could go around the bush and sit down at another bench on the other side of the clear space from Ferenc and the Pag, and from there he would be able to see them clearly. But he would probably not be able to sit close enough to go on eavesdropping. They didn’t seem to be keeping their voices down deliberately, of course . . .

He decided to walk around once, at least, and then make up his mind whether to sit down where he could watch and call for a drink to account for his presence, or to return here. He took a path through the bushes that would bring him out the other side of the clearing where they sat; the bushes were taller than he was and were thick, of a dark green hue.

He was just turning along a branch of the path that led to the bench he was making for, when another familiar figure came briefly into view from the other path and walked uncertainly out into the clearing.

Ligmer, the archeologist, carrying a thick portfolio of papers and a transparent bag full of photographs.

He went hesitantly across the open space, and the Pag who had been talking with Ferenc rose to her feet, smiling. Her face was really quite finely carved for someone as naturally oversize and coarse as a Pag, and the single filed tooth in the middle of her smile struck a jarring note. Vykor, slipping into the bench-seat opposite, thought wistfully of Raige’s miniature beauty.

“I—I see you two know each other,” Ligmer said in a
rather cautious tone. Ferenc scowled, with a sudden return of his habitual manner.

“We got to talking,” he said gruffly.

“We’ve been here only a short while,” the Pag supplemented. “I was expecting you earlier, Ligmer.”

“Yes. Well—uh—I’m sorry, but I was delayed. I couldn’t lay my hands on a document I wanted.” Ligmer’s astonishment made him stumble over his words. "No, don’t go,” he added to Ferenc. “Not unless . . .”

Ferenc swigged the last of his liquor and got to his feet. He wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand. “You have business together, I guess,” he said brusquely. “Don’t let me get in the way.”

He gave a stiff bow and walked away. Ligmer followed him with his eyes until he rounded a thick clump of bushes and vanished from sight. “Well, I’ll be confounded,” he said in puzzled tones. “I don’t understand it at all.”

“Understand what?” the Pag inquired, sitting down again and stretching out her long legs. “He seems quite a decent type for a military man—and one of yours, at that.”

“It isn’t that simple, Usri,” said Ligmer, recollecting himself and likewise sitting down. “I shipped out with that man, and he behaved like a real diehard, with all the orthodox cliches ready to pop up at the press of the right button. To find him actually talking with a Pag, and politely, is un- thinkable
!
”

Vykor could just catch the words, by straining his ears; he nodded automatically at the last sentence.

Usri’s face showed puzzlement as deep as Ligmer’s. “Then . . . then he probably has a reason for acting like this,” she said shrewdly. “You probably threw a wrench into the works of some deep-laid scheme or other by breaking up the conversation. Well, never mind—we have our own business to attend to.” She reached under the bench on which she sat and took out a file of documents as thick as Ligmer’s, selected some, spread them out on the table, and looked up expectantly.

And at that moment Vykor became aware that he was no longer alone on his bench. Sitting at the other end, looking
perfectly self-possessed and relaxed, and stroking the black fur of his pet, was Lang.

“Good day to you," Lang said, with a humorous twitch of his mouth, as soon as he saw that Vykor had recognized him. “I think you’re the steward who looked after us during the trip from Cathrodyne, aren’t you?”

So the mask wasn’t working on him, at any rate. It was foolish to deny the truth; Vykor nodded and sat dumb.

“Allow me to buy you some refreshment, then,” Lang proposed. “You gave us very good service; your Cathrodyne shipping lines are among the best I have encountered.”

He signaled a waiter by pressing a bell on the arm of the bench before Vykor had a chance either to accept or refuse, and went on, “You were watching that peculiar little episode on the other side of the clearing, were you not?”

Vykor glanced over at Ligmer and Usri; the scholarly face and the face with the filed tooth marring its smile were bent together over a photograph, studying it with a magnifying glass. He nodded again.

“Strange, wouldn’t you have said?” Lang pursued. “I was under the impression that Officer Ferenc would have died rather than be seen talking in friendship with a Pag—particularly with a Pag who was an evil influence on this young ar- cheologist whose views he objected to.”

Vykor found his tongue at last. “Distinguished sir, it was not only you or I who found it peculiar. Ligmer also seemed .shaken.”

“And with reason, I think.” Lang saw that the waiter he had summoned was waiting for orders, and gestured inquiringly at Vykor.

“Distinguished sir, you owe me nothing,” Vykor protested. “I was doing my job and no more—”

“But no less, either. Many people do less.” Lang snapped his fingers. “Two fine wines, waiter.”

The waiter nodded and vanished, and at that moment Ligmer looked up from his study of the photograph. He recognized Lang and came hurrying across the clearing.

“Join us, won’t you?” he said. “I have been hoping to see you again, to answer those questions you said you might have—or to trv to, at least. And now is a good opportunity,
because I can also introduce you to my Pag associate, Scholar Usri.”

“I had just invited our steward here to have a dri
n
k with me,” said Lang, rising and lifting his pet on to his shoulder. A resigned expression, here and gone like summer lightning, flickered over Ligmer’s face.

“He may come if he will,” he said. He gave Vykor a sharp glance, and Vykor meekly removed the mask from his face. It might have been politeness that prevented Ligmer from telling him off about mingling with his betters in disguise; it might have been the fact that they were in tourist territory and the usual rules officially were suspended—except that that never prevented a Cathrodyne from being officious when he felt inclined.

Somehow, Vykor had the distinct impression that it was the presence of Lang.

He followed Lang and Ligmer across the clearing at a discreet distance, and sat down on a stool at a suitable point neither too close to the table nor ostentatiously far from it. He remained silent, accepting his glass of wine from the waiter when it was brought, and listening with eyes and ears alert.

"Out of eye-range, eh?” Usri said, plainly impressed. “A rarity along the Arm, sir. Do you plan to pass beyond Waystation to the Pag worlds?”

Lang let his pet climb down his chest and nestle on his lap. “I may do,” he said. "Or may not.” And smiled. “It was Waystation that attracted me this far, I’m afraid— not the renown of your empire.”

“Huh!” Usri laughed shortly. “And quite right too. This place is a miracle, one of the marvels of the galaxy, and the more you get to know about it the more amazing it seems.”

“So our friend Ligmer was telling me aboard ship.” Lang glanced round at the Cathrodyne. “He was saying that its origin is buried in mystery, but that there were claims about ancient travelers from Pagr having built it. . .”

"This is probably eyewash,” said Ligmer bluntly. “Prejudice!” said Usri with sudden heat. “You cannot discount the relics on Pagr of an ancient space-flying culture—”

“Which no one except Pags is allowed to see,” Ligmer interrupted. “If they are there.”

“Oh, for . . . They’re there,” Usri snapped, and rummaged in her file of documents, producing a photograph for Ligmer’s inspection. “I haven’t shown you this yet. Brought it specially for you.”

Ligmer waved it down. "Photographs can be doctored,” he said. “Not that I’m intending to discredit you, Usri; it’s just that your official propaganda organs have issued so much nonsense in the past centuries that you can’t expect us to take something so important on trust.”

“May I see?” said Lang, and in the same instant contrived to lift the picture out of Usri’s hand and spread it before him. Looking past him, Vykor could see only indistinct blurs.

“It’s a ship,” Lang said. “Fossilized: Am I right?” He turned to Usri, who gave a pleased nod.

“Not so much fossilized as embalmed,” she said. “It’s been there for at least ten thousand years. As we picture it, it had a faulty or experimental null-grav engine, and during ground testing or landing it over-stressed the planetary surface too close to a fault line. Result: a flow of magma, perhaps even a volcano, which buried it.”

“And how is this picture supposed to have been obtained?” said Ligmer. His voice was heavy with sarcasm at the beginning of the sentence; it didn’t quite last oilt.

“Well, the original elements of the hull are now present as high concentrations of trace elements in the solidified lava,” said Usri. “We made that out of a hundred or so shots— polishing the surface of the rock to a high reflectivity, and then beaming bright light off it at the correct angle. The natural inhomogeneities of the rock cause too much noise for the complete outline to show in a single shot; by averaging the noise over a hundred pictures, though, you begin to get the distinctive shapes. I have more, and a copy of the report published by the team that did the work. Aside from the usual propaganda, there’s some good stuff in it.”

She glanced at Lang. “How does it strike you?” she said c
h
illengingly.

“I think,” said Lang quietly after a pause, “that you’re right to interpret the picture that way, but wrong in your
further assumptions. A ship on Pagr, with Waystation out here, implies—to me at any rate—that someone came
from
here
to
there. And most likely, also to Glai, to Cathrodyne, to Alchmida, to Lubarria, and”—he gave a sidelong glance at Vykor—“to Majkosi.”

X

Vykor
half expected a torrent of indignant counter-argument from the two archeologists, and in fact they looked at each other for a moment, their expressions suggesting that they were on the point of uttering some such retort.

But it didn’t come. They relaxed slowly, and Ligmer was the first to speak—almost shamefacedly.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “this really is the obvious answer, isn’t it? Only there are obstacles. This theory has been put forward a dozen times over the past few centuries, since Waystation was first discovered, and each time it has foundered on some obstacle that seemed insuperable.” He gave Usri a brief glance. “And I don’t think Pagr has ever given it serious thought.”

“Don’t you?” said Usri wryly. “I hope no monitors are listening, because this is highly subversive and could cost me my rank and my right to visit Waystation—but I spent half the time I was in school arguing the pros and cons of what- we call the Bringer theory. The main objections—leaving out matters of planetary pride—were that no one had claimed discovery of prehistoric space-flight relics on any other world than Pagr—and if they were there, no one would be likely to hush them up, would they?—and the fact that the peoples of the different worlds of the Arm are so different physically. Their cultures are also widely different, their ways of thinking, even. And an argument advanced against this theory of the Bringer, also, was the fact that the male-dominated
social order of all the other worlds of the Arm coincided with what tradition declared to be the condition obtaining on Pagr before our modern society evolved.”

Lang nodded. “And so what is the presently accepted theory concerning the origin of man, here in the Arm?”

Ligmer and Usri looked at each other again. “Depends which planet you’re talking about,” said Ligmer, grunting. “On Cathrodyne there’s no generally accepted theory; some people support the Bringer theory, as Usri calls it, but rather few. Since human beings are pretty widespread through the galaxy, the opinion is that on oxygen-high worlds with seas and the right temperature man is statistically the most likely being to evolve."

Lang shook his head, without saying anything; Ligmer, however, chose to interpret it as a disdainful comment, and went on hotly, “Whereas on Pagr, of course, they give out that man first evolved there and then infected the whole galaxy!” “And on Lubarria they still say what they were saying on Cathrodyne a mere century or so ago
!
” snapped Usri. “That man was created by some mystical dual principle—the stars male and the planets female, or the other way round—which he reflects in his own being. I must say that the priests of this cult certainly act as though the only principle they have is a sexual one—”

“You won’t find a Cathrodyne above the level of a moron who takes that rubbish seriously today!” Ligmer broke in. They were practically shouting at each other when Lang coughed, and they calmed down sheepishly.

“Well, there are one or two supposedly insuperable obstacles to the Bringer theory which don’t seem to me to be so hard to overcome,” Lang said in judicious tones. “The fact that space-flight relics have only been found on Pagr, for instance. Pagr is right out towards the end of the Arm, isn’t it? Doesn’t that suggest that it might be the last world on which Waystation—which wouldn’t have been a station at all, but an interstellar vessel, on this theory—the last world on which colonists were deposited? Naturally relics occur there; that’s where the ships, no longer wanted, were dumped. They were probably first cannibalized, then left to decay.”

59

“That’s one way of looking at it,” said Usri grudgingly. Ligmer confirmed with a nod.

“What do they say about the origin of man on Majkosi, by the way?” Lang glanced at Vykor, who stared down at his wine.

“We are not permitted to speculate so far,” he mumbled. "We are forbidden to have universities, observatories, laboratories, schools higher than mere technical colleges where one learns routine mechanical tasks, or in fact any of the centers where people talk about such matters.”

He met Ligmer’s glance with a defiant stare and relapsed into silence.

“But if you were asked to give your own opinion?” Lang pressed gently. Ligmer scowled; in his view, too much attention paid to subject races was dangerous. Still, Lang was an outsider; it wasn’t as bad as if he himself had been doing it.

“All right,” said Vykor. “I’d say that man must have started somewhere,
once.
I don’t believe he could have grown up on all these different worlds—not just along the Arm, but all over the galaxy—by pure coincidence. Take mating, for instance.” He was surprised to find himself warming to his thesis.

“Now we know that people from different planets can mate and have children. On Lubarria, where a lot of the priests are Cathrodynes who can’t make a go of it on Cathrodyne itself, and where the fake religion that the Cathrodynes stuck there compels women to give in to priests when they’re asked to—on Lubarria there you can see lots of kids of mixed blood. There are some mixed Lubarrian-Cathrodynes right here on Waystation, in the Lubarrian section; Cathrodynes won’t accept them, Lubarrians hate their exalted opinion of themselves, so they make do here, if they can.

“Likewise between Alchmids and Pags. I’ve heard how, when your people, Scholar Usri”—he boldly looked the Pag straight in the face—"have a male they can’t quiet down or satisfy themselves, they’ll turn it loose among a crowd of Alchmid women. And pretty often there are kids
born
that way, too. Only you kill them off at birth.”