The D’neeran Factor (15 page)

Hanna found herself breathless. For a moment she had stood high above a tapestry of history, watching the sweep and scope of it. She wrenched herself into the present, shocked and resentful of the power that could so easily impose its vision. And she did not like being told what she should know.

She said, struggling for objectivity, “It's only a possibility.
Though when you put it together with the—the quality of the images—”

She stopped short, not liking the implications. Jameson's face gave nothing away, but she knew he was thinking precisely the same thing.

In the sudden silence the door chattered at them. Hanna went to it, unthinking. She could not focus on the meaning of prior knowledge and the hunt. Her head was full of what she did know of the Explosion: Constanza Bassanio shaven-headed, pregnant and scarred, ransomed from death in a Lunar stockade just before the last ship left for the green promise of D'neera under Clara Mendoza's command. “Dreams admirable or reprehensible”…the outcasts' dream had only been to stay alive…

A serving robot drifted through the door and wavered without orders to a landing at Jameson's feet. After a minute Hanna, compelled by courtesy, settled herself cross-legged beside it. She said reluctantly, “Coffee?”

“The coffee's for you.” He leaned over and picked up a decanter and looked at the contents with distaste.

She thought of Heartworld and ancient wealth. She said, “I guess they couldn't find any Arrenswood whiskey.”

“I certainly hope not. Not paid for with public funds. I'll have coffee after all, I think.”

She went silently through the ritual of serving, obscurely astonished at the scene. Was Jameson thinking of Species X? His face told her nothing. She made no effort to probe his thoughts or feelings—he might, she thought, recognize the nearly palpable impact of telepathy for what it was—but she was wide open for anything that might escape him. Some true-humans, like Koster, were full-time explosions of emotion, natural broadcasters who made the air around them crackle.

But Jameson was as self-contained as any true-human she had ever met. There were not even any physical cues to help her guess what he was thinking. He did not fidget, he did not engage in nervous mannerisms, and every movement was precisely controlled.

Hanna, to her surprise, began to relax. His stillness was comforting, after the noisy activity of her own thoughts and the tension that accompanied all her days here. Jameson
might have been alone, for all the attention he paid her now. But she could not doubt his intelligence or alertness; and she thought again of outriders and pioneers, and remembered a thing she had known but not examined—that Starr Jameson was the force behind the whole
Endeavor
Project, and the vessel and its crew and their work were the reflection of his will.

He said without prelude, very quietly, “You will not speak of this conversation to anyone. Not even Captain Fleming or Dr. Koster.”

She said with casual curiosity, “Why not?”

“Because everything you have said is unsubstantiated.”

She was startled. “I thought you believed me!”

“The question of belief does not arise.” He looked at her with, she thought, a trace of something new in the sea-colored eyes. Speculation?

She shook her head. He said, “Is it so difficult to promise silence?”

“Yes,” she said. “As a matter of fact, yes. You can't keep secrets very long on D'neera even if you want to. People guess. Bits of data creep into overt content. The harder you try to keep a secret the quicker you give it away. I can't help it. You seem to know more about telepathy than most people. I thought you would know that.”

“I do,” he said. “That is why you are not going home.”

“I'm not?” Hanna said, and was unprepared for the wave of desolation that poured over her. She must have projected some of it because Jameson made a sharp, half-protesting gesture. Hanna scarcely noticed, absorbed in the surprising knowledge that for all her anxiety to finish her work, deep inside she had heard, all along, a glad song: “Home…soon!” In the maze of Standard dating she had not lost sight of her native seasons. First snowfall was due in Koroth. The D'neeran year was longer than Earth's, and the seasons of Koroth were long and distinct. Soon fantasies of ice would rise in the city: palaces, statues, crystal vegetation, slides and labyrinths elaborated as winter darkened. In sunlight it was a city of flashing mirrors. The fires of Sunreturn…she could be home for Sunreturn…

Jameson said something and she answered absently, “Yes?”

“I said: Have you thought of entering your work for a Goodhaven award?”

“Hmm?”

He said patiently, “The Goodhaven Academy's annual competition. You are familiar with it?”

“Yes. Of course.” She came back reluctantly. “I've read a lot of Academy publications. They do good work, with F'thal at least. Not the kind of work I do.”

“Then perhaps it's time you showed them something new.”

“Me?” What he had said about the Academy's prestigious award began to sink in. She sat back on her heels and stared at him. She said, “Wait a minute. They wouldn't give it to a D'neeran. Especially not me! I'm saying D'neerans can do exopsychology better than anybody else. And it's true. I've found out things, just by being a telepath, nobody ever found out before. But they won't want to hear that, Commissioner!”

He said inexorably, “You are creating a completely original work of great potential value. You should be finished with it by the deadline for the next competition. Are you afraid to try?”

If he meant to sting her with insult, it did not work. She was too absorbed in the new idea to become angry. She had never thought of submitting her work to the Academy. The scholarship structure of true-human society was so far outside her frame of reference that she might as well have thought of competing in a F'thalian courtship drama.

But what it could mean to be a member of the Academy! Not for herself alone, but as a means of making it easier for other D'neerans than it had been for her to gain access to data and persons and places—

She felt Jameson watching her very closely. She looked up and opened her mouth to protest that it was impossible. But he said, “I don't dispose of the prize, but I do have friends in the Academy. Your work would have to stand on its own merits; but if there is a question of injustice, I think I can see to it the award is fairly given.”

Some seconds passed while she turned his words over, wondering what they meant. She really did not know at once. It was hard to follow him in her weariness. He had
said nothing expected or predictable since walking into her room. If he was trying to keep her unbalanced, she was easy prey. She knew little of true-human networks of influence and dimly, trying to understand, she opened herself a little, a little, a very little more, and added it to the slightest intrusiveness, the barest touch of query, just to see what he meant—

She gaped at him.

He had taken from her burst of homesickness a conviction that she wanted to leave the
Endeavor.

He had offered her a bribe to stay.

He knew instantly what she had done. She saw it in his face in the moment of engagement, and sensed—not anger nor guilt nor apprehension, but an intense curiosity so at odds with the circumstance that she was unbalanced even more.

She got up slowly. She could not think of anything to say, and stared down at him. Light glinted off a scattering of silver in his hair. The gray-green eyes were remote. No curiosity showed in them, nor anything else.

He said, surprising her again, “Aren't you angry?”

“Angry?” She was only bewildered.

“That is supposed to be the appropriate reaction.”

“Is it?” She shook her head in confusion. “I only want to know why. Why is it so important that I not talk of this?”

“You needn't be concerned about that,” he said.

“But I am,” she said stubbornly.

“It is important for you,” he said. “Believe me, it is important for you.”

A bare hint of threat hung between them. She might have heard it in his voice or sensed it elsewise. She said, thinking it through with great effort, “You mean because I won't get the prize if I break silence?”

“More than that.”

It only confused her more. She shook her head again and said, “I don't know what you mean.”

He folded his hands in his lap, an unexpectedly prim gesture. He said, “You're in an extremely ambivalent position, you know.”

She looked at him helplessly. She did not have the slightest idea what he was talking about.

“You stand at a branching of the way for D'neera,” he said, calmly as if he were commenting on the weather. “On the one hand this work of yours—what do you call it, by the way?”

“Uh—‘Sentience,'” she said, startled into speech.

His face showed, for the first time, a flicker of amusement.

“A little arrogant, don't you think? Never mind. It is brilliant. It is a foundation, certainly, for arguments in favor of a position I have held for some time—not a popular position: that D'neera is the ideal interface between the human race and alien intelligences. The
Endeavor
is funded for a mission of three Standard years. I don't intend to see the project end in three years' time. It will go on, and on, and on—through our lifetimes and into the future. This vessel will be joined by sister ships. Within our lifetimes, if we are fortunate, we will see contact with a thing that logically must exist on some scale—a super-network of star-traveling species. We might then begin to call ourselves citizens of the universe…Have you ever thought of the part D'neera might play in such a renaissance? You might be our teachers, our translators, our first and most honored ambassadors. But it must begin now, my lady.”

He paused, waiting perhaps for her to speak, but she could not utter a word.

He went on, “You are the beginning. An experiment; the first. Being first is a great responsibility, my lady. The arguments against your presence on this voyage were difficult to refute, and indeed you have fulfilled many persons' misgivings. I was told that D'neerans are erratic, promiscuous, unreliable and tinged with cowardice; over-emotional, stubborn, flouters of discipline and, of course, ridiculously communicative…You cannot babble of Lost Worlds to anyone who will listen.”

Hanna bit at her fingers and stared at him as if her eyes alone would pierce his skull. Intangible walls of promise and threat closed on her. There was something he was not saying, and everything he did say obscured it. She had guessed something she was not supposed to know, that her silence was important enough to make him offer her a precious gift unasked, and still he skirted the real “why.” Another answer hung round his head like smoke. She listened for echoes of the unspoken.

She said slowly, “If I don't tell anybody about this, you and I will be the only ones who know, won't we?”

His face was empty and detached as a mask. He said, “The Coordinating Commission must know, of course. And key persons in the
Endeavor
Project.”

“But,” she said, answering echoes, “the project personnel report to you, don't they? So they don't matter. You didn't even mention Alien Relations. They won't know unless you tell them. And the Commission—you can tell them what you think they ought to know. Any way you want to present it. You can shape how they think—”

She stopped, because he stood up. She had forgotten his height and she looked up, up, into eyes cold and dispassionate as the sea. She felt him put away the hope of deceiving her; he might have pushed away a useless object, but he said only, still calmly, “This is why you frighten us, my lady.”

“Because you can't have secrets,” she said breathlessly. “But you must have known!”

“In theory,” he said thoughtfully. “In theory. I must say I was not prepared to test it myself…I offer you a straightforward bargain, then. I am, as Lady Koroth knows, D'neera's only effective champion in true-human circles of power. This is not an easy thing to be, and I must have your cooperation. In this case I must have your silence. Without it—well. It is your world you risk. Not mine.”

“But how can it be so important? Why? Why? Tell me that.” Her voice was shaky. “Just tell me and—so I can decide! You would really turn against us? You would do that?”

He did not answer. Perhaps he would not do it. But he could; she felt the potential of his power, so intense and repugnant that she backed away from him involuntarily. She might have been running from rape, revolted. And then she knew that she had projected the sickening image, because she felt in the same instant his shocked disclaimer of any physical interest in her whatsoever.

She stood by her cluttered bunk, breathing hard. She had broken through his icy self-possession, anyway; they stared at each other in mutual outrage, and she knew he felt as violated as herself.

“You don't care,” she said. “You don't care about D'neera at all! All that about a renaissance and what we can do—it's
all for you, the project is all you! What are you doing? What are you using us for? What are you doing to me?”

She thought she heard him say:
After all, this is a terrible thing
—but he had not said it. He was angry enough now, furious with her. For a moment the sense of physical danger was so strong that she dared not disengage awareness out of fear for her very life.

The threat disappeared suddenly and completely. Hanna found herself in fighting stance, balanced and ready to move. She was ridiculous. She could not recover as quickly as he. Her muscles twitched. She thought: I went too far.

He stood before her silent and still. She felt the re-evaluation going on inside him, astonishing her again. She was dizzy. She did not know anyone, D'neeran or true-human, who could move on so rapidly and coldly after what had passed.