The D’neeran Factor (17 page)

But when she said so Iledra answered, “Never mind. If he keeps to his promise one of us will at last be recognized for what our special gift can do. And what can his hopes do for us but good? You made a success of the
Endeavor
after all, H'ana.”

“Or he made it one for me…Or made it appear so…”

Hanna pushed uneasily at her hair. She was thoroughly disoriented. She could not see the season of
Endeavor
in perspective from this leaf-brushed balcony. A night breeze touched her face softly, smelling of flowers. The crystal jars of luminescence that lit their meal could not compete with the stars; when she lifted her head she saw them blazing past the fragrant leaves. Had she really been there in that starry abyss? Yet this commonplace dinner at home was unreal too.

The other women thought tranquilly of transitions and adjustments. Hanna said, “You are missing a point.”

“You are,” Iledra said, smiling. “But I have not told you about Alien Relations.”

“What about them?”

“I did not try to tell you before you came because I did not think the censor would let it pass. A representative of the committee has asked me to study the possibility of D'neera's enhancing and expanding its formal programs of study in exopsychology. I have already approached the university at D'vornan—”

“He would do that,” said Hanna, thinking of something else.

“I beg your pardon?”

…
our teachers, our translators, our first and most honored ambassadors…

“Nothing. Go on.”

“There are difficulties, of course. The subject generally is not believed to warrant public support for full-time scholars. The Polity has offered some aid, but the university does not wish to accept assistance from true-humans. The first name mentioned was yours, of course—would you like to do that?”

“Me?” Hanna said, startled. “Teach? I don't think so.”

“Good. We need you here. In any case, I hope the difficulty can be surmounted by inviting true-human instructors to D'neera, provided the course of study is integrated with the theories of ‘Sentience,' and provided students manage field work with their own resources. They will have to make personal sacrifices to do so, but—that has always been our way. You did it.”

“Yes,” Hanna said, and sipped a delicate, tangy wine of southern Koroth. It was perhaps the wine that made her
misgivings so disquieting, or perhaps she had suppressed them too long in the peaceful last months on
Endeavor.
“Sentience” had absorbed her utterly, and custom made the strange ordinary. Perhaps having stone underfoot made the difference now. Some of her reservations had to do with Jameson and the Polity and all it represented; but the rest were rooted in incomprehensible silence.

Cosma heard the echo of silence and said in confusion, “The aliens?”

“The aliens. Don't forget them…We talk of scholars and studies and, oh, hypothetical beings in some other time and some other place, but there are
these
aliens, the ones I could never see clearly, and they slipped away because—because—I don't know why, and I should—”

Her hand jerked on the tabletop, the Heir's Ring flashing. Iledra and Cosma thought together and disapprovingly that so long a time among true-humans must surely be injurious. But Hanna looked at her own brown hand and thought of more than that, of what she supposed might be called sacrifice, though she had never thought of doing anything besides what had to be done and endured: exile among strangers, the obsession with “Sentience,” haunted
Endeavor,
Shuttle Five, the nightmares; before that, war; and before that, a youth divided among this House that had claimed her early, and Defense, and the travel and sunlit studies that had brought her to—this table and this night. It was not so long a time, but so full that for a moment she stood outside herself, and regarded with astonishment what she had become. If she felt more weary than her years should make her, who could blame her?

“I'm glad to be home,” she said. “I don't want to leave again, Lee.”

“You will change your mind,” Iledra said placidly. “There is no need for you to go anywhere just yet. But if your strange creatures who follow the
Endeavor
should call, I think you will not be able to resist.”

“I suppose you're right…” She thought of shadows and strange images. She said, “I should have been able to see them. I should have. I should have.”

Patience,
said Iledra's thought, but Hanna shook her head and did not answer. Slow-moving rivers and webbed tapestries had their place, no doubt. But she could not quite
consign the X beings to a current or a thread, and be sure they would comfortably accept it; not yet.

*   *   *

The New City finally was building, and Hanna went out to it and took up old duties. Spring swelled toward summer. She heard nothing of interest from
Endeavor,
not a word, and one bright morning after a night of rain, without pausing to examine her motives, she called Jameson. He told her readily that the second leg of
Endeavor
's journey was beginning uneventfully as the first had ended.

It was then mid-morning in eastern Koroth, but early evening in southeastern Namerica. Jameson was at home, and Hanna had no way of knowing how unusual it was for him to take a call such as hers at such an hour. She had not bothered with security, and Jameson talked to her informally, so that behind him she could see a well-furnished dining room showing the remnants of a meal. In the background a tall woman briefly appeared and disappeared; not without taking a good look at Hanna's face.

“If anything happens,” Hanna said, “will you let me know? If there's a direct contact I'd like to be involved.”

“You might have stayed, you know,” he said.

“To what end?” she said, feeling cross. Jameson's face on a video screen did not have the subduing effect of his presence. She would not let him quell her into self-doubt.

“Why, to be on the spot when something happens, of course.”

“But maybe nothing is going to happen unless you make it happen. You said something about—” She fumbled, trying to remember. “About not dancing to their tune, or something like that. Well, they're not dancing to yours, either. It seems to be a stalemate. They're still following, aren't they? You'd let me know if there were any change?”

He regarded her thoughtfully. She wondered in exasperation if he ever said anything or did anything spontaneously. Finally he said, “This conversation is not secure. You are no longer officially connected with the Project, and you are residing in a culture where secrecy is unknown. I'm limited in what I can say.”

“Then there
has
been a change!”

“Nothing substantive,” he said delicately.

Damn true-humans and their secrets. She said, “And how do I go about finding out what this non-substantive development is?”

“You don't,” he said calmly. “Not without rejoining the Project. Which I may ask you to do. Your tolerance for the routine drudgery of exploration seems very low, however. When you had finished ‘Sentience,' you wanted to leave the
Endeavor
at once.”

Hanna decided she definitely did not like Jameson. Her hands, outside his range of vision, balled into fists. She said, “Do you know where I'm talking from?”

“No.”

“Wait a minute.” She pushed buttons, and panels slid open around her; a flood of noise poured in. She let him listen for a second before she shut it out again.

She said, “This is a construction site. There's a city going up here and I'm supposed to be in charge of it. Besides that I'm helping the university at D'vornan set up a program in alien studies. I've got responsibilities here. I'd rather be doing exopsychology than this, but I'd rather be doing this than creeping through space with nothing to think about but ambers.”

“There is a little more to think about than that,” he said maddeningly.

“But
what?
”

“We've changed the tune a little. We have had no success. There is a thing we might try…” His face became remote, with the trick he had of looking at something that was not there as if he saw it plain. She was on the verge of speaking again when he came back to her and said, “I would rather not try it. If I decide to do so, you will know about it, my lady.”

Hanna's hair was full of dust. In the summer heat she wore only the tiniest of briefs and a bandeau to support her breasts, and beside her lay heavy gauntlets she had just taken off. “My lady” had never seemed less appropriate.

She opened her mouth to ask another question, and decided it was futile. Instead she said, “Just keep me informed, will you?”

“I will,” Jameson said, and Hanna closed the call with mixed feelings. He had not forgotten the importance of Species X any more than she had, and the knowledge nourished
her in this self-absorbed world, where no one but Hanna cared about such things. But Jameson's restraint in the quiet elegance of his own milieu reminded her of how she must appear to him: mud-caked and mostly naked, savage product of a backward world.

“Bastard,” she muttered, knowing it sprang from her own defensiveness; but she said it again for different reasons a little later, when she received his formal, written congratulations on her acquisition of the 2836 Goodhaven Award for her contribution to humanity's knowledge of alien species—a message notable chiefly for preceding the Academy's official notification by some hours.

*   *   *

Hanna had little use for remote supervision, and got muddier as the days went on, and darker from the sun, and more expert at soothing querulous engineers and sulky architects and overly fastidious construction crews. The fact that many of the New City personnel combined all three functions did not make her task easier. In the old city by the slow Earthly river, a hard winter began to give way to the thaw; it had been going on for some time before Starr Jameson noticed it, felt no pleasure in the prospect, and acknowledged with a shrug the deeper winter within himself.

He had not forgotten Hanna, whom he thought of rather grimly from time to time. He could hardly forget a person who had gone straight through a lifetime's carefully developed skills in defense at their first and only meeting, and taken a plain look at his heart. No less astounding was the ease with which she had accepted what she saw there. He wondered if she knew how rare she was. He did not think so; but he could not decide if such simplicity was an advantage or a danger for his purposes.

Hanna also was remembered on the
Endeavor,
where Anja Daru and Charl Zeig wished heartily that she were there, either with them or instead of them. Something was happening at last, and Anja and Charl did not like it.

“Locus referents. Finally,” said Erik Fleming. He was a little pale, but showed no other sign of tension.

The man who had replaced Tamara as communications chief nodded. Translated to a visual display, the content of Signal Gamma showed a pair of carefully described stars,
Endeavor
's relative position and, overlapping it, a point
that pulsed with light. Ito Hirasawa had already ordered preliminary calculations of a course for the indicated point while the contact team was assembling.

“All right,” Erik said to Hirasawa. “How long?”

“A day, maybe. One minim Jump and backtrack under conventional power.”

“Close. So damn close…” He shook his head. “I never thought it would work. Somebody at Central's got a brain. But why did it work? When nothing else did?”

Marte Koster said, “It seems clear they're not interested in making contact with this ship. As such.”

“They lost interest in the drone, too. After a certain point. But here's Gamma.” Erik looked down the room at Charl and Anja. They were much less trouble than Hanna had been. They had formed their own community of two, but they were polite and cooperative and deferred to Koster, which Hanna had not done. It said something for Hanna's impact, however, that they had been invited to this meeting from the start.

He said, “You two notice anything?”

They looked at each other briefly. Charl said, “I don't know.”

“What do you mean by that?”

They looked at each other again. Charl said, “There was something. About the time they approached the drone. But I don't know what it was.”

“Describe it,” Erik said impatiently.

“I can't. It was just different.”

“Different how?”

Outside Erik's perception Charl and Anja shared a conviction that might have translated to: I
knew
it would be this way!

“I don't have anything to compare it to,” Charl said.

“Well, was it friendly? Hostile? What?”

“I don't know. It was just there.” He added hastily, seeing Erik's mouth go tight, “I thought it was very strong. But I don't know what that means, actually. Strong compared to what? I don't know.”

Erik stared at them hard and said, “Just let me know if you get anything else.”

“All right,” they said with relief, but when Erik let the contact team go they went back to Charl's room almost on
tiptoe, like guilty children, and Anja said, “I think we should ask for permission to talk to H'ana.”

“Then he'll want to know why. And we'll have to tell him. He didn't understand what
I
was trying to tell him. What's he going to say if you tell him you had a bad dream?”

They fell from Standard into proximity D'neeran, an intimate shorthand that relied heavily on telepathic exchange as a supplement to the spoken word.

“Well, but H'ana dreamed too, uneasily. I heard him trace her dreaming—”

“But of what? The chance of connection is so vanished-remote—”

“Oh, why isn't there more in the log! Why didn't she speak fully! Might there have been more?”