Susanne fled weeping.
“What has come loose?” the Betan asked anxiously.
Nobody, nobody should see me like this… except you, you’re not human, you’re my fellow holothete… I’m being irrational I was unfair to that linker.
I must apologize. No. How can I explain? Anger: Why should I explain? Why must I alone forever be rational? Bewilderment: Why have I kept remembering Eric, these past weeks? He’s no more than a linker either. Less than that, the last I heard
– settled down, long married, become a not particularly important administrator in Calgary.
Joelle gasped for air. “N-n-nothing, Fidelio. I’m tired and- Hold me close, let me rest a while. Then I’ll get a sleeping pill,”
from our medical officer, that Mulryan woman; well, she may have the grace not to try sympathizing, “and… afterward I’ll be in better shape to… oh, Fidelio!”
Suzannr sought her cabin, saying no word to anyone, apart from informing Caitlin that she wouldn’t be in the mess for dinner.
Side 115
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The Next mornwatch she entered the computer center expressionless. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Joelle greeted her perfunctorily, in English. “I was feeling distressed on Fidelio’s account. He’s an old friend.”
“I understand, madame,” the linker replied with care; and they went about their mutual business.
Actually Susanne had little to do beyond monitoring, to make certain the union of Joelle, Fidelio, computers, and instruments did not start going subtly agley. It did not; the bugs were finally out of the system. The two holothetes joined awarenesses as two lovers who know each other well join bodies, and became more than the sum of themselves, and let the universe pour through them.
Much they already knew from observations and deductions made by their shipmates. The bearings of neighbor galaxies showed this region to be approximately five hundred light-years from Sol in the general direction of Hercules. That information made various bright stars like Deneb and objects like the Orion Nebula identifiable, which in turn defined the position more precisely. (As if it mattered. A single light-year is an abyss wherein imagination drowns.) The sun was a red dwarf of type M, mass 0.02 Sol, luminosity 0.004 Sol. It had five planets, none of them in the least Earthlike, all seemingly barren-except, perhaps, this largest, around which the T machine and Chinook were orbiting at a distance of some twenty-four million kilometers.
That world was a giant, ninety-two percent the mass of Jupiter, attended by a dozen moons. Its mean distance from its primary was 1.64 a.u., a bit further out than Mars is from Sol. Like Jupiter, it had a vast atmosphere, chiefly hydrogen, secondarily helium; lesser components included ammonia, methane, and more elaborate organic compounds. Also like Jupiter, it was hot from contraction; the upper air was thin and space-cold, but lower down it thickened and warmed, until water became a vapor and storms raged that were the size of lesser planets. Most of its bulk was liquid, though sheer pressure, despite temperature, kept solid a metallic core equal to about five Earths.
Spinning around once in ten hours and thirty-five minutes, it generated an immense magnetic field which trapped charged particles from the sun. However, the latter was so feeble a radiator that these Van Allen belts were nowhere near the Jovian intensity. No human could safely linger long in them; but, given her electrostatic defenses, Chinook could drop down through them and climb back up without those aboard getting a dosage to worry about.
She would have a reason to.
Joelle and Fidelio would have lost themselves in sun, moons, ambient magnificences and subtleties, every uniqueness. Hardly had they settled into the wonderful kaleidoscope, however, when a thing tugged at the fringes of their consciousness. They dismissed it a while, explored a vortex, found out why an inner globe rotated widdershins, established that this whole system was older than Sol’s; but the thing would not go away. Almost impatiently, they brought their double mind to confront it. Hertzian emission from the world they were circling, yes, surely, what else would you expect?
The fact leaped forth.
Lightning, synchrotron effects, a hundred separate sources were putting forth radio energy yonder. Each had its set of patterns, which the holothetes understood in the way that a ballet dancer understands how another is executing a par seul. But one small element was like a flute, defiant and variable amidst the uproar of a gale at sea- Perhaps in a decade of concentrated effort, unaided humans would have made this discovery. The holothetes realized instantly that here was nothing which unliving nature could produce: therefore, that they were overhearing the discourse of beings which were alive and intelligent.