Thus did she slowly give him back his heart, until he could rise and go about his work.
Later, though, entering their quarters to fetch something, he found her seated silent, the marks of crying upon her. When he asked what the matter was, she said in a near whisper that she was making a song and wished to be alone.
She was absent, on duty, when he met with Joelle Ky, Carlos Rueda Suarez, and the nonhuman. Presently he would arrange a general gathering at which his entire band could hear the tale of Emissary. However, he must not delay getting a skeleton of the facts for himself, to aid him in planning, and this was most rapidly done when a minimum of people were on hand. Despite his gratitude to Frieda von Moltke, he did not invite her, for their lack of acquaintance might slow down the proceedings. Carlos was a cousin of Antonia, Brodersen’s first wife. Though he was a child when she died and had not often met his in-law, they shared considerable background. Brodersen had first encountered Joelle on business nineteen Earth-years ago; since moving to Demeter, he’d looked her up whenever he revisited the mother planet, and for the past decade- Never certain exactly how he felt about her, she being unlike any other woman ever in his life, he was shocked anew when she entered the office.
They had birthdays within a month of each other, but suddenly she was fifty-eight, long gone in a place whose strangeness must have helped grizzle the locks he remembered as blue-sheening black, line the brow he remembered as Side 83
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The
serene, thin the flesh to a cloak tightly drawn over bones which remained as exquisite as before.
He bumbled to his feet. “belle,” he said out of a lumpy larynx, “hello.
It’s wonderful having you here.”
She smiled. That and her voice hadn’t changed either; both were pleasing and a little remote, like compositions by Brancusi or Delius. “Thank you for everything, Dan. I’m so eager to learn precisely what èverything’
means-certainly an enormous lot-” They clasped four hands and might have kissed, but Rueda came through the door and, in Peruvian style, hugged the captain.
“Daniel, Daniel, how magnificent!” His Spanish almost warbled. “Our rescuer, our warrior -I’ve been talking to some of your crew- Do you know, when I was a boy I idolized you. And I was right. By God, but you are a man!”
Stepping back, he reassumed proper aristocratic dignity. Brodersen studied him for a second. A ghost of Toni lingered in Rueda’s straight-lined, short-nosed countenance and hazel eyes. Of medium height, he had laid a small paunch onto his slimness while he was away, and Brodersen understood how he must resent that trace of early held: doubtless worse than being left with a mere brown fringe of hair. At least his mustache was the same.
Then the nonhuman arrived and overwhelmed all other impressions. The chances were that he (she? it?) had no such intention, Brodersen decided. If anything, the attitude of the creature looked diffident, though how could you tell? But the sight-he’d need practice before he made complete sense of those contours-the gait-the smell that was like a seashore, only not really- “May I give you a formal introduction to Fidelio?” Rueda said, smiling. The alien extended the lower right arm. Brodersen shook hands. He’d done the same with a tame gibbon once, in Asia during his PC hitch, and been startled; the ape’s thumb was laid out wrong and had no ball to it. Fideio’s clasp made the gibbon’s brotherlike.
Brodersen met the eyes, which resembled the eyes of no animal on Earth or Demeter, and forgot about handshakes. It roared in him: This is an intelligent nonhuman being. This is, this is. I’m living the dream that always was in me.
“Fidelio,” he stammered, “welcome. Bienvenido.”
“Buenos dias, senor, y muchas gracias,” coughed and whistled out of the fanged mouth. Suddenly Brodersen laughed aloud-not at anyone or anything, simply laughing, his mirth reborn.
“Come on into the cabin,” he urged after he was through. “What can I offer everybody? Does Fidelio mind if I smoke? We may as well be comfortable.”