“We can retreat to a safe distance and wait, in hopes of somebody who can help us arriving before we starve. Of course, that means converting the ship to spin mode; she’d never boost again. However, it might pay off. We might get a free ride home.
“Joelle, you’ve said bloody little to anybody, these past weeks. We’ve borne with you, knowing how tough your job must be. Learning a Betan lingo from scratch was a picnic by comparison, I’m sure. But today we’ve got to have a report from you. I’ve asked you to give it to us all, because it concerns us all.
“Okay, if you please, proceed.”
Floating beside him, before the rest of them, she thought wearily that she saw shock lingering on faces. I do look awful. The mirror had shown hair become a matted gray mane, eyes sunken and dark-rimmed and bloodshot in a visage that was hardly more than skin stretched across a skull, body turned lank and yellowish, hands which sprouted untrimmed fingernails and continually trembled.
Oh, curse this abominable flesh, that will not let me stay in communion with the Oracle!
She mustered dryness: “I should emphasize that my exchanges have been rudimentary. In spite of computer enhancement, in spite of unstinted cooperation from my opposite number, I don’t have enough years left in me to figure out the complete language. A transmission lag of minutes doesn’t help, either. I may well be totally misinterpreting various things, including what’s crucial to us.”
“We would be nowhere without you,” Susanne Granville said, arm in arm with Carlos Rueda.
Joelle drew breath. “Well, then, if you’ll bear those reservations in mind- The Others built the station because they knew that spacefaring species would want to study a world so unique.” I merely guess that they trust that through this study, both the star dwellers and the outsiders will grow a little, will come a little closer to being what they are. “I haven’t been able to find out whether they manifest themselves directly to any of the races concerned, but my impression is they don’t. Probably they come on their own to hear out the data, the biographies, the Oracle has been preparing for them.”
“They share, then,” Caitlin breathed. “Their wish is to know the lives that are on every world. The better to love?”
“They certainly knew us well before they programmed that robot at the Solar System T machine,” Frieda said. “What Oracle did they plant on Earth?”
“Nothing like this’n, obviously,” Brodersen said. “Go on, Joelle.”
“A number of advanced societies have found their way here, presumably by trial and error,” the holothete proceeded. “They send scientific expeditions from time to time. There’s no set schedule, and nobody comes frequently.
Remember how much else a race will have to engage its attention and effort, once it’s learned the routes through several gates. Quite possibly, one or two may visit inside the next decade. But they don’t know how to reach Sol or Phoebus or Centrum. How could they? The Oracle itself doesn’t know.”
Into a shaken hush, she said hastily: “I have made progress. If we could stay where we are, in communication range, I’d make more. The Oracle seems Side 157
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The willing to tell me anything. But we can’t. So I’ve concentrated on asking it about the star gates themselves. And I’ve gotten an inkling.
“I can’t calculate where and when a particular path will fetch us out.
However, given what I’ve learned here, I can make a probabilistic computation of the magnitude and direction of that transit. What’s more important, I can make a pretty good estimate of how likely it is that another T machine will be at the end of a gate.
“The Others continue building them, you see.” Laughter rattled around her larynx. “That word ‘continue’ is a classic example of a meaningless noise, isn’t it? Excuse me. I’ve gotten out of the habit of being limited to my natural brain.
“The point is, the Others don’t work at random. They know the plenum better than that. They’re always expanding their frontiers – for knowledge only, I’m sure, not conquest-” (For love, Caitlin whispered; Joelle saw) “and they go to places where they’re likeliest to find something besides vacuum. Remember, they have to send the materials though, maybe also the tools, for constructing a new T machine before an expedition can return. No small job, even for them.