“Am I supposed to do something about this?” Thorn trembled, a brief convulsion. “Am I what the ghota want to stop?”
“There are three kinds of people I’ve found: those who think the universe is good, those who believe it’s corrupt, and those who don’t want to think about it any more than they can help. I prefer the first two. The last can be hired by anybody. Dallen Company wants you stopped because they’re scared of you: so do others; the ghota are just damn scared of your being hatani and not theirs, and of more and more knowledge in hatani hands and not theirs. They’re dying and they know it. The world can’t afford them anymore. It can’t afford ignorance. The tanun, the kosan guilds-you’re their hope.”
“To do what? Fly that ship?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Someday. What would you do?”
“O gods.”
“Now you know what you’re for.”
“Don’t ask me this! Duun-”
“Haras-hatani, what will you do?”
Thorn walked off across the floor, raised his hands to his head, dropped them. There were no thoughts. Nothing but a tumbling of images. (The boulders in the sand, each with a hatani.
Tangan’s aged mask and Sagot’s blurred. Manan’s impersonal voice: “That’s a miss on their side, a hit on ours. It’s down.” Ganngein’s: “This isn’t a trip we want to share.”)
He looked back at Duun. At a quiet shadow against the vast illusion of the windows.
“Well?” Duun asked.
“I’m not even eighteen years old!”
“I didn’t say it was all in your lap. You’re not responsible for the ghota. You’re not to blame for the world’s foolishness; but it’s burning, Haras-hatani. And maybe that eighteen years is all the world is going to have. What will you do to stop it?”
(Go back to earth? How could I stop it? Who would hear me? Hatani. Tanun guild; kosanin would hear Duun.)
(A room with a bed, a bath, a fire, and hidden tricks. What is my room? This place. This world. How do I put out the fire but with my bare hands? Am I twice a fool?)
(Now you know what you’re for.)
Thorn looked about him, the windows, the glittering sprawl of Gatog; the computer banks. (The ghotanin are afraid of something. This. Of its use.)
(The tapes. The voices.)
“I see,” Thorn said. “You already know what you want me to do. You think you know. You wonder what I think. Pathways? Is that it?”
“Maybe just the hope of something better. Tell me your solution.”
“The ship transmitted. Did the message go out translight?”
“No. Lightspeed.”
“The pilot knew they wouldn’t be in time then. He wasn’t asking them to save him.”
“No. There was no hope of that. So what did he want, hatani?”
“How can I know? You taught me.”
“Perhaps you can’t. A great deal of you is shonun.”
“But the messages started nine years later. They say, ‘hello; here we are.’ And they go on saying it. And he said: ‘I’m dying; they’re killing me and they have such little ships.’ They know we can’t come to them. Don’t they?”
“They’ve known at least since that message got to them, seven years, nine years after he was dead. And nine years after that attack on their ship their first messages came to us. And still come.”
“How long have you been getting them now? Five years?”
“Near seven.”
Thorn shut his eyes a moment. Opened them. “People should have been relieved.”
“Some were. Some were simply reminded. Others said the ship wasn’t really translight, that nothing could do that, that the message was a trick and timed to take us off our guard: that ships would be arriving sublight. And soon. And they hired the ghota, who saw only money and a chance to stop the hatani guild from getting control of the war they believed would come. The war they’ve already started.”
“To see who meets those ships.”
“That, yes.”
“Is it so simple, then? The ship out there could transmit.”
“Even simpler. Gatog can.”
“They wouldn’t hear me for nine years!”
“But then earth would know there’s no stopping it. No undoing the messages once we’ve started sending. And we can hold here at Gatog indefinitely. We can stand off the ghotanin, and it won’t take much more than that nine years for ships from the other side to get here if they hear us: some think so, at least. One year, two, at the rate that ship might go. They might have been here years ago-if we’re right about that speed. They might come tomorrow. They may be waiting for their answer. We had no way to read them-until now. When they come, whatever they intend, you’ll be here. Safe. A voice like theirs. Perhaps they’ll remember their pilot when they see you. Perhaps they’ll wonder. Maybe they’ll begin thinking and hesitate at whatever they plan. Gods know, in ten years maybe we’ll have learned to fly that ship.”