CHAPTER 24
Year two.
As aboard ship, beds in the cottages were expansible to double width. After half an hour, the cedary odors of lovemaking had faded from Zeyd’s. He and Dayan had begun to talk, sitting up against the headboard. Their mood was less bright than earlier.
“It’s been far too long,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes.”
He stroked his mustache and attempted a leer. “We must do something about that.”
The hazel eyes challenged him. “Can you?”
He looked the question he neither needed nor wanted to speak.
“You are the one always away,” Dayan said. Her tone regretted but did not accuse, and she did not add that his absences were with Mokoena.
“Research,” he defended. “The environments, the ecologies, the laboratories. All over the planet.”
“Of course. You know how I envy you that.”
“Do you still feel idled? I thought you were happy enough, working with Wenji.” It was not quite true. He was an observant man. He had left some things unsaid in hopes they would improve by themselves; and she was not given to complaining.
She nodded, red locks sliding across pillow. “It is interesting. But —”
He tensed. “Yes?”
She had gathered resolution. “There is real science screaming to be done.”
“What?”
“The pulsar. Some of us have quietly discussed it. We’ll soon be ready to present a plan for an expedition.”
“No!” cried shock.
She smiled a bit sadly and stroked his cheek. “If it happens, I’ll be sorry to leave you forsaken. I’ll look forward to coming back.” She turned implacable. “But go I will.”
The device that Yu held before Sundaram fitted on her upturned left hand. It had the form of a thin forty-centimeter slab bent at right angles, the vertical part twice the length of the horizontal. A control board, a continuous touch-sensitive surface with a grid of guidelines, covered the top of the lower section. Screens filled both sides of the upper. As the fingers of her right hand gave directions, characters came and went across the screens while a speaker produced melodious sounds.
“I hope we may consider this the finished model,” she said. “The Tahirians who have tried it seem to like it well.”
She gave it to Sundaram. He experimented. Even the randomness he got entranced him. “Magnificent,” he praised. “It will require practice, of course, to master, but — I have been thinking about it. Let me suggest we call it a parleur. A voice across the abyss between two utterly different kinds of communication.”
“You still must create the mutual language.”
“It progresses. I suspect that with this tool progress will rocket. But I will need your help — what you can spare from your technological studies — I will need your help more than ever.”
“How?”
“I imagine that programming your nanocomputer demands a special talent.” He shrugged, with a rueful smile. “Under the best conditions, I am not a good programmer.”
“You have no reason to be.”
Sundaram blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
Yu regarded him levelly through the muted lighting in his cabin. Rain roared against the windows, a savagery of silver.
“Your own genius is too big,” she said. “It crowds other things out.”
“Oh, come, now, please. I am simply overspecialized.”
“It grows lonely, does it not?”
“Can you collaborate?” he asked in haste. “Have you time?”
She lowered her eyes and bowed above hands laid together. “Certainly. I am honored and delighted.”
“The honor and delight are mine, Wenji,” he let out.
Nansen took a group of Tahirians on a tour of Envoy. They flitted up in a native spaceboat. Considerable preparation had gone beforehand, while people of both species struggled to explain things and outline procedures; thus far, they had little more than their diagrams and cartoons to talk with. In the course of it, he gathered that nearly all space activity was robotic. Sometimes minerals were brought to Tahir, or finished products whose manufacture on the surface would harm the biosphere. However, this was seldom. The planet’s economy seemed to be as close to equilibrium as the laws of thermodynamics allowed.
Then why does so much material, energy, effort go to the world they’re transforming? he wondered for the thousandth time. What became of the ships that once plied among the stars?