She gripped his hand. “We’ll go after the answers,” she said, “yonder.”
No doubt Dayan, the acting captain, would object, and still more would Envoy’s robotic judgment. Kilbirnie’s thought coursed about in search of arguments, demands, ways to override opposition: anything short of mutiny. She had not come this far, leaving her true captain behind her, to sit idle in a metal shell.
Summer heat lay on the settlement like a weight. Forest stood windless, listless beneath a leaden overcast. Thunder muttered afar.
Windows were not opaquable, but Nansen had drawn blinds over his and the air conditioning worked hard. In the dusk of the living room, a crystal sphere, a Tahirian viewer, shone cool white. Within it appeared the image of a being. Nansen leaned close. The form was bipedal, slanted forward, counterbalanced by a long, thick tail. From beneath a scaly garment reached clawlike hands and a hairless, lobate, greenish head. The effect was not repulsive, simply foreign.
“(I show you this,)” wrote the parleur of the Tahirian he called Peter, while attitudes and odors gave overtones he was beginning to interpret, “(because somehow, in your company, command flows through you. Later we will talk, and then you can decide what your others shall learn.)”
“(Everything,)” Nansen replied. I can’t explain about tact, discretion, timing, especially when four of us are off beyond reach. (Jean, what are you doing as I sit here, how do you fare?)
He sensed grimness. “(Yes, you are free with information, whatever the hazard. Most of us would have kept knowledge of the black hole from you, for fear of what reckless things you may do. Too late.)”
Inevitable that that incident become known, I suppose. No mention of punishment Emil and the rest go about as freely as ever. A consensus society? What are the sanctions?
Maybe none were needed, only the slightest social pressures, until we came. The powers that be don’t know how to handle us.
As if en had read the thought, Peter said, “(Yours is the second starfaring race we have encountered. Now that communication is acceptably clear, I will tell you of the first.)”
Nansen steadied his mind.
“(Their nearest outpost was about three hundred light-years from Tahir, their home world twice as far,)” Peter said. “(As with you, the trails of their ships inspired our scientists and called our explorers — although for us the development took much longer than yours did. Already those trails were dwindling away. By the time we arrived, the beings had ended their ventures and withdrawn to their parent planet.)”
Nansen felt a chill in his flesh. “(Did you find out why?)”
“(We believe we did. Communication with such alien mentalities was slow and difficult. Your resemblance to us, however tenuous, is greater by orders of magnitude. They are communal creatures, descendants — we theorize — of animals that dwelt together in burrows, in large numbers, with just a few breeders of the young-bearing sex.)”
That experience might account for the Tahirians’ eventual grasp of the roles of men and women, Nansen reflected. He also noted that Peter had not used the symbol for “female.” Doubtless the analogy was not exact.
“(Their whole culture, identity itself, resides in the kin group,)” Peter went on. “(It is remarkable that they finally achieved a global civilization. We think electronic data processing and communications made it possible.
“(Over time, starship crews and even colonies proved insufficient to maintain it. Numbers were too few for mental health, contact with other nests too weak and sporadic for social ties. Madness(?) ensued, cultures twisted, destructive, evil(?). Some went extinct, through internecine conflicts that destroyed their basis of existence. One lashed out across interstellar space, and a continent was laid in radioactive ruin. Finally the sane core of the race succeeded in quelling the mad and recalling the survivors. Slowly they settled down into the peace that still prevailed when our last expedition visited them.)”
Peter blanked the view, as though the sight was too painful, and stood motionless. Nansen sank back in his chair, shaken. Thunder rolled closer.
“Tragico,” the man muttered, for Cambiante had not yet found an utterance for that concept and perhaps Tahirians had never had it. He turned to his parleur. “(They were unfit for starfaring.)”