“Might you come nearer to an idea of the Holont’s semantics?” Dayan asked.
“That is beyond me. But our contacts with it and the Tahirians have been richly suggestive as to the basics of our own minds. In the end, this may prove to be the true revolution we bring, insight into ourselves.” He quelled the note of enthusiasm. “Daydreaming. First we must give form to our thoughts so that we can test them.”
“Well, we all have a lot to think about.”
He glanced at her. The clear profile was somber against heaven. “You don’t complain,” he said gently, “but I imagine you feel a dreadful frustration. A glimpse of fundamental new knowledge, and then we left.”
“Why, no,” she replied. “I’ve been sincere. None of us were really sorry to go. What we did learn will keep us busy for the rest of our lives, won’t it? In fact, Wenji and I expect to be working the whole way back.”
“How, if I may ask?”
“We hardly know where to begin, there’s so much. For instance, preliminary designs of field-drive spacecraft suitable for humans. And besides the acceleration compensator, what other applications of the principle are there that the Tahirians never thought of? And newer to us, maybe even more important — I think I’m starting to see how that electron manipulation from a distance that the Holont can do works. Quantum entanglement. . . . The uses in communication and nucleonics, energy sources. . . . Transmissions across time. . . . And more and more, including what you’ve found out about the mind and Mam’s found out about life, possibly life after death. Oh, people will be engaged for centuries to come with what we bring them.”
“To the extent they can be,” Sundaram felt obliged to say. “That maybe limited. They will have no black hole to study, no Holont to converse with.”
He was not a physical scientist or technician. Preoccupied with his special explorations, he had not chanced to be present when this subject came up on shipboard, or else had paid no attention. She corrected him. “They will know the phenomena exist, that such things can be made. That should be enough for them to go on.”
“If they care to.”
“Yes. If. We don’t know what their civilization will be like.”
They walked on awhile. The noise of the water beast receded.
“All right,” she said abruptly. “Time I told you why I asked if we could have a private talk.”
“I did not wish to press you.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Kind, tactful — and, mainly, you understand the human soul.”
“Oh, please.”
“I mean in different ways from how Mam does as a physician and psychologlst, or any of us do from everyday experience. Your, well, probably yoga is the wrong word, but your spiritual guidance. I remember how you helped Lajos, calmed him down, eased his pain, that nightwatch when we were sealed into the wardroom. I suspect you’ve quietly helped others along the way.”
Sundaram shook his head. “I have no secret Eastern spiritual technology. In fact, it’s a myth.”
“Self-command, perception — there are right ways and wrong ways to try for them, aren’t there? The same as with anything else. You know at least some of the right ways. Now everybody needs your counsel.”
“Why do you say that?”
She fell silent once more. Mists thinned as temperature climbed. The turf squelped less and felt springier.
“We’re a crew, we surviving half dozen,” Dayan answered at length. “Our relations were never easy. They finally got murderous. And that was when we only had to cope with strangeness, loss, exile in space and time. We’re better knit together now. But what when we meet our far-future kin, when they come at us in ways no nonhuman ever could? How can we keep this hard-won . . . crewdom of ours? I think we have to, because it’ll be all we really have. But can we?”
Sundaram’s smile was more compassionate than amused. “I cannot very well offer a seminar in brotherhood, can I?”
“No, but you can . . . lend strength to … individuals as they need it. Just be willing to. They’ll soon know.”