“The residence you mentioned,” it went on, “is no longer occupied by Earth-humans. Do you still need to visit it?”
For an instant the Cinrusskin’s hover became less stable. Then it recovered and said, “Yes, Colonel. If only to apologize for landing Rhabwar uninvited in their backyard.”
Being an emotion sensitive, Prilicla always tried to avoid doing or saying anything that would cause an unpleasant emotional reaction in others, because the other person’s anger or distress would be shared by the empath. Even though the colonel was well beyond the range of its empathic faculty, the habit of always saying the right thing was strong. But there were times, Hewlitt had found, when the little entity could be very economical with the truth. He had the feeling that this was one of them.
“Major Stillman will meet you at your airlock in three hours,” said the colonel. “Is there anything else you need from me, Doctor?”
Before Prilicla could finish saying no and thanking it again, the transmission ended.
“I could have taken you to the site, and the house, without Stillman’s help,” said Hewlitt. “Why do you want to go to the house anyway? The real reason, I mean, not the polite, socially acceptable one that you gave the colonel.”
“If we refused the assistance of the local Monitor Corps, friend Hewlitt,” said Prilicla, “the colonel would be sure that we were trying to hide something. We are not hiding anything, because we still don’t know if there is anything to hide except, perhaps, our own future embarrassment.
“I have no good reason to visit the house,” it went on, “other than to cover old ground in the hope that a useful idea will occur to us, or to you, while we are doing so. I feel you radiating disbelief combined with disappointment. Perhaps you were expecting a more substantial reason. But the truth is that we have no clear idea of what, if anything, we will find there.
“We will proceed with the briefing now…”
They might not know what they were looking for, Hewlitt thought, but Captain Fletcher and the entire medical team were going out well equipped to find it. His translator was working, but the language was too specialized and technical for him to understand and make a contribution, so he listened without speaking until there was an interruption from the wall speaker.
“Communications. The material promised by Colonel ShechRar has come in. Instructions?”
“Put it on our repeater screen, friend Haslam, and run the accident report first,” said Prilicla. It drifted closer until the downdraft from its wings stirred his hair, and went on, “You are welcome to remain, friend Hewlitt, but if at any time you find this material or our conversation distressing, please feel free to return to your bed and raise the hush field.”
“It happened a long time ago,” he said. “I was too young to be told all the details, but now I want to know. Thank you, but I feel sure that I’ll be all right.”
“I will know how you feel, friend Hewlitt,” said Prilicla. “Proceed, friend Haslam.”
The report began with the service ID pictures of his parents, which surprised him because they looked no older than he was now, and in his mind they had always been so much bigger and older than himself. They had been looking very serious for the camera, he thought as the other personal and physiological details unrolled, but that must have been one of the few times when they had not smiled at him. The memories came flooding back, sharp and clear and corroborating in every detail the reconstruction of the accident investigators.
At the time his father had been too busy to even to look at him, but his mother had smiled and told him not to be afraid as she climbed over the backrest of the copilot’s position to squeeze down beside him. She had held him very tightly in her lap with one arm while her free hand redeployed the safety harness around both of them. Outside the canopy, the sky and the tree-covered mountains were spinning around them, with the trees coming so close that he could see individual branches. Then she had pushed his head forward, folding him in two on her lap with the back of his head pressed between her breasts. There had been a sudden shock that flung them sideways and apart, a loud, tearing crash, and the feeling of rain on his face and cold air rushing past as he fell.
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