Wings, passed over her mind. Is it part of a different idea for Yuri? We’ve naturally come to use the star-pictures of Beronnen; but across a thousand light-years, he can recognize a few of man’s, however strangely changed, he told me. Which are they?
Light-years. Light… It glimmered on grass, glinted where it caught insignia on the man’s dress uniform or, she knew, the silver in her headband; maybe her unbound hair shone a little for him. She finished the music.
“Nom d’un nom!” Dejerine exclaimed. He struck hands together. “I have never heard anything like! Where is it from?”
“America, I believe.” Jill lowered the guitar to the floor, leaned back in her chair with one long leg crossed over the other, and lifted her glass for a sip. This Earthside brandy was heady stuff. She warned herself to go slow. Well, not too slow. Moderation in all things, including moderation.
She had made that remark to Ian Sparling, and he had said, “My dear, your idea of moderation would’ve strained Alexander the Great,” then at once retreated into impersonalities. Is Ian really in love with me? I wish I could be sure, to help me know what to do. whatever that would be. She continued, smiling a bit:
“Odd, that you should have to come this far to hear a song off your native planet. But maybe it’s forgotten there. I daresay we preserve many quaint archaisms. Shall we charge admission?”
Dejerine shook his sleek head. “No, no, Jill,” he said. They had gotten on first-name terms in the course of the meal, which he praised with a knowledgeability that proved he was sincere. She had been pleased, being rather proud of her skill. “I meant your incredible… coda? It fitted so well, yet it cannot be of human origin. Can it?”
“Yes and no,” she replied. “I spent a couple of seasons doing field work in the Thunder-head Mountains. The locals there communicate across distances by whistling, and they’ve developed a music based on it. I learned and adapted what I could. That wasn’t much, Ishtarians are better than us at producing and hearing sounds. Their music, tike their dance, is nearly always incredibly sophisticated by our lights.”
“What you can do is remarkable.”
“Yeah, I’ve made it a minor art of my own. You should hear some numbers.” Jill grinned. “Downright obscene.”
Dejerine chuckled and bent toward her. She hoped he hadn’t misunderstood her jape as a suggestion. To change the subject, and because the sudden fancy amused her, she said, “Apropos peculiar cultural creations, that expression you used. ‘Nom d’un nom,’ wasn’t it? If you’ll forgive my pronunciation. Am I right that it means ‘name of a name’?”
He nodded, relaxed, picked his cigar out of the ashtray on the table, and puffed.
I reckon he got the hint. she thought. Maybe not consciously. He’s sensitive.
“A French phrase,” he said. “I have never grasped the logic of it.”
“Oh, but I do. What is the name of a name? For instance, my name is Jill. But the name of my name—” She cocked her head and laid a fingertip to chin. “Yes, I believe my name is named Susan. And yours… m-m… Fred? Why, we may have founded a whole new science!”
They laughed together. Then a silence fell, wherein they heard a nightringer sing.
“What a lovely evening,” she murmured at last. “Enjoy it. We won’t get a hell of a lot more like this in our lifetimes.”
“Lovely in every way,” he said, “though chiefly because of you.” She gave him a quick glance, but he stayed where he was and his tone came earnest rather than glib. Therefore, her look stayed with him. “I am truly grateful for your invitation, your all-around kindness. It has been, it is hard work getting settled here. And then nearly everyone is chilly toward us, if not outright hostile.”
“That seems wrong to me. You’re wearing the same uniform as my brother. This war wasn’t of your making, and you’re doing your duty the most humane way you can.”
“You know I support the war. Not for conquest or glory—ad i chawrti, no!—but as the lesser of two evils. If we keep the balance of power today, we should not have to fight on a far larger scale in ten or twenty years.”
“You’ve told me before. I—Yuri, I like you as a person, but you’re too bright not to realize I’m also trying to influence you, get your help for the help of Ishtar. You talk about sacrifices for the greater good. Well, what value have millions of thinking lives? A whole set of societies, arts, philosophies, all we could learn and make of ourselves, from a race which quite possibly balances out as ahead of us in evolution.”
His free hand made a fist on the arm of his chair. “I sympathize with the fact that you have friends here who will suffer if your programs are curtailed,” he said. “But as for the more abstract issues—Jill, excuse me, but I ask you to ask yourself: How much scientific advance is your brother’s life worth?”
“That isn’t the point!” she flared. “Your wretched base—”
She broke off and he stepped quickly into the gap. “The base is a detail, important here but still a detail. If it were cancelled, you would become able to do certain things. Nevertheless, the war would go on engaging resources and shipping you need for most of your projects. Engaging them for the sake of humans who can hurt just as badly as Ishtarians.”
“Well, I don’t know.” She stared past him, into darkness. “Are we obliged to bail out the Eleutherians? Would we need that ‘balance of power’ you say is our real reason, if we hadn’t first encouraged and then underwritten their land grab?” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I only know, here we’re letting a chance—purely from a selfish, practical viewpoint we’re throwing away a chance at knowledge that could make as big a difference to us as, oh, molecular biology.”
From the comer of her eye she saw him frown; but she felt he was as relieved as she at this way to steer clear of a partisan fight. “M-m-m, I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ll take your word for it that the Ishtarians have done unique things, sociologically. Yet how relevant can their experiences ever be to us?”
“No telling till we’ve tried. But I’m talking about straight biology. Look, what do you imagine it was like to live in a world where people got cancer? Or any of those foul things we tossed out after we understood our cell chemistry? Our chemistry. Since, we’ve begun getting in-depth knowledge—barely begun—knowledge of extraterrestrial life. I’ll bet it brings on a, an Einsteininian revolution in Terrestrial biology, too. And one of the most enlightening cases is right here on Ishtar. Maybe solitary in the universe.”
“You… your research needn’t be affected by the war, Jill.”
“I doubt if mine matters—natural history, and in the most Earth-similar parts of the planet. No, I mean T-life. And to study T-life, we have got to get safe, steady, large-scale access to Valennen. Now the Gathering is in danger of losing Valennen. My honorary uncle Larreka’s been in charge there; he’s come down to plead for help in keeping a foothold—” She turned her gaze full upon him. “How do you like that. Captain Dejerine? A possible rebuilding of all our ideas about how life can work—possible immortality for man, or you name it—in the hands of one battered old legionary mudfoot!”
“I don’t quite follow you,” he said softly. “I will be happy to hear you explain.”
Surprise jolted her. In their encounters hitherto, he had shown he’d done his homework. His questions were well informed and he needed answers less elaborate than she had given him at first. Why this sudden ignorance?
A put-on, to make me enthusiastic and jolly again? she wondered. And if so, for what purpose, plain goodheartedness or—?—He must know women the way he knows orbits. Or, anyhow, better’n any other man I’ve ever met does. For sure better’n I know men. Not that that’s saying a valwas of a lot.