Then Jonathon ceased blinking and looked hard at Reynolds. “Will you be going too?”
“No,” Reynolds said. “I’d like to talk to you alone if I can.”
“Certainly,” Jonathon said.
Several of the men in the party protested to Kelly or O’Hara, but there was nothing they could do. One by one they left the chamber to wait in the corridor. Kelly was the last to leave. “Don’t be a fool,” she cautioned.
“I won’t,” he said.
When the men had gone, Jonathon took Reynolds away from the central room. It was only a brief walk to the old room where they had always met before. As if practicing a routine, Jonathon promptly marched to the farthest wall and stood there waiting. Reynolds smiled. “Thank you,” he said.
“You are welcome.”
“For lying to them. I was afraid they would offend you with their stupidity. I thought you would show your contempt by lying badly, offending them in return. I underestimated you. You handled them very well.”
“But you have something you wish to ask of me?”
“Yes,” Reynolds said. “I want you to take me away with you.”
As always, Jonathon remained expressionless. Still, for a long time, it said nothing. Then, “Why do you wish this? We shall never return here.”
“I don’t care. I told you before: I am not typical of my race. I can never be happy here.”
“But are you typical of my race? Would you not be unhappy with us?’
“I don’t know. But I’d like to try.”
“It is impossible,” Jonathon said.
“But-but-why?”
“Because we have neither the time nor the abilities to care for you. Our mission is a most desperate one. Already, during our absence, our homeworld may have gone mad. We must hurry. Our time is growing brief. And you will not be of any help to us. I am sorry, but you know that is true.”
“I can talk to the stars.”
“No,” Jonathon said. “You cannot.”
“But I did.”
“Vergnan did. Without him, you could not.”
“Your answer is final? There’s no one else I can ask? The captain?”
“I am the captain.”
Reynolds nodded. He had carried his suitcases and crates all this way and now he would have to haul them home again. Home? No, not home. Only the moon. “Could you find out if they left a tug for me?” he asked.
“Yes. One moment.”
Jonathon rippled lightly away, disappearing into the corridor. Reynolds turned and looked at the walls. Again, as he stared, the rainbow patterns appeared to shift and dance and swirl of their own volition. Watching this, he felt sad, but his sadness was not that of grief. It was the sadness of emptiness and aloneness. This emptiness had so long been a part of him that he sometimes forgot it was there. He knew it now. He knew, whether consciously aware of it or not, that he had spent the past ten years of his life searching vainly for a way of filling this void. Perhaps even more than that: perhaps his whole life had been nothing more than a search for that one moment of real completion. Only twice had he ever really come close. The first time had been on Mars. When he had lived and watched while the others had died. Then he had not been alone or empty. And the other time had been right here in this very room-with Vergnan. Only twice in his life had he been allowed to approach the edge of true meaning. Twice in fifty-eight long and endless years. Would it ever happen again? When? How?
Jonathon returned, pausing in the doorway. “A pilot is there,” it said.
Reynolds went toward the door, ready to leave. “Are you still planning to visit our sun?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. We shall continue trying, searching. We know nothing else. You do not believe-even-after what Vergnan showed you-do you, Reynolds? I sympathize. All of us-even I-sometimes we have doubts.”
Reynolds continued forward into the corridor. Behind, he heard a heavy clipping noise and turned to see Jonathon coming after him. He waited for the alien to join him and then they walked together. In the narrow corridor, there was barely room for both.
Reynolds did not try to talk. As far as he could see, there was nothing left to be said that might possibly be said in so short a time as that which remained. Better to say nothing, he thought, than to say too little.
The air lock was open. Past it, Reynolds glimpsed the squat bulk of the shuttle tug clinging to the creased skin of the starship.
There was nothing left to say. Turning to Jonathon, he said, “Goodbye,” and as he said it; for the first time he wondered about what he was going back to. More than likely, he would find himself a hero once again. A celebrity. But that was all right: fame was fleeting; it was bearable. Two hundred forty thousand miles was still a great distance. He would be all right.
As if reading his thoughts, Jonathon asked, “Will you be remaining here or will you return to your homeworld?”
The question surprised Reynolds; it was the first time the alien had ever evidenced a personal interest in him. “I’ll stay here. I’m happier.”
“And there will be a new director?”
“Yes. How did you know that? But I think I’m going to be famous again. I can get Kelly retained.”
“You could have the job yourself,” Jonathon said.
“But I don’t want it. How do you know all this? About Kelly and so on?”
“I listen to the stars,” Jonathon said in its high warbling voice.
“They are alive, aren’t they?” Reynolds said suddenly.
“Of course. We are permitted to see them for what they are. You do not. But you are young.”
“They are balls of ionized gas. Thermonuclear reactions.”
The alien moved, shifting its neck as though a joint lay in the middle of it. Reynolds did not understand the gesture. Nor would he ever. Time had run out at last.
Jonathon said, “When they come to you, they assume a disguise you can see. That is how they spend their time in this universe. Think of them as doorways.”
“Through which I cannot pass.”
“Yes.”
Reynolds smiled, nodded and passed into the lock. It contracted behind him, engulfing the image of his friend. A few moments of drifting silence, then the other end of the lock furled open.
The pilot was a stranger. Ignoring the man, Reynolds dressed, strapped himself down and thought about Jonathon. What was it that it had said? I listen to the stars. Yes, and the stars had told it that Kelly had been fired?
He did not like that part. But the part he liked even less was this: when it said it, Jonathon had not blinked.
(1) It had been telling the truth. (2) It could lie without flicking a lash.
Choose one.
Reynolds did, and the tug fell toward the moon.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Gordon Eklund was born in Seattle, served four years in the Air Force, and now lives in the San Francisco Bay area. His first published story was a Nebula Award finalist in 1971. Since then he has published some four dozen stories and five novels, including The Eclipse of Dawn, Beyond the Resurrection, and All Times Possible. He is a full-time writer.
Gregory Benford is a part-time writer and a full-time associate professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine, currently working in the areas of plasma turbulence and the dynamics of relativistic electron beams. He has published numerous articles on science and two science-fiction novels, Deeper than the Darkness and Jupiter Project.
They have collaborated on a Nebula Award-winning story about strange aliens and their even stranger beliefs.