“She’s biologged your little contretemps already.”
It had been hours. “You follow it?”
“I track the feeds. Bad habit I picked up from Grey.”
“Oh,” said Horrocks. For some reason it was a name he didn’t welcome hearing. “How is he, by the way?”
“Perverse,” said Genome. “Like all that Red Sun crowd.”
“Red Sun crowd?” Horrocks had an alarmed moment when he thought she alluded to his dealings with the Red Sun Circle.
“You know, all the people from back there.” She waved over her shoulder. “The old crew hands are as bad as passengers, sometimes.”
“Oh, right. They’ve been so long in the ship it’s like—”
“They have to make life more complicated than it needs to be,” she said.
“You’re right there,” said Horrocks, with more force than he’d meant.
“Ah!” said Genome again. “Her caremother got under your skin, did she?” She grinned at his open mouth. “Atomic biologged that, too.”
Horrocks had to laugh. “What do you think of the substance of it?”
“The argument? Huh.” She took a long sniff and stared into the distance. “I sure don’t want these little flatfoot breeders on the ship for much longer. Or their parents, come to that.”
“Just go ahead as planned?”
“Yup.”
“What about the aliens?”
“Rock the aliens,” said Genome. “Look, in fifty years they’ll have data colonies and science robots and all that Civil Worlds shower crawling all over them. They might as well get used to us in the meantime. Let it sink in that they’re not — ta-da! — alone in the universe, and they’ll soon sort out their little squabbles.”
“Suppose they have a little squabble with us?”
“So what?” Genome said. “What are they going to send up against us? Kites?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard what I’ve said on that score,” said Horrocks. “I’m more concerned about what fighting them would do to us.”
Genome shrugged. “We’d have plenty of time to prepare. Discuss. Sort out the morality of the thing. It’s not something you can do anything about now.”
Horrocks broke off another drink. “I suppose not,” he said. “I have a nasty feeling I’ve been inveigled into one of these founder intrigues that has nothing whatever to do with the ostensible bone of contention.”
“Yeah,” said Genome. “Probably some speculative ramp at the back of it.” She sighed. “Grey was always doing things like that. Watched the terrestrials market like a crow eyeing a caterpillar, every time he fired off one of his daft rants.”
“Past tense now, is he?”
She shifted in the loop. “As far as I’m concerned, yes.”
Horrocks guessed he mirrored her embarrassment. They gazed at each other for a minute. Having known Genome since childhood no longer struck Horrocks as a difficulty. In a sense he had not known her at all. Her directness was refreshing, her sharing of his age and background attractive. He told her so.
She waved her inhaler under his nose. “It’s a strong anti-inhibitor,” she said. “And you’ve been sidestreaming it for half an hour.”
“You have me at an advantage,” he said.
“So I have,” she said, and took it.
12 — View from a Height
“Tapes!” Nollam shouted. “Tapes!”
As Darvin and Kwarive rushed in to join the growing huddle around the telekinematographic receiver, two of Nollam’s fellow-technicians scrambled and fumbled to load and thread what looked like two kinematograph reels, one full and one empty, with no projector between them.
Darvin peered over Orro’s shoulder, conscious of Kwarive’s chin and hand-claws digging into his.
“We should have had them ready to roll,” he heard Orro grumble. He paid no attention. The screen demanded it all. The press was still growing. Behind and around him people were clambering up racks and leaning forward.
The moving picture was a grainier black-and-white than a kinematographic film, yet less jerky, more fluid and realistic. It showed the map Kwarive had drawn, and peering over it their own staring faces from a minute earlier, then them turning and running out of view. An uneasy laugh went up.
The image changed again, to a figure like a human being without wings, and with small eyes, ears, and nose. The face appeared hairless, with a tuft on the crown of the head. Its mouth was moving, it seemed in synchrony with the sound that boomed from the loudspeakers of the apparatus: EEE UUUUMMMM III-IHHH EEESSS EEEEE… It went on like that, a sound like surf in a cave. It was hard to hear, for a moment, as everybody in the room gasped or cried out, Kwarive loudest of all. Darvin shook with astonishment. Thus far he had not so much as imagined the aliens, and the vague swirl of images in his head that he’d associated with them had been of things far more alien than this.
The alien turned and pointed. What had seemed baggy, wrinkled skin on his arms and chest slipped and moved, revealing itself to be a body covering, like a cloak but fitted and shaped. The picture became for a moment incomprehensible, a patchwork of varied shapes interspersed with bright surfaces and overlaid with fuzzy white blobs. It rotated about a vivid white line drawn from the top of the screen to near the middle, and gave way to a much darker area dotted with clumps of bright spots. This was repeated several times, alternating light and dark.
“It’s the inside of a cylinder,” said Kwarive.
The view snapped into perspective. A cylinder: of course.
Orro jumped. “It’s the inside of the ship!”
“That’s ridiculous!” said one scientist. “Where are the occupants? Where is the machinery?”
“Too small to see!” shouted Orro above the hubbub. “The white puffs are clouds. The bright patches are lakes. We’re looking at a landscape rolled like a map.”
At that point everyone fell silent. The similarity of the scene to a view, from a greater height than any of them had flown, of an entire country curving upward and wrapped around overhead was irresistible.
“The thing is vast,” breathed Markhan, pushing forward from the back of the crowd.
“We knew that already,” said Darvin. “For it to be visible by telescope at its distance,”
The alien voice continued. The viewpoint zoomed downward. As it sank they all saw what seemed to be a gliding man, which as it passed closer turned out to be a small flying machine with a propeller at the front. Orro turned and grinned into Darvin’s face. The viewpoint reached ground level and settled on an open space, beyond which lay low buildings. A few of the aliens walked in and out of view, their legs long, their gait limber. They showed no awareness of the viewpoint, which Darvin presumed to be a camera.
The voice stopped and the picture changed again, to a scrolling display of line diagrams and row upon row of symbols. After some minutes of this the crowd began to relax and break up. Some who had rushed in drifted away, or hastened to their neglected duties. Some of the scientists went into immediate huddled conferences. Others remained transfixed by the incomprehensible sigils on the screen. The telekinematograph technicians paid more attention to the apparatus than to the display.
Markhan called one of them over. “More tapes!”
“Sorry, chief, we only have a couple more reels, and they’re right here.”
“How long does a tape last?”
“About half an hour.”
“Put out a call for more. Airship them in. Meanwhile, scrounge around for any used tapes. I don’t care what’s on them. Have them ready to tape over.”
The technician left, muttering under his breath.
“Might be a waste of time,” said Nollam. “Begging your pardon, chief, but even if we could read that, which we can’t, it’s flying up the screen too fast.”
“Couldn’t we run the tapes slowly?” asked Kwarive. A couple of the technicians laughed. Nollam gave them a sharp look and nodded to Kwarive.
“We couldn’t do it now,” he said, “but maybe with a bit of tinkering… I’ll think about it.”