“I couldn’t agree more,” said Darvin.
“Oh, you could,” said Bahron. “You’ll agree a lot more when you see this.”
The paper was of poor quality, the picture poorer. It was all dots. Narrowing his eyes, Darvin could just about make out a rectangle and two triangles. “It’s the Object!” said Kwarive, over his shoulder. “And it’s broken up!”
“Well done,” said Bahron. “The two conical bits are moving very fast. Not our way, thank the gods. To the little rubbish planets — the Camp-Followers.”
Darvin held up the sheet of paper. “Where did this come from?”
“It’s a wireless photograph from our embassy in the Southern Rule. The Gevorkians also have a copy. The original was handed in by one of the court astrologers. I understand it’s a lot more detailed. Like I said, you should have watched the skies.”
“Indeed I should,” said Darvin. “When did this breakup happen?”
“Four days ago, I gather.”
“Then there may be photographs from the observatory in my office—”
“Yes,” said Bahron. “I was kind of hoping there would. What have you been doing lately, if I may ask?”
Darvin gestured at Kwarive. “We’ve been investigating the trudges.”
“Brilliant,” said Bahron. “And what have you found?”
Kwarive held up an earpiece in one hand and the loop antenna in the other. “Listen,” she said.
Bahron came over and put his ear to the buzz.
“Is this some kind of trick?” asked Bahron.
“Trick,” said Handful. “Trudge trick. Bad trudge!”
In the moments that followed, the midge kit heard some new words, which Darvin rather hoped it wouldn’t learn.
They walked between the towers to the Faculty of Impractical Sciences. They walked as a courtesy to Kwarive, for whom Handful was now an armful. When they’d made to leave the annexe the little beast had set up such a pathetic wail that nobody could bear to leave him behind. Kwarive walked beside Bahron, in earnest conversation. Behind them Darvin walked with Orro and Holder. Darvin observed on the faces of people walking the other way a predictable shift of expression. As they approached their faces tended to bestow the standard vague indulgent smile of noticing a young woman and small kit. As they came closer and passed, the faces of those who noticed what Handful was froze, intrigued or shocked or outright disgusted. Darvin maintained a strut and glare that defied remark. It seemed to work, though he allowed on reflection that Holder’s swords and Orro’s martial bearing helped.
“Make yourselves at home,” he said when they crowded into his office, and left them to sort themselves out while he made tea. The stacks of unopened envelopes of celestial exposures, still sent every eight-days from the observatory, nagged at his conscience. He’d kept the order up for the sake of some future student who wanted to take up the search for the outer planet, and had never bothered to examine them himself. A packet had been in his basket as they came in. He thumb-clawed it open as the pot heated up. There was no room to spread them out. He flicked through them pair by pair. Orro’s arm reached over his shoulder.
“That one,” he said.
“How do you know?”
Orro gave him a puzzled look. “We solved the equations last year.”
“So we did, Orro, so we did.” He sighed. “Could you take care of the tea, old chap, and I’ll fire up the blink comparator.”
He positioned the plates and adjusted the focus and started scanning, faster and with less care than usual. By luck or intuition, he found the three adjacent moving dots within a minute. He spent longer staring at them.
He wondered how much difference there was between his mind and Orro’s. Where did any normal person stand in relation to someone who could visualise orbits from equations and recognise small patches of sky from memory and place the orbiting body in the right patch after half a year? Orro wasn’t doing mathematics quickly; he found calculation as laborious as the next fellow; but once he’d done it, he saw. Was the working of Orro’s mind as different from Darvin’s as his was from that of a trudge? It wasn’t a superiority in reasoning. It was like having another faculty, as alien to the normal human as language to the brute.
He looked up. “It’s confirmed,” he said. “I’ll have the photographs sent daily, so we can track what’s going on.”
“That would be good,” said Bahron, from the windowsill. “Going to the observatory would be better.”
Orro handed Darvin the tea.
“Thanks. What next?”
Bahron jerked his head at Holder. “Ask the sabreur.”
Holder, standing by the door holding a mug as if not quite sure whether to drink from it or piss in it, glanced around all the expectant faces.
“As a Gevorkian I feel somewhat awkward giving directions to—”
“Don’t,” said Orro.
“Thank you,” said Holder. “Forgive me. This is all very new. Once the treaty is proclaimed, the whole security aspect changes. The new project will be public. Much more work will be done openly. Our etheric calculators and systems of rocket guidance may prove invaluable, when combined with Seloh’s advances in aviation and etheric telekinematography. The secret sites will still be used, but it will be possible to ship in far more personnel and equipment now that there is nothing to hide—”
“Excuse me,” said Kwarive. She looked up from giving drops of tea on her fingertip to Handful.
“Yes?” Holder didn’t sound like a man used to being interrupted.
“You say there’s nothing to hide. That’s true — between us humans. We have nothing to hide from each other. What about hiding from the aliens?” She stroked Handful’s back. “This little creature, for example, is transmitting etheric waves as we speak. I don’t know if it’s getting back to the third moon, but it could be. Other trudges are doing the same, on a scale we don’t yet know. It’s going to be bad enough dealing with intelligent trudges, without worrying about trudge… intelligence, if you see what I mean! If we’re going to keep what we’re doing secret from the aliens, we have to do it out of the sight and hearing of trudges.”
“What do you mean, hearing?” asked Holder.
Darvin recalled Lenoen the Southerner’s comment about what it took to surprise him.
“Well,” said Kwarive, “if this little one is learning our language, and transmitting to the aliens, who’s to say the aliens aren’t learning it too?”
“That is a good point,” said Holder. “I have seen etheric calculators, and I am not inclined to set limits to what a more advanced science may do. However, it changes little, because we have no intention of concealing our activities from the aliens.”
“What?” cried Darvin.
Holder made a helpless gesture. “Bahron? You can explain it better.”
“Don’t know about that,” said Bahron. “But I’ll try. See, I and the science boss, Markhan, and smarter folks than me, like Arrell, we’ve talked a lot about this. Especially after the shittle affair. Other parts of the project have looked long and hard at what that germ-plasm fiddling tells us about what our friends up there can do. We never forget that they’re up there, looking down, seeing us as sharp as a hunter fixing on a skitter. We never forget that their eyes are down here — maybe in the trudges, maybe shittles again, maybe things we can’t see at all. When I was a little kit, and even a big kit, we knew there was ether, right, it’s self-evident, but we had no idea there was such a thing as etherics. Invisible waves passing right through us and all that. We know the aliens use etherics, but don’t know what else they may use. In other invisible realms, so to speak. So we could be hiding away in caves and under roofs and screening for all the things we know about, and the wingless could be just watching us and smiling behind their big hands.”