“Not luren senses,” corrected H’lim. Then in an odd tone, he added, “There are no luren astrogators, at least not yet.” He paused at the door and looked back at Titus with that same distant gaze he’d had in the lab a while ago, speculating, weighing, looking into a distant future while simultaneously groping for something only dimly remembered.
And he did say that a genetic code could be the key to a giant leap forward in space-faring technology. For the first time, Titus recalled how H’lim had lumped the study of the relationship of space to time in with human will, vision, and the life force. By “life force” he might have meant genetic code. Genetic codes and space technology.
And he remembered the time when H’lim had dealt with the pain of a woman’s broken bones and explained that Earth’s customary divisions of disciplines were not his own. In that kind of a science, could astrogation and interstellar drive be one and the same thing?
Unbearably excited, Titus stepped up to the threshold to stand at H’lim’s side. He felt the subtle resistance of a mild threshold effect, something like a hotel room, and recalled all his attempts to prove mathematically that Influence could not exist. Yet it did.
“H’lim,” he asked, “why would the room be insulated like this, if luren don’t use it?” He was almost afraid of the answer.
“I really don’t know. I told you, Astrogation is a very tight union.”
“Well, come on in,” said the engineer, “and tell us what you can of all this. Please.”
H’lim gracefully stepped across the threshold. “Come, Titus, you may want to look this over.” To the engineer and everyone else, he said, “I don’t know how astrogation is done, but I can guess that from the time the collision course with your moon was known, they must have been in here trying to alter our course to prevent the crash. They must have been the first to know that our situation was hopeless.”
“And they would have bailed out?”
From the tilt of H’lim’s body, Titus thought the luren was struggling with the idiom. Since H’lim hadn’t had time to look at any fiction, it was small wonder he’d never heard the term. “To abandon ship,” supplied Titus.
“Ah! Yes, I suppose they would have tried. I can only hope they succeeded. Just hope. Please believe me, I know nothing about the exercise of their skills, or the way they use this room. Such matters are a specialty for the talented and trained. I couldn’t begin to assess their chances of getting out alive. I can only hope they did.”
Talented. Genes reveal talent?
“And if they did survive,” prompted Titus, “they’ll send help for you.”
“No. If they survived, they’d assume total destruction.” He gestured at the ship. “Hardly an unwarranted assumption.”
“I hate to be a killjoy,” said the engineer, “but except for the door which was locked from the inside, there’s no way out of this room.”
“Not at the moment, no.”
Ah! “So the motion of the ship through the galactic fields creates something in this room-a vortex, an anomaly, a singularity which interfaces with-what?” For that moment Titus forgot about Abbot, messages, threat of exposure to humans, and Inea’s diabolical self-determination. He felt tremendously alive for the first time since the takeoff from Quito!
Disjointed. Our science is disjointed! Little bits and pieces of comments and allusions H’lim had made coalesced. “A pool,” said Titus aloud. “You said a pool must be entered to learn this variety of math. A singularity might look like a pool.” He was standing on the black glass at the center of the design. He tapped one foot. “This looks like a pool! It makes some kind of a spacewarp, doesn’t it?”
H’lim was utterly still, his boots no longer scuffing at the mosaic. Even the susurration of everyone else breathing vanished as they waited.
“Spacewarp?” asked H’lim.
The word was part of Titus’s vocabulary, but mentally filed under “fantasy” along with everything else he knew about philosophy, psychology, Tarot, palmistry, and dream interpretation-unreal and therefore unimportant. Mysticism. He had dismissed the most important clue H’lim had given him as mysticism, not physics.
It’s real. It’s not mysticism, it’s real. They can really make spacewarps. It was the simplest explanation for everything they had found-and not found-on this ship.
“Explain it to him, Titus,” said one of the engineers, and Titus could hear the suppressed chuckle.
“I’m sorry, H’lim.” Titus sketched a definition, stumbling embarrassedly as he gave his sources.
“Science fiction? And I thought science training knocked all the imagination out of humans.”
They were all breathing again, but softly, tentatively. Titus replied, “Oh, we still dream, even as adults.”
With intense, searching curiosity, H’lim asked, “What do you dream of achieving, Titus? Travel among the stars you study?” His tone made it a personal, private moment, almost as if he were seriously offering Titus the stars.
Titus answered with bald honesty, “Yes. Every night.”
H’lim took a step closer, and Titus could make out his pale features behind the helmet. “Every night?” he demanded with a peculiar intensity.
“Every night when I can sleep, anyway. Tell me, H’lim, how does this thing work?”
H’lim retreated two steps, and Titus thought he could make out the negative movement of his head as he brushed the plea aside, his concentration focused elsewhere. “I don’t know, Titus. That’s the truth. I don’t know.”
In jerky stages, H’lim’s left hand went to the top of his helmet, as if absently trying to touch his forehead. The glove remained suspended there. Titus sensed aborted surges of Influence, as if the luren were choking down a fear/fight/flight response as he muttered, “Dreams,” as if tasting the word’s nuances for the first time. “Not aspirations or ideals. Something else entirely, some other biochemical function of consciousness.”
Titus offered, “Dreaming is the healthy way the human mind has of editing and organizing memories of the day’s events, and is psychologically vital to human health.”
Titus expected that was enough to dredge up all of the untapped associations lurking at the back of H’lim’s mind where Titus’s vocabulary was stored. It usually didn’t take very much to bring a word up into active use for the luren, but now Titus understood better what blocked the luren’s comprehension. Earth’s languages carved the universe up into chunks of very different sizes and shapes than the galactic languages. The genetics of consciousness. Earth’s physics talked of conserving momentum, mass and energy, not volition.
Before Titus could pursue that thought, H’lim dropped his hand, muttering in the luren language, “So that’s what Abbot meant.” The room filled with a beat of Influence that built from shock, to dismay, and edged into panic. Titus gathered his own Power. Knowing he couldn’t protect the humans if H’lim were to seize them as he had when he first woke, Titus focused narrowly on H’lim and spoke with all his own power, “H’lim!”
Somewhat to Titus’s surprise, it worked. The bright throb of Influence vanished and the luren turned to look at the cluster of humans by the door. “I’m sorry,” he began, then turned back to Titus, who was still standing on the black area of the floor. He) seemed to realize the humans had never been aware that he’d violated his word and invoked Influence. “Uh. I’ve just had a sudden insight. I’ve got to get back to the lab.” He started for the door. “Titus? Can you hurry?” He chattered to the scientists as he sidled through the crush. “You know how it is when you’re stumped and you take your mind off the problem. Besides, we were finished out here anyway.”
The crowd parted, and Titus caught up with H’lim, casting his own apologies about him as he went.
Chapter twenty-two
“What did Abbot mean?” demanded Titus when the two of them were momentarily alone in the airlock.