…But then he remembered the gray woman, the quantum jewel which had sparkled even within its battered setting of bone and dirt, and his contempt was stilled. Even fallen, these were still humans.
Slowly, almost hesitantly, he returned to the Eighth Room.
After the absurd attempt to push Sand into the Eighth Room, the novelty of the crystal box had worn off. The Room was left mostly empty as the villagers spread through the comfortable, opaque interiors of the other Rooms, laying their filthy blankets over fleshlike floors. Soon it seemed that Erwal could scarcely walk a yard without tripping over some running child or the outstretched legs of its parent. The purposeless, almost lazy mood was only to be expected, she supposed. Life in the village had been an endless round of cold and dirt, made only more meaningless by the endless legends of man’s great past. The Eight Rooms were the driest, warmest, most comfortable place any human alive had ever seen…
But they had not come here for comfort.
Again and again she was drawn to the mysteries of the Eighth Room. She would lie on her back on its body-warm floor staring up at the star-buildings; or she would lie facedown, her nose pressed against the clear floor, and imagine herself falling slowly into that great, endless pool of light.
She studied the craft beyond the wall. It was some thirty feet long — nearly three times the size of the Room — and shaped like a fat, rounded disc. It was utterly black, showing only by starshine highlights. It was completely beyond her experience… but she knew what it was. Teal had told her what to expect, with his strange tales of men traveling among the stars.
This was the ship. It was a vessel to take them… somewhere else. (Here her imagination failed.) The Eight Rooms were merely a way station. But if they were to go on they had to find a way through these walls! She laid her palms flat and passed them over the warm, crystalline stuff. But this was not a teepee; there were no flaps to open. She slapped the wall in exasperation.
The gray-haired woman was frustrated! She wanted to explore!
Paul exulted. He slid quantum tendrils into her skull.
…She spread her hand wide and folded the fingers forward so that they formed a kind of cylinder; then she pressed her fingertips against the wall, just — here…
Erwal gasped and staggered away from the wall. She stared at her hands, flexing them and turning them over, as if to reassure herself that they were still under her control.
It had been like a waking dream.
It could have lasted no more than a second. She had seen her hand reach out and touch the wall in that odd way — it had been her own hand, undoubtedly; she had recognized the patch of white, frost-killed tissue near the center knuckles — but the vision had been laid over the sight of her real hand, which had remained resting against the clear wall.
She wrapped her arms around herself and retreated to the door of the Room. For some minutes she allowed the warm, human noises of the villagers to seep over her. She had felt able to cope with her bizarre experiences up to now: she had the stories of Teal to cling to, and as long as it was all out there, as long as she, Erwal, wife of Damen, remained the same, with her comfortable skin smock and her tiny collection of possessions, then she felt strong and able to endure.
But this was different.
Something had reached inside her head, and for the first time since she had left the village she experienced real terror. She wished Teal were here; surely he would be able to understand this…
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Teal wasn’t here. And in any event he hadn’t been able to go beyond this point himself. There was no use hiding in helplessness; the meaning of the vision was obvious. Someone, or something, had shown her the way out of here. Who it was, and how they had done it, she didn’t know. Nor did it matter. Now she had to decide what to do. She could return to the warm fug of the villagers and forget about the challenge of the stars…
Or she could follow these clear instructions.
And what would happen then?
It was just as well she was so unimaginative (she walked back to the far wall) for if she had the faintest inkling of what she might unleash (she lifted her hand as in the vision, made a tube of her fingers) she would certainly never approach the wall and stab her fingers just so—
Nothing happened.
She leaned against the wall, trying to stop the shaking of her body, and stabbed again and again.
Suddenly there was a hole in the wall. It was a circle a little shorter than she was, and it led into a wide, well-lit room — a room inside the ship.
Suddenly her will broke and she ran, sobbing, from the Eighth Room.
The humans stepped cautiously through the circular opening and stood, incongruous in their furs and leggings, at the center of the ship’s single chamber. Chairs of some dark, soft material lay scattered over the deck. The chairs were fixed in place but the humans quickly discovered that they would, with a judicious rock backwards, convert into couches. Soon the children were swarming over the devices, rocking back and forth.
Paul, watching, considered this. These chairs were so clearly designed for humans; in fact, of course, the whole life-system was human-based. And yet the rest of the ship showed few of the characteristics of human technology. Paul’s attention foci prowled. The chamber occupied by the humans was a flat cylinder which, Paul realized, filled most of the ship’s volume; its drive units, life support and other equipment must be embedded in the hull. And when he studied the paper-thin hull itself he found space-wings furled into tight coils within the body; and he discovered how it would be possible to expand collapsed compartments in the hull to accommodate hundreds, thousands of people.
Sadly this wasn’t necessary.
Slowly the humans colonized the comparatively spacious environs of the ship. They spread their foul blankets over the floor, argued over occupancy of the couches, and even tried to goad the poor animal through the Eighth Room and into the ship. Soon they were hanging up their blankets to separate the chamber into a series of private cells.
The ship meant no more to them than would a comfortable shack, Paul realized, amused and irritated.
Only the gray-haired woman showed any continuing curiosity in the ship itself. She prowled the walls, touching, staring, studying. There were panels which showed scenes of stars, but they were not simple windows; they showed images which were magnified, inverted, or distorted, as if seen sideways in a reflecting sheet of ice. Other panels, larger in area, coated the lower walls like silver paint. And to a table fixed beneath an array of panels were attached devices which Paul instantly recognized as waldoes, tailored for human hands. Obviously this was the ship’s control system. With a mixture of fascination and dread Paul watched the woman approach the strange, mittenlike objects; she poked at them tentatively, and once even appeared to be contemplating slipping her hands inside. But she backed away nervously and moved on.
Paul, with the wave-function equivalent of a sigh, resigned himself to waiting a little longer.
Erwal ran her fingers over the ship’s gleaming surfaces. She stared at the panels, the strange mittens, the shaped chairs, and tried very hard to understand.
She stood before a silver wall panel. The featureless rectangle, about as tall as she was, reflected a tired, uncertain woman. Perhaps she simply wasn’t up to this. If only Teal were here—
…She reached out her right hand and slid it through the silver panel, as if it were a pool of some liquid stood impossibly on end; she felt no discomfort, only a mild, vaguely pleasant tingling…