He crept on up. Now I know what it means to be old, he thought.
His heart fluttered feebly and wildly as he got into the chair. For a while he could not see the vision screens, through the night that spumed in his head. Then his universe steadied a little. The transmitter room was quite empty. The red light still showed contact. So at least there had been no destruction wrought in the receiving place. Except maybe on Dave; it didn’t take much molecular warping to kill a man. But I am being timid in my weakness. I should not be afraid to die. Least of all to die. So let me also go on through and be done.
He reached for the timer. His watch caught his eye. Half an hour since Dave left? Already? Had it taken half an hour for him to creep this far and think a few sentences? But surely Dave would have roused even the sleepiest operator. They should have sent a teletype to the Cross: “Come on, Terangi. Come on home with me.” What was wrong?
Maclaren stared at the blank walls enclosing him. Here he could not see the stars, but he knew how they crowded the outside sky, and he had begun to understand, really understand what an illusion that was and how hideously lonely each of those suns dwelt.
One thing more I have learned, in this last moment, he thought. I know what it is to need mercy.
Decision came. He set the timer for ten minutes — his progress to the transmitter room would be very slow — and started down the ladder.
A bell buzzed.
His heart sprang. He crawled back, feeling dimly that there were tears on his own face now, and stared into the screen.
A being stood in the receiving chamber. It wore some kind of armor, so he could not make out the shape very well, but though it stood on two legs the shape was not a man’s. Through a transparent bubble of a helmet, where the air within bore a yellowish tinge, Maclaren saw its face. Not fish, nor frog, nor mammal, it was so other a face that his mind would not wholly register it. Afterward he recalled only blurred features, there were tendrils and great red eyes.
Strangely, beyond reason, even in that first look he read compassion on the face.
The creature bore David Ryerson’s body in its arms.
17
Where Sunda Straits lay beneath rain — but sunlight came through to walk upon the water — the land fell steep. It was altogether green, in a million subtle hues, jungle and plantation and rice paddy, it burned with green leaves. White mists wreathed the peak of a volcano, and was it thunder across wind or did the mountain talk in sleep?
Terangi Maclaren set his aircar down on brown-and-silver water and taxied toward the Sumatra shore. Each day he regained flesh and strength, but the effort of dodging praus and pontoon houses and submarines still tired him. When his guide pointed: “There, tuan,” he cut the engines and glided in with a sigh.
“Are you certain?” he asked, for there were many such huts of thatch and salvaged plastic along this coast. It was a wet world here, crowding brown folk who spent half their cheerful existences in the water, divers, deckhands, contracting their labor to the sea ranches but always returning home, poverty, illiteracy, and somehow more life and hope than the Citadel bore.
“Yes, tuan. Everyone knows of her. She is not like the rest, and she holds herself apart. It marks her out.”
Maclaren decided the Malay was probably right. Tamara Suwito Ryerson could not have vanished completely into the anonymous proletariat of Earth. If she still planned to emigrate, she must at least have a mailing address with the Authority. Maclaren had come to Indonesia quickly enough, but there his search widened, for a hundred people used the same P.O. in New Djakarta and their homes lay outside the cosmos of house numbers and phone directories. He had needed time and money to find this dwelling.
He drove up onto the shore. “Stay here,” he ordered his guide, and stepped out. The quick tropic rain poured over his tunic and his skin. It was the first rain he had felt since … how long? … it tasted of morning.
She came to the door and waited for him. He would have known her from the pictures, but not the grace with which she carried herself. She wore a plain sarong and blouse. The rain filled her crow’s-wing hair with small drops and the light struck them and shattered.
“You are Technic Maclaren,” she said. He could scarcely hear her voice, so low did it fall, but her eyes were steady on his. “Welcome.”
“You have seen me on some newscast?” he inquired, banally, for lack of anything else.
“No. I have only heard. Old Prabang down in the village has a nonvisual set. But who else could you be? Please come in, sir.”
Only later did he realize how she broke propriety. But then, she had declared herself free of Protectorate ways months ago. He found that out when he first tried to contact her at her father-in-law’s. The hut, within, was clean, austerely furnished, but a vase of early mutation-roses stood by David’s picture.
Maclaren went over to the cradle and looked down at the sleeping infant. “A son, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes. He has his father’s name.”
Maclaren brushed the baby’s cheek. He had never felt anything so soft. “Hello, Dave,” he said.
Tamara squatted at a tiny brazier and blew up its glow. Maclaren sat down on the floor.
“I would have come sooner,” he said, “but there was so much else, and they kept me in the hospital—”
“I understand. You are very kind.”
“I… have his effects… just a few things. And I will arrange the funeral in any way you desire and—” His voice trailed off. The rain laughed on the thatch.
She dipped water from a jar into a tea kettle. “I gather, then,” she said, “there was no letter that he wrote?”
“No. Somehow… I don’t know. For some reason none of us wrote any such thing. Either we would all perish out there, and no one else would come for fifty or a hundred years, or we would get back. We never thought it might be like this, a single man.” Maclaren sighed. “It’s no use trying to foresee the future. It’s too big.”
She didn’t answer him with her voice.
“But almost the last thing Dave said,” he finished awkwardly, “was your name. He went in there thinking he would soon be home with you.” Maclaren stared down at his knees. “He must have… have died quickly. Very quickly.”
“I have not really understood what happened,” she said, kneeling in the graceful Australian style to set out cups. Her tone was flattened by the effort of self-control. “I mean, the ‘cast reports are always so superficial and confused, and the printed journals so technical. There isn’t any middle ground any more. That was one reason we were going to leave Earth, you know. Why I still am going to, when our baby has grown just a little bit.”
“I know how you feel,” said Maclaren. “I feel that way myself.”
She glanced up with a startled flirt of her head that was beautiful to see. “But you are a technic!” she exclaimed.
“I’m a human being too, my lady. But go on, ask me your question, whatever you were leading up to. I’ve a favor of my own to ask, but you first.”
“No, what do you want? Please.”
“Nothing very important. I’ve no claim on you, except the fact that your husband was my friend. I’m thinking of what you might do for his sake. But it will wait. What did you wonder about?”
“Oh. Yes. I know you tuned in the aliens’ transceiver and didn’t realize it. But—” Her fists clenched together. She stared through the open door, into the rain and the light, and cried forth: “It was such a tiny chance! Such a meaningless accident that killed him!”