86

Eugenia Insigna said in a tone that seemed to place her halfway between puzzlement and discontent, ‘Marlene was singing this morning. Some song about: “Home, home in the stars, where the worlds are all swinging and free.” ’

‘I know the song,’ said Siever Genarr, nodding. ‘I'd sing it for you, but I can't carry a tune.’

They had just finished lunch. They had lunch together every day now, something Genarr looked forward to with quiet satisfaction, even though the subject of conversation was invariably Marlene and although Genarr felt that Insigna might be turning to him only out of desperation, since to whom else could she talk freely on the subject?

He didn't care. Whatever the excuse-

‘I never heard her sing before,’ said Insigna. ‘I always thought she couldn't. Actually, she has a pleasant contralto.’

‘It must be a sign that she's happy now - or excited - or contented - or something good, Eugenia. My own feeling is that she's found her place in the Universe, found her unique reason for living. It's not given to all of us to find that. Most of us, Eugenia, drag onward, searching for life's personal meaning, not finding it, and ending with anything from roaring desperation to quiet resignation. I'm the quietly resigned type myself.’

Insigna managed to smile. ‘I suspect you don't think that of me.’

‘You're not roaringly desperate, Eugenia, but you do tend to continue to fight lost battles.’

Her eyes dropped. ‘Do you mean Crile?’

Genarr said, ‘If you think I do, then I do. But actually, I was thinking of Marlene. She's been out a dozen times. She loves it. It makes her happy, and yet you sit here fighting off terror. What is it, Eugenia, that bothers you about it?’

Insigna ruminated, pushing her fork around on her plate. Then she said, ‘It's the sense of loss. The unfairness of it. Crile made a choice and I lost him. Marlene has made a choice and I'm losing her - if not to the Plague, then to Erythro.’

‘I know.’ He reached for her hand, and she placed it, rather absently, in his.

She said, ‘Marlene is more and more eager to be out there in that absolute wilderness and less and less interested in being with us. Eventually, she will find a way of living out there and return at lengthening intervals - then be gone.’

‘You're probably right, but all of life is a symphony of successive losses. You lose your youth, your parents, your loves, your friends, your comforts, your health, and finally your life. To deny loss is to lose it all anyway and to lose, in addition, your self-possession and your peace of mind.’

‘She was never a happy child, Siever.’

‘Do you blame yourself for that?’

‘I might have been more understanding.’

‘It's never too late to start. Marlene wanted a whole world and she has it. She wanted to convert what has always been a burdensome ability of hers into a method for communicating directly with another mind, and she has it. Would you force her to give that up? Would you avoid your own loss of her more or less continuous presence by inflicting on her a greater loss than you or I can conceive - the true use of her unusual brain?’

Insigna actually laughed a little, though her eyes were swimming with tears. ‘You could talk a rabbit out of its hole, Siever.’

‘Could I? My speech was never as effective as Crile's silences.’

Insigna said, ‘There were other influences.’ She frowned. ‘It doesn't matter. You're here now, Siever, and you're a great comfort to me.’

Genarr said ruefully, ‘It's the surest sign that I have reached my present age, that I am actually comforted at being a comfort to you. The fires burn low when we ask not for this or that, but for comfort.’

‘There's nothing wrong with that, surely.’

‘Nothing wrong in the world. I suspect there are many couples who have gone through the wilds of passion and the rites of ecstasy without ever finding comfort in each other and, in the end, they might have been willing to exchange it all for comfort. I don't know. The quiet victories are so quiet. Essential, but overlooked.’

‘Like you, my poor Siever?’

‘Now, Eugenia, I've spent all my life trying to avoid the trap of self-pity and you mustn't tempt me into it just to watch me writhe.’

‘Oh, Siever, I don't want to watch you writhe.’

‘There, I just wanted to hear you say that. See how clever I am. But, you know, if you want a substitute for Marlene's presence, I am willing to hang around when you need comfort. Even a whole world to myself wouldn't tempt me from your side - if you didn't want me to go.’

She squeezed his hand. ‘I don't deserve you, Siever.’

‘Don't use that as an excuse not to have me, Eugenia. I'm willing to waste myself on you, and you shouldn't stop me from making a supreme sacrifice.’

‘Have you found no-one worthier?’

‘I haven't looked. Nor have I sensed among the women of Rotor any great demand for me. Besides, what would I do with a worthier object? How dull it would be to offer myself as a duly deserved gift. How much more romantic to be an undeserved gift, to be bounty from the skies.’

‘To be godlike in your condescension to the unworthy.’

Genarr nodded vigorously. ‘I like that. Yes. Yes. That's exactly the picture that appeals to me.’

Insigna laughed again, and more freely. ‘You're crazy, too. You know, I never noticed that somehow.’

‘I have hidden depths. As you get to know me still better - taking your time, of course-’

He was interrupted by the sharp buzz of the message-receiver.

He frowned. ‘There you are, Eugenia. I get you to the point - I don't even remember how I did it - where you are ready to melt into my arms, and we're interrupted. Uh oh!’ His voice suddenly changed completely. ‘It's from Saltade Leverett.’

‘Who's he?’

‘You don't know him. Hardly anyone does. He's the nearest thing to a hermit I've ever met. He works in the asteroid belt because he likes it there, I haven't seen the old bum in years. I don't know why I say “old”, though, because he's my age.

‘It's sealed, too. Sealed to my thumbprints, I see. That makes it secret enough for me to ask you to leave before I open it.’

Insigna rose at once, but Genarr motioned her down. ‘Don't be silly, Eugenia. Secrecy is just the disease of officialdom. I pay no attention to it.’

He pressed his thumb down on the sheet, then the other thumb in its appropriate place, and letters began to appear. Genarr said, ‘I often thought that if a person lacked thumbs-’ And then he fell silent.

Still silent, he passed her the message.

‘Am I allowed to read this?’

Genarr shook his head, ‘Of course not, but who cares? Read it.’

She did so, almost at a glance, then looked up. ‘An alien ship? About to land here ?’

Genarr nodded. ‘At least that's what it says.’

Insigna said wildly, ‘But what about Marlene? She's out there.’

‘Erythro will protect her.’

‘How do you know? This may be a ship of aliens. Real aliens. Nonhumans. The thing on Erythro may have no power over them.’

‘We're aliens to Erythro, yet it can easily control us.’

‘I must go out there.’

‘What good-’

‘I must be with her, Come with me. Help me. We'll bring her back into the Dome.’

‘If these are all-powerful and malevolent invaders, we won't be safe inside-’

‘Oh, Siever, is this a time for logic? Please . I must be with my daughter!’

87

They had taken photographs and now they were studying them. Tessa Wendel shook her head. ‘Unbelievable. The whole world is absolutely desolate. Except this.’

‘Intelligence everywhere,’ said Merry Blankowitz, her brow furrowed. ‘No question about it now when we've been so close. Desolate or not, intelligence is there.’

‘But most intensely at that dome? Right?’

‘Most intensely, Captain. Most easily noticeable. And most familiar. Outside the dome, there are slight differences, and I'm not sure what it signifies.’

Wu said, ‘We've never tested any high intelligence other than human, so, of course-’

Wendel turned to him. ‘Is it your opinion the intelligence outside the dome isn't human?’

‘Since we agree that human beings couldn't have burrowed everywhere underground in thirteen years, what other conclusion is it possible to come to?’

‘And the dome? Is that human?’ Wu said, ‘That's a different thing entirely, and doesn't depend on Blankowitz's plexons. There are astronomical instruments to be seen. The dome - or part of it - is an astronomical observatory.’

‘Couldn't alien intelligences be astronomers as well?’ asked Jarlow, a bit sardonically.

‘Of course,’ said Wu, ‘but with instruments of their own. When I see what looks to me like an infrared computerized scanner of exactly the type I would see on Earth- Well, let's put it this way. Forget the nature of the intelligence. I see instruments that were either manufactured in the Solar System, or built from designs prepared in the Solar System. There is no question about that. I cannot conceive that alien intelligences, without contact with human beings, could have built such instruments.’

‘Very well,’ said Wendel. ‘I agree with you, Wu. Whatever there is on this world, there are, or were, human beings under that dome.’

Crile Fisher said sharply, ‘Don't just say “human beings”, Captain. There are Rotorians. There can be no other human beings on this world, excluding ourselves.’

Wu said, ‘And that's unanswerable, too.’

Blankowitz said, ‘It's such a small dome. Rotor must have had tens of thousands of people on it.’

‘Sixty thousand,’ murmured Fisher. ‘They can't all fit into that dome.’

‘For one thing,’ said Fisher, ‘there may be other domes. We could sweep around the world a thousand times and yet miss objects of all sorts.’

‘There's only this one place where there seemed to be a change in the plexon type. If there were other domes like that, I would have spotted a few more of them, I'm sure,’ Blankowitz said.

‘Or,’ said Fisher, ‘another possibility is that what we see is a tiny bit of an entire structure which, for all we know, may spread out for miles below the surface.’

Wu said, ‘The Rotorians came in a Settlement. The Settlement may still exist. There may be many. This dome may be a mere outpost.’

‘We haven't seen a Settlement,’ said Jarlow.

‘We haven't looked ,’ said Wu. ‘We've concentrated entirely on this world.’