The taxi took off. Brenner started toward the door. At home he had walked with a rolling, ursine gait. Here he flowstepped, light and easy as an Earthdweller on Mars. His cloak flapped loose, his singlet was open on the broad hairy chest. The unaccustomed cold didn’t seem to bother him, rather he savored it.
I moved to intercept him. «Good evening,» I said.
Shadows barred our faces. He leaned forward to peer at me. The cigar dropped from his jaws. «Holy hopping Judas—Nick Simić!» He shook his head in bewilderment. «But you, your ship, you stayed behind.»
«Your settlement was out of touch with astronautics,» I said. My tone was sharper than intended; I really wanted to gentle the shock for him. «The Colonial Fleet accelerates at one gee. But in an exploratory vessel like the Bering, we’re selected professionals; and the motors have a lot less mass to act on. We load ourselves with gravanol and crank her up as high as ten gees. In five or six weeks we’re close to light speed and can ease off. I’ve been home for a year.»
«You, uh, didn’t stay long on Sibylla then.»
«Long enough.»
«Well.» He straightened. The remembered chuckle sounded in his throat. «Quite a surprise, son, quite a surprise. But pleasant.» He thrust out his hand. I took it. His clasp was firm. «And how are your shipmates?»
«Very well, thank you, the last I saw. The Bering has left again. Further study of the Delta Eridani System. The third planet looks promising, but its ecology is peculiar and—» I realized I was chattering to avoid speaking truth. «I stayed,» I said, «since I was in charge of our investigation on the ground and drafted our report. Citizen d’Indre wanted me for a consultant when you arrived.»
«I’m sorry if you missed going on account of us.»
«No matter. I’m in line for a command of my own.» That was true, but I said it merely to cheer him a little. «How are your people doing?»
«Okay to date.» Brenner didn’t seem in need of consolation, now that he had gotten over his surprise. I don’t suppose anyone grew old on Sibylla who couldn’t land on his feet when the floor caved in. He drew a breath and gave that straight-in-the-eye look which he had once described as Horsetrader’s Honest Expression Number Three. «’Course,» he said, «we wonder a wee bit why we’re held incommunicado and till when.»
«That has to be decided,» I said. «What happens tonight could be pivotal.»
«Don’t the proles know we’re here?»
«Nothing except rumors. Your story has to be handled like fulminate. You can’t imagine how restless those billions there are.» My hand swept an arc around the city. It growled and grumbled. «The original news, nonhuman vessels attacking Sibylla, was let out with infinite care, and only because it couldn’t be suppressed. Considering that they seemed to have faster-than-light travel, and something like gravity control, the way you told it, the photographs you transmitted—Panic can bring riot, insurrection.» I paused. «So can rage.»
«Um. Yeh.» The lines deepened around Brenner’s mouth, but somehow he kept his tone easy. «Well, what say we get on with it?… Oh, almost forgot.» He stooped to pick up the cigar. «Soldier gave me some o’ these. Friendly taste. No tobacco on our planet, you recall. We’d everything we could do to raise enough food to keep alive.»
My gullet tightened. «Put that thing away!» I exclaimed. «Over the side with it! Don’t you understand who we’re about to see? Jules d’Indre, Minister of Extraterrestrial Affairs. What he recommends be done about you, the Director is almost sure to decree. I warn you, Brenner, be careful!»
He regarded me a while before he obeyed. His next words were astonishing. «Did that girl who traveled with you, Laurie MacIver, did she ship out in the Bering?»
«Why yes.»
«Too bad.» He spoke softly, and for a moment laid his hand on my shoulder. «I think you want to help us, son, according to your lights. But she had something extra. You know the word simpatico?»
I nodded. «She is that,» I agreed.
We went ranging about, she and I, after a ground-effect car had been brought down and assembled. My thought was to interview as many Sibyllans as possible before they left. None were alive who had experienced the attack, but older ones might recollect what the generation before them had said, and might have noticed significant things in the bombed-out towns before salvage and erosion blurred the clues. Laurie accompanied me for several reasons. We didn’t need a computer officer here, and you don’t travel alone on another planet. But primarily, she understood people, she listened, and they talked freely because they sensed that she cared.
It is not true what the alleydwellers snigger, that spacewomen are nothing but a convenience for spacemen. They hold down responsible posts. And in the black ocean between stars, among the deaths that lair on every new world, on return to an Earth grown strange, you need someone very special.
Just the same, we had thin luck. Sunset handicapped us. Cumae hung low and went lower, casting an inflamed light that was hard to see by across the plateaus. But the air had cooled sufficiently for outdoor work, and everyone on those pitiful farms toiled till he dropped in his tracks. They must complete their daylight jobs—discing and sowing at the present season, plus hay harvest, livestock roundup, and I don’t know what else—largely with muscle power. They could only illuminate a limited part of their holdings after the moonless dark came upon them, truck gardens and such that would fail otherwise. Metal and manpower were too scarce to produce the factories which could have produced the machines and energy sources they lacked.
To be sure, this was the last round for them. They were going to Earth. But you can’t spaceload ten thousand human beings overnight. The Fleet was barely able to carry the rations they would need on their journey. They must feed themselves meanwhile, and they had no reserves. I was appalled at the wretched yields, the scrawny animals, the stunted timber. And, while most of the individuals I saw were whipcord tough, they were undersized, they had few living children, the graveyards were broad and filled.
«Terrene life is so marginal here,» Laurie said as we drove. Her voice was muted with compassion. We had no logical need for a recital of the facts. We had known them since before we left Earth, when we studied the reports of communications from Sibylla. But those were words. Here she met the reality. She needed to put it back into words for herself, before she could reach beyond the anguish and think about practical ways to help.
«Not simply that the native species are poisonous to us,» she said. «They poison the soil for our crops. You have to keep weeds, bacteria, everything out of a field for years before the rain’s leached it to the point where you can begin building a useful ecology. And then it’s apt to be attacked by something—new poisons seeping in, diseases, stormwinds—and at best, it never gets strongly established.»
I nodded and listed the causes, to hold off the idea of a personally evil cosmos. «Long nights, weird seasons, shortage of several trace elements, ultraviolet poverty coupled with X-ray and particle irradiation, gravity tending to throw terrene fluid balances out of kilter, even the geological instability. Some of their best mines collapsed in earthquakes in the early days, did you know?—and never could be reopened. Oh, yes, it’s a hard world for humans.»