And then, in suspense once again in spite of themselves, they put it carefully into the Interface with the flickering (?) thing they called Beta-2.
And the flickering thing went mad this time. At least they assumed that must have been what happened. Showers of sparks (?) flew from one end of its half of the Interface to the other. The air in the Interface took on a moiré pattern that none of them could look at. There were vibrations… not noises precisely but vibrations… thudding (?) around them. Things quivered and split off and flowed and flapped wildly…
When it was over, not nearly quickly enough, the Alien was quite dead. So far as they, or the scientists, could tell. Which was just as well, since no one would have dared turn it loose and return it to where it had come from if it had survived. And there was only PanSig available for explaining to the rest of the Beta-2’s, back at the old plantation or whatever they lived on, what had happened to their dearly beloved departed.
Arnold Dolbe bitterly resented the fact that Thomas Chornyak had refused to take on the job of making that explanation, or even delegating it to some other member of the Lines. It seemed to Dolbe that that was inexcusable.
“Absolutely not,” the linguist had said. “You made this mess. We keep telling you, and you won’t listen, and so you keep making messes. You clean it up.”
“But we are not good at PanSig!”
“Nobody is good at PanSig,” snorted Thomas. “It’s not something that it’s possible to be good at. It’s a system of very crude and primitive signals for emergencies… and I suppose this is one of those. Jesus, what a mess.”
At such moments Dolbe wished he had followed the Pentagon’s advice and continued to let their “John Smith” types act as liaison between Government Work and Chornyak, instead of insisting that he be allowed to observe the project directly and talk with him and with the technicians without intermediary. He had hoped things would go better if they eliminated the middlemen. He had been wrong.
“Mr. Dolbe,” said the linguist, “you have scores of staffers from D.A.T. who are trained in PanSig. Find somebody with guts and let him get on with this. Putting it off won’t help matters… for all you know, that Alien was part of some kind of collective animal, or was completely telepathic. The rest of the Beta-2’s may already know that it’s dead.”
“We know that.”
“And you’re scared. That’s why you called me.”
“We called you because you’re an expert on such matters,” Dolbe replied with the stiffest of upper lips. “We aren’t scared.”
“Then you’re bigger fools than I thought,” said Thomas, walking out on them. “I’d be scared shitless in your place.”
Definitely, thought Dolbe, he should have let the old system stand. Then it would have been one of the John Smiths who had to be humiliated like that, and not him.
And then the linguist had stuck his head back in the door and said, “Dolbe, I’ll make you the same offer I made last time. I’ll take that baby off your hands.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Dolbe whispered.
“No? Doesn’t it appear to be in the same condition the other eleven children were?”
“So far as we know.”
“Then let me have it — we might be able to help it.”
“It will go to the orphanage, as did the others,” Dolbe said, fighting to keep each word coming, something about the linguist’s face making him long to crawl on the floor on his belly and beg for mercy, “and it will receive the very finest care. You may be sure of that. You can’t have it.”
Chornyak had given him a look that Dolbe would remember forever; but he had not said another word, and that was the last they’d seen of him.
And now Dolbe was packing. He had never expected this, never thought the day would come when he’d have to pack his things and move out of this office. His office. His lab. His project! It tore him apart. It twisted him, right in the guts.
The orders from the Pentagon had been very unlike the usual government messages — you could understand this set without the slightest trouble. They said: TERMINATE PROJECT. Just that. No explanation. No account of what had happened when the D.A.T. staffer told the other Beta-2’s about the accident, in PanSig. No remarks of any kind. Just TERMINATE PROJECT. And their new division assignments, in a postscript.
It wasn’t fair. True, everything they’d done so far had failed. But they had learned things! What had happened to the idea of knowledge for the sake of knowledge? Truth for the sake of truth? They’d done a damn good job, considering the magnitude of the task and what they’d had to work with.
The other men had only laughed when he told them. Laughed! And Showard, curse him, had said, “How come new assignments, Dolbe?”
“Well, of course, we’d get new assignments.”
“I don’t see why,” Showard drawled. “Remember? It was crack Beta-2 or the world would end. Remember? The General himself told us so, him and his spaghetti and his blinding white teeth and his cute little soldier suit. If the world is about to end, I’d rather get drunk. How about you, Beau? Lanky? Wouldn’t you rather get drunk?”
The only consolation in this move, thought Dolbe, who had never had even a fleeting interest in frontier colonies and wasn’t looking forward to living on the one they’d picked to transfer him to, was that he’d never have to see Showard or St. Clair or Lanky Pugh again. The Pentagon had scattered the four of them as widely as they could possibly be scattered, and Dolbe found it almost unbearable that Lanky Pugh was being allowed to stay here on Earth. New Zealand might not be Washington, or Paris, but at least it was civilized. So Pugh had a certain touch with computers… it was still unjust.
“Never mind, Arnold,” he told himself out loud. “Never mind. Just put it all behind you, and get on with what you’ve been ordered to do.”
A team player, that’s what he was. By God.
And he wasn’t going to let down the side.
Chapter Seventeen
“Behavioral Notes”
ONE: That: one never has to say please.
What does it mean? It means that please is not required because your needs are known, and without being politely asked it is still possible to refuse you.
TWO: That: one is always welcome.
What does it mean?
It means that there occur from time to time empty spaces which you are allowed to fill and during which your presence constitutes no real annoyance.
THREE: A shudder.
What does it mean?
It means that an error has been made in the translation.
Nazareth could not have said precisely when her personal involvement with Jordan Shannontry began. She had never had a flirtation, never even a “crush,” and there had been no opportunity for her to learn anything about romance from her husband. One day Jordan was simply her informal backup on duty, always courteous, always as helpful as his limited knowledge of REM34 allowed him to be. And then without any transition that she could identify he was something more, and she found herself always in a kind of breathlessness next to him. Her eyes went more and more to his strong hands as they turned the pages of his books and worked deftly with the microfiches; she knew those hands so intimately that she could see them with her eyes tightly closed… the texture of the skin and its color, the elegance of the joints, the haze of dark soft hair, the bend of the wrists. All of it seemed to her to have an endless fascination so that she could never tire of exploring it again; and when his hands touched her, accidentally or in the course of their joint duties, she went absolutely still, as a rabbit freezes when the owl swoops down upon it. Presumably, this was the “love” about which she had heard so much… she had no real way of knowing. And the negotiations dragged on and on.