Nonsense! Jordan scoffed. Xenophobia, pure and simple. Still … I suppose we should be careful. Then he laughed to himself. It doesn’t matter how careful we are, we’re in the hands of a vastly superior civilization. Adri could crush us if he wished, vaporize us, our camp, and the ship up in orbit, to boot.
But he said he needed our help.
A brightly colored bird swooped low between the trees and squawked once, then flapped away.
Jordan followed its flight until it was lost in the foliage high above. When he looked down again at the trail he was following he saw Aditi standing there, waiting for him, with her catlike pet Sleen twining around her ankle. His heart leaped.
She was wearing a knee-length skirt of dark blue and a short-sleeved blouse of a lighter shade. Her smile lit up the forest.
He hurried up to her. “Hello! Have I kept you waiting?”
“Not at all,” Aditi replied, laughing. “I knew when you’d get here.”
Jordan kissed her, lightly, and hand in hand they walked the rest of the way to the city’s edge while Sleen slinked off into the foliage.
As they crossed the stone walkway that circled the city and started up its main street, Jordan said, “I’ve got to have a long talk with Adri. There’s so much I need to learn, need to find out.”
Aditi nodded thoughtfully. “He’s busy this morning. A meeting with the city’s administrators.”
“Sounds dull.”
“But it’s important. He said he’d meet us for lunch. In his office.”
Jordan smiled. “That gives us the entire morning for ourselves.”
“None of the others are coming?”
“No,” he said. Wondering how much he should tell her, he added slowly, “They’ve decided to remain in camp, for the time being. They … they’re rather frightened of you.”
“Of me?”
“Of Adri. Of your people. The reality of all this is just starting to sink in on them.”
“And they’re frightened of us? Why? We’re not going to harm them.”
“Aditi dear, I know that. And you know it. I think perhaps even the rest of my people know it—in their heads. But in their hearts, in their guts, they’re scared.”
“How odd,” she said. “Emotional.”
“We humans are frightened by the unknown, and there are such enormous unknowns involved here.”
“I suppose so,” she said, nodding.
“I want to help them get over their fears. To do that, I have to learn a lot more about who you are, where you come from, and why you’ve lured us to this world.”
Aditi smiled at the word lured, but made no reply. The two of them walked in silence along the city’s main street, nodding at the people walking along in the opposite direction.
“Where’s everyone going?” Jordan asked. “We seem to be the only people heading upstream.”
“Most of them are going to their jobs. It’s the beginning of the workday.”
“And where are we going?”
Aditi hesitated a heartbeat or two. Checking with her inbuilt communicator, Jordan thought.
At last she replied, “Let’s go to the communications center.”
She led him down a side street toward a small stone building. Jordan saw that it was attached to the side of the massive structure that Adri had called their administrative center. All right, he said to himself. The dormitory building should be around the corner of the administrative center, on the far side of the plaza that connects them. He smiled inwardly. I’m getting to know the city’s layout, at least a little.
He saw no antennas on the communications center’s roof. Like all the other buildings in the city, its flat roof was a garden, green and leafy.
Inside, though, the comm center was a humming beehive of quietly intense activity. Men and women sat at rows of consoles. Electronic maps covered the walls. Display screens showed rooms, corridors, city streets, the farms beyond the city’s edge, patches of forest, a seashore glittering beneath the morning sun.
“That’s our camp!” Jordan recognized the dome-shaped bubble tents.
“Yes, we keep watch over it,” said Aditi, standing beside him.
Frowning slightly, Jordan asked, “Do you eavesdrop on our conversations?”
“We monitor your discussions, yes.”
Even though he had known that Adri somehow tracked his every move, Jordan felt nettled at Aditi’s casual admission that they were spying on their human visitors.
“I suppose the lavatories are off-limits,” he grumbled.
Aditi giggled. “Oh yes. You can keep secrets in there.”
He grinned back at her. “On our world, it’s considered impolite to spy on people.”
“Oh, we’re not spying, Jordan! We’re…” She fumbled for a word. “We’re … spying,” she finally admitted. “I suppose that really is the correct definition, after all.”
“Why? We’re no threat to you.”
“We need to know all about you,” Aditi said. “We need to know what you think of us, what you intend to do.”
“Are you afraid of us?” he asked, incredulous.
“Not afraid, exactly. Curious. Hopeful. Worried, too, I suppose.”
Jordan looked into her troubled eyes. “There is a gulf between us, isn’t there?”
“Yes, I’m afraid there is.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m here to close that gulf. When we meet with Adri.”
The Gulf
Aditi led Jordan to the astronomical observatory, a domed structure that housed several telescopes, big tubular pieces of equipment angled up toward the dome, closed against the day’s glare. Men and women, youngish for the most part, were seated at electronics consoles or bent over large tables whose tops were digital display screens. Jordan saw that the images were of star fields, swirling clouds of thousands, millions of pinpoint stars set against the black of infinity.
“Your telescopes seem rather small compared to the ones I’ve seen on Earth,” Jordan observed.
Aditi explained, “These optical telescopes are electronically boosted. They can see more clearly than your best telescopes on Earth.”
“Our best telescopes are in orbit,” he said. “And on the Moon.”
“We have no need for that. Observations from the ground are sufficient for our studies.”
“Really?”
“Dr. Rudaki seemed happy to be working with our astronomers,” Aditi said, almost mournfully. “But she hasn’t returned here for some days.”
“She will,” said Jordan. “Give us some time to adjust to conditions here.”
“I hope she will. I hope your Dr. Meek and the others learn to trust us.”
Jordan bit back the reply that sprang to his mind. Listening to every word we speak isn’t the way to build trust, he said to himself.
Aditi seemed to understand his reaction. Turning from the telescopes to a wall display that showed row upon row of alphanumeric symbols scrolling rapidly across the screen, she said, “We also have radio telescopes, outside the city. Some of them are quite large.”
“Do you communicate with other intelligent species?” Jordan asked.
She shook her head. “It can’t be called communication. The gulf between stars is too large. It takes years—our years—for a message to reach another intelligent species. Then more years for them to respond.”
“But you do send messages back and forth?”
“Yes,” she said. “Perhaps one day we’ll begin sending messages to Earth.”
And letting our own messages get through, Jordan added silently.
Adri was standing by one of the sweeping windows, slowly stroking the same little ball of dark fur with big, round eyes, when Aditi led Jordan into his office. He turned at the sound of the door sliding open and slipped the pet into a pocket of his robe. A beaming smile spread across his aged, seamed face.