Alexandra came in and passed her a message marked PERSONAL. It was from Digger, and it outlined a plan to induce the Goompahs, when the time came, to evacuate their cities. He wanted her opinion.
It was as good as anything she’d been able to think of. Might even work. She scribbled off a short reply: Try it. Good luck. Will join you in the new year.
Hell, he might have something. Maybe they’d pull it off yet.
After dinner, the captain of the Vignon offered a tour of his ship. Everybody went. The kids went because they thought superluminals were exciting. Wally Glassner went because it provided a chance to pontificate on how much better the appointments were compared with what they’d had to live with for the past seven months. Jason Holder went so that he could make sure no one had accommodations superior to his. The other members of the general staff went so they could express their relief at getting away from the al-Jahani.
Judy went so she could be one more time with the eleven linguists and her shattered dream of riding to the rescue.
The captain of the Vignon, whose name was Miller, or Maller, or something like that, was an unassuming man of modest proportions, shorter even than she was, but who was obviously proud of his ship. He enjoyed showing her off. And, in fact, the Vignon was the most recent addition to the Academy’s fleet. It had briefly belonged to the late Paul Vignon, a banking magnate, who had willed it to the Academy. “It was originally named Angelique,” the captain explained, “after a girlfriend.” At the family’s request, the ship was renamed for the donor, who had never actually been aboard her. (Whether the personal pronoun referred to the ship or the girlfriend was not clarified.)
The tour ended in the common room, where the captain had arranged to have drinks and snacks laid out. Judy wandered from one conversation to the next, aware that she was having trouble getting the thundering beat of the 1812 out of her mind. She could not resist smiling, standing with MacAvoy and Holder, while the latter went on about the stupidity of administrators at the University of Toronto, where he’d punished their incompetence by leaving his position as leading light in the Sociology Department. As Holder described his vengeance, cannons went off in her head, banners rose through the gun smoke, and saber-wielding cavalry units drove into the flanks of the infantry.
“Why are you smiling?” Holder asked, stopping in midsentence to stare suspiciously at her.
“I was just thinking how difficult it will be for the U. T. to make up for the loss.”
“Well,” he said, not entirely certain whether he had been mocked, “I didn’t really want to do any damage, but at some point they have to come to realize. ” and so on.
When the opportunity offered, she excused herself and went back to the al-Jahani. Despite what they’d been through, she wasn’t anxious to leave the broken ship. They’d accomplished a lot here, had broken into the language of the Goompahs, had mastered it, had read their literature, absorbed some of their philosophy and their ethics.
She sat down and paged through her notebook of Goompah wisdom.
Enjoy life because it is not forever.
There was no indication they believed in an afterlife, or in any kind of balancing of the scales. No judgment. No Elysian fields. They seemed to see the world, the Intigo, as an unpredictable place. But it was their home, as opposed to the idea it was a place through which they were just passing en route to somewhere else.
Therefore, pleasure was a good unto itself.
Regrets usually arise from things we failed to do that we should have, rather than things we have done that we should not.
Accept responsibility.
Enjoy the moraka, which didn’t translate, but which seemed to imply a combination of love, passion, the exotic, intimacy, friendship.
Beware addictions. The essence of the good life is a free exercise of the will, directed by reason.
Beware addictions.
But wasn’t moraka an addiction?
“Bill,” she said, “I want to record a message. For transmission.”
“To?”
“David.”
“When you’re ready, Judy.”
She thought about it a long time. Smiled into the imager, tried to look casual.
“Dave,” she said, “the relief ship got here today. Some of our people are bailing out. Rest of us are headed in your direction. When you get where you’re going, keep in mind things may not work out. If that happens, don’t blame yourself.” She almost thought she could see him, sitting in his cabin on the Hawksbill. Thinking about nothing except the omega. “Have a good flight. I’ll see you in January.”
“Transmit?” asked Bill.
Somewhere, far off, she heard the thundering hoofbeats of Cossacks.
“Send it.”
“Done,” said Bill.
ARCHIVE
(Excerpts from The Book of the Goompahs)
(Translated by various members of the Shironi Kulp)
We exist for the sole purpose of making one another happy.
It is said, with pride, that we are the only creature that looks at the stars. But who knows what the galloon contemplates in the dead of night?
Every advance, every benefit, is the gift of an individual mind. No group, no crowd, no city has ever contributed anything to anyone.
Whatever you have to say, make it brief.
Good advice is always irritating.
Defend your opinion only if it can be shown to be true, not because it is your opinion.
Authors love to be petted.
Integrity means doing the right thing even when no one is looking.
Every good jest contains an element of truth.
The queen of virtues is the recognition of one’s own flaws.
Snatch a kiss and embrace the consequences.
chapter 34
On board the Jenkins.
Thursday, December 4.
MOST OF THE projectors were micros, units ranging from the size of a pen up to a full-scale Harding monitor that came complete with a tripod. Four hundred of them had been collected at Broadside, the majority from their own supply, a few from one of the corporate development groups and independent researchers. They’d been shipped in four containers on the Cumberland. Mark Stevens also brought the two gold rings ordered by Digger. And a cartload of congratulations.
While the Cumberland unloaded its cargo, the Hawksbill arrived insystem. Stevens announced he’d stand by in case needed, which meant he wasn’t anxious to forgo some human company after the long run out from the station.
The micros would be placed at strategic sites, then could be activated from the Jenkins, and would relay whatever visual image, and spoken message, was fed into the system. All that remained was to get them in place. And prepare the message.
The omega dominated the night sky. It was a great black thundercloud twice the size of the bigger moon. And it grew visibly larger each evening. The Goompahs saw it clearly as an approaching storm, one that refused to behave like ordinary storms. They were terrified. The talk in the streets was that when it came they would all hide indoors, with the shutters drawn. But they were still thinking exclusively of heavy rains and a few lightning bolts. Maybe over an extended time. Several days or so. There was no sense of the enormity of the thing, or of the damage that hurricane-force winds might do. Digger wondered whether the Goompahs had any experience with tornadoes or hurricanes.
They were approaching a part of the operation that Digger didn’t like. He had known the plan for months, that when the Hawksbill got there, Kellie and Julie Carson would switch places. Julie would take over the Jenkins, and Kellie would switch to the Hawksbill, which she would command during the decoy operation. That was happening because she wasn’t licensed to pilot the AV3, the heavyweight lander that would be used during the cloud-making effort.