“Magnificent,” said Whit. “This is the kind of stuff I came to see.” He produced a notebook and gazed at it. “I’d like to capture as much of this as I can. Sloshen. Uh, that’s the correct term, right?”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful,” he said.
“What’s wonderful? How do you mean?”
“Nothing seems to be sacred here. They can get up and talk about anything. The audience screams and yells, but the police do not come to get you.” His eyes glowed. “You thought of this place as Athens when you first saw it.”
“Well, not exactly, Whit. That was Brackel.”
“I’m talking about the civilization, not merely this particular city.” He fell silent for a few moments. Then: “They have more freedom than the Athenians did. More even than we do.”
That annoyed Digger. He liked Whit, but he had no patience with crazy academics making charges no one could understand. “How could they have more freedom than we do?” he demanded. “We don’t have thought police running around.”
“Sure we do,” he said.
“Whit.” Digger raised his eyes to the overhead. “What kind of speech is prohibited? Other than yelling fire in a crowded place?”
Digger smiled. “Almost everything,” he said.
He was baffled. “Whit, that’s crazy. When’s the last time anybody was jailed for speaking out on something?”
“You don’t get jailed. But you have to be careful nonetheless not to offend people. We’re programmed, all of us, to take offense. Who can go in front of a mixed audience and say what he truly believes without concern that he will offend someone’s heritage, someone’s religion, someone’s politics. We are always on guard.”
“Well,” said Digger, “that’s different.”
“No it isn’t,” said Whit. “It’s different only in degree. At my prep school, it was drilled into us that good manners required we avoid talking politics or religion. Since almost everything in the domain of human behavior falls within one or the other of those two categories, we would seem to be left with the weather.” He looked momentarily bleak. “We have too much respect for unsubstantiated opinion. We enshrine it, we tiptoe cautiously around it, and we avoid challenging it. To our shame.
“Somewhere we taught ourselves that our opinions are more significant than the facts. And somehow we get our egos and our opinions and Truth all mixed up in a single package, so that when something does challenge one of the notions to which we subscribe, we react as if it challenges us.
“We’ve just watched Macao go in front of an audience and admit that a belief she’s probably held all her life, that the world can be explained by reason, is wrong. How many humans do you know who would be capable of doing that?”
“But she was right the first time, Whit. Now she’s got it backward.”
“Irrelevant. She’s flexible, Digger. It looks as if they all are. Show them the evidence, and they’re willing to rethink their position.” He shook his head. “I think there’s much to recommend these creatures.”
The actions of the gods are everywhere around us. We have but to look. What are the stars, if not divine fire? How does one explain the mechanism that carries the sun from the western ocean, where we see it sink each evening, to the eastern sky, where it reappears in all its glory each morning? How else can we account for the presence of plants and animals, which provide our subsistence? Or for the water that we drink? Or the eyes by which we see? The gods have been kind to us, and I sometimes wonder at their patience with those who cannot see their presence, and who deny their bounty.
— Gesper of Sakmarung
The Travels
(Translated by Ginko Amagawa)
chapter 42
On board the Hawksbill.
Monday, December 8.
THE CLOUD HAD been shedding velocity for months, possibly years. Because the Hawksbill was moving at a steady clip, the cloud was falling behind. Collingdale wished they could shed some velocity themselves.
But they couldn’t. Not without bumping, and probably collapsing, the kite.
He wondered when they would reach a point from which the cloud would no longer be able to get an approach angle on Lookout. “Insufficient data,” said Bill, when he asked the AI. The truth was they simply knew too little about the cloud’s capabilities.
Collingdale played with the numbers, but he wasn’t much of a mathematician, and it was all guesswork anyhow. It was just past noon on the second day of the pursuit. He thought that if they could get through the rest of the day, and through the next, to about midnight, it would be over. The cloud would be so far off course that no recovery would be possible.
But the omega was becoming steadily smaller on the overhead. It was now eight-hundred kilometers back, almost three times as far as it had been when it turned to follow them.
He was exhausted. He needed some sleep. Needed to think about something else for a while. He’d done nothing since they’d left orbit over Lookout except sit and worry while his adrenaline ran.
Bill announced that Julie was on the circuit.
“Good news,” Julie said. She looked tired too. “Ten-day forecast for Hopgop, Mandigol, and the entire northern end of the Intigo: Rain and more rain. With lots of low visibility.”
“How about that?” said Collingdale. “I guess Marge knows her stuff.”
“Apparently.”
It was a memorable moment. Everything seemed to be working.
HE TRIED TO read, tried to work on his notes, tried to play chess with Bill. He talked with Kellie. The only release for his tension came when she admitted to similar feelings. Be glad when it’s over. Dump the thing and wave good-bye.
He promised that when they went back to Lookout they’d do a proper celebration of her wedding. “I guess I pretty much put a cloud over everything.”
“Not really,” she said, but her tone said otherwise.
“Well, we sort of cleared out. Not much of a honeymoon.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“Probably the first time a woman got married and ran off for several days with another man.”
THEY HAD AN early dinner and watched The Mile-High Murders. Kellie guessed after twenty minutes who did it. She was quite good at puzzles and mysteries. Collingdale wondered why she hadn’t made more of herself. But she was young. Still plenty of time.
When it was over he excused himself and retired. An hour later he was back on the bridge clad in a robe. At about midnight Kellie joined him. “Wide awake,” she said. “I keep asking Bill if the cloud’s still behind us. If the kite’s still in place.”
It was eleven hundred klicks back now.
At about 3:00 A.M., when both were dozing, Bill broke in: “The cloud has begun throwing jets out to the rear.”
Thank God. “Excellent,” said Collingdale.
Kellie was still trying to get awake. “Why?” she asked.
“It’s accelerating. It wants to catch us. Or, rather, catch the kite.”
She looked at him, and smiled. “I guess it’s over.”
Collingdale shook his head. Don’t get excited yet. “Another twenty hours or so,” he said. “Then I think it will be time to declare victory.”
Bill put the images from the monitors on-screen. A couple of plumes had indeed appeared at the rear of the cloud and were growing as they watched.
HE DOZED OFF again, and woke to find her gone. “Bill,” he said.
“Yes, David?”
“Is it still there?”
“Yes, David.”
“Range?”
“Twelve-fifty. It is still losing ground, but not quite as quickly.”
“Excellent, Bill. Good show.”