“They do, and they don’t. They’d look like that in any holo or flat picture. Those don’t capture what’s in and behind them.” I didn’t want to talk about what I hadn’t been able to depict through either direct capture or my own lightbrush strokes and pointillism. “Did anyone say when we’ll be able to board the Magellan or when we’ll be leaving? Or where we’re headed? Do you have any more ideas about that?”
“No one mentioned any specific time. I did overhear one of the officers talking about his stateroom and how it was better than the station quarters.” Elysen looked at the thin wisp of steam beginning to circle out of the pressure spout of the teakettle that rested on the small counter at one side of the sitting room. “I hadn’t realized the pressure seal was leaking. Watched kettles do boil so much more slowly.”
“Do you have any more ideas about where we’re headed?”
“I had thought it might be an expedition back to Chronos, but the parameters aren’t right, and they wouldn’t need someone like me…”
I nodded politely. I didn’t have the faintest idea what Chronos was.
“… and they certainly wouldn’t need you. They want records, and good ones, but they also want a sense of wherever it is. You couldn’t ever get close enough to record anything artistically, not even with an AG drive. Chronos is a featureless sphere, and with a gravity two hundred eighty times that of Terran norm.”
“Terran?”
“That’s old-style terminology. It’s unfashionable these days. Now it’s either T or Tellurian, but it’s all the same. It has been for millennia. Too many people have the illusion that changing the name changes the truth—or the lie—behind it.”
How old was she? She drank tea, had silver hair, and eyes that were black and green at the same time, and that was a sign of great age.
“You’re saying that they’ve found an alien civilization.”
“I would judge that they have found ruins of some sort, and that they’re quite a distance away. If the civilization were still present, this would be a military expedition—or a diplomatic one backed with great military force. They have certainly found something of great and unique value. I would also judge that it is of great antiquity— unimaginable antiquity.”
Unimaginable antiquity? What would something like that look like? Was it still intact? Or did they want me to create an image of what it might have been from rubble and fragments?
Elysen poured the boiling water into the teapot. “It’s not as hot as it should be. That’s even with the pressure spout.”
I’d never noticed the difference, except that I wasn’t burning my tongue.
“Tea should be prepared with true boiling water, not water pressurized to less than boiling, but that is one of the small irritations of great expeditions.”
The irritations would be forgotten as small only if the expedition were in fact a great one. That also was human nature. I took the cup and saucer from her. It was ancient porcelain of some sort, and I decided that a cup and saucer of that design should be on a side table in the next portrait. Somehow, I needed to combine the mischief, the hint of saintliness, the scientist, and the proper woman who loved tea, a woman out of her time, who was aware of it and yet comfortable with who she was.
18
Fitzhugh
After more than an old-style week on the station, with each day unending in its dolose monotony, broken by but conversations, either speculating upon the forthcoming project or upon the eternal haecceity of academia, I had managed to make a less-than-profound impression on the tortuous backlog of professional readings I had loaded into the blocs I’d brought. So much of what passed for analysis and insight was merely a compilation of events with explications designed to support a preconceived thesis. All too many equated a succession of trends or events with causality. Most of the theses, as well, were based on ideological wistfulness, rather than the rigor of speculative deconstruction. To stand outside one’s history, culture, and language and see what has happened with acciptrine scholarly vision is among the hardest of accomplishments, and the least valued by those who deal with the certainty of a set universe.
As for entertainment, while both stateroom and work space had screens, what was available from the station’s system was insufferably pedestrian and with little redeeming value—social, political, or otherwise. I did listen to my copy of Cavernisha’s Event Horizon Suite, my eyes closed, enjoying the music. I also used the high-gee workout room.
While I pondered, as I did more often than I should, right after breakfast on twoday, Lieutenant Ruano stepped through the hatch into our sitting room. His official title was Mission Liaison Officer, although his diplomacy, tact, and delicacy hovered on the border of taciturn banality, and, when asked a question, his explanations could often have been classified along the range of between disingenuous and totally morological.
“Professors, please pack all your gear. We’ll be moving you to the Magellan, beginning at ten hundred.”
“ ‘The time has come,’ the Odobenus rosmarus said,” I added, almost under my breath.
“Liam, obscurity for the sake of obscurity serves no one,” murmured Alyendra from across the table. “Least of all, you.”
“I was talking about walruses.”
“You are a walrus at times, and that’s being charitable.”
I had let slip from my memory the less than delightful acerbity of Alyendra’s terseness. I resolved not to do so once we parted ways again.
“Will we be able to return here?” asked Tomas.
“That is highly unlikely,” replied Ruano, smiling.
A simple negative would have sufficed, along with a polite apologetic commentary, but Ruano’s social graces had more than obviously reached their limbus at the minimum requisites of military courtesy.
“Will you have a slider for baggage?” asked Melani.
“Ah… I will make sure there is one.”
“Thank you,” the petite theoretical psychologist replied. “It will be far easier for you than having to carry so much of our baggage and equipment.”
Ruano paused. He looked at Melani, then looked away.
Alyendra concealed a smile.
After several moments, Ruano straightened. “I’ll be back at ten hundred.” He turned and departed.
After Ruano’s abrupt withdrawal, we all retreated to our quarters and began the process of repacking. That encompassed some garments, in my case, in need of cleaning, a necessity about which I was more than infrequently guilty of procrastinating, particularly when I was the one required to undertake the ablutive actions.
True to his word, the good lieutenant returned at zero nine-fifty-nine, with a muscular tech and a slider for baggage.
We all had our gear stacked in the sitting room. I had carried out a case of Melani’s that massed as though it held either lead or gold. I wasn’t about to inquire what it contained. I also wasn’t about to warn Ruano, but the tech who accompanied him was the one who lifted it onto the slider, almost as effortlessly as I had.
Once the tech loaded the slider, we followed the lieutenant out through the hatch and down the blue corridor, then a gray corridor, then another blue corridor, for quite a distance—it could have been close to a kay—before we reached a circular ramp.
“This ramp will lead to the lock and tube to the Magellan. At the top of the ramp, each of you will be scanned, and your ID/DNA entered into the ship’s systems. That is necessary to allow you access to the equipment in your work areas and staterooms. Your bags and equipment will be scanned as well. I’ll wait for you inside the Magellan’s lock, and from there, I’ll direct you to your quarters.”