“The visitors? That’s what I prefer to call them.” Sitting in my sole good chair, Elysen sipped tea from her mug, while I paced across my work space, avoiding canvases and matrices.
I paused to study her. There were deeper circles under her eyes, with hints of redness in them. She was thinner, and she’d shuffled slightly when she’d come in.
“I’m not a fowl to be studied, Chendor.” Her voice was gently acerbic.
“You’re not well, are you?”
“No. I wasn’t well before we left. They knew that, and I knew it.”
“What—”
“Extreme old age. At some point, medical science can’t do any more. You can only spur regeneration so long before the system says no, or before you get carcino-genesis so rapid and widespread that no treatment is effective. In my case, it’s just the former.”
“But… why did you come?”
“Why not? My children are dead, and I have greatgrandchildren older than you. I’d rather keep working.” She smiled and her eyes brightened. “I’ve never had such an interesting project, either.”
“Can you tell me yet?”
“Not quite. The cross-checks on the last observations—and on the mathematics—should be finished in the next few days.”
“Is it as big as you thought?”
She shrugged, then sipped her tea once more. “If the evidence all turns out the way it’s looking, it will be one of the most astounding discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics. It will also confirm the Kardashev civilization classifications. Most people will reject it. Possibly even most astronomers. It will be very controversial, to say the least.”
“You’re making it all very mysterious.” I knew better than to ask. I’d already tried more than a few times and gotten nowhere. Elysen would tell me when she was ready, and not before.
“You don’t like to let people see what you’re painting until you’re ready.”
She looked tired, and I didn’t point out that I had let her see works in progress. She and Aeryana were the only ones who had. “You never said what you thought about the visiting aliens.”
“From what Cleon has sent me, I don’t think the visitors’ technology was as advanced as ours, but it’s difficult to tell from so few scraps. One of the items left was a projectile weapon, gas-powered, from a reservoir. Of course, it wouldn’t have operated on Danann unless it had a heating element.”
“The only way they could get into the towers was to pound open the doors.”
“Some form of massive hydraulics. They’ve found traces of that, too. From the metal shavings buried in the ice, Cleon thinks that they had mechanical difficulties and finally gave up.”
“Why didn’t they use lasers?”
“I would surmise that they either did not have them or did not have them with the ability to focus sufficient energy in a fine enough cutting edge.”
“But they reached Danann.”
“They did. So did we. And we could have traveled here centuries ago. I have my doubts that we could have had much success either if we had arrived right after the development of the AG drive.”
“Why didn’t they come back, then?”
Elysen raised her eyebrows. “There was only one flurry of expeditions to Chronos. Why didn’t we go back?”
“Oh. You think it was too costly, with no hope of financial return? But surely, sometime…”
“How long do civilizations last, Chendor? We don’t know. We look at the ruins down there, and we know that something ended… at least it appears that it ended anywhere that we can reach or observe. We almost didn’t survive the early nuclear age on Old Earth, or the postdiasporan conflicts, or the Covenanter-Sunnite Conflagration. If they hadn’t called a truce when they did, most of the known galaxy would have been dragged in. Would we have had a civilization to come here—or return to Chronos?”
“But we haven’t seen a trace of the visitors’ civilization. Our Galaxy is by far the closest to Danann, and it would have been even a million years ago.”
“That’s true. And what percentage of even our Galaxy’s systems have we surveyed or visited? There are close to five thousand inhabited worlds—out of more than a hundred thousand million star systems.”
I couldn’t argue that.
“Intelligent life has to be rare,” she said quietly “We know that. Intelligence also makes cultures unstable.”
I hated to think that. “Liam Fitzhugh thinks Danannian culture was stable.”
“He may well be right. Are we to the point of matching it? In terms either of stability or technical achievement?”
Elysen didn’t say it, but I could sense what she implied. Would we ever reach that point? “Not yet.”
She looked at the latest light-matrix painting, my representation of a past that might never have been. “I wonder…”
“You wonder what?”
“If great art and stable societies are irreconcilable.”
“What about science?”
She smiled, so enigmatically that I wished I could have put the expression into oil then and there, but the half smile vanished before I could have even reached for an imager.
But that was art—trying to create a work that evoked a moment and a truth that had already come and gone—or one that had never been, but should have been.
56
Chang
Didn’t get to the officers’ mess that much with all the shifts in the shuttle schedule. Neither did Lerrys, and usually we never got there together, except at breakfast. Morgan took some of the replenishment runs to the Alwyn, trying to give us a break and keep his hand in. Wasn’t a bad idea.
Asked him why he didn’t try the needle pilots with the shuttles. He had laughed. “They don’t feel the mass.”
I understood what he meant. Exactly.
Another fiveday came. Dragged myself to the mess for the evening meal. Saw Liam Fitzhugh coming the other way. Just looked for a moment.
He looked, gave me a sort of smile. “Might I join you for supper?”
“I could manage that. Don’t ask me to be brilliant, Professor.”
“I won’t. I would request… if you wouldn’t mind… that you refrain from calling me ‘Professor.’ When I hear the term from you…” He stopped speaking. “My verbiage is already excavating a depression from which I will not be able to extricate myself.”
“Then stop digging.” Tried not to make the words hard.
“Excellent advice.”
We sat a good three tables away from the captain’s. Didn’t even ask each other. Just seemed better that way.
Professor deSilva joined us, and so did Nalakov, obnoxious math theorist. He always stared at me, like he’d never seen a fair-skinned woman with true blond hair and slanted eyes. Except he was blunt about it. Had to stop a smile when Alyendra Khorana plopped down between Fitzhugh and Nalakov. Gave me enough separation.
Fitzhugh poured me a quarter glass of the wine, exactly what I poured for myself. Impressed me. Also worried at me. Took even less for himself, passed the carafe to Alyendra.
“You don’t drink much?” I asked.
“I like just a little good wine. This is barely passable, but I will taste some, at times, if merely to remind myself that there is a universe of superb vintages awaiting our return. Not that I could afford most of them. Still… if one looks and is careful, there are many that are delightful and fit the budget of academics.”
Didn’t want to talk credits. “Do you think the aliens had wines?”
“They did not practice viniculture as we know it, not down upon Danann, but perhaps their chemistry was as advanced as their materials science.” He pursed his lips. “But then, they would never have discovered the joys of uncertainty, the combination of soil, of climate, and the fluctuations of solar radiation that combine to make a vintage that can be almost abysmal or truly celestial.”