“Why, Lidi?” Sweet Today asked.
Lidi stared at the Hainishwoman. “You want to churten again?” she demanded, raucous. She looked round at them all. “Are you people made of stone?” Her face was ashy, crumpled, shrunken. “It doesn’t bother you, seeing through the walls?”
No one spoke, until Shan said cautiously, “How do you mean?”
“I can see the stars through the walls!” She stared round at them again, pointing at the carpet with its woven constellations. “You can’t?” When no one answered, her jaw trembled in a little spasm, and she said, “All right. All right. I’m off duty. Sorry. Be in my room.” She stood up. “Maybe you should lock me in,” she said.
“Nonsense,” said Sweet Today.
“If I fall through…” Lidi began, and did not finish. She walked to the door, stiffly and cautiously, as if through a thick fog. She said something they did not understand, “Cause,” or perhaps, “Gauze.”
Sweet Today followed her.
“I can see the stars too!” Rig announced.
“Hush,” Karth said, putting an arm around the child.
“I can! I can see all the stars everywhere. And I can see Ve Port. And I can see anything I want!”
“Yes, of course, but hush now,” the mother murmured, at which the child pulled free, stamped, and shrilled, “I can! I can too! I can see everything! And Asten can’t! And there is a planet, there is tool No, don’t hold me! Don’t! Let me go!”
Grim, Karth carried the screaming child off to their quarters. Asten turned around to yell after Rig, “There is not any planet! You’re just making it up!”
Grim, Oreth said, “Go to our room, please, Asten.”
Asten burst into tears and obeyed. Oreth, with a glance of apology to the others, followed the short, weeping figure across the bridge and out into the corridor.
The four remaining on the bridge stood silent.
“Canaries,” Shan said.
“Khallucinations?” Gveter proposed, subdued. “An effect of the churten on extrasensitive organisms—maybe?”
Tai nodded.
“Then is the ansible not functioning, or are we hallucinating nonfunction?” Shan asked after a pause.
Gveter went to the ansible; this time Tai walked away from it, leaving it to him. “I want to go down,” she said.
“No reason not to, I suppose,” Shan said unenthusiastically.
“Khwat reason to?” Gveter asked over his shoulder.
“It’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? It’s what we volunteered to do, isn’t it? To test instantaneous—transilience—prove that it worked, that we are here! With the ansible out, it’ll be seventeen years before Ve gets our radio signal!”
“We can just churten back to Ve and tell them,” Shan said. “If we did that now, we’d have been…here…about eight minutes.”
“Tell them—tell them what? What kind of evidence is that?”
“Anecdotal,” said Sweet Today, who had come back quietly to the bridge; she moved like a big sailing ship, imposingly silent.
“Is Lidi all right?” Shan asked.
“No,” Sweet Today answered. She sat down where Lidi had sat, at the NAFAL console.
“I ask a consensus about going down onplanet,” Tai said.
“I’ll ask the others,” Gveter said, and went out, returning presently with Karth. “Go down, if you want,” the Gethenian said. “Oreth’s staying with the children for a bit. They are—We are extremely disoriented.”
“I will come down,” Gveter said.
“Can I come?” Betton asked, almost in a whisper, not raising his eyes to any adult face.
“No,” Tai said, as Gveter said, “Yes.”
Betton looked at his mother, one quick glance.
“Khwy not?” Gveter asked her.
“We don’t know the risks.”
“The planet was surveyed.”
“By robot ships—”
“We’ll wear suits.” Gveter was honestly puzzled.
“I don’t want the responsibility,” Tai said through her teeth.
“Khwy is it yours?” Gveter asked, more puzzled still, “We all share it; Betton is crew. I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t understand,” Tai said, turned her back on them both, and went out. The man and the boy stood staring, Gveter after Tai, Betton at the carpet.
“I’m sorry,” Betton said.
“Not to be,” Gveter told him.
“What is…what is going on?” Shan asked in an overcontrolled voice. “Why are we—We keep crossing, we keep—coming and going—”
“Confusion due to the churten experience,” Gveter said.
Sweet Today turned from the console. “I have sent a distress signal,” she said. “I am unable to operate the NAFAL system. The radio—” She cleared her throat. “Radio function seems erratic.”
There was a pause.
“This is not happening,” Shan said, or Oreth said, but Oreth had stayed with the children in another part of the ship, so it could not have been Oreth who said, “This is not happening,” it must have been Shan.
A chain of cause and effect is an easy thing to describe; a cessation of cause and effect is not. To those who live in time, sequency is the norm, the only model, and simultaneity seems a muddle, a mess, a hopeless confusion, and the description of that confusion hopelessly confusing. As the members of the crew network no longer perceived the network steadily and were unable to communicate their perceptions, an individual perception is the only clue to follow through the labyrinth of their dislocation. Gveter perceived himself as being on the bridge with Shan, Sweet Today, Betton, Karth, and Tai. He perceived himself as methodically checking out the ship’s systems. The NAFAL he found dead, the radio functioning in erratic bursts, the internal electrical and mechanical systems of the ship all in order. He sent out a lander unmanned and brought it back, and perceived it as functioning normally. He perceived himself discussing with Tai her determination to go down onplanet. Since he admitted his unwillingness to trust any instrumental reading on the ship, he had to admit her point that only material evidence would show that they had actually arrived at their destination, M-60-340-nolo. If they were going to have to spend the next seventeen years traveling back to Ve in real time, it would be nice to have something to show for it, even if only a handful of slime.
He perceived this discussion as perfectly rational.
It was, however, interrupted by outbursts of egoizing not characteristic of the crew.
“If you’re going, go!” Shan said.
“Don’t give me orders,” Tai said.
“Somebody’s got to stay in control here,” Shan said.
“Not the men!” Tai said.
“Not the Terrans,” Karth said. “Have you people no self-respect?”
“Stress,” Gveter said. “Come on, Tai, Betton, all right, let’s go, all right?”
In the lander, everything was clear to Gveter. One thing happened after another just as it should. Lander operation is very simple, and he asked Betton to take them down. The boy did so. Tai sat, tense and compact as always, her strong fists clenched on her knees. Betton managed the little ship with aplomb, and sat back, tense also, but dignified: “We’re down,” he said.
“No, we’re not,” Tai said.
“It—it says contact,” Betton said, losing his assurance.
“An excellent landing,” Gveter said. “Never even felt it.” He was running the usual tests. Everything was in order. Outside the lander ports pressed a brownish darkness, a gloom. When Betton put on the outside lights the atmosphere, like a dark fog, diffused the light into a useless glare.
“Tests all tally with survey reports,” Gveter said. “Will you go out, Tai, or use the servos?”
“Out,” she said.
“Out,” Betton echoed.
Gveter, assuming the formal crew role of Support, which one of them would have assumed if he had been going out, assisted them to lock their helmets and decontaminate their suits; he opened the hatch series for them, and watched them on the vid and from the port as they climbed down from the outer hatch. Betton went first. His slight figure, elongated by the whitish suit, was luminous in the weak glare of the lights. He walked a few steps from the ship, turned, and waited. Tai was stepping off the ladder. She seemed to grow very short—did she kneel down? Gveter looked from the port to the vid screen and back. She was shrinking? sinking—she must be sinking into the surface—which could not be solid, then, but bog, or some suspension like quicksand—but Betton had walked on it and was walking back to her, two steps, three steps, on the ground which Gveter could not see clearly but which must be solid, and which must be holding Betton up because he was lighter—but no, Tai must have stepped into a hole, a trench of some kind, for he could see her only from the waist up now, her legs hidden in the dark bog or fog, but she was moving, moving quickly, going right away from the lander and from Betton.