Lucifer Comet (2464 CE) Page 23

  In the end, it was agreed that Methuen should be accompanied by Alexandrovna for language, Chu for anthropological appraisal, and Seal for her own archaeological edification. By now, Olga was able to offer each member of the party a brand new goodie: a portable two-way translator, to be hung about the neck so that it would dangle on the chest with leads to the ears and throat; the translators, programmed in terms of the word-and-phrase correspondences elicited by Olga and her computer with Quarfar and modulated this morning, would make communication two-ways direct, and would continuously improve their services by what they would be learning as communication proceeded.

  The party, Methuen insisted, must have no visible guards: that would only inflame their hosts, and the party could be kept under protective surveillance by ship’s instruments.

  Emerging from the ship’s portside crewdeck hatch onto the top platform of a ship-activated transparent airlift shaft ten meters high, the party found themselves awaited at airlift-foot by a raggedly drawn up honor group consisting of the three officers, a number of breech clouted men, and a number of naked women. Methuen and his three colleagues dropped in the shaft; and instantly upon their emergence from its foot, the native women produced an assortment of musical instruments, drums and rattles and pipes, and set up a caterwauling that troubled the Erth folk because they could discern no rhythmic or harmonic system in it. Nevertheless, it was obviously a welcome.

  The leaders came forward to greet them. The number-one leader, who was grizzled, asserted (and it came through in chopped Anglian via the chest-interpreters): “My name Brozny. Welcome. You come with me to Narfar.” Methuen replied in his normal Anglian, having been assured by Olga that his interpreter was programmed to trim off decoration and color words which would confuse the natives: “My name is Methuen. We are pleased by your welcome. We come peace. Pray take us to Narfar.”

  The god-king, naked and unadorned as usual, sat upon his throne, to receive them; but these were unusual visitors, and he made no effort to impress them with his great dignity or to humble them. Instead, he stood with extended arms and wings as soon as they entered his hall (which was larger in this modern palace, although the throne was the same throne). Brozny, arraying the four visitors before the god, whispered to Methuen, “Be yourself with Narfar.”

  Standing at officer-loose ease, Methuen addressed the king. “Great Narfar, my name is Methuen, I represent the planet Erth. These are my friends Alexandroyna, Seal, and Chu. We are proud to be received by you.”

  Broad-grinning, Narfar yipped: “Welcome!” He advanced upon Methuen, whom he overtowered by quite a few centimeters, clasped the captain in both arms, and kissed juicy smacks upon both Methuen’s cheeks. He then did the same to

  Olga, Chu and Seal. Olga took it grudgingly, Huang stoically, Mabel with wide eyes.

  Stepping back, Narfar told the four of them: “Erth great planet. We glad you come. We drink big now. Then we eat big. Then we talk big.”

  They managed to get back to the ship by 1900 dinner time. It hadn’t been easy to break from ultra-hospitable Narfar. At lunch (if you could call it that), their winged host had poured some kind of sweet ferment out of gourds down their gullets until they were bug-eyed (was it mixed juices of pineapple and banana?); whereafter he had stuffed them with course after course of fruit and fish and vegetables and porky meat and sweets, until, eating everything out of politeness, their bug-eyes were glazed. Narfar then took them on a walking tour of the city, fully two miles of it, difficult even for these exercise-hardened people with their bellies the way they were. As a grand finale, somewhere near the outskirts, Narfar had seized Methuen under one arm and Olga under the other and wing-flown them back to the palace, returning to taxi in Chu and Seal.

  By then it was 1700; and Narfar, squinting at the westering sun, declared that it was happy hour. They lounged on a palace patio, sipping an entirely different sort of fermented drink (dark unstrained, uncooked barley-beer?) and talking, talking.

  Narfar urged them to stay overnight in his palace. Methuen, seeing desperation in his companions’ eyes, told Narfar that the night air of Dora was poisonous to them, that as a matter of health they must always pass nights aboard their ship.

  Narfar looked puzzled. “That funny. Night air on Dora not poison to Dorita.”

  Inwardly agitated, Methuen leaned forward: “What about Dorita? Is she alive?”

  “Oh, no. Dorita die many many lifetimes ago. But she not die of night air. She die old woman. Narfar never get old, that bad some ways, good some ways. Know many men and women, all die, hate that, but good when they bad. But never any woman like Dorita! Anyhow, you see, night air not poison. So why you not stay here tonight?”

  Leaning back, Methuen closed his eyes. “We have important business on the ship tonight.”

  “Oh, well. Why you not say that first time? You better not drink any more, bad for business. You better go to ship now. You welcome here, you go where you want, do your what-you-call study stuff.”

  It was precious little dinner that was eaten by the four members of the diplomatic mission, while the other scientists and .ship’s officers were poking down great hot gobbets of steak sliced off some sort of wild ungulate shot two days before. And when after-dinner drinks were passed, the four diplomats limited themselves to rehydrated small beer or Vichy fizz. (Between stars, some of the raw space for fuel could be diverted to synthesize hydrogen and oxygen and from them water.)

  The after-dinner conference was prolonged. Its first two hours were devoted to the diplomatic mission. Methuen gave them an overview of the experience and drew some chuckles with his description of Narfar’s potlatch-type hospitality, and it went into open laughter as he described the two-by-two flight back to the palace (Olga was grinning small, Chu was grinning large, Seal was convulsed). It quieted some when Methuen assured them: “I see every reason to believe that we can move along peaceably with our mission. Narfar has given us carte blanche, and I trust him—except that he is impulsive and could change quickly. It behooves all of us to be most courteous to all his people. Dr. Alexandrovna, are there any more of those chest interpreter gadgets?”

  She replied: “I have eleven, and I have already programmed six.”

  “Can our technicians make more?”

  “I can give them specs and diagrams.”

  “Please push ahead with that. I desire that as soon as possible, every scientist or crew-leader who works outside on the ground will be wearing one at all times and will make full use of it for friendly communication. Let me insert here warm commendation for the services of our linguist who perhaps will have some comments later. .Just now I would like Dr. Chu and Dr. Seal to share with ns their anthropological-archaeological impressions—”

  It went on like that. After Olga had finished the diplomatic team report with some comments on the entailed linguistics, the captain turned to others. There were openly ecstatic comments from Liana Green, who had been touring the south polar ice fields and was eager to survey the northern ones before zeroing in on detail work; conservatively sub-ecstatic remarks from Sita Sari whose .astronomical experiences aloft had been mostly as predicted but with some remarkable surprises awaiting study; laconic impressions from Hoek who, in his jungle-prowling, had narrowly evaded a carnivore which looked like a cross between a bear and a werewolf; and so on.

  The conference broke at 2311; and all of them went to their rooms to taper off and sleep, with the exception of the captain and the exec who visited the bridge first. Tonight, Zorbin was off duty from 2400 until noon, with a trusted lieutenant having the con during those watches. The two top officers exchanged a few words with the lieutenant who had already appeared on the bridge; then Methuen and Zorbin visited a little bar behind the bridge, a sanctum consecrated to officers going off bridge duty. Methuen had a sipping whiskey; Zorbin, being on duty another half-hour, a Coke (he would cognac-sweeten another Coke at 0000.1 before sacking out.)

  Toward the end of it, as Methuen was preparing to
go to their joint cabin, Zorbin remarked, “At least, B.J., we’ve had our time-paradox. So I guess now we can rest easy on that score.”

  Frowning, Methuen stood; frowning, he moved to the hatch; there he turned and said, “I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Friend Saul. Keep your security alert undiminished.”

  30

  Days Twenty-Nine to Thirty

  Swaddled in both gadzyook furs, Dorita clung tight to the reins and leg-hugged the naked flanks of Narfar, who seemed impervious to cold. They were north of the arctic circle. There would be no midnight sun, since the north-south axis of Dora kept itself erected tangentially to the arc of the Saiph star-surface; nevertheless, northern lights played even by daylight. Narfar was flying slowly at an altitude no higher than five hundred meters, which kept them far below most of the snow-capped peaks, many of which reared their bulks three or four thousand meters aloft.

  It was a fair day. They flew in full sunlight (although the sun stayed far below zenith southward) except when white clouds shadowed them; sky blue matched sea blue, with scattered white cloud-flecks counterpointing tiny ice floes in the sea beneath. Her face was cold, particularly her nose-tip, and the cold started tears which froze quickly; she did not care, so exalted she was; holding the rein with one mittened hand, she pressed the other mittened hand over her nose and mouth and peered above it at sublime frozen eternity.

  Narfar thoughtspoke: We go high now, you see big glacier, then we come down. Up he went indeed, climbing another two thousand meters where the air was so thin that she breath-gasped; although an occasional pinnacle still sneered down upon them, Dorita could now look down and survey a solid ice field four thousand kilometers wide in all directions, breaking into ice-fingers which probed downward from the main mass through mountain valleys until they thrust themselves into the sea, the fingertips of ice flaking off into iceberg calves. Narfar had no detectable thoughts about the ice, except that it was there, a fundamental condition of the north-land. Dorita knew from high-school geology that the ice could easily be five kilometers deep at ice-field center; and she strongly suspected that a volcanic eruption beneath the ice field might well have been the origin of Comet Gladys which had brought Quarfar and Narfar to Erth.

  More importantly, the mental sensors of Dorita, telekinetically sweeping the ice, told her more and more strongly that indeed the object of her highest desire was here somewhere… .

  We go down now, thought-gruffed Narfar; too cold for you up here. Hang on. And he downswooped.

  Nearly at water-surface, they came in on a mighty glacial face; and here Narfar hovered, drifting back and forth for his bride’s pleasure. With the headwind gone, she could unmask her face and shed her mittens; and after awhile she was able to unclasp the front of her outer pelt, so temperate the sunny weather seemed when the wind was still.

  She brooded before the glacier, almost worshipful, undergoing an experience entirely new for Dorita: pure appreciation of natural magnificence unrelated to any goal that she might be pursuing. And for this while, astonishingly, it was enough! The hard face of the glacier rose more than thirty meters above the water; or perhaps, rather than a face, it should be called a forehead, with all the rest of the face from the eyes down to the chin submerged. Two widely spaced-apart ice caverns at water level might be brows for submerged eyes; above them, the forehead was randomly smoothly incised as though by a dull flintstone chisel where great masses of ice had yielded to gravity and broken away smashing down into the water to become icebergs. Such calves were being bora while she watched—calves, indeed! They were rather goddesses being spawned out of the forehead of the glacial Zeus! And as though he were gelid-horrified at his own forehead-calving, the hair of this god stood atop the forehead in erect ice gouts which were the fore-edges of surface-crevassing. Narfar rose a bit higher to show her the top surface of the glacier winding back into mountains: if this was the cranium of the ice god, it was hoar except for three streaks of black, two at the sides and one in the middle; and these were moraines of rock dust which the ice had ground out of the mountains.

  It was coming into Dorita that Narfar was doing this leisurely glacier-cruising for her pleasure. For her pleasure! Narfar was being generous—he was giving! And what was Dorita giving to Narfar? Nothing but her body, which was little enough for a god who could enjoy any body he might choose. And what was Dorita going to give to Narfar, in the process of using him for her highest desire? Trouble!

  Momentarily guilt-anguished, she made such restitution as she could: it was a small price for what he was doing for her. She made herself brood upon the magnificence purely, she required her heart to leap at the magnificence purely, and she conveyed her brooding and heart-leaping into the mind of Narfar.

  She felt his warm heart-filling gratitude. And it compounded her guilt. Angrily she trampled her guilt, it was a deterrent to achievement of her grand goal—compared to which, insistently she told herself, Narfar was nothing.

  When he gathered that Dorita had been sated by the grandeur of the glacial face, Narfar cruised leisurely elsewhere in this glacier bay, spreading its delights before her. Whales played: two allegretto killers, two largo baleens. A pair of seal streaked for an iceberg, churning white wakes in blue water. An eagle perched indolently on the pinnacle of a small berg; a pestiferous gull nuisanced him; the eagle took off after the scared-running gull, overtook him, swooped down upon him with talons extended for the kill, barely missed the gull (an obviously intentional miss), and having made his point with the gull, lazed back to a still taller berg, found its pinnacle, and lazed there for as long as Dorita could see him from the back of outflying Narfar. …

  Thought-said her husband: You see land of ice now. You like?

  Fervently she affirmed.

  Good wedding trip, eh?

  Marvelous, Narfar. Full of wonders.

  Wedding trip over now? We go home now?

  “NO!” she shouted aloud, and her thought also was a shout.

  Hearing the shout, feeling the powerful mind-negation, Narfar braked so suddenly in midair that he threw his bride over his head; luckily there was catching room, they were a hundred meters up, and he caught her just above water and lofted cradling her in his great arms. “Sorry,” he crooned to her. “Narfar do bad, I not do again.”

  “ ’Sail right,” she managed feebly. “You good, Narfar. You good.”

  “You want wedding trip go on? Where we go now?”

  She caught her breath and put it to him. “Remember when we were up high, looking at the whole ice field?”

  “Right. You like?”

  “Very much indeed, my husband. But—now listen. Way far away, I saw a place where there was a long line of rocks sticking up out of the ice. They were slanty rocks. They looked like teeth of great fish who eat people and other fish.” She was thinking of shark’s teeth, she mind-conveyed the image of shark’, and Dora evidently had that sort of animal, since Narfar instantly comprehended. Said Dorita: “I want to go there.”

  In the mind of Narfar, she felt a great shriveling.

  Presently Narfar said curtly, “You get back on my back.” He placed her there. He hovered, meditating.

  She mind-quavered: You not want to take me there?

  Why Dorita want to go there?

  No reason. Just look interesting.

  That not so, Dorita. You talk straight to Narfar. I feel your big interest. You got special reason to go there. What?

  Damn this guy, he was so honest, so dear… . She decided to make a sort of semi-clean breast of it I know you got secret up here somewhere. I your wife now, husband not keep secret from wife. I think that where your secret is. Is it, Narfar?

  Bertrand Russell once made the shrewd point that it takes a certain minimum of intelligence and sophistication to lie: you have to suppress the truth and substitute a non-truth, and this is not animal-natural. Below an early age (three, maybe?) children can’t do that. Narfar had the intelligence for clumsy lying, but not the sophistication
to do it readily. He could, however, refuse to talk. Mind-sulking, he said: I no tell.

  You would not keep a secret from your wife? she wheedled.

  He grew huffy. That my business. Not business of wife.

  She hit him with all the affirmative suggestion-strength that she could muster, saying within this compelling cloak: If you love me, you not keep secret from me. If you not love me, then I go home.

  It was grossly unfair, and she knew it. In the first place, he did love her; in the second place, he hadn’t the wit to deny her consequent; in the third place, he did not think to wonder how she would go about getting home without his help.

  And he told her, after a deal of misery: I take you to see line of rocks. They make circle, I fly you all around circle. You not go inside circle of rocks. You not ask questions. We fly around circle, we go home: end of good wedding trip. Okay?

  Lets try it, she evaded. And now she knew for certain that she was on target.

  During many hours he flew reluctantly, sluggishly, and at a low level above the table ice, while the sun reached noon and waned into afternoon. The chill grew by perceptible degree-drops; Dorita had her second fur coat tightly pinned about her; and she lay close against the back of Narfar for protection against the wind-ice of his wings. Bye and bye she was continuously shivering, but blessing her tremors for keeping her blood flowing lukewarm. And always they were homing on the shark-rock circle, the glowing center of her intangible dream.

  Already far back, near the glacier bay, they had overflown what looked like a similar crater of jag-rocks, much smaller than their target: it seemed to be a crater; and within it, accumulating snow-ice lay massive-inert while the glacier ice flowed around it. Dorita had queried: What that? Narfar, curt: That where comet start. Dorita: Comet that bring you to Erth? It blow-off here? Surely affirmative. I confirmed the Quarfar story, increasing her respect for Quarfar, who had with his spear evoked vulcanism violent enough to fire a huge chunk of ice into air at the forty thousand kilometers per hour velocity necessary to clear Dora’s gravitational field. Also, the knowledge unclouded a question: the larger crater which was their goal was not the source of Quarfar-Narfar’s Comet Gladys, although it may have originated some earlier comet; and therefore that larger crater had existed before Narfar’s departure from Dora and could in fact have been there when Narfar had sought and found a box for his world-secret