Poul Anderson - The Avatar

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The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

eversion 1.0

I was a birch tree, white slenderness in the middle of a meadow, but had

no name for what I was. My leaves drank of the sunlight that streamed through

them and set their green aglow, my leaves danced in the wind, which made a

harp of my branches, but I did not see or hear. Waning days turned me brittle

golden, frost stripped me bare, snow blew about me during my long drowse, then

Orion hunted his quarry beyond this heaven and the sun swung north to blaze me

awake, but none of this did I sense.

And yet I marked it all, for I lived. Each cell within me felt in a

secret way how the sky first shone aloud and afterward grew quiet, air gusted

or whooped or lay dreaming, rain flung chill and laughter, water and worms did

their work for my reaching roots, nestlings piped where I sheltered them and

soughed, grass and dandelions enfolded me in richness, the earth stirred as

the Earth turned among stars. Each year that departed left a ring in me for

remembrance. Though I was not aware, I was still in Creation and of it;

thought I did not understand, I knew. I was Tree.

When Emissary passed through the gate and Phoebus again shone upon her,

half of the dozen crew folk who survived were gathered in her common room,

together with the passenger from Beta. After their long time away, they wanted

to witness this return on the biggest view screens they had and share a

ceremony, raising goblets of the last wine aboard to the hope of a good

homecoming. Those on duty added voices over the intercom. "Salud. Proost.

Skol. Banzai. Sa de. Zdoroviye. Prosit. Mazel tov. Sante. Viva. Aloha" each

spoke of a very special place.

From her post at the linkage computer, Joelle Ky whispered, on behalf of

those who had stayed behind forever, "Zivio" for Alexander Vlantis, "Kan bei"

for Yuan Chichao, "Cheers" for Christine Burns. She added nothing of her own,

thought what a sentimental old fool she was, and trusted that nobody had

heard. Her gaze drifted to a small screen supposed to provide her with visual

data should any be needed. Amidst the meters, controls, input and output

equipment which crowded the cabin, it seemed like a window on the world.

"World," though, meant "universe." Amplification was set at one,

revealing simply what the naked eye would have seen. Yet stars shone so many

and bright, unyielding diamond, sapphire, topaz, ruby, that the blackness

around and beyond was but a chalice for them. Even in the Solar System, Joelle

could have picked no constellations out of such a throng. However, the shape

of the Milky Way was little changed from nights above North America. With that

chill brilliance for a guide, she found an elvenglow which was M3, and it had

looked the same at Beta, too, for it is sister to our whole galaxy.

Nonetheless she suddenly wanted a more familiar sight. The need for the

comfort it would give surprised her. She, the holothete, to whom everything

visible was merely a veil that reality wore. The past eight Earth-years must

have drunk deeper of her than she knew. Unwilling to wait the hours, maybe

days until she could see Sol again, she ran fingers across the keyboard before

her, directing the scanner to bring in Phoebus. At least she had glimpsed it

when outbound, and countless pictures of it throughout her life.

The helmet was already on her head, the linkage to computer, memory

bank, and ship's instruments already complete. The instant after she desired

that particular celestial location, she had calculated it. To her the

operation felt everyday: felt like knowing where to move her hand to pick up a

tool or knowing which way a sound was coming from. There was nothing numinous

about it.

The scene switched to a different sector. A disc appeared, slightly

larger than Sol observed from Earth or Luna, a trifle yellower, type G5.

Photospheric luminance, ten percent above what Earth got, had been

automatically stopped down to avoid blinding her. Lesser splendors remained

undimmed. Thus she made out spots on the surface, flares along the limb, nacre

of corona, slim wings of zodiacal light. Yes, she thought, Phoebus has the

same kind of beauty as my sun. Centrum does not, and only now do I feel how

lonely was that lack.

Her touch ranged onward, calling for a sight of Demeter. This problem

her unaided brain could have solved. Having newly made transit, Emissary

floated near the gate; and it held a Lagrange 4 position with respect to the

planet, in the same orbit though sixty degrees ahead. The scanner must merely

course along the ecliptic to find what she wished.

At a distance of 0.81 astronomical units, unmagnified, Demeter resembled

the stars about it, stronger than most and bluer than any. Are you still

yonder, Dan Brodersen? Joelle wondered, and then, oh, yes, you must be. I've

been gone for eight years, but a bare few of your months have passed.

How many, exactly? I don't know. Fidelio isn't quite sure.

Captain Langendijk's general announcement interrupted her reverie.

"Attention, please. We've registered two vessels on our radars. One is

obviously the official watchcraft, and is signalling for tight-beam

communication. I'll put that over the intercom, but kindly do not interrupt

the talk, or make any unnecessary noise. Best they don't know you are

listening."

For a moment Joelle was puzzled. Why should he take precautions, as if

Emissary's return might not be the occasion for mankind-wide rejoicing? What

put the note of strain into his tone? The answer struck inward. She had been

indifferent to partisan matters, they scarcely existed for her, but once

recruited into this crew, she couldn't help hearing talk of strife and

intrigue. Brodersen had rather grimly explained the facts to her, and they had

often been a subject of conversation at Beta. A considerable coalition within

humanity had never wanted the expedition and would not be happy at its

success.

Two vessels, both presumably in orbit around the T machine. The second

must be Dan's.

"Thomas Archer, commanding World Union watchship Faraday, speaking,"

said a man's voice. His Spanish was accented like hers. "Identify yourself."

"Willem Langendijk, commanding exploratory ship Emissary Spanish

Emisario," replied her captain. "We're passing through on our way back to the

Solar System. May we commence maneuvers?"

"What- but -- " Archer obviously struggled with amazement. "Well, you do

seem like- But everybody expected you'd be gone for years!"

"We were."

"No. I witnessed your transit. That was, uh, five months ago, no more."

"Ah-ha. Give me the present date and time, please."

"But- you -- "

"If you please." Joelle could well imagine how Langendijk's lean face

tautened to match his sternness.

Archer blurted the figures off a chronometer. She summoned from the

memory bank the exact clock reading when she and her fellows had finished

tracing out the guidepath here and twisted through space-time to their unknown

goal. Subtraction yielded an interval of twenty weeks and three days. She

could as readily have told how many seconds, or microseconds, had passed out

of Archer's lifespan, but he had only given information to the nearest minute.

"Thank you," Langendijk said. "For us, approximately eight Terrestrial

years have passed. It turns out that the T machine is indeed a time machine of

sorts, as well as a space transporter. The Betans -the beings whom we

followed-calculated our course to bring us out near the date when we left."

Silence hummed. Joelle noticed she was aware of her environment with

more than usual intensity. Free falling, the ship kept her weightless in a

loosened safety harness. The sensation was pleasant, recalling flying dreams

of long ago when she was young. (Afterward her dreams had changed with her

mind and soul, as she grew into being a holothete.) Air from a ventilator

murmured and stroked her cheeks. It bore a slight greenwood odor of recycling

chemicals and, at its present stage of the variability necessary for health,

coolness and a subliminal pungency of ions. Her heart knocked loud in her

ears. And, yes, twinges in her left wrist had turned into a steady ache, she

was overdue for an arthritis booster, time went, time went. Probably the

Others themselves could not change that.

"Well," Archer said in English. "Well, I'll be God damned. Uh, welcome

back. How are you?"

Langendijk switched to the same language, in which he felt a touch more

at ease and which was in fact used aboard Emissary about as often as Spanish.

"We lost three people. But otherwise, Captain, believe me, the news we bear is

all wonderful. Besides being anxious to get home-you will understand that-we

can hardly wait to spread our story through the Union."

"Did you -- " Archer paused, as if half afraid to utter the rest. Quite

possibly he was. Joelle heard him draw breath before he plunged: "Did you find

the Others?"

"No. What we did find was an advanced civilization, nonhuman but

friendly, in contact with scores of inhabited worlds. They're eager to

establish close relations with us, too; they offer what my crew and I think

are some fantastically good deals. No, they know nothing more about the Others

than we do, except for the additional gates they've learned how to use. But

we, the next several generations of man will have as much as we can do to

assimilate what the Betans will give.

"Now I'm sorry, Captain, I realize you'd love to hear everything, but

that would take days, and anyhow, we have orders not to linger. The Council of

the World Union commissioned us and requires we report first to it. That is

reasonable, no? Accordingly, we request clearance to proceed straight on to

the Solar System."

Again Archer was mute a while. Was something more than surprise at work

in him? On impulse, Joelle called on the ship's exoinstrumental circuits. An

immediate inrush of data lured her. It wasn't a full perception, but still, as

far as possible, how easy and how blessed to comprehend yonder cosmos as a

whole and become one with it! Resisting, she concentrated solely on radar and

navigational information. In a split pulsebeat, she calculated how to bring

Faraday onto her viewscreen.

There was no particular reason for that. She knew what the watchcraft

looked like: a tapered gray cylinder so as to be capable of planetfall,

missile launcher and ray projector recessed into the sleekness-wholly foreign

to the huge, equipment-bristling, fragile sphere which was Emissary. When the

picture changed, she didn't magnify and amplify to make the vessel visible

across a thousand kilometers. Instead, the sight of two dully glowing globes,

red and green, coming into the scanner field, against the stars, snatched at

her. Those were markers around the T machine. The Others had placed them. Her

augmented senses told her that a third likewise happened to be visible on the

receiver; it was colored ultraviolet.

Vaguely she heard Archer: " -- quarantine?" and Langendijk: 'Well, if

they insist, but we walked on Beta, again and again for eight years, and we

have a Betan native with us, and nobody's caught any diseases. Pinski and de

Carvalho, our biologists, studied the subject and tell me cross-infection is

impossible. Biochemistries are too unlike."

Caught up in the beacons, she quite stopped listening. Oh, surely

someday, she, holothete, could speak mind to mind with their makers, if ever

she found them.

Though what would they make of her, perhaps in more than one meaning of

the phrase? Even physical appearance might conceivably not be altogether

irrelevant to them. It was an odd thing to do in these circumstances, but for

the first time in almost a decade Joelle Ky briefly considered her body as

flesh, not machinery.

At fifty-eight Earth-years of age, her hundred and seventy-five

centimeters remained slim, verging on gaunt, her skin clear and pale and only

lightly lined. In that and the high cheekbones her genes kept a bit of the

history, which her name also remembered. She had been born in North America,

in what was left of the old United States before it federated with Canada. Her

features were delicate, her eyes large and dark. Hair once sable, bobbed

immediately below the ears, was the hue of iron. Clad now in the working

uniform of the ship, a coverall with abundant pockets and snaploops, she

seldom wore anything very much more stylish at home.

A smile flickered. How silly can I get? If one thing is certain about

the Others, it is that none of them will come courting me! Could it be the

thought of Dan, yonder on Demeter? Additional nonsense. Why, at Beta I became

eight years his senior.

Somehow that raised Eric Stranathan for her, the first and last man with

whom she fell wholly in love. Across a quarter century-plus the time she had

been gone on this mission-he came back, seated opposite her in a canoe on Lake

Louise, among mountains, in piney air, under a night sky nearly as vast as

what lay around Emissary; and staring upward, she whispered, "How do the

Others see that? What is it to them?"

'What are they?" he answered. "Animals evolved beyond us; machines that

think; angels dwelling by the throne of God; beings, or a being, of a kind

we've never imagined and never can; or what? Humans have been wondering for

more than a hundred years now."

She mustered pride. "We'll come to know."

"Though holothetics?" he asked.

"Maybe. Else through-who can tell? But I do believe we will. I have to

believe that."

"We might not want to. I've got an idea we'd never be the same again,

and that price might be too high."

She shivered. "You mean we'd forsake all we have here?"

"And all we are. Yes, it's possible." His dear lanky form stirred,

rocking the boat. "And I wouldn't, myself. I'm so happy where I am, this

moment."

That was the night they became lovers.

Joelle shook herself. Stop. Be sensible. I'm obsessive about the Others,

I know. Seeing their handiwork again serving not aliens but humans must have

uncapped a wellspring in me. But Willem's right. The Betans should be enough

for many generations of my race. Do the Others know that? Did they foresee it?

She was faintly shocked to note that her attention had drifted from the

intercom for minutes. She wasn't given to introspection or daydreaming. Maybe

it had happened because she was computer-linked. At such times, an operator

became a greater mathematician and logician, by orders of magnitude, than had

ever lived on Earth before the conjunction was developed. But the operator

remained a mortal, full of mortal foolishness. I suppose my habit of close

concentration while I'm in this state took over in me. Since I'm not used to

dealing with emotions, the habit got out of hand.

She knew peripherally that an argument had been going on. Hearkening,

she heard Archer state: "Very well, Captain Langendijk, nobody foresaw you'd

return this early-if ever, to be frank-and therefore I don't have specific

orders regarding you. But my superiors did brief me and issue a general

directive."

"Ah?" replied the skipper of Emissary. "And what does that say?"

"Well, uh, well, certain highly placed people worry about more than your

bringing a strange bug to Earth. The idea is, they don't know what you might

bring back. Look, I'm not saying a monster has taken over your ship and is

pretending to be you, anything paranoid like that."

"I should hope not! As a matter of fact, sir, the Betans -the name we

gave them, of course -the Betans are not just friendly, they are anxious to

know us well. That is why they will trade with us on terms that would else be

unbelievably favorable. They stand to gain even more."

Wariness responded: "What?"

"It would take long to explain. There is something vital they hope to

learn from us."

It twisted in Joelle, something that I have never yet really learned

myself, nor ever likely will.

Archer's voice jarred the thought out of her. "Well, maybe. Though I

think that reinforces the point, that nobody can tell what the effect might

be...on us. And the World Union is none too stable, you know. You plan to

report straight to the Council -- "

"Yes," Langendijk said. "We'll proceed to the neighborhood of Earth,

call Lima, and request instructions. What's wrong with that?"

"Too public!" Archer exclaimed. After a few seconds: "Look, I'm not at

liberty to say much. But...the officials I mentioned want to, uh, debrief you

in strict privacy, examine your materials, that sort of thing, before they

issue any news release. Do you see?"

"M-m-m, I had my suspicions," Langendijk rumbled. "Go on."

"Well, under the circumstances, et cetera, I'm going to interpret my

orders as follows. We'll accompany you through the gate, to the Solar System.

Radio interlock of our autopilots, of course, to make sure the ships come out

at the other end simultaneously. You'll have no communication with anybody but

us, on a tight beam-we'll handle everything outside-until you hear

differently. Is that clear?"

"Rather too clear."

"Please, Captain, no offense intended, nothing like that. You must

understand what a tremendous business this is. People who, uh, who're

responsible for billions of human lives, they're bound to be cautious.

Including, for a start, me."

"Yes, I agree you are doing your duty as you see it, Captain Archer.

Besides, you have the power." Emissary bore a couple of guns, but almost as an

afterthought; her fire control officers doubled as pilots of her launch.

Though she could build up huge velocities if given time, her top acceleration

with payload and reaction mass on hand was under two gravities; and her gyros

or lateral jets could turn her about only ponderously. No one had imagined her

as a warcraft, a lone vessel setting off into what might be a whole galaxy.

Faraday was designed for battle. (The occasion had never arisen, but who knew

what might someday emerge from a gate? Besides, her high maneuverability

fitted her for rescue work and for conveying exploratory teams.)

"I'm trying to do our best for our government, sir."

"I wish you would tell me who in the government."

"I'm sorry, but I'm only an astronautical officer. It wouldn't be proper

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TheAvatarbyPoulAndersoneversion1.0IIwasabirchtree,whiteslendernessinthemiddleofameadow,buthadnonameforwhatIwas.Myleavesdrankofthesunlightthatstreamedthroughthemandsettheirgreenaglow,myleavesdancedinthewind,whichmadeaharpofmybranches,butIdidnotseeorhear.Waningdaysturnedmebrittlegolden,froststrippedme...

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