Jem

ONE

WHEN DANNY DALEHOUSE first went to Sofia he did not know it for the first stage in a much longer journey, nor that he would meet some of his future companions. He had never heard of that larger destination, which bore the unattractive name of N-OA Bes-bes Geminorum 8426, or for that matter of the people. Their names were Nan Dimitrova and Captain Marge Menninger. The occasion was the Tenth General Assembly of the World Conference on Exobiology, and the time was not in any way bad for any of them. It was a springtime season, and for a moment there all the world seemed to be budding into sweet and friendly life.

There were three thousand people in the Great Hall of Culture and Science for the opening session, so many of them political that the five or six hundred scientists who were actively involved had trouble finding seats. Even the translators were doubled up in their booths. Handsome, hoary old Carl Sagan delivered the opening invocation, looking like a spry octogenarian instead of whatever incredible age he really was.

He was already wheeling forward to the rostrum as Dan Dalehouse squeezed into a seat at the back of the hall. Dalehouse had never been in Bulgaria before. He had been drawn to the sunny parks, and he promised himself a look at the museum of centuries-old ikons under St. Stephan’s Cathedral, a few-blocks away. But he didn’t want to miss Sagan, and the first plenary session was a tutorial on tactran reports. Some of the stuff he had never heard before. That was probably Sagan’s work, he thought. Even as honorary joint chairman, Sagan passed the whole program through his nonsense filter. What was left was sure to be worth hearing. Sagan spoke briefly and cheerfully, and rolled away to a standing ovation.

Because the keynote speaker had been an American, the chairman of the tachyon-transmitter tutorial had to be from one of the other blocs. That was international etiquette. He was an Englishman from Fred Hoyle’s Cambridge group. A few of the dignitaries from the Fuel Bloc stayed to hear him out of group solidarity, but most of the other political people left as inconspicuously as they could, and Dalehouse was able to move up to a better seat on the center aisle. He settled himself to tolerate the chairman’s opening remarks, lulled by the scent of flowers coming through the open windows — Bulgaria made even less use of air conditioning than the United States.

Since Food and Fuel had already been heard from, protocol required that the next space go to People. So it was a Pakistani who read the first paper, entitled “Vital Signatures Reported from Bodies Orbiting Alpha Draconis, Procyon, 17-Kappa Indi, and Kung’s Semistellar Object.”

Dalehouse had been half drowsing, but as the title came through his earphones he sat up. “I never heard of some of those stars,” he remarked to his neighbor. “Who is this guy?”

She pointed to her program and the name: Dr. Ahmed Dulla, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto University, Hyderabad. As Dalehouse leaned over, he discovered that the flower scent was not coming from the windows but from her, and he took a closer look. Blond. A little plump, but with a solid, good-natured, pretty face. Hard to tell the age, but maybe about the same as his, which was mid-thirties. Since his divorce, Dalehouse had become more aware of the sexuality of women colleagues and chance-met females in general, but also more wary. He smiled thanks and sank back to listen.

The first part was not exciting. The reports on the probe to Alpha Draconis had already been published. He was not greatly interested in hearing again about the photometric measurements that established the presence of photosynthetic “plant” life in a reducing atmosphere. There were plenty of planets like that around that had been scanned and reported by the tachyon probes with their cargoes of instruments — the whole thing no bigger than a grapefruit, but miraculously capable of leaping interstellar distances in a week. The Pakistani seemed intent on repeating every word of every one of the reports, not failing to comment on the number of other reducing-atmosphere planets discovered and the apparent generally low level of evolved life on them. The Procyon probe had lost its lock, and the reports were at best ambiguous. Mercifully, Dulla did not dwell on the instrumentation. The data on 17-Kappa Indi sounded better — an oxygen atmosphere, at least, although the temperature range was bad and the signatures were sketchy — but the real prize was at the end.

Kung’s Semistellar Object was not much larger than a planet itself. As stars went it was tiny, barely big enough to fuse nuclei and radiate heat, but it had a planet of its own that sounded like fun. Hot. Humid. Dense air, but about the right partial pressure of oxygen to be congenial to life — including the life of a human exploratory party, if anybody cared to spend the money to try it out. And the signatures were first-rate. Carbon dioxide. Traces of methane, but only traces. Good photometry. The only parameters missing were radio wavelengths; otherwise it sounded a lot like Miami Beach.

The Pakistani then went on to explain how Kung’s Star had been discovered by the big fixed radio dish at Nagchhu Dzong, in the Thanglha hills, and that the discovery had come about as a direct result of the wisdom and example of the late Chairman Mao. That was not in itself very interesting except to the other members of the People Bloc, who were nodding grave concurrence, but the planet seemed pretty strange. The translation had trouble keeping up with the Pakistani, and it wasn’t Dalehouse’s area of special interest anyhow, but he made out that only a part of one hemisphere was covered in the biotic study. Funny! Nor was he the only one fascinated. He looked up at the bank of translators, each in their individual glass cages, like nail clippers and pocket combs behind the windows of a vending machine. Each booth had its draped scarlet curtains tied back with a gold sash, very Slavic and incongruous, and behind them the translators looked like astronauts in their solid-state communications helmets. One of them was a young girl with a sweet, plain face, leaning forward to stare at the speaker with an expression of either incredulity or rapture. Her lips weren’t moving; she seemed to be too entranced to function.

Dalehouse borrowed a pencil from the woman next to him and made a note in the margin of his program: Invstgt Kung’s Star, posbl survey grant. He didn’t name the planet. It didn’t have a name yet, though he had heard some of the Peeps refer to it half reverently as Son of Kung. It would be called other things, and worse.

What can be said of someone like Danny Dalehouse? Grammar school, high school, college, graduate school; he got his Pretty Heavy Diploma at twenty-six, and jobs were scarce. He managed to teach freshman biology for a year, then a year on a grant in Tbilisi and more than a year of post-doctoral studies, so that he was past thirty before he caught on at Michigan State’s new exobiology department. The marriage that had survived a year of living on cheese and white wine in Soviet Georgia began to dissolve in East Lansing. He was medium height, viewed charitably — about one seventy centimeters in his shoes — and slim. He wasn’t particularly handsome, either. What he was was smart. He was smart enough so that in three years at Michigan State he had made himself one of the Food Bloc’s top experts in reading the telemetry from a tachyon-transmitter probe and translating it into a good guess at how much life the signatures represented — even what kinds of life. Then he was smart enough to figure out that a telemetry interpreter who got to be nationally known for his skill was going to look too valuable where he was to be risked on a manned expedition to one of those fascinating, remote worlds. So he tapered off on the interpretation and resharpened his skills at mountain climbing, sailplaning, and longdistance running. You never knew what kind of athletic qualities you might need if you were lucky enough to be one of the fewscore people each year who got tossed to another star.

Being divorced was probably a plus quality. A man without much home life would be judged better able to concentrate on the job than someone mooning over wife and kids fifty light-years away. Dalehouse hadn’t wanted Polly to leave. But when she did pack up and go, he was quick to see that the divorce wasn’t all bad.

That night in the Aperitif Bar he ran into the blond woman again. He had gone to listen in on the headliners’ news conference, but the crowd at that end of the bar was pretty thick, and most of them seemed to be actual reporters he didn’t feel justified in shoving aside. Between their heads and cameras he caught glimpses of Sagan and Iosif Shklovskii sitting together in their life-support chairs at one end of the narrow room, having their picture taken, and passing smiling comments and an oxygen mask back and forth to each other. They rolled away toward the elevators, and most of the crowd followed them. Dalehouse opted for a drink and looked around the bar.

The blond was drinking Scotch with two small, dark, smiling men — no, he realized, she was drinking Scotch; they were drinking orange juice. The men got up and said good night while he was looking for a place to sit down, and he perceived the opportunity.

“Mind if I join you? I’m Danny Dalehouse, Michigan State,”

“Marge Menninger,” she said, and she didn’t mind his joining her at all. She didn’t mind letting him buy her another Scotch, and she didn’t mind buying him one back, and she didn’t mind going out for a stroll under the fat Bulgarian spring moon, and she didn’t mind going to his room to open his bottle of Bulgarian wine; and, altogether, the day when Danny Dalehouse first heard of Kung’s Star was a very successful and pleasurable one.

The next day, not quite so good.

It began well enough, in the early dawn. They woke in each other’s arms and made love again without changing position. It was too early to get anything to eat, so they shared the last of the bottle of wine as they showered and dressed. Then they decided to go for a walk.

It had rained a little during the night. The streets were wet. But the air was warm, and in the lovely rose glow of sunrise, the Maria-Theresa-yellow buildings were warm peach and friendly.

“The next thing I want to do,” said Dalehouse expansively, slipping an arm around Marge’s waist, “is take a look at Kung’s Star.”

Marge looked at him with a different kind of interest. “You’ve got funding for that?”

“Well” — coming down — “no. No, I guess not. MSU launched four tactrans last year, but we’ve never had a grant for a manned probe.”

She butted her head against his shoulder. “You’re more of an operator than you look.”

“What?”

“You don’t come on real strong, Danny-boy, but you know what you’re doing every minute, don’t you? Like last night. Those two Ay-rabs weren’t getting anywhere trying to put the make on me. Then you just eased right in.”

“I’m not sure I know what we’re talking about.”

“No?”

“No, not really.” But she didn’t seem about to clarify it, so he went back to what really interested him. “That planet sounds pretty great, Margie. Maybe even industry! Did you get that part? Traces of carbon monoxide and ozone.”

She objected thoughtfully, “There were no radio signals.”

“No. Doesn’t prove anything. They wouldn’t have heard any radio signals from Earth two hundred years ago, but there was a civilization there.”

She pursed her lips but didn’t answer. It occurred to him that something was troubling her, perhaps some female thing of the sort he had never considered himself very good at comprehending. He looked around for something to cheer her up and said, “Hey, look at those fellows.”

They were strolling past the Dimitrov Mausoleum. In spite of the hour, in spite of the fact that there was no other human being in sight, the two honor guards stood absolutely immobile in their antic musical-comedy uniforms, not even the tips of the long curled feathers on their helmets quivering.

Margie glanced, but whatever was on her mind, sightseeing was not part of it. “It would be at least a two-year hitch,” she said. “Would you really want to go?”

“I, uh, I think I’d miss you, Margie,” he said, misinterpreting her point.

Impatiently, “Ah, no crap. If you had the funding, would you go there?”

“Try me.”

“That Pak was so flaming pleased with himself. He’s probably already got it all lined up with Heir-of-Mao for the Peeps to send a manned probe there.”

“Well, that’s fine with me, too. I don’t want to go for political reasons. I don’t care what country meets the first civilized aliens; I just want to be there.”

“I care,” she said. She slipped free of him to light a cigarette.

Dalehouse stopped and watched her cup her hands around the lighter to shield it from the gentle morning breeze. They had had a good deal to drink and not very much sleep. He could feel a certain interior frailty as a consequence, but Marge Menninger seemed unaffected. This was the first time he had gone to bed with a woman without the exchange of several chapters of autobiography. He didn’t know her at all in his mind, only through his senses.

The other thing in Dalehouse’s thoughts was that in the 10:00 A.M. session he had a paper to give — “Preliminary Studies toward a First Contact with Subtechnological Sentients” — and he wanted enough time to add some comments about the planet of Kung’s Star.

He sneaked a glance at his watch: 7:30 — plenty of time. The city was still quiet. Somewhere out of sight he could hear the first tram of the morning. Far down the street where they walked he could see two city gendarmes strolling hand in hand, their batons swinging from the outside hand of each. Nothing else seemed to be happening in Sofia. It made him think of his own home in East Lansing at that same promising time of day and year, when the university was running at half-speed for the summer sessions and on decent mornings he walked or biked to his office to enjoy the peace. And, of course, since the divorce, to get out of his empty house.

To be sure, he reminded himself, Sofia was not in the least like East Lansing: flat and urban, where his home was hilly and carpeted with solid quarter-acre split-levels. And Marge Menninger was not in the least like absent Polly, who had been dark, tiny, quick, and easily bored. What exactly was Marge Menninger like? Dalehouse had not quite made up his mind. She seemed to be different people. Yesterday in the Great Hall of Culture and Science she had been another academic colleague; last night, exactly what every all-American boy would like to find in his bed. But who was she this morning? They weren’t strolling with their arms around each other’s waists anymore. Marge was a meter away and a little ahead of him, moving briskly, smoking with intensity, and staring straight ahead.

She seemed to reach a decision, and glanced at him. “Michigan State University, Institute of Extrasolar Biology. Daniel Dalehouse, B.A., M.S., Ph.D. I guess I didn’t tell you that I saw a preprint of your paper before I left Washington.”

“You did?” He was startled.

“Interesting paper. Makes me think you’re serious about wanting to go. Danny-boy, I might be able to help you.”

“Help me how?”

“With money, dear man. That’s all I’ve got to give. But I think I can give some to you. In case you didn’t notice my name tag when you were taking my clothes off, that’s what I do for a living. I’m with SERDCOM.”

“Praise COM from whom all blessings flow,” Danny said fervently; it was the annual grants from the Space Exploration, Research and Development Commission that kept Dalehouse’s institute green. “How come I’ve never seen you when I go to Washington with my begging bowl?”

“I’ve only been there since February. I’m vice-secretary for new projects. Job didn’t exist till the first of the year, and I wangled it. Before then I was teaching the stuff at my alma mater… among other subjects; we didn’t have much of an extrasolar department. It’s a small school, and it fell on hard times even while I was still an undergraduate. Well? What about it?”

“About what?”

“Were you creaming? Or do you want a grant for a manned trip to Kung’s Star?”

“I do! Christ, yes, I do, I do.”

She took his hand in one of hers, patted it with the other. “You may regard it as settled. Hello, what’s this?”

“But—”

“I said settled.” She was no longer looking at him; something had caught her attention. They had come to a large park, and off to their right was a mall leading up to a monument. Flanking the entrance to the mall were two heroic groups of bronze statuary.

Dalehouse followed her toward them, feeling dazed as well as hung over; it had not sunk in yet. “I suppose I ought to submit a proposal,” he said tentatively.

“You bet. Send me a draft first before you put it through channels.” She was examining the bronzes. “Will you look at this stuff!”

Dalehouse inspected them without interest. “It’s a war memorial,” he said. “Soldiers and peasants.”

“Sure, but it isn’t that old. That’s a tommy gun that soldier is holding… and there’s one on a motorbike. And look — some of the soldiers are women.”

She bent down and inspected the Cyrillic lettering. “Damn. Don’t know what it says. But it’s the workers and peasants welcoming liberators, right? It has to be the last of the Big Ones — World War Two. Let’s see, this is Bulgaria, so that must be the Red Army chasing the Germans out and all the Bulgarians bringing them flowers and hearty fraternal-solidarity handshakes and glasses of clear spring water. Wow! Jesus, Danny, both my grandfathers fought in this war, and one grandmother — two on one side, one on the other.”

Dalehouse looked at her with amusement and fondness, if not full comprehension; it was strange to find anyone who took such an interest in actual foot-slogging fighting these days, when everyone knew that war was simply priced out of the market for any nation that wanted to survive. “What about your other grandmother? Some kind of slacker?”

She looked up at him for a moment. “She died in the bombings,” she said. “Hey, this is fun.”

The bronzes were certainly military enough for any war fan. Every figure was expressing courage, joy, and resolution in maximal socialist-realist style. They had been sculptured to fit in foursquare oblong blocks, with all the figures fitted into each other to conform; they looked a lot like a box of frozen sardines writhing around each other. Margie’s interest in the sculpture was itself attracting interest, Dalehouse saw; the gendarmes had reached the end of their beat and were passing nearby on the return, watching benignly.

“What’s so much fun about soldiers?” he asked.

“They’re my trade, dear Dan. Didn’t you know? Marjorie Maude Menninger, Captain, USA, late of West Point, or late of the practically late West Point, as I sometimes say. You should see me in uniform.” She lighted another cigarette, and when she passed it to him for a drag he realized she had not been smoking tobacco.

She held the smoke, then exhaled it in a long plume. “Ah, those were the days,” she said dreamily, gazing at the bronzes. “Look at that prunt holding the baby up in the air. Know what he’s saying to the other soldier? ‘Go ahead, Ivan. I’ll hold the kid while you rape her mommy; then you hold the kid and it’s my turn.’ ”

Dalehouse laughed. Encouraged, Margie went on. “And that young boy is saying, ‘Hey, glorious Red Army soldier, you like my sister? Chocolate? Russki cigaretti?’ And the WAC that’s taking the flowers from the woman, she’s saying, ‘So, comrade! Stealing agricultural produce from the people’s parks! Make no mistake about it, it’s a long time in the camps for you!’ Course, by the time the Soviets got here the Germans were finished anyhow, but—”

“Margie,” he said.

“—still, it must have been pretty exciting—”

“Hey, Margie! Let’s move on,” he said uneasily. He had suddenly realized that the gendarmes were no longer smiling, and remembered, a little late, that all the municipal police had been given language lessons for the conference.