Читать книгу Balance of Power - Brian Stableford - Страница 5

CHAPTER THREE

“It’s a bad break,” I said, settling down on the floor. The cabins weren’t exactly de luxe. I had a table and a little leg room. Mariel had only the bunk.

She lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The lamp was attached to the wall above the pillow, and it cast a shadow across her face when she put up a hand to shield her eyes from its direct glare. I couldn’t see her expression.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I know how things are. They’re an ugly lot and they’re in a bad mood. But it just seems so ridiculous that we can be beaten by such a stupid thing. After the Salamen, I was sure I could talk to these people, sure I could get to know them. I was convinced that I could learn more about them in six weeks than an army of exobiologists in six years. I am convinced...but to come so close and not get the chance....”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s not your fault. I’m as worried as you are. They’re unpredictable because they’re so tense.”

“Are they giving you any trouble?” I asked awkwardly.

The question embarrassed her as much as it did me. “No,” she said. “They just look. If I couldn’t get used to that...where would I be? Even back on Earth, when I was fourteen....”

Now she was eighteen. She’d grown into her rather gangly frame. She looked a lot less awkward. She was plain, but she wasn’t unattractive.

“It’s not your last chance,” I said quietly. “The next world has alien indigenes, too. And after that...if all goes well....”

“If,” she said. She said it very flatly, very bitterly.

“You’re afraid, aren’t you?” I said. “Afraid of your talent...burning out.”

She turned on her side to look at me, as if astonished by my perception. She was used to knowing what other people thought. She wasn’t used to them knowing what she was thinking.

“How...?” she began.

She stopped, because she could see what I was thinking. Put into words, it was something like: I’m not a fool. Even I’m not totally insensitive.

“They do, you know,” she murmured. “They always do.”

“Maybe people just learn to hide them,” I said.

“And maybe they learn to destroy them,” she said, softly. “To save themselves.

“Is that what you’d like to do?”

“No. It’s the last thing in the world I’d like to do. I don’t believe the thesis. I suspect that talents have to die, because if they don’t....”

“...people go crazy,” I finished for her. “Not necessarily. Nobody knows.”

“I know,” she said, in a fierce whisper. “When you’re a child, it doesn’t matter. A child is outside the adult social world...self-involved, self-possessed. All children are mad, by adult criteria. But as they grow up, we expect them to become sane. How can you take your place in the adult world when you can read minds? When so much depends on rules and conventions and ethics and self-concealment...how can there be any place in a world like that for something like me?”

“We’ve adjusted,” I said. “Aboard the ship. Even me. It’s four and a half years now. Maybe I took a long time. But I’ve adjusted now. We all have.”

“The ship’s a microcosm,” she said. “Not a world. It’s just six people, forced to live so close to one another that there can’t be any such thing as privacy. We all know one another’s souls inside out. What does a little thought-reading matter? But in the real world...in the complex world of millions of people, where no one knows anyone except perhaps inside marriage, and maybe not then...I’m outside. I’m an offense against life itself. As a child, I was a freak...but as a person, passing myself off as a person....”

“Stop it,” I said.

She curled up a little, as though her body were instinctively seeking a fetal position which it could no longer quite accomplish. Her eyes were still on my face.

“Do you know what I believe?” she said, in a strange tone that didn’t quite belong to her voice. “I believe that talents vanish like magic with virginity. The moment I initiate myself into the human race, it’ll be gone just like that!”

I looked away. “You can’t believe everything,” I said, trying to find a way to veer away from the subject. “Not all at once.”

“Yes I do,” she answered. “All the conflicting theories—all the cute psychological analyses. I believe them all. I believe that I’ll have to lose my talent to stay sane. I believe that it will vanish away like a childhood neurosis once my formal initiation into the wonders of sex is over. I believe it all. And now you see why I can’t be sure that there’ll be another chance. Ever.”

“If it does fade away,” I said, again awkwardly, “it won’t be the end of the world.”

“It won’t be the beginning,” she said, bitterly.

“Even if there was to be no other opportunity,” I said—slowly, because I was treading dangerous ground—”you wouldn’t have failed. What you did on Wildeblood...you’ll always have that. And that was important. That was the first. No one can ever take that away from you. You made contact—real contact—with an alien species. You got inside their heads, into their way of thinking. No one can deny you that one success. Maybe you’ll get a chance to repeat it, maybe you won’t. The situation here doesn’t look too good. But you mustn’t get into this state of bitter desperation. You mustn’t.”

I had built up pace and intensity while I spoke. I watched her relax slightly. Her eyes, with the pupils gaping in the dim light, were fixed upon my face as she looked right into my mind. She could probably have offered a clearer description of what was there than I could.

“Thanks, Alex,” she murmured.

“For what?” I asked, uneasily.

“For caring.”

There were little tears in the corners of her eyes.

I wished that Karen was with us. Or Linda. They, I felt sure, could have done a much better job of caring. It wasn’t really my line. It didn’t involve examination, analysis and taking census. They were my fortés. Empathy I was always short of.

“Just fight it,” I said, feeling that something that sounded like advice was called for. “You have the power. Power to look inside people’s heads—and the power to support the power. It’s a matter of keeping it all straight. Don’t let it slip. Don’t let anything hurt you. I’ll do everything I can to get you another chance. Everything. But if it doesn’t work out...don’t hurt yourself.”

She shut her eyes. It was a kind of signal. She was letting me alone...taking the pressure off. It was a chance to think something that she wouldn’t see, but I knew full well how meaningless that chance really was.

Among the Salamen, I remembered, she’d been happy. Maybe the first and only time she ever had been happy. How comforting to be among aliens, when you can be free from the double vision that afflicts you among your own kind. She expected a lot from the aliens of Delta. Maybe far too much. Even after one success, there was no way to be sure that they wouldn’t have a bad effect on her...like the people of Dendra. The Salamen had been amphibians—remote from humanity. Maybe just remote enough.

I stood up, and touched her lightly on the shoulder. “All right?” I asked.

“Sure,” she replied.

I closed the door quietly behind me, and went to my own cabin, next door. I had to pick my way very carefully to the bed—the floor was very cluttered. Once there, I sat down. Almost automatically, I took up a sample of seawater from the table and dipped in a pipette, to take droplets for a series of slides. It wasn’t really work—just something to settle my mind, and to make it change gear.

It was very late when I finally went to sleep.