H.M. Hoover - Lost Star Read online

  "If we can."

  While they were transferring cartons to the other ship, the radio beeper went on again. Dr. Farr was in the truck and took the call. It was very brief, and he seemed to spend most of the time listening. He came out with a bemused expression.

  "That was Max," he said, and Lian frowned. "Would you—uh—like to join us on the dig? Be our guest?"

  "If I could," she said politely, wondering why he was issuing an invitation now. "How long will you be on Balthor? You see, we're expecting a star to supernova any time now, and that's going to keep us all busy. It's very lucky—you don't often get to see the actual explosion. . . ." The expression on his face made her pause. "What is it?"

  "Well, that's just it. Apparently the nova has occurred and no one ... I suggested we fly you back to Limai and they could meet us there. .. ." He paused to choose the kindest words. "None of the observatory staff can be spared to pick you up at the moment. And I'm afraid our trucks can't brave the high mountains with the chance of running into a storm up there."

  "Oh," said Lian, and suddenly she was very tired. But not surprised by the decision. It was quite like her parents. She appreciated Dr. Farr's tact but knew exactly what the reality was. They were in charge of the observatory. It was a choice between having their full

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  staff recording a supernova as it happened or someone's missing part of that experience to come and get her. And since she was safe, after all, she could wait. They would have let anyone else wait. Her personal interest In the event was incidental. Their work came first. Tears burned her eyes, and she turned her back and blinked rapidly, not wanting a stranger to see. "How long until they—"

  "At least a week."

  "That's an imposition on you," she said. "I'm sorry."

  "Not at all," he assured her. "It will be a pleasure to have you as our guest."

  lian said very little during the hour's ride to the archaeologists' base. She politely answered Dr. Farr's questions, but after several futile attempts to draw her into conversation her rescuer decided she was worn out from her ordeal and left her alone. But it wasn't fatigue that kept her silent. She was thinking, trying to decide if, in her parents' position, she could have done the same thing.

  I can understand, she thought. They cannot make exceptions for me. But it seemed to her that, if the situation had been reversed, she would have hurried to them even if three stars went into supernova and formed a black hole on camera. Perhaps that was because she was young. They ascribed many of her "wrong" deci-sions to her youth. Perhaps, when she was their age, when she had spent so many years studying distant lights in the sky, her perspective of human affairs would have altered. But at the moment her feelings were hurt. She did not understand. She did not want to understand. She wanted to cry.

  "That's our base there—on the bluff above the bend in the river," Dr. Farr announced. "If you look down the valley to the southeast, you'll see the outline of an old city."

  The base was obvious, with its street of yellow-dome housing units and large white X-mark landing pad. All she could see in the forest to the southeast was a series of large wooded mounds. Only slowly

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  did she realize the mounds formed a pattern of a great green eye. A red dirt road led from the camp to the corner of the eye, like a tear's trace.

  As she looked down on it, a curious murmur filled her mind, like a song remembered in a dream. She could almost understand the words, as if she had once known what they meant. Then it stopped.

  She glanced over at Dr. Farr; he appeared unaffected. The phenomenon was probably the result of too many altitude and air pressure changes on her inner ears, she decided. Or perhaps the protein bar had disagreed with her.

  In the ancient structure below, beneath the center of the eye, the Counter added One.

  In the time between landing and late after-noon, Lian forgot her hallucination. Dr. Farr led her directly from the truck to the medical dome, where she spent a naked hour alone being analyzed and intimidated by the medicom's probings. When she emerged, she had had a medicated shower, a thorough physical, which found her tired and bruised but healthy, and her fill of that pushy machine's smug androgenous voice issuing orders.

  She had often been told it was an immature trait— being irked by computers. Perhaps it was, but Lian secretly thought most machines developed personality traits of their own, and some were hostile to humans or felt superior. Which means I am probably paranoid as well as childish, she was thinking as she came out, combing her ..wet hair with her fingers.

  Dr. Farr was waiting, sitting on his haunches on the path by the door. Seeing her expression, he stood up, concerned. "Everything O.K.?"

  "Fine. Just cuts and bruises. And your medicom

  wants me to cut my hair to avoid contamination by mold spores."

  "It tells us all that," he said with a grin. "I suspect it was programmed by a bald fanatic. Ignore it and come see where you'll be staying. I fixed up the guest module for you, and we moved in some clothes and toiletries, as Dr. Scott calls them. She's our language expert, Earthly and otherwise. She's a redhead and was born in the spring. Her parents named her Robin, but if you're wise, you'll call her Scotty. Let's get you some real food, and you can meet the staff when they come back for lunch . . . and I'll show you . . ." He chatted on so cheerfully and was so obviously glad to have her there that her spirits began to rise.

  Of all the people she met at lunch, human and non-human, the only face she remembered was Dr. Scott's. Perhaps because the woman had eyes that crinkled into laughter at unexpected moments. Lian was at that stage of physical exhaustion where the mind functions on instinct; she could not have rationally explained why she liked Dr. Scott on first hello; she just did. Just as she disliked the staff photographer, whose name was Vincent. By the time lunch was over, she hadn't slept in thirty-six hours, and all she wanted to do was take a nap.

  Her guest house resembled a small yellow igloo with two round windows and a vent pipe. Inside, a bath module made one wall flat. In contrast to the brilliant exterior, the interior was a restful beige, the furnishings spartan but adequate. The bed felt wonderfully soft. Luxuriating in the feel of it, she stretched and yawned and pushed a pillow under her left ear.

  Dr. Fair and Dr. Scott had told her so much over lunch that it was hard to remember it all. There were some fifty staff members, about half of them human. There were five amalfi—lavender creatures with bodies like four tubular arms, bulbous heads, and purple beaks that spoke in rapid clicks. Highly intelligent, they came from a world wetter than Balthor. They suffered discomfort here and wore breathing-assist ap-

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  paratuses but persisted because they sought evidence of a long-lost colony of their own. The balance of the staff were dwarf tolats. The tolats' names all sounded like interrupted snores. A race crablike in appearance, they were known for their engineering and mechanical talents, durability, and total lack of imagination. The airtruck was of tolat design, as was much of the equipment here.

  She rather liked the assortment, the variety of the mix, Lian decided, thinking it over. At the observatory the staff was all human; there once had been several amalfi, but they had been unable to endure the dry cold of the mountains and of the human mind. She had never talked with a tolat, and she found them very alien. But that, no doubt, would change, she thought, and fell into a long, deep sleep.

  She was dreaming of her grandmother's house on Earth; she could smell the grass and hear someone walking in the garden. Footsteps crunching on gravel, a gardener working. There was something special about today, she remembered, some glad reason to get up. She opened her eyes, saw the round room, and remembered. The dream slipped away—far back into the past. But part of the gladness stayed.

  During the night someone had covered her with a green plaid blanket It smelled faintly of sunshine and perfume, and she decided her benefactor was Dr. Scott. They are really very nice, she thought, to be so gracious to a total strange
r. Her parents, faced with the same situation, would page someone like Max and give him responsibility for the guest. There would be no question of spending time so unproductively as to think of blankets. She checked her watch. They would be going to bed now at the observatory, or sitting in the dining room discussing the night's viewing, engrossed in radiant energy emitted from the exploded star ... she was missing it all. . . . She got up and went in to shower and put on clean clothes. Half an hour later she walked out into the morning.

  The trees around the camp dew-glistened in the sun-24

  light. The river winked at the bottom of the bluff. What she called birds, for lack of knowing their proper names, perched upon the fronds, their morning songs mingled with the throbs of amphibians from the marsh somewhere below. Off in the distance other creatures could be heard. Lian had no idea what they were.

  A few igloos down the street, Dr. Scott was mowing the long grass around a flowering shrub, manicuring raw nature into a lawn for her home. Lian watched for a moment and then began to laugh. Insects flew, hopped, or walked out of the path of the cutter bar. Large frog-mouthed birds, like unkempt bags of blue feathers, marched about, scooping up the insects. Each time the birds swallowed, they paused in their walk; a look of almost insane gratification crossed their owlish faces; their amber eyes closed, and they gave a chesty cry of "Wortle!" Then, with a quick ruffle, they recovered their dignity and marched on.

  Impulsively Lian knelt and picked up one of the birds; it was surprisingly heavy. Its feet went on walking on air as she held it. It regarded her with a direct stare, then quite audibly burped. She quickly set it down. It continued its walk as if nothing had happened.

  "What are they?" she called to Dr. Scott.

  "Wortles," came the answer. "They act like toy birds. Watch them-—after a time you start looking for the key in their backs." Her next words were drowned out by three wortles at once. Lian started off down the path to join her.

  A black beetle half the size of her hand darted out from beneath a clump of leaves, paused, then raced the other way and dodged into the tall grass. It was no sooner gone than a fuzzy orange millipede some two feet long and six inches in diameter flowed across the path. Feathery brown antennae quivered as it followed the route of the beetle. It all happened so quickly Lian didn't even have time to be upset.

  As if this creature's appearance gave evidence of her ability to flush out game, two wortles came flopping over and landed on the path beside her. She stopped.

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  "You go ahead," she invited them. They ignored her and to her delight marched sideways like demented sentries until she turned and proceeded. Then she saw that each visible staff member had its complement of wortles.

  "I never knew there was so much wildlife down here," she said as the woman turned off the mower to talk. "I nearly got knocked down by a worm."

  "Big orange one?" said Dr. Scott, and when Lian nodded, "That's Buford. He's the camp pet. He controls our black beetle population. He's tame but you must be careful when you pet him. He has an acid tongue."

  "I'll—uh—watch out for it," said Lian. Having no intention of petting a worm, but not wanting to offend local tastes, she added, "He is . . . lovely. And very quick, too."

  Dr. Scott laughed, delighted by Lian's attempt to be tactful. "You don't like him, do you? There's no accounting for tastes. How do you feel about lumpies?"

  "I've never seen one. The cargo men at Limai call each other lumpies as if it were an insult. Are they animals?"

  "The cargo men are, yes. I'm not sure about the lumpies." She paused. "Dr. Farr and the others say so. . . ."

  "Are there lumpies around here?"

  "Some. They live in the hills of the old city. One comes up here every morning to feed Buford."

  Lian frowned. "The worm is their pet, too?"

  "Maybe . . ." Dr. Scott obviously had never thought of that. "Maybe that's why Buford's been tame since the beginning . . . there he is."

  Lian turned cautiously, expecting to see Buford. She saw instead a large gray creature walking on four legs. "What an odd-looking . . ." she started to say and then stopped, for the lumpie had paused in midstep at the sight of her. It stood erect, and they were at eye level.

  The lumpie was not a beautiful animal. It was squat 26

  and heavy, with smooth pearl-gray skin. Unlike the other animals she had seen here, this one was a hexa-pod. Its mid and rear legs were short and stocky, and it could walk on four legs or stand erect on the wide-spaced rear feet with mid legs folded against its belly. Its "arms" were oddly jointed, and its hands many-fingered like a gray sea anemone. It was short-necked, its high-set ears petal-shaped. The roundness of its head made the wide mouth form a clownlike smile beneath a short seal muzzle.

  For what seemed like minutes to Lian, they stared at each other in the shock of some sort of recognition. Now she was aware only of its eyes, blue with rims and striations of dark blue, eyes large enough to belong to a nocturnal creature, eyes that peered into her mind like some alien camera and let her see into a soul where such quiet joy danced that she smiled.

  It seemed to Lian as she stared that it knew—knew her being here was no accident but a thing predestined, knew what she had been and was and would be—and approved.

  "lian?" Dr. Scott touched her arm. "Lian? Look at me!" A certain urgency in the voice made Lian obey, but regretfully. "They can almost hypnotize you. Please don't look or stare at them too long."

  "What are they?" Lian was almost whispering. She saw Dr. Scott start to say something, then change her mind.

  "Don't give them human feelings," she said. "They aren't . . . human. Possibly not even very intelligent, But gentle."

  "Do they talk?"

  "I've never heard one make any noise."

  "Are they telepaths?"

  "Do you think they are?"

  Lian didn't know her well enough to judge if the woman was mocking her—but instinctively she felt not "You do think they're telepaths!"

  "But we're not, are we?" Dr. Scott said, and that seemed to sadden her. "Sometimes I wish „.

  "What?"

  "I wish they'd quit playing the fool!"

  At the hint of anger in the woman's voice the lumpie dropped to four feet and approached, smiling its built-in smile. In one hand it carried a bulgy woven string bag. Dr. Scott looked at it, then shook her head in resignation and smiled at the creature. "Good morning, Billy," she said. The lumpie sat down on its haunches like an odd dog.

  "You give them bags to collect things?" said Lian.

  "No. They weave them from grass. They make hammocks for beds, too." She gave an unexpectedly piercing whistle, and almost immediately Buford appeared from the shrubbery and paused, looking to see if it was safe to come out into the clearing. The lumpie held out its bag and shook it vigorously. Lian saw the bag contained several large, very live, very leggy beetles. Buford saw them, too, or smelled them. He hurried over.

  At that the lumpie paused and gave the bugs a look of great compassion, then reached deftly into the bag, selected a struggling insect, and held it a few inches from Buford's head. The worm's tongue flicked out and the bug went still. A second flick and the victim was lashed into an orange and toothless mouth. Lian considered throwing up, then remembered she hadn't had breakfast. The lumpie turned and regarded her intently, then gravely offered her a beetle.

  After a conventional breakfast Dr. Farr and Lian walked down to the dig together. Two lumpies ambled on ahead, their moon-round bottoms gleaming in the sunshine. Buford skulked in the underbrush. Twice the walkers had to step aside as a tolat drove past on digging equipment.

  "The site is three miles long and not quite two miles wide," Dr. Farr told Lian. "The western end is almost completely buried. We've started digging where structures are closest to the surface. One of the more interesting aspects of the site." He pointed to where the road cut through a hillock. "This earthwork rims the entire eye. We found nothing buried in it, so its purpose probabl
y was not ritual. We don't think it was built for defense; it's much too low. And there is Utile danger here. It may have been only decorative."

  The dirt road made a right turn on the other side of the eye's rim and widened out. Lian noted the trees on the site were much smaller than those outside. Without heavy leaf canopy a profusion of flowering

  shrubs grew here, and the air smelled of flowers and plowed ground. What she first thought were flakes of colored paper floating about became, on closer look, butterflylike insects.

  The entire area bustled with activity. Tolats were removing the overburden; one machine rolled up sod as if it were strips of carpet; another forked the sod rolls off and deposited them in neat rows to one side of the clearing. Still another unit was shaving the bare ground, layer by layer, and dumping the soil into a carry-all loader for removal. A human stood with map in hand, guiding the operation. Two amalfi worked with power brooms, carefully vacuuming the surface of the now denuded mound.

  With the powerful hum of the equipment, the ripping of roots in the soil, the conversations called back and forth in three different languages, half of which were repeated by belt-worn translating units at full volume, the site was almost unbearably noisy to Lian. She was acclimated to long hours alone in the observatory domes where the silence was broken only by the occasional whine of the roof or the telescope turning as a star was tracked.

  "Farr? Farr?" The translator crackled as it converted the clicking amalfi tongue. "Lurch your body to my proximity for viewing." Lian looked in the direction of the voice and saw an amalfi gesturing as eagerly as it was possible for it to wave those limp arms.

  "Klat appears to have found something," said Dr. Farr. "Let's go look."

  They made their way up the slope on a well-defined path and descended into what they thought was once an ancient street. Off to one side, where Klat waited, three tolats were clearing the ground away from an oblong black platform.

  "Well done!" said Dr. Farr. "It appears intact."