‘Well, I suppose it is hypocritical. I guess we – we Tripsingers – we go along with what BDL demands because it makes it possible for us to go on doing what we love to do. On the surface, in public, we pretend the Presences aren’t sentient because that statement allows us to move around on Jubal. Underneath, we believe they are sentient, and that belief is what makes moving around on Jubal worthwhile! We assent to hypocrisy, because it doesn’t seem to make that much difference. I guess it’s because we don’t see anything consequential happening just because we give lip service to nonsentience. It doesn’t change anything. We still go through the motions Erickson laid down for us, the quasi-religious, very respectful stuff he ordained, so while we say they’re not sentient, we act as though they are sentient. We have to. Otherwise we might lose Jubal, and Jubal’s in our blood.’
She sat down opposite him, her face eager. ‘I’ve felt that, you know. What is it like, for you?’
He lowered himself onto the bed, dangling a sock from one hand, thinking. What was it like for him?
‘It’s like going into paradise,’ he said. ‘We say going into peril, but I’ve always thought paradise must be very perilous. Anything beautiful, anything that takes hold of your heart and shakes it – that’s perilous.
‘The peril takes hold of you even before you leave, sometimes. You see the ceremonial gate opening. Everything inside you gets very still. You start to ride, the fields flowing by, slowly changing to Jubal lands. You smell the Jubal trees, and as you go up the trail, they turn, almost as though they’re following you, watching you. The ground begins to shiver, only a little, then more. Something is speaking in the ground, something enormous….’
‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘You go on and the words being spoken in the ground get bigger and bigger until they fill your head. Until you see the Presence before you, glittering. Light comes out of it like daggers, like swords. They pierce you, and you begin to sing…. It’s like bleeding music instead of blood.’
He nodded. She knew. Oh, yes. She knew.
‘And if you do it right, quiet comes,’ he concluded for her. ‘Something listens.’
There was an aching understanding between them, a sympathy that was almost agony. He flushed and dropped his eyes, awash with an emotion he would not allow himself to feel. When she had spoken, he had felt her in his arms, as she had been there on the trail below the Watchers, trembling in his arms. He gritted his teeth, pushing the feeling away. It made him feel disloyal to the memory of Celcy each time he had one of these fleeting feelings.
After a time she pocketed the mouse and said, ‘Logically, if something listens, something should reply.’
He shook his head, smiling ruefully. ‘That’s what Chad Jaconi says. He’s spent forty years trying to make sense out of Password scores. I don’t know how many so-called universal translator setups he’s bought from out-system.’
‘Did he ever get anything?’
‘Nothing sensible.’
‘What about the other side of the conversation? The Presence side?’
‘Gibberish. For decades, people have recorded the sounds the Presences make. They’ve tried every known translator device. All they get is some kind of noise, Chad says. White noise or brown noise or something. Squeaks, howls, snores, gurgles. Nothing useful. Nothing with meaning.’
‘What about the viggies? They sing. Maybe they’re sentient.’
‘A lot of people tried to establish that. There were a number of viggies captured in the early years, well treated so far as anyone could tell, and they almost all died – overnight sometimes. A very rare few were said to have lived in captivity. The one I had, the one Lim let loose, was supposed to say a few words, “pretty viggy” and “viggy wants a cooky,” but there’s no record of any of the things the PEC looks for in determining sentience. No toolmaking. No proof of language. No burial of the dead. And, of course, there’s simply no way to go among them and study them as our naturalists would like to do. They’re nocturnal, elusive, die when captured, and they don’t talk. So much for viggy sentience….’
There was a tap at the door and Jamieson thrust his head in. ‘I’ve found an empty brou truck that’s leaving for Northwest in half an hour.’
‘Right,’ Tasmin agreed, rising. ‘Let this stuff go, Clarin. I’ll finish packing here. You two get your own gear.’
There was a brief delay while the truck was fitted with a proper hitch to pull the trailer Tasmin had borrowed from the mule farm. Since there was only space in the truck turret for two passengers, Jamieson chose to ride with the mules. They set out early in the afternoon.
First came the city outskirts, mud houses, mud stores, untidy gardens, these separated from similar stretches by great swatches of hard surfaced road, with more of it building. ‘Military construction,’ bellowed the driver over the noise of their travel. ‘Somebody decided they needed better roads to move the military around. That’s why bricks are so short. They’ve got all the solar furnaces out here surfacin’ road.’
They passed several of the furnaces, huge mirrors hung on complicated frameworks that both tracked the sun and focused the resultant beam. Behind the furnaces, road surface smoked hotly, fading from red to black.
Once past the construction, though the road was narrow and bumpy, they made better time. They were traveling through fields of grain and narrower strips lined with root crops. Occasionally they could see pens of fowl or small meat animals, chigs or bantigons, omnivores native to Serendipity. Tasmin’s mouth watered. He had an insatiable hunger for grilled bantigon. Fried bantigon. Bantigon pie. On this meat-poor planet, Tasmin was an unregenerate carnivore. Clarin, watching him salivate, gave him a sympathetic look. She, too, enjoyed fresh meat.
They
