Yoshi told himself he wouldn't care, if it
weren't for Tatya. He had a violent allergy
to controversy; it was one of the reasons he'd sought the
seemingly lonely life of the
agrostations. Was he so caught up in Tatya's
romanticism about other planets that he was suddenly
willing to risk his life to prevent what could only be
the misunderstanding, the
hysteria, the detention and interrogation and possible
exploitation or worse of two total strangers
who just happened to look vaguely human, who just
incidentally spoke a human language, and about
whom he knew absolutely nothing else?
What if they had incredible super powers which, once
awakened, could crush two
isolated humans like bugs on a wall? What
if they were criminals escaping from their own world, bent
on murder and mayhem? What if they were the
vanguard of an invasion force, whose mission was
to infiltrate, win over poor
unsuspecting humans, and conquer Earth?
And what if they were just two innocent star
travelers
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who had lost their way and almost died and were now
totally dependent upon the kindness of strangers?
Well, what if?
There were very few things Yoshi would risk his life
for; he'd be the first to admit it. Unlike his
adventurous partner, he'd never aspired to anything more
grandiose than what he had
here. The twenty-first century with its crowds, its
noise, its technology, its potential for getting
a person too deep into things too big and too
complicated, intimidated him. All he'd ever
wanted was to spend the rest of a long and uneventful
life contemplating the sea, counting the stars, worrying
about nothing more
threatening than kelpwilt, and staying out of harm's
way.
He might have turned the aliens in himself as soon
as they'd gotten back to the station to at least get them
medical help, he'd reasoned if it hadn't
required more assertiveness than he
possessed. And if he hadn't been certain
Tatya would break every bone in his body.
And if the female alien hadn't spoken to him, in
his own language.
Yoshi sighed, and flipped the channel.
"dis . . reportedly a defective recon
satellite believed to have splashed down somewhere to the
westnorthwest of Easter Island . . ."
Yoshi stood up abruptly, capsizing his
beanbag chair and making his sore ankle throb
violently. He dialed the volume up.
"dis . . Aeroationav vessel dispatched in an
attempt to recover any portion of the satellite which
may have survived. In other news . . ."
"Well, there it is," Yoshi said aloud.
"I'll bet it's the Whale," Tatya said from the
doorway of the sleeping room. Yoshi hadn't
realised she was there; they seemed not to have seen each
other for hours. "She's due tomorrow anyway."
They had always called Delphinus the Whale, as
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
play on her name, because of the size and shape of the
ship itself, and as an affectionate joke at the
expense of her captain, though never to his
face. Jason Nyere was sensitive about his size.
Suddenly the Joke wasn't funny anymore.
Nothing was.
"How are they?" Yoshi nodded toward the room behind
Tatya; no need to specify who "they" were.
"Stabilized, I think." Tatya looked
drawn, exhausted. "The male seems to be coming
around a little. I don't dare medicate either of
them, not even painkillers. As nearly as I can
tell their entire physiology is different from
ours. Organs in the wrong places, vital
signs all screwy. I can't get accurate
readings on
anything, not even a blood pressure . . ."
Her voice trailed off. Yoshi had never seen
her too exhausted to talk.
"Yoshi, what are we going to do?"
Yoshi shrugged. He didn't want to do
anything. He wanted to fall into the Mayabi
Fault and disappear.
relatives?" he suggested, groping for humor.
Tatya was not amused.
"I'd like to see you try telling that to Jason,"
she said grimly.
"I don't hear any brilliant ideas from your
corner of the room," Yoshi snapped back.
Alone out here, they were accustomed to arguing as loudly
and as often as they chose, but the presence of their
unwanted guests had changed all that. Argue they
did, but softly, counting on the rising wind stirring
up
whitecaps and howling around the corners of the station
to keep them from being overheard should one of the aliens
waken.
It did not occur to them that pointed ears had
evolved on other worlds for a reason, that the wind had
already wakened one of their guests, and that one such pair
of ears was absorbing every word.
* * *
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"They seem so primitive," Sorahl had said
to his mother the first time she observed the frown with which he
studied his private viewer and inquired as to what
might be puzzling him. "I mean no disrespect, but
I cannot help
wondering why you and my grandfather find them so
fascinating."
They had been two days from the Sol
system, the scoutcrafttraversing the Oort Cloud
where so many of the comets visible from Earth
originated. T'Lera and Sorahl were in the living
quarters, she at the beginning of her offshift, he
nearing the end of his. Shortly he would take over
from Selik, who, with seemingly effortless
proficiency, navigated with one hand while
recording new comets with the other.
""Primitive"?" T'Lera had inquired,
making no effort to disguise her dryness of voice; of
all beings, surely her son was most accustomed to it.
"Specify."
Sorahl's gesture encompassed a number of
record tapes strewn about his workspace,
particularly those gleaned from Earth's
holovision broadcasts by previous expeditions.
"Their forms of entertainment," he began, with the
wariness of youth expecting to be criticised for its
naivete. "Their obsession with violence, with maudlin
emotions, with humor at the
expense of others. If these are the things they
value . . ."
"Is this what your study indicates, my son?"
T'Lera allowed herself to address him informally when they
were alone and off duty. were her father in
attendance she would have refrained; where Savar had
commanded, formal mode had been all.
"Mother, I am aware that I lack the experience of
those who have made this their life work, but my observations
indicate that this is a species perpetually on the
verge of self-destruction."
"So many
of its great thinkers would concur,"
T'Lera said dryly. "But what you have observed is
not the sum
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total of what they choose as diversion for their
leisure, much less what they consider of value."
Sorahl lowered his eyes. His observation had been
naive, and presumptuous. Before he could ask his
mother's forgiveness she interrupted him.
"And what would you suggest, my son? That we
abandon our efforts to learn of them?"
Sorahl's eyes came up to meet hers,
barely masking the fire behind them in time.
"Not at all, Mother. Rather that we take the first step
to which all our research has been leading. That we
make first contact."
T'Lera hid her bemusement at his eagerness behind
a careful sternness.
"Forgive my inability to follow your logic,
Sorahlkam, but if this is as you suggest a
violent, unready, or to use your word tilde
rimitive species, of what benefit would revealing
our presence be to them? Would they not resort
to precisely the violence you suggest in order
to protect themselves from that for which they are unready?"
"I do not think so," Sorahl said quickly.
Curious, his mother dropped her pretence of
"Please explain."
"A recent paper by the political scientist
Sotir . . ." Sorahl began carefully,
watching his mother's face. Between them they always
referred to his father and her former consort as an
impersonal entity. There was a certain irony in this,
Sorahl thought, in that much of his childhood had been
spent under his father's care while T'Lera was off on
yet another space voyage, but to refer to another's
divorce, even within the family, was a serious breach
of the proprieties. "dis . . promulgates the
theory that benevolent intervention in the evolution of a
less advanced culture may actually spare
another species the aggressions and 65
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
loss of life which we as a species endured before
finding the Way. In short his
"Logic suggests that there are as many
theories as there are theorists," T'Lera said
abruptly. "And Sotir has never been offworld."
This fact among others, she did not need to say,
had been one of the reasons for their estrangement.
"Does this necessarily mean his theory is without
validity?" Sorahl asked with a familiar
stubbornness his mother always found curiously satisfying.
It was not Sotir's stubbomness, which could be both
pedantic and strident, but her own and Savar's, a
stubbornness that was
nonaggressive, invisible until challenged, but
then immovable.
"Any theory logically arrived at possesses
its own validity," T'Lera admitted, masking
her pride in her willful offspring. "Nevertheless,
one is not free to test it on unsuspecting
outworlders."
"Then why are we here?" Sorahl demanded with the
impatience of youth, which even a Vulcan could fall
prey to. "Why study these Earthmen for most of my
grandfather's life and all of yours yet refrain from the
logical next step?"
"It is not yet time," T'Lera said, in a tone
that indicated the topic was not open for debate.
"In whose opinion?" Sorahl dared to ask, where
one who knew his mother not quite as well might
hesitate. "Yours, or Prefect Savar's?"
Destruction before detection. It was not Sorahl's
question that gave his mother pause but the manner in which it had
been asked. She had had cause herself to question whether
after a lifetime under the aegis of that principle she
could separate her own motivation from her father's.
"Saver and I are as one in our "opinion,""
T'Lera said quietly, believing it. Her
far-seeking eyes had gone hard. "But you, it would
seem, prefer PK-AHR Sotir's
"interventionist" theory?"
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
Sorahl's jaw tightened imperceptibly beneath the
full brunt of his mother's irony.
"I believe," he began, as if he had
rehearsed it, expecting challenge, "that ff
Earthmen, or any intelligent species, were offered
incontrovertible proof that it is possible to abandon
violence and live by logic, millions might be
spared the need to destroy each other. They
could not help but see the advantage of our
way$'a
"Despite their "primitivism,"" T'Lera
added.
"Mother, I am not suggesting that we are superior
to them." Sorahl's voice had risen despite his
best efforts and he lowered it forcibly. "Merely that
we are different That is consistent with IDIC."
"Precisely," T'Lera said, as ff he had
led himself to her side of the argument, which in fact he
had. "And IDIC leads to Savar's Prime
Directive, not to Sotir's interventionism. We
are too different to judge what is "best" for
another species. And it is not yet time."
She stood abruptly, intent upon a sonic shower
and sleep.
"Sotir may theorise at his leisure," she
concluded. "It is 1, as commander of this vessel, who
must confront the reality. And you, as a member of this
crew, who must obey.
Before we enter Sol 111 orbit,
Navigator, you will complete a thorough study of
all record tapes designated
"Colonialism." I will expect a full
report."
Sorahl's voice, borrowing generously from the
irony that was his birthright, reached his mother over the sound
of the shower.
"Understood, Commander," he said.
Which of them had been correct? Sorahl
wondered now in the strange and utterly alien
place where he found himself upon awakening. Or, rather, more
correct, since logic dictated that no single
individual could possess the whole of any truth.
And what did it matter,
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
now that circumstance had given them both into the
Earthmen's hands?
He could hear them arguing in the room
beyond.
"dis . . hide them here for how long? Even if they
somehow magically recover all by themselves his
"I don't know, Yoshi, I just don't know! But
you said it yourself: we're committed. I feel
responsible for them. And I won't have them hurt .
. ."
Savar's precepts had never made provision
for the situation his grandson found himself in, but like any
Vulcan beyond seven years Sorahl was
well trained in survival. Immediately upon awakening,
he had assessed his circumstances and his surroundings,
and attempted to rise from the waterbed. His
unpracticed movements on this alien device,
however, set it to
undulating violently. The motion threatened
to awake
T'Lera, who lay beside him, co
matose as he had
been, but in no immediate danger. Sorahl
ceased his movements and considered what to do next.
He had been intrigued by the notion of a
liquid-filled sleeping mat as soon as he
determined its nature, added the sensation to the
multiplicity of alien sights, sounds, and smells
that assailed him. There was also the lighter gravity, with
its accompanying strange sensations. Every waking moment
increased the young Vulcan's knowledge about Earthmen and their
world considerably.
This tiny room, safe haven from the strange and
tumultuous seascape he glimpsed through the window
port, spoke more eloquently of this world and its people
than decades of long-range study. The homey
furnishings and simple decor, jars filled with
seashells and water-worn rocks, dog-eared paper
books in several languages and on a
variety of topics, bits of driftwood and
Tatya's Ukrainian artifacts (sorahl did
not yet know them to be either Tatya's or
Ukrainian, but would leam such things in time), the
ordinary clutter of 68
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
personal effects kept in the privacy of a
sleeping room where one did not expect
strangers to venture . . .
Sorahl did not move, touched nothing, would not
presume to violate the privacy of those to whom he
owed his life. Nevertheless their artifacts surrounded
him, and he could not help contemplating them. Given
an opportunity to examine his room at the
Academy, what would Earthmen surmise about him and
his kind?
He did not intend to eavesdrop on their argument,
either, but how could he avoid it? Their voices
assaulted his sensitive ears; their discordant
emotions were more strident still. Yet their struggle to come
to terms with what had been thrust upon them struck the young
Vulcan profoundly. At last he began to understand
his grandfather's obsession, his mother's fasci nation, with the
species. He remembered that he had called them
primitive, and was
ashamed.
His shame was short-lived. There were things he must
do. Gingerly he made another attempt to get out
of the waterbed. This time he was successful.
Standing, he realised he was weak from
hunger and shock (how long since the crisis that
had brought them here, how long had their craft floated
unnoticed in this alien sea?), but his youth and
Vulcan stamina would work in his favor, and the human