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Ian Watson - Alien Embassy
'-you'll have to find some other way. Oh!' I realized what she had just said.
Of course! Why else would they have left the fly-globe with her, if it was
anything more than a mere toy during her pregnancy? No wonder I was puzzling
her, as I
grasped frantically at any straw. 'You must get down there somehow, Maimouna.
If you're so clever at finding your way about!'
'I'm sure I could.'
'You must wake the Dobdobs up. Maybe you can work through Chang? But that s
dangerous - just telling one Dob-dob. You must tell them all! I can't
5
manage it. You're still practically a free agent compared with me. You have to
be their liberator. And everybody's!'
'Maimouna shall make up her own mind what's best to believe,' she said with an
oblique smile, detaching herself still further, veering towards the door. 'And
what's best to do. Speaking as a free agent, I shall bear it all in mind, my
dear, I
promise you.'
Yes she would. She must. Feng must see his contempt for fallible, human
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Maimouna rebound. I'd planted the seed. Even though it was the power, not the
truth, she cared about!
With a wink, she took her leave of me. Not as someone mocking me - but as my
accomplice, I hoped.
But what about me, now?
My own time had run out. Feng had said they would know if I was telling the
truth if I said yes and didn't really mean it. And if they were in any doubt,
a mere plant hooked up to a galvanometer could tell them! I
had to believe it. But if I said no, and my Dobdob guard reported me talking
to
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Ian Watson - Alien Embassy
Maimouna - she would never be able to act, in my absence.
Something had to distract him completely. Something that closed my case
forever in Feng's mind too - leaving Maimouna free.
Yungi lay naked in the cot except for the nappy tied round her middle. No
pillow, of course. And too warm for a blanket this July night.
A few clean nappy towels lay on a shelf. I snatched hold of these. My Dobdob
was still looking vaguely out along the corridor, where Maimouna had departed.
The nurse, then-! She would have to see me.
I tugged the earphones off Yungi's head, waking her up with a little grunt of
surprise. It took a while before she actually started crying at the
disturbance.
Such a while.
Then I pressed the soft heap down upon her upturned, noisy face.
I pressed gently. As ineffectively as I could.
At last the nurse cried out in Tibetan.
The Dobdob reached me first - pulling me away violently and quickly towards
the door. It had surely only taken seconds but I couldn't be sure that Yungi
was still alive. I couldn't see her! She might have breathed in strands of
towd or vomited and choked on that.
Neither could I hear her crying. I tried to hear her, how I tried. I cried out
myself, involuntarily, as the Dobdob twisted my arms to rush me along the
corridor. And
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Ian Watson - Alien Embassy by then I was too far away to hear.
EPILOGUE
It's winter and the wind rages like a wall of ice, up top. There's so much
hail and snow in it, it may as well be ice: a stiff block scraping across the
ice-cap from end to end. Nothing moves; everything is locked up tight. Even
the wind is solid.
Life stands still, transfixed.
This place is called K22. K stands for
Karma
: the Indian word for what a person's deeds in life produce. Geographically,
it's between West Ice Shelf and
Shackleton Ice Shelf on the Antarctic coast. In summer I have to wear wooden
spectacles with slits in them, to stop myself from going blind; the clothes I
wear even then make me waddle like a penguin. In winter the storms force
everyone underground for months on end.
Elsewhere in the world, for the next few hundred years or maybe for the next
few thousand years, they are busily upgrading the human race; that's to say
phasing it out of existence. We don't discuss this too often, we prisoners. By
now it seems incredible. We must have been sent here for some reason. Perhaps'
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we were saboteurs? Agents of the Star Beast? A certain woman called Maimouna
obviously had no wish to be a saboteur. I waited and waited for us to be set
free.
Nothing happened. Maybe she had no chance, or failed.
There are no permanent guards. We're left to ourselves, guarded by the
environment. From time to time, Dobdobs who can't speak any of our languages
inspect us and bring us more supplies. Bardo is a humane organization. Even if
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Ian Watson - Alien Embassy not human? We're set tasks, too, by printed
instructions, which we perform out of boredom, even when they're dangerous.
Some long-lived radioactive waste still lies buried in the ice, here and
there; so we keep a watch on the level of radio-activity with geiger counters.
Or we drill down through the ice to discover what the world's climate was like
thousands of years ago. I think they're afraid of a new ice age cramping their
world. Or maybe hoping for it - to speed up events.
Or else we do other chores.
Karma 22 holds some five hundred people The oldest is seventy; he has been
here more than half his life. We Antarcti-cans will be extinct before the
human race itself. Fewer prisoners arrive every year. Conceivably Bardo is
filling fresh camps elsewhere round the rim of the ice-cap, not wishing to
overcrowd us?
Who knows? Our nearest neighbours, K2.1 and K 23, are three hundred kilometres
away to east and west; we have no contact.
From time to time some of us still discuss the situation. On the whole
despondently; old rebels have lost heart- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]