Moonstruck. Part 7

interpretation program she had trained, the expert-system software whose operations she had been too naively trusting to keep to herself.

In the blissful quiet of the storeroom, Swelk surrendered to anger and fear. Her body shook; her weak

limb threatened to collapse of its own accord. She lowered herself, wearily, to the deck. The hard lump in her pocket reminded her that she'd come here to continue on her treatise, but she was no longer in the mood. It was not supposed to be this way.

It was not fair. It was not right. But when had Swelk's life ever been either?

CHAPTER 9.

Krul came in only two kinds: perfect and mutants.

The race had had to advance from cave dwellers to a society rooted in science before radioactivity, the cause of most mutation, was discovered. They had had to develop interstellar travel to learn that the concentrations of radioactive elements in Krulchuk's core and crust were unusually high. By the time they knew enough to say "There but for the aim of an alpha particle go I," by the time medical advancements would have permitted prenatal correction of most mutations, selective infanticide had long been an unquestioned cultural imperative. Swelk was even sympathetic in the abstract to the

custom, without which the Krulirim would never have cohered long enough as a species to havetechnology.So abnormal newborns continued to be put out of their parents' misery. Swelk was doubly a freak, because, despite her flaws, she still lived. Swelk's father had been too resentful of Swelk's mother's death in childbirth to relinquish a living ent.i.ty to blame. Once Father had sufficiently recovered from his loss to do the right thing, too much time had pa.s.sed-the "civilized" fiction that Swelk had succ.u.mbed naturally to her birth defects was no longer credible.

Swelk seldom saw her father. Her nurse taught that when life gives you a kwelth, you make kwelthor stew with it. Swelk didn't care for stew, kwelthor or other, but she took the point.So, she was a freak in an intensely conformist society, and nothing she could do would change that. Swelk picked her type of "stew": to be the objective outside observer of a society that lacked outsiders.

Over time, Swelk's personal journal overflowed with commentary about the society that, from her unique perspective, was closed and intolerant. Her restlessness grew with the volume of her private notes. Krulchuk became too confining: unwilling to offer her an opportunity, increasingly devoid of any even mildly interesting variety.

The more Krulchuk palled, the more the stars beckoned to her: new worlds, different societies, other intelligent species. Father gladly paid her fare-with luck the frontier or the rigors of travel would kill her off, or he himself might have pa.s.sed on before the monstrosity's return. In the worst case, Swelk's return during Father's lifetime, her tour of Krulchukor colonies would still have spared him the embarra.s.sment of her freakish presence for some three-cubes of years.

She realized after the first few planetfalls what only wishful thinking had kept her from extrapolating before leaving home. Krulirim brook no deviancy; ergo, transplanted communities differed little from the society of the ancestral world. If anything, the new societies were more orthodox, less accepting of differences, than the home world. On any worlds with the potential to support Krulchukor life, exotic biospheres were systematically weakened to make way for imported biota. Those sentients that had been discovered, none nearly so advanced as her own species, were quarantined and systematically looted of any worthwhile resources. Disdain and neglect combined in an unofficial policy of cultural destruction.

She cashed in her remaining tickets to buy pa.s.sage on the first starship returning to Krulchuk. That vessel was the Consensus, a well-used cargo craft with a few cabins for pa.s.sengers of limited means and corresponding expectations.

She knew no one aboard the Consensus, but that hardly mattered. Her nurse aside, and she had pa.s.sed on, the Krulirim of Swelk's acquaintance mistreated her no less than did strangers. Few Krul ever encountered anyone as visually different as she; those exceptions lacked precedents for how to behave toward her. Deference to authority generally won out-her treatment generally depended on how authority figures treated her. Shipboard, the captain's impatience with and sometime ridicule of her were quickly adopted.

She gladly stayed in her room at first, organizing the extensive if disappointing notes from her travels. When her tiny cabin grew tiresome, she volunteered, notwithstanding her status as a pa.s.senger, to stand watches. Between stars, nothing ever happened on a watch, but someone was required on the bridge just in case. She expected no grat.i.tude from officers spared the boring duty, nor did she receive any-she was content with a change of scenery and less confining surroundings in which to be shunned. And for the comparative peace . . . Captain Grelben did not tolerate hara.s.sment when Swelk was on watch.

And that was why Swelk was the one to detect the radio signals from Earth.

* * * The unexpected signals were at first faint and erratic, and Swelk did not doubt that any of Captain Grelben's undisciplined staff would have simply ignored them. She persevered. Coping with her handicap, and with those who would torment her because of it, had taught her patience. The radio-frequency anomalies had progressed slowly from arguably a figment of her imagination to formless certainty-the Consensus was not traveling toward the unexplained broadcasts; rather the signals themselves kept getting stronger. Taking on more and more extra shifts, she had slowly learned to a.s.sign various patterns to different languages. Her puzzled a.n.a.lyses grew more focused, if still unproductive.

She had yelped in surprise upon determining the modulation scheme that converted some of the radio waves streaming past the Consensus into moving pictures. A bit more tweaking had added a synchronized sound subchannel to the moving pictures. Now she began to adopt the software she had trained across visits to several worlds to learning and translating the unknowns' communications.

Even as Captain Grelben acknowledged Swelk's progress, the discovery brought renewed cruelty from the crew. "Trust the freak to find more freaks." And these beings were odd by Krul standards, with separate limb-types in pairs: a bottom set dedicated to locomotion and a top set to manipulation. Their bodies moved preferentially in one direction, like Swelk's; their sense organs favored that side. By reason of her handicap and the shunning of her own kind, Swelk sometimes felt closer to the humans than to her shipmates.

And then, amid the ever-swelling torrent of signals, Swelk encountered what must have been educational material for the youngest of the aliens. It was elemental: basic symbols and acting out of their meanings, fundamental concepts repeated in endless variations. While the big bird never made sense to her, she came to recognize numbers, the sounds that went with letters, whole words. Her vocabulary grew. In time, other Earth television programs made sense. And the more she learned, the deeper became her sense of wonder.

* * * Swelk's discovery had for a time transformed the trip from mundane disappointment to the wondrous adventure of which she had dreamed. She was not the only pa.s.senger on the Consensus, although she did not know much about the others.

Their cabins were in the better-tended parts of the ship, while she had been exiled to what she suspected was a former closet in the crew quarters. The other pa.s.sengers were somehow involved in the entertainment industry, she gathered. Popular amus.e.m.e.nt had no appeal to Swelk, the unvarying perfection of the actors just one more personal rebuke.

She was astonished when Rualf, the leader of the other pa.s.sengers, took Swelk's part in an argument

with the captain.Swelk had become forceful for only the second time in her life. The first time had been to negotiate the terms of what she and her father both saw, for quite different reasons, as a voyage of liberation. This time she was arguing with Captain Grelben to divert the Consensus to investigate Earth.

Pre-s.p.a.ceflight philosophers on Krulchuk had accepted without qualm or question the silence of the cosmos. Surely the Krulirim, who alone had overcome the universal tendency of species to mutate into oblivion, were the ideal and only intelligent race. Starflight had necessitated a redefinition of that uniqueness: the planets of many stars fostered life, and intelligence, or at least the use of language and tools, arose almost as often. Krulchukor superiority and-of course-centrality survived those discoveries, because the Krulirim remained in one way unique: their mastery of technology. When other intelligences obtained technology, it mastered them. Two three-squares of worlds were known where the dominant species once aspired to technical greatness and the stars; they had achieved only self- destruction and ruin. The causes varied-overbreeding, environmental devastation, genetic-engineering disasters, and, most frequently, nuclear immolation-but the effects, collapse and regression, were constants. And so the superiority of the Krulirim, and the perfection of everything about them, was vindicated . . .

One more supposedly intelligent species, argued the captain, meant nothing. It was of little interest, and even less cause for diverting the Consensus. These humans would only destroy themselves, while heincurred huge penalties for late deliveries, and his debts continued to pile up. Relativity slowed many things, but not the acc.u.mulation of interest.

"But they are right at the crisis point," Swelk argued, "perhaps past the crisis, if only barely. They speak of reducing their nuclear weapons, remedying their ecological excesses. If I am right, the Krulirim could have a companion advanced species."

Grelben, unlike his suddenly a.s.sertive pa.s.senger, equally monitored all directions at once. Nothing in his stance indicated that he was seeing the recovered television pictures from Earth, appearing on several screens on the bridge. Swelk nonetheless knew he was; the shiver in the s.p.a.cer's body declared that what Swelk suggested was anathema. One deformed adult Krul on board was almost too much to bear-could any sane person consider normal a technologically capable planet that teemed with such deviancy? "We will not change our course, you-"

"Captain Grelben, if I may." Rualf glided onto the bridge with a grace Swelk could only envy. His entrance had surely spared the cripple a devastating insult.

"Of course, sir." The quick transition to deference was astonishing.

"Captain, I've overheard in the corridors a little about this curious discovery." Rualf's sensor stalks wiggled in an understated display of worldly amus.e.m.e.nt. "Would it be possible to hear a bit about it directly?"

"You heard the man," snarled the captain.

Swelk needed no encouragement: here, finally, was someone interested in her amazing find. Rualf and his company were widely traveled; perhaps she had lost faith too soon. Perhaps somewhere among the

worlds of the Krulirim there were people with the creativity and imagination to consider new ideas. Maybe even people to whom Swelk could sometime explain her concepts of group dynamics and social organization.

She launched into an ardent exposition on the challenges of technological development, the crises certain technologies caused societies, the failure of Krulchukor explorers to find any peer-level species.

She waxed eloquent that this new species, whose presence had become clear from its radio broadcasts, could yet survive this crisis and become equals. Krulchukor philosophers had long postulated that a self- destructive drive was inherent in all other races; she marveled at the rebirth in thinking and worldview that would arise once such Krul-centered thinking was disproven.

Swelk was too enthusiastic, too rapt in futuristic visions, to take notice of the subtle interactions of gesture and posture between captain and honored pa.s.senger. All that registered of her audience's reaction-an audience! what an unaccustomed concept!-was Rualf's spoken response.

"Young woman, you have discovered something extraordinary. I find myself intrigued. Perhaps you will

allow me to discuss the matter in private with our captain."

Giddy with the unexpected courtesy, even praise, Swelk stammered her concurrence and limped from the bridge.

* * * Rualf had had influence that Swelk could only envy. The Consensus was redirected, with the full support of all pa.s.sengers, to investigate Earth.

CHAPTER 10.

Captain Grelben became harsh in enforcing Swelk's detention once the Consensus neared the humans' solar system. Detention was her term, not his; he merely made clear that she was unwelcome without invitation beyond the crew quarters. Rualf's coterie made similar feelings plain. Officers and pa.s.sengers alike fell silent whenever she approached-and there was no possibility of sneaking up on beings who sensed equally well in all directions.

A life spent as an outside observer then served her well. She gleaned what she could from overheard bits of conversation, from changes to shipboard routine, from the general announcements that preceded and accompanied the ship's maneuvers. She knew, though no one told her directly, that the Consensus had stopped at Earth's moon, that still-mysterious preparations had been made there, that direct radio contact had been established with-in the crew's words-Swelk's freaks.

Rualf occasionally solicited her help in the translation or interpretation of a radio intercept while sharing as little information as possible: her "independent" commentary, he said, was invaluable. Rualf was always scrupulously polite; Swelk realized too late that the open-mindedness she had trusted was a sham, an example of his art. She remained clueless as to his interest in the discovery of the humans, sointerested that he'd championed rerouting the flight he had chartered.

So, from many sources and with much deduction, she learned that her hopes had been realized. The

humans had not let their technology destroy them!Now, as the ship hopped from one Earth location to the next, the crew was content to stay aboard. Experiencing an alien culture had no attraction to normal Krulirim, nor was Earth itself hospitable: its sunlight was too hot and yellow, its thin ozone layer admitted unsafe levels of UV, its carbon-dioxide level was nonlethal but debilitating. On board at a landing strip or on board in a parking orbit-it was all the same to the able-bodied s.p.a.cers. Her own requests to visit with the humans were rejected.

Something happened at those landings, though, something to which only the officers and normalpa.s.sengers were privy. Rualf alone among the inner circle occasionally shared crumbs of news about the humans. The more robust her translation program grew from extended use, the more Rualf's sporadic comments tilted toward smug superiority about progress in some undisclosed grand scheme.

Swelk burnt with curiosity, outrage, and feelings of injustice. Before each planetfall she was escorted to

her cabin, "So as not to be in the way, you understand."

Fuming in her tiny room yet again, she reached a decision. She opened her door. "Brelf," she shouted. "I have an offer for you."

The deckhand was off duty, which meant he'd be drinking or gambling. Probably both. Hearing his off- color stage whisper to his shiftmates, and their t.i.tters, she allowed herself a moment of satisfaction: she'd picked her words to encourage some amus.e.m.e.nt at her own expense. Brelf emerged from the crew galley looking satisfied with his cleverness, his buddies following. "What do you want, Swelkie?"

"Out of here, of course." To their laughter she added, "Any more time in this closet will drive me insane." She dipped her sensor stalks in a pout. "Trust me, that wouldn't be a pretty sight."

They roared in appreciation, the freak poking fun at herself.

"So here's my idea. I'm so tired of talking to myself that even a Girillian swampbeast would be enjoyable

company."

Brelf flexed the digits of an extremity thoughtfully. "Well, Swelkie, that is an interesting suggestion. I'm sure you know that we have a couple of swampbeasts on board. Not just them; we have ourselves a whole Girillian menagerie, and a messy, ill-tempered bunch they are. Thanks to you and your humans, we'll be watching over the monsters for a whole lot longer before they get to the imperial zoo on

Krulchuk." He tipped onto twos, sweeping the unburdened limb inclusively across the group of his mates. "Anyone here care to let Swelkie take their shift feeding the beasties?"

"And cleaning up their s.h.i.t afterwards!" someone added, evoking more hilarity.

"What do you say, Swelkie? Are you so tired of your deluxe accommodations that you would do a little

light cleaning for us?"Success! Willing her voice calm, she flexed her shortened limb. "I guess I can use the exercise.""Come along then, Swelkie," said Brelf. "Who knows? A swampbeast may find even you attractive."

* * * Swampbeasts turned out not to be the most stimulating companions Swelk had ever had, but neither were they the worst. Where Swelk's sidedness resulted from a congenitally deformed limb and the need to cope with it, swampbeasts were naturally bilateral in two different respects. There were three limbs on each side, each limb flaring into a large webbed appendage that distributed their weight over a broad area to keep them from sinking into their native muck. The eating end had a protuberance that held not only the mouth, but also the brain and many of the creature's sensory elements. The animals ate more or less constantly, and excreted almost as rapidly out the other end, an apparent trick to keep them well stocked with nutrients while minimizing the body weight to be suspended above the swamp.

She raked together their many droppings without complaint. The animals wouldn't care about her disapproval, and anyway, she had asked to be here. Every so often she would trade her rake for a shovel, emptying the dung into a standard bioconverter. The machine recycled the wastes, plus a dollop of fresh chemicals from ship's stores, into fodder as wholesome as could be found in any swamp on Girillia.

That was the theory, anyway. With Swelk's surrept.i.tious adjustment to the bioconverter, the food was not quite that wholesome. She felt some minor guilt about her actions, the swampbeasts being aggrieved first in their capture, then in the mud-free artificiality of their confinement, and now in her treatment of them. Guilt or no, the feed they now received failed to agree with them. The cargo hold pressed into service as a zoo was awash with feces, fouler smelling even than usual. None of the crew objected to her taking as many caretaker shifts as she wished. Brelf and his pals found the outbreak of diarrhea hilarious. "Seeing Swelk makes even a swampbeast ill."

The stench served a purpose: it subst.i.tuted for close supervision when she was out of her cabin. No one wanted to be near her while she took care of the menagerie. That, in the end, was her purpose. The Consensus carried four lifeboats, one of which was reached through the cargo hold that had become the Girillian zoo. The access hatches that led to the lifeboats were all monitored by sensors that reported to the bridge-but one cut wire guaranteed that the sensor to this lifeboat always reported the hatch to be shut.

She had unenc.u.mbered access to the tiny but complete s.p.a.cecraft. One part of the lifeboat's equipment was a radio.

CHAPTER 11.

Her first uncensored news made Swelk wonder if she had gone mad.

The broadcasts she had monitored most of the way to Earth had shown humanity resolving old