Vernor Vinge - Tatja Grimm's World

After the first exposure, plates were changed and the telescope was repositioned. The exposed plate was the object of further chemical ritual; after twenty minutes, a priest announced that the picture might be viewed. He set it beside an archive plate of the same sky region, and positioned a double eyepiece over the pair. Svir recognized the procedure. Each ocular gave a magnified view of a separate plate. In this way, small differences between the pictures could be quickly detected. Svir stepped close to the table. The pictures glowed red where the light from the table showed through them. It took a moment to realize that light and dark were reversed here. Then he felt a stab of envy. The plates showed the Batswing Nebula—as Svir had never dreamed it. The gases extended, twisting, beyond the limits of anything seen in greentints taken with the Krirsarque thirty-incher.

Now the search could begin.

The hours passed. There was the routine of setting plates, aiming the Eye, treating exposed plates, and comparing them with previous pictures. But between events, time stretched empty. Jolle and Tatja took positions at the perimeter of the dome. Any intruder would set himself in silhouette against the high windows, unless he crawled along the floor.

It was nearly midnight when the man on the comparator called to Svir, “New object.” Svir leaned over the binocular eyepiece and looked at the red and black display. It was an undistinguished star field, nothing brighter than sixth magnitude. There was a whirring by his ear as the Doomsdayman turned a crank. The images flickered as first one and then the other lense was blocked. A faint streak was blinking in one corner of the image. Hmm. This wasn’t like the earlier ones. The streak was too long to be a reasonable asteroid.

He looked up to call Jolle, and found the other standing beside him. The alien bent over, and studied the scene for several seconds. Then, with the ease of one trained in the use of the instrument, he flipped a reticle into the optics. “That’s it. Just the right drift, just the right orientation.” There was a hint of triumph in his voice. “No more pictures, Observers. We have found what we came for.”

“Then you will leave us now?” came the voice of one of the more recalcitrant priests.

“Not quite yet. We will commit one more small desecration.” He glanced at the micrometer settings on the optics, and thought a moment. “Set the Eye back on the coordinates of plate fourteen.” He turned, walked quickly across the room. “Give me a hand, Svir.”

Above them, the Eye’s frame slewed fractionally, bringing the huge tube to near horizontal.

Jolle was already taking equipment out of a cart when Svir caught up with him. The small wooden cabinet was very familiar. Jolle looked up and continued quietly. “I’m going to use what you thought was a golem to operate my signaler.” He pushed the cabinet into Hedrigs’s hands and pulled an oblong box from the cart. Its smooth sides glittered metallically in the red light. “We’ve got to hustle. My boat is almost at the horizon; it’s already in haze, I think.”

Behind them, Tatja was herding the Doomsdaymen to the far side of the room. Just three people were needed now. Any intruder would be Profirio. For once there would be no trouble in penetrating others’ disguises and ruses. Everything was very simple.

Svir walked back to the scope, gingerly set the hand-carved cabinet on the floor beside the picture-maker. Above his head, the framework of girders and struts moved infinitesimally, tracking the stars beyond. Jolle opened the cabinet. The jewels glowed even brighter than Svir remembered. The shifting glitter sent blue-green ripples around the room. There was a collective gasp from the Doomsday astronomers, then an even more impressive silence. They had thought they were dealing with madmen. Now the world itself had gone mad.

Jolle drew a cable from the shimmering heap, attached it to the oblong box, and clamped the box to a telescope-alignment strut; evidently this was the signaler. Jolle stood, looked through a sighting scope. In the blue light, his face held a new intensity. “Damn. They didn’t leave it tracking properly.” He slung his crossbow, and adjusted the tracking wheels. “I could use my machine to do the aiming, but the scope is ready-made for—”

If Svir had not been looking directly into the maze of struts around the mirror, what followed would have seemed like magic. In one flashing motion, Profirio leaped from the scope to the floor, kicked over the glowing cabinet, and shouted, “Jolle killed her!” Svir’s weapon was pointed directly at Profirio’s middle—killing him was a matter of tightening one finger. But the other’s words held him back for a split second; then Tatja screamed “Don’t, Svir!”

Time slowed to a human pace. In a single second, Profirio had forced a stalemate. Svir realized this as he glanced at Jolle, who had his weapon nearly unslung—and could probably aim and shoot in a fraction of a second. But he didn’t move. Svir looked at Profirio, who appeared to be unarmed. This was the Celestial Servant who had talked to him in the tunnel. But now his face seemed younger, though very different from Jolle’s. Above his beard, Jolle’s face was smooth, deeply tanned. Profirio’s was paler, and creased with frown and smile lines.

Why didn’t Jolle shoot? Svir glanced at Tatja. Her crossbow was leveled and aimed —at Jolle. He looked at the glowing pile Profirio had spilled from the cabinet, and realized that at the instant he had accused Jolle of killing Cor, on a different level he had convinced Tatja that things were not as they seemed. Now that Jolle’s machine lay exposed, Svir could see there was a shape imbedded in its fiery matrix. That shape was horribly familiar: An oval lump, six inches across. From the lump led a ropelike strand, with finer strands splitting off it. Barely visible, the finest ones touched the silvery boxes that surrounded the pile. How many times had he passed that exhibit at U Krirsarque Museum, and shuddered at the pickled brain and spinal column there? Here the spinal column was bent into a circle to conserve space, but the rest was all the same.

As it lay on the floor, the pulsing treasure whimpered. Broken away from its machine tasks and left for a moment without a program, its high-pitched voice keened over and over, “Where am I, where am I, am I…” and the answer was nowhere anymore. Several of the astronomers fled outside, preferring hypoxia to the nightmare that had come to their shrine.

So Jolle was the slaver, after all. The revelation had strangely little effect on Svir; it was irrelevant what Jolle had done to strangers. The stock of his crossbow drifted back to the intruder. Svir’s universe shrank to Profirio’s blue-lit face. This murderer must die.

Less than five seconds had passed since the other’s appearance. Now he spoke for the second time. “And this is how he did it!” His hand whipped out to slap the side of the signaler. Red lightning. Even at ten feet, the heat of that beam scorched his face—just as it had once before. The beam clipped the dome, and shards of wood and glass showered down. Prompted by this cue, the thing on the floor spoke, its voice suddenly deep and male, “Ter äshe g aul, Jolle.”

The memory of the last time Svir saw that light was suddenly very sharp: Jolle had dismissed the signalman just before it happened. He had moved himself out of the way. Jolle put the golem in the tree and made it use the signaler to kill. Svir felt his muscles jerk. All men had been puppets to these three. Even now he was being maneuvered as unsubtly as a skoat. That didn’t matter. He was remembering a charred face; he would never quite be able to remember how Cor’s face had looked in life. His crossbow swung toward Jolle. The bearded one hardly seemed to notice. He was talking low and fast, to Tatja. “We can be. You love—”