Timothy Zahn - Star Song and Other Stories

"By all means," Suzenne invited. "Tell us what sort of clues or hints you left behind."

"No clues or hints," Kulasawa said loftily. "Merely a simple matter of who I am."

"And who are you?" Suzenne asked.

And at that moment, the double doors behind Peter swung open again. I looked that direction to see Jimmy come into the room, his hair looking even more unkempt than usual. He must have missed seeing Peter and Suzenne, with their backs mostly to him; but he spotted me instantly. "Captain!" he said, bounding toward us as the doors closed again behind him.

I hissed under my breath, trying to gesture his attention to Peter without being obvious about it. Talk about your oblivious bull in a china shop—

But he was bubbling too hard to even notice. "Guess what?" he called, a huge grin plastered across his face as he came around the end of the couch. "These people can talk to the flapblacks!"

I froze, my gesturing hand still in midair. "What?"

"Yeah, they can talk to—" He broke step, suddenly flustered as he abruptly seemed to focus on the rest of the people seated in front of him on the couch.

"Oh. Uh... I'm sorry..."

"No, that's all right," I said, throwing a hard glance at Peter. But his face was unreadable. "Tell us more."

Jimmy's eyes darted around, his throat working uncertainly. "Uh... well, I was talking to one of their musicians," he said hesitantly. "And he said..."

His voice trailed away. "He said we can communicate mentally with the beings you call flapblacks," Peter said. His voice was calm again, and with a flash of insight I realized that this was the secret he'd thought Kulasawa had stumbled on earlier when she'd spoken of revolutionizing space travel. "We would have told you about it eventually."

"Of course," I said. "How about telling us about it now?"

He held his hands out, palm upward. "There's not much to tell," he said. "Our first hint was a few years out, when we began to realize that the supposedly imaginary friends our first-born children were telling their parents about were not, in fact, imaginary at all. It took awhile longer to realize who and what the beings were they were in contact with."

"And Jimmy said you talked to them?"

"A figure of speech," Peter said. "It's actually a direct mental contact, a wordless communication."

"Why didn't you tell the Habitats?" Kulasawa put it. "You must have still been in contact with Jupiter at that point."

"We were already beginning to fade," Suzenne said. "By the time we'd figured it all out, it would have been problematic whether we could have gotten enough of the message through."

"And besides, you thought it might be a useful secret to keep to yourselves?"

Kulasawa suggested, smiling thinly.

Peter shook his head. "You don't understand," he said. "In the first place, it's hardly a marketable secret—any child who's conceived and brought to term away from large planetary masses will have the ability. Everyone aboard has it now, except of course for the handful of recent visitors like yourselves."

"That doesn't change the fact that it's an enormously useful talent,"

Kulasawa said. "You people don't need a musicmaster to get where you're going, do you?

You just order the flapblack to take you where you want to go, and that's it."

"It's not like that at all," Suzenne protested. "They're not servants or slaves we can order to do anything. It's more like..." She floundered.

"I sometimes think of it as similar to those dolphin and whale shows they have on Earth," Peter said. "You train them by giving them a reward when they do something you want, but you aren't really communicating with them. In this case, you provide the reward—the music—concurrently with the action, but you have no real understanding as to who and what you're dealing with—"

"Let's put the philosophy aside for a minute," Kulasawa cut in brusquely.

"Bottom line: you can tell them were to go and they take you there. Yes or no?"

Peter pursed his lips. "For the most part, yes."

He looked back at me. "You see now why we can't let even a hint of this get back to the rest of the Expansion. If they knew we could move their transports between the stars without the uncertainties and complications of the music technique, they would carry every one of us away into slavery."

Kulasawa snorted. "Give the melodramatics a rest, Your Highness. What you mean is that you've got a platinum opportunity here and you're just afraid to grab it."

"Believe whatever you wish," Peter said. "For you, perhaps, it would be an opportunity. For us, it would be slavery." "You really think they would just take you away like that?" Rhonda asked. "I can't believe our leaders would allow that."

"Of course they would," Peter said, gesturing toward Jimmy. "Just look at your own musicmaster. The musicmaster on the first transport to find us was a forty-six-year-old former professor of composition. How old is Mr. Chamala?"

"Nineteen," I said, looking at Jimmy. "He has the right kind of mind, and they hustled him straight through school."

"Did he have a choice?"

I grimaced. "As I understand it, there's a great deal of subtle pressure brought to bear on potential musicmasters."

"Do you think it would be any different with us?" Peter asked quietly.

"There's a virtual explosion in the volume of interstellar travel and colonization—just comparing the Sergei Rock's planetary charts with those of our earlier visitors makes that abundantly clear. If they knew we could feed that appetite, do you really think they would hesitate to press us into service?"

"And do you have any idea what prices you could command for such service?"

Kulasawa demanded. "That's what Smith's 'subtle pressure' mostly consists of: huge piles of neumarks. Play your cards right and your world could be one of the richest in the Expansion."

"And who would be left to live there?" Suzenne countered. "Children under five and elders over ninety? They'd take everyone else."

"Now you're being ridiculous," Kulasawa growled.

"I don't think so," Suzenne said. "But whether I am or not is irrelevant. The decision has been made, and we're not going to change it."

"Fine," Kulasawa said. "If you won't bring freedom to your people, Jimmy and I

will have to do it for you."

Jimmy, who'd been largely frozen in place ever since planting himself near Peter's end of the couch, came unstuck in a rush. "Who—me?" he gulped, his eyes turning into dinner plates.

"You're the only one who can help them, Jimmy," Kulasawa said, her voice abruptly soft and earnest. "The only one who can free them from the prison King Peter and his power elite have locked them into."

"Wait just a second," I protested. "If the people have decided—"

"The people haven't decided, Smith," Kulasawa cut me off scornfully. "Or haven't you been paying attention? What proportion of the people here, do you think, would jump at the chance to get out of this flying coffin and see the Universe?"

"We can't let even one of our people leave here," Suzenne said. "If there was so much as a single slip on anyone's part, the entire colony would be doomed to slavery."

"There's that slavery buzz-word again," Kulasawa scoffed. "Do you feel like a slave, Jimmy? Well, do you?"

Beneath that mop of hair Jimmy's face looked like that of a cornered animal, his eyes darting around as if seeking help or a way to escape. "But if they don't want to do it—"

"Do you feel like a slave?" Kulasawa repeated sharply. "Yes or no?" "Well... no..."

"In fact, you're extremely well paid for what you do, aren't you?" Kulasawa persisted. "And with opportunities and privileges most teens your age would give their left arm to have." She stabbed an accusing finger at Peter and Suzenne.