Damon Knight - Orbit 21

It was coming out wrong. I couldn’t say it. I paced even more rapidly.

“Perhaps I am wrong, as you believe, and Vasyutin did build Icehenge. If so, then we should be able to document that on this expedition. I hope you agree to join us. I . . . bid you farewell. End transmission.” The red light blinked off.

The following day, at about the same time, the reply arrived. I sat down in the chair with the red dot. The scene appeared and I blinked while my eyes accommodated the light.

He was sitting behind an anonymous university desk. He looked just as he did in the press conferences: short hair neatly combed, expensive suit (the latest Martian style) pressed and carefully adjusted. It was the official, pontificating image.

“Mr. Doya,” he said, looking just to my right. I shifted.

“We haven’t met before, even by means of this illusory medium, yet I’m aware that we’re related—that I am your greatgrandfather. How do you do. I hope we get to meet in the flesh someday, because I can tell we have common interests as well as common family.” He smiled for a moment, and adjusted a sheet of paper on the desk. “Let me assure you, I understand that your arguments concern archeology and are not directed against my person.” He moved the paper again and began tapping it with his forefinger. The corner of his mouth tightened, as if he were about to perform an unpleasant task.

“I disagree with many of the things you said in your invitation. There isn’t any evidence in your work sufficient to convince me that the Vasyutin explanation is not true. So I don’t believe that there is a need for your expedition. And I don’t believe an on-site investigation made up of diverse theorists, each attempting to prove his own case, can become anything but a circus. For these reasons I decline your invitation, though I thank you for making it.” He stopped, and appeared to consider what he had just said. He looked down at the paper again, then up, and this time he seemed to be looking directly into my eyes.

“When you say that Emma’s story will still exist no matter who wrote it, you imply that it doesn’t matter whether Emma’s story is true or not. I say it does matter. I think in your heart you agree with that, and I ask you not to misrepresent the situation as if to disguise its meaning. If your theory is proven true, I know what that will mean as well as you do.”

He looked down again, made desultory taps with his fingers. “I cannot wish you good luck. End transmission.”

Blackout. I sat there and thought of many things—thought of the young Nederland trekking across the barren slopes of Olympus Mons, searching for answers; and suddenly I thought, it’s been a hundred and fifty years since those things happened. He’s changed, he’s not the man who wrote the books you read when you were a child—not at all. I sat in the dark.

We were close, very close. Activity began on the Snowflake —like water thawing after a long winter, people began to move in the halls, to meander past each other, scuffing at moss, greeting shyly. . . .Jones and I went down to the crew’s lounge and passed a couple of groups on the way; they were smoking and talking about Icehenge.

In the lounge we watched the viewscreen and drank. Occasionally we made comments to the crew there, to each other. We had reached the point where we could each talk about our thoughts concerning the monument without argument. We just listened to each other.

“So where is it?” said Jones to one of the crew. She pointed out Pluto, just ahead of Aries. It was about second magnitude. Jones pointed himself and said, “You’re right! There’s Icehenge, I see it right there on top!”

Later, when we were alone, I said, “I’ve been writing a lot of this down, Jones. A sort of journal.” He nodded. “Sometimes it occurs to me that what I’m writing is the sequel to Emma Weil’s journal, which I’m certain was written by Holmes. And my story tells of a voyage to Pluto, which is exactly what Emma said was going to happen—and this voyage is being paid for by Holmes —sometimes that old woman looks very much in control of things out here, Jones; sometimes I wonder how much of it she may have planned, what she has in store for us. . . .”

“Who knows?” said Jones. “There are so many influences on our lives that we don’t control, you might as well not worry about another one that you may be making up. Whatever happens on Pluto, I’m looking forward to it. I’m anxious to get there. We are quite close, you know,” pointing at the screen and staring at me seriously. “I wasn’t joking when I said I could see those ice towers.”

And then we were there. I was there, circling the ninth planet, and soon afterward, on its surface. My first impression was that the horizon was flat. It was, at any rate, less curved than any I had ever seen. “This is the biggest thing I ever stood on,” I said aloud. “I’m on a planet. First planet I’ve ever stood on, and it’s Pluto. ...” Something in the thought was distressing, and though we were just a couple of kilometers from the monument, I waited till all the others trekked out and marveled at it, waited until most of them returned, and told me of it, and eyed me as if I were quite peculiar. Then I suited up, left the landing vehicle and walked north. The gravity wasn’t very heavy.

Icehenge, Icehenge, Icehenge, Icehenge, Icehenge. I started running and almost immediately stumbled and fell to the ground; even that reminded me that the rocks were real, that I was really there.

Sitting there on Pluto’s gravelly, dusty surface, and looking north, I could see the top three-quarters of the liths, rising just behind a low hill. The sun was off to my right, to the “east” (though every direction in reality soon became south)—it was a star just brighter than first magnitude, a few degrees above the horizon. On the eastern side the liths were long, gleaming white streaks—to the west they were barely visible black shadows. The southeastern triangular lith reflected a broad facet of white— other beam-ends were no more than white lines against the night.

I was shivering, as if I could feel through my suit a touch of Pluto’s cold, only seventy degrees above the absolute zero of total stillness. I got up and established a rapid walk toward the monument.

There were four or five humans standing in and around the gigantic circle, and to my surprise I appreciated their presence, though I kept my intercom off. They were so small—one of them stood by the fallen lith, and even he appeared insignificantly short.

I passed between two liths and stood, looking down the curving row of columns; they seemed much more irregularly placed than they ever had in holograms—as if the act of transmitting and imaging had somehow given them more order. Here, in reality, their placement seemed random, the work of some alien intelligence.

I walked forward, head craned around to view the liths behind me. The awkward position left me feeling a bit faint.

From the center it appeared a rough circle—I couldn’t perceive the flattened side on the north, for the different dimensions of each lith and the varying angles of placement created an irregular display of white and black parallelograms that were hard to get in spatial perspective. Most of the western liths shone with reflected sunlight, though many were darkened by the endless shadows of the eastern liths. The eastern liths themselves were black cutouts against the sky, except for a few that caught the reflected light from some more westerly lith, and gleamed dully. To the north the Six Great Liths stood like a huge curving wall; yet the jagged row of small liths near the fallen one seemed not much shorter, though the shortest ones were all there.