Free Starship Winter (David Conway 03) by Eric Brown

his manifest dislike of the off-worlder.
    “I was not,” Dortmund continued, “referring to artistic endeavour.” He pursed his lips around a large mouthful of whisky and glanced at each of us in turn. “As far as I’m concerned, artistic achievement is limited to the narrow range of human consciousness, circumscribed by the limited perceptions of the human mind.”
    Matt gestured with his glass. “Limited it might be, but it’s all we have with which to make sense of the universe we inhabit. Which isn’t to say that science doesn’t fulfil the same purpose, but both are bound – as you say – by the limits of our perceptions.”
    Dortmund smiled, like an alligator knowing it had snared prey. “And what would you say if I claimed that there are ways and means of transcending paltry human consciousness and attaining some measure of universal knowledge?”
    Matt paused, staring at his beer. A fraught tension filled the air. I know that I, for one, feared that Matt had talked himself into a corner. I guessed where Dortmund was leading, and I didn’t like it a bit.
    Matt’s reply though, when it came, was brilliant. “I don’t doubt for a minute that you think you have gained some superior powers of perception, Dortmund. But what facilitated that leap of perception did not in any essence originate within you – it was through the psionic processes granted you by your government: a machine-enhancement, if you like. Also,” he swept on, “a superior perception you might claim for yourself, but when all is said and done, what is an exalted perception if it doesn’t lead to some result, some breakthrough or insight, either artistic or scientific, which might be communicated to an audience who would thus be enlightened or educated by one’s insights?”
    “Very clever, Sommers, very articulate. But your diagnosis pre-empts my eventual breakthrough.”
    Matt laughed at this, mocking. “Dortmund, you sound just like your twenty-year-old self, always making great claims never to be substantiated.”
    Dortmund finished his scotch in one gulp, reached out with an unsteady hand and poured himself another.
    “If I could only have you apprehend what I have experienced”, he said, “and achieved…”
    The Ambassador, either wishing to calm the waters, or ignorant of the tension in the air, asked, “And what are those achievements, Mr Dortmund?”
    The off-worlder performed his imitation smile again. “For the past ten, twelve years I have travelled the Expansion”, he said, “and even beyond. I have communed with all manner of sentient life; I have striven to understand even the most alien, the most incomprehensible, to understand the effects which brought about their sentience and behaviour, and so gain some empathy with the consciousness of a hundred different extraterrestrial species.”
    A silence greeted this megalomaniacal, and somewhat drunken, pronouncement.
    I said, “And what would you say that has gained you, other than the gradual disenfranchisement from the understanding and sympathy of… of your fellow human beings?” I think I was a little drunk myself by then, drunk and vindictive, I admit.
    Dortmund surprised me by laughing at that. “Well, it has brought about that, I admit, Conway. But it has also brought me many insights and… abilities,” he went on, taking a huge swallow of scotch.
    The Ambassador wanted to know, “Abilities?”
    Dortmund looked around. At last he pointed, surprising me. His unsteady forefinger indicated Kee, who stared at him wide-eyed.
    “Girl! That… that barb, that hleth spike, as you call it. Here!”
    Kee looked around like a child accused of cheating by a teacher. “What?”
    Dortmund leaned forward, and spoke as if to an idiot. “Take the damned barb from your belt and lay it upon the table!”
    Kee looked worried. She glanced across at Hawk, who nodded.
    She slipped the barb from her belt and did as instructed. It sat upon the mahogany inlay of the coffee