Free Explorer by C. J. Cherryh Page B
Authors: C. J. Cherryh
had dealt intelligently with the hazards of interspecies cooperation, reasoning out acaution the Mospheiran fools trying to yacht over to atevi territory in friendship or on smuggling missions didn’t remotely grasp.
“Was Tamun Guild?” Bren asked bluntly.
“He never said. What mattered in the long run was exactly what you originally said, Mr. Cameron. The man was so blinded by his agenda that he couldn’t count. He couldn’t get it into his head that atevi had all the numbers, and when it turned out atevi would do what we needed and get us operational and that we
could
deal with them, he couldn’t change his views. That change was where
I
stopped voting no, as you may have noticed. When it came to getting the ship up and running, when it came to the station having power and a viable population, well, then I
could
deal with my personal reluctance—my
regret
that some of those historic human skills you were born to learn, Captain Graham, were, in that very process, becoming irrelevant. But I wasn’t so regretful for dead languages and lost records that I’d kill the last chance we had to keep the ship alive out here. I wasn’t that enthusiastic for the Archive, that
I
had time to sit down and learn old languages, so in the end I suppose they don’t matter that much.”
“One person
can’t
learn the Archive,” Bren said. “But one person can save it.
Ramirez
saved it, when he sent it down to the planet. And you know that the part of it Jase knows
isn’t
irrelevant. A language freights its history, its culture, inside itself. Its structure is the bare-bones blueprint for a mindset. Know one, gain insights into another. That’s how we repair the damage Ramirez did.”
“Blueprints for another starship. That’s the relevant part of the Archive,” Sabin said. “A starship and the guns to defend ourselves from Ramirez’s mistakes.”
“As a last resort,” Bren said.
“I’m only interested in one thing,” Sabin said harshly. “Running through this charade of a rescue mission as fast as we can, having our look around and convincing crew to give up, without dragging an alien armada back on our tail. If I was going to lie, gentlemen, I could
lie
to the crew without going all the way in there. But we will go in. I want this question actually settled and done with. If they’re dead, they’re dead, and we go on.”
“The Archive at Reunion,” Jase added, “has to be deleted. No matter what.”
“We do what we can.”
“Senior captain, a piece of history, one of those irrelevant bits: Earth had a very famous piece of rock called the Rosetta Stone, a translation key that put two languages together in the same context—one known, one hitherto undecipherable. If the aliens get a live human and that record, captain—and we don’t know what they have, at this point—”
“Hell with your rocks. If some batch of aliens track our wake, we’re dead and Alpha is dead. End of relevance to anything. We take out the Archive if we can. We have a look around and we go back to Alpha. It’s the recent knowledge that matters. Getting the ship refueled, finding out what’s going on there and getting out unobserved is number one priority. Granted there’s fuel convenient, which I personally doubt. I’m not an optimist.”
“Can we reach Gamma?” Jase asked.
That drew a quirk of the brow. “Maybe. Maybe
that’s
been hit. So, between you, me, and our guests,” Sabin said, on that sober note, “if I have to form a completely cheerful concept of where we’re going, it involves a functioning station with a full fuel load and nothing more exotic, thank you. So you can remain irrelevant. So we can rescue enough people to make the crew happy. Or prove it’s impossible. This always was a crackpot mission, purely on crew pressure, nothing more.—Mr. Kaplan, another, if you please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Kaplan moved instantly, filled the cup, gave it back.
“So if you ask me what you haven’t
“Was Tamun Guild?” Bren asked bluntly.
“He never said. What mattered in the long run was exactly what you originally said, Mr. Cameron. The man was so blinded by his agenda that he couldn’t count. He couldn’t get it into his head that atevi had all the numbers, and when it turned out atevi would do what we needed and get us operational and that we
could
deal with them, he couldn’t change his views. That change was where
I
stopped voting no, as you may have noticed. When it came to getting the ship up and running, when it came to the station having power and a viable population, well, then I
could
deal with my personal reluctance—my
regret
that some of those historic human skills you were born to learn, Captain Graham, were, in that very process, becoming irrelevant. But I wasn’t so regretful for dead languages and lost records that I’d kill the last chance we had to keep the ship alive out here. I wasn’t that enthusiastic for the Archive, that
I
had time to sit down and learn old languages, so in the end I suppose they don’t matter that much.”
“One person
can’t
learn the Archive,” Bren said. “But one person can save it.
Ramirez
saved it, when he sent it down to the planet. And you know that the part of it Jase knows
isn’t
irrelevant. A language freights its history, its culture, inside itself. Its structure is the bare-bones blueprint for a mindset. Know one, gain insights into another. That’s how we repair the damage Ramirez did.”
“Blueprints for another starship. That’s the relevant part of the Archive,” Sabin said. “A starship and the guns to defend ourselves from Ramirez’s mistakes.”
“As a last resort,” Bren said.
“I’m only interested in one thing,” Sabin said harshly. “Running through this charade of a rescue mission as fast as we can, having our look around and convincing crew to give up, without dragging an alien armada back on our tail. If I was going to lie, gentlemen, I could
lie
to the crew without going all the way in there. But we will go in. I want this question actually settled and done with. If they’re dead, they’re dead, and we go on.”
“The Archive at Reunion,” Jase added, “has to be deleted. No matter what.”
“We do what we can.”
“Senior captain, a piece of history, one of those irrelevant bits: Earth had a very famous piece of rock called the Rosetta Stone, a translation key that put two languages together in the same context—one known, one hitherto undecipherable. If the aliens get a live human and that record, captain—and we don’t know what they have, at this point—”
“Hell with your rocks. If some batch of aliens track our wake, we’re dead and Alpha is dead. End of relevance to anything. We take out the Archive if we can. We have a look around and we go back to Alpha. It’s the recent knowledge that matters. Getting the ship refueled, finding out what’s going on there and getting out unobserved is number one priority. Granted there’s fuel convenient, which I personally doubt. I’m not an optimist.”
“Can we reach Gamma?” Jase asked.
That drew a quirk of the brow. “Maybe. Maybe
that’s
been hit. So, between you, me, and our guests,” Sabin said, on that sober note, “if I have to form a completely cheerful concept of where we’re going, it involves a functioning station with a full fuel load and nothing more exotic, thank you. So you can remain irrelevant. So we can rescue enough people to make the crew happy. Or prove it’s impossible. This always was a crackpot mission, purely on crew pressure, nothing more.—Mr. Kaplan, another, if you please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Kaplan moved instantly, filled the cup, gave it back.
“So if you ask me what you haven’t