Learning the World

It was a view he had often imagined, but that no one had ever seen. For a moment Darvin thought it blurred, but then he blinked, and his vision cleared.

The process was reversed, as though the camera dropped again, hurtling down. The illusion of falling was so powerful that Darvin felt an atavistic urge to close his eyes and spread his wings. Noises in the crowd told him he was not alone in this; that others, indeed, had enacted the braking reflex.

The fall stopped. What now filled the screen was a view from above the camp they stood in, as if seen from a not very high-flying airship. The very building they were in could be identified. Darvin braced himself against a surge to the windows. It came, just for a moment, and then everyone stood still and looked embarrassed. Somebody laughed. Even Markhan smiled.

The view changed: first to a similar but not identical camp or military base, and then to a rapid series of brief images of aircraft and rockets, familiar images that must have been recorded from Selohic and Gevorkian telekinematographic news displays, because fragments of voice-over in both languages boomed from the speakers.

Another familiar image appeared: the alien who had appeared on the first, cryptic communication. He stood facing the camera, which pulled in to show his face, dark and hairless with the characteristic scalp-tuft of the wingless.

“We — see — you — now,” he said. The movement of his lips had no relation to the sounds.

Darvin stood transfixed. The hairs over his spine stood up. Chills rushed down his cheeks and the sides of his neck. It was as if the alien’s tiny eyes looked straight at him, and the words were literally true.

“We — say — not — hit — you — grrr — you.” A flash of aircraft and rockets again. “We — say — no.”

“Open — door — trudge.” This was accompanied by a picture of, indeed, a stable door opening and a trudge shambling out. Darvin could only imagine that it was a view through the eyes of one of the trudges that gave off etheric transmissions.

“No — hit — trudge.” The picture was to the point.

“No — cut — trudge.” Again an illustration, a vivid one. A collective wince shuddered through the crowd. Darvin felt a stab of shame. He had speculated on this, but still it dismayed him to see it verified, that the aliens had seized on this accepted cruelty and thrown it back in humanity’s face.

“We — see — you,” the alien said again. The view pulled back. The alien walked over to a screen of its own and pointed. It was a map of the land hemisphere of Ground. He pointed at three places, locations marked with spots which the camera zoomed in on and then drew back from. At a first guess, they were Kraighhor, Lassir, and the Great City of the Southern Rule. Then a fourth: an island in the Equatorial Ocean.

The alien stepped aside. The map filled the screen. Black lines crept from the three cities to converge on the island.

“We — meet — you — there.”

On the quay at Kraighor in the middle of the night under the glint of the alien and artificial moon, Darvin felt around him for the first time a tremor of the panic that he had once imagined. He could smell it. There was no reason for the crowd to be there. Few would have friends or relatives among the project scientists and soldiery departing on the Southern ship. There was no reason for people to take wing, every so often, and wheel about like night-flitters above the dock. Yet he was tempted to do so himself. One of the main streets away from the dock opened on to a large square. Around that corner, out of his line of sight, stood a high public screen. Its grey light flickered on the sides of buildings and the faces of the crowds watching it like a cold flame. Whatever words boomed from its speakers were mangled by echoes and buried under the susurrus of murmurs and wing-rustlings as if under snow. Darvin knew what was being said, and wondered how this new word from the Height would be taken.

Metal cables squealed on winches as supplies and apparatus were craned on board. The ship had already been to New Lassir. Gevorkian and Southern faces lined the rails. Darvin recognised Lenoen, the astrologer, and Orro, but neither were looking bis way. The quay was too crowded for Darvin to leap into the air. He shouldered his way toward the gangplank.

“Darvin!”

A tiny figure skittered over indignant heads, leapt to his chest, grabbed the fur, and nuzzled his collarbone.

“Oh! Hello, Handful—” He looked around. “Kwarive!”

She sidled through a gap toward him. He caught her neck and stroked.

“It’s great to see you! Thanks for coming all this way, you shouldn’t—”

“I’m not here to see you off,” said Kwarive.

“Then why—” He stopped, shocked and delighted. “You’re coming on the expedition?”

“I most certainly am,” she said. “Sight’s orders.” She retrieved Handful. “I’ve been told it’s very important to talk to him a lot.”

“You’ll have plenty of time for that,” said Darvin.

“Oh, it’s not just me,” said Kwarive. “All of us. Don’t shirk it.”

“What can I talk to him about? Astronomy?”

“Yes.”

“Astronomy!” said Handful. “New moon!”

“You’re off to a good start,” said Kwarive.

They had at last reached the gangplank.

“Cold bad meat,” said Handful, sniffing the air.

“No, that’s salt,” said Kwarive. “Salt water.”

“Salt water cold bad.”

“Yes,” said Darvin, looking down at the black gap beside his feet. “Keep that in mind.”

The deck was made of long planks of a soft, resilient wood, like float-bark. The superstructure and fittings were of hardwood and brass. Southern crewmen leapt and flitted in the rigging. The air smelled of tar and rock-oil derivatives. Selohics and Gevorkians mingled, eyeing each other, trying out phrases. Grenadiers and sabreurs debated tactics and contrasted weapons in their martial Creole. Scientists of the three powers quibbled in ungrammatical Orkan. Stewards and clerks stalked the deck, fussed over ladings and fastenings, fluttered frantic pages of lists on clipboards.

Chains rattled. Late arrivals and departures took wing to or from the ship. Sails snapped to the wind’s attention. The deck began to vibrate. Water churned at the stern. The quay glided past. The town diminished. The western headland displayed its black muzzle and white teeth. The horizon became a line beneath the stars, that within two hours encircled the world.

After that it was just a sea voyage.

Black above the ocean rose the eroded volcanic sea mount. White around the foot of its pleated basaltic cliffs boomed the surf. A cloud floated high above the island’s plateau like a watercolour of ancient smoke. A hazy sun burned a line across the sea to the left.

Through binoculars Darvin watched the soaring white specks of cliff-dwelling sea flitters, and the broader and darker shapes of the island’s dwellers, some already wing-beating their way out to meet the ship. The distance, though diminishing as the ship approached, looked terrifying.

“Fly over water bad,” said Handful, from Darvin’s shoulder.

“Yes,” said Darvin, who had been impressing this on the kit for the past fortnight.

An unlikely looking harbour, a black-sand beach at the bottom of a steep cove, became visible as the ship angled in. Locals descended on the deck, neck bags and belt baskets laden with lewd or cute carvings of pumice, or with unknown fruits of dubious hue. The island was a Southern possession, languidly disputed by Gevork; the inhabitants, for the most part, the descendants of Selohic mutineers and maroons. They spoke all three main languages, but at the same time.

“These people are going to be a problem,” said Kwarive. “What if they’re superstitious?”

“No ‘if’ about it,” said Darvin. He inclined his head to the forward deck. Already the chief scientist and the ship’s priest busied themselves with explanations and invocations.