to theirs.”
“It seems a pity,” said Ling.
“But there’ll be another day,” said Nieland. “Once we’ve been here and returned home, the dam is broached. We’ll have proved it can be done. That’s the main thing. We can always come back.”
“You can,” said Mariel.
“Our first priority is to help the colony,” I reminded her. “The contact mission is secondary. You know that I think it’s important—hell, you know that I feel almost as strongly as you do. But it won’t be the end of everything if you can’t follow through as you’d like to. You’ve already achieved a great deal on Wildeblood. You don’t have to prove yourself all over again.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. The way she said it made me feel that I didn’t.
“Nevertheless,” I said, “that’s how we’re going to do it. We establish the base. We try to make contact. If they’re ready to come and talk to us, okay. But if they’re not interested we’re not chasing them...and if they show any sign of hostility we get out. Fast.”
“That doesn’t give me a chance to get over any barriers,” she complained. “And these people need that chance. Who else is going to get over any difficulties the way I could? Is there anyone in the colony with the gift of tongues? If the other expeditions really were destroyed by the aliens then my talent may be the only hope we have of finding out why and making sure that it doesn’t happen again. The colony can’t isolate itself forever...someday, now or in a thousand years, it’s going to have to contact the aliens.”
“Miss Valory,” said Nieland, gently. “We have other things to think of. We will establish contact with the natives one day. It is not necessary that it should be done now. Your talent might help. I believe that it would. But this may not be the time. We have to go at our own pace.”
I could see that she was fighting tears of disappointment. But she seemed to be winning. The voyage hadn’t been easy on her—the crew weren’t the best of traveling companions. There were other women on board, but that didn’t make her invisible. There are times when it must be pretty near hell to be able to read the thoughts of the people looking at you...especially if you’re an adolescent girl.
When we’d finished playing the hand we put away the cards. We had killed the game. I took Mariel back to her cabin, and left Ling to talk it over with Nieland. Somehow they’d work out a convenient formula for haggling with the crew.
CHAPTER THREE
“It’s a bad break,” I said, settling down on the floor. The cabins weren’t exactly de luxe. I had a table and a little leg room. Mariel had only the bunk.
She lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The lamp was attached to the wall above the pillow, and it cast a shadow across her face when she put up a hand to shield her eyes from its direct glare. I couldn’t see her expression.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I know how things are. They’re an ugly lot and they’re in a bad mood. But it just seems so ridiculous that we can be beaten by such a stupid thing. After the Salamen, I was sure I could talk to these people, sure I could get to know them. I was convinced that I could learn more about them in six weeks than an army of exobiologists in six years. I am convinced...but to come so close and not get the chance....”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s not your fault. I’m as worried as you are. They’re unpredictable because they’re so tense.”
“Are they giving you any trouble?” I asked awkwardly.
The question embarrassed her as much as it did me. “No,” she said. “They just look. If I couldn’t get used to that...where would I be? Even back on Earth, when I was fourteen....”
Now she was eighteen. She’d grown into her rather gangly frame. She looked a lot less awkward. She was plain, but she wasn’t unattractive.
“It’s not your last chance,” I said quietly. “The next world has alien indigenes, too. And after that...if all goes well....”
“If,” she said. She said it very flatly, very bitterly.
“You’re afraid, aren’t you?” I said. “Afraid of your talent...burning out.”
She turned on her side to look at me, as if astonished by my perception. She was used to knowing what other people thought. She wasn’t used to them knowing what she was thinking.
“How...?” she began.
She stopped, because she could see what I was thinking. Put into words, it was something like: I’m not a fool. Even I’m not totally insensitive.
“They do, you know,” she murmured. “They always do.”
“Maybe people just learn to hide them,” I said.
“And maybe they learn to destroy them,” she said, softly. “To save themselves.
“Is that what you’d like to do?”
“No. It’s the last thing in the world I’d like to do. I don’t believe the thesis. I suspect that talents have to die, because if they don’t....”
“...people go crazy,” I finished for her. “Not necessarily. Nobody knows.”
“I know,” she said, in a fierce whisper. “When you’re a child, it doesn’t matter. A child is outside the adult social world...self-involved, self-possessed. All children are mad, by adult criteria. But as they grow up, we expect them to become sane. How can you take your place in the adult world when you can read minds? When so much depends on rules and conventions and ethics and self-concealment...how can there be any place in a world like that for something like me?”
“We’ve adjusted,” I said. “Aboard the ship. Even me. It’s four and a half years now. Maybe I took a long time. But I’ve adjusted now. We all have.”
“The ship’s a microcosm,” she said. “Not a world. It’s just six people, forced to live so close to one another that there can’t be any such thing as privacy. We all know one another’s souls inside out. What does a little thought-reading matter? But in the real world...in the complex world of millions of people, where no one knows anyone except perhaps inside marriage, and maybe not then...I’m outside. I’m an offense against life itself. As a child, I was a freak...but as a person, passing myself off as a person....”
“Stop it,” I said.
She curled up a little, as though her body were instinctively seeking a fetal position which it could no longer quite accomplish. Her eyes were still on my face.
“Do you know what I believe?” she said, in a strange tone that didn’t quite belong to her voice. “I believe that talents vanish like magic with virginity. The moment I initiate myself into the human race, it’ll be gone just like that!”
I looked away. “You can’t believe everything,” I said, trying to find a way to veer away from the subject. “Not all at once.”
“Yes I do,” she answered. “All the conflicting theories—all the cute
