Forster took that as a compliment. “As one might guess by looking at it, the plaque is not really a plaque. It is but a fragment of a much longer document, most of which is missing. This is what it says.” The speaker spewed forth a broken string of hisses and booms and clicks, reading off the incomplete lines of the plaque in the voice Forster had reconstructed for the long-gone aliens who had inscribed the metal plaque.
“The untranslated terms are proper names, of course—possibly names of individuals, certainly the names of stars and planets, including, I’m confident, Earth, Venus, Mars, and the sun,” Forster said. “And of course the Bronze Age terms—chariots and stadia and so forth—were the closest equivalents the Venus texts could provide for the original words of the plaque. Their meaning is easy enough to guess.”
But Forster was still happily expounding: “Trains or cars, perhaps even vessels of some sort—but not ships, there were perfectly good words for that—and miles or kilometers, some unit of measurement. That sort of thing.”
“No, but they obviously intended ‘ocean world.’ Dissolved salts may have interested them as much as water. For whatever reason. Historical, perhaps.” Forster had obviously anticipated the question. “Consider that we call galaxies galaxies. If one were to translate that word without the necessary context, one might wonder about the etymology of a term such as ‘milkies.’ ”
“Uh, why I wanted Redfield to meet you.” It wasn’t a contradiction, exactly, and since tea arrived at that moment, along with a bottle of Laphroaig, Forster’s favorite, the commander was saved the trouble of explaining himself more fully.
“Remember the star maps I looked at in the Athanasian Society?” It was twilight. Blake and the commander were walking across the grass toward the white Space Board helicopter that had brought them to Granite Lodge.
As the foothills grew rapidly closer, Holly Singh recovered control from the autopilot of her quick little Dragonfly helicopter and manually guided its swift, silent ascent of the terraced ridges. A macadam road and a shining pair of tracks wound like coiling pythons beneath the open craft. An antique train was tortuously making the same ascent, puffing white steam into the mountain air.
The helicopter crested the ridge at 2,500 meters. The Himalayas, hidden behind the ridges until now, sprang forward in the crystal air. Sparta’s breath caught at the sight of the glacier-hung peaks, thrusting like broken glass into the dark blue sky. Katchenjunga, second highest mountain on Earth, dominated all the others; still seventy kilometers away, it nevertheless towered above the darting helicopter, in perspective so starkly carved as to seem close enough to touch.
“The English—including a round dozen of my great-great-grandparents—developed Darjeeling as a retreat from the heat of the plains,” Singh said. “That’s why half the buildings look like they were transplanted from the British Isles. See that one, the one that looks like an Edinburgh church? It was a movie house for a few decades. Half the rest of the town could be in Tibet. A colony of Tibetans settled here after fleeing China in the mid-20th century. What remains, including the marketplace, is pure India. We’ve tried to preserve it pretty much as it was a century ago.”
Singh noticed the direction of Sparta’s gaze and smiled. “Mountain people spend a lot of time praying, one way and another.” The barren heights were prickled with poles carrying prayer flags, pale banners hanging limp in the still air.
The helicopter flew on until a broad green lawn opened before it, bordered with massive oaks and chestnut trees. For the merest fragment of a second Sparta searched her eidetic memory: there was something familiar about this wide lawn, these brooding trees, the snowy Himalayas above the cloudfilled valleys beyond.
“Indeed, Howard landed here many times,” said Holly Singh. “Howard’s roots in India are almost as deep as mine. Although none of his very proper British ancestors ever went native.” Her mood seemed genuinely cheerful, as if the sharp mountain air had refreshed her. “You must have seen this view in one of the documentaries they made about him. When he was trying to raise money to build the
Queen Elizabeth
, Howard’s favorite trick for winning friends and influencing people was to take them up in his fusion-powered hot air balloon—they’d leave from Srinagar and stay aloft for several days, drifting the length of the Himalayas and landing here—right where we’re setting down.”
The helicopter settled gently to the grass. Back among the trees Sparta glimpsed a white house with wide verandas and broad eaves, flanked by enormous flowering rhododendrons—bushes as big as trees, holdovers from the last age of dinosaurs.
“And whenever Howard touched down we’d invite our neighbors over and wine and dine and flatter his guests.” Singh unstrapped her harness and stepped lightly from the helicopter. Sparta tugged her duffel from behind the seat and followed, her shoes sinking into the springy sod.
On the broad lawn, two peacocks carefully picked their steps, displaying enormous fans of blue and green plumes to the peahens that wandered on the lawn. High in a towering cedar, Sparta saw a plumed white egret. To their left, the snow-clad mountains were turning ruddy in the evening light.
The two women walked toward the big house, the doctor in her riding outfit, the policewoman in her trim blue uniform. A tall man in puttees and jacket hurried across the lawn toward them, stopping a few meters away and inclining his turbaned head.
“Good evening, madame.”
Sparta followed Singh into the cool shadowed aisles beneath the chestnut trees. Through the neat rows of old trees and decorative bushes she saw other white buildings. A few people moved slowly in the courtyard they enclosed, heads down, showing little interest in their surroundings.
“My mother’s paternal grandfather—his father having made his fortune in tea—established this place as a tuberculosis sanatorium,” said Singh. “Now that tuberculosis is a thing of the past, we treat neurological disorders here . . . those we can. Despite all the progress I spoke about before, some mysteries are beyond us. Though we do try to provide a good home for the people we can’t help.”
Singh turned off the gravel path and led the way past tall hedges of fragrant camellia. It did not take Sparta’s specialized senses to anticipate what they were coming to next; the smell of animals grew stronger with each step.
“My grandfather established this menagerie, which my father agreed to maintain when he married my mother.” She smiled. “Dowry arrangements could be rather complex in the old days. I have renovated it and added to the professional staff. Now it is used for research purposes.”
Low masonry barns stood among the trees. Sparta identified the sharp smell of cats coming from one, the ripe odor of ungulates from another, and a dry, autumnal whiff of reptile from a third. In a four-storyhigh wrought iron cage she saw wings flap as an eagle momentarily silhouetted itself against the darkening sky.
“Many rare species from the subcontinent are represented here. You are welcome to spend as much time here as you like, tomorrow”—Singh was leading her past the aviary toward another open structure —“but this evening . . .”
The design was simple and familiar: a floor of sloping concrete several feet below ground level, edged with a system of drains for easy flushing, and a hatch in the corner leading to the long stone barn that backed all the primate cages.
Sparta knew the face well—that of the terrified chimp Howard Falcon had met face to face during the
Queen
’s last moments. Apparently Falcon’s order—
“Boss—boss—go!”
—had saved this one’s life after all, although not those of the others.
“Every time I look a chimpanzee in the face, I’m reminded that this is my closest evolutionary relative,” said Singh. “I think it is safe to say that none of us understand in a fundamental, cellular, molecular way, why chimps don’t look and behave just as we do. After more than a century of sophisticated research we still don’t fully understand why we and they have different shapes—although we recognize the utility of the differences—and we still don’t understand why we and they can become infected by the same viruses but not get sick in the same ways. We don’t understand how humans can read and write and talk in complex sentences, and they, in their natural state, can’t. In genetic terms we are so nearly identical that probably only we humans ourselves could tell the difference.” Singh turned slightly toward Sparta, again favoring her with that thin smile. “I doubt that an alien, some visitor from another star, would be able to make the distinction at all—not on biochemical grounds, or at least not without very sophisticated instruments. Which suggests that vast evolutionary differences may be achieved by the subtlest physical adjustments.”