Left with the creature,” Patton Bretano said, with a sinking heart, and Pardino, down on the surface, went on about how they’d gotten radio transmission, they were still getting it, and they wanted a decision from the station.
Pattern Bretano sat with the receiver in his hand, listening to it, asking himself why it was his son, and what kind of craziness had sent Ian out by himself, or why Ian hadn’t run for the base instead of away from it, but he feared he knew that answer already.
Ian wouldn’t risk the project, wouldn’t risk it. Working near the perimeter, Pardino said. In an area where they thought they had years yet to find the answers.
But the answers had found them. Found Ian, on the edges and unprotected. Pardino talked about how the radio was still open, and if it stayed that way they had a chance to track them.
But, How can I tell Joy? was the thought chasing through Patton’s mind, scattering saner notions. The father’s instincts were to mount a search party, to curse Ian for doing what he’d done, the father’s instincts didn’t damn care what risks the search would run.
The father didn’t give a damn how a rescue attempt would play politically with the Guild. The politician was thinking of the risks they knew they’d run, where they’d put the base… God, of course there were dangers, and there were procedures for avoiding them. They’d created an electronic perimeter. The natives weren’t advanced enough to bypass it. They’d been down there for months without an incident. They’d never let their precautions lapse, and Ian hadn’t been in the first team down, he’d pulled every string he had and absolutely made sure that Ian wasn’t in the first team—
“Pat,” Pardino said, “Pat, are you there?”
“Yes,” he said, thinking, God help us, it’s happened, hasn’t it? Contact’s made. Irrevocable from this point. But my son…
“We can’t go after him,” Pardino said. “The staff’s in consensus, we can’t go after him, we aren’t in that kind of position here …”
“I want the transmissions.” He was trembling. The shock was still richocheting through his nerves, saying nothing was real. But that open radio was the only fragile link to Ian, and he wanted to be hearing that, not Pardino; he wanted to hear for himself that Ian was all right, never mind what the Guild was going to make of it, never mind that the news was going to be all over the station with the speed of the phone system, and somehow he had to break the news to Joy and get some kind of official news release out.
Had to take a position before the Guild released the story on its own.
He wasn’t a bad man. He told himself he wasn’t a bad man. He was walking a narrow line between a Pilots’ Guild that wouldn’t scruple to use the story against everything their hopes rested on, and a council skittish of opposing them too radically… and now Ian had gone and put himself in the middle of what, God help him, he’d planned.
Because he knew and the committee knew there were inhabitants in that area of the island, non-technological as they needed, as they’d wanted the first contact to be, not to bring them face-to-face with the savviest politicians and the most advanced technology on the planet… but he hadn’t on any terms wanted Ian in the middle of that encounter.
Pardino was saying something about the patch on channel B, and he couldn’t but think how the Guild was going to be monitoring their transmissions the instant they realized there was something happening. Everything they said, everything Ian said, was going to the Guild the same as it went to them, bet on it.
“Pat,” Pardino said, obscuring what he wanted to hear, Ian’s voice, “Pat, the boy’s resourceful, he’s being clever, he’s not hurt, they’re not threatening him, whatever’s happened. He talks, but they can’t suspect there’s a pickup, they haven’t got radio. He said he’s got the volume down so they can’t hear, but he’s not that far away. The batteries are good for at least four days solid, he says don’t come after the guy, they’re not threatening him. You copy, Pat?“
“Yeah. Yes, I understand you. I want the transmissions, dammit.”
“You’ve got everything we have.”
Pardino signed off with that, as if it made anything better than it was; but, He’s resourceful, Pardino had said, too, and Patton clutched that thought to himself when Pardino went out and left him a quiet, static-ridden breathing.
Then Ian’s voice, saying, out of breath, “It’s still all right, don’t worry, he’s just afraid someone’s following us. We’re in a cave in the rocks. He keeps touching my arm, very gentle, like he’s trying to get me to be quiet, he talks to me and I act like I’m answering him.”
The other voice came back then, a low, quiet burr.
“He’s at least a head taller than me,” Ian’s voice said, “mostly like us, but incredibly strong. His skin is black as space, his eyes are narrow and his nose is kind of arched, flat to the face, he frowns, you can tell that.…”
The other voice again. A pause, then:
“He’s talking to me, I guess you can hear that, real quiet, like he’s trying to tell me everything’s all right.”
Ian’s voice was shaking. Patton felt the fear in his son, felt the strain telling on him, and Ian’s breaths were short and desperate. He knotted his hands together and knew the Guild was recording by now, every desperate minute, to play back to the council and the station at large.
Ian wasn’t the type to crack, he knew his son. Ian was doing all right emotionally. It was the physical stress or a physical constraint that was putting that quaver into lan’s voice, but others might not think so.
He punched in his wife’s office number, before the news could go out. He said it the way Pardino had said it, just, “Joy, Ian’s in a little trouble, don’t panic, but they’ve got a contact down there and Ian’s met it.”
“A contact,” Joy said, on the other end of the line.
“What do you mean, they’ve got a contact? Is he all right? Pat? Is he all right?”
“So far he’s fine,” Patton said. “We can hear him, he’s got his radio open, I’ve got him on the other channel. Turn on your B.”
“I’ve got it,” Joy said, “I’ve got it.”
“—a little out of breath,” Ian was saying, and coughed. “My legs are wobbly. I’m not acclimated down here. I’d say we’re a couple klicks from the base, don’t know how to judge it. There’s like trees around here, kind of soft-trunked, big flat leaves, there’s like a lot of moss, there’s got to be water near here, I’d think, it’s all soft-leaved stuff…”
God, Patton thought, the boy was still observing, still was sending back his damn botany notes, but it was the native he wanted to know about.
He heard the creature talking again, he heard Joy ask, “Is that one of them?” and he muttered, “So far there’s just one of them. Walked right through the perimeter alarm and accosted Ian. Ian ordered the rescue party back. He apparently wasn’t feeling threatened.”
“Sir,” his secretary’s voice broke in, on override. “Vordict’s calling in, says it’s urgent, about your son, sir.”
The Guild had heard. The Guild was going to raise bloody hell about the situation and play hard politics with the electorate. He wasn’t ready for this. He had a son in trouble down there and Vordict, damn him, wanted to make an issue of what they all sensibly knew had been inevitable from the hour they reached this star, all to read him might-have-beens.
“He wants to keep moving,” Ian’s faint voice said. “He wants us to walk again. I’m cold, I’m out of breath, excuse the shakes.…”
“Put him on,” he told his secretary, regarding Vordict, and told Joy, “It’s Vordict. I’ve got to talk to him. Ian can’t hear us. But whatever he’s found down there, it’s not hostile, it’s all right…”
Ian gasped, a short, small intake of breath, and Patton’s heart froze.
Ian said, long-distance, “I lost my balance, is all. It’s all right, it’s all right, don’t anybody do anything stupid.”
Patton wished the Guild would take that to heart.
“Patton,” came the voice from the other channel. “Patton, you’ve forced this, this is on your head, it’s your son in danger, and you knew damned well there was a settlement close to the base. I have the documents. I have the witness. You knew before you made the drop there, tell me otherwise, and be advised I intend to take this before the council.”