stress-free as it sounds; the bizarre sexual mores of the locals could make it surprisingly awkward for
a woman simply to go up and start talking to a
man.I suspect if I hadn't been a good ten
centimetres taller than the average male I'd have
had more trouble than I did.
My other problem was the ship itself.It was always
trying to get me to visit as many places as possible,
do as much as I could, see all the people I was
able to; look at this, listen to that, meet her, talk to
him, watch that, wear this it wasn't so much that we
wanted to do different things - the ship rarely tried
to get me to do anything I wouldn't want to do -
simply that the thing wanted me to be doing
something all the time. I was its envoy to the city, its one human tendril, a root through which it
sucked with all its might, trying to feed the
apparently bottomless pit it called its memory.
I took holidays from the rush, in the remote, wild
places; Ireland's Atlantic coast and the Scottish
highlands and islands.In County Kerry, in Galway
and Mayo, in Wester Ross and Sutherland and
Mull and Lewis I dallied while the ship tried to
bring me back with threats and cajolings and
promises of all the exciting work it had for me to
do.
But in early March I was finished in London, so I
was sent to Germany and told to wander, asked to
drift and travel round and given a few places and
dates, things to do and see and think about.
Now that I had stopped using English, as it were, I felt free to start reading works in that language for
pleasure, and that was what I did in my spare time,
what little of it there was.
The year turned, gradually there was less snow, the
air became warmer, and after thousands upon
thousand of kilometres of roads and railway tracks
and dozens of hotel rooms, I was called back in
late April to the ship, to reel off my thoughts and
feelings to it.The ship was trying hard to get the
mood of the planet, to form the sort of impression
that only direct human interaction can provide the
raw material for.It was sorting and rearranging and
randomizing and re-sorting its data, looking for
patterns and themes, and trying to gauge and relate
all the sensations its human agents had
encountered, measuring them against whatever
conclusions of its own it had come to while
swimming through the ocean of facts and figures it
had already dredged from the world.We were by
no means finished, of course, and I and all the
others who were down on-planet would be there
for some months yet, but it was time to get some
first impressions.
2.2: A Ship With A View
'So you think we should contact, do you?'
I was lying, sleepy and contented and full after a
large dinner, sprawled over a cushion couch in a
rec area with the lights dimmed, my feet on the arm
of the seat, my arms folded, my eyes closed.A
gentle, warm draught, vaguely Alpine in its
fragrance, was displacing the smell of the food I
and some of my friends had consumed.They were
off playing some game in another part of the ship,
and I could just hear their voices over the Bach I
had persuaded the ship to like, and which it was
now playing for me.
'Yes I do.And as soon as possible, too.'
'They'd be upset.'
'Too bad.It's for their own good.' I opened my eyes
and flashed what was, I hoped, a palpably
contrived smile at the ship's remote drone, which
was sitting at a slightly drunken angle on the arm of
the couch.Then I closed my eyes again.
'Probably it would be, but that isn't the point,
really.'
'What is the point then, really?' I knew the answer
too well already, but kept hoping the ship would
come up with a more convincing reason than the
one I knew it was going to give.Maybe one day.
'How,' the ship said through the drone, 'can we be
sure we're doing the right thing?How do we know
what is - or would be - for their own good, unless,
over a very long period, we observe matched
areas of interest - in this case planets - and
compare the effects of contacting and not
contacting?'
'We ought to know well enough by now.Why
sacrifice this place to some experiment we already
know the results of?'
'Why sacrifice it to your own restless conscience?'
I opened one eye and looked at the remote drone
on the couch arm. 'A moment ago we agreed it
would probably be for the best, for them, if we
went in.Don't try and cloud the issue.We could do
it, we should do it.That's what I think.'
'Yes,' said the ship, 'but even so there would be
technical difficulties, given the volatility of the
situation.They're on a cusp; a highly heterogeneous
but highly connected - and stressedly connected -
civilization.I'm not sure that one approach could
encompass the needs of their different systems.The
particular stage of communication they're at,