Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [174]
The curved fabric distorted the points of light, making them scintillate like stars. For one confused moment, Matthew thought they might actually be stars, and that the infinite purple canopy had condescended to undergo one of the rare flamboyant transformations of which it surely had to be capable, drawing itself apart in order to display the sky.
Then he scrambled out of the tent, following his companion.
It was Ike, not he, who whispered: “Get the camera! For heaven’s sake, get the camera!”
Matthew did as he was told. At first, he pointed it at Ike, but Ike knocked the lens away, angrily. “Are they receiving?” Ike demanded. “Are they putting this out?”
Matthew didn’t know—but when he was finally able to clear the last vestiges of sleep away and focus his eyes on what Ike was pointing at, he knew immediately what was needed. He dared not shout, but he spoke firmly to whoever was on the other end of the link, instructing the crewman not merely to activate the TV relay but to sound an alarm that would wake up every single member of the crew, and every single colonist on the ground.
He realized, belatedly, that he need not have worried about the crew. He had forgotten that surface-days and ship-days were out of phase. It was midday on Hope, not midnight.
Everyone on Hope was awake; everyone was watching; everyone was party to the miracle.
All Matthew had to do was point the camera.
The scene at which it was pointing told its own story.
There must have been at least a hundred humanoids: an entire tribe, in all likelihood. They came close enough to make themselves obvious, and then they paused. In fact, they posed—not for the camera, of whose nature they knew nothing, but for the sake of their own dignity and pride, and to signify their own sense of triumph. The crowd distributed itself in a huge semicircle, partly to display itself more bravely and partly because its every member wanted to be able to see the weird aliens, their peculiar hut, and their strange machinery.
They were curious. They were probably more than a little afraid, but they were certainly curious.
At least half their number carried spears, but Matthew couldn’t be bothered to try to make out what the shafts and tips were made of. Some of them carried ropes, some baskets, some hammers, some artifacts of their own making to which he could not put a name. To all of this, he paid scant attention, because the dozen who drew his gaze and made it captive were the ones who were carrying spherical bowls ablaze with light, supported on squat cylinders. The bowls must have been harvested from the treetops, and the cylinders too. They had been carefully shaped, neatly dovetailed, and ingeniously augmented with wicks and devices to deliver the wicks into the bowls by slow degrees.
The twelve aliens were carrying lamps: lamps with reservoirs of oil and burning wicks.
Sex divides, Dulcie Gherardesca had told Lynn Gwyer, with a measure of passion that Matthew had not fully understood at the time. Sex divides, but cooking unites. The foundation of culture was the capacity to delight in the sharing of fire; the beginning of culture—of the meeting of minds and the forging of the elementary social contract—was the Promethean Moment.
Only three of Dulcie’s alien apostles were also carrying stolen machetes, but they were holding them up to the light, showing them to Matthew and Ike—and also, although they did not know it, to every human being in the system who had responded to Matthew’s urgent call.
Through this crowd-within-a-crowd came Dulcie herself, striding confidently to greet her friends. Her surface-suit was no longer brown or purple; it was silver-and-gold.
Her arms were quite relaxed, swinging at her sides, but her hands spoke nevertheless, casually drawing attention to her achievement, her gift, her repentance, her redemption, her denouement.
Fire and iron, Matthew thought. There, but for the grace of fire and iron …
And he knew, now that he was absolutely sure that he really had awakened from his febrile dream, that the Ark named Hope had not merely