Foreigner

“ 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’dplanned.

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.