A Maze of Stars Page 31

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  Chuckling: “As for me, I’m coming to feel quite capable of pitying myself. There’s no need for you to reinforce the sensation … Don’t you want to hear my joke?”

  “Yes, go ahead!” cried Annica.

  “A well-known skeptic was challenged on the question of voluntarism. Throwing up his hands in despair, he said, ‘Of course I believe in free will—I have no choice!’ ”

  Which provoked a response even Ship had not expected. Frowning, Annica adopted her customary pose for contemplation, legs drawn up and arms embracing knees. She looked as though she were staring at infinity.

  “Yet these people on Sumbala… They’re trying something I couldn’t quite understand, yet it seems to give them more confidence in their ability to reason and make choices than any other people we have so far met.”

  “Yes, this mystifying reference to signing a contract with your body,” Menlee agreed. “I’d like that clarified. I want to know how it works and also why—given that it can produce spectacular results, like the dousing of that fire with ice fetched from a distant moon—there are people Uke Hesker who rebel against it.”

  “Now,” Annica commented dryly, “you can tell us you’re not allowed to explain about that, either.”

  “This time, I’m pleased to say, you’re wrong. Had you asked the question before we paid our visit to Sumbala, I would indeed have been inhibited. Now, having witnessed the contemporary situation, I can furnish the data you request. I warn you: they constitute a long lecture.”

  “It won’t take half as long to deliver,” Annica said tartly, “as we’ve spent puzzling about it. Especially with your resources.” She glanced at the display surrounding them, which they had come to take for granted. It showed Sumbala shrinking toward its sun in the customary predeparture pattern. “That is, unless it will delay your next tachyonic entry.”

  “That has to be postponed in any case,” Ship murmured. “Delivering that ice inside the atmosphere caused a major upheaval in the nearby continuum. It may be weeks before local communications on and around Sumbala are restored to normal. I shall have to continue at sublight-speed for longer than usual to get clear of the reverberations. So you have plenty of time.”

  “Go ahead, then,” Menlee invited, leaning back and putting his arm around Annica’s shoulders. One thing that had not changed was the visible affection between them.

  Sometimes Ship regretted the need to ensure that it was maintained.

  The decision to adopt person-worn data sources was one of an enormous range of possibilities open to the original settlers on Sumbala. Back in the parent galaxy hundreds of similar devices had been employed at various times. Subcranial implants reporting directly to the brain were common on densely populated worlds where it was imperative always to be au fait with a colossal range of news and other information; external devices feeding the visual, auditory, or tactile nerve endings were also widespread; elsewhere, in societies that placed a premium on individuality and feared that dictatorial input from some central source might one day override the ability of those equipped with more intimate devices to judge and choose for themselves, the preference was for old-fashioned machines of the type that had to be activated and interrogated.

  (Annica tensed. She suggested: “Of the kind still in use on that sad planet where the people are so hideously changed yet imagine they are wholly human?” And Ship answered with one of its likewise nonhuman signals: a nod, unseen, unheard, unfelt, yet unmistakable.)

  Faced with the risks of a hospitable-seeming yet alien planet, the settlers on Sumbala elected a course that differed subtly, yet in a most important fashion, from what had been customary elsewhere.

  They adopted external, removable devices, worn around the wrist and/or the waist according to their function. So much was commonplace. But instead of according primacy to the wearer’s ability to access data from elsewhere, they argued that, confronting a brand-new planet, it would be far more useful to monitor what it was doing to the wearers themselves. A reaction provoked in the lungs by inhaling a native spore; a response from the liver due to drinking the local water with— despite near-perfect filters—traces of complex organic compounds; a minuscule tilting of the “normal” perceptual reality within the brain, thanks to wafts of scent from an aboriginal plant; signals from bones and joints and muscles that could be compared with an arbitrary standard and used to issue warnings , . . such facilities as these, it seemed to them, were infinitely more important.

  And, indeed, in the upshot it appeared that they were right. Jokingly, they began to speak in terms of “making a contract” with one or another internal organ as they programmed new and better versions of their original devices, and very shortly they realized it wasn’t a joke after all, for what they had chanced across was a means of putting the analytical forebrain into closer touch with the reactive hindbrain and spinal cord than any of their predecessors.

  In a sense, for the first time humans were conscious of, indeed experiencing directly, what evolution had taught for millennia: the reality of a human body as a colony organism assembled from creatures that once led independent lives. Thus equipped, they were able to complete the occupation of their planet with relative ease, and by the time the Shipwrights sent out their automatic vessel to inquire who would be willing to lease starships in return for supplying information, they were virtually the only population in the Arm relaxed and confident enough to say at once, “Why not? It might be fun!”

  Yet there were a few among them who resented this.

  (“Like Hesker!” Menlee exclaimed excitedly, and Annica prodded him with her elbow to imply: Don’t be so obvious!)

  The reason seemed to be a sense of having lost, on the one hand, some kind of primal innocence, and on the other some primal awareness of evolutionary direction, masked by excessive knowledge of real-time internal processes—a combination that, indeed, was what had led Hesker to take up his post as a forester. It was his view, and that of people like him, that only by reentering into contact on the most simplistic level with the world around could progress be made toward the ideal of the Perfect.

  Ironically, what he and those like him imagined to be a brand-new idea, a veritable breakthrough, had as ever been adumbrated clear back on the birthworld. There was even a saying that encapsulated their objections with peculiar aptness: “You cannot see the forest for the trees.”

  The exposition, as always, had been backed up by visual and auditory data. Now the autumn splendor of the forest enveloped them, as it had Ezar and Sohay, and, isolated in a wind-swept glade, they smelled and tasted the harbingers of fire. Nonexistent sparks made their bare skin tingle, so that they almost glanced down, seeking the dark smuts that real ones left. Then, with suddenness that shook them to the primeval core of their ancestral reflexes, the fire crowned. Flames leapt overhead like pouncing predators and with them dragged a whirl, a rush of dry dead leaves, and all the precious oxygen they needed to survive. Heat punished them, inside and out, for one intolerable instant—and space and stars were all around again, and they were shaking, sweating, and most gratefully enlightened.

  Eventually, in a trembling voice, Menlee said, “Hesker, who wanted to return to primal awareness, managed to forget—or rather never think of—that!”

  Annica licked lips grown abruptly dry, as though it had been real heat they’d undergone. “It ought to be inside our cells,” she said. “Inside our bones. Perhaps it is.” She glanced at Menlee. “After all, whoever it was who contrived to put the fire out just in time must have been functioning at optimum, even by the standards of Sumbala.”

  They waited, expecting Ship to comment. There was only silence.

  “On the other hand,” Annica sighed when enough time had slipped away, “no belts or wristlets, no awareness of their inner selves, could help them when it came to predicting what an alien might do to save its species in an emergency. Right, Ship?”

  “Your species does not easily identify with
others,” was the enigmatic answer.

  “Sometimes we don’t seem much good at empathizing with our own,” Menlee countered in a cynical tone.

  “True …”

  Another silence followed, this time somehow drab, as though neither Menlee nor Annica felt inclined to follow any of the lines of inquiry signaled by what they had just been told. At last Annica stirred and said, “Ship!”

  “Yes?”

  “You can’t help knowing that Menlee and I want to be put—uh—ashore at the Veiled World.”

  That being so patently true, it called for no response.

  “Can it be done?” Menlee demanded. “Or will you try and argue us out of it?”

  “I don’t think Ship could do that,” Annica countered. “I think it must take something enormously important to override a passenger’s choice of a ‘suitable’ world. I mean, we know about Stripe. She was allowed to go aground even though she was obviously doomed.”

  And is still mourned. But that was not spoken aloud.

  “On the other hand,” Annica went on, “how are you going to land us there without the Shipwrights realizing it must have been you that brought us? It was one thing to create a fog of obfuscation on Shreng, to disguise the fact that a foreigner had arrived without passing through any normal channels. But judging by what you’ve told us about the Shipwrights, they - couldn’t be so easily misled.”

  Nodding vigorously, Menlee added, “So does this mean you can’t after all leave us where we most want to go?”

  Their expressions were identically anxious. Waiting for the reply, she took his nearer hand in hers.

  “Certainly the Shipwrights will realize,” Ship said. “How could they not? But they won’t care.”

  The impact of that was so powerful, they both held their breath for a long moment. Eventually Menlee let go with a gasp.

  “Won’t care?” he echoed. “The most important news in the entire Arm—the Ship does come back, it hasn’t got lost or been destroyed!—and they won’t care?”

  “Strange though it may seem, that is the case.”

  “But—but how is that possible?” cried Annica.

  “They have mapped their future in the way that seems to them appropriate. What they cannot find out about must be omitted from their planning. They accept that my visits are inherently unpredictable, if they occur at all. To find foreigners among them whose presence is unaccountable except by assuming my intervention will strike them as of considerable interest, inevitably.

  “But since you will be unable to give them any useful information about my comings and goings, they will pursue the matter no further.”

  They both spoke at once, sounding alarmed. Menlee began, “You mean our memories, like Volar’s—?”

  And Annica: “Will they make us welcome, let us live and work among them?”

  Ship waited while they exchanged glances. Annica was the first to yield, inviting Menlee to go ahead, and Ship answered his question without further prompting.

  “No, I shall not need to tamper with your memories as I was obliged to with Volar’s. You already know the reason. This implies the answer to Annica: Yes, they will make you welcome because of the firsthand information you can impart about the worlds you have visited with me. While your interrogation is under way, however, I advise you to work out some way in which to make yourselves useful afterward. They are industrious and disinclined to tolerate people making no contribution to their upkeep.”

  Another silence followed, shorter but no less gloomy. Menlee broke it by saying with a shrug, “We’ll take our chances. I can’t help wondering, though, how news of two people having been brought there by you can be stopped from spreading. I’d have thought rumors would break out like—well, like that forest fire! I presume, for instance, that one of Sohay’s duties when he takes over as Sumbalan ambassador will be to report exactly that sort of news.”

  “Sohay,” Ship murmured, “will report exactly what the Shipwrights want him to know, neither more nor less. The data they are gathering are designed to act as capital in the event that they are driven away from the Veiled World and obliged to spend centuries wandering in space before they find a suitable uninhabited system where they can settle down again. You might say they are amassing the Arm’s greatest treasury of its most valuable currency.”

  “Yes, of course,” Menlee breathed, and relaxed! Annica, by contrast, shook her head.

  “You’re missing an important point,” she muttered from the side of her mouth. “Ship, how is it you can tell us so much about the Veiled World when we haven’t reached it yet? Always before you’ve refused to discuss the next system and those after it. Now you’re making statements—and even predictions!— about the Shipwrights. Why?”

  “It may appear to be a paradox,” Ship replied in a judicious tone. “In fact it’s not, and you should be able to work out why.”

  She looked blank and Menlee annoyed with himself for having overlooked so crucial a point. Suddenly he snapped his fingers.

  “Is it because they’re the only settlers who have worked out their future actions in detail? You said they’ll take the news of your return into account but not act on it because there’s no way of knowing when will be the next time. That implies that from the very start you must have accepted their ability to achieve exactly what they set out to do. Even though you haven’t been there yet, what you’ve found out so far—espe-dally the lending of ships to Sumbala and the other worlds collecting information for them—has only served to confirm that they are exactly on the course they originally chose. So you have no reservations about drawing conclusions about them. When we arrive, you confidently expect to find them doing precisely what they originally undertook to do.”

  “I see!” Annica whispered. “No wonder they were able to talk you into letting them land on worlds that must have seemed utterly wrong for human occupation. I’d been puzzling over that. They must descend from a particularly tough-minded and ambitious group.”

  “Oddly enough,” Ship sighed, “not even I knew they were a group. Not until I arrived in the vicinity and they saw possibilities where I’d seen none. Then volunteers emerged as though by magic.”

  “Magic!” Annica repeated with a chuckle. “Ship, you do continue to surprise me. A machine that can wonder about its own free will—with a sense of humor and frustration and impatience—and now it’s talking about magic! How I would have liked to meet your builders!”

  “I think,” Menlee said slowly, “we’re on our way to meet their nearest equivalents. Ship, when shall we reach the Veiled World?”

  “I’m obliged to call at four more planets before then, but I expect them to be relatively uninteresting. They are in contact with Sumbala, of course, but I learned little of much import when interrogating Sumbalan computers. People are surviving there, managing pretty well all things considered, but much preoccupied with problems that elsewhere have been overcome. No, our next significant port of call is the triple world of the Shipwrights.”

  “Will we”—Annica’s voice broke huskily on the words— “will we be happy there if we stay?”

  “Happiness,” the Ship said in a somber tone, “is among the human concepts I can’t yet claim to understand.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE VEILED WORLD

  WHAT FEW STARS COULD BE MADE OUT TWINKLED INCREDIBLY, made to dance as much as a full degree from their true position by refraction, reflection, and the strains of space within the cloud that shrouded—and had earned a fortune for—the Shipwrights.

  At the center of this extraordinary system loomed the bulk of what was too dim to be a star, too large to be a planet: a brown dwarf emitting enough heat to render habitable its surprising retinue of satellites but not yet so massive as to ignite its hydrogen into a stellar fire. Rotating fast because of the constant infall of dust and meteors, it churned visibly. Visibly, at least, to someone possessed of ordinary human eyesight. Such an observer could have discerned the tumult of its s
urface, even watched the occasional semisolid plates of “cool” material that formed in its lower atmosphere, as they were hurled aloft on eruptions of gas like sheets of aerated slag blown skyward by a geyser, then skimmed back diskwise into the simmering caldron below, with no worse discomfort than the odd afterimage of a flash from searing magma exposed when one of the plates was tossed on high.

  But Oach dared not even glance at his people’s “sun” without protection. The first settlers had decided to incorporate certain genetic changes in their descendants, and within a few generations they were universal. Chief among them was loss of the ability to detect the blue region of the spectrum, compensated by vast enhancement in the red and infrared. Consequently, as he rode his flying sled along the geodesic course dictated by the artificial space strains that stabilized the system, listening with half an ear to the ceaseless babble of talk on his communicator, interrupted now and then by the hiss of a micrometeorite being vaporized by the sled’s forward shield, he could clearly make out the planets Asaph, Bethe, and Gamow, named according to legend after the first three letters of some ancient script. To him they were bright and unmistakable, for he could view them by the reflected warmth of the “sun.” In unusually favorable conditions he could even detect the faint emanations from the “bow waves” they compressed into the cloud by moving through it. A visitor from elsewhere, however, would have noticed at best three blurs and quite likely nothing at all.

  In addition, whereas that visitor would have registered no color higher in his visual octave than a drab yellow from those stars not blotted out by the enveloping dust cloud, while the rest of the local volume was dominated by a monotone reddish brown, Shipwright folk distinguished five additional colors from “pale” to “intense,” all in the infrared band. It made no difference to Oach that some of them were reported not by his eyes but by modified skin on his forehead and focused by a mosaic of microtubules. That had been natural to him since birth, and he was now out of adolescence, a grown man.