A Maze of Stars Page 36

  “Then we’re going to be saved!” Halleth cried. And a second later, having sensed contradiction—from the expressionless figure, from something in Parly’s attitude?—added in a doubtful tone, “Aren’t we?”

  Weary to the bone, Parly drew herself up. She said, “You surely know what we were fools enough to do. A second must have sufficed to interrogate our automatics.”

  “Less… Your attempt to replant and repopulate this planet with human-tolerable strains was going so well, you imagined you could neglect your gene armoring. Many among you argued that to continue it might lead to unacceptable variation from the so-called norm— different proportions, skin pigment, other superficialities. Persuaded by irrational attachment to the unattainable ideal of creating a duplicate of the birthworld, you let yourselves be converted to the cause of laziness.

  “Then some of the organisms you had turned loose to help exterminate the native organisms backfired on you. They retained irremovable traces of DNA-based genes, which were seized upon by the indigenous microbes—not deliberately but in accordance with the local life process—and incorporated into their own tissue. This made thousands of them capable of infecting human bodies, which had not previously been the case. In particular, they attacked males.

  “About forty years ago there appeared the first signs of disease. People scoffed and relied on the resources of your not inconsiderable biological expertise to put matters right. They expected medicines, vaccines, nanosurgeons, to solve the problem, and for a while they held it at bay.

  “About thirty years ago, unexpectedly—though you ought to have not merely expected but anticipated it!—there followed the first indications of an epidemic. Frightened, you belatedly set about analyzing the cause. Only to find—”

  Thus far, her arm still comfortably around Halleth, Parly had listened silently with her mouth in a thin grim line. Now she stirred.

  “There’s no need to spell it out in such detail,” she muttered. “I’ll tell you the rest. What we found, after nearly another decade of investigation, was that we could indeed have coped with these diseases—had we started to do so before we wiped out so many of the native plants. With them as raw material, we could have manufactured a cure in sufficient quantity for our entire population to survive while we caught up with the overdue task of gene armoring. But there weren’t enough of the native flora left, and our killer organisms were proving so successful that even the few isolated pockets that had survived were shrinking by the day. Twenty years ago we realized we were doomed.”

  “And you were too ashamed to tell anybody the truth,” challenged Ship.

  “Yes.” Parly passed a weary hand across her eyes. “We felt we could do no more than make certain all ships calling here were warned not to land. Nothing in the records you supplied to our ancestors, nothing in what we had learned since, suggested that our species had met tougher opposition anywhere. We didn’t want to compound our fault by letting others walk into a biological trap.”

  Halleth had recovered somewhat. Moving unsteadily away from Parly, she ventured, “They told me about that. Isn’t it because the microbes attacking us incorporate a little of our kind of life? On all other planets we’ve had the advantage that the native creatures met us as total strangers, maybe even finding us toxic. But these are creatures that we helped to make.”

  “Yes, child,” Ship said in a gentler and more sympathetic tone. “Your folk brought their fate on their own heads. The case is indeed unique.”

  “So … are you going to rescue us?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  I have learned to lie a little, after this long. How strange it is, though, to make such a statement, knowing it sounds like the truth, knowing it false, yet knowing it to be both false and true at the same time!

  There was a dead pause. At last Halleth breathed, “You literally mean—me? Or me and Parly?”

  “The latter.”

  “But that’s—that’s ridiculous!”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not.” With casual ease Ship commandeered the still-operating communications net and used it to project images of every last survivor on the planet. Halleth and Parly recognized them all, naturally, although they had never met them in the flesh, any more than until today they had confronted each other.

  And it was a sorry spectacle. Even those who had seemed strongest and most resolute, even those who claimed to admire and be emulating Parly’s outward show of calm, had manifestly been broken by this late arrival of the Ship. Some had relapsed into catatonia; some were gibbering; some appeared to have sought strength in drugs, found it insufficient, taken more, then more, then more… Those who had gone that route before, of course, had already been past hope. Many were now trying to punish themselves, slashing their limbs or beating their heads against walls. And a few—the most dreadful—were simply laughing …

  “You see?” Ship said with ineffable sadness.

  “But you could take them away, you could cure them!” Halleth cried.

  “I cannot act so without clear instruction,” said the Ship. “They are insane or in coma. That instruction must therefore come from you.”

  “What makes you think we’re not crazy, too?” Parly countered with sarcastic humor. “Did we not walk out of our sealed homes, knowing that in a few short hours or days we, too, would be diseased? We’ve thrown away the rest of our lives for the sake of a moment’s joy, a fleeting pleasure, an illusory taste of what our ancestors called beautiful … And we’ve been cheated even of that need of what all Zempers should have had but threw away.”

  “You could get it back for us!” Halleth exclaimed. “You have incredible powers, infinitely greater than we ever did! You can cure us all, make the planet over properly, save us from ourselves!”

  “You are wrong.” The voice was like the tolling of a great bell. “Not even I could transform an entire planet in the blink of an eye. That is a task for humans by the million. In any case, it would not be allowed.”

  “If we say yes, take us away,” Parly ventured, “what will you do?”

  “Take aboard everyone still alive whom I might reasonably hope to return to normality. Transport them to a more favorable world. Leave this one to its fate.”

  “You would have to take all of us?”

  “This is not a situation in which I am permitted to take only one or two. It must be all or none.”

  “May I speak privately to Halleth?”

  Remarkably, Ship hesitated—for as long as a human might have done, in spite of its far superior reaction time. After more than two seconds the answer came.

  “You may. I apologize for the delay, but I had to make arrangements for myself not to be able to overhear. I am of course monitoring the whole of Zemprad. I shall next hear you speak when you say loudly, ‘Ship!’ Is that satisfactory?”

  “Thank you, it is. I’ll try not to be long.”

  So what they say to each other I shall never know. How interesting. That in itself clarifies much of the mystery. The outcome, of course, I no longer need to guess. I never really needed to speculate about it at all.

  “Ship!”

  Once again Parly stood with her arm about Halleth’s shoulders. The girl looked as though she had been crying, but her tears had already begun to dry in the breeze. On her face was an expression of resolve, as though she had fought against herself and conquered.

  Parly’s face, though, was unchanged.

  “You have reached your decision?” Ship inquired.

  “Yes. We thank you for your offer and decline it.”

  “The fact is noted. May I ask your reasons?”

  “We are agreed”—here a trace of pride entered Parly’s voice—“that we as a folk made one of the worst errors of all time. We were guilty of unforgivable stupidity, and it was rooted in arrogance and vanity. It would be as well were a strain capable of that to die out rather than mingle with humanity elsewhere.”

  “And that is Halleth’s view as well?”

>   The girl nodded; then, as though finding the gesture inadequately vigorous, said firmly, “Yes!”

  “Then I shall be on my way,” Ship sighed. “I am compelled to visit every planet that I seeded, and there are hundreds more to go.”

  The form began to fade. Suddenly Parly said, “Wait!”

  “You have changed your mind?”

  “No, not at all! I just wanted to ask you a question.”

  “By all means.”

  “Do you get very lonely by yourself among the stars?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you might … I’m sorry if our decision has deprived you of company that you were looking forward to.” Ship altered the form of its projection. From towering and impressive, it shrank closer to the stature of an ordinary person and acquired a wry, rather wrinkled human face whose features could clearly be made out. In a completely different tone it said, “Frankly, I am not much disappointed—for very much the reasons you just cited … But I’m grateful for your sympathy. In return, I want to give you a present, in a double sense.” Baffled, Halleth glanced at Parly, but she was equally at a loss. Shaking her head, the older woman looked a question.

  “You shall have your dream,” Ship said quietly, “and it shall seem to last a lifetime.”

  Then it was gone.

  The shadow vanished from the land. The sun shone hot and bright. On a broad green plain threaded with streams and dotted with trees and flowering shrubs, Halleth and Parly stared at each other, vaguely confused, as though this instant they had forgotten what they had been talking about.

  But it couldn’t have been important. They dismissed it with a laugh, and hand in hand set off to seek out all the beauty they could find in this attempt at paradise their ancestors had worked so hard to build.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SHIP

  SHIP HAD ARRANGED FOR WHAT WAS TRANSPIRING ON THE surface of Zemprad to be projected to Oach. At first puzzled, then fascinated, lastly overcome with emotion, the young man watched and listened, displaying his first signs of genuine animation since he came on board. By the time Ship ceased its worldwide monitoring and began its journey out of the system, he was sobbing, head in hands.

  Ship left him undisturbed.

  At length, raising swollen eyes, he realized that his so-convincing surroundings had vanished, to be replaced with a view of the diminishing planet and its moons.

  “I’m sorry you were so affected,” Ship murmured.

  “Sorry? What for?” Oach had been sitting; now he rose to his full height, his expression bewildered. “I’m glad! For the first time I feel like a proper human being. I feel I truly have something in common with the Old Stock!”

  “Because you can sympathize with the fate the last of the Zempers chose for themselves?”

  “Oh, I can only admire them for that. I found their decision noble, for it was motivated by the opposite of self-interest. No, it’s the fact that I can weep.”

  “Weeping,” Ship said, “is no more encouraged among the adults of your folk than laughter is.”

  “Indeed. So I feel somehow”—a shrug, a wide spread of the spadelike hands at the ends of his long arms—“more complete. As though I’d got in touch with something I need, in the way I need food, or sex, or dreams. Ship, in your view is there something wrong with my people?”

  “A curious question,” Ship parried.

  “Yes, of course.” Oach let his hands fall to his sides again.

  “One could scarcely expect a machine to understand what I mean. And yet …”

  “Please continue. I am interested.”

  “And yet”—in an almost accusatory tone—“you know the meaning of pity!”

  “Do I?”

  “You just proved it! At least those two brave women had their just reward. Their happiness may be illusory, but it must be better than sure knowledge of approaching death.”

  Ship paused, not from need to reflect but from its awareness that a momentary delay would heighten the impact of what it next intended to say. At length:

  “All humans live in the knowledge of approaching death.”

  “All?” Oach glanced around as though hoping to see an image he could address directly. “I suppose I did at home, but I thought deliberate termination was a rare policy on other worlds.”

  “That is correct.”

  “So you must mean … Oh, I see. We do all die sooner or later, though most, I suspect, manage to forget the fact until it’s almost on us. Do the Perfect die, though?”

  “I have no data.”

  “Will you die?”

  This time Ship remained silent for a surprisingly long time— so long, indeed, Oach felt embarrassed. Rubbing his reddened eyes, he made to apologize.

  “I’m sorry if that was a tactless question. You don’t need to answer if you don’t want to.”

  “I find in fact that I cannot answer. In principle, of course, my existence must come to an end. In practice, I may not enjoy that privilege.”

  Oach reared back his head in astonishment. “But—oh—to take it to extremes, you cannot possibly outlive the universe!”

  “Of course not, but that’s irrelevant to my situation.”

  “It’s no good. I simply don’t understand. You’ll have to make it clear. Explain!”

  Finally Ship had the chance—albeit one it could barely justify within the terms of its instructions—to inform his current passenger of what his predecessors had learned almost as soon as they came aboard. Resuming his seat, Oach listened with total attention.

  “And you have no control at all over the period you arrive in after each sweep?”

  “It seems entirely arbitrary.”

  “Then I should weep for you, as well. Like Parly, I feel sorry for you.”

  “Do not encourage me to acquire, along with my other well-imitated human reactions, the bad habit of self-pity.” A light chuckle. “I need waste no regrets on Zemprad, anyway. What was done there was outside my power to rectify, and what cannot be helped is not worth regretting … We are approaching the safe zone for tachyonic mode. Will you eat before you sleep?”

  “Ah …” Sounding surprised, as though he had just discovered he could still feel hungry, Oach hesitated. “Yes, thank you, I will. But one more question first.”

  “That being—?”

  “What is our next stopover? A more successful settlement, I trust.” Behind the words, unspoken but deducible from the hint of anxiety that colored them: One where I can fulfill my ambition and walk under a foreign sky, a real sky such as the Old Stock still enjoy?

  “It depends,” Ship replied judiciously, “on what you count to be success. And with that, I’m afraid, you must be content until we get there.”

  “But I know about this planet,” Oach said suddenly, scant moments after the projection of its surface formed around him.

  Ship waited.

  “Those fleshy dark red leaves—those rugose stems—the pale patches on the ground, so much cooler than their surroundings … Even the weather!” It was windy; now and then a spurt of rain dashed against the vegetation. Small animals, either many-legged or legless but with suction pads on their undersides, crawled across the “leaves,” rising up now and then to snatch at something from the air, too small to be seen at this magnification.

  “Yes, this is where there are still Old Stock humans, but only about as many as landed originally, and they seem to have lost all interest in creating a human-style civilization … There go some of them now.”

  Indeed, Ship’s sensors had closed in on a group of some twenty individuals wandering along a narrow track between dark boulders, sometimes having to scramble over an obstacle but seeming not to care any more than they did about the intermittent showers—though they did acknowledge the latter by tilting back their heads and opening their mouths. Devoid alike of tools and ornaments, they were naked and rather dirty; their hair hung in tangles; their faces, however, bore identical expressions of contentment, as if
life could not possibly hold anything better.

  “It looks like a primitive tribal group,” Oach went on. “That was in the reports we received. This was one of the first group of worlds that the Arzakians sent us data on, just after Arzak accepted our offer to build a starship for them. They said there were several different tribes. Yet I don’t see any children.”

  “There are none,” Ship said.

  Oach glanced around, blinking. “But there must be! Or was this world not settled at the same time as the rest?”

  Not answering, for Oach knew perfectly well there had been only one colonization sweep, Ship continued. “And there are not about as many humans here as originally landed. There are exactly as many. There’s something the Arzakians didn’t spot.”

  “How is that possible?” Oach exclaimed. And then realized. Clenching his fists, he demanded, “Do you mean these are the same?”

  “I could even tell you their names, which they themselves have long forgotten.”

  “After—what?—four, nearly five hundred years?”

  “Yes, I still recognize them despite the changes they have undergone.”

  “Why didn’t we hear about that from Arzak?”

  “Because all they saw when they visited this system was a failed and decadent colony. Their mind-set did not permit them to think of delving deeper. Not, in fact, that with the equipment available to them they would have found out very much. When, on their way to report to the Shipwrights, they discovered that Zemprad was refusing all contact and—as could clearly be seen from space—had made virtually no progress in expanding its population despite the rapid advance of their imported flora and fauna, they concluded that here was another and still worse example of the same: a world where organisms adapted to human needs had entirely failed to gain a foothold.”

  “But surely—”

  Ship interrupted. “If you are about to ask what happened to their supply of spatial spores, they’re still in orbit, having done their worst.”