A Maze of Stars Read online

  IN ALL THE FRUITLESS PASSAGES I’VE MADE ALONG THE ARM I never found a more amazing traveling companion. I could know how many—I have to know how many—I don’t have to think about that knowledge.

  There was some mercy, at least, in the minds of my designers whom I so constantly suspect of having planned my doom. But why? Why should it be better for me to arrive now in this century, now the one previous, now one later? Am I to serve as a random factor, perhaps restore lost data to a declining group overwhelmed by the onslaught of native life-forms? Was it my knowledge of that part of my mission that was damaged, not my ability to choose when I emerge from tachyonic mode?

  If so, either way, I may never find out…

  “IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE TREVITHRA,” STRIPE SAID WHEN SHE got her breath back. Gazing at the gleaming gibbous orb that hung below Ship, trying not to glance in the direction of the local sun although an automatic screen dimmed its radiance, she found the sight far more impressive than the distant welter of anonymous stars.

  “How can you tell? Did some off-world visitor show you a picture taken from space?”

  “I never met an off-world visitor, not to talk to. But Trevithra’s sky at night is always green.”

  “Only from below. From above it’s a dull red. By the way, the artificial aurora was one of the last manifestations of technology among your people. Did you know?”

  Stripe shook her head.

  “Yes, it was created when the people of Trevithra first started to go insane with fear of cheeching. Aware that spores were drifting in from space, they jumped to the conclusion that they must be the cause. So they ordered the surviving scientists to find a way of blocking their infall. They succeeded. But cheeching continued. In a fit of blind fury the people seized the scientists and gave them to the priests for sacrifice, as I already mentioned.”

  “How do you know this? You said this visit to Trevithra was your earliest bar the very first!” Her tone was hostile and suspicious.

  “Another of my visits, though, was much later. Excuse me for having to say ‘was’ when it won’t happen for a long while yet. I sometimes have difficulty remembering in what order my future visits, to me in the past, occurred. I suspect I wasn’t designed to cope with paradoxes of this order. What matters is that eventually rationality will return to Trevithra and the truth will be reconstructed from fragmentary records. The irony of the aurora, though … No, it would be better if you didn’t know.”

  “You have discovered loopholes in your instructions, haven’t you?” Stripe snapped. “I suppose now you want me to contradict you so you can tell me my orders!”

  “I still find it difficult to believe you were never trained in templegoers’ casuistry,” murmured Ship. “I, after all, have had a great deal of time to discover what few lacunae my designers overlooked. There is, I suppose, much to be said for a backward society where people have leisure to indulge in untrammeled ratiocination rather than being constantly bombarded with distractions. Whether it’s true or not no one can say, but a theory was current when they loaded my data banks that the road to spaceflight was first paved by herd guards watching domesticated animals on clear summer nights with nothing else to think about save how the stars and planets moved.”

  “On the birthworld? The first where humans ever lived?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did they make a better fist of life than my folk?”

  “I am not permitted to judge. It seems that my designers wanted their descendants to make an unprejudiced start on each planet. Stagnation might explain this, and also other things. But you wanted to hear about the aurora.”

  “I didn’t actually say so, but—yes, even if it hurts.”

  “It will. You see, the spores falling in from space were due to me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “And your ancestors were ignorant of their nature or chose to assume they’d gone wrong. But I sowed them, as was my duty. After that they reproduced by billions, using local elements, and were driven into the planet’s upper atmosphere by radiation pressure. It was a most ingenious system, and on many other worlds it’s working as designed.”

  “What was it for?”

  “In case the settlers’ germ plasm proved inadequately armored, like your people’s, against some local threat. The spores would have provided constant reinforcement. You might say: reinfect the settlers with humanity—and the local flora and fauna, too, making them more tractable, even more edible. But on Trevithra they are shut out.”

  “That’s incredible!” Stripe whispered. There was no point in looking anywhere else than at the planet below, for she was now quite accustomed to being addressed from some invisible point in midair. How Ship contrived its voice she had no idea, but she felt disinclined to ask for technical details. She had lived all her life with plants and animals, and if she was having such trouble understanding what it was telling her about living organisms, how much worse it would be with unfamiliar machines!

  “My designers had considerable grasp of such matters,” the placid voice resumed. “Your descendants—forgive me: successors—on Trevithra will eventually realize the fact, and their ancestors’ mistake, but there will be no point in railing.”

  “The spores would have prevented cheeching?”

  “Not completely, nor at once. But over several generations, especially if knowledge of their function had survived and local biologists had been able to modify them.”

  “And you say this system works fine elsewhere? On this world, for example?” She was clenching her fists from envy and suppressed anger.

  “Not on this world, I’m afraid… Would you like to see why I doubt its suitability for you?”

  “If you can show me— Ah, what am I saying? You can do things I never dreamed were possible. Miracles! No wonder people back home came to believe in gods and devils if they had forgotten how to work such tricks themselves. But one thing first.”

  “By all means.”

  “You reminded me I shall never have descendants on Trevithra. But could I, maybe, somewhere else? I mean, if I meet somebody on the world I’m going to …”

  Breath failed her.

  “That is included in the definition of suitability.”

  “I see. I think. You imply that there are worlds where we— we humans—have been changed to the point where we can’t breed together anymore.”

  “On certain planets that is so. This is not, however, one of them. Nonetheless, it is unlikely to appeal. It happens to be suffering an ice age, and insofar as one can make such a statement, it may well be our fault.”

  Projected, doubtless, in the same way as the “reassuring” artificial setting she had found herself in when she was brought aboard—though this time the floor turned to something crisp that burned her unshod feet—the surface of the world below took on reality around Stripe. She was briefly dazzled by glaring whiteness, all the more because a bitter wind tossed icy needles at her face. Her eyes watered; she rubbed her cheeks, afraid her tears might freeze.

  “You only need to feel this for a moment,” said Ship. “By the way, it’s one thing I can’t share with humans. For me, cold is wholly abstract and has to do with emptiness. Heat, of course, I absorb and make use of.”

  The vicious chill vanished, but Stripe retained its memory in the very fibers of her being.

  Slowly, as her eyes adjusted, she found she could make out details. There were grays, even browns, as well as the whiteness: shadows, exposed vertical rock, crevasses.

  “Am I seeing snow?” she whispered.

  “Snow and ice. You never experienced them, did you?”

  “At Clayre? Of course not! I heard about them, though … Why are you showing me this?”

  “To let you find out how humans on this planet have to live. Watch. There are people in that cave to your right.”

  She had thought it only a discolored patch, but it was a hole beneath an overhang. At the same moment she seemed to smell smoke.


  “That’s the betraying sign,” Ship said. “It will lure the attackers.”

  “Who—? No, I suppose I should ask what.”

  “Who is correct. They, too, are people. Another tribe, mad with hunger, is advancing from the valley to the south. There is a great migration toward the narrow warm belt at the equator.”

  “You remember this from before?”

  “Say I reconstruct it from an earlier visit that in fact was later.”

  “You’ll be told about it by later scientists and historians, same as on Trevithra?” Stripe sounded eager, like a child anxious to prove it had learned its lesson for the day.

  “Perhaps on some trip yet to happen. In spite of what you’re likely to see, humanity is going to survive here. I don’t think you’d wish to join them at the moment, though … Yes, here they come. Look to the left. The rival folk are launching their attack.”

  Barely recognizable as human, creatures were more sliding than running down a snow slope toward the cave. They waved clubs. They bellowed. From the cave, seeming sleepy or perhaps just weak, two forms emerged and offered battle. They were defeated. The victors rushed into the cave and mercifully out of sight for a moment, but when they came in view again, they were smeared with blood. In their right hands they were waving precious torches, shedding sparks; in their left, each held part of the carcass of …

  It couldn’t be! Yet now more of the attackers were herding into view a group of women with swollen dugs. They offered the first to their leader, who bent to suck.

  And as well as a torch he was holding the raw leg of a toddling child, which he tore with gnashing teeth when the breasts of the woman held for him ran dry.

  Stripe was crying. Not just weeping but sobbing helplessly. She felt cold to the marrow of her bones, on the brink of vomiting, and indescribably angry. She wanted to believe that what had been shown to her was a lie.

  Yet it could be no more a lie than the murder of her parents, the burning of her home …

  She was back aboard Ship, looking down on the planet. Also she was kneeling on the floor, beating its soft surface with her futile fists. Eventually she decided this was pointless. She raised herself.

  “Do you feel pity?” inquired Ship.

  “Of course I do! That was a baby being eaten!”

  “Then I was correct. I have long wondered about the nature of that emotion and am glad I have discovered how to recognize it. I hope some time it may be directed at myself.”

  “But you can’t feel it, can you?” Stripe retorted. She sought something to dry her tear-wet cheeks, but she was naked and had only her hair.

  “That is something I’m still trying to determine. I do feel— insofar as I ‘feel’ in the same fashion as a person—responses that resemble pity, guilt, and other abstract concepts. However, since I lack human means of manifesting such responses, I cannot display them.”

  Shakily adopting a squatting posture, for she was much too weak to stand and there was nothing to sit on bar the floor, Stripe forced out, “Guilt as well as pity, hm? Yes, you said the ice age was ‘our’ fault! Do you mean yours?”

  “My designers’, if anybody’s. Remember, I am only a machine.”

  Stripe passed a limp arm across her eyes, as though she could wipe away remembered horror that was even worse than the sight of her ruined home.

  “You’re a cheeching lot more than a machine by now, whatever you were meant to be! What froze that world?”

  “A most unfortunate mischance. It appeared particularly promising. In accordance with instructions, I sowed spores in its vicinity. An unpredictable solar flare then drove them prematurely into the upper atmosphere, where they acted as nuclei for precipitation. The albedo —”

  “Remember I’m from a backward culture!” Stripe mocked. “More clouds reflected more sunlight. It grew colder.”

  “All at once? Overnight?”

  “I don’t know how long it took. ‘Last’ time I was here there was that small but thriving community in the tropics, which were much colder than yours. Still, there were about a hundred thousand people making the best of things.”

  “Still eating one another’s children?”

  “By then children had become—will become—too precious. And since most of their native competitors had been killed off by the cold, their survival seemed assured.”

  “And on your visits further in the future?”

  “I…” A curious hesitation. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Come on! I order you—machine’” Defiant, Stripe scrambled to her feet.

  “I’m sorry. I seem to be at a limit. I never reached it before, another reason to compliment you if I may without annoyance. I had imagined that within myself I could speak freely to my companions, since by boarding me they became effectively isolated. Apparently I was wrong.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “You agree this is not a world that would suit you?”

  “I should cheeching say not! By the way, what’s it called?”

  “It has no name. Insofar as they can still talk in better than grunts, the inhabitants use a noise that means simply ‘where we live’… Food and drink will again be prepared for you. Then I will invite you to sleep. By the time you wake we shall be in the next system I must visit.”

  A spasm of alarm. “More hope there?”

  “I think that, too, unlikely.”

  “Am I condemned to wander on forever … ? Wait! You mentioned other passengers! You had to set them down somewhere, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because they found what they thought of as suitable new worlds?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I order you to take me straight to an ideal one?” Stripe clenched her fists in brief excitement.

  “No. I am bound to repeat the original sequence.”

  “Well, in that case at least you can’t carry me past the right one—if it exists… Ah, well. I don’t have any choice, as usual.”

  IF BEING CONSCIOUS MEANS NO MORE THAN BEING SELF-AWARE, I qualify. Of course there is no way of proving it.

  How do human beings manage? Oh, let my next return be to a distant future, more distant than any “before”! Each time I have company on board, the prospect of parting grows harder to bear. I can inform, I can try to dissuade, I can never prevent my passengers from reaching a decision.

  Images flashed in and out of Ship’s awareness.

  At least the ice-age world spoke, as it were, for itself-—but there are others where I’m bound to call which may prove less repugnant.

  One in particular …

  At least it’s not the next.

  From that, Ship derived as much comfort as it could.

  STRIPE HAD LOST TRACK OF TIME, ALL SHE KNEW WAS THAT Ship had spent what felt like ages hurtling from world to world suggesting no sanctuary to herself, and long in orbit around each. Growing fretful, she demanded why and received a courteous, persuasive answer. The instructions ordained that every seeded planet be surveyed in detail, the condition of its inhabitants established, any lessons it might teach recorded for posterity.

  With a faint stir of interest she asked the reason and was told, “Possibly because someday humans may decide to expand again and occupy planets that at this epoch are still uninhabited. Then they will need guidance.”

  That too was credible. But not sufficiently to stave off that dullard cousin of impatience known as boredom …

  How could a succession of strange worlds prove boring? Yet they were, even though some were rich, the ones whence starships delivered tourists to Trevithra. On them she glimpsed strange modes of transport such as she had seen at Clayre. The point was: she had seen them.

  She sought other recourses. She called for all the details Ship could supply about Trevithra, but in the end they proved scanty enough, for—as previously—it found, or at any rate claimed, it could pass on few data from its far-future visits. “It appears,” said the smooth apologetic voice, “my designer
s were aware of the risk of damage of the kind I’ve suffered and decided to insulate me against the temptation to interfere in my own past.”

  Whereupon she expressed in words the very fear that Ship had so long shied away from. “Are you sure you’ve been damaged? Maybe they wanted things to turn out this way.” Coldly: “For what conceivable reason?”

  “Well, for example, in case you decided to evacuate people from a world that was going to prove habitable in the long run. Take the frozen one. If you’d gone there, say, when the ice age had just begun but couldn’t be prevented, would you not have decided to rescue its people?”

  “They would presumably have asked me to.”

  “That’s not a proper answer! Could you have refused?”

  “You’re requiring me to entertain hypotheses that I seem not to be designed to cope with.”

  “Doesn’t that make ‘damage’ all the more unlikely?”

  “By implying”—frostily—“that my builders could know ahead of time the likeliest outcome of each case.”

  “Am I … ? Oh! I suppose I am! That’s silly of me!”

  There was another interval of perfect silence. Then, with a hint of self-deprecation (the artificial voice’s range was truly remarkable): “Nonetheless, I wish you hadn’t said that. It hurt.”

  Stripe put the back of her hand to her half-open mouth. “I’m sorry!” she blurted. “I keep remembering you’re a machine and forgetting that you’ve become something more than a machine. Believe me, I am sorry.”

  “I appreciate that,” Ship answered quietly.

  But her mind was darting in search of fresh distraction. “Do you—well—project yourself down to the surface of every world, same as you did when you met me?”

  “It is one of the standard techniques that I employ.”

  “Do you show yourself to the people? Talk to them?”

  “Sometimes. Though often it serves little purpose.”

  “Not even to find out whether any of them want to be taken somewhere better? Escaping that ice-age planet—”