The Fleet of Stars Read online

  His thoughts, his feelings, joined the currents flowing in the sea of mind. Their tiny waves found resonances. The entity responded to itself.

  The bliss of communion that he expected became communication.

  Afterward he remembered as if it had been spoken what had actually come to him as near-instant, tremendous knowledge. His organic brain could do no better.

  Yes. I/you would soon have called you/me to this in any case. The news from the stars is proving more than troublesome. An advent in the near future may well precipitate a crisis. That in itself can doubtless be coped with, but it will leave its seeds in history, and what springs from them may be very strange. The Oneness looks millions of years forward; but to bring the great vision into being, it must also provide for the next few centuries.

  Hitherto, even in union like this with the whole, you have received no information concerning the plan, for you needed none, nor did it require your help. Now the work must accelerate and intensify, so that all may be ready in time, before events have gone beyond control. Your mortal self has had experiences of humankind that, however quiet, are in some ways unique. Your thoughts and emotions, your contribution to that which is being created, will have value, helping speed and enrich the creating.

  You would have learned after your bodily death, but then you will no longer be Chuan the man. Rejoice that already you will have an active part, small but real, in shaping the morrow of the cosmos.

  Here is the secret. The solar lens-—

  Always when a synnoiont came out of synnoiosis, there was a period of disorientation. The world seemed flat, unsubstantial, meaningless. You learned how to shake off the sense of unendurable loss and go back to being human. Presently you felt how your strength had been renewed and inner peace restored.

  But what he had had revealed to him kept Chuan awake till dawn.

  Home in Sananton on vacation, Kinna Ronay donned her skinsuit and biostat and left the house. She had no immediate duties, she simply wanted to ramble.

  The sun had cleared the eastern horizon. The sky was going coralline, with a few diamond-bright streamers of ice-cloud high aloft. Hills, dunes, boulders, craters stood forth in soft colors and metallic gleams. Northward, a ridge climbed rugged to the rim of Eos Chasma. Closer by, the house walls reached tawny, dome and ports shone, and the plantation roused. Low on the ground, solaria unrolled its leaves, turning their white sides down and their ebony sides up. Breath-of-life spread out its green and began to brew the oxygen that seed mites and plowbugs would tap when they emerged. A phantom breeze stirred the filaments of silkentrees. Darkness lingered in an orchard, but goldfruit hung like a thousand lanterns. Soon the wasserschatz would thaw and release the water in its drum-shaped bole, mixed with antifreeze, out through its countless capillaries; and life would get to work livine.

  Kinna had been in search of words to voice her happiness. They came together now and she said them aloud, for no one but herself.

  "Each day this land is reborn anew, However old it may be, In rusty rose and shadowful blue And some glints like the light off a sea. Above the crest of a purple hill A crag stands towery tall, And I can walk wherever I will— The most wonderful part of it all."

  8

  AS HE STEPPED from the volant onto the airfield, into a wind lulling mild across three thousand kilometers of equatorial ocean, a brown girl gave Fenn a white smile and laid a garland around his neck. lokepa Hakawau hugged him but then stepped back and said formally, "Aloha, hoa, he kotoku rerenga tahi" in the lingua franca of the polity. Fenn recognized the phrase, a welcome to a rare visitor. He was also an eagerly awaited one. It had taken him awhile to get an extended leave of absence.

  A boy, not a machine of any kind, carried his locker-bag for him, and that too was part of the greeting. Strangers who saw him bowed. It was not that Fenn stood out physically; most people here were somewhat shorter and much darkef, but not all, for every Terran bloodline had flowed into the Lahui Kuikawa. It was just that he was obviously special, having arrived from Kamehameha Spaceport in Hawaii, and alone at that.

  He had taken the routine courtesies among Moondwellers for granted, except when he consciously didn't bother with them. He was rather scornfully familiar with the sociological dictum that more elaborate observances gave humans something to do, added significance to their lives. He had played documentaries about the varieties of them around Earth. But suddenly, here, he encountered ritual that was not theater but as natural as breathing.

  lokepa guided him across the big, crowded float platform. Structures reared pastel-tinted, their lines and curves suggestive of sails or prows, above a traffic that was mostly afoot, mostly chattering and cheerful. Flowers blazed in strips and boxes. He caught hints of their fragrance through the salt air. "I've got you a room at the Lilisaire," lokepa said. "Figured you'd feel easier in a hotel than in a private home, till you've grown used to us. I can take you straight there if you'd like to rest awhile,"

  "No, I'm not tired," Fenn replied.

  "Pomaikai. I didn't expect you'd be. Let Mikala take your duffel over. Meanwhile, we'll go talk. Then I'll see you to your quarters, and you had better get some rest before the luau starts."

  "You're giving a party . .. for me?"

  "Out on the Malolo." A brawny arm pointed through a gap between walls, over several kilometers of blue waves dusted with ·diamond by the sun, to the great ship that, Fenn knew, held lokepa's anaina—community of extended families. "First a talimalo, a proper reception for you." Seeing his friend brace himself a little, the kanaka added: "I think you'll enjoy it. Nothing stuffy. You for sure ought to enjoy the celebration afterward. We're not solemn po'e here, you know. It wouldn't be right without a talimalo, though. You're important."

  Fenn was unsure about that, but decided to wait and see what it meant.

  Leaving the boy to go his way, the men boarded one of the shuttles that ran continuously between here and Nauru, and were soon on the island. No matter how often he had seen it on multiceiver and vivifer, Fenn found it astonishing. He was used to high-technology concentrations of humans. This was an atoll, larger and more elevated than most but still less than twenty kilometers in circumference. Yet parks and gardens covered at least half of it, palms swaying and rustling, grass a velvet carpet bordered and crossed with scarlet,, violet, golden, dawn-pink, Mars-orange extravagances of flower beds, here a fountain, there a plot where raked gravel and standing stones invited contemplation.

  Although few buildings w'ere residential, none rose high and all were of traditional form, frequently in natural wood, with sweeping roofs, shady verandas up which grew bougainvillea or fuchsia, perhaps a hand-carved tiki in front or a figurehead springing from the gable. Vehicles were minimal in size and numbers. People walked, leisurely, in loose and colorful clothes; they stopped to chat, they whiled away an hour in an outdoor cafe; a group of young folk in a room whose door stood open sang to the strains of guitar and flute; a man and a maiden skipped along hand in hand; in another room, an old woman sat weaving cloth to a pattern she must have made up herself; several men passed by in plumed masks. ... It did not look like the centrum of a polity that dominated half the Pacific and reckoned just its human members at eight million.

  Well, Fenn thought, of course there were many other islands, not to mention ships like lokepa's hometown. Besides, given the right equipment and, what counted for far more, the right habits, you could accomplish everything you wanted to without having to act stiffly efficient. The truly extraordinary feature was how well-ordered the society appeared to be, how almost everybody seemed to belong.

  No doubt the exceptions were plentiful. He had heard about stresses and unrest on the increase, here as everywhere else.

  "Where are we bound?" he asked after a while.

  "To the luakini, seeing that you've arrived ready for action," lokepa replied. "It comes out 'temple' in Anglo, or else 'spiritual center,' but I don't think either's quite right. Manu wants to meet you first and broach the
matter to you himself, in a very preliminary way. He aims to get your input about it, and some feel as to whether you'll be right for it. He'o and I recommended you to him."

  "Whatever the 'matter' is." Fenn grinned against the tension inside.

  "I told you you'll hear today. In principle, anyhow. Later you'll see the engineering studies and so forth; we'll want your opinion as well as the experts'. If the proposal clears all this, we'll make it public. If it draws enough interest, it'll be debated in the longhouses on every island and every shipland. If they like it there, we can begin dickering with the Synesis and whoever else might be concerned. A long haul to maybe nowhere. But I've got my hopes."

  "Who's this, uh, Manu?"

  “Manu Kelani, the chief kahuna of Nauru. You start at the top, mate."

  The top indeed, Fenn thought with a prickling up his backbone. High priest, grand advisor, primary magistrate of an unwritten law stronger than any in the databases— however you wanted to render the title—had the chief kahuna of the polity's capital ever before passed personal judgment on an obscure young foreigner?

  The luakini lay massively timbered behind a sculptured colonnade. An honor guard of men in sarongs and rainbow cloaks, armed with spear guns, stood in front, beneath the star-and-wavecrest banner of the Lahui Kuikawa. lokepa's usual offhandedness turned grave as he saluted and addressed their leader. With equal dignity, he and Fenn were admitted. Four women in loose white gowns, flowers wreathing their unbound hair, conducted the two down a dim, cool hall and left them to wait in a room clearly meant for private talk. Windows, open to the sea breeze, were high in the walls, each of which bore a fixed mural—the genesis of the Keiki Moana, their ancestral refuge with a few human caretakers in Hawaii, Kelekolio Pela setting forth the Dao Kai, the cession of Nauru to descendants who had become a nation. A table with a terminal and a few chairs were the only furniture on the hardwood floor.

  Manu Kelani entered through a rear door. He was tall, his hair bushy-white, his features more Melanesian than. Polynesian but the eyes incongruously emerald. A golden cross hung on his breast above a blue robe and he carried a staff topped with a miniature anchor of an ancient type, lokepa went to one knee. Manu laid a hand on his head. Words passed between them. Fenn could only, awkwardly, salute.

  lokepa rose. Manu turned to the newcomer. “Be welcome," he said in fluent Anglo. "I have heard much about you."

  "Nothing too bad, I hope, sir," Fenn mumbled.

  Manu smiled. "Enough to show that you are spirited. Do please be seated." He took a chair by the table and flicked the terminal. An attendant appeared. "Would you care for refreshment?"

  Presently they were sipping coffee. Manu inquired about the trip from Luna. Fenn described it briefly, a standard ferry ride, then blurted, "Now what is this— Pardon me, sir. I, I don't mean to be, uh, unmannerly."

  Manu smiled again. “If you feel impatient, that is quite understandable. It is we who must ask pardon, for withholding information until now. It was generous of you to come on our bare word. Confidentiality is wisest at this early stage."

  He knew how to put a man at ease. "Well," Fenn replied, "lokepa promised me it'd be interesting, and in that regard, he's never failed me yet."

  The seaman laughed. Evidently, among the Lahui, respect for a person of high standing did not imply hushed awe. "I'm afraid this time it's nothing rowdy." He winked. "Though we'll see to that also in due course."

  Manu grew serious. "You are of space, Lieutenant Fenn, born and bred. Your knowledge and skills go well beyond the requirements of your daily life on the Moon, and you can readily acquire more. So I have been assured. It speaks of a longing to use them."

  Emotion exploded. "Slag and slaughter, yes!" In abashed haste: "Apologies, sir. But lokepa did hint—Do you mean—"

  “The news from the stars has touched everyone in the Solar System," Manu said. "It has started a ferment that in its many different forms grows daily more dynamic, for better or worse. In us too."

  "In a lot of us, not a ferment," lokepa muttered. "A bloody fire."

  "Surely, Lieutenant Fenn," Manu said, "you can see how the concept, the tremendous fact of the Life Mothers, must affect us. They are like a sudden incarnation of the Dao Kai itself."

  Flashingly, Fenn reflected on what he knew about the Sea Way: less a religion than a philosophy, a manner of thinking and feeling and living—less a set of precepts than a set of behaviors, organic, founded on the wholeness of all life and its oneness with all the universe—He had seen lokepa and He'o meditate beneath the stars and under the water—If ever a people loved life, it was the Lahui Kuikawa....

  "The Synesis will not choose to create an Earth Mother," Manu went on.

  Somehow Fenn felt he should deny the finality of that, if only to quell anger that did not belong here in this company. "I don't know, sir. If a majority of people want it—her—''

  "A majority won't," lokepa growled. "Too volcano-disruptive of their comfortable habits. And it'd cost like whale fur, you know."

  Fenn nodded. He had seen and heard discussion aplenty since Ibrahim's announcement. Beyond the investment of resources and work—which nobody could estimate with any realism, except that it would be gigantic—lay an un-reckonable demolition of material establishments and social institutions, merely to make room for the change. The lesser minds of the cybercosm had been unable to make any specific predictions and the Teramind had vouchsafed no prophecies.

  "Besides, it can't be done in the lifetime of anybody now alive, or probably their grandchildren's," lokepa continued. "That much sacrifice for benefits that distant? Don't you believe it."

  Fenn could not but argue: "I hear talk of people downloading to wait for the time," with their aged bodies simultaneously given euthanasia. Otherwise, what would be the point? One lucky twin ... and one unlucky.

  "A few will, no doubt," lokepa snorted.'"Which means they'll opt out of the game. Do you seriously suppose they'd ever be woken up to share in an Earth Mother they'd done nothing to earn? Or that they could be happy in her kind of world? Not that Earth will get any."

  Manu's mild tone snapped their attention back to him. "It may be that the Teramind will give us an easier means to the same end."

  "It hasn't yet, has it, kapena?" lokepa replied, instantly quiet again.

  "No. We must consider the possibility, but I do not imagine it will come to pass. Perhaps no other way exists, or perhaps it would be wrong for our race. It is not for us to question the Teramind."

  "But we don't have to sit meekly by, either, do we, kapena?" lokepa's gaze sought Fenn. "That's what this is all about. I'd like to try for immortality and, yes, by Pele, the stars. I may well never make it myself, but I can have fun along the way, and half the fun will be in knowing that someday we'll have our own Life Mother, smack up against the smug Teramind."

  Chill ran through Fenn's flesh. He felt his mane and beard bristle. "By all the dead down under—" he breathed.

  Manu spoke, gently and unwaveringly. "Our friend is rather vehement, lieutenant. But he is right. Such an undertaking accords with our Dao as it does with no other way of thought or deed in the Solar System."

  Fenn groped for comprehension. "Do you mean—But you can't transform Earth. lokepa just said it. They won't let you."

  “Nor should we, if it is not desired by others. No one should have such power."

  lokepa's tone went practical. "The territory we control is too small to support a Life Mother. At least that's what our biologists figure."

  "Small?" Fenn exclaimed. "Half the Pacific Ocean?"

  "Not much solid land there, and life in the sea is too, uh, diffuse. That's what the experts think, and believe me, we and our computers have been giving it a fleetload of thought." lokepa sighed. "Could we even steer our private course, separate from the other life on Earth? Doesn't look very likely to me."

  "Furthermore," Manu added, "we must not be arrogant. It may well be that a transformation of Earth would cost too dearly, in s
pirit still more than in wealth. Nor do we know if it is possible, in a biosphere as highly evolved as this." He paused. "Yet are we altogether barred from the dream? Can we not do as they did at Demeter and elsewhere, on a world where there is little or nothing to oppose us?"

  It leaped in Fenn. "Wait!" he gasped. "I see—in space—the Moon? You've been interested in, in a colony there—"

  "Yes. We decided against that, as you know."

  "But you still sent missions."

  Since Manu did not respond, lokepa explained. "Oh, it's not Lahui style to shut the door absolutely on something that's looked promising. And probably any such operation would involve Luna." His smile twitched lopsided. “Also, it was an excuse to go back for more romps yonder. But now—"

  "Where?" Fenn cried. "Mars?"

  "We had not considered it in earnest before," said Manu, "because the concept of our colonizing beyond Earth began to die when the Moon proved disappointing. The fact of the Life Mothers changes the entire equation. Mars appears to be an option."

  "T-t-terraforming it—along the lines of Demeter? The job's always been judged too big to pay, and—"

  "Remember, we speak in terms of centuries."

  "And we start small," lokepa added. "And every step along the way has to be worth taking for its own sake. Its profit, whatever that may mean in any particular case."

  Manu's voice throbbed low. "The Habitat was once Ragaranji-go, and wondrously alive."

  Fenn's mind sprang to and fro, wild with surprise and distances opened, like a captive dolphin abruptly set free. "Begin with a Habitat," he stammered. "Your sort of Habitat, with some kind of sea in it and—In Mars orbit? That'd be far enough off that nobody could complain you're interfering with Earth-Luna satellites or, or anything. But materials—"