Harvest of Stars - [Harvest of Stars 01] Read online

  “Sure, I know. Too bloody far away. What’s on Demeter is reachable now.”

  “Primitive life.”

  “All we’ve got. It would’ve been nice if those supposed signals had turned out to be CETI, not a freak of nature, but looks like we’ll have to learn about the universe on our own. So let’s do it.”

  “Eh, bien, if you are not content, we can send anosser spacecraft. First we improve se design, if you spend plenty of money. Also se robots and instruments, yes.” Aulard’s fist crashed on the desk. “But a spacecraft sat can return! Mon Dieu, w’y? Wat is wrong wis se data transmission?”

  “Inadequate, I repeat. The robots do their earnest best, and it isn’t bad, but nobody has yet come up with an artificial intelligence that’s got anything like real imagination. As witness the attrition among the machines now on Demeter. She keeps springing surprises on them that they can’t always handle. And what angles, what opportunities are they overlooking? No, I want a genuine human mind on the spot; and after a while it will need to come home.”

  Aulard gaped for seconds before he muttered, “Sacree putain.”

  “Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m not about to saddle you with developing life support systems for that kind of trip. We can’t afford the antimatter to boost so much extra mass. Agreed. What we’ll send is me, or a twin of me that we’ll make when the time comes.”

  “—I . . . ‘ave . . . nossing to say . . . except sat you—I sought I knew you, but I see I never did. Not se least bit.”

  “Aw, the notion isn’t that hairy-brained, Pierre. Really, it isn’t. I’ve played with it for years, run off some computations for myself, and I’m satisfied it can be done on a halfway sober budget. Listen, the reason we have to bring the spacecraft back, though of course we can leave the robots, the reason is simply that I won’t be able to transmit my entire experience. Interference, insufficient bandwidth, quantum effects, you know the physical limitations better than I do. And then there’s everything, hunches, feel, familiarity, that can’t very well be put into words or diagrams. I’ve got to return and download into myself, or what was the point of my going in the first place?”

  Aulard spread his palms wide and gazed heavenward. “W’at indeed?” he groaned.

  “Easy, amigo. You should thank me. I’m handing you a perfectly gorgeous technical problem. If I know you, for the next several years you’ll wallow in it like a pig in Mississippi mud. Meanwhile, speaking of fluids, I suggest you have a drink. You know where the Scotch is.”

  * * * *

  More stars showed, and more, until they were about as many as unaided vision ever saw through this misty air, or from those nature preserves on Earth where the light-haze was unusually thin. Guthrie amplified their illumination until he could continue down the littoral, hoping to come upon something worth the attention of the science machines. It wasn’t integral to his self-created role, for they explored too. However, he had nothing better to do at the moment. While he flattered himself that he had made discoveries and devised procedures which would have been beyond any prewritten program—still, he wanted his contribution to be as large as possible. He was under no necessity of justifying it to the likes of Aulard; he had decreed it, and that was that. But he wanted to.

  If Aulard was alive when he returned.

  Wind dropped to a lulling. The sea whooshed and rustled. It shimmered black, streaked with starlit foam. Coolness breathed off it. Guthrie stopped. He reached an arm to pick up a shiny object and bring it under his lenses. A piece of shell, iridescent like mother of pearl, nothing he’d seen before on Demeter. Maybe the main database had no record of this either. Maybe it was a clue that should be pursued.

  Probably not. You couldn’t research everything. Life on Demeter might not have evolved past an equivalent of Earth’s Cambrian, or Silurian, or whatever the hell you named—meaninglessly, as alien as the whole biology was—but its diversities and subtleties dwarfed the stellar cosmos.

  Guthrie held the fragment for a minute or two before he stowed it in his collection locker. Once he and Juliana found something very similar on a California beach. Abalone shell, she’d exclaimed. But abalone were nearly extinct! They bent their heads over the marvel. Nobody else was around, they were visiting a country whose economy had crashed, the sun, salt, and sand were theirs alone. Her hair fluttered against his cheek. He slipped an arm beneath her tunic, about her waist. She felt warm and smooth. With a glance and a grin, she drew close. For a program in a neural network it was a vivid memory.

  Guthrie turned his vision aloft. A brightness, lamplike and unwinking, stood high. It was Phaethon, the rogue planet, which would soon swing through the orbit of Demeter. But that would be at a safe remove. Guthrie chose not to think further ahead. His heed sought the stars beyond.

  Constellations and the wan silver of the Milky Way were familiar. His twenty-year voyage had brought him no distance that especially mattered, through the immensity of these galactic outskirts. Of course, the orientation was different. At this hour and this middle latitude, he found Polaris almost straight overhead. His search went onward, past dim red Proxima to Cassiopeia. There an added star outshone the other five: Sol.

  “By God, sweetheart,” he called aloud, across the light-years, to her ashes, “we made it!”

  * * * *

  7

  L

  et’s not get morbid,” Guthrie said. “Better we talk about us.”

  Kyra agreed thankfully. “I wish I could simply hop a plane to someplace foreign.” She couldn’t resist, and didn’t think he’d mind: “With you as hand baggage.” Bleakness again: “But the Sepo must have alerted all airport security devices to watch for anything that could be you. We’d be detected the minute I walked into an airport.”

  Lee nodded. “Too bad Tahir couldn’t plausibly ship that biobox to Cairo or wherever,” he said.

  “That might have been arranged, if we’d had more time,” Guthrie remarked.

  Lee’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”

  “I expect so. Fiddle with the computer files, write in the clearances and permits and other garbage, and I’d’ve been on my way. But contacting the people who can do that, persuading them, planning the specifics, et cetera, would’ve taken days, which we didn’t have.”

  “Why days?” wondered Kyra.

  Guthrie formed a chuckle. “Innocent lass. Well, for your information, though I imagine you’ve guessed it yourself by now, an active underground, a resistance movement, does exist. People who don’t just daydream about bringing the Avantists down and setting up a free country again, but will risk their necks for it. They’re not many, and in public they are impeccable citizens, but they’re well disciplined and little by little they’ve accumulated weapons. Yes, they know they haven’t a prayer of mounting a revolution by themselves, but they want to be prepared should a chance ever come along and meanwhile, now and then, here and there, some among them can quietly do something.

  “Like other such folk in the past, they’re organized in cells of a few persons each. No member of any cell knows for certain that more than one in any other belongs to the outfit. That way, if the Sepo catch somebody, even if they deep-quiz him, he can’t guide them to making a clean sweep of the camaradas. But it does slow down communications.”

  Kyra’s spine tingled. “Just the same, there are Chaotics in the government —in at least a few useful positions?”

  “Uh-huh. I don’t know the details, nor should I.”

  Lee stared into the lenses. “How do you know what you do, sir?” His voice trembled a bit.

  “Obvious, I thought,” Guthrie answered tartly.

  Yes, Kyra thought, now it was, after what she had seen and he had related. Over the years, Fireball must have developed some connections, however tenuous, with the secret force. For instance, individual consortes who helped smuggle political fugitives across the borders would hear things, and the knowledge would eventually come to Guthrie.

  He might or might not be in
direct touch with the junta. Probably not, she reckoned. That could be dangerous both to them and to Fireball. Besides, in spite of Avantist accusations, the company never had been in the business of overthrowing governments. Even now, she supposed, the jefe would settle for a return to the status quo.

  But still, cautiously, indirectly, Fireball and the rebels maintained a degree of rapport. Once in a while, one party was able to do the other a favor.

  The question leaped into her. “Has Fireball infiltrated too?”

  “Not worth mentioning,” Guthrie replied. “Most people we could engage and trust to do that have backgrounds that’d rule them out. Besides, their kind seldom make good government employees.” His tone harshened. “On the other hand, it seems clear that the Avantists have planted some agents among us. Not family members, probably not trothgivers, but hirelings in a position to spy, if nothing else. That may well be how they learned Jonas Nordberg would be worth kidnapping and wringing dry—my friend, who turned out to know where my duplicate was stashed. It also means that we can’t just phone Quito from a public booth. We don’t know what the enemy’s interception capabilities are. They must be fairly good, or the Avantists wouldn’t have felt confident enough to try this stunt.

  “And, positively, my alter ego knows what I knew about Fireball’s arrangements in North America at the time he came back. They’ve developed since then, but he’s got leads that the Sepo won’t be slow to follow. I’d better not use what lines into the government I’ve got, nor rely on what information I have about it. All can go to trace and trap me.”

  What lines might those be? wondered Kyra. He’d seen Avantism coming. He’d made preparations against it, and done more after it arrived. Did that include slipping worms into essential computer programs? How much of Anson Guthrie lurked in the brains of the state itself?

  How fast could his double aid his hunters to answer that? When would this resource too be turned against him?

  He swung his stalks toward Lee. “The first problem we have to deal with concerns you,” he went on. “If the cops start to seriously suspect you, and get thorough about it—pointing them at Tahir and his men who rigged our escape would be a shabby return for kindness. Also, a blow to the resistance movement.”

  Lee stiffened in his chair. He spoke as rigidly. “I know. I’ve planned a safeguard.”

  The bag he had brought along lay on his lap. He opened it and took forth a bottle and an injector. “This,” he said. The blood had gone out of his lips. “Lesmonil.”

  “What’s that?” Kyra felt a vein throb in her throat. Sweat gathered in her armpits, cold and rank.

  Lee looked straight ahead, at the nearest of the walls that enclosed him. “A synthetic drug.” His words jerked. “Seldom used. Not just because it’s illegal and hard to get. The immediate effects are ecstatic. But the slightest overdose is amnesiac, like a large overdose of alcohol except that this is total.” He barked a laugh. “Fun that you can’t remember the next day isn’t so hyper, is it? The amnesiac is really powerful. It doesn’t inhibit transfer from circulating to permanent memory, it destroys every trace. That’s why the ban on it is enforced more than on ordinary brain-poison. Even psychomeds who might find it helpful in treating mental patients, even they can’t get any.”

  “Unless they’re government psychomeds re-educating hard-case correctees, I’ll bet,” Guthrie said.

  Lee’s mouth drew taut. “Yes, I’ve heard rumors that it sees a certain amount of use in those institutions. As for what little is on the black market, most goes for pleasure—an ecstatic, remember—but I daresay various criminals have other applications of it.”

  Kyra jumped toward him. “No, Bob!” she yelled. “You can’t—wipe yourself out—like that!”

  He gave her a smile of sorts. “I don’t plan to. Before I traded my informant for this, I tapped the public database. The formula’s not there, of course, but the basic physiological facts are. The stuff attacks recent memories first. I reckon they’re the most accessible, cytologically. For my body weight, I can estimate the dose that’ll eliminate, roughly, the past fifty hours. No more.”

  “And then? And then?”

  “Why, I’ll wake up here tomorrow, sick, puzzled about what happened, but able to make my way home. If I’m arrested soon, a blood test may show I went on a lesmonil binge. No doubt the Sepo will wonder what made me do something so unlike my past life—I will myself—and they may deep-quiz me. If so, they’ll learn that I harbored the jefe, but that’s all they’ll learn, because that’s all there will be to extract. Someday you can explain to me.”

  “If . . . you survive.”

  He shrugged. “They seldom actually kill the subjects of their ministrations, you know. I expect I’ll go into rehabilitation.”

  Whatever is left of you, after they’ve been through your brain with their chemicals and electronics, Kyra wanted to cry out. And if you go through the years of treatment at a correction center, whatever they finally release will bear only the name of Robert E. Lee.

  She blinked hard, knotted her fists, and stammered, “W-we’ll get you out soon.” Before they can harm you beyond healing, she vowed. And meanwhile, now, she must keep her spirit as high as his.

  Hopefulness wasn’t foolishness. It was a necessity for survival.

  Guthrie, too, must want to stay clear of pity. “That’s a nice theory you’ve got,” he growled. “Listen, though. I didn’t know about this hell-soup either, but I’ve seen what assorted kinds of dope can do to people. Mainly, it ain’t predictable. How close can you gauge your dose? And ever hear about idiosyncratic reactions? You could wake up a drooling vegetable. Or dead, which I would prefer.”

  Kyra saw determination stiffen in Lee. With it went a calm that slowly eased his muscles and brought life back into his face. “It’s a gamble, yes,” he said. “The whole business is. But the odds don’t look too bad, with you two on my side. And, sir, I gave troth.”

  Silence dwelt among them.

  “Okay, son,” Guthrie said at last, most softly. “They’ll honor your name as long as there are free men alive, if we win. But Christ, I wish I could shake your hand.”

  Kyra stooped over Lee and cast her arms about him. “Gracias, mil gracias,” she said through sudden tears.

  He rose and returned the embrace heartily. It became a kiss that went on.

  “Ay,” she murmured, gaze upon gaze, after they drew a step apart, “you’ve got surprises in you, you do. Let’s investigate this further when we get the chance.”

  His mouth quirked. “You’ll have to remind me. I sure hope you will.”

  Guthrie’s basso brought their heads around to him. “Sorry, kids, we’d better stick with immediate business. Bob, you’re doubtless better informed about things local than Kyra or me. What’s our least dicey way out of here, would you say?”

  Lee blinked and responded like a man roused from dream. “Oh. . . . Oh, yes. Bueno, I think ... I think you should leave the area pronto. Train and bus stations—” His voice quickened. “They don’t have detectors like airports, and they probably aren’t under surveillance as yet. The sheer numbers of passengers ought to help too. But don’t travel in plain sight. A general alarm could be broadcast, maybe. Take a train, Kyra, a private accommodation. Not a room, certainly not a suite. Too expensive and conspicuous. A recintito. They’re fairly cheap, but almost always available, what with the depressed state of the economy. Pay in cash dollars.”

  “Good!” Guthrie exclaimed. “I said it before, you’ve missed your calling. Next time I need a conspirator I’ll contact you.”

  “But where should we go?” Kyra asked into the air.

  “I have a notion,” Guthrie said. “Fireball consortes aren’t safe and, given the threads the Sepo may have collected, I no longer trust what few Chaotic plug-ins I know about, either. But if we buy a ticket to, hm, Portland—”

  “Stop,” Lee snapped. “Be on your way.”

  “But you, you are going to forget,” Kyr
a said.

  “The sooner you lift off, the better. My absence has them excited, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Guthrie said. “When they’ve heard from the other sites they’ve raided, they’ll tighten the net in this region. If they trace your movements back, they’ll find the clerk here, who’ll remember Kyra. That should take a few days, but you’re right, we’ve got to weigh anchor.”

  Lee drew breath. “Besides,” he told Kyra, “I’d rather be alone when I take my injection and fall into my rapture. I’ve gathered that it isn’t a dignified spectacle.”

  She had no words. Guthrie rumbled, “So long, son. Vaya con Dios,” before he retracted his eyes and she slipped him into the pack. She slung it on her shoulders and took the clothes bag in her hand. Ludicrously, she thought of other things she needed, a comb, a toothbrush— The terminal would have automats. She laid her free arm around Lee’s neck. “Oh, damn,” was all she could find to utter. This time the kiss was brief. You might call it chaste. He stood in the doorway and watched her go down the stairs.