The Fleet of Stars Page 13

  Scorian halted and leveled his bird-of-prey eyes on her. A surprisingly soft, drawling voice gave an old-style greeting: "Well beheld, donrai."

  "With courtesy." she responded in the same formal Lunarian. (Actually, "enteur" implied respect for pride, including one's own.)

  Elverir stood very straight, palm on breast. "Aou, freelord," he said.

  Scorian smiled the least bit and gestured at the chairs. All sat down, the visitors opposite him. He whistled. An armed retainer brought in a wine carafe and goblets, set them on the low table between, and exited. Scorian nodded at Elverir, who made haste to pour.

  The chief raised his drink first. "Uwach yei," he said, the traditional toast.

  "Y-your health, donrai," Kinna faltered. She followed him in sipping. The wine was a full-bodied white. Starberry overtones roused memories of home. Could it be loot? "This is...good."

  "You have Elverir to thank," Scorian replied. "You are here at his urging."

  "Me, what can I do?"

  "Ey, maychance naught—or maychance much. If the experiment proves out, we will invite more Terrans to hear our tale."

  "It will prove out, freelord," Elverir ventured. "I have avowed that Kinna Ronay is trustworthy."

  "Are you wholly certain?" Scorian asked.

  The young man lifted his head in haughtiness. "I stake myself upon it."

  "You honor me, trouvour," Kinna told him, more moved than she had expected.. "I'll try to deserve it." She mustered courage. “But I may well decide—keep on believing—what you do here is not right."

  "Boldly spoken," Scorian said. She recognized the approbation.

  It heartened her to go on. "Your cities, your countryside—in revolt—"

  “We claim no more than is ours, resting on the bones of our ancestors," Scorian declared. "Crommelin has no · rights over us, nor do the machines of Earth."

  She shivered at the glacial fury in his tone. How long could the standoff continue? She wanted to say that republican forces could occupy the towns whenever they chose and piecemeal scour away the Inrai, but refrained because of the blood that would be shed. He would probably observe, as her father had done, that Lunarian pressure in the House of Ethnoi had something to do with their patience. How then could she convince him that violence was not in the soul of the Synesis or its cybercosm? It was bad enough detaining whatever outlaws were captured. A Lunarian would often suicide before submitting to correction; humane though the conditions were, several had anyway. But if the Inrai became a serious threat and the authorities saw no alternative—

  "How free are you now?" Recalling her observation en route: "That life of yours out in the desert must be pitifully limited."

  "In its fashion," Elverir admitted, "and often short." Nature—dust storms, rockslides, sand hells, wandering lost, choking or freezing when biostats failed—killed more than armed clashes did; but however they died, no Inrai were left in revivable condition. He glowed. “Yet, while it lasts, a full aliveness!"

  I didn't persuade him, she thought sickly.

  Scorian relieved her: "At present your comrade is more useful where he is..If you would save him from going wild, then work toward getting us our liberty."

  "I don't understand," she said. "I've tried,'really I have, but I can't. What harm if you joined us? How are we restricted or, or bossed or anything, except in a few reasonable ways people have to agree on if they're going to live together like human beings?"

  "Ever the cybercosm encroaches."

  "Donrai, you speak as if it ruled the Solar System."

  "Does it not? None are free save out on Proserpina and the comets—and here, in this narrow space, which is piece by piece gnawed from us."

  "How? Hasn't the Synesis—the Synesis, I say, not the cvbercosm but human civilization—hasn't it stayed its hand against you? In spite of some almighty insolent provocation, donrai!"

  A tight-lipped smile crossed Scorian's countenance. The scar on his cheek writhed. "The spirit has not been bleached out of you, at least, my lady. But as for invasions, to name only the latest, see yonder." He waved a hand at that shadow on the horizon which was Pavonis Mons. The sun very low, the peak seemed larger than before, black under a deepeningly red sky where dust streamers scudded. "There, halfway to the summit, sits now a stronghold of the enemy's."

  "What?" She was astonished. "Do you mean the Star Net Station? I know about it, of course. But how can it possibly hurt you? Is it anything except wonderful?"

  For a moment the vision danced and sang before her. The Star Net, astronomical instruments orbiting from near the sun to out among the comets, linked by laser beams and electrophotonic minds, one vast observer looking into the heart of the galaxy and toward the uttermost ends of the universe—and now here, on her Mars, a part of it that was also a centrum to receive and store data, a hoard of marvels and miracles—

  "It is theirs," Scorian said flatly, "built by them on Threedom land without leave of freeholder or seigneur. A scientist has told me the reasons given for its construction are feeble. It need not be where it is to serve the research. One like it could as well have been raised elsewhere. What is it, then, save an outpost and an outrage?''

  "But nobody lives there."

  "A robot does," Elverir said, "if you can call it alive."

  His words appalled her. Was Scorian's bigotry so contagious, or had her friend soft-played his in her presence all these years?

  "Did the workers, machines, and materials fare overland," the chief said, "we would have fought them each centimeter of the way."

  Kinna had heard that was the reason everything for the construction had traveled by air. At the time, she was indignant—bandits snapping at the heels of a sublime enterprise—but today she began to catch glimmerings of the opposite viewpoint. She didn't have to accept it to say, "Eyach, if a road had gone through, with supply depots along it, you might have felt menaced."

  "We would have destroyed it as it was being built. Could we only, we would destroy that thing on the mountain."

  "Oh, no!" she cried. "Please!"

  "Have no fear," Elverir sighed. "Its fence and machines guard it well."

  "Someday," Scorian murmured, "we may try how well that is."

  "But I tell you, I don't understand," Kinna protested. "Why are you angry? Why can't you make peace? I know how easy that would be. My father's talked about it. Amnesty—"

  "Domestication," Elverir said.

  "No! Are you a slave? Don't you live in Belgarre according to your own law, your own style? It'd be the same for the Threedom."

  "Yes, pet animals may scamper loose about a spacecraft," Scorian jeered. "Bulkheads keep them out of any place that matters. They have naught to say about where the ship is bound."

  "What do you want, for plenum's sake?"

  He spiked her with his gaze and answered remorselessly: "First, a Threedom sovereign throughout Tharsis, allied with Proserpina." How much of this fury had been aroused by messages and messengers from that world? "Later, a sovereign Mars." A Lunarian Mars. "At last, the Luna that was and is ours, returned to our race." The irrendentism she had heard muttered spoke nakedly forth. "Is that overmuch? Earth need never dread us." Contempt: "We are not interested in what Terrans call 'empire.' "

  "But why?" Kinna asked in bewilderment. "What's the purpose? You talk about freedom as if you had none this moment. What else would you do with ... that precious sovereignty of yours?"

  The room was growing dark. She imagined the specter of the nation-state walking in through the wall, from the cold and unbreathable wind outside, followed by war and war and war.

  No, Scorian perhaps was right about that. Lunarians weren't pack animals like wolves or Terrans, ready to follow any ravening alpha male; they were more like lions in their prides. Yet lions too were hunters. And Scorian could be wrong. It was a hideous chance to take.

  He was answering her: "We have no purpose, no destiny. The cybercosm does, whatever its plan may be. We shall not meekly, blindly,
be carried along like you. We will go wheresoever we ourselves will."

  The sun went under the horizon. The instant Martian night clapped down. Scorian had nulled the house lights. He did not immediately let them turn on and blanket the sky, but sat for a little while and talked softly, almost questioningly.

  "See the universe. Its strangeness overpowers us. But are we unfit to try to know it? Is that for the Teramind alone? We hear of a momentous discovery a solar lens has made. The tale must lie archived yonder, as well as elsewhere, up in the station on Pavonis. Why do they put off disclosing it? What does the cybercosm keep from us, and for what reason?"

  "Where go those light-speed ships they have lately built?" Elverir put in.

  "If they go anywhere," Kinna said defensively. "It's been explained that they're still experimental. And we are getting reports from the, the interstellar missions."

  "What truth is in them?" Scorian demanded. "How shall we know? Nay, we are being refused."

  "The data are uncertain; they need confirmation—"

  "Lest the Teramind have to confess making a mistake? The Proserpinans sought to establish a lens of their own, and failed. They think this was belike the work of the cybercosm. Someday we shall see." Scorian's hiss was like a knife being drawn from the sheath.

  10

  A BOAT LEFT the shiptown Malolo and turned east. Induction drive soundless, bow barely whispering through the water, it went like a living swimmer, but swiftly, swiftly. The waves bore it in long surges and deep murmurs, surrounded it with their blues, violets, greens, white laces of foam. Sunlight danced on them in shards and stars. Though the wind was deflected by a screen around the open cockpit, its song poured over the two who sat there.

  Near the starboard horizon and reaching beyond it, pe-lagiculture laid a dark carpet. Glints told of machines at work, tending the plants, herding the fish. A thermal tower lifted above, where temperature differential drove the pumps that brought nutrients up from the bottom while discharging fresh water and energy into storage units. To port, the sea was entirely open. Yacht sails winged here and there across it. Aloft, a hang glider dropped from a small dirigible, caught an updraft, and soared exuberant.

  Fenn drew a salt breath, consciously savoring it. "What a gorgeous day," he said. "I still don't understand why lokepa didn't come along."

  Wanika Tauni smiled. "Why should he?" she replied.

  "Well, he and He'o—partners—"

  "I'm close to the Keiki Moana too," she reminded him. "And my cousin is a simpatico man."

  "Huh?" However fluent her Anglo, Fenn didn't quite grasp her meaning. He stared at her. She was worth staring at, a big young woman, full-bodied, black hair falling free past vivid dark eyes, snub nose, generous mouth, brown cheeks and shoulders. Like him, she wore merely a blouse and shorts, but she didn't need the sun oil he had rubbed on his skin. In the days and nights while Malolo cruised from Nauru, they had come to share much laughter and some seriousness.

  "Don't be so earnest," she teased. "It gets in the way."

  "Uh, I don't object, you realize," Fenn answered awkwardly. "Couldn't ask for better company. But this today, it's supposed to, uh, educate me. Isn't it?"

  "Everything is. That doesn't mean we can't enjoy ourselves."

  There spoke the Dao Kai, he thought. How easygoing and easy it sounded. How hard, evasive, maddening it could be if you weren't born and raised to it. In the cities of Luna he had seen attempts at half a dozen land-bound versions. Documentaries had shown many others, all around Earth. None seemed more than superficial at best, grotesque at worst, nor did any appear to yield more than discontent with the existing system—no workable alternative. Manu Kelani had called them part of a general spiritual secession, which had found rto place to withdraw to.

  Here, in mid-ocean, the real thing reigned, not just a formulated philosophy but a Way: traditions, rituals, relationships, a sense of oneness with nature and life; minimally few sophotects, never a synnoiont, yet no hostility toward cybercosm or Synesis—And here also it was breaking down, with malaise among the elder, rebelliousness among the younger, everything from simple rudeness and gross unconventionality to crime and violence, and increasing numbers of the best departing in search of something happier somewhere else. "We're starting to see how we're in a cage," lokepa had growled. "A preserve, at least. Oh, it's a big preserve, and we can do whatever we want inside it that's possible, but how much is possible and what do the old ways mean any longer?''

  Fenn shook himself. "I'm sorry," he apologized. These past days had brought an unwonted degree of mildness upon him. "I can try, but I'll never really belong among you."

  Wanika regarded him closely. "You can if you wish to, by what you do, if not quite by what you are," she said. "We need you."

  He respected her judgments. She was not simply a championship surfer. Her work was akin to his father's, concerned with the ecological balance and well-being of wild species, which the Lahui Kuikawa did not entrust to even intelligent machines; and she took an above-average active part in affairs of her anaina. Nevertheless, he must in honesty admit, "I wonder about that. What can I actually do?"

  "More than we now know, I suspect. Our grandchildren's lives may turn on it." In thinking so far ahead, she was typical of her folk. It wasn't futurism; it was unity through time.

  "No, wait," he protested. "I can't give you anything but—an opinion, a guess, hardly worth the name of advice."

  "We shall begin to find out about that today, shall we .not?"

  The boat fared on. Mdlolo dropped below the rim of sight. An islet hove in view. It was artificial, afloat. Pe-lagiculture wasn't practiced near coral, which the associated plankton bloom would have damaged. This patch of ground was treeless, grassless, covered only with sand, shell, and rocks. Buildings clustered at the middle, low and bleakly functional. Here was a resting place and rookery for the Keiki Moana. Wanika handed Fenn an optic. Through it he made out the crowded seal-forms darkening a beach.

  One broke through the waves alongside. Fenn recognized He'o. He wore a vocal synthesizer. His natural voice coughed beneath the shout: "Aloha, hoapili! Are you ready?"

  The same eagerness leaped up in Fenn. “We soon will be," he cried back.

  Wanika ordered the boat to stop, lie to, and wait. At her gesture, Fenn peeled off his clothes. She helped him get his outfit on—wetsuit, helmet, biostat, flippers, motor, armband of instruments—and checked it out. He had had instruction and practice en route. It was less fun than going nude, but he had strenuous swimming and diving ahead of him. Or was it less fun? Without equipment, he was inept compared to humans of the Lahui Kuikawa; he could only, enviously, watch their water dances. Space-reared, he took immediately to this gear.

  When Wanika stripped to don hers, lust stabbed through him, not for the first time. It had been awhile. He shoved the feeling aside and sprang overboard.

  What followed in the next several hours was utter witchery. With the woman to help interpret, He'o conducted Fenn through his world.

  Lectures, discussions, texts, vivifer presentations had prepared him a little. A dreambox session might have done more, but the Keiki had never permitted such data to be taken, and besides, their human fellows hardly ever indulged in that pastime. Anyway, there really was no replacement for reality.

  They went over kilometers of wild water, and if Fenn could not share, he could see the exultation—the exaltation—that took hold of He'o as he breasted and clove and rode the waves, mounted their crests and plunged into their hollows, merged with them and their mightiness. The two joined Keiki herders on their rounds, warding the uncultivated range where bright-scaled flocks roamed; Fenn heard them bark their songs, and something ancient in his marrow stirred to that hoarse, unhuman music; he half sensed the pulsations through which they were not only in communication, but in communion. He watched several overtake prey and close jaws; blood ran dark and pungent out into sunlit green, and that too was right, that was as it should be. He saw scars
from encounters with sharks, and He'o told him tales of death and bravery. He rollicked among dolphins while flying fish skimmed overhead, meteoric silver.

  His party sought the depths, where blue dusked away into a night as unending as Proserpina's. A whale passed by, hugeness incarnate, on some unspoken business. The Keiki descended to keep track of life and subtle current shifts, to watch over machines that worked for them, and because this was another part of their sea. A riskful dive to the borders of what an unaided body could survive was a rite of passage into adulthood. It did more than test strength; it was religious revelation, awe and mystery and the implacability of the universe.

  Coming ashore at last, well wearied in spite of having had the motor to help him, Fenn met He'o's wives and pups. In this species, sexual equality was not ludicrous, it was unthinkable. Yet the females were in no manner subservient. They had their own culture with its own language, concerns, mores, ceremonies, arts, history, distinct from though conjugate with the males'. It produced less noise, more formality, no fighting. Wanika remarked that insofar as human terms had any meaning here, the males were Dionysian and the females Apollonian. Fenn wasn't familiar with the words, but was too full of wonder to stop and ask.

  Arts—In a species without hands, the arts were originally somatic, creations acted out or said forth or sung, or wrought with touches and odors and perhaps a stone or a strand of weed. Over the centuries, material works had become increasingly common. Molecular recorders let oral compositions develop into literature. Skillfully directed, robots, or simpler machines, gave solid form to visions. Fenn inspected small-scale but impressive pieces of technology, together with vivifer presentations of others elsewhere in the realm. He most admired the medical equipment, especially that intended for injuries. Architecture did not much interest a race of seals, but he wished his mother could firsthand experience the eerily evocative sculptures and pictures shown him. There was even a variety of musical instruments.