The Fleet of Stars Read online

  " 'This?' "

  "The entire universe and future. Yeah, that may be exaggerated. But I don't propose to sit idle waiting for whatever wants to come along."

  "What can you do?" She divined his meaning. Dismay moaned, "Oh, no."

  He nodded. "You guessed it. I'd better get back there and try to find out."

  "Over those distances, into that unknown? Anson, An-son!" She gripped his arm. "Somebody else," she pleaded. "We've plenty of brave men and women."

  His tone went gentle. "I am the jefe, darling." She understood full well everything he would say, but he must say it. "We call this a republic, and I've done my damnedest to keep us simply two citizens of it,so have you-but it can't be helped; we are what we are." The eternal hero, the incarnation of the Life Mother. "No decent comandante sends his men into risks he won't take himself."

  She rallied. "I should have known it of you. I did. Always I did."

  He attempted a laugh. "Anyhow, not me, you realize. I aim to live out my days here with you, making love and raising Cain till our great-grandchildren finally and with relief scatter our ashes and compose our mendacious obituaries after which we'll scandalize them afresh in our new bodies."

  "A download of you. Yes, that's clear. But he-"

  "He won't thank me? He might, sort of. It's bound to be quite an adventure."

  "That whole enormous way, alone."

  "Not straight to Sol. At the moment, I reckon my-his best bet will be to first go back to Centauri and confer with the Lunarians there. By that time, they should have lots more information."

  "But that adds light-years to the journey," she protested. “Even in a c-ship" Her voice faltered. "You-he will get to Centauri after Demeter is destroyed."

  He winced. "Uh-huh. That hurts. However, the Lunarians should be okay on their asteroids, mostly. In fact, they should be able to outfit my alter ego for the trip on to Sol. He'll arrive in style, loaded for bear."

  "Do you mean he'll make that leg in a cruiser? But it will take decades longer!"

  "What's a few decades more or less, given the scale of space-time?"

  Guthrie was mute for another while. Stars were appearing now in the west as well as the east. Among them he recognized Sol. It glimmered insignificant, about fourth magnitude, near Ursa Minor. Twenty light-years, an abyss denumerable but unimaginable by humans, was too small a reach in the galaxy to affect constellations much. But Polaris was not the lodestar of Amaterasu.

  He rose. Light from above, in this clear air, and light cast off the sea were ample to find one's way by. "Let's go home," he proposed.

  "I would like some closeness and comfort," she admitted.

  "You know," he said, "I can hope that in the end, maybe a hundred years from tonight, my download will come back here and get reborn." He stroked her hair. "And there'll be a you for him."

  She tried to speak as cheerfully. "By then he may well find this planet entirely green."

  "That's our goal, isn't it?" he said. "What the travel and labor are for. Homes, elbow room, personal gain, yeah, but way down the pike, the object of the game is to make the universe come alive."

  Unspoken with our kind of life.

  2

  THE FIRST MEMORY that stayed with Fenn-and it dwelt in him through all his days-was of space and the stars. He must have been two or three, not old enough to leave the Habitat for the Moon but getting around handily on its low-weight decks. The sight would have been commonplace to him, often in a viewscreen, now and then glimpsed directly through a port. Perhaps what made this time magical, an epiphany, was that he looked from the after observation turret on the axis of rotation, floating free, the hyalon bubble virtually invisible, as if he had become a comet on its very own orbit. At least one adult would have been with him, a parent or a friend of the family,not a preceptor, for then other children would have tumbled about, squealing and shrilling, Fenn quite likely the noisiest in the class. He did not afterward recall who had escorted him. They may have chanced to be alone, while the person or persons kept aside, respecting that majestic stillness.

  The Habitat was coming around from nightside. Sky surrounded Fenn, stars and stars and stars, unwinking sharp shards of brilliance, ice-white, steel-blue, topaz-yellow, ruby-red; the Milky Way coursed as a frosty river, banked with black nebular headlands; the fire-fog in Orion glowed vague and mysterious as the neighbor galaxies; there were more lights in heaven than there was crystalline darkness. In the direction from which he had entered, gray metal curved away to a near horizon. Beyond it on four sides reached gleaming planes that came to knifelike edges at some distance he did not yet know how to gauge-four of the solar and magnetic sails that stabilized the great cylindroid on its path and its axis. Their spin across the star-field made him dizzy, and he turned his eyes away.

  Luna hove into view, at first an arc bitten out of the brightness, then rising and gaining an ever-broader luminous rim, tremendous, mountains and craters and maria ashenly clear. Earth appeared likewise, also waxing, far smaller, although its marbled blue and white dazzled him until he could see nothing else nearby. These were splendors, he watched them and watched them as they swelled toward fullness; yet his gaze kept going back to the stars.

  Probably on this occasion he did not stay through a full cycle of the Habitat's course around Luna. Six hours would have been rather much for a small boy. But as long as he remained inboard, he returned whenever he could persuade someone, anyone, to take him. More than once he was caught trying to sneak back on his own. Getting into trouble came natural to him.

  Near the end of his residence, the creche sent his class on the customary trip outside. To most of the children this was not an overwhelming experience. Explanations, multiceiver shows, and vivifer simulations had fairly well prepared them. Still, it was exciting to sit, harnessed, in a vehicle that crawled about, gripping the rails, with the monstrous shell of home overhead' and the heavens wheeling wildly by, the Bears in pursuit of the Peacock and Chameleon, a hasty red spark that Preceptor said was Mars. At one end of the route, the Lunar disk gyred like a black wheel, jewel-strewn with lights where people lived, studded on its verge with glints where peaks caught rays from the hidden sun. (For safety's sake, these excursions always took place while in the shadow.) At the other end, Earth, full, glorious, did not so much tumble in its lesser circle as tread out a stately measure. And the installations—domes, pods, masts, dishes, hatchways, the polar port where spaceships came and went, the sails like shining cliffs—and the machines that scurried about or flitted free as birds or fireflies—yes, those were fine too.

  Fenn pressed his nose against the hyalon and hungered.

  That evenwatch at home he demanded to be given a spacesuit and taken back out. Didn't the multi show people walking around all the time? Didn't their clingboots keep them from being flung off, and when they chose to leave the surface, didn't they have jetpacks to fly with? When told repeatedly that that was for grown-ups, he at last threw a tantrum that made his father order him to bed.

  Birger was Earthbred, from Yukonia; that nation was his polity, although he had connections to the Foresters of Vernal and, in fact, eventually took an oath of association: He should doubtless have reckoned himself lucky. Not only did he get gainful employment, it was work he could love, ranger-manager in the huge wilderness preserve that covered much of his motherland; and then he'married and begot a child. However, year by year he came to feel more hemmed in, regulated, restricted, confined largely to shepherding tourists while robots and sophotects did everything important. Partly on this account, his marriage broke. She kept the child.

  Birger was already looking elsewhere. He did not really care to join the Foresters, he found their style better suited to a vacation than a lifeway, but he had heard of possibilities on the Moon—rather, within it, where woods and meadows were expanding through cavern after cavern, raising challenge after challenge. How to keep them healthy, yet resist their often insidious encroachments on the gardens and nanotec
hnics of humankind?

  He emigrated, adapted, got the position he applied for, and did well, steadily advancing in rank and responsibilities. After a while, he married Elitha. She was of old Selenite stock, with old money, and artistic; but she also had vigor, an independent spirit, and originality. That last was a rare trait. Some critics said that her sculptures were not merely beautiful, they might be the harbinger of a creative breakthrough, the first in centuries—assuming that others like her took inspiration. Elitha did not share their concern. She was simply interested in what she made.

  In due course she opted for a different sort of creation, with help from her man. It was not ah easy decision. She would have to spend her pregnancy, and the following three or four years if she wanted to stay with the infant, in the Habitat. Birger would be there too when he was able, but frequently he must remain on Luna for daycycles that could run into weeks. Nevertheless, he agreed. After all, he was not quite young anymore. If he was to have this final offspring the law permitted him, he would be well advised to do it soon.

  He tried under the circumstances to be a good parent, and one cannot properly say he failed. He was, though, on the strict and overbearing side. Having examined the fetal genome, a genetic program found it normal but forecast friction between father and son, punctuated by explosions. Fenn soon proved the program right. However, the family was basically an affectionate one, and when at last they could all go live in Tychopolis, Birger and Elitha felt hopeful.

  "Mamita," Fenn asked, "what's a Lunarian?"

  He had seen the structures preserved around Hydra Square, and a few other relics, but now something that somebody said had caused him to wonder why they were unlike anything else. Also, Elitha thought, he must have caught the word once in a while in adult conversation or on a historical show or whatever.

  "They're the folk who used to live here, a long time ago," she said. "Mostly, they were taller than we are."

  "What happened to them?"

  "Well, when Terrans, people like us, started coming to the Moon to stay, till finally there were more of them than there were Lunarians, the Lunarians grew unhappy. They didn't like living the way Terrans did; they didn't think much like us. More and more of them moved away, find those who didn't had fewer and fewer children, till finally none were left on Luna. But we still use the same name for them. So we here today call ourselves Moondwellers or Selenites."

  No need yet, she thought, to go into details: the era of the independent Lunarian Selenarchy and of Lunarian enterprises rivaling Terran throughout the. Solar System. Nothing remained of it but chronicles, abandoned artifacts, and dust. As space-struck as he was, Fenn would be distressed when he learned of how the Lunarian settlements on asteroids and on moons of the giant planets had been squeezed to oblivion because they could not compete with sophotects and robots—for the same had befallen the Terran outposts. Old, unhappy, far-off things; let them not invade this room where her gardenias sweetened the air and a full-wall viewscreen showed Mount Denali regal above Birger's Yukonian forests.

  "Where are they now?" the boy wondered.

  "Oh, some are on Mars, where they get along with the Terrans there. But most are way, way away on a world of their own, called Proserpina." Never mind, now, about those whose ancestors fared with Anson Guthrie to Alpha Centauri. "We very seldom hear from them." Nor bring up conflicts in the past and tensions in the present, tensions so complex and subtle that she herself was unsure of what they were, or why.

  Fenn knit his brows. "Where'd they come from?"

  A quick mind pounced to and fro in that towhead, Elitha thought. If only the child were less willful and aggressive. He could be such a dear when he chose. Let her honor his confidence with an honest answer, even though he might not entirely follow her meaning.

  Her glance went across spidery tables and chairs, the usual form on Luna, to the lounger. She settled down in it. Standing was about as easy as sitting, but she hoped he would join her and she could lay an arm around him. He kept his feet, confronting her. She swallowed her slight disappointment and began:

  "The first Lunarians were born to Terran mothers. You see, people had reasons to settle on the Moon, like building and tending the solar units that beam energy to Earth. They didn't have machines then that could do everything. But they found the weak gravity was bad for them."

  He nodded impatiently. The Habitat had made him familiar with variations in weight. Here his parents insisted he exercise regularly in the centrifuge at one standard g, like them. It wasn't universal practice, when biotechnics kept cells and body fluids healthily balanced. However, neither Elitha nor Birger wanted thin bones and minimal muscles; visiting the Mother World, they would rather be comfortable. For once, Fenn didn't argue about the program. He enjoyed using his body to the full, and looked forward to reaching an age when he could safely go under higher accelerations.

  "The worst problem, one that we haven't solved yet, was that Terran women can't have babies on Luna," Elitha went on. "Too much goes wrong. The baby dies before it's born. People soon realized this and stopped trying. Nowadays we have the Habitat in low Lunar orbit, spinning fast enough to give Earth weight on the outer decks. I lived there while I was carrying you, and stayed till you had developed so one-sixth g wouldn't harm you as you were growing."

  "I know, I know! What about the Lunarians?"

  "People didn't have a Habitat in those early days. What they had was what we call 'genetic technology.' We can take a living thing and fix it to have little ones that aren't quite the same as it is. An animal, a plant, a microbe—the new kind of thing we call a metamorph. You've seen plenty of metamorphs, like glitterbugs and daybats in the woods or the giant flowers in the Conservatory. Others make a lot of the stuff we use, food and fiber and fuel and medicines, oh, a lot.

  “Well, the scientists fixed it for Terran women to have metamorph babies. When those Lunarians grew up, the low gravity was right for them. They didn't need bio-stabilizers and special exercises to stay well, and they had babies without any trouble. After a while, most of the people on the Moon were Lunarians."

  Fenn pondered. "But the Lunarians are gone," he said.

  "Yes, they are. What nobody back then, when they knew less about genetics than they do now, what nobody back then foresaw was that Lunarians wouldn't be different just in their bodies. The biochemistry, the ... well, everything about them made them, makes them, different in their spirits too, in what they like and don't like, how they want to live their lives, everything. They aren't bad people, no, don't think that. But they aren't happy under Terran laws and customs."

  "How 'bout Mars?" he exclaimed.

  Quick mind indeed, Elitha thought gladly. "Mars is a special case. It's got a gravity in between Luna's and Earth's. Terrans and Lunarians can both live there and have babies. And Mars is bigger than Luna, with lots of territory that isn't claimed either for homes or for eco-balance. A community can be off by itself and do pretty well what it wants to." Let him not hear, today, how the human presence yonder was also dying.

  His eyes, blue as heaven above Tahiti, grew big. "Lunarians in space," he whispered, "way out on P'serpina—" And then a shout, while his fists doubled: "Why, aren't we?"

  Over the years, piece by piece, never directly, he— sometimes bewildered, sometimes enraged—got an answer. How complete or truthful the answer might be, he was never certain. That stoked the anger always smoldering deep inside him.

  It was not that anyone in any important way lied to him or evaded his questions. On the contrary, as he once heard a philosopher remark, in a set of societies that had long held their total population to little more than a billion, for whom the necessities and most of the comforts of life were essentially free goods, education was bound to become less an occupation than a preoccupation, at least among the intelligent. To a considerable extent, the difficulty lay in getting a perspective—in realizing that there was a perspective to be gotten—on what everyone took for given. Would Rameses II have wo
ndered about the divine status of kings, or Thomas Jefferson have inquired whether machines had rights?

  Machines, devices, were everywhere around Fenn, shaping and maintaining his world, pervading his life, and indeed making it possible. They ranged from spacecraft, land vehicles, power transmitters, cities, on through the multiceiver that entertained and helped to school him, down to engines he knew only from micrographs, because they were of molecular size: Their benefits were as hard to see as were the benefits of drinkable water or breathable air. When he came to the study of ancient history, it took an imaginative effort to comprehend how average life expectancy had been perhaps thirty years— a fourth of his!—and most people must spend most of their waking hours at work if they were to survive, whether they liked it or not. Why, after you were adult and out of the lyceum system, work was a privilege, something you had to earn, like Birger, or make for yourself, like Elitha. Not too many ever managed it.

  Like all his friends, Fenn was in continual interaction with computer terminals and robots; the distinction got blurry. He had much less to do with sophotects. He met some when his father took him around in the Lunar wilds, where they did more work but were less noticeable than the human caretakers. In Tychopolis, the community counselor used a specialized body to give him routine physical examinations. In its role of teacher, it synthesized a holographic human image for itself when it delivered lectures or gave demonstrations to students. Likewise did it when, after an egregious escapade of Fenn's, it conducted several private sessions for his betterment. Those were sympathetic. Not being stupid, he took heed of them; but he scarcely took them to heart.

  Aside from what he read or otherwise absorbed vicariously, this was about the extent of his direct exposure to the machines in his first ten or twelve years. He needed a preceptor to spell out the distinctions between them for him, as we need to have the grammar of the language we learned by osmosis explained to us.