We Have Fed Our Sea Read online

  He put his book on the table—she recognized the title, Kipling's Poems, whoever Kipling had been—and pointed at a shelf. "Fetch the text and sit down."

  Something flared in the girl. She doubled her fists. "No."

  "What?" The leather face turned in search of her.

  "I am not going to study any more English."

  "Not—" Magnus peered as if she were a specimen from an­other planet. "Don't you feel well?"

  She bit off the words, one after another: "I have better ways to spend my time than learning a dead language."

  "Dead?" cried the man. She felt his rage lift in the air be­tween them. "The language of fifty million—"

  "Fifty million ignorant provincials, on exhausted lands be­tween bombed-out cities," she said. "You can't step outside the British Isles or a few pockets on the North American coast and have it understood. You can't read a single modern author or scientist or . . . or anybody . . . in English—I say it's dead! A walking corpse!"

  "Your own husband's language!" he bawled at her, half ris­ing.

  "Do you think he ever spoke it to anyone but you, once he'd he'd escaped?" she flung back. "Did you believe . . . if David ever returns from that ship you made him go on and we go to Rama—did you imagine we'd speak the language of a dying race? On a new world?"

  SHE felt the tears as they whipped down her face, she gulped after breath amidst terror. The old man was so hairy, so huge. When he stood up, the single radiglobe and the wan firelight threw his shadow across her and choked a whole corner of the room with it. His head bristled against the ceil­ing.

  "So now your husband's race is dying," he said like a gun. "Why did you marry him, if he was that effete?"

  "He isn't!" she called out. The walls wobbled around her. "You are! Sitting here in your dreams of the past, when your people ruled Earth—a past we're well out of! David was going where . . . where the future is!"

  "I see," Magnus Ryerson turned half away from her. He jammed both fists into his pockets, looked down at the floor and rumbled his words to someone else—not her.

  "I know. You're like the others, brought up to hate the West because it was once your master. Your teacher. The white man owned this planet a few centuries ago. Our sins then will follow us for the next thousand years . . . till your people fail in their turn, and the ones you raised up take revenge for the help they got. Well, I'm not going to apologize for my ancestors. I'm proud of them. We were no more vicious than any other men, and we gave . . . even on the deathbed of our civiliza­tion, we gave you the stars."

  His voice rose until it roared. "And we're not dead yet! Do you think this miserable Protectorate is a society? It isn't! It's not even a decent barbarism. It's a glorified garrison. It's one worshipping the status quo and afraid to look futureward. I went to space because my people once went to sea. I gave my sons to space, and you'll give yours to space, because that's where the next civilization will be! And you'll learn the history and the language of our people—your people—you'll learn what it means to be one of us!"

  His words rang away into emptiness. For a while only the wind and a few tiny flames had voice. Down on the strand, the sea worried the island like a terrier with a rat.

  Tamara said finally: "I already know what it means. It cost me David, but I know."

  He faced her again, lowered his head and stared as if at an enemy.

  "You murdered him," she said, not loudly. "You sent him to a dead sun to die. Because you—"

  "You're overwrought," he broke in with tight-held anger. "I urged him to try just one space expedition. And this one was important. It could have meant a deal to science. He would have been proud afterward, whatever he did for a career, to say, ‘I was on the Cross.'"

  "So he should die for his pride?" she said. "It's as senseless a reason as the real one. But I'll tell you why you really made him go . . . and if you deny you forced him, I'll say you lie! You couldn't stand the idea that one child of yours had broken away—was not going to be wrenched into your image—had penetrated this obscene farce of space exploration, covering distance for its own sake, as if there were some virtue in a large number of kilometers. David was going to live as nature meant him to live, on a living soil, with untanked air to breathe and with mountains to walk on instead of a spinning coffin . . . and his children would too . . . we would have been happy! And that was what you couldn't stand to have happen!"

  Magnus grinned without humor. "There's a lot of meaning­less noise for a symbolics professor's daughter to make," he said. "To begin at the end, what proof have you we were meant to be happy?"

  "What proof have you we were meant to jump across light­years?" she spat. "It's another way of running from yourself— no more. It's not even a practical thing. If the ships only looked for planets to colonize, I could understand. But . . . the Cross herself was aimed for three giants! She was diverted to a black clinker! And now David is dead . . . for what? Scientific curi­osity? You're not a research scientist, neither was he, and you know it. Wealth? He wasn't being paid more than he could earn on Earth. Glory? Few enough people on Earth care about exploration; not many more on Rama; he, not at all. Adven­ture? You can have more adventure in an hour's walk through a forest than in a year on a spaceship. I say you murdered your son because you saw him becoming sane!"

  "Now that's enough," growled Magnus. He took a step to­ward her. "I've heard enough out of you. In my own house. And I never did hold with this new-fangled notion of letting a woman yap—"

  "Stand back!" she yelled. "I'm not your wife!"

  He halted. The lines in his face grew suddenly blurred. He raised his artificial hand as if against a blow.

  "You're my son's wife," he said, quite gently. "You're a Ryer­son too . . . now."

  "Not if this is what it means." She had found the resolution she sought. She went to the wall and took her cloak off its peg. "You'll lend me your aircar for a hop to Stornoway, I trust. I will send it back on auto-pilot and get transport for myself from there."

  "But where are you going?" His voice was like a hurt child's.

  "I don't know," she snapped. "To some place with a bearable climate. David's salary is payable to me till he's declared dead, and then there will be a pension. When I've waited long enough to be sure he won't come back, I'm going to Rama."

  "But, lass . . . propriety—"

  "Propriety be damned. I'd rather have David's child, alive." She slipped her boots back on, took a flashlight from the cupboard, and went out the door. As she opened it, the wind came straight in and hit Magnus across the face.

  "In the land of Chinchanchou,

  Where the winds blow tender

  From a sea like purple wine

  Foaming to defend her,

  Lives a princess beautiful

  (May the gods amend her!) Little known for virtue, but

  Of most female gender."

  AS he came around the gyro housing and pulled himself forward to the observation deck, David Ryerson heard the guitar skitter through half a dozen chords and Maclaren's voice come bouncing in its wake. He sighed, pushed the lank yellow hair back out of his eyes, and braced himself.

  Maclaren floated in the living section. It was almost an in­sult to see him somehow clean all over, in a white tunic, when each man was allowed a daily spongeful of water for such purposes. And half rations had only leaned the New Zealander down, put angles in his smooth brown countenance; he didn't have bones jutting up under a stretched skin like Ryerson, or a flushed complexion and recurring toothache like Nakamura. It wasn't fair!

  "Oh, hullo, Dave." Maclaren continued tickling his strings, but quietly. "How does the web progress?"

  "I'm done."

  "I just clinched the last bolt and spotwelded the last connec­tion. There's not a thing left except to find that germanium, make the transistors, and adjust the units." Ryerson hooked an arm around a stanchion and drifted free, staring out of sunken eyes toward emptiness. "God help me," he murmured, "what am
I going to do now?"

  "Wait," said Maclaren. "We can't do much except wait." He regarded the younger man for a while. "Frankly, both Seiichi and I found excuses not to help you, did less out there than we might have, for just that reason. I've been afraid you would finish the job before we found our planet."

  Ryerson started. Redness crept into his chalky face. "Why, of all the—" His anger collapsed. "I see. All right."

  "These weeks since we escaped have been an unparalleled chance to practice my music," remarked Maclaren. "I've even been composing. Listen.

  "In their golden-masted ships

  Princes come a-wooing

  Over darkling spindrift roads

  Where the gales are brewing.

  Lusty tales have drawn them thence,

  Much to their undoing:

  When they seek the lady's hand

  She gives them the—"

  "Will you stop that?" screamed Ryerson.

  "As you like," said Maclaren mildly. He put the guitar back into its case. "I'd be glad to teach you," he offered.

  "No."

  "Care for a game of chess?"

  "No."

  "I wish to all the hells I'd been more of an intellectual," said Maclaren. "I never was, you know. I was a playboy, even in science. Now . . . I wish I'd brought a few hundred books with me. When I get back, I'm going to read them." His smile faded. "I think I might begin to understand them."

  "When we get back?" Ryerson's thin frame doubled in midair as if for a leap. "If we get back, you mean!"

  NAKAMURA entered. He had a sheaf of scribbled papers in one hand. His face was carefully blank. "I have com­pleted the calculations on our latest data," he said.

  Ryerson shuddered. "What have you found?" he cried. "Negative."

  "Lord God of Israel," groaned Ryerson. "Negative again."

  "That pretty well covers this orbit, then," said Maclaren calmly. "I've got the elements of the next one computed— somewhere." He went out among the instruments.

  A muscle in Ryerson's cheek began to jump of itself. He looked at Nakamura for a long time. "Isn't there anything else we can do?" he asked. "The telescopes, the—Do we just have to sit?"

  "We are circling a dead sun," the pilot reminded him. "There is only feeble starlight to see by. A very powerful instrument might photograph a planet, but not the telescopes we have. Not at any distance greater than we could find them gravita­tionally. S-s-so."

  "We could make a big telescope!" exclaimed Ryerson. "We have glass, and . . . and silver and—"

  "I've thought of that." Maclaren's tones drifted back from the observation section. "You're welcome to amuse yourself with it, but we'd starve long before a suitable mirror could be ground with the equipment here."

  "But—Maclaren, space is so big! We could hunt for a million years and never find a planet if we can't . . . can't see them!"

  "We're not working quite at random." Maclaren reappeared with a punched tape. "Perhaps you've forgotten the principle on which we are searching. We position ourselves in an orbit about the star, follow it for a while, check our position repeat­edly, and compute whether the path has been significantly perturbed. If it has been, that's due to a planet somewhere, and we can do a Leverrier to find that planet. If not—if we're too far away—we quarter to another arc of the same path and try again. Having exhausted a whole circumference thus, we move outward and try a bigger circle."

  "Shut up!" rasped Ryerson. "I know it! I'm not a schoolboy. But we're guessing!"

  "Not quite," said Maclaren. "You were occupied with the web when I worked out the secondary principle . . . yes, come to think of it, you never did ask me before. Let me explain. You see, by extrapolating from data on known stellar types, I know approximately what this star was like in its palmy days. From this, planetary formation theory gives me the scale of its one­time system. For instance, its planets must have been more or less in the equatorial plane; such quantities as mass, angular momentum, and magnetic field determine the Bode's Law con­stants; to the extent that all this is known, I can draw an orbital map.

  "Well, then the star went supernova. Its closer planets were whiffed into gas. The outermost giants would have survived, though badly damaged. But the semimajor axes of their orbits were so tremendous—theoretically, planets could have formed as much as a light-year from this star—that even a small percentage of error in the data makes my result uncertain by Astronomical Units. Another factor: the explosion filled this space with gas. We're actually inside a nonluminous nebula. That would shorten the orbits of the remaining planets; in the course of millions of years they've spiraled far inward. In one way that helps us: we've an area to search which is not hope­lessly huge. But on the other hand, just how long has it been since the accident? What's the density distribution of the neb­ula now, and what was it back then? I've taken some readings and made some estimates. All very crude, but—" Maclaren shrugged—"what else can we do? The successive orbits we have been trying are, more or less, those I have calculated for the surviving planets as of today. And, of course, intermediate radii to make sure that we will be measurably perturbed no matter where those planets actually are. It's just a matter of getting close enough to one of them."

  "If our food lasts," groaned Ryerson. "And we have to eat while we finish the web, too. Don't forget that."

  "We're going to have to reorganize our schedules," declared Maclaren thoughtfully. "Hitherto we've found things to keep us occupied. Now we must wait, and not go crazy waiting." He grinned. "I hereby declare the Southern Cross dirty limerick contest open and offer a prize of—"

  "Yes," said Ryerson. "Great sport. Fun and games, with Chang Sverdlov's frozen corpse listening in!"

  SILENCE clapped down. They heard the air mumble in the ventilators.

  "What else can we do with our poor friend?" asked Nakamura softly. "Send him on a test rocket into the black sun? He deserved better of us. Yes-s-s? Let his own people bury him."

  "Bury a copy of him!" shrieked Ryerson. "Of all the sense­less—"

  "Please," said Nakamura. He tried to smile. "After all it is no trouble to us, and it will comfort his friends at home; maybe yes? After all, speaking in terms of atoms, we do not even wish to send ourselves back. Only copies." He laughed.

  "Will you stop that giggling!"

  "Please." Nakamura pushed himself away, lifting aston­ished hands. "Please, if I have offended you, I am so sorry."

  "So sorry! So sorry! Get out of here! Get out, both of you! I've seen more of you than I can stand!"

  Nakamura started to leave, still bobbing his head, smiling and hissing in the shaftway. Maclaren launched himself be­tween the other two. He snapped a hand onto either wrist.

  "That will do!" They grew suddenly aware, it was shocking, how the eyes burned green in his dark face. His words fell like axes. "Dave, you're a baby, screaming for mother to come change you. Seiichi, you think it's enough to make polite noises at the rest of the world. If you ever want to see sunlight again, you'll both have to mend your ideas." He shook them a little. "Dave, you'll keep yourself clean. Seiichi, you'll dress for dinner and talk with us. Both of you will stop feeling sorry for yourselves and start working to survive. And the next step is to become civilized again. We haven't got the size, or the time, or the force to beat that star: nothing but manhood. Now go off and start practicing how to be men!"

  They said nothing, only stared at him for a few moments and then departed in opposite directions. Maclaren found him­self gazing stupidly at his guitar case. I'd better put that away till it's requested, he thought. If ever. I didn't stop to think, my own habits might possibly be hard to live with.

  After a long time: Seems I'm the captain now, in fact if not in name. But how did it happen? What have I done, what have I got? Presently, with an inward twisting: It must be I've less to lose. I can be more objective because I've no wife, no chil­dren, no cause, no God. It's easy for a hollow man to remain calm.

  He covered his eyes, as if
to deny he floated among a million unpitying stars. But he couldn't hunch up that way for long. Someone might come back, and the captain mustn't be seen afraid.

  Not afraid of death. Of life.

  SEEN from a view turret on the observation deck, the planet looked eerily like its parent star which had mur­dered it. Ryerson crouched in darkness, staring out to dark­ness. Against strewn constellations there lay a gigantic out­line with wan streaks and edgings of gray. As he watched, Ryerson saw it march across the Milky Way and out of his sight. But it was the Cross which moved, he thought, circling her hope in fear.

  I stand on Mount Nebo, he thought, and down there is my Promised Land.

  Irrationally—but the months had made them all odd, silent introverts, Trappists because meaningful conversation was too rare and precious to spill without due heed—he reached into his breast pocket. He took forth Tamara's picture and held it close to him. Sometimes he woke up breathing the fragrance of her hair. Have a look, he told her. We found it. In a heathen adoration: You are my luck, Tamara. You found it.

  As the black planet came back into sight, monstrously swal­lowing suns—it was only a thousand or so kilometers away— Ryerson turned his wife's image outward so she could see what they had gained.

  "Are you there, Dave?"

  Maclaren's voice came from around the cylinder of the living section. It had grown much lower in this time of search. Often you could scarcely hear Maclaren when he spoke. And the New Zealander, once in the best condition of them all, had lately gotten thinner than the other two, until his eyes stared from caves. But then, thought Ryerson, each man aboard had had to come to terms with himself, one way or another, and there had been a price. In his own case, he had paid with youth.

  "Coming." Ryerson pulled himself around the deck, between the instruments. Maclaren was at his little desk, with a clip­board full of scrawled paper in one hand. Nakamura had just joined him. The Saraian had gone wholly behind a mask, more and more a polite unobtrusive robot. Ryerson wondered whether serenity now lay within the man, or the loneliest circle of hell, or both.