Starfarers

by Poul Anderson

  Yu left her own chair and joined him. They were both young.

  “And we can soon go home,” she said when they stopped for breath.

  His forebodings came upon him again. At this victorious moment he defied them. “And we will cope with whatever we find there.”

  Her gladness wavered. “Do you truly expect trouble?”

  “We’ll come back with a fame we can turn into power. We’ll cope.” His fingers stroked her cheek. “Do not be afraid, blossom.”

  “Never,” she told him, “while we have one another.” And she murmured a few ancient lines that she treasured, from the Book of Songs:

  “Wind and rain, dark as night,

  The cock crowed and would not stop.

  Now that I have seen my lord,

  How can I any more be sad?”

  4.

  The mad old man lay dying. To him came Selim ibn Ali Zeyd.

  The suite was high in a hospital. Windows, open to an autumnal afternoon, let in the barest rustle of traffic. A breeze fluttered gauzy white drapes. The windows looked out over the crowded roofs of Istanbul, a Byzantine wall, and the Golden Horn, on which danced boats and little waves. Beyond, hills lifted in tawniness darkened by trees and lightened by homes.

  Zeyd trod softly to the bedside and bowed.

  Osman Tahir squinted up from his pillow. Bald head, mummy face, shriveled hands, brought forth the massiveness of the bones underneath. His voice was almost a whisper, hoarse and slow, but the words marched without stumbling. “You are very welcome.”

  He spoke in Arabic, for Zeyd had no Turkish. Either one could have used English or French. The courtesy was regal.

  “I am honored that you wanted me here, sir,” Zeyd answered. “So many wish to pay you their last respects, and the physicians will let so few in.”

  “Officious bastards. But, true, I’ve only driblets of strength left.” Tahir grinned. “Time was, you may recall, when I could rough-and-tumble in the Assembly all day, run ten kilometers before the evening prayer, carouse till midnight, make love till dawn, and be back ahead of the opposition, ready to browbeat them further.”

  You old scoundrel, Zeyd could not help thinking. Nevertheless it’s more or less true. This man, soldier and politician, had shaken history and gone on to reach for the stars. We’re all of us mortal though. Biomedicine may have given us a hundred years or better of healthy life, but in the end the organism has used itself up. “It is as God wills,” he said.

  Tahir nodded. “We’ll not waste time on politeness. I had my reasons for insisting you come. Not that I’m not glad to see you—however much I envy you, envy you—”

  Zeyd had been to Epsilon Indi.

  Tahir must draw several harsh breaths before he could go on: “The damned nurse will throw you out bloody soon. I need to rest—ha! As if an extra three or four days till I’m done make any difference.”

  He was always like this, Zeyd thought. A trademark. And he made shrewd use of it “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “You can tell me … the prospects … of the Envoy mission.”

  Startled, Zeyd protested, “I’m not in the organization, sir. I admire what you have done for us, but I know nothing except what the news releases say.”

  An English word snapped forth. “Bullshit! With your record, the connections you are bound to have in the space community—” The voice had risen. Overtaxed, it broke in violent wheezing.

  Alarmed, Zeyd stooped close. Tahir waved him back. “Be honest with me,” he commanded.

  Zeyd straightened, as if coming to attention. “Well, sir, yes, I—I do hear things. I can’t confirm or disconfirm them. The status of the project is certainly unsure.”

  A fist doubled on the coverlet. “Because of the war, this damned, stupid, useless war in space,” Tahir rasped. The hand unfolded, trembled outward, groped for Zeyd’s, and clung like a child’s. “But they’re not going to cancel the undertaking, are they?” Tahir pleaded. “They won’t?”

  The most straightforward answer possible would be the best, Zeyd decided. “As nearly as I can discover, no. It’s on standby now, as you know, and all the bureaucrats of all the countries involved are being noncommittal. But it does seem as if people within the Foundation, working together regardless of nationality—I do get the impression they’re holding their own. We can hope work will resume not too long after hostilities end.” Whenever that may be.

  Tahir’s thought must have been similar, for he said as he let his arm drop, “That lies with God. But thank you, young man, thank you. Now I, too, dare hope—” A fleeting wist-fulness: “I did hope I’d live to see the ship set forth.”

  His achievement, his obsession for the past half century, for which he used all the power he had been gathering: wherefore they called him mad. But he got the mission started, he got it started!

  “You will watch from Paradise, sir,” Zeyd said.

  “Maybe. God is compassionate. Otherwise, what do we know?” Tahir’s eyes, sunken and dim, sought the visitor’s. “You, however, you can go.”

  Tahir stood mute.

  “You want to go, don’t you?” Tahir asked anxiously. “Already you’ve sacrificed so much.”

  Strange, the lure that caught me. A spectrogram taken by an orbiting network of instruments—oxygen at a planet of Epsilon Indi, a sign of life—and I divorced Narriman, that she be free to find another man, a stepfather for our children—and here I am back, my reputation made but in a world grown more alien than I had imagined. …

  It would be wrong, a sin, to make a promise to this man that might never be kept. And yet—“Any who go must needs be … somewhat peculiar,” Zeyd said.

  “Everybody realized that from the beginning. I’d like to believe I’ve met one of them.”

  “What happens lies with God, sir.”

  Tahir tried to sit up. He fell back. His voice, though, took on force. “This is to His glory. And, ten thousand years from now, when everything around us today is gone with Nineveh, you will remember, Zeyd, you will tell—But it’s not for that, it’s for mankind. Mankind, and the glory of God.”

  “Yes—”

  A nurse entered. “I’m sorry, Dr. Zeyd, but you will have to leave,” she said in English.

  Tahir did not roar her down as once he would have done. He lay quietly, drained.

  Zeyd bowed again, deeply. “In God’s name, farewell, sir, and peace be upon you.” His eyes stung.

  He could barely hear the answer. “Fare you well. Well and far.”

  He is not mad, Zeyd thought as he departed. He never was. It is only that his sanity went beyond most men’s understanding.

  5.

  Early Sunlight slanted over old buildings. The mansion stood as it had stood for centuries, red-tiled and amber-walled. The same family dwelt there as always. Modernizations throughout its history had not changed its appearance much or stolen away its soul. Barn, shed, and workshop were likewise little changed, although now they held only artifacts of the past, exhibits. Trees—chestnut, cedar, quebracho—shaded a broad stretch of lawn. Flowers trooped their colors. Several members of the staff were outside, some doing minor tasks, one showing a party of tourists around. Their talk lifted cheerfully but was soon lost in the wind.

  It blew slow from the south, cool, scattering insect hordes. The odors awakening in it were as green as the grassland that billowed onward to the horizon. Anthills dotted the plain like dull-red stumps; groves stood scattered, murky except where tossing leaves caught the light. A few emus walked sedately, not far off, and the sky was full of wings, partridge, thrush, dove, parrot, vulture, and more: wildlife that came back after the cattle were gone.

  Ricardo Iriarte Nansen Aguilar and Hanny Dayan rode off. He could have shown her more if they had taken a hovercar, and later they would; but when he suggested an excursion on horseback for her first morning here, she accepted eagerly. To her it was an exciting novelty, to him a return to memories.

  Hoofs thudded gently, leather creak
ed, otherwise they went in silence until they were well out in the open. The whisper of wind through grass became an undertone to the whistles, trills, and calls from above. Dayan looked right, left, ahead, over immensity. She had arrived yesterday evening, when the welcome she got took all her time before she withdrew to her guest room.

  “A beautiful country, Paraguay,” she said in the English they shared. “I’ve trouble seeing how you can leave it … forever.”

  Nansen shrugged. “It isn’t my country,” he replied without tone.

  “No? It’s your family’s, and I can see they’re close-knit, and your own roots are here, aren’t they? Your grandnephew told me—”

  She hesitated. That man was gray and furrowed. The man at her side was still young, under fifty. He sat tall in the saddle, lean, shoulders and hands big for such a build. Under straight black hair, his face bore blue-gray eyes, Roman nose, chin clean-depilated and strong. His garb was nothing uncommon—iridescent white shirt, close-fitting black trousers, soft boots—but he wore it with an air that she thought might, long ago, have been a gaucho’s.

  Well, he had been to the stars and back.

  “—your grandnephew, Don Fernando, told me your ancestor who founded this place came from Europe in the nineteenth century,” Dayan finished. “A history like that must mean a great deal.”

  Nansen nodded. “Yes. Though we weren’t all estancieros, you know. One son would inherit. Most others went into trade, professions, the Church, the army, sometimes politics in the democratic era—eventually, when the time came, into space.”

  “Then don’t you belong here?” Dayan persisted. “The land, the portraits on the walls, books, goblets, jewels, mementos, traditions—the family.” She smiled. “I studied you up beforehand, Captain Nansen, and now I’m seeing for myself.”

  “You see the surface,” he replied gravely. “They are cordial to me, yes because I am of the blood, and they’re proud of what I’ve done and will do. But they’re strangers, Dr. Dayan.“ He fell quiet, gazing before him. A hawk swooped low. She recollected from news accounts of him that in his boyhood he had been a falconer. “Or … no, it is I who am the stranger,” he said. “I came home from Epsilon Eridani, and many of the same people were still alive. Things had not changed beyond recognition. Already, however—It seemed well to join the 61 Cygni expedition.”

  “Surely not in despair?”

  “Oh, no. An exploration. My calling, after all. I don’t regret it. Those planets, lifeless but full of astonishments and challenges.”

  His look went aloft. Beyond the blue shone the Centaur. Five thousand light-years hence, other ships fared, and their crews were not human.

  “You’re familiar with our reports, I suppose,” he said flatly, as if realizing he had shown more of himself than he wanted to.

  Dayan would not release him. “You returned again and everything was different.”

  “Yes.” Once more his tone carried a trace of emotion. “When I was growing up, something of the old way of life remained,” the seigneurial way, hard-riding, hard-drinking, athletic, but also cultivated and gracious. “No doubt it had already outlived its time, but it was alive, oh, very alive. For instance, we still learned Guaraní as a courtesy to the Indios who worked for us, although they themselves spoke mostly Spanish. Today the language is extinct. The Indios have vanished into the general population. Cattle breeding is as obsolete as the building of pyramids, and our few horses are for sport. The Nansens have kept some of their property by turning it into a nature reserve and themselves into its caretakers.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “No. It is simply change.”

  “But you feel rootless enough to make the great voyage.”

  He scowled. For a moment she was afraid she had given umbrage. He was not one to tolerate prying. His laugh barked, but relieved her. “Enough of me. More than enough. I invited you for a visit—Fernando agreed—for me to get acquainted with you.” His glance sought hers. “The captain needs to know his crew, doesn’t he?”

  She had expected that. “Ask whatever you like, sir. I do hope you will accept me.”

  “Frankly, it is not clear to me why you volunteered.”

  She could not resist teasing a bit. “Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe everyone aboard the Envoy will be.”

  “We can’t afford any like that,” he said sharply. Not when sailing into the ultimate loneliness.

  She sobered. “True.” In an effort to show she had given the matter hard thought: “Osman Tahir could become obsessed with the idea of contacting the Yonderfolk. He could spend the last half of his life and the whole of his political capital to get a ship built that can go there. But he was just obsessed, not insane. Why should anybody actually leave? Ten thousand years’ round trip! Each of us must be an odd creature. I’ve wondered about you, Captain Nansen. That’s why I tried to sound you out.”

  He shaped a smile. “Fair is fair. Now explain yourself to me.”

  “You have seen my résumé, and surely a fat dossier as well. We have talked.”

  “In some offices. Over some dinner tables. It’s time for me to get to know you.”

  “And decide if you want me aboard.”

  “Yes. No offense. You seem too good to be true. As you say, the volunteers have been few, and nearly everyone wrong in the head or unfit for anything at home or otherwise useless. You are young, healthy, apparently well-balanced. You have proven your competence. You are personally attractive.”

  Despite the reserve he wore like a cloak, he knew how to say that, and how to regard her while he did. He saw a woman small but firm and rounded of figure, with high forehead and cheekbones, eyes large and hazel between long lashes, curved nose, mouth full and accustomed to laughter. Red hair fell wavy to her shoulders. A pendant in ancient Egyptian style gave a touch of flamboyancy to her coverall.

  “Then why,” he demanded, “do you want to go on a voyage that will be like traveling beyond death?”

  She straightened in the saddle. “You know why. I’m in danger of my life.”

  He drew rein: She followed suit. They sat confronted. The horses lowered their heads to graze. Butterflies and a hummingbird flashed above rippling green. Wings beat on high, cries drifted through the wind.

  “Is that really true?” he asked.

  She met his eyes. “You want to be sure I am not a hysteric.”

  “I’ve read the biographical material you submitted. More than once. But would you care to tell me the parts you think are important, face-to-face?”

  “For you to judge my personal style?” She had done some of her graduate studies in North America; occasionally it showed in her speech. “How far back shall I go?” She threw him a grin. “Your family claims a distant kinship with Fridtjof Nansen. I’m a direct descendant of Moshe Dayan. What else is so special about my life?”

  “Almost everything,” he said.

  She was born in Latakia, where her father was stationed, an officer of the Israeli Hegemony. Her mother was a reclamation engineer. Thus, as a child, she was exposed to considerable foreignness, until they returned to Jerusalem. Having taken her doctorate in physics, rather precociously, she went to work for the Central Technical Supply Company, mostly among the asteroids but also in the Jovian and Saturnian Systems, helping develop instruments for operations in a variety of surroundings.

  “You should have a brilliant future,” he added.

  She grimaced. “Yes. I should have had. Then I ran afoul of the Cosmosophists.”

  “That was a foolish thing you did.”

  “Probably. An impulse.” Blood rose under the clear skin. Her words throbbed. “But I hated them so. I always will.”

  His gaze measured her. “I agree in principle. Philo Pryor was an outrageous charlatan, and his successors have done questionable things. However, I am not violent about it.”

  “They are.”

  “What you did was provocative.”

  She tossed her head. “It needed doing.”


  Every northern summer solstice on Mars, the Order of the Received Cosmosophy brought forth from Pryor’s tomb the device he related finding in a cave on Ascraeus Mons, left by the Galactics to await a genius who could endure to use it. Since his translation to a higher existence, it again lay inert; but a procession carried it to the Temple of Truth for solemn ceremonies before returning it to its resting place. Perhaps another genius would appear, in whose brain the quantum mechanical resonances would pulse anew, bringing further manifestations from the Ones. Meanwhile its appearances reminded the faithful of the doctrines their prophet had received, which the Synod of Interpreters rendered into day-by-day commandments. Such a communion will not take kindly to an outsider who loads with instruments an apartment that the procession must pass, afterward publishing her data and explaining how they show that the circuits in the box do nothing and never could do anything.

  “Why did you?” Nansen pursued.

  “I’ve told people over and over,” she spat. “To expose the fraud.”

  “You haven’t, you know,” he said. “Devout believers go on believing, and call you the liar. You are not stupid. Nor do I think you are completely naive. It was a good deal of trouble to go to, for what you should have foreseen was a pointless prank. Why? What drove you to it?”

  She swallowed hard, red and white surging across her face. The sun made flame of her hair. He waited.

  “All right,” she got out. “I didn’t put this in my file because I didn’t think it was anybody else’s business. But I suppose it is yours, and you’ll keep it to yourself. I had a dear friend. He owned property on Mars. The Order wanted it, and did him out of it, blackening his name in the process. He … got drunk, got careless about his air supply in the desert, died. The body wasn’t found till too late for revival. I was angry”

  Nansen nodded. “I see.” He refrained from inquiring about the friend. Instead, after a pause, he said, “Your account describes several attempts on your life since then. Police records corroborate three of them. How do you know the Order is responsible?”