Starfarers

by Poul Anderson

  “Who else would be?” Dayan looked past him, toward the horizon. “Oh, I have my connections in Israel. I could arrange a well-guarded cocoon for myself. But what sort of life is that? Or I could sign onto an interstellar expedition, if one will take me, and come back after my enemies are dead. But I doubt fifty years will be enough, and nothing longer is planned, except yours.” She was still for another moment. The wind in the grass, the sound of the horses cropping, seemed to louden. “How very much longer!”

  “An extreme way to go for safety.”

  “I’d rather shoot those swine, of course. But the law doesn’t allow, and anyhow, I can’t identify the individuals who’ve tried for me.”

  “You would hardly be going into a safe refuge.”

  “I know!” As she went on, allurement overtook rage and her mood brightened. “That’s one thing making it… not a loss to me. Yes, I’ll mourn for the people I love, everybody, everything I’ll never see again, but—what’ll we find out there? What’ll we do? And when we return, this will be a whole new world, too.”

  “We must explore the question further,” he said quietly. “I like your spirit.”

  “And I—I—well, I don’t expect your company will be dull,” she told him.

  For two or three seconds they considered one another.

  Nansen touched heels to horse and took up the reins. His briskness declared that the captain should not allow any sudden, real intimacy to flower. “Come, that’s plenty for the time being. Let’s enjoy the day. You’re not an experienced caballista, are you?”

  She chuckled. “Isn’t that obvious?”

  “Let me show you a bit of technique, and then we’ll ride!”

  6.

  From the stoep of Mamphela Mokoena’s little house, Lajos Ruszek saw widely. Westward the Transkei heights rose green with plantations, shrubs and trees producing their various organics under a hard blue sky. Northward and southward the city reached beyond sight, towns swollen until they ran together, brightly colored modules clustered along traffic-swarming streets, towers rearing among them, hovercars weaving above, and everywhere people on foot or on motor-skates, their voices a daytime overtone to a machine throb that never ceased. Eastward the Indian Ocean glared with sunlight. The city sprawled out into it: platforms for residence, thermal energy, and mineral extraction; maricultural mats; boats and attendant robots plying between. No matter how pure the industry, a faint reek lay in the air—chemicals, particulates, humanity.

  Mokoena came from inside bearing a tray with a pitcher and two tumblers of iced tea. She set it down on a table and herself in a woven chair across from Ruszek’s. Her guest snatched his drink and gulped.

  “Ah-h-h!” he exhaled. “Goes good. Thank you, mademoiselle.”

  Mokoena smiled. “That title doesn’t fit me well, I fear,” she replied in English less accented than his.

  “Eh? I meant—I understood you have not married.”

  “True. However—” She waved a hand at herself, a gesture half humorous, half rueful. Her dashiki covered a frame fairly tall and formerly slender but putting on weight now that she was in her late thirties. Her face, brown-skinned, broad-nosed, under bushy black hair, remained smooth, and the eyes still shone like a girl’s.

  “No matter,” she said. Her voice sounded twice melodious after his gravelly basso. “I appreciate the thought. And it is most kind of you to have come all this way just to pay a visit.”

  “I want to meet everybody in the crew,” Ruszek admitted in his blunt fashion. “Get some beforehand knowledge of them. We’ll be a long time together.”

  Mokoena’s smile faded. “Long—” It was as if the shade in which they sheltered had gone chill. Ten thousand years and more.

  Ruszek’s prosaic question brought her back, “What should I call you?”

  She studied him. Neither his manner nor his appearance suggested courtliness. Of medium height but powerful build, he had made the mistake of wearing a naval-style tunic and trousers, and was sweating copiously and pungently. The bullet head was totally bald except for bushy brows and sweeping black mustache. Brown almond eyes looked out of a broad, rather flat countenance. His age was fifty-five.

  She relaxed. “Oh, I suppose ‘Dr. Mokoena’ will do till we feel free to be less formal. What do you prefer for yourself?”

  Ruszek poured more tea. Ice cubes clinked. “Whatever you want. I’ve been many things.”

  “So I’ve gathered. Although the information’s remarkably scanty, considering how the journalists are after us. Did you make them hostile to you on purpose?”

  “I give the pests what they deserve.”

  “Forgive me, but is that quite wise? Especially when you will be second in command.”

  “And a boat pilot,” he reminded her, veering from a subject he disliked. “That interests me much more.”

  She went along with him. “I’m sure it does, from what I’ve heard about you.”

  “Besides, Captain Nansen won’t really need any second.”

  His tone had altered. “You sound as though you admire him,” she said.

  “There’s no better man, in space or on the ground.”

  “Is that why you enlisted? To serve under him? I didn’t know you’d met before.”

  “We hadn’t, till I applied. Then I found out.”

  “May I ask why you did join?”

  Ruszek forced a laugh. “I came here to ask you that, Dr. Mokoena.”

  “It works both ways, Mr. Ruszek.”

  “Well, adventure, challenge, if you must have big words.”

  “There are closer stars, shorter voyages, no dearth of discoveries and great deeds.”

  “Could I get a berth on any such expedition? Not fucking likely—uh, pardon me. Too few starships so far. Too much competition.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. As you say, adventure and challenge, and the time away from home isn’t usually too many years.”

  He grinned. “Don’t forget the profits. Crew members get their lecture fees, endorsements, book contracts, fat Earth-side jobs. The Foundation, or whoever has built and backed the ship, gets the specimens and samples to sell—and the entertainment rights, the documentaries and dramas. Oh, it pays.”

  “It pays us all, in knowledge, in hope—hope of meeting other intelligences, settling new worlds,” she said earnestly.

  “Why are we trading these duck-billed platitudes?” he retorted. “To get to your point, Dr. Mokoena, Envoy’s the one starship with no serious competition for berths.”

  “Nevertheless—”

  He cut her off. “All right, God damn it, all right, I’ll tell you about myself. Don’t blame me if you already know everything.

  “Born in Budapest, lower middle class, rough-and-tumble boy, left home at sixteen and odd-jobbed around the world a few years—yes, sometimes had to dodge the busybody law—till I joined the Peace Command of the Western Alliance. Surprise, I liked that and buckled down to getting an education. Got posted to military construction on Luna and in free space, got piloting skills, but kept being broken in rank for this or that trouble. At the end of my hitch I found me a civilian post, with the Solmetals Consortium, and piloted around, everywhere from Mars to Saturn. Saw some action in the Space War.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really? But you were a civilian then, you said. And a European.”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t a decent old-time kind of war, remember. A nasty, drawn-out, sniping thing between the cat’s-paws of the big powers, for who should control this or that out there. Even after Europe withdrew, the Chinks—Argh, it’s years past. I came through with experience, a record, that made Captain Nansen push hard for the Foundation to accept me. Are you satisfied?”

  “An active life,” she murmured, her gaze contemplative upon him. “Often harder than you admit, I’m sure.”

  His irritation subsided. “You have an eye for people, Dr. Mokoena.”

  She smiled. “Perhaps. My business.”

  “Your turn. I k
now hardly anything about you.”

  “There isn’t much to know. Quiet years, unlike yours.”

  “Then why are you going?”

  “I can be of service.”

  He sat back, ran a palm over the sweat that sheened across his pate, and said, “Well, we certainly do need a biologist and a physician, and if they come in the same package, God is very obliging. But you do well enough on Earth, no? Why should you want to leave it?”

  She sipped her tea, buying time, before she answered slowly, “The reasons are personal. Captain Nansen and the Foundation directors know, of course. You shall eventually. I would rather it not come out before the public, to avoid embarrassing … certain persons.” Decision: “Well, you won’t spill it to the media.”

  He grinned again. “Guaranteed.”

  “What do you know about me?”

  “Um … you studied medicine, and worked for years among the poor, first in this kingdom, later with relief missions elsewhere in Africa. At last you stopped, went back to school, became a biologist, and did good science, especially on the specimens brought back from Tau Ceti. Is this why you want to go with us, research?”

  “It will be fascinating.”

  “You may never publish it, you know. When we come back, we may not find any world here.”

  “I realize that. I dare hope—meeting the Yonderfolk, learning from them—will matter to humankind.” Mokoena fanned the air dismissingly. “But I don’t want to sound stuffy, either. By going, I can set something right here and now.”

  “What?”

  She sighed. “It hurt, forsaking medicine. The need is so great. I felt so selfish. But I—I did not think I could stand seeing much more utter misery, unless I hardened my heart to it, and I didn’t want to do that. My parents are ministers of the Samaritan Church. My work was through it, on its behalf. When I quit, they, felt betrayed.” Her fingers tightened around her tumbler. “Envoy badly needed one like me. I joined on condition that the Exploratory Foundation make a substantial grant to their church, a sum that’ll make a real difference. We are reconciled, my parents and I. They say they’ll wait for me in the afterlife and welcome me gladly. I don’t, myself, know about that. But they are happy.”

  He regarded her somewhat wonderingly. “You’re a saint.”

  She put down her drink, threw her head back, and let laughter ring. “Ha! Absolutely not, Mr. Ruszek, nor ambitious to be one. I expect I’ll enjoy most of what happens. I usually have.”

  After a moment: “In fact, since we’d like to get acquainted, why don’t you stay for dinner? When I cook for myself, I cook well, but it’s more fun to do for company.”

  “That’s the best offer I’ve had all week,” he said, delighted.

  “One thing—”

  “Oh, I have a room at the Hotel de Klerk.”

  “No, no, what I meant was—It had slipped my mind, but we have a chance to learn something about our second engineer.”

  “Alvin Brent? I’ve already met him.”

  She grew grave. “What was your impression?”

  “Why, … not bad. He knows his business. Not too much the physics of the quantum gate, but the nuts and bolts. If anything happens to Yu Wenji, Brent can get us home.”

  “But as a person? You see, I’ve never met him. I’ve only seen the reports and some news stories.”

  “His background is no worse than mine.”

  American, born in Detroit, parents service providers struggling to keep afloat amidst depression, taxes, and controls. Alvin was their single child, apparently wanted more by the father than the mother, she was dutiful, as the New Christian Church commanded women to be and the Advisor commanded citizens in general to be. A misfit in school, he showed a talent for computers and machinery, which his social isolation reinforced. On recommendation of his local gang boss—the Radiums were in favor with the regional commissioner—he won appointment to the Space Academy. There he flourished. Though still not given to camaraderie, he got along, and his grades were excellent. Having trained on Luna and between planets, he became involved in the Space War, aboard “observer” ships that saw occasional combat. During those four years he did several courageous things.

  They availed him little. Having been stripped of most of its interplanetary possessions, the United States must needs scale down. Discharged into a hand-to-mouth existence, Brent finally got a minor position with Consolidated Energetics. He was well aware that a robotic system would replace him as soon as the capital to install it became available. Envoy offered more. Whether for weal or woe, nobody knew.

  “I am thinking of his ideas,” Mokoena said.

  “What difference will they make, where we’re going?” Ruszek countered.

  “Bad for our unity, our morale, if they are offensive. He’s been in the news quite a bit, you know, because of those things he keeps saying. But what they mean isn’t clear to me.”

  “Don’t worry. If he should get obnoxious, I’ll sit on him. But he struck me as fairly sensible. About as sensible as anybody can be who’d go on an expedition like this.”

  “I saw on the news that he’ll give a live talk in Australia about that North Star Society he belongs to. At 2100 hours. In a few minutes, our time.”

  “And we can watch it happen, hm? All right, if you want to.”

  “I’d rather. When so much of all our input is recorded or synthesized or virtual—Call it a superstition of mine, but I think we belong in the real world.”

  “I do, too. When we can get at it.”

  Mokoena rose and led the way inside. Ruszek glanced around. The living room was clean but cluttered: cassettes, folio books, printouts, pictures, childhood toys, seashells, souvenirs ranging from garish to gorgeous, woven hangings, old handicrafted pieces—tools, bowls, musical instruments, fetishes, masks, two assegais crossed behind a shield. She sat down on a worn and sagging couch, beckoned him to join her, and spoke to the television.

  It came alight with a view of an auditorium. The building must date back at least a century, for it overwhelmed the hundred-odd people who had come in person to hear. However, on request the net reported that some twenty million sets were tuned in around the globe. Doubtless several times that number would carry replays, or at least excerpts. “Aren’t we the sensation, we Envoy crew?” Ruszek gibed. “Every sneeze and fart of ours is newsworthy. How long till they forget, once we’re gone? Six months?”

  The scan moved in on Brent as he advanced to the forefront of the stage. He was a forty-year-old of average height and soldierly bearing, dressed in plain military-style gray tunic and trousers, a Polaris emblem on the collar. His black hair was cut short, his beard suppressed. His features were regular and sallow, distinguished mainly by intense dark eyes.

  “He is attractive,” Mokoena remarked.

  Ruszek raised his brows. “Heh? I wouldn’t know. He doesn’t seem to chase women.”

  Mokoena smiled. “Part of the attraction.” Seriously: “And his … his burningness.”

  The invitation to speak had come from a group sympathetic to his views. Australia, too, had suffered losses in space. The chairman introduced the guest speaker rather fulsomely. By sheer contrast, Brent’s level tone caught immediate hold of the attention.

  “Thank you. Good evening. To all on Earth who share our concern, to all like us through the Solar System, greeting.

  “I am honored to be here, I who will soon leave you for a span longer than recorded history. Why have I come? To offer you a vision.’ To tell you that hope lives, and will always live while men and women are undaunted. My own hope is that you will follow this vision, that you will redress our wrongs and start the world on a new course, that what I find when I return will be glorious.”

  The voice began to pulse, and presently to crash. “… yes, the North Star Society says we were betrayed. In the Federated Nations they bleated about ‘peace’ and brought every pressure to bear on us they could; but no more than a token on our enemies. The intellectuals,
the news media, the politicians squealed about nuclear weapons let loose on Earth if the fighting got ‘serious’—as if it wasn’t! The bankers, the church bosses, the corporation executives, they had their hidden agendas. Believe you me, they did. And so we withheld our full strength. We pretended we were not in a war at all. And brave Americans, brave Australians, died for lack of our aid. Do you want them to have died for nothing?”

  “NO!” the audience shouted.

  “It’s no wonder his government is discouraging that club of his,” Mokoena muttered. “This is explosive stuff.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Ruszek answered. “They’re not stirring up any mobs.” His mustache bent upward with his sneer. “The mobs are at home, wrapped up in their virtual-reality shows. Maybe that’s why he signed on with us—frustration. He can’t do any harm where we’re bound.”

  Mokoena shook her head. “I don’t think he is an evil man. I think he’s terribly embittered and—Yes, let’s see if we can help him heal.”

  “Let him do his job and I’ll be satisfied. Not that he’ll have much to do, while Yu is in charge.”

  “A mere backup. It must be a hard knowledge.”

  Brent continued. His tone grew shrill when he denounced the conspirators and called for a rebirth of Western will. Toward the end, though, he quieted again; and tears were on his cheeks as he finished:

  “… I leave the work in your hands. I must go, with my comrades, across the galaxy, to meet the nearest of the great star-faring civilizations. You, your children, your children’s children, they must found our own, and take possession of the stars for humankind. What we in our ship will find, nobody knows. But we, too, will carry destiny with us, human destiny. And when we return, when we bring back what we have won, to join with what you and your blood have built, humankind will go onward to possess the universe!”

  The audience cheered, a sound nearly lost in the hollowness around them. Mokoena told the set to turn off. For a minute she and Ruszek sat silent.

  “Do you know,” he said, “I think he really believes this.”