Starfarers

by Poul Anderson

  “About what?” He wished immediately that he hadn’t snapped.

  “You’ll resign? Quit the Kith? Become an Earthling?”

  “We can discuss that later.” He couldn’t hold down the harshness. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t time this evening.”

  She pulled her hand back.

  “Good night, Theye,” he said more amicably.

  “Good night,” she whispered.

  He saluted again and strode off, fast, not looking back. Light and shadow slid over him. His footfalls rustled.

  Nivala waited. He would see her tonight. Somehow, just then, he couldn’t feel quite happy about it.

  She had stood alone in a common room, looking at the stars in the viewscreen, and the illumination from overhead had been cool in her hair. Glimpsing her as he passed by, he entered quietly. What a wonder she was. A millennium ago, such tall, slender blondes had been rare on Earth. If the genetic adaptors of the Dominancy had done nothing else, they should be remembered with thanks for having recreated her kind.

  Keen-sensed, she heard and turned about. The silver-blue eyes widened and her lips parted, half covered by a hand. He thought what a beautiful thing a woman’s hand was, set beside the knobbly, hairy paw of a man. “Oh,” she said. Her voice was like song. “You startled me, Kenri Shaun.”

  “Apologies, Freelady.”

  Since he had had no reason to come in—none that he could tell her—he felt breathtakingly relieved when she simply smiled. “No harm done. I’m too nervous.”

  An opening for talk! “Is something the matter, Freelady? Anything I—anybody can help with?”

  “No.” And, “Thank you,” she added. “Everyone is already very helpful.” They’d better be, with a passenger of her status. However, these first two daycycles of the voyage she’d been courteous, and he expected she’d continue that way. “It’s a sense of”—she hesitated, which wasn’t like a Star-Free—“isolation.”

  “It’s unfortunate that we are an alien people to you, Freelady.” Social inferiors. Or worse. Though you haven’t treated me so.

  She smiled again. “No, the differences are interesting.” The smile died. “I shouldn’t admit this.” Her fingers brushed across his for a bare moment that he never forgot. “I should have grown used to it, outbound. And now I’m headed home. But the thought that … more than half a century will have passed … is coming home to me.”

  He had merely clichés for response. “Time dilation, Freelady. People you knew will have aged.” Or died. “But the Peace of the Dominancy still holds, I’m sure.” All too sure.

  “Yes, no doubt I can take up my life as it was. If I want to.” Her gaze went back to the blackness; stars and nebulae and cold galactic river. She shivered slightly under the thin blue chiton. “Time, space, strangeness. Perhaps it’s that—I fell to thinking—I’ll make the crossing in practically the same time as before, over the same distance, as far as the universe is concerned—except that it isn’t concerned, it doesn’t care, doesn’t know we ever existed—” She caught her breath. “And yet the return will take nine days longer than the going did.”

  He took refuge in facts. “That’s because we’re rather heavily laden, Freelady, which Eagle wasn’t. Our gamma factor is down to about three hundred and fifty.” Not that it ever gets much above four hundred. We merchantmen are not legendary Envoy. It isn’t necessary for us, it wouldn’t pay; and maybe even we Kithfolk have lost the vision. Kenri put the thought from him. It spooked too often through his head.

  For a while they stood wordless. Ventilation hummed, as if the ship talked to herself. Nivala had once wondered aloud how a vessel felt, what it was like to be forever a wanderer through foreign skies. He hadn’t actually needed to explain, as he did, that the computers and robots lacked consciousness. She knew; this was a passing fancy. But it stayed with him, having been hers.

  Nor did she now resent his pointing out an obvious technicality. She looked at him again. A breeze brought him a faint, wild trace of her perfume. “The time is more frightening than the space,” she said low. “Yes, a single light-year’s too huge for our imagining. But I can’t really grasp that you were born eight hundred years ago, Kenri Shaun, and you’ll be traveling between the stars when I’m dust.”

  He could have seized the chance to pay a compliment. His tongue locked on him. He was a starfarer, a Kithman, belonging to nowhere and to no one except his ship, while she was Star-Free, unspecialized genius, at the top of the Dominancy’s genetic peerage. The best he could do was: “The life spans we experience will be similar, Freelady. One measure of time is as valid as another. Elementary relativity.”

  She cast the mood from her. It could not have gone very deep. “Well, I never was good at physics,” she laughed. “We leave that to Star-A and Norm-A types.”

  The remark slapped him in the face. Yes, brain work and muscle work are the same. Work. Let the suboptimals sweat. Star-Frees shall concentrate on being aesthetic and ornamental.

  She saw. He had not had much occasion to conceal his feelings. Abruptly, amazingly, she caught his right hand in both hers. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—I didn’t mean what you think.”

  “It’s nothing, Freelady,” he answered out of his bewilderment.

  “Oh, it’s much.” Her eyes looked straight into his, enormous. “I know how many people on Earth dislike yours, Kenri. You don’t fit in, you speak among each other of things unknown to us, you bring wares and data we want and drive hard bargains for them, you question what we take for granted—you’re living question marks and make us uncomfortable.” The pale cheeks had colored. She glanced down. Her lashes were long and sooty black. “But I know a superior type when I meet one. You could be a Star-Free, too, Kenri. If we didn’t bore you.”

  “Never that, Freelady!”

  They didn’t pursue the matter and he soon left her, with trumpets calling in him. Three months, he thought. Three ship months to Sol.

  A maple stirred overhead as he turned at the Shaun gate, its leaves crackling in the wind. The street lighting didn’t do justice to their scarlet. Early frost this year, he guessed. The wind blew chill and damp, bearing autumnal odors, smoke from traditional hearthfires, cuttings and soil in gardens. He realized suddenly what had seldom come to mind, that he had never been here during a winter. He had never known the vast hush of snowfall.

  Light poured warm and yellow from windows. The door scanned and recognized him. It opened. When he walked into the small, cluttered living room, he caught a lingering whiff of dinner and regretted arriving too late. He’d eaten at the spaceport, and not badly, but that was tech food. His mother cooked.

  He saluted his parents according to custom and propriety. His father nodded with equal restraint. His mother cast dignity aside, hugged him, and said how thin he’d gotten. “Come, dear, I’ll fix you a sandwich. Welcome home.”

  “I haven’t time,” he replied. Helplessly: “I’d like to, but, well, I have to go out again.”

  “Theye Barinn was asking about you,” she said, elaborately casual. “The High Barbaree came in two months ago.”

  “Yes, I know. And we happened to meet on my way here.”

  “How nice. Are you going to call on her tins evening?”

  “Some other time.”

  “Her ship will leave before ours, do you know? You won’t see her for years. Unless …” The voice trailed off. Unless you marry her. She’s your sort, Kenri. She’d do well aboard Fleetwing. She’d give you fine children.

  “Some other time,” he repeated, sorry for the brusqueness; but Nivala expected him. “Dad, what’s this about badges?”

  Wolden Shaun grimaced. “A new tax on us,” he said. “No, worse than a tax. We have to wear them everywhere outside the Town, and pay through the nose for them. May every official of the Dominancy end in a leaky spacesuit with a plugged sanitor.”

  “My group got passes at the spaceport, but we were told they were just for transit to here. Can I borr
ow yours tonight? I have to go into the city.”

  Wolden gazed for a while at his only son before he turned around. “It’s in my study,” he said. “Come along.”

  The room was crammed with his mementos. That sword had been given him by an armorer on Marduk, a four-armed creature who became his friend. That picture was a view from a moon of Osiris, frozen gases like amber in the glow of the mighty planet. Those horns were from a hunting trip on Rama, in the days of his youth. That graceful, enigmatic statuette had been a god on Dagon. Wolden’s close-cropped gray head bent over his desk as he fumbled among papers. He preferred them to a keyboard for composing the autobiography that officers were supposed to bequeath to their ships’ databases.

  “Do you really mean to go through with this resignation?” he asked.

  Kenri’s face heated. “Yes. I hate to hurt you and Mother, but—Yes.”

  Wolden found what he was searching for. He let it lie. Face and tone kept the calm suitable to his rank. “I’ve seen others do it, mainly on colony planets but a couple of times on Earth. As far as I could learn afterward, mostly they prospered. But I suspect none of them were ever very happy.”

  “I wonder,” said Kenri.

  “In view of the conditions we’ve found here, the captain and mates are seriously considering a change of plans. Next voyage not to Aurora, but a long excursion. Long, including into regions new to us. We may not be back for a thousand years. There’ll be no more Dominancy. Your name will be forgotten.”

  Kenri spoke around a thickness in his throat. “Sir, we don’t know what things will be like then. Isn’t it better to take what good there is while we can?”

  “Do you truly hope to join the highborn? What’s great about them? I’ve seen fifteen hundred years of history, and this is one of the bad times. It will get worse.”

  Kenri didn’t respond.

  “That girl could as well be of a different species, son,” Wolden said. “She’s a Star-Free. You’re a dirty little tumy.”

  Kenri could not meet his gaze. “Spacefarers have gone terrestrial before. They’ve founded lasting families.”

  “That was then.”

  “I’m not afraid. Sir, may I have the badge?”

  Wolden sighed. “We won’t leave for at least six months—longer, if we do decide on a far-space run and need to make extra preparations. I can hope meanwhile you’ll change your mind.”

  “I might,” said Kenri. And now I’m lying to you, Dad, Dad, who sang me old songs when I was little and guided my first extravehicular excursion and stood by me so proudly on my thirteenth birthday when I took the Oath.

  “Here.” Wolden gave him the intertwined loops of black cords. He pulled a wallet from a drawer. “And here are five hundred decards of your money. Your account’s at fifty thousand and will go higher, but don’t let this get stolen.” Bitterness spat: “Why give an Earthling anything for nothing?” He clamped composure back down on himself.

  “Thank you; sir.” Kenri touched the badge to his left breast. Molecules clung. It wasn’t heavy but it felt like a stone. He sheered off from that. Fifty thousand decards! What to buy? Stuff we can trade—

  No. He was staying here. He’d need advice about Earthside investments. Money was an antidote to prejudice, wasn’t it?

  “I’ll be back—well, maybe not till tomorrow,” he said. “Thanks again. Good night.”

  “Good night, son.”

  Kenri returned to the living room, paused to give his mother a hug, and went out into the darkness of Earth.

  At first neither had been impressed. Captain Seralpin had told Kenri: “We’ll have a passenger, going back to Sol. She’s on Morgana. Take a boat and fetch her.”

  “Sir?” asked astonishment. “A passenger? Have we ever carried any?”

  “Rarely. Last was before you were born. Nearly always a round trip, of course. Who’d want to spend ten, twenty, fifty years waiting for a return connection? This is a special case.”

  “Does the captain wish to explain?”

  “I’d better. At ease. Sit down.” Seralpin gestured. Kenri took a chair facing the desk. They were groundside on Maia. The Kith maintained offices in Landfall, the planet’s principal town. Sunlight streamed in through an open window, together with subarctic warmth and a cinnamonlike odor from a stand of native silvercane.

  “After I got the word, naturally I searched out everything I could about her,” Seralpin said. “She’s the Freelady Nivala Tersis from Canda. An ancestor of hers acquired large holdings on Morgana in pioneering days. The family still draws a fair amount of income from the property, though she’s the first of them to visit it since then. Evidently she—or rather, no doubt, an agent of hers—made inquiries at Kith Town and learned what the current arrangements, schedules, were for 61 Virginis.”

  “Current” is not exactly the word, passed through Kenri. We’re talking about a span of several centuries. But no, that’s by cosmic time. To Kithfolk, not very many years. And “schedule” is pretty vague, too, the more so when fewer ships ply the lanes now than once did.

  “You can see how it worked out,” Seralpin went on. “Given the existing agreement on trade circuits, she could take Eagle here, knowing Polaris and Fleetwing would call within about a year of her arrival before proceeding to Sol. Fleetwing happened to make port first, and she’s ready to go, so we’ll take her.” Seralpin paused. “I can’t say I’m overjoyed. However, she’ll pay well, and you don’t refuse a person of that status. Not if you want to stay in business at Earth.”

  “Why would anybody like that ever come, sir?”

  Seralpin shrugged. “Officially, to inspect the holdings and collect data, with a view to possible improvement of operations. Actually, I imagine, for the thrill and glory. How many in her circle have gone beyond the Solar System? She’ll be a glamour figure for a while, till the next fad comes along.”

  “Um, uh, maybe she’s serious, sir. At least partly. She’s taking some risk and making some sacrifice. She can’t be sure what things will be like when she returns, except that everybody she knew will be aging or dead.”

  “So much the better,” replied Seralpin cynically. “New fashions, new amusements, and new young people. Liberation from boredom. She spent her time on this planet till lately, and only then popped over to Morgana. Now she wants back, though she knows we won’t leave for weeks.”

  “Well, sir, Morgana’s not humanly habitable. Those valuable biochemicals can be repulsive-looking, or dangerous, in their native state.”

  Seralpin grinned. “That’s why I picked you to fetch her. You’re an idealist who wants to believe the best about his fellow human beings. You should get along with her and not have to swallow as much rage as most of us would.” He turned solemn. “Make sure you do get along. Be super-respectful and obliging. She’s not ordinary upper class, she’s a Star-Free.”

  Thus it came about that Kenri Shaun piloted a boat to the neighbor planet. At the present configuration, a one-gravity boost took four days. He spent some of the time rigging a private section for the guest, though it left scant room for him, and arranging the minor luxuries that his mother had suggested he lay in. Afterward he was largely at the reader screen, continuing his study of Murinn’s General Cosmology. He couldn’t win promotions if he didn’t have that material firmly in his head.

  But must he accept it as the absolute last word? True, there hadn’t been any fundamental change since Olivares and his colleagues worked out their unified physics. Everything since had been details, empirical discoveries, perhaps surprising but never basic. After all, went the argument, the universe is finite, therefore the scientific horizon must be, too. Where a quantitative explanation of some phenomenon is lacking—biological, sociological, psychological, or whatever—that is merely because the complexity makes it unfeasible to solve the Grand Equation for this particular case.

  Kenri had his doubts. Already he had seen too much of the cosmos to keep unqualified faith in man’s ability to understand
it. His attitude was not unique among his folk. When they mentioned it to an Earthling, they generally got a blank look or a superior smile. … Well, science was a social enterprise. Maybe someday a new civilization would want to ask new questions. Maybe there would still be some Kith ships.

  He set down on Rodan Spacefield and took the slideway into Northport. The hot, greenish rain sluicing over the transparent tube would have poisoned him. Though its machines kept it clean, a subtle shabbiness had crept into the Far Frontier Hotel. Partly that was because of the plantationers drinking in the lounge. They weren’t rowdy, but lives as lonely as theirs didn’t make for social graces.

  Hence Kenri’s surprise approached shock when he entered the suite and found a beautiful young woman. He recovered, bowed with arms crossed on breast, and introduced himself humbly. That was the prescribed way for one of his station to address one of hers, according to the latest information from the laser newsbeams.

  “Greeting, Ensign,” she replied. Her language hadn’t changed a great deal since he had learned it. She got his rank wrong; he didn’t venture to correct her. “Let’s be on our way.”

  “Immediately, Freelady?” He’d hoped for a day or two in which he could relax, stretch his muscles, go someplace other than the boat.

  “I’m weary of this dreary. My baggage is in the next room, packed. You should be able to carry it.”

  He managed a smile. At the craft, he managed an apology for her cramped, austere quarters. “That’s all right,” she said. “The ferry out was no better. I called for a ship’s boat for the sake of trying something different.”

  After they had lifted, settled into steady boost, and unharnessed, she glanced at her timepiece. “Hu, how late,” she said. “Don’t worry about dinner. I’ve eaten and now want to go to bed. I’ll have breakfast at, um, 0900 hours.”

  But then she surprised him anew. Having stood pensive a moment, she looked in his direction and the blue gaze was by no means unfriendly. “I forgot. You must be on quite another cycle. What time is it by your clocks? I should start adapting.”