Starfarers

by Poul Anderson

  She trod one step closer. “Don’t take it so to heart, Rico,” she said from low in her throat.

  “I shouldn’t, true. The irony of it—” His armor cracked enough for her to hear. “We can’t speak of the cruel irony, can we? The universe isn’t cruel or kind or anything. It simply is. It doesn’t even care about its own survival.”

  “Your God ought to.”

  “Well,” he sighed, “the Church taught that someday time also will have a stop.”

  She touched his hand. “Rico—”

  “¿Sí? He sounded startled.

  “If it is so—if Envoy is the last human starship—don’t let it break you.” Dayan’s voice lifted. “A bitter disappointment, yes. To all of us. But we didn’t fare for nothing. We had our voyage, we made our discoveries, we lived. And this won’t be the end of life, either.”

  “No,” he must agree.

  “If humans aren’t adventuring anymore, could they be at peace, as the Tahirians wanted to be?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “We never really had a hardwired drive, a need or instinct, to explore. You and I heard a lot of rhetoric about that, back in those days, but the fact is, most people in most of history were content to stay put and cultivate their own gardens. Exploration, discovery, was a cultural thing.”

  “And an individual thing,” he insisted.

  She beheld him crowned with stars. “Individuals like you.”

  “And you, Hanny.”

  “But would peace be so terrible?” she pursued. “Suppose Earth is tranquil and beautiful. Suppose we can find something for ourselves like your estancia. Then I could gladly settle down.”

  “Do you remember the estancia?” he asked wonderingly.

  “How could I forget? That short while I spent there with you was as happy a time as I’ve ever known.”

  “Hanny.”

  She mustered resolution. “All right, Rico. I’ve been meaning to say this when the chance came. Couldn’t earlier, of course. But it has been more than a year for us since we lost Jean.”

  His machismo crumbled. “I—naturally, I’ve had thoughts—but—”

  She smiled in the starlit gloaming. “But you’re the captain and a gentleman and wouldn’t let yourself notice how I’ve lately been waving my eyelashes at you.” In a rush: “Rico, we’ve six months of travel left. After that—We can’t guess what, after that. But we have this half year.”

  “To explore what we’ve found, yes.”

  “And more than that.”

  “To be happy in,” he said, amazed.

  46.

  Where the gorge was narrowest the river at the bottom ran at its most furious. Gray-green and white-foamed, it roared between cliffs, spouted off boulders in the shallows, breathed chill and damp into the sunshine above. Debris from farther upland whirled and bounded through the current, sticks, brushwood, sometimes a dead animal, a capsized dugout, or a fallen tree. Here the gap was small enough that the Susuich could throw a bridge over.

  Emerging from the shadows and blue foliage of woods, Vodra Shaun stopped at the brink to see what it was she must cross. Iron-ruddy rock fell ten meters to the water, with twice that distance between the sides. A suspension bridge would have been appropriate, but no natural fibers had the strength necessary—at least, none in this region did—and as yet the Susuich trade with the Hrroch did not include steel cable. Instead, the builders had trimmed spindly local trees. Planted in holes and crevices halfway down the cliffs, poles slanted upward to meet other members and form trusses that supported two stringers on which short sections lay transversely. The whole was lashed together with rawhide. Construction had obviously demanded skill and daring, and possibly several lives.

  Dau Ernen halted at her side. “It looks fragile, doesn’t it?” he said.

  “Well, I could wish we weren’t quite so heavily loaded,” Vodra confessed. She grinned. “But then, I’ve wished that ever since we set out.”

  Their burdens were indeed considerable, even in a gravity field 10 percent less than terrestrial. Besides sleeping bags, tent, medikits, and assorted gear, they carried dried food for two months. Nothing that lived on Brent could nourish them. Kithfolk hardly ever had occasion to go backpacking. Vodra herself had done it exactly once before, on her last visit to this planet. Dau had never, and struggled manfully at first. Young, in good condition, he toughened as the days passed on the trail.

  Ri had already stepped onto the span. “Follow, follow,” he called. “We have far to go to the next worthwhile campsite.”

  Standing there against the sky, he made a handsome spectacle. Long, slender save for a barrel chest, the proportions were hot human, but suggested a refined, abstract sculpture of a man. The head was different, plumed, round-eared, eyes big and golden above a curved beak. A kilt decked the red skin. Little more encumbered him than a rifle and knife, of Hrroch manufacture; traveling through this wilderness, his homeland, he lived off it.

  Vodra lifted the transponder hung about her neck to her lips. “We wonder if we can get safely across,” she told him. The instrument converted her utterances to the trills and whistles that she herself could not have produced in any intelligible fashion. Human spellings of Brentan words, including names, scarcely counted as crude approximations.

  Nor was the language she used an equivalent of his; it emerged as Hrrochan. Hitherto Kithfolk had only had serious dealings with the civilization beyond the eastern sea, technologically ahead of any others. Ri was among the Susuich who had acquired its tongue. The knowledge came from traders who, pushing west from their coastal colonies, established outposts in the mountains. Over the years it had qualified Ri to act first as an intermediary between them and his overlords, now to guide a pair of strange beings farther west to the heart of his country.

  He waved a four-fingered hand. “Be careful to keep your balance,” he advised. “Come!”

  “Well, I suppose we can,” Dau said in Kithish after Vodra translated for him.

  “We’d better,” she replied. “Plain to see, this culture has no use for the timid. If we’re to get any profit from our expedition, we have to act bold.”

  Ri waited for them. His original attitude toward the humans, half wary, half marveling, had turned into comradeship. When Vodra reached him, Dau at her back, he made the clucking sound that perhaps corresponded to a smile and turned about to lead the way.

  The bridge was barely a meter wide, without rails. Its thin structure trembled underfoot. Swollen with snowmelt, the river raged beneath.

  Ri saw the danger first. He shrilled and burst into a run. Heavier and less gracile by heritage, tens of kilos on their shoulders, the humans dared not.

  Ri was also too slow.

  That the thing should have happened just then was wildly unlikely. Or was it? Maybe the bridge needed rebuilding every few years. Vodra hadn’t thought to ask.

  A tree came downstream, not one of the gaunt local sort but a mountain giant, oak-massive, uprooted by a spate or a mudslide or the crumbling of a bank. Wide-spreading, spinning as it tumbled, its branches snagged in the truss. The battering-ram momentum of the trunk drove them forward. Wood snapped and rattled. The truss broke. The bridge collapsed.

  Spacefarers had quick reflexes drilled in. As she felt the footing go, Vodra undid her bellyband and pulled her arms free of the pack. She glimpsed Dau doing the same. The bridge toppled slowly, down through the members that had upheld it. She grabbed hold of the nearest piece and clung. It eased her fall.

  But then she was at the bottom and the river had her.

  She felt neither fear nor the cold. She was too busy staying alive. A part of her seemed to stand aside, watchful, and quietly issue orders. Fill your lungs before you strike. The water is thick with glacial flour, you’re nearly blind underneath it, but watch as best you can. Maybe you’ll see a boulder in time to evade it. Swim upward. Break the surface. Breathe. The torrent drags you down again. Don’t thrash, move minimally, save your strength; you’l
l need every erg of it. Up. Breathe. Look around while you’re able. The right bank is closer. Work toward it, but beware of rocks. In this stream, you could hit hard enough to break bones. Under again. No way to kick boots off. Well, they won’t sink you. Not till you’ve grown too weak. Up. Breathe. Where’s the sun gone? Shadow; a strip of sky far overhead, insolently blue and calm; brawling water—Look out! Boulder ahead! A big one, to stick into air. Swim sideways. Now, bend legs, kick, use your feet to push yourself off. Onward. Don’t gasp so. You’re not completely winded yet. And the current is slowing a little.

  And more. The stream was past the steepest part of its fall toward the lowlands. It had widened, too, and was therefore shoaling, through what was almost a canyon rather than a defile. The palisades were much higher, though. On the right they blocked off the sun. It touched the leftward heights, a wash of gold over their rustiness, but that deepened the gloom down here.

  Still, she could see a ways. Not far off lay a small beach. The water was less noisy. “Halloo-oo!” she heard, and cast a glance back. Yonder came Dau. He’d been lucky, caught a balk of wood and gained flotation. Not just for himself, she saw. One arm held Ri across it, face up. The Brentan flopped, ominously passive, as the timber wallowed.

  When Vodra’s feet touched bottom, her observer-pilot went away. Suddenly she was herself, aware of painful bruises, sobbing and shuddering with cold. She waded ashore and dropped onto a gravelly crescent nestled against the cliff. Stranded brushwood covered most of it.

  Dau grounded. Less exhausted, he carried Ri out. The sight shocked Vodra alert. She scrambled back up.

  “Are … are you all right?” Dau stammered. She saw the anxiety on his face and knew it for genuine. It wasn’t merely because she was the sole fellow human in a thousand kilometers or worse. She was the closest to a real Mend he had gotten thus far. Everybody else in Fleetwing was courteous, even helpful, but a newcomer didn’t soon settle into full crewdom. Too many traditions, customs, mores, turns of speech, all the nuances of belongingness, were too dissimilar. Vodra had taken the shy boy from Argosy under her wing. It was one reason she’d chosen him for her partner on this trip. Give him a chance to prove himself.

  That might turn out not to have been a favor.

  The thought flitted off. “Hold!” she exclaimed. “Careful there! He’s hurt. Badly.” Ri lay lax in Dau’s clasp. The long limbs hung down, the head lolled, eyes closed, beak agape.

  “He must have hit something when we fell,” Dau said. “I saw him and snatched. Unconscious; I don’t know—”

  “You can’t,” Vodra interrupted. “I’ve learned some Brentan anatomy. Here, kneel, let me ease him to the ground.”

  Her fingers searched across the red skin. It felt hot. Well, the normal body temperature was higher than hers. She’d like to snuggle close beside him. No, never mind the chill, not till this was done. No serious contusions visible. But—Yes. That jaggedy lump, halfway between neck and waist.

  She rose. “Not good,” she said. “I think he has a broken back.”

  Dau took his gaze from the water, stone, and murk around them. “We’ll bring him to sick bay—”

  “He’s not our species,” Vodra said. “We don’t have regrowth techniques for his biome. Luckily, an injury like this isn’t as bad for them as for us. If we handle him properly, he should recover.”

  Dau fumbled in his coverall and drew his radio transceiver from a pocket. Awkwardly, shaking, his numbed hands groped at the keys. A green light came aglow, tiny in the shadow. “It still works,” he said with lips gone blue. And Fleetwing had, as always, placed relay satellites in orbit. “I’ll call for help.”

  “Wait,” Vodra commanded. “Rescue isn’t that simple.”

  He blinked. “Huh?” His teeth clattered. He suppressed it. “Oh, yes, a spaceboat can’t land down here. B-b-but she surely can s-s-somewhere above, nearby.” He looked at the steep. Scored, craggy, bushes and dwarf trees growing wherever seed had found soil, it would be hard but not impossible to ascend. “We’ll c-climb up.”

  “Not dragging Ri along. Especially if we want to keep him alive.”

  “Oh—But we can’t stay here,” Dau protested. “We’d starve. No, we-we’ll freeze to death. That boat had better land soon.”

  “It had best not land at all, anywhere in this country,” Vodra told him. “Have you forgotten?”

  Long ago, when Kith ships explored as well as traded, their crews naturally bestowed names on planets of interest that they found. Fleetwing, ranging farther than others, made the most such discoveries, and thereby won the exclusive right to deal with them. Every catalogue of myth was drained early on. Fleetwing’s people felt it proper to call worlds where sentient beings dwelt after the crew of Envoy. They were half mythic anyway.

  Brent was unusually terrestroid and promising. The Hrroch, in particular, had attained iron working. More to the point, they were extraordinary agronomists. While nothing was humanly edible, they had a wide range of biologicals to offer, from luxurious textiles to microbial chemistry. If shrewdly marketed, these should fetch high prices on human-inhabited planets. Of course, once the idea was there, presently someone would find it cheaper to synthesize than to import. But meanwhile the Hrroch ought to hit on new ideas; Kith trade goods often stimulated inventiveness. And art—pictures, patterns, statuary, architecture, music, literature, dance—evolved with a civilization. Likewise did events, language, culture, psychology, an ongoing stream of information. The Brentans were humanlike enough for their minds and works to be comprehensible. They were alien enough for these to be unpredictable, wellsprings of excitement and inspiration.

  Hence their world became a port of call for Fleetwing. About once a terrestrial century she arrived from the stars to take orbit and send her boats down. The welcome was always eager. The Hrroch were fascinated, the wares they acquired were fabulous, discourse with crewfolk who had learned the tongue was as enlightening as it was astounding, and you didn’t need speech—signs would do—to show the rest around and have fun with them. These advents lived on in memory, lifetime after lifetime. They conditioned the history.

  Perhaps they gentled it. Brentans had their dark side, conflict, violence, oppression; but they never seemed to wreak the absolute horror humankind knew of, while concepts of peace and justice seemed to come easier. Scientific method was harder for them to grasp, whether for cultural or genetic reasons, but by now the Hrroch were in an industrial era, with steam power and mass production.

  Had that somehow engaged too much of the spirit? Or did every civilization everywhere in the universe eventually expend, its creativity? Already on her previous visit, Fleetwing had found the art disappointing. This time originality was well-nigh dead.

  Not quite. A few brilliant new motifs shone like starbursts in a dark nebula. Kithfolk inquired. The work was from overseas, where colonists traded with the Susuich, the dwellers beyond the Cloudpeak Mountains.

  Would the Susuich admit guests? Well, maybe. They were a clannish, reclusive folk. Some unfortunate incidents in the past had reinforced the attitude. No Hrroch any longer ventured west of the uplands. Humans, though, starfarers, were different. A party of them could fly to a trading post. Interpreters would be available.

  Negotiations took a while. The rest of the crew didn’t mind. A spell of leisure, on living turf beneath sun and leaves, on lakes and in breezes—they were shipfolk, space-folk, but Earth was their grandmother and this half-Earth lifted from them some of a weariness so deep in the bones that they did not really know they bore it.

  Word came at length. A flying vessel could touch down at the border village Chura. It could let two strangers off but must then immediately depart, returning only to fetch them at the same spot. A guide would take them as far as the town Ai. They must not expect admission to the Abode of Songs or other holy places. However, the chieftains were willing to discuss possible barter relations.

  “Arrogant, aren’t they?” Captain Graim said.

&nbs
p; “I’d call it forlorn;’ Vodra replied. “They’re bewildered, maybe terrified, but putting up a brave front. We need to respect it.”

  The need was not physical. The Kithfolk had guns, missiles, robots, every means of conquest. But that would destroy the very thing they sought, and also something within themselves.

  “Agreements? Science? Trade? Corpses can’t do anything!” Dau explained. “Besides, if w-w-we don’t report in this evening—”

  “I know,” Vodra said. “Let me make the call.”

  Her own communicator was intact. Radio waves leaped aloft and back down to that settlement on the eastern seaboard where Arvil Kishna had brought the spaceboat he piloted. The signal activated the transceiver he carried on his person.

  Dau stood by. He caught bare snatches of talk. The river boomed too loud, noise ringing off canyon walls. He shivered too hard. And he was not yet accustomed to the Fleetwing dialect.

  Vodra put the unit back in her pocket. “He’ll call Chura,” she said. The Susuich had agreed to leaving a communicator there. “He’ll ask its chief what can be done, if anything.”

  “But how …” The words faltered and died, for Vodra ignored them. She squatted down beside Ri and examined him more closely.

  When she had finished he said, in his wretchedness, “You care more about him than us, don’t you?”

  “He’s a thinking being, too,” she answered sharply. “They all are, the Brentans. I’ve known them, off and on, for hundreds of their years”—while she herself had been through less than sixty. “Every time, it’s hurt to say good-bye, knowing I’d never meet those friends again. I don’t want to lose one more unnecessarily.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, contrite. “I shouldn’t complain.”

  “Well, let’s take care of ourselves … and him. First, out of these wet clothes. They make the windchill worse. We’ll need them dry by nightfall.”

  He gulped but obeyed. For a moment, seeing her trim form, he reddened. She ended that by paying it no heed. Following her example, he spread his garments over bushes under the cliff. The gravel hurt his feet.