Starfarers

by Poul Anderson

  “Oh, surely not. You aren’t hostile to them in any way, as I’ve heard people once were.”

  Varday shivered in the breeze. “People were not sane.”

  He tried to drive off the specter with dryness. “From what I’ve gathered—tell me if I’m mistaken—there simply isn’t a trade to ply. Planets, or at least planetary systems, have long since become self-sufficient. They don’t need to import. Newness, fresh ideas, or stories—but this culture of yours, here on Earth, isn’t much interested even in that.”

  It comforted neither of them. Is any culture anywhere? he thought, with recollections of recorded communications from other stars. No voyages now seem to go past the sphere of the known, if only because the radius has grown too great and nobody wants the fate of Envoy. As ships die or their crews disband, they are not replaced.…

  And she exclaimed: “It shouldn’t be so! We shouldn’t be!” She gulped. “I used to think about this sometimes. And then you came back to us.”

  They walked on. The sun was down, the sky still bright in the west, but dusk seeped from the ground and spread from the east with the swiftness of these latitudes. Lights began to twinkle in the village ahead. A tune chimed.

  Varday tossed her head. The hair rippled along her back. “This is to be a happy occasion,” she declared. “Forgive my loss of laughter.”

  It was not the first time he had seen sudden melancholy fall on her as they traveled about. She bounced back equally fast, with cheer to lighten his own inner darknesses. “You’ll make it be, my friend,” he said.

  They entered the village. It was in and of this clime, houses square, earth-toned, each surrounding a garden court. Only the local Sanctuary, foam white tower with a helical spire in which rainbow colors played by day, stood out. Residents wandered the streets, relaxing in the cool. Mostly they wore white robes and headcloths, trimmed with bright colors. Pet animals were popular, cockatoos on wrists, long-legged hounds, vividly marked cats, creatures more exotic. Where illumination fell strongest, several artists and musicians followed their callings. Nansen did not recognize the implements and instruments. Everybody greeted him and Varday as they passed. He had merely been named to them as a visitor from elsewhere. That was no novelty.

  The mansion stood on the far edge of town, not very big though ornamented with pilasters, changing iridescences, and a winged cupola. Varday had explained that it belonged to an association of which she was a member, and currently she had the use of it. Bubblelike aircars had already delivered some guests and returned to wait for the next demand for their services. More set down while the door parted for Nansen and his guide.

  Inside was a chamber where abstract murals slowly refashioned themselves, aromas wafted, and music played in the background—music resurrected from his era, mainly by transmission from Envoy’s database, in his honor. A buffet stood generously spread. Food and drink were excellent nowadays, though moderation in both appeared to be universal. Most of the gathering were young. They merged zestfully around the starfarer, without pressure or presumption, informal because etiquette and restraint were ingrained.

  Of course they wanted to hear about his voyage. The basic account had gone worldwide, but incidents, anecdotes, sidelights must be numberless. Nansen spent the next two or three hours largely seated, talking. Beside him, Varday held a small device programmed to translate back and forth. She was right, it didn’t make for intimate conversation, but it served well enough here.

  “… and we left the star cluster and continued on our way,” he said.

  “Does it abide in its unhappy state?” asked one girl.

  He shrugged. “We can only answer that by going back.”

  She hugged herself. “I will never be able to see it again without a shudder.”

  “It’s like something out of Earth’s blackest past,” said another.

  “Oh, now,” countered a young man, “that was a rousing story.”

  “A dreadful story,” maintained a second youth. “Forgive me, Captain Nansen, but if mistakes lead to madness among the far stars, too, we are well free of them all.”

  Some assented, some frowned. Nansen went quickly on to milder tales.

  Later there was dancing. Varday had learned some steps from his time and was his sole partner. The rest made a game of devising their own to fit the archaic melodies. She was warm and lithe in his arms.

  After a span he didn’t measure she suggested some fresh air. A couple already out in the court murmured a salutation and returned inside. Tact? The door contracted behind them and shut off sound from within. Early dew on roses glimmered beneath stars and Milky Way.

  “You have a beautiful world here,” he said. “I didn’t hope to find anything like this.”

  I hoped to find humans in the freedom of the galaxy, and something of its grandeur in their spirits.

  She nodded. How slender her neck was, beneath the heavy hair. “Three thousand years of peace.”

  “Thanks to … Selador.” Who seems to have done better than the Christ they seem to have forgotten.

  “And those who came after, martyrs, preachers, workers.” Her basic seriousness was again upon her. “To this very day. Each one of us, in every generation, must do the work over again.”

  “How?” he wondered.

  “Against the beast that is born in us. We must never let down our defense or believe the past is safely dead.”

  He knew that education included virtual experiences of former events. It struck him now that some of those must be cruel. Psychotherapy afterward could take away the pain, but the scars would remain, reminding. Could this whole civilization be a retreat from the horror that was history? “Peace.” He was unable not to ask: “Do you never grow restless?”

  “Of course we do.” She sounded defensive. “We make our adventures.”

  Yes, I’ve seen some recordings of breakneck sports.

  “And we create,” Varday said.

  When did anyone last create anything really new? He had inquired, during his long-range dialogues while he lingered in quarantine orbit. Artists of every sort—yes, and scientists—were evidently satisfied to play variations on themes long canonical. Most effort and ardor went into exploring and re-enacting the accumulated works of the ages. No one lifetime sufficed to exhaust that heritage.

  “Not everybody can be … original, can they?” he demurred, then feared she might take offense.

  She did not. Looking up at him, her eyes were big and abrim with starlight. “No, not in public ways,” she answered softly. “But everyone can make life itself the highest art.”

  Her invitation was unmistakable. They had been well behaved throughout, by his standards. Hers—? A wish stirred—would Hanny really mind?

  As if summoned, a spark rose over the westside roof and hastened across the stars. “Why, look,” he said, and realized how relieved he felt, “I do think that’s Envoy.”

  Probably she recognized his tone. Probably she wasn’t too disappointed. She spoke gravely. “Your ship. Your life’s meaning.”

  He glanced his startled question at her.

  “We of Earth today seek what we may find in ourselves,” she told him. “You seek elsewhere, outward.”

  Did her voice tremble the least bit?

  From the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, down over the Arabian peninsula to its end—though neither of these bore the names Zeyd remembered—was rain forest. Nor did he know most of its plants and animals. Many had not existed when he left home.

  He stood with Mundival at the edge of a clearing. Ferns brushed his calves, wet, a touch of cold here where sultriness hung on after dark. Below a black wall of trees, a fire blazed and roared. Flamelight wavered on smoke; sparks leaped. Before it bulked an altar hewn from a stone. A hundred or more people were gathered in front, naked to the night. This was their form of Sanctuary, their unifying and affirming ritual.

  Robed at the altar, their leader lifted her arms on high. “In the name of Selador,
” she chanted, “oneness.” Mundival whispered a translation in Zeyd’s ear.

  “Helui ann! Helui ann!” boomed the response. Mundival did not render it. Perhaps he couldn’t.

  “For everything that is life, oneness.”

  “Helui ann! Helui ann!”

  And yet at home they lived and worked, in their scattered communities, as members of global civilization, made trips everywhere around the planet, partook of its all-embracing communications web. Two or three of them had shown Zeyd around, and through Mundival had described rationally—with a certain passion, but rationally—something of the balance between humankind and nature in this land, a balance not only ecological but sacred.

  The liturgy went on. Drums and whistles joined in. The people began to sway and stamp their feet.

  The voice grew shrill. “… bring down the falsehoods of the Biosophists …”

  A carnivore screamed, somewhere off in the dark. Zeyd wondered how serene Earth really was and how long its peace could endure.

  Hith Town lay empty save for robotic caretakers, a museum of antiquity. The styles, furnishings, possessions in its buildings had changed over the millennia, but gradually and never entirely. Even the newest homes, forsaken just centuries ago, haunted Nansen with hints of his childhood.

  Visitors were rare. Anyone who felt curious could employ a virtual. However, a service center included sleeping quarters.

  Nansen got up before dawn. Varday waited outside her adjacent room, as they had agreed. He didn’t want to say more than a good morning, and her culture put her under no compulsion to talk. They went silently out together, into silence.

  It was cold; breath smoked, barely visible by starshine. Murk overspread the hemmed-in street. Footfalls rang hollow.

  The houses ended at a sharp and ancient boundary. With the sky clear above them, the pair saw better. A few lights glimmered on the ground afar, lost beneath the stars. Closer by, snags of walls and pits that had been foundations broke the gray of hoarfrosted grass and brush. From time to time, a city had engulfed the starfarers’ dwelling place.

  “They come no more,” Varday said, barely loud enough for him to hear, and needlessly, except for whatever need was in her. “It is so seldom a ship arrives, and so brief a while. The crew stay in a hostel, or they stay aboard.”

  Do they sense they are no longer wanted? Nansen thought. Their wares are of no more use. The stories and questions they brought from beyond were often troublesome.

  He stopped and looked aloft. She did, too. Constellations had changed shape, not greatly but noticeably. He pointed toward what he knew as Ursa Minor. “See,” he told her, “there was our North Star.” It was Delta Cygni now, not very near the celestial pole.

  “Does it still call to you?” she asked, as low as before.

  Impulsively, he threw his cloak around them both and his arm around her waist. Nothing more happened between them. They stood side by side waiting for the sun.

  A lodge lay in the Himalayan foothills, surrounded by beauty. Isolated, robotically tended, it had no other guests at the moment than the travelers and their guides. They met in a room too big for four, where colors flickered in the walls, a symphony of birdsongs played, and drifting odors stirred obscure feelings.

  “Yes, we’ve decided between us,” Nansen said. “The others would like to set foot on Earth, too, but only in a few special lands.” Only for piety’s sake, or to seek a final forgetting of what is no more. “After that, we go away.”

  “Why?” protested Mundival.

  “We have nothing to do on Earth,” Nansen replied. “Yonder, we may.”

  “You are welcome here! You would be heroes all your lives!”

  Zeyd looked into the troubled countenance and answered as gently as might be, “Yes, we could do well as storytellers, no doubt. But what of our children?”

  “They will be welcome, too—”

  “Welcome to become Earthfolk. I’m sorry. I don’t say that would be bad.” Zeyd tried to smile, “they might find more happiness in your ways than in ours. But we are starfolk.”

  Jean’s folk, thought Nansen.

  Varday stood up from her seat and held her arms out to him. For the first time, he saw tears start forth upon her. They gleamed down the amber cheeks. “Then will you take me with you?” she cried.

  49.

  Tau Ceti. Year five.

  The young Venture League had acquired an old building in Argosy for its headquarters. Its academy occupied one suite on the seventh floor. But then, that school for starfarers was still unborn, little more than a dream and some experimental programs. It would not want a campus until the starships that were themselves, as yet, little more than plans in computers began to be built.

  If ever they did.

  The room where Ricardo Nansen and Chandor Barak sat was light and spacious. Opalescence swirled like slow smoke in walls and ceilings, except for the fourth wall, which stood open on a balcony. There flowers glowed in planters—geraniums, marigolds, forget-me-nots, because Harbor had never evolved much in the way of blossoms. Air flowed warm, bearing murmurs of the city. Though it was summer in this hemisphere, to Earthside eyes the sunshine spilling from the blue would have had a mellow, autumnal quality. By now Nansen was used to it, and Chandor’s people had been on the planet almost since Envoy first departed from Sol.

  Like many of them, the director and prospective commander of the academy was medium tall, with tan complexion and features that bore memories of northern Asia. However, his eyes were green and the mustache and bobbed hair dark blond. Somewhat of a dandy, today he wore a purple blouse with upward-flaring red collar, rainbow-striped kilt, and gold trim on his floppy half-boots. Otherwise there was nothing foppish about him, and the fact that his mother, Chandor Lia, was president of the Duncanian continent had not been decisive in choosing him for this post. It hadn’t hurt, but what counted was that he had proved himself an able administrator who shared the dream.

  “Yes, we have to ride the comet,” he was saying. Nansen, who had gained fluency in the language but hadn’t encountered all its idioms, was momentarily puzzled, then translated from context, “catch the tide” or “strike while the iron is hot.”

  How much else don’t I know yet? The question pierced him daily. And he hadn’t even been very active in public affairs. Steering from Sol to Tau Ceti … tumultuous welcome … appearances, interviews, celebrations … lectures, conferences, helping interpret the torrent of data downloaded from his ship … getting Hanny and himself established, the whole crew, and that handful of Earthlings who threw everything away that they might go with him to an unknown destiny. … The years stormed through memory.

  He hauled his attention back to Chandor. If his influence—and, yes, the substantial sum he became able to contribute—had made the founding of the League possible, then it behooved him to answer this appeal for his help.

  The director leaned forward, intent and intense. “Our beginning may have been too successful,” he said. “We’re in danger of being overwhelmed. Hundreds of youngsters are applying, clamoring, to us. If we can organize them into a nucleus, something active, actually taking the first steps forward, we’ll recruit thousands, around the globe and throughout the system. But if we don’t show any real accomplishment soon, I’m afraid the excitement, the support, will die.”

  “That fast?”

  “There’ll be forces working to quench it. Are you aware; sir, what powerful interests are against us? They look on our goal as insane. They don’t believe a serious revival of starfaring is possible. They want the capabilities you’ve brought developed and used at home for undertakings they know will be profitable.”

  Nansen scowled. “This is a free society, isn’t it? How can they forbid us applying our knowledge to make money and spending the money as we see fit?”

  “They have funds, resources, and influence of their own, more than we’ll have for years. They can undercut our fledgling businesses, put pressure on those who’
d help us with financing, and flood the world with disparaging, discouraging propaganda. I’ve reason to think they’re already subsidizing the Seladorian missionaries.”

  “Can a few evangelists make any difference in the time span that concerns us?”

  “If the eloquent preaching the laser beams carry from Earth gets featured regularly in major news media, perhaps yes. What you have revealed is so new. How many people have understood the implications? For millennia we’ve been resigned to—the stars only lights in the sky, a few threads of communication, a rare ship with an alien, clannish crew.”

  “Do you seriously think we’re threatened?”

  “No, not really, thus far,” Chandor admitted. “I fear we soon can be, but it need not happen if we keep our momentum—and if we don’t suffer some major setback; but that’s beyond our control.

  “And so, Captain Nansen, I believe we must take the wave of hopefulness you’ve raised and give it the impetus to mount higher. We should begin accepting recruits now, start their education, prepare them to receive the next Kith vessel and befriend her people. She may arrive at any year, you know.”

  “Hm. Are you ready for such an effort?”

  Chandor nodded. “Yes. We have our database organized, adequate staff, ample computer capacity. Of course, at first we can only offer home-study courses, but they ought to lay a firm foundation. By next year we should have facilities for simulator training, and in two years for the elements of practical spacemanship. A small cadet corps, true, but a corps, a living body.”

  “That’s quick work,” Nansen said, impressed.

  “Work worth doing! I asked you to come see me—this sort of thing goes far better in person—to counsel us on what to teach and how. We have the theory, you have the actual experience. And you are the hero. I could well say you’re the prophet. We need your imagination.”

  Nansen felt uncomfortable about that. But no matter. The zeal before him lighted his own fire afresh. This was not about gain or glory, it was about the nature of humankind and humankind’s place in the universe.