Harvest of Stars - [Harvest of Stars 01]

by Poul Anderson

  The metal came back into his face and words, into the very way he sat apart from her. “There may be more roadblocks later. Or that Sepo may have second thoughts. Like, if you want to go to Hawaii, why not fly straight from Portland? Is the reason really what your behavior suggested, that you’re taking a small extra vacation? If he calls headquarters about it and they scan the data received today, they’ll almost certainly find you’ve been the only Fireball employee who left Portland by ground. That could make them wonder. As soon as we’re under the horizon of those flitters, I’m going to turn off, the first chance I get.”

  Kyra hated feeling the glory drain from her. “Where to?”

  “I know a safe house. I’ll check the possibility, there, of changing our arrangements so we don’t have to go on to San Francisco tomorrow. It means letting two or three more people in on part of our trajectory, but they’re pretty reliable and if the enemigos do get interested in a couple fitting our description, they’re apt to beswarm the Bay Area.”

  “Jesus Maria,” Kyra said weakly, “what’d we do without you, Guthrie and me?”

  She barely heard his chuckle. “Get caught, I suppose. You did quite well at first, for paisanos, but this is my trade. Now let’s rehearse you some more, just in case.”

  The offroad they found was paved but had no guide cable beneath. He took manual control with a deftness that became apparent after they got onto secondaries and tertiaries twisting through the mountains. On some of these the surface was cracked and potholed; others were dirt, eroded away to little more than trails, where dust smoked high behind the car. Wheels snarled and squealed. Curves tossed Kyra sideways. Often she looked straight down a slope of brush and boulders to the bottom of a canyon. “I thought I was a hot pilot,” she finally had to say. A bump rattled her teeth. “Is this kind of driving required by law?”

  “I want us under cover as soon as may be,” he explained curtly. “A red Phoenix was a disguise of sorts on the main route, but to any aircraft that passes over us here, it’s like a torch in tinder.”

  She made herself fall into a dance of muscles responding to motion. At least, in his concentration, he wasn’t drilling her any longer. Besides, the country was lovely. Under an efficient government it might today have been another set of gene-tailored plantations or mineral-extracting nanotech sites. As was, its steeps were virtually deserted. Conifers serrated the ridges, peaks lifted majestic into the wind. Occasionally she spied the ruins of a home, occasionally she glimpsed the sea.

  She didn’t know how closely he had calculated it, but their fuel was near exhaustion when they pulled into a remnant hamlet. While the attendant at the station exchanged their buckyglobe for one freshly charged with hydrogen, they got sandwiches and soft drinks to go in a place across the solitary street. “We don’t see a lot of tourists,” said the woman behind the counter wistfully. “Hard times.”

  “I’m sorry, we have to run,” Kyra replied. Whatever they did, they’d be remembered here. Bueno, it was unlikely the hounds would come this precise way.

  Munching and drinking, Valencia drove in less hellish wise. As hunger eased, Kyra felt a measure of peace steal over her. “Who are these people we’re bound for?” she asked.

  “Their name is Farnum,” he said. “Jim and Anne Farnum. Mostly he works on a fish ranch, she keeps house and raises a little produce for the gourmet market.” Nothing unique there, she thought. Not High World, but not exactly Low World either. “No children, which is why they can do what else they do.”

  “They’re—with your outfit, then?”

  “No, nor with the Gentlemen Adventurers, whose territory extends that far north. They’re crypto-Chaotics. Part of the organized underground. Not as activists, but they provide a way station, a communications link, a hiding place at need. I wouldn’t be surprised but what they watch over a shedful of weapons in the woods somewhere.”

  Crack, Kyra thought, this was getting in deep. “How do you know about them? You, uh, Sally Severins aren’t revolutionaries, are you?”

  “No. Most of us, personally, wouldn’t be sorry to see the government overthrown, provided its successor doesn’t curb us more effectively than the Avantists have managed to. But a brotherhood qua brotherhood has to be apolitical.”

  Valencia seemed to consider for a while before he went on: “Now and then the police have discreetly engaged us for a job. We are, after all, officially a licensed personal service agency. Even the Sepo has tried a time or two, I’ve heard, but been refused, precisely because the purpose there involved politics. The Chaotic junta knows this and appreciates it. Hence we’ve done work for them—not specifically against the government, but helpful in various ways. I may not tell you more. Except for this, that it has brought about a degree of liaison. It’s sometimes mutually useful for certain brothers to know about people like the Farnums, and we can be trusted with the information as much as any undergrounder can. I’m betting that they’ll not only shelter us tonight, they’ll give us a boost . . . because this time our opposition is their enemy.”

  “I see.” Kyra regarded his profile. Light slanting misty-gold from the west brought it forth against darkling trees. “You don’t talk like what I’d expected,” she said.

  He smiled. “How should I?”

  “You’re well educated, aren’t you? How’d you get into this line of, of work?”

  “How do most people get into theirs?” He shrugged. “They drift in.”

  “I always knew what I wanted to be.”

  “And made it. Lucky. But you had Fireball to belong to, and Fireball has Anson Guthrie.” Valencia’s voice lowered. “A gunjin isn’t a wage robot. He’s reasonably free, and he finds use for everything that’s in him.” Sharply: “I’d better speed up again. Por favor, Pilot Davis, don’t distract me.”

  Kyra sank back into the enfolding seat. Guthrie— How was he taking this, locked in blackness and silence? Bueno, he’d toughed out a lot of things in the past. Death itself, for one.

  The sun was at the horizon, huge and orange, casting a broken bridge over an argent sea, when they reached Noyo. The village overlooked cliffs above a narrow bay, at whose beach a few buildings nestled, with boats along a dock or anchored out in the water. The rest of the houses were above, old and few, three of them crumbling abandoned. Valencia halted before one that stood somewhat apart, screened by gnarled silvery-gray cypresses. “Here we are,” he said.

  Kyra got out. Her body rejoiced to stretch. Wind off the ocean ruffled hair and slid sensuously cool around skin. It had a keen-edged smell, not much like the odors that wafted over Hawaiian strands. Its flutter was well-nigh the only sound she heard till her feet and her companion’s crunched on a graveled walk.

  The house was large. Its antique frame construction recalled Baker, but this paint was bleached sallow. Archaically, Valencia struck the door with his knuckles. A man opened it. He too was sturdily built and weathered, his rufous beard grizzled though the hair above said he was in early middle age at most. “Saludos, amigo,” Valencia greeted. “Can you doss us tonight? This lady is cleared for the run.”

  Farnum went impassive. “Come in,” he rumbled.

  “I should garage our car straightaway.”

  “Kind of bright-colored,” Farnum agreed. “Bring ‘er around. I’ll go open up. You go on in, Señorita. Don’t fret about what the neighbors may have noticed. We’re good at minding our own business in these parts.”

  Kyra entered. A plump woman met her and said, “Bienvenida, guest,” unemphatically but as though she meant it. Neither man nor wife resembled a heroic resistance fighter. Nor did, this room, its well-worn furniture and rather banal pictures on the textiled walls, seem like a den for desperados. Of course, that was how it ought to be. Savory scents drifted from the kitchen, where Kyra spied a cooking console that must be fifty years or more old.

  Soon the four of them were seated over drinks before dinner. Farnum had provided a magnificent homebrew beer. When Kyra complimented him, h
e replied, “We keep as much of the real world going here as we can.”

  “You want to bring back more of it, for everybody, don’t you?” Kyra asked.

  Farnum frowned. “Let’s not talk politics,” his wife said mildly. Her gaze was unblinking on Kyra.

  “Best we go directly to business, however,” Valencia responded. “You may know something important or have some ideas we two don’t.”

  “Go ahead.” Farnum might have been calling for the next deal at a poker table.

  “I can’t say much, but you’re probably aware the government’s raised a full-scale hunt for something it hasn’t described very closely.”

  Anne Farnum grimaced. “How could we not have heard? Those lies about fanatics— Why? What are they after?”

  “Could there be something real behind the stories?” Valencia murmured.

  “No!” Farnum’s fist smote his chair arm.

  Maybe, Kyra thought, he denied what he didn’t want to believe. Not that the junta or most of those who secretly trained in hopes of someday fighting—not that they were monsters. But it would be strange if every last person among them was emotionally disciplined. Also, revolutionary movements didn’t survive for years, biding their time, unless they imagined they had a reasonable prospect of success. That surely meant covert support from abroad, exiled North Americans, foreign governments that had their own motives . . .

  “Apologies,” Valencia said with his best, somehow heart-storming smile. “I felt I had to inquire, but was confident what the answer would be. You in your turn will accept us as basically decent, won’t you?

  “Muy bien, we two are conveying, shall I say, one of those objects the Sepo are after. We have to get it out of range, soon. The best arrangement I could make on short notice was for transport on a big yacht, a hydrofoil, the Gentlemen Adventurers own. Reciprocity between brotherhoods, you know; the Sally Severins have done them favors in the past, and my superiors decided this job was worth calling in the debt.”

  Kyra drew a tingly mouthful from her stein. She admired how smoothly Valencia talked around all but the absolute minimum of facts that mattered. Why had the comandantes of his outfit made such an investment? They weren’t exactly idealistic. Obviously, they knew that if they helped Guthrie now when he needed it, they’d be amply repaid, not just in cash but in Fireball’s good will.

  Cold: But then they shared knowledge of the real situation. Either Esther Blum had explained it to them—perforce, because she lacked the money to pay for a serious rescue effort—or, once she told Valencia, he contacted them and they authorized this requisition. Yes, he’d had time in his hotel room last night before she arrived. He could have done it before releasing Guthrie to overhear.

  Whichever, too cracking many were in on the truth. In principle, it ought to be spread around, but in practice, everybody who knew was an added danger. Valencia wouldn’t betray. No, not he! And he must expect none of his lodgemasters would. But could you be sure? Besides, the Sepo were bound to know more about the brotherhoods than they let on. If clues pointed that way, they might well consider it worth their while to break through any trap they had been patiently constructing, to capture and deep-quiz whomever could lead them onward.

  A quick liftoff was necessary, yes.

  Amidst the blood that thudded in her ears, she heard Valencia continue: “On our way down today we were roadblocked—got by, but I think we’d be lepton to proceed to San Francisco as we’d planned. Could you put me in touch with the Gentlemen on a secure line? And do you think their crew could put to sea tomorrow, and a boat from here take us out to meet them, fairly safely?”

  The Farnums exchanged a look. They pondered. After a minute she said, “If they have clearance to go as of today, yes, it should be all right tomorrow. The captain can tell the harbor police he was delayed by family trouble or something. And you, Jim, you can call in and tell the company you won’t report for work. We can make up a nice reason.”

  Her husband tugged his beard. “I’ll have to figure a rendezvous point,” he said. “This coast isn’t much patrolled, but what with the government gone a-jet, we don’t want to take any worse chance than we have to of a cutter or an amphiflitter noticing us and stopping by, inquisitive-like. I’ll check on what movements of theirs have been observed lately.”

  He, a simple fishpoke? The underground—nothing spectacular, plain folk like this, wide-scattered but in touch, each doing his or her small service when called upon—Kyra thought of a coiled snake. A boot heel could crush its head, if a man knew where it lay; but if he did not, it awaited its moment to strike, and meanwhile its tongue flickered, tasting the air that he troubled.

  “Bueno, is that settled for now?” exclaimed Anne Farnum. “Let’s eat before dinner cooks to death.”

  Over the meal they talked about the weather, the sports news, local incidents, anything trivial. You didn’t want to learn more than you must, Kyra realized. Not long afterward she was ready for the spare bed to which the wife showed her. Valencia and the Farnums stayed up. Waking at sunrise, Kyra wondered if they had gotten any sleep at all.

  * * * *

  20

  A

  nother sunset laid fire across great waters and died away. The dusk that followed was brief. When Kyra entered the observation cabin after dinner, night was already upon the Pacific half of the planet.

  Aboard a vessel that would take you from the mainland to Hawaii in thirty-odd hours, you didn’t stand out on deck. This cabin was almost as good, sunken but the sill of its canopy at head level. Very little spray had marred the clarity of the hyalon, as well streamlined and windscreened as the Caravel was, as smoothly as she bounded over the waves on flexing planes. Kyra scarcely noticed her own responses to the motion, except as a sense of oneness with machine and sea.

  Having the cabin to herself, she darkened it and let her pupils widen to drink the scene. The riding lights were out of her view and the radar invisible. She saw only the topside, a dim and rhythmically surging whiteness. Beyond ran ocean. It sheened changeably, like a thousand black leopards a-chase; close by, she glimpsed swirls of lacy foam. The engine throbbed. The waves made torrent sounds, undertone to the wind. Overhead, sky-glow was about as slight as it ever got on Earth. Against that swarthiness she could make out perhaps a thousand stars and a ghost of the Milky Way.

  A grand sight, with the peace of strength in it. Too bad the jefe couldn’t enjoy this, she thought. Again he lay locked in a screened and secret compartment. She dared not bring him out before she must. The Gentlemen Adventurers were simply repaying a favor; they had signed no contract. If the Caravel’s crew learned what it actually was that they smuggled along, temptation—whopping reward, pardon for past crimes, lucrative sinecure in government—might prove too much for one among them. Or the captain might think he’d been deceived into taking a monstrous risk for no real profit, and avenge it.

  She’d merely been able to whisper a few words to Guthrie, which he maybe didn’t hear through his wrappings, in transit between the car and Farnum’s boat. How long could he endure near-total sensory deprivation before his mind began to spin apart? Her spell had been miserable enough, and she supposed it was the same for Valencia, after a guard cutter dashed over the horizon and radioed an order to stop. There’d been time to stash them in a pair of the lockers for contraband, but duration stretched horribly in blindness while the hydrofoil was being ransacked. Less than three hours? Was that possible?

  Bueno, the ordeal lay behind her and a repeat search was unlikely. Kyra returned her soul to the sea. She couldn’t reach far, though. However hard she ignored it, anxiety leashed her.

  A soft footfall brought her glance around. Her pulse jumped. The shadow that came to stand beside her was Valencia.

  “Buenas tardes,” he said as quietly as he had arrived. “Do I disturb you?”

  “No,” she answered. “Not at all. A lovely night.”

  “True. But we must go to space for a real sight of the stars.
”

  “Oh, a vivifer—”

  “You know better than I how much that is not the same.” He paused. “Or do you? We soon take our blessings for granted, we humans. Often we forget they are blessings.”

  She had not imagined she would ever feel compassion for him. “Have you never been there?”

  “Briefly on the Moon. A tourist, restricted and shepherded.”

  “You wanted to become a spacer,” she knew.

  “Always.”

  Impulse closed her fingers around his hand for a moment. “You’re not alone. Even among Fireball children— Precious few openings, and steadily fewer.”

  “Yes, yes, I quite understand,” he snapped. “I don’t pity myself.” His tone took on its usual impersonal courtesy. “My apologies, Pilot Davis, for interrupting you here. I have some news, but if you’d rather wait to discuss it, morning should be soon enough.”