Capitol
Page 23
"Of course."
The crew of the starship did not look like an inspection team. They were worried, obviously, as they approached the Governor.
"Is something wrong?" the Governor asked.
"You're a colony, right?" the captain asked in return.
"Probably not, after the next inspection. I assume you're not inspectors?"
The captain shook his head. "We have a warship. Loaded with weapons. I warn you, there's still a crew up there, if something happens to us. We're prepared to blast this planet out of the sky."
The Governor's eyes widened in mock surprise. "And you're from the Empire, making threats to a loyal colony?"
The captain looked ashamed. "You wouldn't blame me, if you'd seen what we've seen."
"What have you seen?"
"Capitol," said the captain. "It's dead."
"Of what?"
"Terminal humanity, I suppose. It was a revolution. That bastard usurper, Abner Doon--"
"Usurper?"
"You've been away from the news for a long time. He began messing with somec. And the nonusers got angry and there was a revolution and they killed all the sleepers."
"All!"
"And they've been seizing starships wherever they landed, all over the Empire. The Rebels, too. Killing the crews and smashing the somec. It's mad. Do you realize what it's doing? There aren't any starships going, between planets anymore! And Capitol-- Capitol slit its own throat. The revolution started there, and now they have no food, and there are only a few survivors, and they can't last long. Cannibalism. The planet's dead. A place of savages trying to survive in metal."
"And you?"
"Where could we land? We tried stopping at Garden, but even they've gone crazy. Tried to shoot us down. We went as far as we could, trying to find a colony that didn't have somec yet, where they wouldn't be part of the revolution."
The Governor smiled. "We're not part of any revolution."
The captain relaxed then. "Thank God. We've come so far."
"You're welcome to come down."
"We won't have to live on charity, you know," said the captain. "We have some things you could use. We have enough somec to supply the top people of your world for ages. And our computer knows the formula. And we have a braintaper. And more than two hundred tapes. You can go full status right now, with our equipment. All we ask is to be able to stay on somec ourselves."
"Why would you want to do that?" the Governor asked.
The captain laughed. "Such a sense of humor."
The Governor thought for a moment. "Let me go up to your ship. Let me see this equipment."
The captain looked perturbed. "Of course we have it. How could we have gotten here without it?"
The Governor only smiled. "I didn't doubt that you had it. I only wanted to see it."
They led him to their landing craft and took off. The acceleration was surprisingly powerful. The Governor had never traveled so fast in his life.
And then they did the slow dance of docking, and the Governor experienced weightlessness, and the stars shone without twinkling through the window of the crah.
This is what it feels like, he thought, to be in space. No wonder men have clung so long to it. And he wanted to go with them to another star.
And soon I will have immortality within reach. I will see the stars move. And he wanted to have his brain taped and go on somec immediately and watch until the stars blinked out.
But then, as the docking slowly moved to completion, he knew that he would not accept the somec. Knew, in fact, that he would continue the revolution. Not with hatred. Not with blood. But because there were trees on Answer that had never been touched, mountains that had never been seen. Who needs immortality, when every day is still full to overflowing? The long sleeps of somec are only useful to those who are bored, who hope that by skipping over time they will live long enough to see something new.
Do I need to see something new? Only the end of the stars. And somec will never let me live so long as that. Because if we let it come to Answer, there would soon be hatred, and before long a revolution, and I would be one of the sleepers who was killed.
They led him aboard the huge starship, and he walked among the weapons, and they took him to the room where the braintaper was. "If anything went wrong to the braintaper, what would happen?" the Governor asked dubiously.
"Well," the captain said with a laugh, "nobody'd want to take somec. If you take somec without a braintape to be played back into your head, you might as well be dead. All your memories gone."
"I just had to be sure," the Governor said with a smile, and then he pressed the button on the hatchet in his pocket and the machine blew up.
The crew was furious, but the captain seemed unsurprised.
"You can kill me if you like," the Governor said. "But it won't repair your machine."
"We'll blast your planet!" cried one of the crew.
The Governor shrugged. "You can if you like. But where would you go then?" And the crew thought about it, and reahzed that they would never fly the starship again.
"We welcome you," the Governor said, "as I told you before. You can come and live with us. All you have to do is send this starship away."
"This is a pretty expensive piece of--" began one of the crew.
The captain interrupted. "Why did you do that?" he asked the Governor. "Got something against immortality?"
"What immorality? Somec doesn't make your life any longer. Just more useless. And it makes other people hate you."
"It makes starships possible," the captain said, and his voice Was grieved.
"But where would you go? Where would we go? You saw our world. It's beautiful, isn't it?"
"It is!" the captain said. "I guess you have us cold! We'd be fools to refuse. We're joining your colony, I guess."
"We'll die!" one of the crew whined. "Without somec, we'll live to be a hundred and die!"
The captain. looked at him contemptuously. "You'll live as many days as you would have otherwise. Now get whatever you want to take with you. You have ten minutes."
"No weapons, please," the Governor said. "We try to avoid them."
"Except your hatchet," murmured one of the crew.
"I'm the Governor," he said.
Ten minutes later the landing craft was loaded. The men had pitifully small bundles-- what was there to accumulate aboard a starship? And the captain piloted them down to Answer.
Once on the ground they looked up, and saw the starship erupt in a burst of flame and begin its journey. "Where is it going?" asked the Governor.
The captain raised his eyebrows. "I sent it into the sun, of course. We plan to be here a long time. A little extra mass will keep the sun burning that much longer."
"The starship will add less than a second."
"Every little bit helps." And the captain laughed.
The Governor didn't. He took him by the arm and led him to the roof of the government building, where the telescope still waited. Not to show hinm the scope. Just to ask him a question.
"Captain, there were two braintapers on that ship, weren't there?"
The captain shrugged.
"There have to have been two. One for the crew, when you awoke them. And one for you alone. The one that wakens you automatically."
The captain nodded. "Yes, that's right. There were two."
"So you could have flown on."
"Yes."
Why? the Governor did not ask.
"This looked like a nice place," the captain answered anyway.
* * *
The Governor went to sleep at dawn, when the starship people were put to bed in two inns that had vacancies. He was tired, and not at all sure that he had done the right thing. What would the people of Answer say, when they learned what he had done? Would there be a legislature then, and a new governor? Quite possibly. Or, perhaps, recognizing that what was done was done, they would forgive him for having deprived them of somec, and let him stay in
office.
The webs between the stars are gone, he thought, and both mourned and rejoiced.
During his sleep he dreamed. He dreamed that he was standing with one foot on Answer and the other foot on the sun, and he could reach out and gather stars. He reached out, but every star he went to touch popped into a tiny nova in his hand, and disappeared. Soon all the stars were blinking out, and at last the only light in the universe was from the sun, which burned brightly under his feet.
And then he awoke, and he was content. He would not live forever, but he had, in fact, seen the stars blink out. Not in person, but the only way man was ever meant to see such things-- in his dreams.
He was content, but he took up gardening to fill his spare time, relaxing by looking down into the earth: Only the spiders used his telescope anymore, and then only as a prop where they could weave their webs.
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