The Stars Are Also Fire

by Poul Anderson

  Leaving his hired volant on the airstrip and walking toward the house—gravel scrunched beneath his feet—Kenmuir found his gaze and mind dwelling on her. Kestrel, the little Falcon-class that Kyra Davis piloted, she who long and long ago rescued Guthrie from the Avantists and did battle with his doubleganger. Kenmuir himself had once partaken in the annual rite of inspection, cleaning, recharging accumulators, the benediction that ended, “Be always ready to fly.” Beneath the solemnity, a chill had coursed through him and the hair stood up over his whole body. He was very young then. … But something of the same stirred anew today. His race did live and die by symbols. And the Lunarians by theirs—But what of the sophotects?

  It occurred to him that he had never looked up the history of this relic. What struggles and chicanery had it taken, not to obtain her, but to win leave to keep her in alert condition? Oh, she was totally obsolete now, but she had not been then; and to this day, license for storing any amount of antimatter on Earth was not otherwise given unless the machines were fully in charge of it and its containment.

  Well, Fireball Enterprises, which had dominated the Solar System, did not dissolve quickly or without many concessions granted its folk. Let them have their memorial. Already in their lifetimes, they were becoming no more than a harmless sodality. After a generation or two, hardly anyone else remembered that Kestrel existed. To the cybercosm, she was an entry in the database.

  Nevertheless, she was. And—Fireball, harmless? That remained to be seen. Kenmuir’s pulse and footsteps speeded up.

  A guard waited on the verandah. She was unarmed, ceremonial, a girl serving her apprenticeship before initiation into full consorte status. Matthias liked to have visitors greeted in style. She saw the Fireball uniform he had donned, the same gray as hers, and snapped him a salute, which he returned. (Meanwhile he reflected that in the days of the company there had been no formalities. Such things accreted, like coral growing on a sunken hull.) “Captain Ian Kenmuir,” he identified himself unnecessarily, except for her sake, “with an appointment to meet the Rydberg in private.”

  “Aye, señor,” she responded. “Por favor, follow me.”

  He had not been here in years, but as he entered the vestibule, memory billowed over him. The oak panels, the glass window where Daedalus and Icarus spread their wings—and down a hall, the great dark room with its antique furniture, carpeting and hangings, candelabra and crystal, pictures, books, traditions. In an armchair at the stone fireplace sat Matthias.

  Kenmuir drew to attention before him. “Hola, señor,” he greeted as was customary here.

  The old man nodded. “Bienvenido,” he said. His voice was a bass rumble. Nor had much else changed since Kenmuir last encountered him. The frame was still massive, paunchy but not withered in the limbs or in the heavy, hook-nosed features; hair was a white cockatoo crest, eyes deep-set and unwavering. A Fireball emblem on the left breast made his plain blue robe uniform enough for him.

  Fleetingly, Kenmuir wondered if Matthias had ever borne more than the single name. Many Earthlings didn’t. He knew little about this master of the lodge. Given longevity, a person could serve for such decades that his or her past receded into obscurity.

  “At ease,” the Rydberg said. “Be seated if you wish.”

  “Thank you—gracias.” Kenmuir took a chair facing him.

  A chuckle grated. “Have we had our fill of Americanisms and anachronisms? What would you like for refreshment, Captain?”

  “Uh, well—”

  “As far as I’m concerned, it’s not too early for a Scotch and water.”

  “Beer, please,” Kenmuir made bold to reply.

  Matthias gestured at the guard, who went out. The house had a small human staff as well as its machines, but for her this service was an honor. “You’re seldom hereabouts,” he remarked.

  “No, sir. I’ve not been much on Earth, and when I am—” He simply was not a very sociable animal. He’d call on a few friends here and there around the globe, seek out historic sites and daydream, go on days-long tramps through the preserves, that sort of thing. Sometimes he patronized a joyeuse, but not often. It always struck him as rather sad, even when she found pleasure in the specialty by which she prospered. “I ought to participate more in the Trothdom, yes.”

  “It’s voluntary.” Matthias leaned back, bridged his fingers, drooped his lids, and went or ponderously, “Let me see. When you called to ask for an interview, I retrieved what data the outfit has on you, but they’re meager and parts may be incorrect. Check me out. Your ancestors include consortes of Fireball since it was a business, but your parents were Earthsiders and not deeply involved in our affairs either.”

  Pain twinged in Kenmuir. They should still have been alive. He, their single child, was just fifty-five years of age. But accidents happen also in cybernetic societies. Two volants under manual control, being above an Arctic sports ground where traffic was light, collided—and he out beyond the orbit of Pluto, helping to herd a comet.

  “If I haven’t been so active, sir, that’s not because I don’t value my membership.” He was quite sincere.

  “Agreed,” Matthias said. “To continue, you won admission to the Academy. Starstruck from birth, eh? And, what’s more, gifted for it. You began your career in the Federal Space Service, then shifted to the Venture.”

  Since Kenmuir knew that Matthias own employment had been entirely in the Service, he said half defensively, “Well, sir, everything Earth-based has grown so—uh—”

  “So efficient.” Matthias nodded. “Hardly a place left for humans, except on the ground and that mostly makework. No place at all left for initiative. The Service wasn’t that far gone in my time. But as I approached retirement, I stopped envying the young.”

  Kenmuir’s pulse jumped. “The Lunarians, they keep space human.”

  “Their kind of human.”

  Not to truckle. The Rydberg would despise that. “They do it for our kind too. They need us.”

  “Because their style of operations goes against all practicality.”

  “Not when it’s their nature, sir. And Terran nature, too, for many of us, even these days.”

  “Yes, a flicker of the old spirit survives. For a while yet, a while.” Matthias brightened a trifle. “The Habitat should revive it. I may live to watch in the flesh a bit of what I’ve only seen in vivifers and quiviras.”

  Kenmuir tensed. “That’s what I’ve come here about.”

  Eyes probed him. “I suspected as much.”

  What did he actually know?

  The girl returned with a tray, set the drinks on end tables, saluted, and left. “Good liftoff,” Matthias toasted. The men brought vessels to lips. The tingle in his mouth gave Kenmuir impetus.

  “You know what the Habitat will do to the Lunarians,” he said.

  “Civilize them, gradually,” Matthias snorted.

  “Not into a civilization they’ll find endurable.”

  “So they claim.” The tone was rough. “Have they really so little adaptability, or is this a handful of Selenarchs yelling and clawing because they’ll lose their privileges?”

  Kenmuir mustered his words.

  “Sir, with respect, I know the Lunarians, every class of Lunarians, about as well as any Earthdweller—any Terran can. When you’ve been to the ends of the Solar System with somebody, over and over, it gives you an understanding of them.” And he had met them at home and in Mars and in their tiny colonies clinging to asteroids that whirled among wintry stars, or dug into ice and rock beneath the majesty of Jupiter or the jewelwork of Saturn.

  “You’ve come to love them, then?” Matthias asked softly.

  Taken aback, Kenmuir could merely say, “Well, I, I feel for them.”

  Matthias lifted a finger. “Mind you, I don’t hate them. I agree they’re admirable, the way a tiger is.

  And, yes, they are a leaven in this thickening world of ours.” He paused. “But we have our own race to think about.” With a shrug: “As if
what you or I think, what we do, will make the slightest difference.”

  Kenmuir knotted a fist. “The Habitat is wrong.”

  Matthias raised his brows. “Wrong to give thousands of humans, and whole generations after them, once again a frontier?”

  Yes, Kenmuir thought, he’d heard it before, the renewed dynamic, humankind looking outward from its games and shadow shows, to the endlessness of the universe. He was pleading the case of native Americans as the whites rolled across them on the way to the Pacific. But what was it Lilisaire had said, about a wave of Lunar colonists being directed into a holding tank? He had spent many a watch in space exploring the past of Earth. After the white Americans filled their new land, vested interests and demagogues did not take long to make citizens into subjects.

  “Sir,” he persisted, “I’m an example of what Lunarian freedom can mean to Terrans. If we’re ever to go to the stars—” where download Guthrie was, but how barely! “—it will have to be together with them.”

  “Maybe. Speak your piece.”

  “They deserve a chance, the same as we do.”

  “I’d not deny that, if it be a fair chance. Though, to repeat myself, what choice in the matter do you or I have? Say on.”

  Kenmuir drew breath and plunged ahead. In the course of three daycycles, Lilisaire had filled out details of what she first told him, but mostly she had kindled him for her cause. He said nothing about what happened when they were not talking. Did Matthias, impassive in his chair, guess?

  The Rydberg made a single comment: “Remarkable, that those activities Niolente got carried out in space could stay a secret.”

  “Well, sir, you know how basic the etaine is there.” Kenmuir chose the Lunarian word because its usual translation as “family” or “clan” was not really right.

  Nothing that quite corresponded occurred in any Terran culture. Sometimes he had speculated that “pride” might serve—but no, Lunarians weren’t lions either. “Apparently the expeditions were highly cyberneticized, the few organic personnel chosen for ties of blood as well as their skills. They’d keep silent. Niolente presumably meant to reveal her design at the right moment, under the right circumstances, which would give Luna the advantage she was working for, with her and her phyle in firm control of it.

  “At the final catastrophe, it seems everyone who knew perished with her. They were holed up together under Delandres Crater, and you surely recall how the missiles collapsed their shell around them even though the Peace Authority was only trying to force them to surrender. I think she kept them in a group like that precisely to retain the secret, and threatened to catapult warheads only as a bargaining counter that might win favorable terms—amnesty, at least. Instead, it got her bombarded.

  “Apparently, also, she’d wiped what files on the project she could. The record that the Peace Authority laid hands on was fragmentary. All that her adult children knew was that something major had been under way. You’d expect them to be close-mouthed about it, wouldn’t you? They passed it down through the generations, under pledge of secrecy, very much like … the Rydbergs in the Trothdom.”

  Hoarsened, Kenmuir drained his beer. A stillness followed, wherein his blood beat loudly through his veins.

  “And now this female wants me to give you the Founder’s Word, for her benefit and in hopes she can use it to thwart the Habitat,” Matthias said at last.

  “If, if possible, and if—”

  “Exactly what does she fantasize it is?”

  “Information. Long before Niolente’s time, Dagny Beynac’s son Kaino led a mysterious mission into deep space. The family never let out what it had been. Most likely it became the basis of what Niolente undertook. Meanwhile, Lars Rydberg had learned something, probably from Beynac herself, which he considered to be of the first importance.”

  “Concerning a giant weapon in remote Solar orbit?” Matthias scoffed. “To revive an impolite word, lunacy.”

  “I didn’t—Lilisaire didn’t necessarily mean that—”

  “She’d like it. For her personal gain Judging from your account, she’s let slip no hint to many of her fellow magnates, if any.”

  “Sir, I’m not asking for—I wouldn’t condone—”

  “But you are hoping for a way to keep the Terrans on Earth.”

  “Not even that, sir, not in itself. Is it right to suppress information relevant to a matter as important as this? A decision made in ignorance could cost lives later on. I’m sorry if—if I—”

  Matthias gusted a sigh. “Don’t apo ogize. No reason to. No such knowledge exists.”

  “None?” Kenmuir protested.

  “Lars Rydberg brought a secret home to Earth, yes,” Matthias said heavily. “He charged his eldest son with preserving it against a possible hour of great need. It has gone down the succession ever since.” That was not by descent, although every lodgemaster had some Rydberg blood. “This is as much as the world has been told. I will not be the one who betrays it.”

  Kenmuir saw adamantness. “Can you give me any hint?” he pleaded. “If nothing else, can you tell me Lilisaire was mistaken and it could not help her?”

  The old man nodded. “Yes, I believe I can truly say that.” Again he sighed. “By now, after all the time that has passed, I wonder if it means anything whatsoever. We keep the faith, we Rydbergs, simply because this is one more tradition, rite, bond holding, the Trothdom together, so a ghost of Fireball Enterprises can haunt living memories. … I’m the one who’s sorry, son.”

  Abruptly Kenmuir felt wrung dry. “I see. Thank you, sir.”

  “It was never a real hope for you, was it?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Report back.”

  “You’re welcome to call from here.”

  “Thank you, but—”

  “Ah. You want encryption?”

  “Well, actually, I was to call a number on Earth, but—a secure line—”

  “Tell me no more. For groundside communications, we have good security. Now and then, you know, the outfit gives aid to a consorte whose trouble is best kept confidential.”

  Overwhelmed, Kenmuir mumbled, “Sir, when you’re opposed to my whole purpose—”

  “Not entirely. I don’t approve of the government concealing possibly critical information either. But mainly, you’re a consorte yourself. I owe you troth.” The gaze was keenly gauging. “I trust you not to break yours.”

  After a moment: “If you’re not in too big a hurry, let’s have another drink. And dinner. Spend the night. I’d like to hear you yarn about where you’ve been.”

  No, Kenmuir thought, assuredly he would not violate his oath. He would follow Lilisaire’s next instructions as best he was able, to the point where he saw them leading toward a public menace. He did not expect they would. She ought to know him better than that. But he must stay wary. Events might flare out of control. And always—he harked back to his classical reading—the Lunarian spirit was Lucifer’s.

  10

  The Mother of the Moon

  Seen from the Taurus Mountains, Earth hung low in the southwestern sky. Its crescent was thinning with the sun’s slow climb over eastern ridges. Shadows had shrunken across the bench where the Beynacs were encamped, but still picked out uncountable pockmarks in the level grayish rock. Above and below, the slope was likewise scarred, as were the heights around. Not yet lighted, the valley beneath lay as a lake of blackness. All contours were gentle, worn down by the meteoritic rains of gigayears, nothing here of Terrestrial crags or Martian steeps, an aged land withdrawn into itself and its secrets.

  For Dagny the view, like everything on Luna, had splendor. Maybe the very bareness uplifted her heart, a challenge. At the moment she was giving it no thought. Her attention was for Tychopolis, some 2700 kilometers hence.

  Joe Packer’s face confronted her, clear to see through the new-model fishbowl helmet that topped his spacesuit. Its hyalon had self-darkered at the back against
sunlight which would have blasted his eyes had he glanced straight and unprotected in its direction. The big holoscreen showed an excavator at work behind him, hazed in the dust it continuously stirred up. The images weren’t perfect. No fiber-optic cable ran to these man-empty parts; a satellite relayed. The pictures were adequate for practical purposes.

  “—satisfactory progress in general,” Packer was saying. “However, we’ve got a decision to make. This past nightwatch, over at the northwest corner of the Complex Three site, they hit a pretty huge boulder. It’s evidently got more or less the same composition as the surrounding rock, so it didn’t register on the ground-wave probe, but Pedro Noguchi says we’ll have to get it out, and that’ll leave a hole in the side, plus a lot of cracks that must be due to it. I told him to hold off there till you called in.” His smile flashed, vivid white against the chocolate skin. “Don’t worry, I found plenty other things to keep him and his gang out of mischief.”

  “You would,” Dagny agreed. Packer was every bit as competent as she was, slated to succeed her when she moved into general administration. For that reason, as well as to give him added experience, she felt free occasionally to accompany Edmond on his field trips—adventure, family life, helping out in his research. Still badly undermanned, the work was as basic to engineering and future habitation as it was to pure science. Building the structures for the University of Luna ought not to pose any extraordinary problems anyway.

  But of course no project on the Moon failed to spring its surprises, and the ultimate responsibility was hers. Even ten years ago, she’d have been tied to the spot. Telepresence capability was like having another avatar.

  Yes, flitted through her, history in space moved headlong, ever faster, like a comet plunging sunward. Not only here. An L-5 under construction, spaceport, industrial center, home for Terrans where they could bear children wholly Terran. The wealth of the asteroids ingathered. Ice from the deeps of space, soon water in abundance wherever humans wanted it. Not too many years later, antimatter produced so copiously that ships could burn it to accelerate through an entire voyage, bisecting Pluto’s orbit in a trio of weeks. But when that liberation was won, Guthrie said, Fireball would first launch probes to the nearer stars. …