The Fleet of Stars

by Poul Anderson

  “Now lately I have heard that the leaders of the Threedom—no, not strictly 'leaders,' Lunarians aren't like that, but you understand me—they too are in favor. They're in occasional beamcast contact with Proserpina, that's no high secret, and now Elverir has told me the Proserpinans may well offer to help with the project too. It would be an entry for them, back into the inner System—and, yes, of course they'd expect to make profits—but it could also lead to a reconciliation between the Threedom and the Republic, the disbanding of the Inrai. Anyway, that was my first thought. I know it won't be easy. Some of the Inrai are probably irreconcilable. I know something about the wildest ones, like a man named Tanir. But never mind for now. This is looking too far ahead. Just the same, there's hope, isn't there?

  "Maybe more to the point, we know the Proserpinans are in touch with the people out among the stars. Could this, your work, Fenn, could it somehow start bringing all humans everywhere back together? How could that be wrong?

  "I'm not sure about asking Chuan this. I mean, he's bound to learn the same things, if he hasn't already, but what will he say to me? I do care about him. Maybe I'll wait to hear from you, what you think, before I do anything except keep on with my very ordinary life here."

  The text ended and Kinna's image reappeared. Fenn stopped play. "Now that's news," he said, turning his look on Wanika. "Not totally unexpected, but news worth getting."

  "The girl is scarcely an intelligence agent," she answered without enthusiasm.

  “No, no. But she has a lot of contacts, and knows the situation from the inside out.... We should tell her to give future communications quantum encryption. We can pay for it, and who knows what difference it might make?"

  "It would draw attention, and suspicion."

  Fenn chuckled. "It would suggest something private on between her and me."

  Wanika glanced away. “Perhaps.... But why are you suddenly so wary?"

  He bristled. "Why give away information when we've got a fight ahead of us?"

  "Do we?" Her eyes came back to dwell on him. "You're charging ahead toward your glorious vision— you, personally, free in space. They're more conservative in the Lahui councils. They have more to consider—also beyond their own lives. They'll weigh the advice of the cybercosm—of the Teramind, if it chooses to speak directly tq us."

  "Of course." He straightened. "But you don't belong to the cybercosm, do you? We don't. And it admits it can't prophesy. How then can it prove any big change will be for the worse? It isn't even human."

  "I know, I know," she sighed. "You talk like lokepa and so many others. Like me, most times, except that I have my misgivings once in a while. Oh, yes, we will go ahead, for the time being at least. So far, we're only investigating the feasibility. But this mention of the Proserpinans joining in—it does make me wonder."

  She rose from her chair. "I think I would like to walk around a bit. Let me know if your friend has anything else important to say. I'll be back in an hour or two, and we can go to dinner." Her hand stroked his cheek as she left.

  He puzzled briefly over what she had in mind. She was seldom this moody. He forgot the thought when he reactivated the playback.

  Not that there was anything special in the remainder. Kinna smiled and said, "I'm glad that's done with. Aren't you? But I'm sorry not to've been more helpful. Do call back if I can do anything further, or if you just feel like swapping words. I'll try to keep abreast of things, the quiet things, I mean, that don't get on the newscasts. Have it well, Fenn, trouvour. Ai devu," and that was a Lunarian good-bye with unsentimentally wishful overtones heard in no Terran language. She waved aeain. The screen blanked.

  13

  THEIR HIRED SUBORBITAL took Fenn and He'o to Port Bowen. There they immediately engaged a minicar on the monorail. On the ride south to Tychopolis they left the interior darkened. Fenn was content to rest, presently falling asleep in his recliner. Even for him, the past daycycles had been strenuous, not least because he must often help his friend as they and their machines scrambled around Archimedes Crater and the adjacent highlands. The metamorph lay quietly on his cart, but awake and looking outward. He did not watch the Lunar landscape and the occasional works of humankind or .cybercosm leaping over the horizon and streaming past. He kept his eyes from half-phase Earth, which would have dazzled night vision away. His gaze was for the stars.

  Fenn roused as the car surmounted the ringwall, slowing. He blinked, stretched, and said, "Well, amigo, here we are. It's been quite a circuit, hasn't it?"

  "Wearying." Beneath the slow synthetic voice went a sigh as of waves. "Now we shall soon forsake space. I long for my sea."

  "And your wives, no?"

  Fenn regretted his jape when He'o replied, "Are you not eager to be with Wanika again?''

  The man felt himself hesitate, and swore silently, before he said, "Yes, she's a fine one."

  The seal head aimed straight at him. "I fear she has found you a little ... kauwi—drawing apart from her, this year or so aft-time."

  Fenn flushed. He had in fact been aware that Wanika sensed she was less in his mind than before, and was hurt Rut what promises had he ever eiven. and whose affair was it? "I'll steer my own course," he snapped. The thought passed peripherally: Once I'd've said something like, "I'll follow my own orbit." Four years with the Lahui have changed some programming in me, seems like. I need to get off Earth, farther and for longer than this Moon expedition.

  Well, Mars—The heart jumped in his breast.

  He'o lowered his muzzle. The scarred old alpha bull very rarely made that gesture of humility. ”Ua hewa ao. Forgive me. I should not have pissed in your water."

  "Nada, forget it," Fenn mumbled, almost overwhelmed.

  "It is only that Wanika is my hoapili. I have known her from her puppyhood. And now you are also close to me."

  "And you to me." Fenn felt relief when, at that moment, the car plunged underground. It cycled rapidly through the airlock tunnel and glided to a halt. Light from the terminal poured in.

  Fenn sprang from his seat. "Here we are. On to our business, and then ho for home." He took their locker-bags and led the way out.

  As usual, the station yawned cavernous, uncrowded. People didn't travel much any more on Luna, except virtually. The newcomers drew stares and whispers from those who were scattered about. A dark, brisk woman approached. Fenn saw the camera perched on her shoulder, swiveling to track him and his companion, and groaned, "Oh, death. Not another journalist! I was hoping we'd shaken those pests."

  "Our visit has stirred great public interest," He'o reminded him mildly. "The whole undertaking has."

  "Don't I know it." Only a cordon of sophotectic guards, courtesy of the Yuan tong, had kept the Archimedes region from being beswarmed while these two from the Lahui were there. "Um, yeh, if they kept a watch, they'd've seen us take off for Bowen, and a query of TrafCon would establish that a mini left for here which we were probably aboard. He'o, right now I wish my species too were seals, not apes."

  The woman reached them. "Saludos, senores," she said in Anglo, with a professionally brilliant smile. "I believe I have the honor of meeting Pilot Fenn and Captain He'o?" She had obviously picked the titles from a list of such meaningless noises. "My current name is Stellarosa and I'm with the Cosmochronicle Service. You know your wonderful project is fascinating millions of us. Could I ask you a few questions about it, or would you care to make a statement?"

  "We're on our way to a meeting," Fenn growled.

  "Yes, I know, and I'll simply accompany you. I needn't delay you at all." Plain to see, Stellarosa wanted to move them along before anyone from the competition learned they had arrived.

  "Slag and slaughter, does everything leak out?"

  "Was this supposed to be secret?"

  "No. Not exactly. It was supposed to be left alone. How'd you like it if I poked into your doings?"

  "Fenn, malino, be calm," He'o said. "She has her duty."

  "Duty?"

  "Yes, to
your species and its need for information, a need that in this case we all share. Our business could gain tsunami force."

  "Thank you, sir," Stellarosa said.

  Her words mollified Fenn a bit. "That's if it works out,", he put in. "Muy bien, we can talk as we go."

  He signaled to a porter and gave it the bags, with instructions to deliver them where and when called for. He wished for that to be not to any lodgings, but to the next ferry for Earth. He and the woman walking, He'o rolling, they sought the nearest slipway. Somehow it soothed him further. There was a sensuousness to the quasi-fluidity that carried them to the high-speed middle of the belt, while the breeze he felt until they were moving equally with the airstream came as a refreshment after his time in spacesuits, shelters, and conveyances—like a sea wind. Yes, he thought, maybe I was born wanderfooted, but these years among the ocean people have been good and I ought to be grateful.

  I ought to bfe more considerate of Wanika.

  Yet the messages to and from Mars—

  "Yes," he said in answer to a question, "the Archimedes site does look promising for our purposes. Isolated, so the work wouldn't bother anyone, but easy to extend transport lines to. A fair amount of untapped mineral resources close by. Launch site—pretty high latitude, but on Luna that doesn't make any real difference."

  "Your purposes," Stellarosa prompted. "To build a shipyard and a small spaceport, in support of your Martian activities, is that correct?"

  "Essentially, although with many complications," He'o replied. He did not go into detail, for he had no simian urge to chatter.

  Fenn had lost most of his own taciturnity. Now that he had resigned himself to an interview, the brown, full-lipped countenance beside him was quite charming. He had been celibate for weeks. "You realize," he admitted, "everything is strato yet. Nobody has made any commitments. We've just been investigating the site, collecting data."

  "But a consortium of Selenites has helped you, encouraged you, and you're on your way to meet with some of those persons," Stellarosa said.

  “M-m, well, the Trinh and Chandrakumar families, the Yuan tong, Ziganti Properties, suchlike, they are interested. If the Lahui Kuikawa do convert Deimos, with everything else that implies of human activity started up afresh in space, it'll mean a chance for whoever's involved to make quasar-sized profits."

  An almighty long-range prospect, a part of him thought: the part that had never cursed or caroused or brawled but had quietly studied some history and meditated upon it. Once nobody would or could have seriously planned so far ahead. But between modern longevity and modern data systems—and the example of the cybercosm—a few humans and their organizations were beginning to. Or was it due to the possibility of personal immortality?

  And then: Profits? What exactly do I mean by that? Blanked if I know. When everybody's got enough without working for it, and when by working, you really only add some luxuries to your life, what is profit, anyway?

  Power? The strength to break out of the system? But who in his right mind wants to? All I want is to be free to go where I want.

  Some old, old lines rose in his memory. Once on Mars, as they stood overlooking a light-and-shadow grandeur of mountains, Kinna had spoken them for him, her translation:

  We travel not for trafficking alone;

  By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned: For lust of knowing what should not be known,

  We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

  But what if that freedom required cracking the system open?

  “They wish to encounter you in person, am I right?'' Stellarosa was saying. "Telepresence isn't quite the same thing, not when you may be dealing with somebody for many years and it's this important."

  Fenn generally responded gladly to an intelligent remark, whenever he heard one out of the dismal average for his species. "Right. We organics use too many subtle cues." He noticed the slight contempt—or hostility, or whatever it was—in his tone, and paused to think. He didn't care to sound like a back-to-a-nature-that-never-was snotbrain. But at the same time, flip it, he wasn't about to accept that the Teramind was his All-Mother and the whole end purpose of evolution. "As long as we keep on being what we are," he finished.

  "Then you hope they will invest in your project?" Stellarosa asked.

  "Eventually," he replied. "I told you, this is all tentative so far. We'll need Earthside investors too. And the Martians haven't agreed to the idea, remember. It'd be a bigger thing for them than for anybody else."

  And I'm going back there soon to pursue the matter, sang within him.

  "It's big for everybody," Stellarosa said. "More and more controversial as it takes shape, isn't it? The psy-chosocial analysts warning how it could upset the economy and endanger the peace—"

  "They and their crapping equations!" exploded from Fenn. "Sure, the cybercosm and the Synesis councillors don't like the idea. It'd complicate things, make them unpredictable, sure. But does that mean they'll go bad— for us? We aren't machines, we humans, and Keiki Moana, not yet!"

  "Don't you think there could be dangers? How might the Proserpinans react? We know so little about them and their intentions, and even less about what's been happening among the stars."

  "Proserpinans, ha! When did any clutch of Lunarians of any size ever get together on a single intention? And as for the stars, they're what we should be bound for!"

  "An albatross voyage," He'o said softly. "We can only swim the water we are in today. All else is the currents of dream."

  And yet he had fought storms, sharks, and his fellow bulls.

  Stellarosa knew well how to move talk along. It became lively. Fenn almost regretted getting off the slipway. That was onto Tsiolkovsky Prospect, in the old part of town. The meeting was set for one of the complexes fronting on Hydra Square. Still conversing, the three walked onward over the duramoss, between the triple arcades. Behind those high ogives were no longer any curious shops or Lunarian rendezvous, only apartments or antique exhibits. The ceiling above displayed no extravagant illusions, only the simulacrum of a summery sky above Earth. The air bore no pungencies or plangent music, only the foot-shuffle and chatter of Terrans. They were many, here within their city, hustling to and fro on their various errands, crowding as Lunarians never did, clad more brightly and less sumptuously than Lunarians ever were. Fenn's little party raised a bow wave of recognition—stares, nudges, sudden silences, murmurs, exclamations. Some persons, however, stood as if posted, waiting till they passed by, looking and looking.

  "Seems like word of us went ahead," Fenn remarked. Still in a fairly good mood, he didn't resent the fact much.

  "Yes, naturally," Stellarosa told him. "You may not realize how many folk are keenly interested in you. You're something new, something strange and exciting. Quite a few of them, on Earth and Luna both, have set their multis to record anything about you that comes into the dataline. Well, TrafCon satellites routinely reported a suborbital jump from Archimedes to Port Bowen, which must be you two, and the information had already gotten out by phone and so forth that you would be coming straight here to meet with our local powers that be."

  "Then why weren't more journalists lurking at the station?"

  She laughed. "I was quicker than the rest."

  Competition for trivia, Fenn thought. What if the day comes back when people compete for real prizes?

  He'o, prone on his cart, stirred. Under the words, his voice barked and croaked; but the eyes shone in the sleek head, above the massive body, as he glanced about him. "Yes, you are a peculiar race," he said. "I will never fully understand you. Do you understand yourselves?" His whiskers quivered. "I, though, I am going home to my sea."

  Thunder smote. His skull exploded. Blood and brains fountained. The missile whanged off two walls before it dropped.

  From a third-level arch tolled the baritone Anglo, followed by Spanyol and Sinese:

  "Humans everywhere, true humans, Terrans, hear me! Today we have struck down a monster that was about to
attack our very souls. It was the foremost, but just the foremost, of countless monsters, metamorph and machine and abominations, from the outer darkness—"

  Fenn heard no more, until afterward in reply. While the crowd milled and screamed, while alarms wailed and observants arrived and human constables came after, he crouched on the duramoss with He'o's body in his arms.

  After all the time since he quit the force, it felt odd to be again in a police chief's office.

  Like most of his corps, Georghios believed in physical presence. He made his staff come personally, daily, to headquarters, as he did himself. Stocky, heavy-featured, gray-haired, he sat behind a battered desk that was bare except for a terminal and an eidophone, and glowered at the man opposite; but his anger went beyond this room.

  "Yes," he rumbled, "we have identified the killer. Several passersby noticed him lugging his apparatus down the Prospect before he went inside and up to that vacant apartment. We've gotten fairly reliable descriptions from two or three of them. More to the point, our lab managed to retrieve shed skin cells off the weapon and map their DNA. He left directly after the murder— that rant of his was a recording, the voice synthesized— and disappeared in the confusion. He could be anywhere on Luna. Or if he has accomplices, which seems likely, he may well have gotten away to Earth. Could have boarded either of the two ferries that left before we knew who he was and issued our bulletin. A simple disguise would cover his tracks. But now the alert for him is on the entire net, Solar System-wide. It won't be canceled till we have him."

  That could take years, Fenn thought. Or forever. A clandestine biosculp job to change face and fingerprints, then a life led cautiously--Even with the cybercosm to help, police resources were limited, and ever more thinly stretched.