He entered a pale blue passageway. The one who stood there was mostly of a much darker, lustrous hue, organometallic—a robot? No, Fenn thought dazedly, couldn't be. Taller and broader than him, a powerpack high on the back adding to the mass, the form nevertheless seemed graceful, abstractly human. Sophotect? The question struck Fenn in the belly: The machines that own the stars, are they already here to claim us?
He looked up at the turret. His mind rocked to a halt. A 3-screen held the image of a human head, Caucasoid, rugged-featured, with thinning reddish hair, crow's-feet at the eyes, a smile on the mouth. "Welcome to Dagny" he heard. An arm reached out. He felt his right glove clasped. "My name's Anson Guthrie."
And somehow that was not shattering. The idea passed by me before, Fenn remembered; that evening in Xanadu Gardens, when Kinna and I wondered about these matters.
Yet he could merely whisper, "You?"
"Well, one of me," Guthrie said. "There are more, but don't ask me how many, because I don't know."
"Are you—solo—?"
The image nodded. "Uh-huh. No sense in dispatching a platoon when it was such a long haul; God knew what lay at the end of it, and he wasn't telling. Here, let me help you off with that apparatus."
Fenn acceded, dumbstruck. Guthrie stowed it. "Come along," he invited, his voice now directly in the air. "Let's go put our feet up. This ship's outfitted for meat people,"
Fenn accompanied him down passages and a com-panionway to a modest room where a table and rigid chairs stood fixed in place. The overhead simulated the view outside. A multiceiver and a flatscreen displayed pictures—a landscape, a portrait—and music went low and happily—horns, strings, sounded like—but Fenn paid no attention. He slumped into a seat, feeling the weariness well up anew.
"Relax," urged Guthrie, above him. "Judging by your appearance, you've been through a hard time. Or it's been through you." He gestured at what must be a service unit of some kind. "Care for refreshment? I'm sorry not to have any beer or wine, they don't take well to this sort of voyage, but I've got harder stuff, or I can make coffee or tea. And how about a bite to eat?"
Impatience exploded, cracked the crust of exhaustion, and burst into flame. "Don't be so crapping commonplace!" Fenn shouted.
"Easy, amigo, easy. We've time aplenty for talking."
"And a need to, by death!"
Guthrie studied the man. "You are in a bad way. Sorry, I was trying to be hospitable. But you don't feel ready for that, do you?"
Taken aback, taken disarmed, Fenn gaped at the elven armor.
"Okay," Guthrie said. "I'll pour you a whisky anyhow. Not compulsory." He went over to the unit. "Let's see what information we can swap. Do you want to go first, or shall I?"
"You. For favor." Oh, please.
"I suspect my story's a good bit simpler and more straightforward than yours. But do interrupt whenever you have any question. We've got a hell of a lot of history to bridge."
Guthrie set a half-filled tumbler, a pitcher of water, and a bowl of ice cubes on the table before he settled himself across from his visitor. It flashed in Fenn: From everything I've heard about him, the living Anson Guthrie liked to hoist a drink on occasion, and the occasions came pretty often. But this one can't.
His hand shook as he raised his liquor. It smoldered down his throat. What he heard engulfed him.
"And here we are," Guthrie finished. "Your turn. I've barely begun to learn a few things. I'm hoping to pump more out of you.''
Listening, sometimes asking or arguing, Fenn had regained a measure of balance. He flogged his body to stay alert.
"I can't simply run off an account like you," he said. "It's too complicated. It'd take too long. We don't have unlimited time. Some news will soon come out that'll change everything, the whole game, for everybody everywhere. I don't know how, but I've a strong notion that if we—if people interested in freedom—don't act fast, we'll never have any voice in what happens."
The generated face went expressionless. Fenn supposed Guthrie had forgotten about keeping liveliness in it while regarding him with photoelectric optics, considering him with an electrophotonic brain. "The message included a few words about the solar lenses," Guthrie said slowly.
"Yes. The riddle that helped bring you across space, that they've been breaking themselves against on Proserpina, and—It's been answered. Maybe. Here." Fenn drew a datacard from his undersuit and offered it across the table. "Do you have equipment that can read this?"
"Probably. If not, the ship can flange something up. What's in it?" Guthrie paused. "I heard mention of,.. a galactic civilization."
"These are the details." It felt to Fenn as if he did not speak but the fact was using his tongue. "The end of our freedom, all of us."
"That bad, huh?"
Fenn's selfhood came back to him, bewildered and deathly tired. "I—I'm not really sure. I've only been told, and only the barest outline. The person who told me thinks it's an opening to wonders, to, to the next stage of our evolution, but I'm not convinced. I thought you ... the star people ... might know more, and know what we can do."
"You've heard. We don't."
"Yes, I thought of that too, but, regardless, you should have what... information we have, and—They're deciphering the record on Earth, Luna, Mars, but it'll take them some time, unless the Synesis decides to do it for them. Can you work out the full meaning?"
"Fairly quickly, I imagine. I said Dagny's well prepared."
Fenn sighed. "Then do." He tossed off the last of his whisky. It lit a sunset energy in him. "And maybe you'll want to go on."
"To a lens?"
Fenn nodded. “The Taurus lens would be best, I think. Somebody should. You see, I'm not certain that what's in this datacard is true."
"Nor am I, offhand. We can take that up later. For now, though—I've told you what they told and showed me at Proserpina. The escapade you're hinting at could be worse than dangerous. I can't pull it off by myself, that's clear."
Fenn sat upright. He gripped the edge of the table. "Can I help?"
The countenance stayed impassive, but the voice trembled very slightly. "Why do you want to?"
"Because I—because I had hopes once, for a while, and then—" Fenn's throat locked. He breathed hard.
Guthrie sat a minute quiet.
His face in the turret came alive. The brows drew together a little, the eyes squinted, the corners of the mouth wrinkled with half a smile: sympathy. All right, Fenn thought fleetingly, he's generating it, but I believe he means it. "Tell," Guthrie said. "At your own pace."
Fenn rallied what strength was in him. The story staggered forth.
—"But we couldn't go ahead without knowing more, and so my, my girl and I, we went to the mountain and— and—"
"You sprang the information loose. Well done. Whatever the consequences, well done."
"But she, my girl, she got killed. She's gone. I don't want that to be for nothing!"
Guthrie rose. He walked around the table. "I see." His tone grew nearly as harsh as Fenn's. "That's why you're here, isn't it? I understand. I lost a girl once too, forever. It was long ago, but I remember. Even now, even when I'm like this, I remember."
Fenn got up to meet him. They stood for a second, confronted. Then suddenly Fenn could let go. He could bow his head onto a metallic shoulder and weep in the arms of the machine.
29
DAGNY RENDEZVOUSED ANEW with ‘Atafa, and Fenn crossed over. He collected his gear and supplies, made certain the ship was properly programmed for return to Earth orbit, and left a message for his erstwhile partners among the Lahui. It said that they would soon know what his mission to Mars had found, and he was now bound elsewhere on his own responsibility; he could not tell them where or why, nor whether they would ever see him again, but he wished them luck and asked that they bid Wanika Tauni aloha from him.
That was about as much as he felt he should convey, or felt able to. By the time he had brought his things to the field-drive ves
sel, he was numbed and hollow.
He roused a little when she accelerated off, as gently as before, and Guthrie said, "All right, we will head out toward the Taurus lens, unless and until we hear there's no point in it."
"How could we hear that?" Fenn muttered.
"If the Synesis opens the lenses for direct public downloading, seeing the secret is out."
"I don't think that will happen."
"Well, I'll want to talk a lot more with you in any case. Several things don't quite add up. The whole business is way too big for us to sit passive. And we had better start right away, ahead of anybody who might tamper with the evidence."
Guthrie fell silent for a few seconds. "Mind you," he added, "I don't promise a damn thing. If visitors are not welcome yonder, I'll want a look at the situation. If the chances are too poor, I'll turn tail. Maybe then we can work up something less heroic for later, though I admit that's doubtful. Or I may change my mind completely along the way. You may yourself. We'll have buckets of time to think it over."
"How much time?" Fenn asked vaguely.
The synthesized head shook; the synthesized voice clicked a tongue that didn't exist. "Hoo, do you need a rest!" Image eyes dwelt on the big, unkempt form huddled in a chair. "But you're tough. I expect two gravities won't hurt you, especially when you'll be bunked out a lot for the first of the trip."
Fenn stirred. "Two g, all that way? Can you?"
"It won't bother me any. With midpoint turnover, about seven weeks to the lens."
"I mean the energy, the fuel."
"Tanked up, which she pretty much still is, this boat has a delta v of about one-third c. I didn't push as close to that limit as I could have on my way from Centauri, but then I wasn't in the kind of hurry we are now and wanted to keep a fair reserve. We'll run ours low, but still ought to be in shape to scramble off fast. And ... while we'd probably rather not have any Proserpinans on the scene, and they couldn't manage it anyway before we've been and gone, I will be in touch with them. They can maybe help out afterward."
Fenn nodded. He had no strength to do or say more.
"Now relax and come along," Guthrie said. "Let's get you washed and into some clean bedclothes and around some hot soup and then, for Christ's sake, asleep." Fenn stumbled off beside him.
At first he did spend most of his time flat, staring at the overhead or dozing or unconscious or adrift in dreams from which he woke with a gasp or with tears. The heaviness on him was, if anything, a benison, a task for his body that engaged his mind.
After the drugs had drained from his system, he was more and more up, in a program of exercise, study, and work. Guthrie aided him.
Together they went around the ship, detail by detail. The layout was an engineering delight: drive, radiation shield generator, controls, robotics, armament, chemo-synthesizers, life support ranging from private cabins to a sickbay equipped as thoroughly as a major hospital. Fenn grew fascinated.
From Amaterasu, Guthrie had brought along a database holding most of that world's knowledge and culture— suns, planets, moons, geographies, geologies, biologies, history, discovery, art, achievement, conflicts, questions, hopes, horrors, happiness, centuries of it from Earth to Demeter and onward. The Lunarians at Alpha Centauri were not willing to give him records that complete, perhaps they had none, but he had obtained considerable about them too. Fenn could read, listen, watch on a multiceiver, experience in a vivifer. There was no dreambox aboard, but no matter. He lost himself in a tumult of all that past living.
At other times he worked with Guthrie in the ship's machine shop to modify or, in several cases, devise, the gear they would need at the lens, if they got that far and then decided to act. When this had been done, they rehearsed the use of it. In this too he found a heightening companionship.
Increasingly often they talked, everyday remarks leading to conversations that went far and deep. Fenn found he could tell this—being—things he had never supposed he would tell anyone. Was it that Guthrie was a figure half mythic, and with memories so manifold that he would accept whatever could happen to a man as natural? But he had no more pretensions than an old shoe. Maybe that was part of it, his easiness. After a while he felt closer than any of the few male friends Fenn had had before.
Whatever the reasons, to talk with him—about Kinna, about everything—made the wounds hurt less and started them slowly healing.
They sat in the cabin Guthrie called the saloon, below the star images. Onto one bulkhead screen the ship's database projected an ancient painting he loved, Monet's "Cliff at Varengeville." Low in the background played music also remembered from his Earthly lifetime, Bach's Fourth Brandenburg Concerto. For Fenn's sake, the air bore a tang of sea; it wasn't quite Pacific; it held faint, foreign overtones of odor from Amaterasu.
The tabletop between them simulated a chessboard and pieces. The man had finally won a game against the download, surely a sign of recovery. Otherwise Guthrie had had no need to be seated. Fenn did. He took the acceleration well, but he couldn't stay indefinitely on his feet while carrying ninety added kilos.
The game stood forgotten and Guthrie kept his own chair, for they had fallen into serious dialogue.
“What do you really want out of this?'' Guthrie asked. "It is a desperate venture. Has been, since you left for that mountain. What's driving you?"
Fenn thought before answering. He had seldom tried to look at his feelings as if from outside. "Revenge, I suppose," he said tentatively.
"For what? Who's ever abused you?" Guthrie's ghost-face grimaced. “Oh, yes, poor Kinna—God, what a tragic waste—But it essentially just happened, you know. And you did put yourselves in the way of it, you two."
Resentment stirred and growled.
Guthrie lifted a hand. "Hold on," he said. "I'm not laying blame or anything like that. I'm trying to understand. We are partners and we'd better get well acquainted. But if this is too painful, we'll let it go for now."
Anger ebbed, leaving a sense of challenge. "No, I can stand it," Fenn replied. I will stand it, he thought. No surrender. "Maybe 'revenge' was the wrong word. But all my life I've been caged." Outburst: "Can you understand that? You've had the freedom of the stars!"
"Y-yes. .. . And that too just happened. Circumstances got together with motivation. Given today's technology, it'd cost much less. Oh, you'd still have to shoot your wad. But nobody's forbidden restless souls like you to pool your resources and quit the Solar System."
"Forbidding hasn't been necessary. They simply made it impossible."
"How?"
"Why do you ask? You must know. They won't release the field drive to us, neither the full theory of it nor the plans, and the Proserpinans certainly won't share it with us. Nor could we develop it by ourselves, or build or supply the ships. You had a concentration of power and wealth in your Fireball like nothing that's been seen since. Our precious equilibrium economy today guarantees that no humans on Earth, Luna, or Mars ever will again. Argh, it's a warm, soft, safe cage they've made for us, but we'll never break through or climb out."
Guthrie's image raised its brows. "They? Who do you mean?"
Rage was flowing back. The man's fist crashed on the table. "The machines! The clotting, stifling machines."
Guthrie shook his phantom head. "You're no dimwit, whatever else you may be. You realize matters are nowhere near that simple."
"Yes, yes. The cybercosm has its servants—all right, its allies, collaborators, true believers—all through the Synesis. And most Terrans, at least, are contented lap-dogs."
"I'm not sure that's entirely true any more," Guthrie murmured. "I've gotten an impression the old Adam is waking up."
Fenn disregarded the aside. "Yes," he spat, "everybody means very, very well. So does every thing."
Outline's tone sharpened. "But you blame the cybercosm—the Teramind, if you like—for your troubles. It could change the world to suit you better, and doesn't. Well, supposing it could, which I'm inclined to doubt, probabl
y it thinks it shouldn't. It is smarter than .we are, by more orders of magnitude than we can guess. Don't hate somebody because he's superior to you."
Fenn gaped at him. "You .. . you accept it knows best?"
"No, but I accept I don't, for sure." Guthrie grinned. "Don't worry," he continued more mildly. "I wouldn't be out here freebooting if I didn't care about liberty. Human liberty."
Heartened but still shaken, Fenn blurted, "You've had liberty at your stars. Or so you've thought. How do you know it hasn't been the freedom of—of weeds, that the gardener will pull when his plan calls for it?"
Guthrie frowned. "From everything I've heard, and I've heard some mighty prejudiced folks on the subject, I do not believe the cybercosm wants to kill us off. I wonder if it's able to want to."
Fenn made a chopping gesture. "No. Curb us. Or tame us, make us useful to it. Eventually swallow us up in itself."
"Or ignore us. That'd be okay. Live and let live."
"Do you really imagine it will? That it can?"
"Well, your cybercosm isn't grinding you under its heel, is it? And it thinks, or says it thinks, that organic critters out amongst the stars are happily and freely developing their own civilizations, coexisting with the machines."
"The machines dominate."
"So it appears. In the nature of the case, I should expect they'd be more plentiful, in more different kinds of places. But it doesn't follow that they rule over the organics, directly or indirectly. They definitely don't need the same kind of real estate."
"If the organics exist. It's only a theory."
"Yeah, thus far. Maybe not even a sincere one. Maybe the cybercosm wants people to feel better about the galactic sophotects. Maybe it doesn't really figure it'll ever pick up any spoor of anything else."
"That's crossed my mind," Fenn said. Now he felt cold. The rage in him was congealing into dismay. "It would fit the pattern. Social control. Oh, very tolerant, mostly indirect, we barely feel it, but that makes it all the harder to learn how deep into us it goes. Can you see what I mean? Maybe you can't. You haven't spent your life inside a social machine."
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