The Boat of a Million Years

by Poul Anderson

  “Well, we talked it over in the Council and decided this was better. You’re not just another jako.” That must be local slang for the few hundred outsiders a year allowed to experience the wilderness. It sounded mildly contemptuous. “Nor a scientist or official agent, are you?”

  “N-no.”

  “Come on, I’ll see you to the hotel, and later I’ll sort of introduce you around.” They started off. Soon they were on an unpaved road where puddles glimmered. “Because you’re a Survivor.”

  Wanderer’s smile twitched rueful. “I didn’t want to advertise that right away.”

  “We ran a routine check before agreeing you could come, same as we do for everybody. You eight may go pretty much unnoticed, but you sure were famous once. Your background popped right out of the scan. Word got around. I hate to say this, nothing personal, but you’ll find some folks here who resent you.”

  That was an ugly surprise. “Really? Why?”

  “You Survivors can have children whenever you like.”

  “I ... see.” Wanderer considered how to respond. Gravel scrunched underfoot. “Jealousy isn’t reasonable, though. We’re freaks of nature. A crazy combination of genes, including several unlikely mutations, that doesn’t breed true. Normal human beings who don’t want to age have to undergo the process. Well, we can’t then let them reproduce freely. Remember your history, population explosion, the Great Death, and that was before athanatics.”

  “I know.” Davison sounded a bit miffed. “Who doesn’t?”

  “Sorry, but I have met quite a few who don’t. They think history’s too depressing to study. I point out to them that they’ll have their chance to be parents eventually. There are accidental losses to make up, and interplanetary colonies may yet be founded.”

  “Yeah. The waiting list for children was several centuries long, last time I looked.”

  “Ufa-hub. But as for us Survivors, ever hear of a grandfather clause? By revealing ourselves, we opened up a treasure trove for scholars. Fair is fair. As a matter of fact, we hardly ever do become parents.” We hardly ever have partners who are eligible. And any offspring we have grew too soon alien.

  “I understand all that,” Davison said. “I don’t object, myself, I’m only telling you we’d better be, uh, tactful. That’s a reason why I met you.”

  “I do appreciate it.” Wanderer attempted to drive his point home: “You might remind those objectors to my status that they can beget kids every bit as lawfully, no limit.”

  “Because they’re willing to shrivel and die in a hundred years or less.”

  “That’s the bargain. They can drop out whenever they choose, get youth restored if they’ve lost it, join the immortals. There is simply that small, necessary price to pay.”

  “Sure, sure, sure,” Davison snapped. “Think we’ve never heard?” After half a dozen strides: “My turn to say, ‘Sorry.’ I didn’t mean to sound mad. To most of us, you’ll be very welcome. What yarns you have to spin!”

  “Nothing you can’t play off the databank, I’m afraid,” Wanderer said. “We were questioned and interviewed dry many years ago.”

  Generations before you were born, Charlie, if your lineage is purely mortal. How old are you? Forty, fifty? I see white sown through your hair and crow’s-feet at your eyes.

  “Not the same,” Davison answered. “Good Lord, I’m in company with a man who knew Sitting Bull!” Actually, Wanderer had not, but he let it pass. “Hearing it from you in person means so much more. Don’t you forget, our whole idea is to live naturally, like God intended.”

  “That’s why I’ve come.”

  Davison’s pace faltered. He stared. “What? We supposed you were ... interested, like the rest of our visitors.”

  “I am. Of course. But more than that. I guess we’d better not mention this immediately. However, I think I might settle here, if people will have me.”

  “You?” asked amazement.

  “I go way back, you know. To the tribes, the brotherhoods, rites and beliefs and traditions, living by our wits and .hands off the land and of the land. Oh, I’m not romantic about it. I remember the drawbacks too clearly, and would certainly not want to revive, say, the horse barbarians. But still, damn it, we had a, a oneness with our world such as ‘doesn’t exist now, except maybe among you.”

  They were entering the village. Boats rocked at the wharf; men fished for the local market. Kitchen gardens and apple trees burgeoned behind neatly made wooden houses. Mere supplements, Wanderer must remind himself, like their handicrafts. The dwellers spend share and order stuff delivered, same as the rest of us. For added earnings, some of them take care of these woods and waters; or they attend to the tourists; or they do brainwork out of their homes, over the computer net. They haven’t disowned the modern world.

  He thrust away memories of what he had witnessed elsewhere around the planet, the deaths slow or swift, always anguished, that overtook obsolete communities and ways of hie, the ghost towns, empty campsites, forsaken graves. Instead, he searched about him for the secret of this folk’s endurance.

  Those on the street were a mingled lot, every race of mankind, together in their faith, wish, and fear. A church, tallest of their buildings, lifted its steeple cloudward; the cross on top declared that life eternal was not of the flesh but of the soul. Children were the desire, the reward. When and where else had Wanderer last seen a small hand clutching mother’s, a round face turned his way to marvel? Calm gray heads bore the sense of having staved off dehumaniza-tion.

  They recognized the newcomer; word had indeed gotten about. None crowded close. Their greetings to Davison were self-conscious, and Wanderer felt the looks, heard the buzz at his back. Not that the atmosphere was hostile. Doubtless only a minority begrudged him his privilege, as nearly meaningless as it was. Most seemed as if they looked forward to knowing him, and were simply too polite to introduce themselves at once. (Or else, since they were few and close-knit, it had been agreed they wouldn’t.) Adolescents instantly lost the sullenness that hung on them.

  That last struck Wanderer first as peculiar, then as disturbing. He paid closer attention. The elderly were a bare handful. Drawn shades and neglected yards showed what houses stood vacant.

  “Well, you begin by relaxing and enjoying yourself,” Davison advised. “Take the tours. Meet the jakos. They’re okay, we screen ‘em pretty carefully. How about dinner at my place tomorrow? My wife’s anxious to meet you too, the kids are starry-eyed, and we’ll invite two-three other couples that I think you’ll like.”

  “You’re awfully kind.”

  “Oh, I’ll benefit, and Martha, and—“ The hotel was ahead, a rambling structure whose antiquarian verandah looked over the bay and the sea beyond. Davison slowed his gait and lowered his voice. “Listen, we don’t just want to hear stories from you. We want to ask about... details, the kind that don’t get in the news or the databank, the kind we don’t notice ourselves when we go outside, because we don’t know what to watch for.”

  The chill deepened in Wanderer. “You mean you wish I’d explain how life there feels to me—to a person who didn’t grow up in those ways?”

  “Yes, that’s it, if you please. I realize I’m asking a lot, but, well—”

  “I’ll try,” Wanderer said.

  Unspoken: You’re giving serious thought to moving away, Charlie, to renouncing this whole existence and creed and purpose.

  I knew the enclave is shrinking, that its children usually leave soon after they reach legal adulthood, that recruits have become vanishingly scarce. I knew it’s as doomed as the Shakers were in their day. But your middle-aged are also quitting, so quietly that the fact wasn’t in what I studied about you. I’d hoped for a mortal lifetime or two of peace, of belonging. Set that aside, Wanderer.

  Guests were clustered on the porch. They pointed and jabbered. He stopped and turned to see. Barely visible through the haze, three giant shapes slipped past the mouth of the bay.

  “Whales,” Daviso
n told him. “They’re multiplying fine. We spot more every year.”

  “I know,” said Wanderer. “Right whales, those. I remember when they were declared extinct.” I wept.

  They were recreated in the laboratories, reintroduced to a nature that is completely managed. This is no wilderness other than in name. It’s a control reserve, a standard of comparison for Ecological Service to use. No true wilderness is left, anywhere on Earth, unless in the human heart, and there too the intellect knows how to govern.

  I shouldn’t have come here. Now I’ll have stay a week or so, for courtesy’s sake, for the sake of this man and his kin; but I should have known better than to come.

  I should be stronger than to let this hurt me so.

  5

  Nowhere was Yukiko ever alone with the stars.

  Solitude she could have, yes. The powers and, mostly, the people were gracious to Survivors. She often thought that graciousness had become the common and principal virtue of humanity. It led to an impersonal kindliness. Unhindered room was the sole good in which the world was impoverished. Nevertheless, when she expressed her longing, this atoll became hers. Minuscule though it be, that was an Aladdin’s gift.

  Yet the stars were denied her.

  A few blinked wan after dark, Sirius, Canopus, Alpha Centauri, sometimes others, together with Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Their constellations lost in the nacreous luminance, she was rarely sure which she saw. Satellites twinkled swift across heaven. The moon shone mistily, and on its dark part she made out steady sparks, the light of tech-nocomplexes and the Triple City. Aircraft went in firefly swarms. Occasionally a spacecraft passed, majestic meteor, and thunders rolled from horizon to horizon; but that was seldom, most operations being off Earth and robotic.

  She had resigned herself to the loss. Weather control, atmosphere maintenance, massive energy transfers were necessary; they caused fluorescence; that was that. She could fill the walls and ceiling of her house with a starscape as grand as if she stood in an Arizona desert before Columbus, or she could visit a sensorium and know naked space. Still, ungratefully, when she was outdoors in this her refuge, she wished she didn’t have to conjure the night sky out of memories.

  The ocean murmured. Reflection sheened off much of it, where aquaculture did not blanket the waves. Brightnesses bobbed yonder, boats, ships, a bargetown plodding along. Surf made white unrest beyond the lagoon, which was a well of sky-glow. The noise felt hushed, less loud than coral gritting beneath her feet. Her lungs drank cool purity. Each day she wordlessly thanked untold gigabillions of microorganisms for keeping the planet clean. That humans—computers—had designed and produced them to do it made no difference; theirs was a wonderful karma.

  She passed by her garden, dwarf trees, bamboo, stones, twining paths. A machine was noiselessly busy there. Newly returned from Australia, where she had found herself involved in one more “fleeting affair, she hadn’t thus far taken over that work again.

  Well, she wasn’t very gifted for it. If only Tu Shan—but he didn’t like these surroundings.

  Her house lay shadowy, a small and subtle blending of curves. Her worldlet, she was apt to think. It provided or had brought to her everything she needed and more. Self-repairing, it could do so for as Jong as the energy arrived. Now and then she wished it would make sense for her to take a dusting cloth in her hand.

  And I was once a lady of the court, she thought. Wryness tugged her lips upward.

  Dismiss those feelings. She had gone to sit by the sea and empty her mind, open her soul, until she felt ready to use her intelligence. Whatever harmony she had won to was fragile.

  A wall opened for her. Light bloomed within. The room was furnished in ascetic ancient style. She knelt on a straw mat before the computer terminal and raised the electronic spirit.

  A portion of that immense rationality identified her and spoke in suitable, musical language and phrases. “What is your desire, my lady?”

  No, not really suitable. Desire was the snare. She had even forsaken her old, old name of Morning Glory and become—once again, after a thousand years—Small Snow, as a sign to herself of renunciation. But that too had failed. “I have meditated on what you told me about life and intelligence among the stars, and decided to learn as much of this as I am able. Teach me.”

  “It is a matter complex and chaotic, my lady. As far as the exploratory robots have taken our knowledge, life is rare, and only three unmistakably sentient species are known, all technologically in an equivalent of the human paleolithic era. Three others are controversial. Their behavior may be elaborately instinctive, or it may arise in minds too unlike the Terrestrial to be recognizable as such. Whatever they are, these creatures too possess only simple implements. On the other hand, the Web has detected anomalous radiation sources at greater distances, which may mean high-energy civilizations analogous to ours. Depending on how the data are interpreted, they may number as many as seven hundred fifty-two. The nearest is at an estimated remove of four hundred seventy-five parsecs. Additionally, the Web is receiving signals that are almost certainly informational from twenty-three different sources, identified with bodies or regions that are astrophysically unusual. We doubt that these signals are directed at us especially. We do not know whether any transmitters are in direct contact with each other. There are indications that they use distinct codes. Data thus far are insufficient for more than the most tentative and fragmentary suggestions of possible meaning.”

  “I know! Everybody does. You’ve told me already, and it was unnecessary then.”

  Yukiko fought down irritation. The machine was godlike in its power, it could do a million years’ worth of human reasoning in a day, but it had no right to patronize her... It didn’t intend to. It habitually repeated itself to humans because many of them needed that. She eased, let the emotion surge and die like a wave. Calm, she said, “As I understand it, the messages are not about mathematics or physics.”

  “They do not appear to be, and it seems implausible that civilizations would spend time and bandwidth exchanging knowledge that all must certainly possess. Perhaps they concern other sciences, such as biology. However, that implies that our understanding of physics is incomplete, that we have not by now delineated every possible kind of biochemistry in the universe. We have no evidence for such an assumption.”

  “I know,” Yukiko repeated, but patiently. “And I’ve heard the argument that it can’t be politics or anything like that, when transmission times are in centuries. Do they compare histories, arts, philosophies?”

  “Conceivably.”

  “I believe that. It would make sense.” Unless organic life withers away. But won’t machine minds also wonder about the ultimate? “I want to master your ... analysis. I’m aware I can’t make any contribution, nothing original. Let me follow along, though. Give me the means to think about what you have learned and are learning.”

  “That could be done, within limits,” said the gentle voice. “It would require much time and effort on your part. Do you care to explain your reasons?”

  Yukiko couldn’t help it, her words trembled. “They, those beings, they must be advanced far beyond us—”

  “Not likely, my lady. To the best of present-day knowledge, and it appears seamless, nature sets bounds on technological possibilities; and we have determined what those bounds are.”

  “I don’t mean in engineering, I mean in, in understanding, enlightenment.” Inner peace was gone. Her pulse stammered. “You don’t see what I’m talking about. Would anybody nowadays, any human being?” Except Tu Shan and perhaps, if they tried, the rest of our fellowship. We hark back to when people felt these questions were real.

  “Your purpose is clear,” said the electronics mildly. “Your concept is not absurd. Quantum mechanics fails at such levels of complexity. Mathematically speaking, chaos sets in, and one must make empirical observations.”

  “Yes, yes! We must learn the language and listen to them!”

  Di
d she hear regret within the inexorability? The system could optimize its reactions for her. “My lady, what information we have is totally inadequate. The mathematics leaves no doubt. Unless the character of what we receive changes in fundamental ways, we shall never be able to interpret it for any such subtleties. Be warned, if that is what interests you, studying the material will be an utter waste of your time.”

  She had not dared lift hopes too high, but this smashed down upon her.

  “Instead, wait,” counselled the system. “Remember, our robotic explorers travel at virtual light speed. They should begin arriving at the nearer sources, to observe and interact, in about a millennium. Perhaps fifteen centuries after that, we will begin to hear from them, and truly begin to learn. You are immortal, my lady. Wait.”

  She smothered tears. I am .not a saint. I cannot endure that long while existence has no meaning.

  6

  Suddenly, warningless, the rock gave way under Tersten’s boots. For an instant he seemed frozen, arms flung wide, against an infinity of stars. Then he toppled from sight.

  Svoboda, second in file, had time to thump her staff down and squeeze the firing button. Gas jetted white from vents as a piton shot into stone. The barrel locked onto the upper part of the shaft. She clung. The line slammed taut. Even under lunar gravity, that force was brutal. Her soles skidded on a treacherously thin dust layer. Gripping the staff, she kept upright.

  Violence ended. Silence pressed on the faint cosmic hiss in her earplugs. She had been yanked forward about two meters. The line continued upslope and over a verge formed when the ledge they had been following went to pieces. It should have been strained tight by Tersten’s weight. She saw with horror that it drooped slack. Had it broken? No, it couldn’t have.

  “Tersten!” she cried. “Are you all right?” The wavelength diffracted around the edge. If he hung there, it was only about a meter below. She got no response. The seething gibed.