The Boat of a Million Years

by Poul Anderson

  The computer system perfected itself. Nothing he had found with his subtlest and most powerful instrumentation was beyond its analysis. Everything he might find in his laboratories, it could predict beforehand, in ultimate detail. His science had reached the end of its search.

  Idle hedonism repelled him. He set a device to shut down his body while it programmed the patterns that were bis mind into the system.

  Are you happy?

  Your question is meaningless. I am occupied. I participate in operations, I am one with the accomplishments. Time is mine to do with as I will. For it may take an hour to plan Earth’s weathers a year ahead, with the measures necessary to contain chaos; it may take a day to design an extension of the Web or compute the fate of a galaxy ten billion light-years hence on which it has accumulated sufficient data; but each bit of information processed is an event, and to me those hours are as a million years or more. Afterward I may descend to the pace of human thought and learn what went on while I was transfigured. On this I meditate. It is small but interesting. Grow into augmentation, Flora, and at last you will share splendor, promises the shade.

  From Phyllis I understand that few desire such a destiny. They will stay organic, however mutable. Linkage is pleasure, enlightenment, challenge. Joined, we realize what we cannot realize singly, about each other and about the cosmos. We bring our revelations back and refashion them in our separate ways. New arts, skills, philosophies, joys, newnesses for which no old name exists, spring into being. Thus “do we enlarge and fulfill ourselves.

  Come. Try. Surrender what you are to find what you are.

  I merge into Phyllis, Faunus, phantom Nils. We are a self that never was before. I am slave who won to freedom, teacher and sportswoman, photosculptor and sybarite, dilettante mathematician and serious athlete. We will need many unions to ease the conflicts and create a single creature—

  A whirl, a wheeling, a measure in the dance. Others have been with us. I withdraw and merge again. I am servant who won to a sort of queenship, gilled inhabitant of the sea, professional imaginer, artificial personality designed by the whole in conjunction with the computer—They fly together, they lose themselves, the hive mind Mazes and thunders—

  No!

  Let me out!—and I flee down endless echoful corridors. Fear howls at my heels. It is myself that pursues.

  She was alone, save for the medical machine that watched over her. For a while she merely shuddered. The breath sawed in her throat. Her sweat stank.

  Terror faded. The sense of unspeakable loss that followed went deeper and lasted longer. Only as that too drained from her did she gain the strength to weep.

  I’m sorry, Phyltis, Faunus, Nils, everybody, she called into the empty room. You meant so well. I wanted to belong, I wanted to find meaning in this world of yours. I cannot. To me, becoming what I must become would be to destroy all I am, the whole of the centuries and the folk forgotten by everyone else and the comradeship in secret that formed me. I was born too soon for you. It is now too late for me. Can you understand, and forgive?

  9

  They met in reality. You cannot embrace an image. Fortune favored them. They were able to use a visitor house at Lake Mapourika control reserve, on the South Island of what Hanno to this day thought of as New Zealand.

  The weather was as lovely as the setting. They gathered around a picnic table. He remembered another such board beneath another sky, long and long ago. Here a greensward sloped down to still waters in which forest and the white mountains behind stood mirrored. Woodland fragrances arose with the climbing of the sun. From high overhead drifted birdsong.

  The eight matched the quietness of the morning. Yesterday passions had stormed and clamored. At the head of the table, Hanno said:

  “I probably needn’t speak. We seem to be pretty well agreed. Just the same, it’s wise to talk this over calmly before making any final decision.

  “We have no more home, anywhere on Earth. We’ve tried in our different ways to fit in, and people have tried to help us, but we finally face the fact that we can’t and never shall. We’re dinosaurs, left over in the age of the mammals.”

  Aliyat shook her head. “No, we’re left-over humans,” she declared bitterly. “The last alive.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Macandal replied. “They are changing, more and faster than we can match, but I wouldn’t take it on myself to define what is human.”

  “Ironic,” Svoboda sighed. “Should we have foreseen? A world where we could, at last, come forth would necessarily be a world altogether unlike any that ever was before.”

  “Self-satisfied,” Wanderer said. “Turned inward.”

  “You’re being unfair too,” Macandal told him. “Tremendous things are going on. They simply aren’t for us. The creativity, the discovery, has moved to—what? Inner space.”

  “Perhaps,” Yukiko whispered. “But what does it find there? Emptiness. Meaninglessness.”

  ”From your viewpoint,” Patulcius replied. “I admit that I too am unhappy, for my own reasons. Still, when the Chinese stopped their seafaring under the Ming, they did not stop being artists.”

  “But they sailed no more,” Tu Shan said. “The robots tell us of countless new worlds among the stars; and nobody cares.”

  “Earth is pretty special, as we should have expected all along,” Hanno reminded him needlessly. “The nearest planet reported where humans might be able to live in natural surroundings is almost fifty light-years from here. Why mount an enormous effort to send a handful of colonists that far, possibly to their doom, when everybody’s doing well at home?”

  “So they truly could live their—our own kind of lives again, on our own land,” Tu Shan said.

  “A community,” Patulcius chimed in.

  “If we failed, we could seek elsewhere.” Svoboda’s voice rang. “If nothing else, we would be human beings out yonder, doing and daring for ourselves.”

  Her look challenged Hanno. The rest likewise turned toward him. Although until now he had barely hinted at his intentions, it was no great surprise when he spoke. Yet somehow the words came before them like a suddenly drawn sword.

  “I think I can get us a ship.”

  10

  The conference was not a meeting of persons, nor even their images. That is, Hanno’s representation went around the globe, and faces appeared shiftingly before his eyes; but this was mere supplement, a minute additional data input. Some of yonder minds were computer-linked, or in direct touch with each other, from time to time or all the time. Others were electronic. He thought of them not by names, though names were known to him, but by function; and the same function often spoke with differing voices. What he confronted, what enveloped him, were the ruling intellects of the world.

  We’ve come a long way from you, Richelieu, he thought. I wish we hadn’t.

  “Yes, it is possible to build such a spacecraft,” said the Engineer. “Indeed, preliminary designs were drawn up more than a century ago. They showed what the magnitude of the undertaking must be. That is a major reason why it was never done.”

  “It can’t be so far beyond the one I was flitting around the Solar System in,” Hanno protested. “And the robotic vessels already push the speed of light.”

  “You should have studied the subject more thoroughly before you broached your proposal.”

  Hanno bit his lip. “I tried,”

  “It is transhumanly complex,” the Psychologist conceded. “We ourselves are employing only a semitechnical summary.”

  “The basic principles involved ought to be obvious,” the Engineer said. “Robots have no need of life support, including the comforts necessary for human sanity, and they require minimal protection. For them, an interstellar carrier can be of very low mass, with small payload. Nevertheless, each represents a substantial investment, notably in antimatter.”

  “’Investment’ means resources diverted from other uses,” observed the Economist. “Modern society is productive, rich, yes
, but not infinitely so. There are projects closer to home, that an increasing body of opinion maintains should be started.”

  “The sheer size of the universe defeats us,” sighed the Astronomer. “Consider. We have received the first beam-casts from robots that have gone about a hundred and fifty light-years. It will take longer before we hear from those few we have sent farther. The present sphere of communication contains an estimated forty thousand stars, much too many for us to have dispatched a vessel to each, the more so when the vast majority are dim red dwarfs or cold sub-dwarfs. The suns not too unlike Sol have generally proved disappointing. True, a flood of scientific discoveries already overwhelms the rate at which we can properly assimilate them; but the public finds little of it especially exciting, and nothing that could be considered a revolutionary revelation.”

  “I know all that, of course I do—“ Hanno began.

  The Engineer interrupted him: “You ask for a manned ship that can reach the same speeds. We grant you, no matter how long-lived you are, anything else makes little sense. Even for a handful of people, especially if they hope to found a colony, the hull must be spacious, correspondingly massive; and the mass of their necessities will exceed that by a large factor. Those necessities include laser and magne-tohydrodynamic systems able to shield against radiation as well as to draw in sufficient interstellar gas for the reaction drive. The drive in turn will consume an amount of antimatter that will deplete our reserves here in the Solar System for years to come. It is not quickly or easily produced, you know.

  “Moreover, the robot craft are standardized. A scaleup such as you have in mind demands complete, basic redesign. The preliminary work stored in the database indicates how much computer capability it will take—enough to significantly curtail operations elsewhere. Production, likewise, cannot use existing parts or facilities. Whole new plants, both nanotechnological and mechanical, and a whole new organization, must come into being. The time from startup to departure may well be as long as a decade, during which various elements of society will endure noticeable inconvenience.

  “In short, you wish to impose a huge cost on mankind, in order to send a few individuals to a distant planet which, it seems, may be habitable for them.”

  Yes, Hanno thought, the job will beggar the Pyramids. And after a while the Pharaohs stopped building pyramids. It was too expensive. Nobody wanted it any more.

  Aloud, with a stiff smile: “I am aware of everything you’ve told me, at least in a general way. I’m also aware that today’s world can do the job without imposing hardship on anyone. Please don’t poor-mouth me. You must see some merit in my idea, or we wouldn’t be having this meeting.”

  “You Survivors are unique,” murmured the Artist. “To this day, you keep a certain appeal, and a certain special interest for those who care about whence we came.”

  “And where we may be going!” Hanno exclaimed. “I’m talking about the future, all humanity’s. Earth and Sol won’t hist forever. We can make our race immortal.”

  “Humankind will deal with geological problems when they arise,” the Astronomer said. “They won’t for several billion years.”

  Hanno refrained from saying: I think anything that might be called human will be long extinct by then, here. Death, or transfiguration? I don’t know. To me, it hardly matters which.

  “Any idea of large-scale interstellar colonization is ludicrous,” declared the Economist.

  “If it could be done,” said the Astronomer, “it would have been done already, and we would know about it.”

  Yes, I’ve heard the argument, over and over, from the twentieth century onward. If the Others exist, where are They? Why have Their exploring robots, at least, never visited Earth? We ourselves, we’re interested enough to send follow-ups to those primitive sapients we’ve found. What little we’ve learned thus far has touched our thinking, our arts, our spirits in subtle ways—if nothing else, as much as Africa touched Europe when the white man opened it up. If only life and awareness weren’t so seldom, so incidental or accidental. I think we’d be out there today, seeking, had the loneliness not reached in to freeze us.

  Nevertheless, They exist!

  “We must be patient,” the Astronomer went on. “It seems clear that They are. In due course, robots will get there; or we may establish direct communication earlier.”

  Across light-centuries- That long between question and answer.

  “We don’t know what They are like,” Hanno said. “What the x many different Theys are like. You’ve read the written proposal I submitted. Haven’t you? I went over each of the old arguments. They get down to simply this, that we do not know. What we do know is what we are capable of.”

  “The limits of feasibility are contained within the limits of possibility,” declared the Economist.

  “Yes, we have studied your report,” the Sociologist said. “The reasons you give for mounting the enterprise are logically inadequate. True, some thousands of individuals believe they would like to go. They feel frustrated, bewildered, out of place, confined, or otherwise discontented. They dream of a fresh start on a fresh world. Most of them are immature and will outgrow it. Most of the rest are visionaries who would retreat, shocked, if offered the opportunity in reality. You are left with perhaps a few score, for whose emotional convenience you want the entire society to pay a high share-cost.”

  “They’re the ones that matter.”

  “Do they, when they are so selfish that they will actually subject their descendants—for they will reproduce if they live—to the hazards and deprivations?”

  Hanno’s grin was stark. “All parents have always made that kind of decision. It’s in the nature of things. Would you deny your race the opportunities, discoveries, whole new ways of thinking and working and living, that this civilization forecloses?”

  “Your point is not ill taken,” said the Psychologist. “Still, you must agree that success is not guaranteed. On the contrary, you would take a rather wild gamble. It is not yet proven that any of the half-score planets thus far found which seem to have Earthlike environments and biochemistries, is not a long-range death trap.”

  “We could look farther if need be. We’ve got the tune. What we need is something worth doing with it.”

  “You would indeed find marvels,” said the Artist. “Perhaps you could understand them and convey them back to us in fashions that no robot is, quite able to.”

  Hanno nodded. “I have a notion that intelligent life can only communicate fully with its own kind. Maybe I’m wrong, but how can we be certain before we’ve tried? We build our limitations and the limitations of our knowledge into our machines and their programs. Yes, they learn, adapt, modify themselves according to experience; the best of them think; but it’s always along machine lines. What do we know about experiences they can’t handle? Maybe scientific theory is complete, maybe not; but in any case it’s a mighty big universe yonder. Much too big and full for us to predict. We need more than one breed of explorer.”

  The Engineer frowned. “So your petition maintains. Did you imagine its contentions are new? They have been brought up again and again, to be rejected as insufficient. The probability of success, and the value of any success that might be had, are too slight in relation to cost.”

  Hanno noticed himself lean forward. It seemed a strange act in this disembodied conversation. “I did not bring up my new argument,” he told them. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. But ... the situation has changed. You’re dealing with us now, the Survivors. You said it, we are unique. We still have our special prestige, mystique, fallowings—nothing great, no, but we well know how to use such things. I in particular recall ways of raising holy hell with the powers that be. I got quite good at it, back in ancient times.

  “Oh, yes, a gadfly. You can pretend to ignore us. If need be, you can destroy us. But that will cost you. We’ll leave troublesome questions behind in many minds. They won’t fade, because you’ve abolished death and databases d
on’t forget. You’ve had your world running so smoothly for so long that you may think the system is stable. It isn’t. Nothing human ever was. Read your history.” The sweep and violence of it, the hidden reefs on which empires foundered with their pride and dreams and gods.

  The Psychologist spoke in steely imperturbability: “It is true that sociodynamics is, mathematically, chaotic.”

  “I don’t want to threaten you,” Hanno urged quickly. “In fact, I’d fear the outcome too. It might be small, but it might be enormous. Instead—“ he fashioned a laugh— “malcontents traditionally were a favorite export of governments. And this will be something adventurous, romantic, in an age when adventure and romance are almost gone except for electronic shadow shows. People will enjoy it, support it... long enough for the ship to get under way. You’ll find the kudos for yourselves quite useful in whatever else you want to do. Afterward—“ He spread his palms. “Who knows? Maybe a flat failure. But maybe an opening to everywhere.”

  Silence thrummed.

  The calm of the Administrator struck Hanno harder than any physical blow. “We have anticipated this, too, from you. The factors have been weighed. The decision is positive. The ship shall be launched.”

  Like that? In this single instant, victory?

  Well, but the computers can have given it thousands of years’ worth of human thinking time while I talked.

  O Columbus!

  “There are conditions,” tolled through his hearing. “Suspended animation or no, the mass of fifty or more colonists, with supplies and equipment, is excessive, when the odds are so poor. You eight Survivors must go alone. Of course, you will have a complement of robots, up to and including the intelligent and versatile but subservient, personalityless type, toward which you can develop no hostility. You will have such other materiel as appears called for. If your venture prospers, larger numbers may someday follow in slower carriers. We expect you will agree that this is reasonable.”