On a hillside facing the amphitheater, Griffith watched Satoshi Lono of the alien contact team pull the string barricade away from one of the entrances.
Griffith had decided not to attend the meeting. Though he could not listen in, in real-time, since there would be no voice-link for a meeting that was not supposed to exist, he would be able to watch the recording. He would do nothing to interfere with the meeting or to alter its course. He would not inject the presence of a stranger.
Then he saw Nikolai Cherenkov climbing the hill.
Griffith bolted to his feet and stood poised between duty and desire. For one of the few times in his life, the desire won out.
When Griffith reached the amphitheater, he could not find Cherenkov in the crowd. Disappointed, he stood in the shadows and watched.
o0o
Victoria hurried through the far tunnel. Outside the fourth entrance, her colleagues watched as she pulled down the barrier and wrapped the string around her wrist.
“Is the prohibition off?”
“No.” She went back inside.
Ordinarily she and Satoshi and Stephen Thomas remained apart at meetings, preferring to speak and act as individuals. Tonight they made an exception, sitting together as the alien contact team. She rejoined her partners and J.D. Stephen Thomas lounged on the wide seat, stretching his long legs.
“I didn’t think there were this many of us left on campus,” Victoria said as the seats began to fill.
People gathered in clusters to argue and talk.
“Why isn’t anyone standing on the platform?” J.D. asked Victoria.
Victoria glanced down the slope. “Nobody ever stands on the platform.”
“Isn’t it for whoever’s speaking? Whoever runs the meeting?”
“No. We don’t work that way, with one person trying to direct the rest, or only one person allowed to talk at a time.” She smiled. “Though you have to be willing to face disapproval if you interrupt someone who’s interesting, and somebody eventually talks to anybody who interrupts a lot.”
The amphitheater filled quickly. Infinity Mendez, passing the team, did a double-take.
“What’s that?” he said to Stephen Thomas, with a gesture of the chin toward the decorations on his pants. “War paint?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Stephen Thomas said. “Any suggestions?”
“Wrong tribe,” Infinity said, and found himself a seat.
“Did he mean he’s from the wrong tribe to ask, or I picked the wrong tribe to use symbols from?” Stephen Thomas said, bemused.
“You’re the cultural expert in this family, my dear,” Satoshi said.
Stephen Thomas grinned. “Maybe I should look up some samurai symbols.”
“Maybe I should get you an ostrich feather headdress,” Victoria said.
“From Africa?”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t know which band to choose. I meant from the Queen’s Guards.”
“Hey,” he said, “if you’re really going to go ethnic on me, get me — ” Without any signal, the amphitheater fell silent around him. Stephen Thomas lowered his voice to a whisper. “Get me a red Mountie jacket.”
The lower third of the amphitheater had filled; another hundred or so people sat scattered around the remaining two-thirds of the terraces. It was a less colorful group than usual: people of all shapes and colors would ordinarily have been wearing clothes of all designs and colors. Victoria felt comforted and strengthened by the number of her colleagues who complied with the trivial rule, but broke the important one.
By a couple of minutes after the scheduled beginning of the original meeting, all the participants sat together silently in the dusk.
Suddenly a wide patch of bright sunlight illuminated the meeting. The sun tubes spotlighted the amphitheater and left the rest of the campus dark.
Victoria took a deep breath and ignored the warning of the light.
“Victoria Fraser MacKenzie,” she said. She remained sitting; though she projected her voice, she spoke in a normal tone. After a pause of a few seconds, she continued. “Today’s changes, particularly the impoundment of funds, affect my family and my work just as they affect everyone on the expedition, whether or not they’re citizens of the United States. I’m angry, and I’m frightened by what the actions imply. I think we’re expected to panic. I think we must not. I think we must continue as if nothing had happened. And I think it would be polite to send a message to the United States, expressing our regret that they are no longer financially able to participate in the expedition.”
Victoria kept her tone serious and solemn, and did not react to the murmur of appreciative laughter.
Other members of the expedition said their names and aired their frustration and anger.
Some of the Americans defended their government and some apologized for it; some of the non-Americans excoriated it; several people explained, unnecessarily, the political situation that had caused the trouble. Some defended the right of any associate to withhold funds, to which the response was that no one questioned the new U.S. president’s right to act as he had. It was his good sense they wondered about.
“Infinity Mendez.” He paused after saying his name. “I think it’s true that we can’t panic. But if we pretend nothing’s happened, if we don’t fight back, they’ll take more and more and more until they leave us nothing.” The intensity of his soft voice left the amphitheater in absolute silence. He raised his head and glanced around. “I think...” Tension grabbed his shoulders; something more than shyness silenced him. He ducked his head. “I have nothing more to say.”
“My name is Thanthavong.” The geneticist paused. “We have a guest.”
Thanthavong drew the attention of the meeting to Griffith, standing in the shadows at the entrance of a tunnel. For a moment he looked as if he might try to fade into the shadows completely. Instead, he moved forward and took a stance both belligerent and defensive.
“I have a right to be here,” he said. “More right than you do. I’m a representative of the U.S. government, and this ship was built with U.S. funds.”
“Partially,” Thanthavong said. “But this starship is a public institution of the world, and by law and custom our meetings are open. No one has suggested that you have no right to attend. But you are not a member of the expedition and I am inviting you to introduce yourself.”
“My name is Griffith. I’m from the GAO.”
“You are welcome to sit down, Griffith... if you wish to observe more closely.”
He sat, reluctantly, on the top terrace, as near to the exit as he could be. He must have heard the soft, irritable mutter that rose when he announced his occupation. Gradually the complaints fell to silence.
“Satoshi Lono.” Satoshi paused. “If we fight — what form of action will we take? Legal battles? Public relations? If we consider physical resistance, where do we set the limits?”
The silence that answered the words “physical resistance” lasted some time. Then, inevitably, people began to look toward Infinity, the first person to mention fighting. Uncomfortable at the focus of the attention, he glanced up the slope toward Griffith.
“I can’t say,” Infinity said. “I don’t know.”
“Satoshi, what do you mean when you say ‘physical resistance’?” Thanthavong opened her strong, square hands. “Bare hands against military weapons?”
“I had in mind civil disobedience, nonviolent resistance, like this meeting, but — we do need to consider what we’d do if...” He let his sentence trail off, unwilling to complete the comment.
“If we were invaded?” Thanthavong said.
“Gerald Hemminge.” Unlike the other speakers, he leaped to his feet, and he barely paused. “You have gone from attending an illegal meeting to a discussion of fighting and invasions! Invasions? You are all conspiring against our own sponsors! Satoshi, who do you believe you’re speaking to, revolutionaries and terrorists?”
At that, several people tried to speak at once.
“I see nothing revolutionary,” Satoshi said, “about wanting to do the job we were sent up here for.”
“Even if a more important job has developed back home? We’re needed. The ship is needed. None of you is willing to admit it, and I’m sick of you all. You forget — ‘The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.’“
“I’m sick of hearing that quote abused,” Satoshi said. “Jefferson wasn’t talking about the danger of foreign powers — even King George and the whole British Empire. He was talking about the danger of handing over our freedoms to a despot of our own!”
Gerald picked out Griffith at the top of the amphitheater. “Did you hear that? He’s called your president a despot!”
Griffith glanced around uncomfortably. “I’m just an accountant,” he said.
Gerald made a noise of disgust. “The chancellor sent me here in the hopes of talking sense into you all. I see that I’ve wasted my time.” He stalked out of the amphitheater.
“Nikolai Petrovich Cherenkov,” the cosmonaut said in the formal way of the meeting. He was only a few rows away from Griffith, who could not understand how he had missed him till now.
“I am your guest,” Cherenkov said. “You have given me your hospitality and asked nothing in return. But now I must behave as a guest should not, and assume privileges that a guest does not possess. Your governments tell you that if you give up your ambitions and turn this starship into a watching and listening post, you will be benefiting the security of your countries and of the world. They tell you that if you accede to these demands, you will be helping my country return to itself.” He paused.
Griffith tried to calm his own rapid heartbeat, but his usual control deserted him. He anticipated what Cherenkov would say. The cosmonaut would accept this chance to work against the people who had overwhelmed his country and sentenced him to death. He would speak to the meeting; he would bring everyone together in an agreement to evacuate the starship without resistance.
Cherenkov and his wisdom and his patriotism would give Griffith a spectacularly successful completion to his task.
“What your governments have told you is a lie,” Cherenkov said. “Whether it is deliberate falsehood or ignorance, I will not speculate. But I tell you that outside the Mideast Sweep, nothing anyone can do will help anyone within it.”
Griffith clenched his fingers around the edge of the stone bench. He was shaking.
“The changes are coming,” Cherenkov said. “But they must come from within, they must evolve. Evolution requires patience. The changes gather slowly, until they reach a level that cannot be held back. I tell you that if the rulers perceive danger from outside, they will find scapegoats within their own territory. You will only visit more death and more pain upon innocents. The changes will be eliminated and the evolution will cease.”
He waited to be questioned. No one spoke.
“Thank you for permitting a guest to speak,” he said. He slowly climbed the stairs. When he reached Griffith, he stopped.
Griffith gazed up at him, stunned and confused. The expression on Cherenkov’s face, full of memories and grief, broke his heart.
“Come with me, Marion,” Kolya said. “Neither of us has a place in this decision.”
Griffith had to push himself to his feet. Kolya took his elbow and helped him. They walked out of the tunnel. The darkness closed in around Griffith like an attack.
Griffith swung toward Cherenkov, his shoulders hunched and his fists clenched.
“How could you say that? I thought you, at least, would understand!” He fought to keep his voice steady. “Do you want to go on the expedition so much that you can throw away your patriotism? Is your brain so burned by cosmic rays that you’ve forgotten what the Sweep did to you back there, what they did to your family — ”
“I do not permit anyone to speak of my family,” Cherenkov said in a quiet voice that stopped Griffith short. “And my memory of what happened to me is clear.”
“I’m sorry,” Griffith said. He could not recall the last time he had apologized to someone and meant it. “But this is a chance to stop them!”
“It is not. I said what I said because it is true.”
“But — ”
“Why are you so concerned, Marion, if you are nothing but an accountant?”
“I — ” At the last moment he caught himself and kept himself from admitting his purpose. He turned away. “I admire you,” he whispered. “I thought you’d want this to happen.”
“No,” Cherenkov said gently. “There’s too much blood already, on the land I came from. Blood is too expensive to use as fertilizer.”
Griffith glanced back at him. Cherenkov smiled, but it was a strained and shaky smile, and after a moment it vanished.
“But freedom — ”
Cherenkov made a noise of pure despair. “You cannot get freedom by shedding more blood in my country! You can only get more blood!”
“Then what should we do?”
“I told you. You should do nothing.” He took Griffith by the shoulders. “Your meddling helped create the problem in the first place. So did our own. We cannot pretend otherwise. We cannot continue to meddle, as if we never did any damage.” His fingers tightened, as if he wanted to shake Griffith hard. Instead, he let him go. “I am wrong, of course. You can still do that.”
Griffith felt as if he had plunged into an icy sea. He shook from the inside out, with a deep, cold tremble. He knew that if he tried to speak, he would be breathless.
“You have always done that,” Kolya said. “You probably always will do that.”
He walked away.
o0o
Cherenkov departed. Everyone understood the effort it had taken for the cosmonaut to speak. Beside Victoria, Stephen Thomas sat slumped with his elbows on his knees, no longer sprawling relaxed and cheerful on the amphitheater bench. He had watched Kolya closely, and Victoria recognized the intensely focused expression: Stephen Thomas sought his aura. Though Victoria did not believe in auras, she knew that Stephen Thomas could be preternaturally sensitive to other people’s feelings, that he could imagine and experience Kolya’s grief and desperation.
Victoria felt the chill of frightening truth: what happened to the expedition, to Starfarer, would affect far more than the people on board.
She searched the meeting for Iphigenie DuPre. She found her. The sailmaker was watching her. Iphigenie inclined her head slowly, carefully, down, then up.
“Crimson Ng.” The small, compact artist leaned forward and gestured toward Victoria. Red river-valley clay was ground permanently into the knuckles of her delicate hands. “What did you mean when you said we ought to go on as if nothing had happened? How far do you think we should take it?”
Victoria spoke carefully, deliberately. “I think,” she said, “that we should take it as far as it can go.”
She imagined that she could feel the stream of tension and excitement, anger and fear, coalescing into a powerful tide of resolution.
“We now have even more reason to continue the expedition as if nothing had happened.”
“That’s easy to say, Victoria, but it’s hardly a plan of action. How do you propose to continue if we’re put under martial law and under guard? We’re risking that already just by meeting.”
“We were already at risk of that. We mustn’t let it happen.”
“Have you joined Satoshi and Infinity in wanting to fight?”
“I never said I wanted to fight,” Satoshi said. “I said I was afraid we might have no alternative.”
“Satoshi is right,” Infinity said. “We’ll have no choice, and what we want doesn’t matter.”
“We do have a choice,” Victoria said. “We can choose not to be here if they try to take over.”
“Great. So, we abandon ship? How is that going to — ” Crimson cut her words shor
t. “That isn’t what you mean, is it?”
“No. I mean move Starfarer. Use a different approach to the cosmic string. A much closer one. One that takes us to transition tomorrow night.”
J.D. gasped.
The meeting’s order slipped abruptly into chaos.
Despite the confusion, Victoria felt the meeting flow in the direction she had chosen. She felt opinions and decisions gather together like the individual streams of a watershed, from a state of unfocused, chaotic indecision and rage, toward a cohesive opinion flowing like a river.
She waited until her voice could be heard.
“The expedition members must agree to the change,” she said. “There will be time — not much, but enough — for anyone who wants to return to Earth to leave by the last transport.”
“We aren’t fully provisioned,” Thanthavong said. “Half our equipment hasn’t arrived — ”
“And half our faculty and staff has left! I can’t help it. If we want the expedition to exist, this is our only chance.”
“We’d be trying to outrun a — a cheetah with an elephant.”
“The elephant has a big head start,” Victoria said drily, keeping up her bravado. The others were less successful; their response was a feeble, frightened laugh.
“Christ on a mongoose, Victoria,” Stephen Thomas said. “You want to steal the starship.”
Chapter 11
Stephen Thomas’s comment, thoughtless and casual, threw Victoria off-center and broke her influence. The gathering’s flow toward agreement, toward decision, splashed up against a dam of doubt and fear.
“I can’t believe you said that,” Satoshi muttered.
“Steal it!” Victoria said. “That’s ridiculous.”
“But I think it’s a great idea!” Stephen Thomas said. “I’ll vote for it.”
No one else spoke. Victoria stood alone in the silence. Stephen Thomas and Satoshi stood up beside her. J.D. remained in her place, fidgeting. She looked at Victoria, stricken, then plunged to her feet. Victoria took her hand and held it.
They waited.
Scientists, researchers, modern middle-class people, had no experience with taking such risks. Intellectual risks, yes, sometimes; even risks to the reputation, if the subject was large enough, the potential great enough. But this kind of risk...
The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus Page 24