by Migration
“Sir…”
The noise swelled to a roar as the object came down right over them. Its lines were smooth and rounded like the body of a fish, its skin white and gleaming in the sun, and it had short wings too small to have fitted any bird, and not moving like those of a bird. Cries of alarm were coming up from the soldiers, with some cringing in fear, others struggling to control their protesting mounts.
“Steady in the ranks!” Zileg roared, unsheathing his sword.
The vehicle, creature – whatever it was – landed a short distance from the far side of the bridge, on an open, grassy expanse beside the road. The magician had already turned his horse toward it and was calling to the others and waving them in the same direction.
“Order the archers forward,” Zileg snarled. “They’ll not escape me now. Magic or not, I’ll have their heads or die in the attempt.”
“Archers to the fore!” Ullatari relayed.
Zileg turned in his saddle and called to the whole company. “Are you warriors of Urst, or children who cower at goblins? A dukedom to any man who brings me a head. If their magic would protect them, why do they flee like mice? He who will not follow me now is not worthy of the flag we ride under. Across the bridge and at them! Trumpeters, sound the charge. Forward!”
The scientist hadn’t been sure exactly how many of his relatives they might have to pick up, so Control had bent the rules and told Ferl to free up an extra seat by flying the lander solo. But somehow the orders had gotten tangled, or somebody forgot to cancel something from the earlier mission, and the same crazy robot that had accompanied him on the Tranth mission showed up in the copilot’s seat. By that time the whole ship was in a tizzy over the news of liftout in under twenty-four hours, and the carrier was expecting to be recalled at any moment, so Ferl had decided to not argue but just go with it. All of a sudden he was grateful for having some help there on the flight deck rather than none.
“Lander to Carrier, yeah, we’ve found them and we’re down,” he barked into his mike. “But I don’t know what’s going on. There’s some kind of a war out there, coming this way fast.” He turned his head to GPT-2D long enough to snap, “Go back there, open up the door, and get all of them inside. Fast!”
The robot hastened to unbuckle and comply. Just as Ferl was about to resume talking into the mike, it said, “The horses won’t fit in.”
Ferl groaned. “Oh shit…. Forget the horses. Just the people, okay?”
The robot lurched back and operated the control to open the door and lower the access steps. Sounds of trumpets and battle cries rising to a crescendo came from outside. Armored horsemen brandishing swords, spears, axes, and bows were streaming onto the bridge, while in front of the lander the four people it had come to collect were dismounting in haste and running toward it. The girl was the first to enter. She stopped in the entrance space, as bewildered by the robot’s appearance as were the faces of the people crammed into the passenger cabin behind. It touched her lightly on the arm with a fingertip and motioned with the other hand. “Must hurry. Sorry, no horses.”
Two men were approaching the steps as fast as they were able while they helped an older one, heavily built and white-haired, clad in a hooded riding cloak. They still had some distance to go. A large black dog was growling and had positioned itself between them and the oncoming horsemen.
“What about the dog?” GPT-2D asked Ferl.
“What?” Ferl jerked his head around again. “Yeah, sure. The dog’s okay.” Then, back into his mike, “I’m telling ya, we’ve got an emergency situation here. I’ve got a full load of people and three outside who look like touch and go. What do you want…”
A rack by the door carried the painted label flare pistol. The robot stared at it and consulted its network of definitions and associations. Flares were pyrotechnic devices used in emergencies. The captain had just said this was an emergency. A “pistol” was a weapon, usually a firearm, that was discharged at enemies. “Enemy” described a relationship between humans in which harm was effected or threatened. The howling horde coming across the bridge waving objects that a quick check of the database showed to be implements specifically designed for the purpose of inflicting homicide and mayhem had all the appearances of harboring intentions that were anything but friendly. The logical inferences were clear enough. GPT-2D took down the flare pistol, descended the steps, and marched out to the center of the roadway to do its duty with the first arrows clattering off its casing.
Streaming a trail of incandescent crimson smoke, the flare tore through the leading ranks and exploded in a blaze of light and starbursts among the close-packed throng in the middle of the bridge behind. The front of the assault broke up amid screams of terror, rearing horses, and unseated bodies, while the panic farther back sent riders colliding in all directions, with men and mounts tumbling into the water on both sides. When GPT-2D looked back at the lander, the older man had reached the steps and was being helped up by one of the others, while the third bundled the dog inside. The robot stood, unsure of whether the pandemonium that it had created constituted an end to the emergency or not. The old man was inside; the doorway stood empty.
Then Ferl’s voice called over the loudhailer from inside. “Hey, Rocketeer, are you gonna stand there all day? Let’s go.”
“Yes, chief.” GPT-2D hurried back and clambered up the steps. The newcomers had found seats and were settling the dog in the aisle. They were looking about strangely at the surroundings, as had the others that had been picked up earlier. GPT-2D closed up the door and steps, and moved back to snap their harnesses for them, which people from these parts didn’t seem to understand. Then it went forward and settled back into the copilot’s seat. The look on Ferl’s face was unlike any human expression that it had seen before. Slipping on a set of phones, it caught the last part of the message coming in from Control.
“… we have recall orders from the ship up here. How much longer are you going to need?”
“Everything’s fine,” Ferl replied in the captain’s seat. “They’re all aboard now. Emergency over. We’re on our way.”
ELEVEN
So, finally, the time had come. The decision that would mean spending the rest of one’s lifetime in a way never experienced by any human beings in history was about to be made permanent. And it would be irreversible.
Solemn-faced and brooding, his hair steel-gray, Lund Ormont, director in chief of the Aurora mission, sat at his station behind the window of the bridge overlooking the Control Deck. All of the consoles and crew positions were manned. The carrier had returned and been taken on board. The last shuttles had delivered the remaining personnel from the ground bases and attached externally as auxiliary craft. Along with Ormont on the bridge, the ship’s captain and chief of flight engineering were confirming the final countdown details being reported by their staffs.
The position implied far more than ship’s commander, director in chief of a space mission, or even mayor of a large city. The vast enterprise that he was heading would become a nation-state in flight. The role ahead called not just for ability in command and management, but for political leadership. And failure to come up to the challenges and demands that could be expected had destroyed a much larger and more robust world than the microcosm contained in the Aurora.
The dominant method of selecting political leaders in the old world had been through a kind of popularity contest in which the citizenry was expected to judge and choose their rulers directly. Such mass-endorsed adulation seemed bound to create inflated self-images and delusions of greatness that would inevitably result in immense power and authority being vested in hands superbly unfit to wield them. Doctors, architects, engineers, and other professionals were appraised and certified by bodies of peers who were expert in the field in question. How much more important was the supreme profession of running a country?
The procedure that had given Ormont his position was modeled on the way the government was formed in Sofi. Eligible candidat
es had to meet some of the highest educational standards required by any profession, and in addition have demonstrated practical competence in a progression of public offices of increasing responsibility. The final choice was made by an appointing body of individuals in turn elected by the people, who were responsible to them for their decision in the same way that the Highways Department was responsible for the performance of the engineers entrusted with the design and construction of the country’s bridges. The system conferred full authority and demanded acceptance of total responsibility, which suited Ormont perfectly. He believed such conditions were essential to running an operation of any importance effectively, and felt contempt for those who hid behind collective anonymity by attributing their pronouncements to such faceless originators as “The Committee.” A leader not prepared to put his name to his decisions and stand by them was not worthy of the name.
His own background had been with the military, which he had played a part in shaping in earlier years, when Sofi found it necessary to organize more comprehensive defenses. People often expressed surprise that he wasn’t staying on as a Progressive to further develop Sofi’s interests and extend its influence. But he had spent enough time in the thick of Sofian politics to see the way things were heading. Too many strong minds with diametrically opposed ideas were vying with each other, dissipating their energies fruitlessly in mutual obstructionism and achieving little. Ormont liked to see things getting done – and getting done his way.
By temperament he was a commander first and a politician second, and that was the role that the mission required. As was true with most, his reasons for leaving were varied and complex, but high among them was the appeal of the unique form of directorship that the position entailed. Aurora’s population was made up to a large degree of intellectuals and idealists – bright and creative people, yes, and sometimes surprisingly obstinate; but in Ormont’s experience they tended to be too trusting in their expectations of human nature, and politically naive. Ormont had long ago made it a first rule never to totally trust anybody.
It was he who had insisted years ago on having eyes and ears inside Sofian military intelligence that would remain loyal to the Aurora planners, and found the ideal person in the form of Lubanov. Intellectuals were brilliant when it came to designing starships and making robots, but they would never think of such things or consider them necessary. But had it not been for those precautions, the entire future of the mission might even now have been in question. Sofi was still hidden by Earth’s curvature, but ground observation on the previous orbital pass had shown military units converging on the shuttle bases and support facilities. Electronic intercepts had revealed little more, but that was to be expected.
The captain reported from his station. “Final interlocks at ready and holding.” It meant they were ready to go.
A short distance away on Ormont’s other side, the chief of flight engineering scanned his summary displays. “Drive main and subs confirming. Compensators synched and responding.”
All heads around the bridge turned toward Ormont expectantly. A strange silence descended.
Ormont leaned forward to the console and drew the microphone closer on its flexible support. He had thought a lot about what he would say to those who were about to follow him when this moment arrived. Some of the sentiments and phrases that he had written down seemed, on rereading, too grandiose and lyrical, and when he tried to tone them down, pompous and pretentious. When he tried boiling things down to bare facts, the result carried all the human color and warmth of a military briefing. In the end, he decided to dispense with written notes altogether and let his thoughts speak themselves naturally, which accorded more with his style. He nodded to the bridge communications officer, who put out an announcement that the director in chief would address the ship. Ormont’s console camera lamp came on, indicating that his image was going out to all parts of the Aurora.
He began, “This is your director in chief speaking. Very soon now, in a matter of minutes, we will depart on what will possibly be the most stupendous, exciting, and fantastic adventure ever undertaken by members of the human race. One day in the distant future, our descendants will be the seed out of which will grow a new world of our kind. For that world to preserve all the variety, richness, and potential that our kind has come to represent through its millennia of history, we go not just as the Builders from Sofi, but as unique individuals bringing talents of every kind from remote regions of Earth, its nations, races, cultures, and peoples….”
“While we must never forget those to whom we owe our heritage, from this day onward the most important truth that should guide our thinking and our lives is that we are all united as Aurorans.”
Korshak and his companions sat listening in a room built of metal and strange-colored materials that they and the others already inside the white, smooth-skinned bird had been brought to after it arrived at the island flying high above the world. He had thought at first that the island was the ship that crossed the sky. But then the island had begun climbing higher, until the forests and mountains beneath were lost and the clouds themselves reduced to smears painted on a surface that shrank to reveal its curved edge, while above, the sky turned black, and stars appeared. And up there, the island had brought them to the Great Ship that Korshak had seen in the window carried by the metal beast that he had first met long ago. The wheel and its tapering axle grew larger as they approached, awesome in grandeur and line, vaster than any city, until the island was swallowed up in a cavern that opened to just a small part of it.
They were inside it now, moored between metal towers hung with pipes and cables, and constructions the like of which Korshak had never seen, behind huge doors that had closed behind them. It seemed that the ship was at that moment preparing to begin its voyage to another world, and disembarking from the island would be delayed until they were under way. Korshak was stunned. He and his party could never have reached Sofi in time. Yet the Builders had sent their white bird to bring them. Who were these beings of such power and magnanimity that a vagabond trickster, his accomplice, and two fugitives from a petty tyrant could be worth such effort? Masumichi, whose face had been the first to appear in the window of the metal beast, and others who had spoken from it since, had shown interest in Korshak’s magical and other arts. He confessed to himself that he was at a loss. Did they believe that they had something to learn from him?
He looked down at Vaydien, who was sitting close, one hand clasping his, her head resting against his shoulder. She seemed in a daze and had hardly spoken. Korshak slipped an arm across her shoulders and squeezed reassuringly.
“Are we really here?” she murmured. “All this around me is real?”
“Oh, yes, very real,” Korshak told her.
Vaydien was silent for a while. “Then I’ve woken up from a nightmare,” she said.
Meanwhile, an image of the Great Ship’s king continued speaking from the window on the wall at the far end of the room. Along with the others, Korshak had been given a box small enough to carry in a pocket or clip to a belt or the edge of a tunic, connected by a cord to a plug that the wearer placed in an ear. From the plug, a voice repeated the king’s words in whatever tongue was selected by turning a wheel on the box.
“I know the thought sits heavily with some of you that we will never see nor set foot on Earth again. But is that really such a tragedy? The forces and passions appearing there are the same as those that destroyed it before. Let me share with you some of the things I’ve observed in recent years, and where I think they will lead before very much longer….”
“Does the thought sit heavily with you?” Korshak asked Mirsto, who was sitting on the far side of a small table from them, his cloak draped over the adjacent seat. Sultan was lying alongside Mirsto’s feet, ears erect and eyes shifting constantly, taking in the strange new world.
“Oh, I think I’ve seen as much of it as I care to,” Mirsto replied. He seemed to be recovering from his exertions down o
n the surface. “A world this size from now on should suit me just fine. Gallivanting around in all that space down there was beginning to be somewhat taxing.”
Ronti was sitting a short distance from them, near the people who had also been brought up in the white bird. They were dressed in all manner of garb and carried an assortment of bags and other objects that looked as if they had been grabbed in haste at short notice. Their speech was different from that of the Arigane and Shengshoan regions, but like Korshak, Ronti had picked up a smattering of it in their travels. What intrigued Ronti most of all was the talking, manlike metal creature that had single-handedly routed an entire troop of Zileg’s cavalry with exploding lights and streaming fiery smoke. If the Builders so chose, they could surely have vanquished the world. But to rule over a world of the vanquished was not what they desired. So what depths of wisdom and insight were there to be learned here?
The creature was sitting beside the captain of the white bird, as it had during the brief journey up to the flying island. Less than two hours before, it had performed a feat greater than that of any hero that Ronti had heard sung of in ballad or told in legend; yet it showed no more emotion than would a house servant after driving away a pack of noisy dogs who were being a nuisance on the street. What manner of creature was it? Did it live, or had the Builders made it, as they had the craft that sailed in the skies and everything else that made up this world of miracles that they were now in?
All the same, Ronti’s natural cockiness hadn’t deserted him entirely. He was pretty certain that he could show it a thing or two when it came to acrobatics, he told himself as he eyed it up and down.
“One thing I can promise you all is that the things we are saying farewell to will fade into insignificance compared to the wonders that lie ahead. Aurora represents the greatest concentration of human creativity and inventiveness that has ever been brought together in a single place at one time….”