by Migration
Lois toyed with her salad and thought before answering. “It goes deeper than that. What’s at stake is the world view and belief system that the society we build is going to be governed by. The choices we make here will shape the future world on Hera. Will it be a world where people are free to become all the things that human potential is capable of? Or one where they tie themselves down by artificial constraints to what amounts to little better than an animal level of existence? Which was what happened to Earth.”
Korshak hadn’t expected anything quite so profound. “You’d better explain,” he invited.
“What led to the old world destroying itself, more than anything, was its failure to grasp that human creativity is effectively unlimited,” Lois replied. “In particular, they were fixated on the belief that their resources were finite, and a growing population would simply use them up faster. So they lived in perpetual conflict with a dilemma. They needed technology to create the wealth that enables a better quality of living. But greater wealth results in greater numbers of people, which to their way of thinking meant simply hastening the day when everything would run out.” Lois gestured with her fork and made a face that said things could only go downhill from there. “The result was insane competition backed by organized violence as everyone scrambled to grab what they could. The wealth ended up in the hands of a small minority who controlled the power to defend it, and anything beyond subsistence level was denied the rest, because it would just have the effect of making more of them.”
“But Sofi didn’t think that way,” Korshak said.
Lois nodded emphatically. “Which is exactly the point. When people need something, and there’s only so much of it, there are two ways they can respond. They can either fight over what there is, and then lose anyway when it’s all gone. Or they can learn to make more. That’s where humans are different from animals. Animals react passively to the situation they’re in, and consume resources. So, they can only exist in numbers that are consistent with the natural replacement rate. Humans create resources. And if you look at Sofi’s experience, it happens as a series of breakthroughs into higher domains of knowledge and control over physical reality that expand to greater limits all the time. So there aren’t any real limits.”
Korshak had heard that kind of argument advanced before. He had also heard others disputing it. “And do you think that can continue indefinitely?” he queried. The suggestion was implicit, but it seemed counterintuitive.
“Yes,” Lois affirmed. “That’s what the universe outside is there for. There are no limits to how many we can become, how far we can expand, or how much we can achieve. That was what I meant by human potential. The old world didn’t even come close to understanding it.”
“That’s a pretty sweeping assertion,” Korshak commented. “It sounds more like a declaration of faith.”
“It is,” Lois agreed without hesitation.
“What if it’s wrong?”
“Every age of human culture has a unique soul that animates it and defines its nature,” Lois replied. “Like any other living organism, which it is, it can only live according to that nature. Our beliefs are an expression of what we are. The old world was blind to its own potential, and its belief in its own finiteness was what destroyed it. Sofi was a rejection of that belief. But when Sofi started to become divided within itself, the soul that it expressed was threatened. Preserving that soul is what Aurora was really all about.”
TWENTY-TWO
At the table in her workroom at the rear of the apartment on Astropolis, Vaydien smoothed out the tapestry that she had been composing on and off for the past couple of months, and tilted her head to one side as she inspected it critically. It showed, as best she could remember it, a view looking down over the city of Escalos from the hills lying to the south. It was to go on a wall in Mirsto Junior’s room, and so she had included numerous animals in the foreground. She was pleased with the way it was coming along, she decided. An earlier one depicting islands set in an ocean – which, if truth were known, she had considered no more than a practice effort – had impressed one of the organizers of the swimming camp that Mirsto had attended, and now graced their club rooms on Beach. She had based it on images from the Aurora’s archives. Her previous life had never taken her beyond Arigane and the adjoining parts of central Asia, and she had never actually seen a real ocean – but there had been no need to go into that. Most of the animals in the present work had never been native to Arigane, either, for that matter.
She was happy in the existence that was now to be the rest of her life. While there were moments when she found herself dreaming wistfully of the places that had seen her childhood days, she would think then of Shandrahl’s cruelties and treachery, her stepmother Doriet’s scheming, what life would have been like with Zileg, and tell herself that Leetha was welcome to all of it. Vaydien had become a new person – or was it more a case of discovering the person she had always been and never known?
In this wondrous world that moved between the stars, she was finding a universe so vast and awe-inspiring as to make Arigane seem like an insignificant speck of desert. One day a new world would be born that would compare in the same way to the whole of Earth; and through Mirsto and Kilea – and maybe more to follow, for she and Korshak were far from old yet – and their descendants, they would be a part of it. The thought prompted her to turn her head unconsciously to the doorway through to the living area, which Mirsto and Hori were in the process of taking over in the course of a game they had invented using an assembly kit of plastic blocks and shapes. She was about to get up and go through to ask if they were getting hungry yet, when the room sounded a tone indicating an incoming call. “Voice on,” she acknowledged aloud. “Accept visual, direct to workroom.” Moments later, Korshak’s face with its generous mane of dark, curly hair and straggly mustache to match appeared on the wall screen.
“Surprise!” he greeted.
Vaydien’s face lit up with delight. “Hey! Well, it is indeed. Where are you?”
“On Plantation.”
“I thought there were no communications from Plantation.”
“There aren’t from the parts most people go to. But I’m in the underworld that you don’t see, where the backstage machinery is. Here, it’s different.”
“Trust you to find any secret tunnels. So, how is everything going?” Korshak had been somewhat reticent on what was taking him to Plantation. Vaydien gathered that it was a sensitive matter that had to do with an awkward situation that Masumichi was in, and hadn’t pressed him for details.
“Moving along,” Korshak said. “Nothing much to report at this point. I just called to say hello while the chance was there.”
“Do you know yet if you’ll be staying over?”
“I’m not sure. We’re waiting for some news at the moment.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“It turns out that Lois is involved, too. She’s got a cabin in the crew section here. That’s where I’m calling from.”
“Lois the astronomer?”
“Right.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Just fine.” Korshak glanced away over a shoulder. “She’s on another call right now.”
“Say hello for me.”
“I will. How’s Junior?”
“He’s next door with Hori, building another Aurora, I think. Want to say hello?”
“Sure.”
“Hey, Mirsto. Your father’s on the screen. Want to come and say hello?”
Mirsto came running in through the doorway moments later and halted beside Vaydien, facing the screen. “Dad! Mom said she didn’t think you’d be able to call for a while. Where are you?”
“Across on Plantation.”
“How come I didn’t get to go?”
“It’s business this time. The kind of thing people can’t talk about too much. I’ll tell you about it some time later.”
“Are there animals around there, where you are?”
“Not right here. I’m down underground, in the part that you don’t see. But I saw some earlier – by a waterfall. They came right up.”
“A waterfall! I didn’t know they had those there.”
“Neither did I. I’ll bring you up to see it the next time we take a trip. It’s up on one of the ridges.”
“Are there robots, too? Mom said that what you were there for has something to do with Masumichi. Hori’s here. We’re making space constructions with the fabricator set. And assemblers that crawl over them – just like real ones.”
“Sounds neat…. No, there aren’t any robots here right now.”
“Masumichi’s neural coupler is cool,” Mirsto said. “You think that you really are the robot.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve tried it.”
Mirsto’s nose wrinkled. “I think it’s more fun being a robot. People have to be stuck inside places like Astropolis and Jakka all the time, where there’s air, and it’s warm enough. They can go outside, and over, and under, and anywhere. Why do we have to have air and stuff?”
“Questions!” Vaydien murmured to herself.
“Because people had to be able to stay alive long before there were any robots,” Korshak answered. “It’s a complicated story. We can go into it when I get back.”
“When will that be?”
Just then, a woman’s voice that sounded like Lois’s issued from somewhere in the background. “Korshak, there’s news.”
Korshak looked to the side for a moment, and then back. “Sorry, look, I have to cut this short. Something’s happening here.”
“You father’s busy,” Vaydien said to Mirsto.
“‘Bye, Dad,” Mirsto acknowledged, and waved a hand reluctantly.
“See you soon, promise,” Korshak told him.
“Take care, Korshak,” Vaydien said as the image vanished.
Korshak swung away from the screen to face Lois, who was holding her hand phone toward him. “This came from Lubanov’s surveillance team,” she said. “See who went through the docking port less than five minutes ago.” Korshak took the unit and peered at the image frozen on its tiny screen. It was centered on a figure standing in what appeared to be a short line of people. But nothing of its appearance could be made out. It was wrapped in a voluminous cloak that left just the bottom parts of its long boots uncovered below, while a full beard, turned-up collar, and a floppy, wide-brimmed hat pulled low obscured everything of the face. It all matched the descriptions that Dari and Bahoba had given.
“That’s Tek,” Korshak confirmed. But he was puzzled. “Did you say it went through the port? They didn’t stop it? I thought the whole idea was to get to it first, before it arrived at Etanne.”
“It isn’t going to Etanne,” Lois told him. “It arrived at the hub port to catch the ferry that’s leaving for Sarc. Lubanov’s people think there would be a better chance of talking to it there without advertising themselves to the wrong people. So the plan is to let it carry on, and they’ll have something set up at the other end.”
TWENTY-THREE
Sarc was the most recent of the Constellation worlds to open itself to occupancy. Physically, it was rather small, and there was nothing remarkable or exciting about its form, which was a sphere without adornments. In fact, there was little that was remarkable or exciting about Sarc in any way at all. That was the idea. It had been built by conservative-minded elements of the populace appalled by the decadence and licentiousness of Istella, who in response decided to establish a haven for what they considered to be the proper standards for a society to maintain, and in particular, a source of correct moral guidance and example for the young.
Dress was sober and subdued; surroundings tended to be plain and utilitarian; strongly expressed social pressures produced behavior that was restrained, with an emphasis on propriety and manners. And yet, few things were expressly prohibited. One could buy a drink, or even stronger narcotics if anybody willing to sell them were found, but it was rapidly learned that becoming incapable through one’s own actions wasn’t a good way to impress friends, make new ones, or be welcomed back in future. Such violations of rights as theft or resorting to violence in the course of a dispute were regarded as manifestations of low breeding and ignorance rather than criminality. In any case, they were almost invariably counterproductive, since the normal practice of the inhabitants was to go armed – mainly as a precaution against visitors, so they said, although it was more the assertion of a principle than from any real need – and onlookers were quick to side actively with a victim. People were expected not to confuse manliness with rudeness, nor politeness with servility. Nobody questioned that humans living together in a community couldn’t be free to behave in any way they chose, and some restraint on excesses was essential. The aim, however, was to create an environment in which those restraints would be cultivated consciously from within, rather than having to be imposed forcibly from without.
To the surprise of many, the response in terms of the number of people electing to move there was not insignificant. Even more so, the resistance encountered among the younger members of families considering such a move turned out to be far less than the diviners of popular sentiment had predicted, and many appeared to welcome the prospect. It seemed that devoting oneself to scientific questions and technological innovations, or striving for things like athletic or artistic prowess for their own sake could be rewarding enough for a while, but without their serving some overriding ideal or purpose, true satisfaction in life remained elusive. In a similar kind of way, Istella’s playgrounds, while continuing to provide an endless source of distraction for some, eventually became facile and boring for others, while the philosophies dispensed on Etanne began to sound shallow and less convincing. All of which would provide ample and welcome material for the social psychologists, counselors, and therapists to study and debate for years. Others called it growing up.
If that were the case, Fuji Warco conceded that he hadn’t fully grown up yet. He found the place stern and exacting – a bit like being in the house of the austere maiden aunt he remembered as a child, with endless incomprehensible rules of etiquette and decorum that he was in constant terror of transgressing. He’d take a fling on Istella with an anything-goes orgy thrown in for good measure, or even a hick-style Plantation dance party with fiddles and farm boots anytime, he decided.
He was on Sarc for a week or two, supervising the fitting out of a new School of Traditional Literature & Arts that they would be opening shortly. His other function, which he didn’t advertise openly, was that of an unofficial agent for Lubanov’s office. The message addressing him in the latter capacity had come without warning and given him such short notice that he had no real idea what was happening. It said that a mysterious passenger, referred to as “Traveler,” would be arriving from Plantation on the next ferry.
“Blue,” another of Lubanov’s people, would approach Traveler at the docking bay and bring him via a roundabout route to be handed over to Warco. How Blue would accomplish this wasn’t clear, but the message implied that Blue had been furnished with information that would get Traveler’s attention. The use of a roundabout route would be to verify that Traveler wasn’t being followed – by whom, the message didn’t say. Warco’s task would be to stay with Traveler and keep him out of sight until somebody from Lubanov’s staff got there from Aurora, who presumably would know what was going on. Blue called Warco on audio to confirm the arrangements shortly after the message arrived. The voice hadn’t been one that Warco recognized.
He watched as Kelerosk, the electrical foreman, finished checking connections in the power-and-air-distribution cabinet at the end of a partly finished corridor on Level 3, and set aside the drawing he had been consulting. On Kelerosk’s far side, an indicator light on the maintenance robot that was undergoing training and had been observing came on to signal that it had gone into “rest” mode while it indexed and cross-referenced the actions it had learned and would be required to
reproduce.
“All tested and correct, sir,” Kelerosk announced. “Would you be so kind?”
Warco accepted the proffered viewpad showing the certification sheet where Kelerosk had already signed off for the job, and added his own name in the box provided. One thing he had come to respect about Sarc was that things got done right, and people were reliable. “About time for your break, isn’t it?” he said as he keyed in his confirmation. He didn’t think he sounded gruff, but being around Sarcans always made him feel that he did.
“If it’s convenient.”
“Sure. Afterward, we need to talk about the main lighting and ring system in the theater. I think it’s going to need higher ratings on the cutouts.” He waved a hand toward the drawing that Kelerosk was holding. “Here, I’ll take that. I’m going back that way.”
“Much appreciated, indeed.”
Warco almost said “My pleasure,” but changed it to “See you later.” These things could be catching.
He returned to the room that was being used as a site office. Nobody else was there at the moment. Just as Warco closed the door, his phone emitted its audio call tone. He pulled it from his pocket and answered.
“Warco.”
“This is Blue.”
“Okay.”
“Traveler has agreed to meet you and is on his way. I have been observing from a distance, and there is no sign of anyone tailing him. It seems clear to go ahead.”
“Okay.” Warco had suggested that the best place to keep Traveler out of sight until the person or persons being sent from Lubanov’s office showed up would be the lower rooms at the rear of the site, which were just being used for storage at the moment.
“He’s almost there now. He is expecting you to be at the door from the service corridor at the rear, the one you described.”
“Okay.”
“Just one other thing, so that you are suitably prepared. I should tell you that Traveler is a robot.”