To Outlive Eternity

by Poul Anderson

  Donnan felt dumpy in their presence. He straightened his shoulders. So what, by God!

  A door, above which was painted a giant eye, flew open. The guard platoon halted, not stiffly and with clattering heels as Earth's soldiers had been wont, but gliding to a partial crouch. Each touched to his head the stubby barrel of his cyclic rifle. Someone whistled within. The leader nudged Donnan forward. The door closed again behind the man.

  One guard stood in a corner, watchful. Otherwise the room's only occupant was a middle-aged officer whose clan badge carried the pentacle of supreme nobility. He belonged to that Kandemirian race whose skin was pale gold and whose ruff was red. A scar seamed one cheek. Still squatting, he smiled up at Donnan. "Greeting, shipmaster," he said in fluent Uru. "I bid you welcome." He arched naked brows with a most human sardonicism. "If you choose to accept my sentiments."

  Donnan nodded curtly and lowered himself tailor fashion to the floor. The Kandemirian touched a button on his desk. "You see Tarkamat of Askunzhol, who speaks for the Baikush Clan and for the field command of the Grand Fleet," he said without pretentiousness.

  Almost, Donnan himself whistled. The high admiral in person, director of combat operations along the whole Vorlakka front! "I had no idea . . . we'd be of this much interest," he managed to say. "Uh—"

  A silver plate in the desktop slid back and a tray emerged with two cups of some hot liquid. "What records about your species I could find in the files of this base," Tarkamat said, "mention that indak will not hurt you. In fact, many of you find—found the beverage pleasant."

  Automatically, Donnan reached for a cup. No! He yanked his hand back as if it had been scalded.

  Tarkamat made a purring noise that might correspond to laughter. "Believe me, if I wished you drugged, I would order that done. What I offer you with the indak is the status of . . . no, not quite a guest, but more than a captive. Drink."

  Donnan began to shake. He needed a while before he could stammer, "I, I, I'll be damned if I'll . . . take anything . . . from you! From any murdering sneak . . . of a Kandemirian."

  The soldier tilted his rifle and growled. Tarkamat hushed him with a soft trill. For a moment the admiral studied his prisoner, scarred countenance enigmatic. Then, very quietly, he said: "Do you believe my folk annihilated yours? But you are wrong. We had no part in that deed."

  "Who did, then?" Donnan shouted. He started to rise, fists knotted, but sank down again and struggled for breath.

  The red-ruffed head wove back and forth. "I do not know, shipmaster. Our intelligence service has made some effort to learn who is responsible, but thus far has failed. Vorlak seems the likeliest possibility."

  "No." Donnan gulped toward a degree of self-possession. "I was there. They showed me proof they were innocent."

  "What proof?"

  "A treaty—" Donnan stopped.

  "Ah, so. Between themselves and some Terrestrial nation? Yes, we knew about that, from various sources." Tarkamat made a negligent gesture. "We feel quite sure that none of the minor independent powers, such as Xo, struck at Earth. They lack both resources and motive."

  "Who's left but Kandemir, then?" Donnan's voice was jagged and strange in his own ears. "Earth—one nation of Earth, at least—was helping your enemies; that's motive. And the Solar System is patrolled by your robot missiles. I took photographs."

  "So did we," Tarkamat answered imperturbably. "We sent an expedition there to look about when we heard the news. It was also attacked. But the Mark IV Quester is, frankly, not the best weapon of its type. Hundreds have been captured by foreign powers, enemy and neutral, through being disabled or having their computers jammed or simply because their warheads were duds. Someone who wished to blacken our name—and has, in fact, succeeded, because few people believe our denials—such a party could have accumulated those missiles for the purpose. Please note, too, that the Mark IV is not ordinarily as slow and awkward as those encountered in the Solar System. Does that not suggest they were deliberately throttled down, to make sure that there would be escapees to carry the tale?"

  "Or to give your propaganda exactly the argument you've just given me," Donnan growled. "You can't sweep under the rug that the treaty between Russia and Vorlak gave you reason to destroy Earth."

  "Then why have we not made a similar attempt on Monwaing?" Tarkamat countered. "They, in their alleged neutrality, have been more useful to the Vorlakka cause for a much longer time than one country on Earth supplying a few shiploads of small arms." He lifted his head, superciliously. "We have refrained, not from squeamishness, but because the effort would be out of proportion to the result. Especially since a living planet is far more valuable to us in the long run. We could not colonize a Monwaingi world without sterilizing it first; but despite the cooler sun, we could have planted ourselves firmly on Earth . . . if we chose . . . when we got around to it. The biochemistries are enough alike."

  His tone hardened: "Do not imagine your world, or any country on it, amounted to anything militarily. Had that one nation, that Ro-si-ya or whatever it was called, had it proven a serious annoyance, do you know what we would have done? If simple threats would not make them desist, we would have used the tried and true process which has gained Kandemir easy domination over five other backward planets. We would have sent a mission to the Terrestrial rivals of Ro-si-ya, pointed out how strong she was becoming in relation to them, and made them our cat's paws. Why expend good Kandemirian lives to conquer Earth when the Earthlings themselves would have done half the work for us?"

  Donnan bit his lip. He hated to admit how the argument struck home. What he remembered of human history told him how often a foreign invader had entered as the ally of one local faction. Romans in Greece, Saxons in Britain, English in Ireland and India, Spaniards in Mexico—If I forget thee, O Jerusalem!

  "Very clever," he said. "Have you any actual proof?"

  Tarkamat smiled. "Who is interrogating whom, shipmaster? Accept my word or not, as you choose. Frankly, the clans care little what others think of them. However," he added more seriously, "we are not fiends. Look about you with unprejudiced eyes. Our overlordship may seem harsh at times. And it is in fact, when our interests so require. But our proconsuls are not meddlesome. They respect ancient usage. The subject peoples gain protection and share in the prosperity of an ever-widening free trade sphere. We do not drain their wealth. If anything, they live better than the average Kandemirian."

  Harking back over what he had learned, Donnan must needs nod. The Spartan virtues of the nomads did include governmental honesty. "You forget one thing," he said. "They aren't free any longer."

  "So your culture would claim," Tarkamat replied with sudden brutality. "But your culture is dead. What use can sentimentality be to you? Make the best of your situation."

  "I'm sentimental enough not to collaborate with whoever killed my people," Donnan snapped.

  "I told you Kandemir did not. Your opinion is of insufficient importance to me for me to belabor that subject further. A handful of rootless mercenaries like yourselves hardly seem worth keeping prisoner, even. Except . . . for the astonishingly deep penetration you made of our defenses. I want to know how that was done."

  "Luck. You got us in the end, after all."

  "By using a new device we had been reserving for the next major battle."

  "I can guess what that was," Donnan said, hoping to postpone the real unpleasantness. (Why? he wondered. What did it matter? What did anything matter?) "Missiles, like ships, operate on paragrav these days, to get the range and acceleration that it offers. So countermissiles are equipped with paragrav detectors. They home on the engines of a target object. Only if the engine is switched off do they use radar, infrared, and other shorter-range equipment. Well, you used a big paragrav job to match vectors with our ship. We spotted it easily. But it didn't try to zero on us. It ran parallel instead, and released a flight—not of regular torps, but of rockets. We weren't on the lookout for anything so outmoded. Over that short di
stance, an atomic-powered ion drive could rendezvous with us. We didn't know it was there till too late to dodge."

  "Actually, you were hit by only one rocket out of several," Tarkamat confessed. "But one suffices. You would have been blown to gas, had our anxiety to know your secret not made us preset the warheads for minimal blast."

  "There is no secret." Donnan felt sweat gather in his armpits and trickle down his ribs. Before him wavered the image of Goldspring, half stunned, bleeding in the face, elbowing aside the wreckage and the dead that bobbed around him, by flashbeam light ripping and hammering the detector into shapelessness while the enemy frigate closed in.

  "There most certainly is," Tarkamat stated flatly. "Statistical analysis of what course data we have for you strongly suggests you were able to detect us at unprecedented distances. Our own best paragrav instruments are crowding the theoretical limit of sensitivity. Therefore you employed some new principle. This in turn may conceivably lead to entire new classes of weapons. I do not intend to play games, shipmaster. I presume you have no great emotional attachment to Vorlak, but some of your crew. One crewman per day will be executed before your eyes until you agree to collaborate. The method of execution I have in mind takes several hours."

  I expected something like this, Donnan thought. Coldness and grayness drowned his spirit. As if from immensely far away, he heard Tarkamat continue:

  "If you cooperate, you can expect good treatment. You will be settled on a congenial planet. Any other humans who may be found can join you there. An able species like yours can surely fit itself into the framework set by the imperium. But I warn you against treachery. You will be allowed to build and demonstrate your devices, but under the close supervision of our own physicists, to whom the principles involved must be explained beforehand. Since I presume you left people behind at Vorlak, who will also be working along these lines, delays shall not be tolerated. Very well, shipmaster, give me your answer."

  Why keep on? the mind sighed in Donnan. Why not surrender? Maybe they really did not bomb Earth. Maybe the best thing is to become their serfs. Oh, Jesus, but I'm tired.

  I was tired in that Burma prison camp too, he thought drearily. I didn't believe we'd ever get sprung, me and the others. Barbed wire, jungle, sloppy-looking guards with almighty quick guns, miserable villagers who didn't dare help us—But that was on Earth. There was still a future then. We could plan on . . . on sunrise, and moonrise, and rain and wind and light; on the game continuing after we ourselves stopped playing. So, we didn't stop. We cooked up a hundred plans for crashing out. One of 'em, at least, was pretty good. Might have worked, if the diplomats hadn't arranged our release about that time. If it had not worked, well, we'd have been decently dead, shoveled down into an earth that still lived.

  That's why I've gone so gutless, he thought. Now there's nothing in space or time except my own piddling self.

  The hell there isn't!

  The knowledge burst within him. He sat straight with an oath.

  Tarkamat regarded him over a steaming cup. "Well, shipmaster?" he murmured.

  "We'll do what you want," Donnan said. "Of course."

  VIII

  Mit shout and crash and sabre flash,

  And vild husaren shout

  De Dootchmen boorst de keller in,

  Und rolled de lager out;

  Und in the coorlin' powder shmoke,

  Vhile shtill de pullets sung,

  Dere shtood der Breitmann, axe in hand,

  A knockin' out de boong.

  Gling, glang, gloria!

  Victoria! Encoria!

  De shpicket beats de boong.

  —Leland

  From their window high in that tower known as i-Chula—the Clouded—Sigrid Holmen and Alexandra Vukovic could easily see aro-Kito, One Who Awaits. That spire lifted shimmering walls and patinaed bronze roof above most of its neighbors; otherwise its corkscrew ramps and twisted buttresses were typical Eyzka architecture. The operations within, however, resembled none which had yet been seen on Zatlokopa, or in this entire civilization-cluster. Terran Traders, Inc., had leased the whole building.

  As yet the company was not big enough to fill every room. There was no reason why the Europa crew should not live there, and a number of the women did. But some, like Sigrid and Alexandra, had to get away from their work physically or explode. They took lodgings throughout the city.

  Occasionally, though, as the company's growth continued, work sought them out. This evening Alexandra was bringing an important potential client home for dinner. The sha-Eyzka were very human in that respect; they settled more deals over dessert and liqueurs than over desks and disto-scribes. If Terran Traders could please Taltla of the sha-Oktzu, and land that house's account, a big step forward would have been taken.

  Sigrid looked at her watch. By now she was used to the time units, eight-based number system, and revolving clock faces employed here. Damn! The others would arrive in ten minutes, and she hadn't perfumed yet.

  A moment she lingered, savoring the fresh air that blew across her skin. Zatlokopa was not only terrestroid, but midway through an interglacial period, climatically a paradise for humans. The women had quickly adopted a version of native dress, little more than shorts and sandals, with the former only for the sake of pockets. The sun slanted long rays across the towers, a goldenness that seemed to fill the atmosphere. How quiet it was!

  Too quiet, she thought. A winged snake cruised above the many-steepled skyline, but nothing else moved, no groundcars, no fliers, not a walker in the grassy lanes between buildings or a boat on the sunset-yellow canals. The city had subways, elevated tunnel-streets that looped like vines from tower to tower, halls and shaftways in the houses themselves. This was not Earth, she knew, it never had been, never could be. Nothing could ever again be Earth.

  A spaceship lifted silent on paragravity, kilometers distant and yet so big that she saw sunlight burn along its flanks. The Holdar liner, she thought; we have a consignment aboard. That reminded her. She had no time for self-pity. Closing the window, she hurried into the kitchen and checked the autochef. Everything seemed under control. Thank God for the high development of robotics in this cluster. No human cook had the sense of taste and smell to prepare a meal that an Eyzka would think fit to eat.

  Sigrid returned to the living room, where Earth-type furniture looked homely and lost amidst intricate vaulting and miniature fountains. The perfume cabinet slid open for her. She consulted a chart. Formality on Zatlokopa paid no attention to clothes, but made a ritual of odors. For entertaining a guest of Taltla's rank, you used a blend of Class Five aerosols. . . . She wrinkled her nose. Everything in Class Five smelled alike to her—rather like ripe silage. Well, she could drench herself with . . . let's see, the sha-Eyzka usually enjoyed cologne, and there was some left from the ship. . . . Her hand closed on the little cut-glass bottle.

  The door said: "Two desire admittance."

  Had Alexandra brought the fellow here early? She'd been told not to. "Let them in," Sigrid said without looking at the scanner. The door opened.

  Blank metal met her eyes. Not sun-browned human skin or the green and gold fur of an Eyzka, but polished alloy. The robots were approximately humanoid, a sheer two and a half meters tall. She stared up, and up, to faceless heads and photoelectric slits. Those glowed dull red, as if furnaces burned behind.

  "Kors i Herrans namn!" she exclaimed. "What's this?"

  One glided past her, cat-silent. The other extended an arm and closed metal fingers on her shoulder, not hard, but chilling. She tried indignantly to step back. The grip tightened. She sucked in a gasp.

  The other robot came back. It must have checked if she was alone. The first said: "Come. You need not be harmed, but make no trouble." It spoke Uru, which was also the interstellar auxiliary language in this cluster as in several others.

  "What the blazes do you mean?" Anger drove out fear.

  Hearing her speak in Eyzka, the robot shifted to that language, fluent
though accented. It laid its free hand on her head. The fingers nearly encircled her skull. "Come, before I squeeze," it ordered.

  That grip could crush her temples like an almond shell. "Make no outcry," the second robot warned. Its accent was even thicker.

  Numbly, she accompanied them out. The corridor was a tube from nowhere to nowhere; doors were locked and blind; only the ventilators, gusting a vegetable smell in her face, made any noise. Her skin turned cold and wet, her lips tingled. They picked the right hour for a kidnapping she thought in hollowness. Nearly everyone is still at work, or else inside preparing for the worker's return. You won't find casuals moving about, as you would in a human city. This is not Earth. Earth is a cinder, ten thousand light-years distant.

  She grew aware of a pain in one hand. With a dull astonishment, she saw that she still gripped the cologne bottle. The faceted glass had gouged red marks into her palm.

  Suddenly she lifted the thing, unscrewed the atomizer nose and poured the contents over her head.