by John F. Carr
Finally, the tent flap was pulled back. Lieutenant Jaspers ducked into the tent. “I’m sorry your two companions didn’t make it, Mr. Langston. I’m sure you have a lot of questions. Unfortunately, I can’t give you a lot of answers.”
“Do you know who these guys were? Were they bandits?”
“We think they were Saurons and that they were after you.”
“What would Saurons want with me?”
“I don’t know. They went to considerable trouble to hide who they were. And when it was clear we were going to win they turned their guns on you and your friends.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would they do that?” Realizing that the Lieutenant didn’t know, he looked up and asked, “What now?”
“This may help.” Lieutenant Jaspers held up a memory cube. “Mr. Langston, I was ordered to give this to you if I found you.” Answering Langston’s unspoken question the Lieutenant continued, “Yes, we were looking for you. My orders didn’t include why. There’s a player on the table over there,” he said pointing. “I’ll leave you alone to watch it. Maybe you’ll find some answers there.” He handed the cube to Langston, turned and left.
Langston didn’t know what he was expecting but it wasn’t this. He squeezed the small bag Jaime had given him. After a moment he got up and limped over to the small table. He put the memory cube in the player and pushed the start icon. He thought he was beyond surprises but he was wrong. Above the unit a small Tri-V image formed. It was Marie Ward.
Marie Ward looked better than he remembered. She had lost some weight. But wisps of hair still stuck out at funny angles from her head. If there was anyone he wanted to see right now it was her.
It looked like she was standing on a bluff overlooking the ocean. It could have been California. As he watched she began to speak. “Jonathon, if you are viewing this it means you are safe. I’m very thankful for that. I can’t tell you much but I can tell you to go with these people. You can trust them. They will bring you to me. I have very exciting news. I will explain everything when you get here. Please, please go with them.”
FLASH MESSAGE BEGINS
TOP SECRET, EYES ONLY
TO: VICE ADMIRAL SERGEI LERMONTOV, CDSN COMMANDING
FROM: COMMANDER DMITRY ORLOV, CAPTAIN CDSS FRANCIS DRAKE
SUBJECT: HAVEN SITREP
JONATHON LANGSTON RECOVERED. SUBJECT WOUNDED BUT IS RESPONDING TO MEDICAL TREATMENT. IN TRANSIT PER ORDERS. SAURONS MAY BE INVOLVED IN ATTEMPTED ABDUCTION OF LANGSTON. NO SAURON SHIP INSYSTEM. INFERENCES:
1) POSSIBLE SAURON SECRET BASE ON HAVEN. RECOMMEND FLEET INTELLIGENCE INVESTIGATE.
2) POSSIBLE COVERT PROGRAM BY SAURON TO AQUIRE SCIENTISTS. RECOMMEND FLEET INTELLIGENCE INVESTIGATE AND CONFIRM STATUS OF EXILED SCIENTISTS.
FLASH MESSAGE ENDS
The trip from Haven to Sparta took just under four months. Langston made the journey on the frigate Francis Drake. It was a hard trip for him but it was nowhere near as bad as his trip on the Bifrost. For the first couple of weeks Langston lay on a bed in sickbay hooked up to a regeneration stimulator. That wasn’t the hard part. In the sickbay he could read; and think. No, the hard part was that the spin of the Drake’s crew quarters kept increasing; although slowly.
He asked the captain about it one day when they were having dinner in the Wardroom.
“Mr. Langston,” Captain Orlov replied in broken English. “Spartan gravity twenty percent above standard. That means is one third more than Haven. We try acclimate you. Make easier for you later.”
Langston was shocked. They were going to a great deal of trouble for him? He couldn’t imagine why.
2078 A.D., Sparta
The delta wing craft circled the island several times bleeding off her speed before touching down in a bay on the island’s west side. Langston couldn’t tell how big the island was but he knew that the turns the craft needed to make were very wide. As the landing craft came to a stop in the water he felt the full force of Sparta’s gravity take hold. It was no longer masked by the landing craft’s bouncing around. Thank God the Drake prepared me for this.
A door in the side of the craft was cracked open. The ocean air flowed in and mingled with the ship’s musty air. Langston inhaled deeply. It smells clean and salty and there’s a hint of something else I can’t quite place. Something I’ve never smelled before.
He’d had the same experience on Haven. An alien world, even a terraformed one, smelled different than Earth.
Langston saw a small boat coming toward the landing craft. After the boat pulled alongside the lander, he climbed down an accommodation ladder and stepped aboard the boat. Langston’s luggage, what little there was of it, came down after him. Then the boat headed for shore. They passed a larger one coming out to take cargo off. Along the way back to shore he noticed what looked like a pod of dolphins in the water. He pointed them out to the coxswain.
“You have good eyes, sir,” the coxswain said. “They are dolphins. They were seeded on Sparta over fifty years ago, but over near the main continent. I guess they’re explorers like us. I heard from some seasonal fishermen that they showed up here about ten years ago. They feed on the local grunter, a warm water cod-like fish. They must be smart, too, because they stay away from our landing zone.”
As the boat pulled up to the pier, Langston saw two people standing on it. One was a CoDominium naval officer. The other was Marie Ward. She was giving him a broad, face cracking smile. Something you didn’t see often on her.
“Marie,” he yelled. He jumped off the boat and ran to her. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her.
“Jonathon, it’s good to see you too. I need to introduce you to someone. This is my husband, Commander Dave Trevor.”
“Your what?”
“I met Dave on the expedition to the black hole.”
“To the what—? What are you talking about Marie?” Langston looked in shock.
“They haven’t told you anything have they? Okay, but it’s a long story. Let’s sit over there,” she said, pointing to some crates.
She walked over to the crates and sat down. Langston followed her. “Jonathon, after the CoDominium arrested me I was tried and convicted of unauthorized scientific research. The judge sentenced me to transport to Tanith.”
Jonathon winced. He’d heard stories of how hard life was for transportees on Tanith. It wasn’t like Haven but it was just as deadly.
Ward paused to gather her thoughts and then continued, “After my trial, an intelligence advisor to the Navy interviewed me. It was during that meeting he got the idea that my research might help the Navy with a problem they had. So before the Bureau of Relocation ship got underway I was pulled off and sent to the CoDominium’s Navy base on Ceres.
“Spaceships were being lost on the Jump between A-7820 and 82 Eridani, Meiji’s sun. The first ship lost was a civilian cruise liner. On board were Grand Senator Martin Grant’s daughter and grandson. The Navy sent a couple of ships to search for the liner but several of those were lost too. Not every ship disappeared after Jumping. In fact it was a rare event. Even so, the Navy had to call off the search and warn ships away from using that tramline. They couldn’t afford to lose any more ships.”
Ward paused again. “After meeting with me on Ceres the Navy decided to send one more expedition. That is, as long as I went with it. If we found a black hole they thought I might be able to help get them home. So, I agreed. After all, black holes are my expertise and no one had ever found one close enough to visit. I wanted to see it. And I had nothing to lose. Anything was better than being shipped off to Tanith.”
Langston said, “That’s true.”
Ward nodded her head toward Commander Trevor. “As I said I met Dave on the expedition. He was First Lieutenant on the Daniel Webster. That was the ship the Navy sent us on.”
Then she hurriedly changed the subject back to the main narrative. “Anyway, we Jumped and found ourselves near a black hole. We found the other ships that had been lost. A
ll were damaged and only two were spaceworthy.”
At this point Ward’s face brightened and she burst out with, “Oh Jonathon, there were gravity waves! They were strong enough to shake our ship from one AU away.” Then she regained her composure. “That’s not important right now.”
Langston had been listening to Ward recount her story without saying anything. Now he became excited. “Sure it is.” Then in rapid fire he asked, “Gravity waves? What was creating them? That doesn’t make sense unless mass was falling into the hole. Were they scalar or tensor?”
“Tensor. The black hole had a small accretion disk around it. It was made of rocks of all sizes. From asteroids down to dust. Periodically, something would fall into the hole and be destroyed. When that happened, it not only produced gravity waves but Alderson forces too. However we couldn’t use those to make a Jump out. We couldn’t predict their occurrence or their magnitude. They were too random. We ended up sacrificing one of our ships to get home.” Her face took on a sad look and she added, “And one very brave man. Captain Harriman.”
After a few moments the sadness passed and she became excited again. “Jonathon, we received telemetry from that ship all the way in. And we returned with the logs and sensor readings from the other ships. Five years’ worth of observations, Jonathon. Five years! When we got back, Senator Grant was so grateful he decided to set up this research station so we could study black holes. Now you’re up-to-date.”
After Ward finished her account Trevor could see different emotions running across Langston’s face. Excitement, jealousy, anger and finally, hope. Trevor didn’t know which would win out. He only knew it wouldn’t be long before Langston settled on one. So Trevor gambled on the truth. “I’m going to give it to you straight, Mr. Langston; technically you are not free. Your sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on this island of New Alexandria. So while we can’t force you to work in this research station we can keep you here. I know this is hard for you but you will have almost anything you want here.
“I’m told you ran into a security situation on Haven. We don’t want to see that repeated here. So we have our own security. But that is to protect you, not to keep you in. And, as you might have guessed, this facility violates a number of CoDominium laws. This is a Fleet research station. If it is ever discovered the best any of us here could hope for is exile to Fulson’s World; or maybe Haven if we were really lucky. You already know what that’s like. So it needs to be kept secret, for all of our sakes,” he said nodding his head slightly toward Marie.
Trevor continued, “Even though this is a secret facility you will have the intellectual freedom within it you never had on Earth. And you will have colleagues to work with that are of your caliber. You will have equipment for your research. You will not want for food, clothing, shelter or other material needs. The climate is very pleasant if you ignore the gravity. But that’s something you get used to. And most importantly the team has begun to see glimmers of a grand unified field theory. Something that, as I understand, you’ve pursued. The expedition to Harriman’s Black Hole was critical in pointing the team in the right direction. As Marie said, you will have access to all the expedition’s logs and data. Please Mr. Langston, think about it.”
“Jonathon, the team needs you,” Marie added.
“This is a lot for me to take in. I need to think,” he said looking around. “Is it safe for me to walk along the beach?”
“Yes.”
* * *
It was a warm and sunny afternoon. Langston turned and walked away from the pier toward the beach. A beach with sand that was as white and pure as any he had ever seen. No one tried to stop him. This wasn’t Earth but it wasn’t Haven either. Few escaped that cold, dark place. Now, he’d been offered more than he ever imagined possible. With a feeling of melancholy he thought about his friends who had died on Haven. What would they have done if they’d had a chance at a new beginning?
A smile grew across his face. He remembered something Taylor had said and knew the answer. They would have been on a good lurk.
Arriving at Haven’s main spaceport, in Castell City, I was confronted by a big sign reading:
Welcome to Haven
THE PLANET ON THE MOVE!
Had I somehow strayed into a Sinclair Lewis novel? Had not that bumpkin Boosterism which Lewis so deplored been left behind on Earth?
Indeed it had. The sign was to be taken literally. Haven was the planet of nomads. Thanks to the Bureau of Relocation, Haven boasted more nomads than any other human-colonized planet, and quite possibly more than Earth herself. (Reliable census figures for nomadic peoples do not exist on any planet. For Haven we have to extrapolate from BuReloc data on transportees.)
Genus Homo, species sapiens, variety nomad. Or should it be Homo nomad? Biologists define a species by its being “reproductively isolated.” On Earth lions and tigers were inter-fertile, but were considered to be separate species because they never mated with each other in the wild, only in zoos. On Haven the nomads trade with the “townies” or fight with the townies, but never intermarry with them. Hence the nomads are reproductively isolated from town dwellers.
This can be clearly seen in their faces. Haven killed off a large number of new immigrants. The small communities of survivors found their few nubile members were of assorted races and ethnic groups. Racial and ethnic taboos were quickly discarded, and one married whoever was available and reasonably attractive, with no thought of ancestry or skin color. Considering the number of women who died in childbirth in the thin, cold air of Haven, it became a matter of a Havener male marrying whomever was available, period.
Walk down a street in any town on Haven and you will see a rainbow of skin colors, a museum of physiognomies. The Haveners worry about winter and land gators, not about race.
In a nomad encampment one will find quite a different situation. I visited several tribes who spoke Mongol dialects and found no one there who did not have the brown skin, black hair, and slanted eyes which on Earth caused Asians to be called the “Mongolian” race. Mongol tribesmen marry primarily within the tribe, or in some cases outside the tribe but only with other Mongols. Even Turkish or Tungus nomads were taboo as marriage partners. The Mongols remain inter-fertile with townspeople, but their “Mongolian” features are as fixed in their gene pool as are the stripes of the Earthly tiger.
The cultural adaptations made by the nomads after arriving on Haven are sometimes astonishing. Consider the religion and lifestyle we call “shamanism.” It is certainly an ancient practice. There are so many similarities between the shaman of Siberia and the medicine man of pre-Columbian North America that one can only assume shamans existed when “Native Americans” were still native Siberians.
A characteristic feature of Siberian shamans is the ceremony in which they achieve shamanhood. Supposedly the new shaman acquires his powers by making a journey to the spirit world and back, a journey which is re-enacted in the elaborate initiation ceremony he goes through.
Where is this spirit world? That is a secret of the shamans, yet they cheerfully admit, boast even, that it can only be reached via old Earth. So a newly initiated shaman on Haven has to make his mysterious trip to the land of the spirits by traveling first to Earth, then to his destination, then returning via Earth, without benefit of the Alderson drive. I never observed a shaman’s initiation, so I cannot say how the space trip is symbolized, much less how it is supposedly accomplished. But it is easy to spot the wagon that belongs to the tribe’s shaman. It is decorated with pictures of stars and a single spaceship.
One wonders how much this will change when the shamanhood becomes dominated by Haven-born practitioners. Will they retain Earth as the necessary waypoint on the journey to visit the spirits, or will they move the spirit world closer to Haven? Or consider Islam and its attachment to the holy city of Mecca. One would think this would force Islam to be Earth-bound.
There is the pilgrimage to Mecca that every male Muslim is supposed to
make once during his life. This requirement is so important that during the 20th Century it transcended the Arab-Israeli conflict. Every year, at pilgrimage season, a fleet of motorbuses would lineup on the Arab side of the border and the Arabs would open the border to allow their fellow Muslims in Israel to board the buses for Mecca.
What is done on Haven about the pilgrimage? It is not possible for the average man-on-the-steppes to afford a round trip to Earth via Alderson tramlines. Allah’s will is plain, say the Muslims. Had Allah intended each tribesman to travel to Mecca, then space flight would be cheap enough to make it practical for pilgrims.
So each Muslim tribe saves money to send a holy man, once a generation, on the round trip to Earth. This is the ideal, of course, since many tribes cannot save up enough capital even in a quarter of a standard Earth century to pay for the ticket. Still, every tribe at least tries to accomplish this ideal.
Take the simpler matter of praying five times a day facing Mecca. On Earth that is easy. A clock will give you the proper times, and a map will show in which direction to face. On Haven, there are no twenty-four hour Earth standard days, and Mecca is a sixth magnitude star in the sky.
What does a good Muslim do? Why, he badgers the CoDominium Consul-General or Governor on the planet until it becomes the duty of the CoDo naval attaché to produce an almanac giving the Haven times corresponding to the hours of prayer on Earth, and the azimuth and altitude of Earth at those times. Every Haven year the Navy sends out copters to deliver this almanac to Muslim tribes scattered far and wide across the planet.
Nomads do not marry townspeople, and would never consider sleeping under a roof, yet they are a part of the Haven civilization. Their nomadism is not due to a permanent dislike of towns, or to an inherited antipathy to urban “bourgeois” values. Nor in the last analysis is it cultural. It is economic.