A Maze of Stars

by John Brunner

  “What—?”

  “What use will they find for you? Oh, there are countless possibilities.”

  “If I volunteer to go the way of my son—”

  “They’d regard that as evidence of derangement,” she cut in. “Derangement being due to organic imbalance, they’d dismiss the data as tainted. More likely they’ll do something local. Put you on a diet of native vegetation, for example, and record what happens.”

  “You can’t be serious!”

  “Out here in the middle of the square, with everybody else at work and the Council involved in its deliberations, this is about the only chance I ever had to be serious.”

  “So—so what can I do?”

  She shook her head, eyes overflowing as she continued to gaze straight at his face.

  “Hide? Where? Run away? How, and where to? No, this is the end of the road for us, old friend.”

  “Us?” He snatched at the word.

  “Oh, you don’t think they’ll let me live any longer than you, do you? Not a chance, not when I defended you. It might make sense, in fact, to say good-bye right now.”

  She was much shorter than he. Reaching up on tiptoe to pass her arms around his neck, she planted a kiss on his cheek. Then she spun on her heel and hurried away at an awkward, stiff-limbed run.

  Licking his lips, he tasted tears: hers or his own? He could not tell.

  After a long dead pause he pulled himself together.

  “If they’re going to do this awful thing to me anyway, I might as well spread the word, mightn’t I?” he said to the air. “So who can I tell?”

  But everybody was at work. When he looked around, even the young men who had been spreading solar paint had disappeared.

  SO SMALL A POPULATION AFTER ALL THIS TIME, CONFINED TO A single island and not even a large one! And such a death rate, and so much of it deliberate!

  Busy and invisible, Ship probed the planet.

  If I didn’t know what I do know—shall know?—I might well have assumed that Klepsit too would be a failure … How long can I endure these shifts in time? The more I learn, the more it seems likely Stripe was right in voicing my worst fear: it’s not damage but intent that drives me back and forth across the centuries …

  Poor Stripe.

  But here perhaps I may acquire a fresh companion. And any company at all surpasses loneliness …

  It went below to walk and talk like people.

  WHEN VOLAR AND SU HAD GONE, HENELLA SAID STIFFLY, “I wish to place on record my grave doubts about the course recommended by the president. I particularly regret that Volar is not to be held in custody until the hearing resumes.”

  Ygrath nodded vigorous support. The rest waited. They knew Sandinole to be cunning.

  Suddenly, and altogether unexpectedly, he laughed.

  “I’d expected better of you—Henella in particular! Did you not hear me remind him that the matter is sub judice? How many crimes will he be guilty of if he so much as hints outside this room that the satellite ought to be supervised automatically?”

  Light dawned.

  “I see you’re catching on at last. But don’t smile too soon! Ygrath!”

  The pasty-faced man jolted to full alertness.

  “He’s right, isn’t he?”

  “I—uh …”

  “He is right,” Sandinole insisted softly, leaning both elbows on the harsh table and gazing down its length. “By the way, how long have you held your post?”

  “F-five years,” Ygrath forced out.

  “And never before or since you were appointed did it occur to you to ask the question Volar asked today—Volar, old and half worn out and arguably deranged by his obsession with his son.” Sandinole clenched his fists before his face. “We’ve been through the same experience, haven’t we? All of us have fathered or borne offspring, wished them well when they set out with challenge teams, and suffered the consequences because they’re still beyond our control. How could anyone dream of living unaided on a foreign planet without enduring just the process that our forebears decreed for us—and for themselves?”

  His voice rose to the pitch he normally reserved for mass meetings of new challenge teams.

  “We know the Ship that brought us was instructed to seed as many planets as might be with human stock, and there were hundreds at the very least. Can any have succeeded better than ours? Are new-built starships knocking at the doors of our atmosphere requesting permission to land?”

  His fanatical glare swept the table like a winter gale.

  “Has anybody sent us decipherable signals containing useful information? Has the Ship itself come back, as the records indicate it should have when it reached the end of the Arm of Stars, to check on progress and bring news of how things go on other worlds? Five hundred years have elapsed and we are still alone!”

  A deep breath.

  “It follows that we must be doing exceptionally well. With each passing generation we improve the armor of our germ plasm. We fall victim to fewer and fewer diseases. We digest more and more various foods, no longer just those whose ancestral strains accompanied us on our arrival but native ones that formerly were poisonous! Another thing we all have undergone, along with loss of offspring: sickness from eating local food. Yet consider what we have achieved! Thousands of us are in good enough health to grow old! Volar’s beard is gray, Su’s hair as well. A century ago, how many of us lived that long?”

  Hearing the fundamentals of their common belief put into words with such blazing conviction, the other councillors relaxed—all save Ygrath, who knew from what Sandinole had said a moment earlier that there would shortly be a review of the Council’s membership, and when it was reconstituted, he would not be among the chosen. The decision would of course be attributed to the monitors. But who knew better than himself, who had often suppressed inconvenient data, how tidily they could be manipulated?

  “Most of what we have on today’s agenda,” Sandinole went on, reverting to his normal calmness in committee, “is routine. But in addition to what has already been circulated there’s an item that may indicate we have succeeded better than we realized.”

  Puzzled glances flickered up and down the table.

  “As yet we have very little to go on, which is why I originally felt it not worth discussing until later. However, as I say, it may prove encouraging. It may indeed indicate that somewhere on the planet, hidden perhaps below obscuring vegetation, we have sown a wild strain of our kind—and it’s surviving.”

  The quiet words exploded like a crashing comet. For a long moment the councillors’ expressions were a mixture of shock, disbelief, and dismay. Sandinole regarded them with a sardonic grin.

  “Full details of what we know so far are naturally in store with the monitors, but to judge by your reaction, it might be useful if I give you a summary account.

  “I trust I don’t have to remind anyone that two days ago a major timber drift originating off the east coast of High North Ground was spotted following the Triennial Circular Current toward the Upper Channel? It was too big to be turned aside by the regular sonic swirls, big enough to risk blocking the channel completely—this, incidentally, being of course the generally accepted means whereby large life-forms spread from island to island in this region. And we would prefer to keep them off our own. Hmm?”

  His tone had changed from sardonic to sarcastic, and more councillors than Ygrath were starting to fidget on their uncomfortable benches. It sounded as though he had made up his mind that the office of president by rotation was not enough, even though he had contrived to have his own term extended twice already. Ygrath himself, who had doctored the monitors’ recommendations, felt his cheeks turn from grayish-white to brilliant pink.

  “So we dispatch—do we not?—a clearance gang to make sure the logs are broken free and sent on their way. Yesterday, or rather late last night, using infrared glasses, they spotted a large warm creature, immobilized but still alive, caught in one of the perimeter traps. At
first, naturally, they assumed it was a native predator, perhaps a bolf or kear carried there by clinging to the floating timber. It had about the right temperature and mass. On inspection, however, they discovered it to be a more or less human female of unknown descent.”

  His eyes again raked the length of the table.

  “Specifically, she has tufts of hair on her elbows and rough, possibly prehensile pads on her feet, while her skin is covered with bright red stripes, beginning at the nape of her neck and spiraling along torso, arms, and legs. Her teeth, what is more, are yellow.”

  “An alien!” Ygrath blurted, desperate for anything that might distract Sandinole from his resolution to eliminate his former trusted aide from the Council.

  Coldly: “You believe in the Perfect?”

  “W-what?”

  “You believe that since they launched the Ship our kinfolk in the parent galaxy have evolved into creatures that can cross interstellar space naked and unprotected?”

  “Of course not!”—licking his lips. “I never heard such nonsense!”

  “Then you haven’t checked the contents of your data banks.” That was a wounding gibe. “Or maybe you didn’t lead a normal childhood . . ? Legends to this effect have cropped up in every generation since the age of settlement. Nonsense, of course, but the important fact about nonsense is that by believing it people diverge from rationality. That may be tolerable in children of prerational age, but even there, I dare say, it ought to be corrected.”

  The implications of Sandinole’s words were building a wall between Ygrath and the other councillors. They began to shrink away.

  “Now,” the president by rotation resumed, “what’s the question that all of us here would ask immediately on being confronted with a report of that kind?”

  Henella snapped, “Can it talk? Is it equipped to, is it well enough? Looking human, can it explain itself?”

  That, seemingly, was not quite the response Sandinole had been prepared for. Making a swift recovery, he gave an approving nod.

  “Absolutely right. Unfortunately, the trap’s ultrasonics gelatinized her frontal lobes. She’s in coma, and the prognosis is unfavorable.”

  A clamor arose, several people talking at once and each shouting louder than the next. Sandinole stared them down. When silence reigned again:

  “You may take it that I considered all those points. Do you wish to hear the findings so far?”

  Nods.

  “Alien”—ocular darts aimed at Ygrath again—“short of delivery by the Ship that brought our ancestors, she can’t be. Her DNA matches ours to nine points. Moreover we’ve determined that she must already have been suffering lassitude and fever from infections native to Klepsit and her system contains no unknown organisms.”

  The implications finally sank in. Henella husked, “You seem to be saying that descendants of some—well—some challenge team once given up for lost have completed the adaptive process?”

  “Not quite,” Sandinole countered in a carefully patronizing tone. “Not if she was weak and feverish from what, as I just stated, are indubitably local infections. Still, if her forebears have survived even for a few generations, that must be worth further investigation, hmm?”

  “Is it definite that she arrived with the log drift?” Henella demanded.

  Sandinole smiled. “Our techniques are not quite up to following a humanoid scent through that much water … are they?”

  He let the veiled insult, the implication of ignorance, rankle for a second, then went on. “But it’s more likely than the alternative.”

  “Which is?” Henella was flushing angrily.

  “That she was already on the island, tried to swim away, and had to cling to the logs when she became exhausted. After all, an unclad female about as tall as yourself but striped vivid red all over would scarcely evade detection—would she, now?” Henella’s responsibility for social stability included keeping track of unauthorized movement among the populace. Once again Sandinole had scored a palpable hit. The other councillors tried to avoid one another’s eyes; each was afraid a plot to oust him or her had already progressed so far that it was useless to argue in public.

  “Still, one thing is beyond doubt. Her system includes no organism, none whatever, that is not identifiable either as a human commensal or native to Klepsit. That she was virtually at death’s door prior to being trapped can be ascribed to the fact that her—or rather her forebears’—resistance has reached its limit. She appears to have been muscular and well nourished until quite recently. All of which added together indicates— does it not?—that a search ought to be mounted along the coast of High North Ground, the densely forested area whence the logs found in association with her originated.”

  As though expecting no contradiction, he made to rise. However, Ygrath retained one spark of spirit.

  “What about putting Volar in charge of the expedition?” The answer snapped like a neck in a hangman’s noose. “No.”

  HOW IRONIC IT IS THAT IN SO PERFECTLY PRESERVING THE human physique despite incorporating countless antibodies and novel defenses designed to cope with challenges from the native life-forms, they have sacrificed so much of what it truly means to be human, such as pity. I wonder whether any of them understands the concept of love …

  Ship detected a trace of irony in its own reflections, connected with the word “countless.” In fact, they would have been quite countable, had it interrogated the local “monitors” on the subject. But something else far more important had arisen, an opportunity not to be forgone.

  Today or tomorrow, certainly not later than the day after, there will be at least one person in danger who might wish to leave Klepsit, and quite possibly two.

  HOW STRANGE IT WAS, VOLAR THOUGHT, TO FIND HIMSELF THE only person on the island without work to do, save children still too young to go to school and the very old eking out their final days in the hospice … where they still contributed to the eventual survival of the settlers in accordance with the principle Su had quoted to him.

  After failing to find anyone else willing to spare him even a few minutes, even the woman who had taken over his former post as satellite supervisor, he tried to call on Su at her place of work but was frostily warned off. News of his hearing before the Council had spread rapidly; he was being treated as though he carried a virulent plague.

  Which of course he did, and wished to spread.

  Baffled, infuriated, at a total loss, he wandered farther and farther afield, occasionally receiving a nod of recognition but never more. He passed the blank walls of sealed laboratories; he reached the plantations where imported and native plants were growing together under controlled conditions; he saw from a distance—for they were behind electronic fences and updraft barriers—the fields where animals were penned, both local species that might one day be useful and the modified descendants of others whose germ plasm had arrived along with the humans. Some of them would have looked extremely strange to those who had planned the Ship’s expedition through the Arm of Stars, for the Council’s brief did not include leaving its livestock outwardly unaltered.

  The sight reminded him of his study of history. In the far past, clear back to the birthworld, people had kept animals for company even though they could not talk and were barely capable of reason. What would it have been like to make this long walk around the island with a “dog” beside him? What function did a dog perform after the days when other animals, barely tamed, still needed to be driven to and from pasture?

  When, if ever, would the like process occur on Klepsit, so that there were farmers instead of agrobiologists?

  Most likely never.

  He reached the extreme south of the island and stood gazing down from a cliff at a coastal work gang, not the one he had watched setting out earlier, for they would have gone to a shoreline nearer home, but another from the closest barracks. They were far too busy to notice him as they combed the rocky beach meter by meter, collecting aquatic creatures cast up by the
waves, comparing the spreads of native sealeaf and imported seaweed, analyzing the organic content of the water in tidal and nontidal pools. There were caves below the cliff, and he saw two people emerge from one of them. They wore breathing masks, presumably because some airborne spore or other had taken root and might cause lung infection in the unprotected.

  Near the horizon, veiled by mist, drifted one of the colony’s automatic ships, following the Triennial Current and studying the spawn it bore to frigid northern waters.

  It’s time for me to say good-bye.

  The thought sprang to Volar’s mind as unexpectedly as his inspired argument against the Council.

  I know everything about Klepsit. I can’t go anywhere, anywhere, that is, that I’m allowed to go, where I don’t know what’s happening, where I’d have to ask for explanations. I might as well end it all, right now.

  The mist was blowing toward land, with the promise of a chill and clammy evening. With a start he realized it was much later than he had imagined. He would barely have time to reach home before dark. In theory he, or anyone, was entitled to a meal and a bed at any barracks where there were room and rations to spare; in practice the privilege was confined to those delayed while on some authorized expedition, and no one would look kindly on him who had wasted a day in random wandering. Urging his stiff limbs to a faster gait, he set out to retrace his steps.

  But the mist swirled in long before sunset, and the path ahead blurred, and frequently he had to pause and rest.

  It was during the fourth of these enforced respites that he glimpsed someone from the corner of his eye. Barely more than a silhouette, the person nonetheless struck him as familiar. A name leapt to the tip of his tongue, the name of the woman who had directed the challenge team among whose members Su and he had met.

  But that’s absurd. Kenia died two years ago.

  Had it simply been a trick of his failing eyesight? He peered in the direction where he thought he had seen the—he had to say stranger. Even though the total population of Klepsit was still extremely small, it had long been impossible to know everyone.