The Stars are also Fire - [Harvest the Stars 02]

by Poul Anderson

  The machine seized on the expression. "Ah, are you concerned with space? How interesting. You'd be our first visitor who wasn't of this Earth earthy." A chuckle ran forth.

  Kenmuir swore at himself. "No, I, I have a friend in the Service, and I've gone once to the Moon. That's all." He retailed his story and waited belly-painful. That he chose to go by a name like Hannibal was nothing unusual, it could be whim, but what if the officer asked him for his registry number?

  That still might not be fatal, he thought beneath the thunders. For the time being, this was a distinct, separated personality that stood before him. It could not have received any reason to be suspicious. (Unless the cybercosm had contacted every last unit on the planet. . . but that kind of effort, at the present stage of things, was unlikely. The channels and the data-processing capabilities that would be tied up—) It might not call in to query whether the man thus identified was wanted for anything. After all, if it did, that would entail a global data search to determine whether the number he gave was false.

  "I see," the sophotect said quietly. "Bueno, let me repeat, bienvenido. Or, in your idiom, welcome. I hope you and your friend to come will enjoy your stay."

  The voice was warm. Could the wish be sincere? Why not? Kenmuir harked back. Auld Angus, comforting him when he was small and had broken a rib, telling him a fable and singing him a song . . . Auld Angus, counselor, arbiter of quarrels, patiently listening to a boy who was one-sidedly in love . . . Auld Angus, courteous as he told the town council that it must enforce limits on mussel gathering if it didn't want the government to station a patrol at the bay . . . Auld Angus, advising a youth that he indeed seemed to have the potential of becoming a space pilot, and he should go for it. . . .

  Did they give their sophotect in Overburg a name and their affection?

  Kenmuir stirred. "I'll be on my way, then," he said.

  The officer raised a humanlike hand. "A moment, por favor. I would like to caution you. This is a difficult society. The conflict between chiefs has not improved matters. Have a care, always. Especially after your friend arrives. You've indicated she's female. I get the impression she's attractive. Best she stay inconspicuous, and no longer than she must. Do you follow me?"

  "I. . . think so," Kenmuir answered.

  Mostly he was thinking how well the machine had read him. But why shouldn't it? If the glands weren't there, an equivalent was, conation, intuition, together with an intellect probably superior to his.

  Certainly superior, if you understood that this was an avatar of the cybercosm, merging itself again and again with the whole, sometimes reshaped thereby, always bearing back memories of that gigantic oneness, even an intimation of the Teramind. Of course it interpreted his overtones, body language, things left unsaid: and not without what you might as well call empathy, or actual sympathy. It, Auld Angus, every electrophotonic intelligence—and, yes, the humble unconscious robots—were all waves on the same ocean.

  The optics gleamed. How much did they note of his face and body? How much about him would the mind enter in the database, when next it reported what it observed?

  For him to wear a life mask would have been an exercise in futility, as untrained as he was in it. Worse, it would have singled him out. After that, a quick check of somatic data that were surely on file would give cause to arrest him.

  His hope lay in remaining utterly undistinguished. In the sheer immensity of the databases was refuge— for a while. No matter how carefully designed a search tree was, scanning, retrieval, and evaluation took finite time. Until the hunters got a clear idea of what to seek for, their machines could spend days, weeks, among the permutations of two billion humans. Not that that would happen. Too much of the system was needed to keep civilization running.

  Give this kindly being no reason to want more information about him.

  "Yes. Thank you. But, uh, you mean—"

  "A mayor in Bramland may command any woman to join him for as long as he chooses. It's the custom; they seldom object. In fact, it's considered an honor." Those who did object could, theoretically, catch the next airbus out of town. Theoretically. Therefore the authorities ignored the whole business. "Ordinarily, a visitor would not be bothered. Our current mayor, though—Perhaps you'd like to meet your friend somewhere else."

  Kenmuir considered. Another move could by itself draw attention, the more so if Bruno took offense and started phoning around about it. "No, thank you again, but I expect we'll be all right. He won't want charges filed against him, will he? Chances are, anyway, he'll never see her." He rose. "Good day, Officer."

  "A good day to you," said the sophotect.

  Jeb waited outside. Doggedly, he guided Kenmuir to the inn. Regardless, the heart rose within the spaceman. He'd made it this far. Weren't he and Aleka exaggerating their danger? What lay ahead could prove fairly straightforward, until—excitement thrummed—it brought them to whatever had been discovered and done, long ago on Luna.

  * * * *

  22

  The Mother of the Moon

  F

  rom its height Temerir's observatory looked widely over the crater wilderness that is most of Farside. A low sun filled the land with intricate shadows and dun highlights. He had set the viewscreen in his living room to show that scene, not as the eye would have beheld it but with glare stopped down and lesser radiances enhanced. There the solar disc glowed soft between zodiacal wings and stars were like fire-drops flung off the tumbling Milky Way. Otherwise the room was sparsely furnished, as austere as its owner. An abstract lava sculpture on a table resembled a thick twist of smoke. The air, a little chilly, bore a tinge of ozone and subdued music on no scale ever heard on Earth. When Dagny noticed it, she thought of ghosts in flight before the wind. Temerir had not said where his one wife and their children were. He alone received his guests, Brandir, Kaino, Fia, and his mother. Crystal glasses and a decanter of wine were his scanty concession to custom. Nobody cared or poured. They entered and stood unspeaking for perhaps a minute. Nor had any among them talked much on their way here in Brandir's yacht; but then crew had been present.

  Dagny broke the crust. "Now can we get to business?" she asked as gently as might be. She knew full well what the business was. Sadness edged her pleasure. 'Mond should have been at her side to hear.

  She put the wish from her. In six years she hadn't stopped missing him, but it was no longer so that every small thing that had been his, every place she had ever seen him, cried aloud to her. She had dear friends, captivating work, lively recreations, a grandstand seat at humankind's ventures into the universe. From Anson Guthrie she had learned early on that self-pity is the most despicable emotion of any.

  Nevertheless wistfulness touched her. "Maybe afterward we can be sociable a while?" she added. "I don't see you a lot." Nor the rest of her offspring, or their mates and children, now that Jinann was with that Voris who had been Reynaldo Fuentes. It wasn't that they were estranged or even indifferent, it was that their lives were no longer close to hers and, she believed, it seldom or never occurred to them that she might wish it were otherwise. Lars, her darling bastard, understood; but he wasn't on Luna very often.

  Brandir's voice rippled at Temerir. Dagny caught that he put a question.

  The astronomer cast her a pale glance and replied in English, "Yes, of course we are safe from listeners. I assured that before I called you."

  Brandir's short golden-hued cloak swirled from his shoulders as he bowed. "Your pardon, lady Mother," he said. "I forgot me."

  The inconsequential gesture made Dagny's eyes sting. "Oh, that, that's okay," she faltered. "I can follow Lunarian pretty well, you know, when I set my mind to the job."

  "Yet not readily, nay?" blurted Kaino.

  No, she thought. It was a mercury language, swift-flowing, shimmery, fluid also in its meanings, impossible for her to quite close hands on. She had borne these brains within her, but little of what was in them had passed through hers or Edmond's. "Admitted," she said. "
Gracias."

  From between her dark tresses, Fia frowned a bit at her brother's impetuosity. To Temerir she said, "The matter is simple for either tongue. You have found the planetoid our father foretold."

  Yes, Dagny thought, at last, after these years. How long they seemed, looking back. But, true, he'd had to search on what amounted to stolen time, inventing pretexts and manufacturing their justifications. Though he ruled this place entirely, his fief from Brandir, those who worked with him and for him were not readily fooled.

  She hadn't kept track of how it stretched on. Her existence had been too crowded. Personal matters, everyday jobs and joys, the occasional sorrow, a friend in need or a youthful confidence. The growth of Lunar population, industry, undertakings, the rewards they brought and the demands they made. Her engineering administrative work for Fireball becoming entangled with the whole society around her, resources to find and allocate, conflicting plans and ambitions. Friction worsening among Moondwellers, be they Lunarians, Terrans born on Earth or in L-5, avowed Earthlings. . . .

  "I have," she heard, "if 'planetoid' be the rightful word for a thing such as yonder."

  "What know you for certain?" Brandir snapped.

  Temerir met the gaze of the taller, more powerful man as does an equal. "That which instruments and computations can tell," he replied. "Telescopic quest brought a huge harvest for winnowing." Yes, Dagny recalled, he could publicly mount a program to investigate the remote reaches of the Solar System, sketch-map and estimate-count the comets of the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune and the Oort Cloud beyond it. What he held to himself were certain of the results he got. "Some few appear to be asteroids, but small and rocky, not what Father meant. When a candidate was promising, I must take what faint spectrum I could. Then, be the promise not immediately shown false, I must find occasion to send robotic probes far enough, fast enough to get a parallax. But you know of these procedures, you who are here this daycycle. In the end, one and only one body manifested the possibility."

  "What is it like?" Kaino nearly shouted.

  Temerir stayed ice-calm. "Seemingly akin to Father's bane, far larger. The form is spheric, diameter approximately 2000 kilometers. Much surface is overlaid with dull material, but sufficient reflects in ferrous wise to suggest that thus is the most, giving a high mean density. The orbital inclination is a few minutes less than forty-four degrees, about the same as for the lesser object that we came to know too well. This too implies a similar composition. Perihelion is 107 astronomical units and a fraction, eccentricity is above 99 one-hundredths." Judas priest, Dagny thought, that made the aphelion point something like thirty or forty thousand a.u. out. This fitted also with 'Mond's asteroid. Oh, 'Mond, 'Mond! "At present the body is 302 astronomical units hence, spaceward bound."

  She could not hold back: "What do you propose to do about it?"

  "What would you, Mother?" Brandir asked. It was not a retort, she felt, it was a response. All four were looking at her with a strange—eagerness?

  "It was, was kind of you to invite me," she stammered, overwhelmed. "You didn't have to."

  "You knew of the search from the outset," Fia said, she maybe the most coldly practical of the brood. "You would in any case have guessed what is now afare."

  "Above that consideration," Brandir said, "we honor you."

  Dagny wondered how sincere that was. How candid were they ever, even among each other?

  Unworthy thought. She thrust it from her and spoke slowly. "Well, this is . . . scientifically fascinating, isn't it? Gives a whole new insight into the early history of the Solar System. What a memorial to your father."

  "It is raised in our hearts, which are ours only," Brandir replied.

  "What do you mean?" Already she knew.

  Temerir confirmed it for her: "I foreglimpsed that the thing might have immense potentialities, and hence required secrecy. Should we give it away to Earth? Nay."

  "But what could you do with it?"

  "We'll find out!" Kaino cried.

  Temerir nodded. "If naught seems valuable, then may we set the knowledge free."

  And he was the scientist of this bunch, Dagny thought. Was his generation really that alien to hers? Or that alienated?

  "We shall need a shipful of robots strong and subtle," Fia said.

  Brandir drew a hand slantwise through the air, a negation. An Earthling would have shaken his head. "Nay. We could not assemble and prepare that much, that costly, unbeknownst," he said. Clear before Dagny stood the fact that he had been thinking about this for a long while.

  "So, a manned expedition?" flared from Kaino. "Eyach!" He threw back his head and laughed against the stars.

  It happened he stood nearest to Dagny. The vision flitted through her, the contrast, those red elflocks beside the hair that hung to her shoulders. Since Edmond's death she had let it go white. The future beside the past—

  No, by damn. She wasn't yet ready for—what was the phrase people used in her childhood? Senior citizen. She bloody well refused to be any sniveling senior citizen. She was an old woman, and she'd soldier on as one till the Old Man came for her.

  These folks had not asked her here out of pure goodness. There was something she could do for them.

  "To go on trajectory would need too much time and too much supply, as noticeable as robots," Brandir was saying. "We shall abide until we possess a torchcraft."

  That wouldn't be soon. Only lately had Dagny and her allies gotten pushed through the Federation a grudging permission for Moondwellers to buy, build, and operate spaceships with the thrust and delta v for full interplanetary service. They must do it in stages, slowly raising capital, training crew, acquiring fleet; and the earlier vessels would be relatively short-range, used for easy missions. To be sure, Brandir would hold a large share in most of the enterprises.

  Kaino sprang about the room. "Come the hour, I'll recruit me a trusty gang," he jubilated.

  "How will you cover the departure?" asked Fia.

  They spoke as if it could be tomorrow, rather than years hence, in ardor joined with frosty calculation.

  "We will give out that Temerir has identified several possible lode comets in the near Kuiper, and I am bound forth to examine them more closely," Brandir said.

  A reasonable story in itself, Dagny considered. The Moon could use a bunch more water and raw organics than had yet been brought to it. Comets of suitable composition and orbit weren't plentiful. Indeed, the Federation had decided that it had done enough of that and if the Selenites wanted more they'd have to help themselves, unsubsidized. That might put their uppity noses out of joint. . . .

  The surprise struck through. Fia spoke before Dagny could, brows lifted over russet eyes: "Your very self, Brandir?"

  "Yes," he said, "Since the emprise will be chiefly mine, I want a full input before I choose what we shall do afterward." His laugh purred. "Furthermore, I fear life on Luna will be flattening," as he achieved other goals, wealth, power, and desires more inward. "My mood will be no secret, and will help explain why men go, rather than robots. By then, sister mine, you ought to be able to manage the cityside affairs of Zamok Vysoki in my absence, under the direction of Ivala and Tuori," his wives. Evidently Fia had proven her worth in the subordinate executive position she currently occupied. It involved some tough, risky work.

  And she just twenty-three, Dagny thought. But Brandir, the oldest, was just forty-one. And she, his mother, took her first job on the moon at age nineteen. (Forty-eight years ago, was that it? Time went, time went.) Well, pioneering eras stand open to youth.

  "None of this can we swiftly or easily achieve, nor by ourselves." Brandir addressed Dagny: "Again we must draw on your wisdom and your aid."

  "Me?" she countered.

  "None other could do so well," Kaino avowed.

  "You know your way about among both Selenites and Earthlings," Fia said. "You have the linkages to high persons and the skill to use them. Through you, we can win a cooperation from Fireball that it would
not elsewise see for profitable."

  "You can make sure our course toward the planetoid remains veiled," Temerir added.

  "Yours is our blood," Brandir finished.

  He smiled. He was beautiful.

  Dared they take for granted she would turn on Earth?

  No, wrong thinking. Helping Luna would be no treason to her kind. Would it? What harm to anyone —except self-infatuated politicians, busybody bureaucrats, and magnates enriched by their franchises and monopolies—if more freedom came to these children of hers and 'Mond's?

  That wasn't fair, she reminded herself. Once you started taking your own propaganda seriously, you were headed for fanaticism. Earth had made an enormous investment in Luna. All history shrieked how right the Federation was to dread a resurgent nationalism. The Lunarians chafed at laws written with good intent, when they did not violate them, covertly or more and more openly. Common heritage was only the most obvious sore point. Environmental concerns, weapons control, educational requirements, taxes, licenses, regulations, most of them reasonable —from the viewpoint of a civilized Earthling—but the civilization aborning here was none of Earth's, was maybe not quite human—