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

by Poul Anderson

  * * * *

  29

  M

  orning light brought alive the mandala of many colors in an arched window. White walls shone, relieved by pilasters that rose to join with the vaulted ceiling. Dura moss carpeted the floor, green and springy. Chairs, couches, table, desk were of wood and natural fiber, graceful as willows. Nothing in the chamber defied the complex of consoles, keyboards, screens, and other equipment that ruled over it. All was like a declaration that life, humanness, and the cybercosm belonged together.

  A declaration much needed, Kenmuir thought. This multiple engine of communication and computation, advanced beyond anything he had ever encountered before, was a daunting sight at best.

  The wordless reassurance did not speak to him. He was come as an enemy.

  Aleka at his side, he entered into cool quietness. The doorway contracted behind them. They were shut away, sealed off, private, until they opened the gates to the cybercosm.

  She swallowed, squared her shoulders, and walked forward. He went more slowly. His heart thudded, his tongue lay dry. This bade fair to be the day of victory, failure, or ruin. Again he knew himself for a fool, who ought to flee and confess it. But no, then he would be less than a man.

  Aleka settled at the primary console and gestured him to take the seat beside hers. When he did, she caught his hand and squeezed it. He felt her warmth, as if blood flowed between them. She smiled. "Bueno," she said, "let's go for broke." He had turned his face toward her. She leaned over and kissed him.

  Before he could really respond, she had drawn back, laughing a little, and her fingers were on the keys. Knowing it wasn't quite logical, he had disdained to take a tranquilizer. Now all at once the fears and doubts were burned out of him. That wasn't logical either, but what the Q. When committed to a course of action, he had always gone calm. Never, though, had he felt more clear and quick in the head than now.

  "Direct me," she said.

  Yesterday they had drafted a general plan. Afterward he had spent much time alone, pondering when his mind did not drift freely in hopes of inspiration. Nonetheless, they must grope their way forward, improvising, his knowledge of space and astronautics guiding her skill with the system.

  "The history of interplanetary exploration," he told her unnecessarily. "For openers, a summary." That should make their undertaking seem an innocuous bit of research, perhaps by someone with nothing better to do.

  Hypertext appeared in three-dimensional configuration. Aleka entered the commands that led topic by topic outward from the asteroid belt to the Kuiper and beyond. Casualties. . . . Sigurd Kaino Beynac did not come home. The purpose and destination of his voyage were never put in any public database. Whatever tale was kept sequestered was probably lost in the disastrous ending of Niolente's rebellion. So the computer said.

  "We knew this stuff," Aleka complained.

  "Yes, but I want it in an entire context, or as nearly entire as exists," Kenmuir replied. "Next we'll focus on scientific missions to asteroids."

  The established associations quickly brought up Edmond Beynac and his death. Kenmuir nodded. He had expected that. "Beynac was after confirmation of his ideas about the early Solar System. Let's check on exactly what they were. It's vague in my memory. I'm beginning to realize that that's largely because I've scarcely ever seen it mentioned. Because he was in fact mistaken, or because there was something there that somebody would like to suppress? He was too important in his science for all record of this to be erasable."

  When he had studied the précis, which took time, Kenmuir whistled low. "M-m-hm. I get a suspicion of what kind of body Kaino went out to. But that was years after his father died, and he wouldn't have taken off blind. First, an astronomical search. But nobody's ever heard—" He sketched instructions for Aleka to track down the account.

  And: "Ah, yes, I'd forgotten, or maybe never knew, a brother of Kaino’s directed the major Lunar observatory of that period. We'll run through a list of what reports and papers came out of it between those two death's."

  And: "Some curious gaps, wouldn't you say? Distant comets discovered and catalogued, nothing anomalous, but. . . I should think the surveys would have found more of them. We know they're out there. Were certain findings left unreported?"

  And: "If I were seriously interested in spotting, m-m, Edmond Beynac's hypothetical mother asteroid, I'd get better parallaxes than you can from the Moon. Robotic probes—those launches will be recorded, even if the results are not."

  Aleka giggled. It sounded like a guitar string breaking. "How lucky for us the cybercosm is a data packrat. It hoards everything."

  "Aye, but a part of the hoard stays permanently underground." Kenmuir was silent a while. "Duck back to Kaino. The departure date of his last voyage, exact type and capabilities of his ship, initial boost parameters as far as they were routinely tracked, date of the return without him. That will all have been public."

  And: "Yes, it's consistent with an expedition to the Kuiper Belt, though that still leaves an unco huge region." Kenmuir frowned. "The last decade or two of the Selenarchy. Missions dispatched by the aristocrats of Zamok Vysoki: Rinndalir till he left for Alpha Centauri, Niolente afterward. Very little information would ever have been released about them, but we'll see what's available, including whatever the Peace Authority found in her files."

  "You've told me they claimed a lot of that was accidentally destroyed," Aleka said.

  "They claimed. Let's look. Again, ship types and launch parameters. Those could not have been hidden, at least not if they left from the Moon. And maybe you can locate a few cargo manifests or the like, scraps of fact, pointing to what they may have carried. . . . Uh, I'd better explain how such matters work."

  Having assembled the figures, Kenmuir turned to an auxiliary board and calculated trajectories, fuel consumption, the range of what could have happened. When he was through, he sat back and said in his driest voice, "Plain to see now, Lilisaire's suspicions and mine are right. Some sort of project in deep space, involving construction. Clandestine, which means trips to the site had to be few and far between and minimally manned. But even in those days, you could do quite a lot with well-chosen, well-programmed robots, if the raw materials were handy."

  He rose and paced. His hands wrestled one another. "Yes," he said in a monotone. "Do you see, Aleka? It's almost got to be Edmond Beynac's giant iron asteroid, orbiting out where only dust and gravel and cometary iceballs large and small are supposed to be. His children kept the discovery to themselves, thinking it might prove valuable. The secret was passed down the generations, doubtless to just one or two each time, else it couldn't have been kept so long. Finally Rinndalir and Niolente decided to try making use of it."

  "A long shot, a what’s-to-lose move," the woman breathed. "Otherwise somebody would have tried earlier. After Fireball made war on the Avantists, it was doomed, however slowly its dying went. The Selenarchs were threatened too. Without Fireball, they had no realistic hope of maintaining their independence against a determined Federation. Unless— Beynac's world—but how? What help was there?"

  "Something the government doesn't want known."

  "Not the whole government. How could it, century after century, and nobody blab?"

  "The cybercosm. The—" Kenmuir decided not to say, "Teramind." Instead: "It could rather easily keep the knowledge to itself, except for a few totally trustworthy human agents. When Lilisaire grew curious, that synnoiont Venator took charge of investigating how much she might have learned and what her Lunarians might be thinking of."

  She nodded. His last sentence had been automatic, unnecessary.

  He halted. "Well, I believe we've gotten everything we can out of the open files," he said. "In remarkably short time, thanks to these facilities." Indeed, so thorough a probe into a quasi-infinity of bytes would hardly have been possible to a less-equipped station. "Still, several hours. Do you want to take a break, or shall we plunge ahead?"

  "I couldn't relax, waiti
ng. Could you?"

  "Frankly, no." He rejoined her. They exchanged a cold grin.

  Hers faded. As if reaching out for comfort, she murmured, "I wonder if Dagny Beynac knew."

  "You've heard of her?"

  "She was quite a power on the Moon, wasn't she?"

  "Yes, I rather imagine she did know. The siblings would have needed her help in covering the trail. But she took the secret with her to the tomb."

  Aleka shook herself. "C'mon. Anchors aweigh."

  They spent minutes formulating their question. It was simple enough, but it must look like one onto which she had stumbled, a bit of aroused curiosity. Kenmuir put in what specifics he had been able to guess at, such as the broad arc of heaven in which the object most likely was wandering, but in its final form the query amounted to: Does a very large ferrous asteroid, perturbed out of the inner Solar System, orbit through the Kuiper Belt?

  Aleka straightened, moistened her lips, and entered it.

  A sharp note sounded. A red point of light blinked in the screen. Below it, words leaped out:

  FILE 737. ACCESS IS RESTRICTED TO AUTHORIZED PERSONS. DNA IDENTIFICATION IS REQUIRED.

  The Anglo changed to a series of other languages. Aleka shut the display off.

  She and Kenmuir sat for a span in silence. Again he felt a steely steadiness. "Hardly a surprise, eh?" he said at length. "Shows we're on the scent." He gestured at the little bag Aleka had carried along. "Shall we?"

  "One minute," she answered. Her voice was as level as his, but he saw sweat on her forehead. He thought it would smell sweet, of woman, were the reek of his not smothering that. "An ordinary scholar would wonder why."

  "Good girl!" His laugh rattled. "You've a gift for intrigue, evidently."

  Her mouth quirked. May I ask for the reason the file is classified? she tapped. Throughout, they had left vocal connections dead, so they could talk freely, and likewise the visual pickup. Besides, a real researcher would avoid distractions like that.

  CONSIDERATIONS OF GENERAL SAFETY NECESSITATE THAT CERTAIN ACTIVITIES AND CERTAIN REGIONS OF DISTANT SPACE BE INTERDICTED TO ALL BUT PROPER CYBERNETIC ASSEMBLIES. OTHERWISE THE DANGER WOULD EXIST OF STARTING SOME OBJECTS, WHICH HAVE UNSTABLE ORBITS, INWARD. THAT COULD EVENTUALLY HAVE SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES. IT IS A CYBERNETIC RESPONSIBILITY TO PROVIDE AGAINST FORESEEABLE MISFORTUNES, NO MATTER HOW FAR AHEAD IN TIME. DETAILS ARE WITHHELD TO AVOID TEMPTATION.

  HOWEVER, IT IS PERMISSIBLE TO STATE THAT NO BODY RESEMBLING YOUR DESCRIPTION IS KNOWN, AND ON COSMOLOGICAL GROUNDS IS IMPLAUSIBLE. SEE—The screen proffered a list of references. Kenmuir knew by the titles and dates that they were papers published in Edmond Beynac's lifetime, arguing against his theory.

  "You lie," he muttered at the machine. "You lie in the teeth you haven't got."

  "That takes sentience," Aleka whispered. "We've contacted a sophotect."

  "Highly specialized, a node in the network," Kenmuir deemed. "It's best to have some flexibility, not a simple, blank refusal." He sighed. "We could continue the pretense, I suppose, and call up those ancient disputes, but I'm for going straight on ahead."

  Aleka raised a hand. "Wait a minute. Let me think."

  Quietude lasted. The faint colors thrown by the mandala window onto the wall opposite had noticeably shifted downward since she and Kenmuir arrived.

  He glimpsed that she had turned her regard upon him, and looked back. Her eyes were gold-flecked russet. "This is mucho important business," she said very softly.

  "Yes," he answered for lack of a better word.

  "Somebody high, high up wants it kept kapu. The haku, the kahuna—I don't know who or what, but I think that in the past it got the Teramind's attention, and can get it again."

  Chill touched him. "Could well be."

  "Is the purpose bad?"

  "Perhaps not. Why mayn't we decide for ourselves?"

  "Do you still want to go through with this?"

  He considered for an instant. "If you do."

  She nodded. "Yes. But listen. You remarked that keeping information squirreled away—for a long, long time, as this has been—that needs more than a lock. It needs flexible response. Bueno, will the guardian really be satisfied with a DNA scan?"

  "That was all it demanded."

  "Anything more might be too clumsy." And anything less, Kenmuir reflected, such as a facial or fingerprint identification, was too easily counterfeited. "Still, if I were in charge, knowing that Lilisaire is on the prowl, I'd take an extra precaution or two. Like instructing the guardian to notify me if anybody does make entry, legitimately or not."

  Kenmuir started where he sat. "Huh! That didn't occur to me."

  "Nor to me till just now. I may be wrong, of course."

  "But if you're right—" Thought searched wildly. "Venator wouldn't sit and wait. He'll be busy, quite likely far from here."

  "So he'd want the guardian to contact not only him, but agents closer, who can pounce fast."

  "The police?"

  "Not local police. They'd wonder why they were ordered to arrest a couple of persons harmlessly using the public database. Those persons might tell them why, and they'd tell others, and folks would wonder. Me, I'd have the crack emergency squads of the Peace Authority alerted, around the planet, to be prepared for a quick raid, reasons not given but the thing top secret."

  "As a recourse—" Protest rose in Kenmuir's throat like vomit. "Are we going to let this possibility paralyze us?"

  "No," Aleka said. "But we'd better scout around first."

  She gave herself anew to the equipment. It told her the nearest Authority base was in Chicago Integrate. "Allowing time to scramble, an arrowjet could bring a squad here inside half an hour," she reckoned. Kenmuir, who knew virtually nothing about constabulary, mustered courage. Maybe he could at least flash a message to Zamok Vysoki. It must go in clear. However, since the Moon was in the sky, it could beam directly to a central receiver there, and—and be intercepted by a surveillance program, and provoke immediate counteraction—"What we'll need to know is whether they do scramble," Aleka was saying. "Hang on."

  Her fingers danced. The patience schooled into a spacer had strength to hold Kenmuir motionlessly waiting.

  After a time he chose not to number, Aleka leaned back, wiped a hand across her face, and mumbled, "Good. We will know."

  "How's that?" he croaked.

  "I've set it up. Traffic Control will inform us if and when any high-speed unscheduled flyer leaves CI in this general direction." She shook her head. "No, no, nothing special, no break-in. The sort of information a civilian might have reason to want. For instance, we could be studying atmospheric turbulence effects, or some such academic makework. I just had to figure out how to request it."

  His belly muscles slackened a trifle. "Then...if it happens...we'll have twenty or thirty minutes to get to your volant and away?"

  "Not that simple. TrafCon will oblige a māka'i every bit as readily as us, if not more so. Easy enough to get the registry of a vehicle that left here a short while back, and know exactly where it is while it's moving. We'll've got to land somewhere close by and be off like bunnies." Aleka sighed. "I trust Lilisaire will ransom my poor flyer, or buy me a new one. Unless you and I end up where we won't have any need of personal transport."

  Kenmuir refused to think about the ugliest possibilities. This was the modern world, for God's sake. Thus far he and she had done nothing illegal. If they were about to, well, it was not technically a serious offense, not in a society that recognized every citizen's right to information. They'd be entitled to a public hearing, to counsel, to procedures that might well be too awkward for the secretkeepers. It wasn't as though they were dealing with an instrument of an almighty state, KGB or IRS or whatever the name had been—

  He wished he could believe that.

  "What we must do is escape, and then take stock," he said. A detached part of him jeered that he could also tell her the value of pi to four decimal places. "How?"

  "T
hat's what I mean to check out." Once more she got busy. Schedules paraded over the screen.

  After a while: "All right. There's no public transport out of Prajnaloka, and it's sparse everywhere close around, as thinly populated as the area is. Mostly it's local, which does ire no good. Figure ten minutes to run to my volant. Ten or twelve minutes airborne before anybody can intercept us, no more.

  "The single place in range is Springfield. It has a twice-daily airbus to St. Louis Hub. There we could vanish into the crowd and quickly get seats to somewhere else big and anonymous. Trouble is, the opposition will know this too, or find out in a hurry. We'll have to time our arrival at Springfield and departure from it ve-ery closely. The next bus is in about half an hour. Otherwise we'll have to wait till evening."

  "That gives us time to prepare," he said reluctantly.