Escape Velocity

by Christopher Stasheff

  “Sounds delightful,” Sam pronounced. “Besides, I'll be a lord's lady.”

  “In a very drafty castle,” he reminded her, “without central heating or air conditioning. Nor plumbing. It'll be very cold, sitting down in the garderobe on a winter's morning—and the wash basin'll be frozen.”

  “I'll get used to it.”

  “No, you won't. In effect, ‘you' will cease to exist just before we make planetfall; we all will. We'll sit down under a cerebral scan and have all memories of this technological nightmare of a culture erased from our brains. Then we'll have false memories implanted; each one of us has been developing a Society persona for years. On the trip outward, each one will record the imaginary memories of his persona; and after the brain-wipe, those ‘memories' will be recorded back into our brains. You won't remember Sam; you'll only remember Lady Loguire.”

  “Lady Loguire! Oh!” Sam breathed, nestling up against him. “It sounds wonderful. To oblivion with Sam; I never liked her much, anyway.”

  “I do,” Horatio sighed, “but I trust I'll love the Lady Loguire just as dearly. Well, then, sweeting, you're one of us, now—the Romantic Emigrés; we've changed our name, effective upon our leaving the Solar system. Would anyone else like to join us?”

  Lona was whispering into Father Marco's ear. He frowned, shaking his head, and whispered something back. She hissed another sentence at him, and his face broke into a wreath of smiles. He stepped forward, clasping Horatio's hand. “A delightful prospect! I'll come too, thank you!”

  Horatio's face lit up, but his tone was guarded. “Are you sure. Father? I know you're a Cathodean, and that means you're either a scientist or an engineer. You'll have to have most of your memories erased too, at least the ones that have anything to do with technology. We don't want our new society to be contaminated by any link to this decadent, materialistic culture.”

  “I'm a priest before I'm an engineer,” Father Marco assured him, “and the priest agrees with you: materialism is a contaminant.”

  “Excuse me,” said Lona. “Gotta make a phone call.” She swayed away to the nearest screen-booth, at her most sultry. Dar's eyes swiveled to follow her; he could almost feel them tugging at his sockets.

  “Wonderful!” Horatio clasped Father Marco's hand, grinning from ear to ear. “At least our colony will have a real priest! How would you like to be an archbishop, Father?”

  “That's not up to us, I'm afraid.” Father Marco smiled, amused. “But I wouldn't mind being an abbot.”

  “As soon as we can build you a monastery,” Horatio assured him. “Still, I think we might manage a bishop's miter for you; I'll beam the Pope as soon as we lift off.”

  Father Marco frowned. “I'm afraid it's not quite that easy to be allowed to talk with His Holiness.”

  “It is for me; we went to school together. Are you sure no one else would like to come?”

  Dar shook his head. “Thanks anyway, Mr. Bocello.”

  “Me, too,” Whitey agreed. “I'm having too much fun in the present. But thanks for the offer, Cello.”

  Lona came swaying back. “Aren't you forgetting Mr. Stroganoff?”

  “My lord!” Dar cried, appalled. “He was our producer—they'll think he masterminded the whole scheme! What'll they do—torture him, or kill him?”

  “Neither one,” Horatio assured him, “at least, not if my chauffeur is his usual, resourceful self.”

  “He was.”

  They all swung about, to see Stroganoff puffing toward them down the concourse. “Thanks for having me kidnapped, Mr. Bocello,” he panted as he came huffing up. “Probably saved my life.”

  “My pleasure,” Horatio assured him. “I'm sorry to have been so unceremonious, but prompt action was required. Have you been briefed about our venture, Mr. Stroganoff?”

  “I certainly have, and I wish you all the luck in whatever world you find. I'd love to go along if I could bring a 3DT camera and come back—but I understand you don't want any technology developed later than 1300.”

  “Except for full plate armor, yes. But are you certain, Mr. Stroganoff? You don't have much of a future left, here.”

  “Not on Terra or Luna, no,” Stroganoff agreed. “But I would like to stop by Wolmar for a few years; there's a man there I'd like to chat with.”

  Dar grinned.

  Horatio shrugged. “Certainly. We don't much care where we exit from Terran space; one vector's as good as another.”

  “You're sure I won't be taking you out of your way?”

  “Not at all, since we don't know where we're going. And we're doing our best to make certain nobody else does, either. We'll change directions after we pass Wolmar; but we won't decide which new heading to take until after we're out of communications range. This is going to be one ‘lost colony' that will stay lost.”

  A man in uniform coveralls came running up to Horatio. “Captain's compliments, sir, and some news—right off the 3DT. The Assembly just voted the Executive Secretary full emergency powers, and the title ‘Executive Director.’ ”

  “An ominous ring to it,” Horatio mused. “I think we'd better be lifting off while we still can. Farewell, good people!”

  There was a quick round of hugs, handclasps, and kisses. Sam glared up at Dar with tears in her eyes. “Goodbye, gnappie, and good luck! Don't let 'em get to you!”

  “I'll be kicking and screaming every centimeter of the way,” Dar promised. “What is a ‘gnappie,' anyway?”

  “Someone who just sits back and lives off his GNP share, without trying to accomplish anything. You won't be that, will you?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Dar assured her.

  Then Horatio was whirling her away, whirling all three of them away, with an arm around Sam while he burbled to Father Marco, “I'm so glad you decided to come, Father! After all, what would the Middle Ages be, without monks and monasteries?”

  They stepped into the lift-tube, and Sam turned back to wave. Then the field bore them up, out of sight.

  Whitey clasped Dar's shoulder. “Up to the observation room, quickly! This is one lift-off I want to be able to watch!”

  They ran to a smaller lift-shaft back down the concourse and flew up into the observation tower. It was a wide, circular space, with a thick carpet and thicker windows. In fact, it was nothing but windows, a full circle of them, and a transparent roof above. Dar looked around at the Lunar surface outside, a crazy quilt of brightness and blackness. “Wonder why they didn't just build a clear dome?”

  “The usual reason—this was cheaper.” Whitey pointed at the huge sliver cigar a quarter of a mile away. “She's lifting, children.”

  They stared, tracking it in silence, as the Brave New World lifted from the Lunar surface and drifted upward, away and away, shrinking from a monster that filled half the sky, to a splendid flying hill, diminishing and diminishing, to a silver cigar indeed, then a cigarillo, then a matchstick, then only a point of brightness. Suddenly that brightness intensified; it became an actinic spark, throwing a faint shadow of the three watchers onto the floor behind them, and began to slide away across the heavens.

  “Exhaust,” Lona whispered. “They've ignited their interplanetary drive.”

  The spark moved faster and faster until it was only a streak of light, shooting off toward the unseen orbit of Pluto, a miniature sun seeking a dawn.

  When it had dwindled to being only one more faint star in the millions that surrounded them, they turned away with a sigh. “I hope they make it.” Dar smiled sadly. “I wonder if they'll really manage to set up their crackpot society.”

  “I have a notion they will,” Whitey mused. “When Horatio sets his mind to something, it gets done. Just hope they'll be happy, though.”

  “Me, too.” Dar frowned. “Especially Father Marco. How can he found a Cathodean monastery if he has his brain wiped of any engineering knowledge?”

  “Oh, I wouldn't worry about that,” Lona murmured, with a quiet smile.

  Whitey fixed her wit
h a jaundiced eye. “Granddaughter, lick that cream off your whiskers and tell me who you phoned!”

  “Just the Brave New World's computer. Grandpa—it isn't hard to get the number, if you know what to say to Central Memory.”

  “No, not at all—you only had to talk your way past a few dozen of the System's strongest security blocks first!”

  Lona shrugged it off. “Just basic logic.”

  “Yes, getting baser and baser as it goes along. And just what did you and the Brave New World have to say to each other?”

  “Oh, I just convinced it that Father Marco's the only one aboard who might stand even a remote chance of fixing it, if it ever broke down. It saw my point right away, and promised that, when it came time to wipe brains, it would skip Father Marco's.”

  Whitey nodded, with a wry smile. “I was wondering why he was suddenly eager to go. I could see a Cathodean being willing to leave civilization for the sake of the Church—but technology is another matter.”

  “I thought they ought to be able to keep some link to reality,” Lona agreed. “And the only place they could do that, without it leaking out to the whole society, is inside the walls of a monastery.”

  “How pure and altruistic of you,” Whitey muttered.

  Lona shrugged. “I just have fun with computers, Grandpa.”

  “Well, enjoy it while you can,” Whitey sighed. “I have a notion our new lords and masters aren't going to think too highly of fun—especially your kind.”

  “Yeah, I hadn't thought about the future here.” Dar frowned. “Maybe Horatio and his buddies aren't all that much crackpots.”

  “Things could get rather dull here,” Lona agreed. “That's why, as long as I was on the phone, I got in touch with the Bank of Terra's computer. Grandpa, and had all your funds transferred to the Bank of Maxima.”

  A delighted grin spread across Whitey's face. “How thoughtful of you, child!”

  Dar frowned. “Maxima? The place that built Fess? He's says it's just a barren piece of rock!”

  “With robot factories,” Lona reminded him, “which includes computer factories. And computer technicians and cybernetics experts, of course—my kind of people.”

  “But I thought you wanted to participate in the life of decadence.”

  “I do, if I can—but if I have to choose between that and toying with circuits and programs, I know where the real fun lies. Besides, Maxima's close to Terra; I might be able to come down for a spree, now and then.”

  “Then why transfer the money there? All of it?”

  “Because Maxima's the one world that might be able to keep the central government from gimmicking its computers,” Lona explained. “That keeps the money intact, not to mention our privacy.”

  “Privacy? You think that'll be threatened?” Dar turned to Whitey, frowning. “You really think it's going to get that bad here?”

  “It's called a police state,” Whitey explained. “I'm sure they intend to include Maxima in it, too—in theory.”

  “But not in practice,” Lona assured him. “At least, not if I have anything to say to the Maxima computers.”

  “A chip off the old bloke, if ever there was one!” Whitey grinned. “Your mama would've said just the same. Well then, if Maxima's where you're bound, we'd better get started.” He pulled out the recall unit and pressed a button. “Should be here, pretty soon.” He turned to Dar. “How about you? Like to lift away from here?”

  “Yes, I would, thank you—very much.”

  “Thought so. You could go back to Wolmar, you know. The LORDS party's been saying for a long time that the frontier worlds cost too much, that we ought to just cut them off and leave 'em to their own devices. Might be some hard times coming out in the marches, but the worlds there should at least keep their freedom.”

  Dar nodded. “I'd thought about that. In fact, I'm pretty sure General Shacklar—our governor—has had that in mind for a while, too. Also Myles Croft, on Falstaff.”

  “Well, I know My's been getting strapped down and ready to go on his own, so I don't doubt your Shacklar has, too. But I take it you're not planning to go back there.”

  Dar frowned. “How'd you figure that out?”

  “ ’Cause if you were, you would've hitched a ride with Horatio and gotten dropped off with Stroganoff. What's the matter? Had a taste of the fleshpots, and decided to stay near 'em?”

  “You've got me pegged,” Dar admitted. “How'd you guess?”

  “Believe it or not, I was young once, myself.”

  “The trick is, believing that he ever aged.” Lona stepped a little closer to Dar, and it seemed to him that he could feel her presence as a physical pressure. And her eyes danced; she was watching him with a smile that was both secretive and amused. “Where were you planning to go?”

  “Someplace,” Dar pronounced, “where I'll never have to hear about that Interstellar Telepathic Conspiracy again.”

  “Yeah, that's a masterstroke of confusion, isn't it?” Whitey chuckled. “I never saw a Big Lie work so well—it even has some of the liars convinced! I love watching a fantasy go out of control.”

  “Oh, it isn't total fantasy,” Dar mused. “There's a grain of substance to it.”

  Whitey gave him a sidelong glance. “You sure about that?”

  “Well, it kinda makes sense, doesn't it?” Dar spread his hands. “With all that fuss and bother, there should've been at least one real telepath at the bottom of it all.”

  “Should've, maybe.” Lona gave him her most skeptical look. “Would've's another matter. When it comes to telepathy, if it doesn't have integrated circuits, I won't believe in it.”

  “Just telepaths?” Dar gave her the skeptical look back. “I would've said that was how you looked at everything.”

  “There's some truth to that,” Lona admitted. “I don't have too much use for dreams, unless someone's trying to make them come true. Telepathy as a dream, now, I can see that—if someone's trying to invent a way to make it happen. Or faster-than-light radio, or maybe even rearranging the bonds in a single molecule, to make it into a complete electronic circuit.”

  Dar's skeptical look turned into a fish-eye. “That's your idea of a dream?”

  “Well, the only ones that I'd talk about in public.” She had the amused, secretive look back, and her eyes transfixed him. “Don't you have any?”

  Dar frowned, and his gaze drifted away, out toward the stark, cruel sharpness of the lunar plain. “No . . . I'm a little low on them, right now. I'll settle for getting away from Terra while I can.”

  A bulbous, pitted, teardrop fell from the starfield and drifted down, settling over the boarding-tube the Brave New World had used. Sensing a ship, it lifted and quested, homing automatically on the airlock, probing and touching tentatively, then locking tight.

  “Fess's here,” Whitey announced. “Let's go get safe, younglings.”

  They stepped into the drop-tube and came out into the concourse. No one talked as they walked the quarter-mile to the gate; each was wrapped in his own thoughts, realizing that he or she was leaving Terra forever. Though Lona was making plans about how to be able to come back for visits, safely; that was her only real concern with the planet. She'd been raised between the stars, after all; to her, Mother Earth had always been only an extravagant relative, to visit when you wanted a treat. Dar had never been to Terra before, and didn't particularly care to visit again; but Whitey had been born and reared on Manhome. Memories were here, many of them; but for him, now, the triune goddess had shifted; Hecate had ceased to be either mother or lover, and had become the murderess. If he came back to her arms, he would die. The children didn't know that, because they didn't know what he was planning to do; but he did.

  They stepped into the gate's lift-tube, and drifted up through the airlock, into Fess's familiar frayed interior. “Ah, home,” Whitey sighed, “or what passes for it these days. . . . Fess, get me a shot of real Scotch, will you? I'd like it to go with the view as we leave.”

&
nbsp; “Certainly, Mr. Tambourin. Lona? Dar?”

  “Vermouth would be nice, right now,” Dar mused.

  “Water,” Lona said firmly, “at least, until we're on our way.” She dropped into her acceleration couch and webbed herself in. Dar sank down on the couch next to hers. The bar chimed softly, and he popped back up to fetch the drinks. “No, stay put, Whitey.”

  The bard settled back down into the couch behind Dar's with a grateful sigh. He stretched the webbing across his body and locked it in, then accepted the shot glass from Dar absentmindedly as he gazed at the viewscreen and its image of Terra, huge against the stars.

  “What course shall I set?” Fess asked softly.

  “Moment of decision,” Lona said to Dar. “Where do you want to go?”

  Dar looked deeply into her eyes. She held his gaze, hers unwavering. Her pupils seemed to grow larger, larger. . . .

  “Wherever you're going,” Dar said softly.

  She sat still, very still.

  Then she said, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Dar said, “very.”

  Then they were still again, gazes locked.

  Whitey cleared his throat and said, a little too loudly, “Well, you know how it is, Fess—when you're young, and all that.”

  “There are references to it in my data banks,” the voice agreed.

  “You go off to your own little dream world,” Whitey explained, “even though you think you're staying in the real one. You get wrapped up in romance for a while, and you don't really relate all that well to what's going on around you.”

  “Similar to an artificially induced alteration in consciousness?”

  “Well, that's what the drugs are trying to imitate, yeah—but you know how much an imitation's worth. Still, when they do get involved in the real thing, they're out of touch for a while, and it's up to us old folk to hold things together till they come out of their trances.”

  “How do you intend to hold things together, Mr. Tambourin?”

  “Oh, just bumming around the Terran Sphere for a while, drifting and roaming, same as I've always done, singing innocent, apolitical songs—and gradually working my way out to Wolmar.”