Exodus to the Stars

by Andreas Brandhorst

  The engineers applauded. Paronn and his Chronicler clapped as well.

  Deshan lowered his eyes and looked out at the blue-white planet above the Moon's horizon. The cradle of humanity, threatened by ice: a spaceship created by nature that circled its sun and with it traveled around the center of the Galaxy. How many other planets were there out there, companions of distant stars?

  He turned his head in surprise when Paronn laid a hand on his shoulder. The engineers had left the Observatory and they were alone.

  "You seem rather thoughtful."

  Deshan nodded. "I caught myself envying the colonists who will reach faraway worlds in the distant future. Who knows what will await them there, what they will see ... "

  Paronn's expression changed. "We are both standing at merely the beginning, Deshan," he said slowly. "We still have a long, long road in front of us, and we will see more than you can imagine today."

  38

  Deshan Apian

  Lemuria, 4621 dT (51,779 B.C.)

  Anunna was enormous and filled nearly the entire sky. Its ring system seemed close enough to touch, surprising Deshan with its multi-colored variety. But as awesome and beautiful as the view might be, a certain tension marked the mood on board the small, six-wheeled transporter as it rolled over the surface of the moon with humming electric motors. Stretching out around them was a rugged landscape of rock, stone, and gravel. It reminded Deshan of the red planet Lahmu that he had visited twice in the past. Nothing lived here and everything was untouched—or so it seemed.

  Yet someone had been here. Someone who did not come from Lemur.

  "It isn't far now," said the man at the controls. His name was Mandao. He belonged to the scientific team at the research station that the Spaceflight Solidarity had maintained on this moon of Anunna for some months. They had left the base just an hour before and had covered about thirty kilometers. "The cleft up ahead leads into the crater where we found the artifact."

  Deshan looked out the window. While it was night in this part of the moon, Anunna's light was enough to discern details. A portion of the crater wall had collapsed, and a V-shaped opening allowed entry inside.

  Sitting next to the driver, Paronn examined a two-dimensional depiction of the artifact. Deshan looked over his shoulder and saw a column black as the night rearing up among some rocks.

  Black as the spacesphere that had appeared in the Apsu system sixty-one years before and destroyed three spacecraft.

  "And the object didn't react when you approached it?" Paronn asked.

  "No." Mandao now had to concentrate fully on steering the transporter. The six wheels rolled slowly over large and small chunks of rock. Some of them broke under the weight of the vehicle, which then abruptly tipped. The stabilizers hummed again and again.

  "What is it in your opinion?" Deshan inquired.

  "I'm not entirely sure," Paronn replied. "I have to see the artifact with my own eyes."

  The transporter lurched through the cleft, past the rocky walls that had been created by a meteor impact millennia before. Soon after that, they reached the interior of the crater. It was about a kilometer in diameter, with a floor that proved to be amazingly smooth. Gravel lay only at the edge, and in one place ...

  The object was like a black finger pointing accusingly towards Anunna. Deshan estimated its height to be at least three meters, and its diameter at its thickest point about eighty centimeters; the artifact tapered a little towards its upper end.

  The transporter stopped in front of the rocks where the object stood. A short time later, three figures in spacesuits emerged from the vehicle and approached the object. Deshan took care with each step since in the moon's slight gravity even he could have made leaps of several meters.

  They carefully proceeded past clay-yellow and rust-brown rocks, approached the artifact, and then stood just in front of it.

  For an entire minute no one said a word. The object seemed to consist of metal, and its surface was completely smooth with no markings, not even a scratch. As to its artificial origin, there was no doubt—it would be impossible for a naturally formed object to look like this.

  Finally Paronn reached out his hand and touched the artifact.

  Nothing happened.

  But Deshan saw Paronn's face go pale behind his helmet visor and abruptly turn around. "Let's go back."

  During the return trip to the research station, Paronn spent most of the time staring silently out the window. Deshan asked him several questions, but Paronn gave only one-syllable, evasive answers. Just before they reached the base, he leaned forward. "I urgently need to speak to the station chief," he told Mandao. "As soon as we arrive."

  The driver nodded, made radio contact with the base, and passed on Paronn's instructions.

  Ten minutes later, they were sitting in the office of the station chief, Enno Fardan. The mature, tall, and gangling man with a wreath of silver-gray hair sat at a round table in the center of the room and stood up as Paronn and Deshan entered.

  "Please sit down," he said.

  "Do you have explosives on hand here?" Paronn asked as he took a seat. "Can you provide me with a bomb?"

  Fardan arched his brows only momentarily. He seemed to be someone who was not so easily shaken out of his composure. "I suggest that you first explain the situation."

  Paronn nodded. "First of all, though, I should thank you for letting us know."

  "I am a friend of the Star Seekers. And I know that you requested that all of the outlying stations—yours as well as those of the Spaceflight Solidarity—to report anything unusual. The artifact seemed to me unusual enough."

  Deshan looked briefly out the window. Outside, on the base's landing field, stood a small interplanetary spacecraft that Paronn used for flights to the Star Seekers' bases around the outer planets. Bases whose crews worked closely with the Spaceflight Solidarity's stations. They had been established to provide help for Exodus ships in case of incidents during their critical acceleration phase. G-force absorbers, artificial gravity, and powerful engines could shorten trips that formerly took weeks or months to hours or a few days.

  "The Solidarity is also sending a ship," Fardan added. "It will arrive here tomorrow."

  "Do you know how long the artifact has been in the crater?" Paronn asked.

  "No. We only found it by chance a few days ago.

  Some dark suspicions formed in Deshan's mind. "Do you think it has a connection with the Enemy?"

  "Yes," Paronn said. "I think the artifact is a kind of relay station that receives signals and passes them on by hypercom."

  "Hypercom?" Enno Fardan echoed in surprise.

  "Signals that are faster than light," Paronn explained reluctantly, giving Deshan the momentary impression that he regretted having said too much. "I'm afraid that the relay station receives signals from probes and transmits them further."

  "To whom?" Fardan asked.

  "To the beings who came here sixty-one years ago in the spacesphere." Paronn took a deep breath. "Perhaps this way the Enemy was able to learn the course data of the thirty-three Exodus ships that have set out so far. That would be an unimaginable catastrophe."

  Suddenly Deshan understood why Paronn had been so alarmed. Hundreds of thousands of colonists who had set out in the generation ships to take the human species to the stars and ensure its survival ... Perhaps they had all flown to their deaths!

  "It's also conceivable that the relay station stores the data it receives and transmits it only when a second Enemy ship enters this solar system. Therefore the artifact must be destroyed immediately!"

  "But from what probes is this supposed relay station receiving signals?" Fardan asked. "We haven't noticed anything."

  Paronn pointed out the window to Anunna's rings. "It would be easy to conceal small detection stations there. Neberu's ring system is also a possibility. Would your instruments be able to detect a satellite two meters long in the myriads of rock and ice chunks out there?"

  "I dou
bt that very much," Fardan admitted.

  "Do you have explosives?" Paronn asked, repeating his original question. "Or can you suggest some other way of destroying that object?"

  "We have all the chemicals necessary for making an explosive," the station chief said. "But there are also ... political aspects in this matter."

  Deshan had wanted to bring that up himself, and left it to Fardan to elaborate on the background.

  "For the first time in its history, humanity is confronted with an object that is very obviously made by another intelligence. As a result, it is incalculably precious. The decision as to what to do with it belongs to the Great Solidarity. The thirteen Solidarity Tamans of the Coordinating Council as representatives of the entire human race. If the Star Seekers destroy the artifact before the Great Solidarity's scientists have an opportunity to examine it, it could lead to considerable tension between you and the Solidarity Tamans."

  Paronn opened his mouth but Deshan spoke before he could.

  "He's right," he said. "We should wait until the Solidarity ship arrives. Just one day. We've been sending Exodus ships to the stars for sixty years. One day more surely won't make a difference."

  Paronn struggled with himself for a few seconds. "Very well," he said finally. "One day."

  The Great Solidarity's ship was commanded by Talia Tali. She was a strikingly young and, for her age, very calm and collected woman who represented an unusual mixture of adventurousness and common sense. She seemed to wear bulky coveralls all the time and could not resist the opportunity to fly the scout herself. It was a small auxiliary craft equipped with one of the new antigrav generators whose development originated with the Star Seekers' technological innovations. The scout glided along the moon's landscape and made considerably faster progress than the transporter that Mandao had driven.

  "There's the cleft," said Paronn, sitting in the co-pilot's seat and pointing to the V in the crater wall.

  Talia guided the scout through the opening and landed where the tracks left by the transporter stopped. A minute later, Paronn and Deshan were outside, wearing spacesuits, and approaching the rocks.

  A surprise waited for them.

  The black artifact was no longer there.

  Where it had stood the day before, there was now only an empty gap between the rocks.

  Deshan heard Paronn mutter a curse. "Sometimes a day does make a difference!"

  "How could the artifact disappear?" Deshan asked as they sat in the control center of the LEMURIA, the small interplanetary ship in which he and Paronn had flown to the ringed planet Anunna. They had already reached Neberu's orbit and were approaching Zeut. In a few hours they would reach the Lemur-Suen system. "It didn't have a propulsion system, did it?"

  "Not a visible one," Paronn said, checking the readouts. "But that doesn't mean anything. Perhaps it was picked up. Or it floated away on an antigrav field. Or it went into a null transfer."

  Deshan looked at Paronn, who seemed so much younger than himself. At length he repeated a question he had asked him 100 years before exactly. "Who are you? Hypercom. Null transfer ... You speak of things that no one but you understands. You know about the Enemy even though no one has seen him yet. You even understood his language! Who are you?"

  Paronn sighed and again Deshan heard a certain tiredness that had struck him once before.

  "Do you think I am Vehraáto?"

  "Many people are convinced of it."

  "What about you?"

  Deshan hesitated. "You are immortal. And when the First shot at you that time, she couldn't kill you."

  "A protective force field prevented the bullets from reaching me. And as for my immortality ... " Like Deshan, Paronn was not wearing a spacesuit. He opened his jacket, reached under his shirt ...

  What he produced was a Cell Activator that looked almost exactly like the device that gave the Chronicler relative immortality.

  "I am immortal the same way you are," Paronn said.

  "Actually, I never considered you to really be the returned Twelfth Hero," Deshan replied. "Myths can be very powerful—who knows that better than a Chronicler?—and you used that for your purposes. That's one more reason to ask: who are you?"

  This time Paronn smiled, and his gray eyes twinkled. "I am Levian Paronn. I have come to ... "

  "Yes, to take the children of Lemur to the stars and ensure the survival of humanity," Deshan said. "I know all that. You've said it often enough. But who are you really?"

  Paronn looked out the forward window into the blackness of space. Zeut had already grown from a point to a small disc and continued to swell. Beyond it waited Lahmu and Lemur. The gas giants of the Apsu system lay far behind the LEMURIA.

  "When I consider that the Enemy really could know the courses of our thirty-three Exodus ships ... " Paronn said. "They wouldn't have the slightest chance against him. All the effort, all the sacrifices, all the many years ... utterly in vain. And who knows ... when he decides to return here, perhaps with an entire fleet ... We have to push Project Exodus ahead even faster. The next ships, Deshan, will change their course as soon as they leave the Apsu system."

  For some time, the two men listened to the humming of the engine and the whispering of the life-support systems as they came so close to Zeut that they could see its cloud patterns.

  "I've worked for you as a Chronicler for nearly 120 years," Deshan said. "Don't you think I've earned a little honesty?"

  "More than that. You've earned answers to all your questions. But I can't tell you everything. Small things are often enough to have an enormous effect. I have already changed a great deal, but that was unavoidable because the survival of the Lemurians is at stake. That is more important than everything else, and for that we must be prepared to pay any price. I have ... sacrificed a part of the future."

  Paronn looked at Deshan and as in the research station on Anunna's moon, the Chronicler had the impression that he was struggling with himself. Deshan felt on the verge of falling into a deep abyss in which a terrible truth awaited him, and suddenly he was no longer certain he really wanted to know.

  Finally Paronn came to a decision. "A stone that someone tosses into calm water creates waves and causes changes. Words can produce waves in the lake of reality. The more information the words contain and the more significant the information is, the greater the waves. I could tell you stories that are more fantastic than anything you have ever heard and read, and I am well aware that as a Chronicler you know many stories—the Tower of Truth in Marroar is full of them. But certain things should not be known because they would change too much and could injure the children of Lemur. That's why I'm asking again for your trust, Deshan. I assure you that I am devoting all my strength to the good of our people."

  "I believe you," Deshan said. He was relieved and disappointed at the same time. "I've come to know you too well to believe anything else. You are not Vehraáto, but neither are you a simple Lemurian."

  "Perhaps I am the Herald as I told you nearly a hundred years ago in the Proclamate of Marroar." Paronn smiled at those words, but his smile was crooked, almost a little melancholy.

  "I understand. A man half-way between an ordinary man and the Twelfth Hero."

  "A ... reasonable description." Paronn looked out the window again. "Well, I can tell you one thing, and it is only right and proper that you know. Have you ever wondered why I took you into my service as a Chronicler?"

  "Vanity?"

  Paronn laughed. "Many people believe so, but you certainly don't. You know I'm not vain."

  "Then why?"

  "You have every reason to be proud, Deshan. The stories that you tell about me and us will reach a distant future and tell it of the exodus of generations. Your recordings will be on board the last Exodus ship that sets out for the stars."

  39

  Jorgal

  This was the world of the songs of the machines, the true world, a world without Uncertainties and without pain. Memerek was with him, and Darhel with
the heavy head full of knowledge, and little Alahandra, and the Mother of Machines, for whom Jorgal had always yearned. This was the world of his dreams, which had become reality, which had completely taken him in, letting his thoughts and feelings grow beyond the boundaries of the physical. Jorgal floated in a sphere that brought him fulfillment and gave him happiness, surrounded by songs in which there were no longer any dissonances. And while he was still occupied with straightening the last bent lines of the shape-echoes and giving the symphony, that had been the song of chaos, a thoroughly harmonic structure, he suddenly realized that songs were disappearing at the edge of his perception. As a result, new discordant notes were being heard in the symphony.

  "What's happening?" he asked.

  The fire that big Alahandra started is destroying machines, replied the melody named Darhel.

  "The symphony is ... breaking apart!"

  I have seen, heard, and helped, spoke another melody, and Jorgal thought he could see the face of a girl among the undulating geometrical forms. An oval where otherwise there were only straight lines. The lifeforms have reached safety.

  We are dying, Memerek said gently, and Jorgal's memory showed him big green eyes. Our bodies are dead and now our souls are dying, too. Our songs are fading away.

  "No!"

  Perhaps we still have one last chance, sang Darhel. The base has only a few more seconds left, and its destruction also means the end of big Alahandra. She is the one who brought us together. Without her, we would break apart and ... go silent. If we concentrate her energy ...

  Jorgal perceived excitement.

  Can you let me have control? the Darhel-song asked. Little Alahandra, you who have seen and heard ... Show me the way to the base's transmitters.

  Jorgal continued to float in the world of machines. He feared nothing more except for being torn out of it and returning to the other world, filled with pain and Uncertainties. He felt things happening around him, and with growing horror heard more songs dying away, and not only in the distance. Holes appeared in the symphony that he had created from the song of chaos. Silent holes without a single note.