Harvest of Stars (40 page)

His smile flowed across her. “Well, then this nightwatch I bear no title. Shall we be simply ourselves?”

If you wanted a mythic likening, how about Krishna?

A
BREEZE BLEW
cool. A few of the leaves that it rustled on a birch had yellowed and the green of the rest begun to fade. As if defiant, sunflowers nearby raised golden blooms high above fescue growing wild. The year of Ragaranji-Go was moving toward autumn. Beyond waited the gentle winter.

Eiko wondered what it would be like to live on a world where seasons and weather had not been tamed, even to the degree that they were on Earth. Those must have been awesome powers, for a ghost of them lingered to this day in the forced cycles and carefully bounded random variations of the orbiting colony. So much life that it sheltered needed them for well-being. Did also the human spirit?

She passed the torii gate and came into the presence of the Tree. Three persons were there already, silent as people were wont to be when first they entered its shadows. She didn’t know them. That in itself meant nothing; but could they be Sepo, civilian-clad off duty, here to behold the marvel? She might watch a while and see how
they handled themselves at half a gravity. No, that could draw their attention to her in turn. Let her be only a woman walking by. It should actually be easier to hide her fears from them than from somebody who recognized her. Of course, her friends were aware that she had frequented this place since childhood. Nevertheless—She rounded the mighty bole and mounted the ladder, aiming to be out of sight before the visitors strolled beneath.

At the third resting stage she dared stop and catch her breath. It wheezed noisily. Her mouth and throat were dry, her body shook a bit, reminders that she was no longer quite young. She drank from the canteen at her belt, rested hands on the platform rail, and opened herself to calmness.

At this height were the lowest boughs, still sparse. Three meters beneath her, they supported the first of the several safety nets. More for protection against falling cones and branches than to catch climbers who lost their hold—trained spacefolk hardly ever would—its mesh was arachnite, strong enough to take an impact but thin; she could look through it, down into dusk. Above, multitudinous vaultings lifted ruddy, green, shadowy, luminous, upward beyond sight. Warmth dwelt in the bark, fragrance and a gathering mistiness in the air. A hawk skimmed by. A robot crept along the trunk in search of disease, lesions, any trouble not human. It looked like a beetle, dog-sized, with extra legs and feelers. It too belonged.

When she had her strength back Eiko went on. The ascent she made was too much for most persons. She didn’t mind. Physical strain, whatever aches it brought, those were benedictions, surcease from the sickness that gripped the outer levels of her worldlet. The very sameness of rung after rung after rung, broken just by platforms and, thrice, relief stations with emergency telephones: it let her lose herself in an infinite variety of bough and twig, needles and cones, silence and soughing, life and light.

Beyond the topmost net, the ladder gave on a final stage and came to an end. Overhead were more intricacies of great, closely growing limbs. One that sprouted a few
meters below her slanted toward them. Eiko rested until she felt ready, then sprang down to it. She fell as softly through the thin air as an autumn leaf. Gauging the jump wasn’t hard for a person who was born to Coriolis force. Rough bark and occasional offshoots gave ample purchase for a body that weighed a few kilos to scamper upward, past the platform and close to a higher branch. To that one she leaped, caught a slender shoot, and crawled on top. Thence it was an easy scramble onward. When she reached the limb she wanted, she moved more cautiously, balanced against a whirl of whickering little winds, out over its massiveness to a triple fork.

She was by no means the sole colonist who made expeditions of this illegal kind; but they who did were rare and seldom spoke of it. For years none had disturbed her in the retreat she had discovered. After all, unlike her, others came this far for the sake of adventure, not peace.

The fork and its lesser branches formed a loose-knit room with broad crotches on which to rest, walls and roof of green, open on the far side. Less thick here than at its base, the main stem swayed slightly to the winds, a thrumming went through it, needle-rich twigs shifted and swished, glimpses of empty air danced among them. Forward beyond it, vapors drifted across pale blue, lighted by a sun that was not a disc but a ring around the mouth of this well. The ground lay dizzyingly far below, but the forest that was the Tree barred sight of it.

Eiko reached past three cones, drew Guthrie from his concealment, and settled him securely. She bowed before she knelt, legs together, hands on lap, facing him. It was an incongruous pose in sweatsuit and deck shoes, but she trusted he knew what she meant.

The flickering illumination made his lenses look eerily alive. “Hello,” he said. “You’ve been a while. Trouble?”

“Not for me, sir,” she replied in the same English. (No, not the same; his went back generations.) “I simply think that coming often would be hazardous. But I must inform you today that new contingents of Security Police have arrived. They are searching the colony from end to end.

We are not told what they seek, except for vague announcements about possible sabotage devices, but it is clear to me. I dare do nothing they might notice.”

“Reinforcements?” he growled. “End to end? Yeah, my other self has okayed it. He’s got a pretty good hunch I’m somewhere in L-5—gone to earth, so to speak.”

“I am sorry to have left you for such a time, sir,” she offered. “How have you been?”

“Bored.”

“I am sorry,” she repeated, while thinking that she would not have been. To rest without hunger or thirst or any need of motion, amidst sky and Tree!

“I’m grumpy too,” he said. “Why are you this passive? You were plenty bold, snatching me out of space. Now do you mean you haven’t made any further effort, haven’t even talked in private to a few reliable people?”

She shook her head. A third apology would be servile, but she kept her answer soft. “I told you my father is a hostage. In a sense, a very real sense, all this nation is. A battle could let the vacuum in.”

“I wouldn’t want that. God, no! I was thinking about—maybe just getting somebody to the Moon to find out what went wrong there and pass the word on.” Guthrie’s voice dropped low. “And I worry about you, lass. If we wait, they’re bound to find me, and they won’t need much wit to figure out you were involved. What about you?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Eiko said, quiet in her heart. “Perhaps your other self is enough like you that he will understand and order me forgiven. In any case, they will have no reason to punish my father or friends, will they? Indeed, that could reveal the truth, which they fear.”

He made a harsh noise and: “How long till the Sepo get up here?”

“It will be some daycycles yet, I believe. The colony is so big, so complex, a labyrinth. I have been trying to think how I can convey you to a place they have already searched.”

“Good girl. Still, we can’t play hide-and-seek forever.”

“No. But while you remain free we have hope for an
opportunity, a change in circumstances.” Her calm broke. “Let there be hope, Guthrie-san!” she cried. “If they destroy you—”

He sounded unshaken. “I’m not scared on my account. However, it’d be too bad for folks like you.”

Insight came, not as a revelation but as the foreseen conclusion to many hours of pondering. “Fireball,” Eiko breathed, “those who live by it and trust you, is that what you exist for?”

He held his tone matter-of-fact, as if to discount his meaning. “What else is there? Oh, this is an interesting universe and I have my fun, but I am in a thin kind of survival. Without Fireball, not a hell of a lot of point in continuing.”

What an ultimate loneliness, Eiko thought. How could she reach out to him? It was the single meager thing she might be able to do this day. She fell silent, seeking an utterance. The wind whittered, the Tree murmured. “Why does it matter this much to you?” she asked finally.

He did not tell her to mind her own business. Was he glad to respond? “Well, Juliana—my wife and I, we founded it and made it grow. Our baby.”

“You had real children, no?”

“Oh, yes. They grew up, though, and set off into their separate lives. We got along fine with them, enjoyed the grandkids, but Fireball was what we kept for ourselves.”

No doubt he felt grateful to her, despite his complaints, and accorded her a measure of respect, and therefore found her worth talking with like this. Nonetheless Eiko was surprised when he added: “Then Juliana died. I soldiered on.”

“Alone,” she said. Tears stung.

“Don’t feel sorry for me!” he snapped. “I don’t, never did. Running Fireball was fun, taking it out to the ends of the Solar System and looking into how much farther we might go.”

“I see. You did not wish to lose that.”

“When I saw my own time coming?” She imagined a shrug of phantom shoulders. “Well, I’d have to. This isn’t
the original Anson Guthrie here, you know. It’s a program in a box.”

“I meant to say,” she fumbled, “you … cared about … space.” About humankind bound ever onward, discovering, triumphing, outliving the sun and the galaxies, and on the way attaining to enlightenment.

His reply came blunt. “Not exactly. I never was any saint, to sacrifice myself for some grandiose Purpose. Nor was I ever such an egomaniac as to suppose Fireball would immediately go on the rocks once my hand was off the tiller.”

He lay mute for a span. Gently, the Tree rocked him.

“But we were at a crisis,” he said. “Several crises, some technical, some political. For instance, should Fireball continue research and development for interstellar missions? Was that the great, shining goal, or were we pouring our resources down a black hole when they could go to something real? Several governments were trying to get into space in earnest, run their own lines and undertakings. Should we forestall the camel sticking his nose in the tent? If so, how? And how to keep Fireball itself from degenerating into a government?”

As he went on, his voice sank and steadied. “I was an old fart, my endurance gone and my wits growing dull. Best for Fireball, this thing Juliana built with me, best would be if I retired. Unless I could get myself a helper who thought like me, who also wanted to keep her dreams alive. The technology for downloading had become available. Quite a few friends, including descendants of ours, urged me to use it. They claimed they needed this. Maybe they were right. Anyhow, I let them talk me over. None too soon, from their standpoint, because as it happened, shortly after the job was done, I died.”

T
HE HOUSE STOOD
near the western edge of its preserve on Vancouver Island. Behind it and on either side of the lawn reared ancient firs. Before it a path ran down to a dock at the cove. Beyond was ocean. On this late afternoon of summer, clouds stood tall in the east, their billows full of light and blue shadows. Otherwise the sky was clear. A low wind bore coolness from sea to sod; gulls skimmed creaking, amazingly white. Waves outside the cove ran gray and green save where they burned with sun or they foamed and fountained. At their distance the sound of them came as a wild lullaby,
hush-hush-hush
. Afar upon them winged a sailboat.

Here abided a piece of Old Earth. It was expensive to maintain.

The robot left his flitter on the landing strip and strode to the house. He was humanoid, suggestive of a knight in armor—accumulator-powered, not very efficient, but better suited for today than something on wheels or tracks or jets. The verandah drummed beneath his weight. Sheila Quentin heard and opened the door. He stepped into a walnut-paneled anteroom. Though windows were dimmed, a stained-glass panel was in full glow. It pictured Daedalus and Icarus aflight from their prison.

“Welcome,” Quentin said. Her voice strove. “But did you have to come in person?”

“He asked, didn’t he?” the robot replied. His own voice was a vigorous basso but rather flat in tone. He hadn’t had enough practice with it yet.

“Yes, but—” She looked away. “I should think he—well, it’s different with … blood kin. You—excuse me, but why couldn’t you settle for a phone connection?” She looked back, mustering a sad defiance. “Less strain on him.”

The robot regarded her. She had been a handsome woman. The years had not leached all of that from her.

“He wants it this way,” the robot said. “Don’t you understand?”

She sighed. “I know. In many ways he’s a primitive soul. I should have prevented it.”

“Could you have?”

“I tried. He insisted. But he’s so weak—” Her fingers twisted together. “Him that was so strong. I could’ve refused to give you his message or to let him call. But—”

“He would have cursed you. I know.”

“Of course you know.” She raised her eyes to confront his lenses. “I gave in. Do you despise me?”

The robot shook his head. “No. Contrariwise. It wasn’t easy for you. Thanks.”

Her glance went to the staircase. “Better go right on up. He’s had his medicine, but no telling any more how long a dose will work, and the cost gets higher to him each time.”

“Afterward—”

“If there is an afterward, yes, I’ll come say goodbye too.” She swallowed. “But now he wants to be alone.”

“In a way, he does,” the robot agreed.

“If he’d let me hold his hand while you—No!” she nearly shouted. “Go on up!”

The robot mounted the stairs and went down a hall to a bedroom facing west. It was sparsely furnished, with just a few pictures on white walls, but much brighter than below. Windows were open to sky and sea breeze. Draperies fluttered gauzy. In a corner stood a grandfather clock, rebuilt museum piece. Its ticking marched slow beneath the wind.

The robot approached the bed and leaned over. Anson Guthrie looked back at him. Eyes blinked. They were faded, bulwarked by a nose that had jutted like a crag since most flesh shriveled. Lips moved. The robot amplified sound until he could hear that whisper. “Hello.” This also brought in the sighing through the firs and the tumbling of waves as they rolled shoreward from across half the planet.