Starfarers (39 page)

“You don’t have the instincts for them we do,” Brent added under his breath. “So you’d have a lot more trouble containing any that did break out. And just getting together some killers—unthinkable. Too bad … for you.”

“(You and I and associates of yours such as Peter have touched on these matters before, of course,)” he said. “(What I want to make clear tonight is that certain of
us
don’t wish to stay. I want to start your side and mine thinking how to bring departure about.)”
Never mind why I picked this exact time for it
. “(This begins with uniting in our purpose and agreeing on what will be acceptable.)”

“(Can we prevail over your dedicated scientists?)”

“(I believe so, if we have important things to bring back in this ship. Then lingering will become—)” No word for treason. “(—an actual disservice to our race.)”

Leo sat sphinx-alert. “(I suspect what you have in mind.)”

“(Yes. Your science and technology. The mighty capabilities of your planetary engineering. The field drive.)” To go with the robots captured in the star cluster. Study of them had by now revealed potentialities that Brent did not discuss.

“(It has been observed before that humans may well have developed these things for themselves.)”

“(Perhaps, perhaps not. You have your own viewpoint on the universe. Besides, your desires have conditioned the research and engineering you have done.)”

“(True. I have heard of superiorities you possess, notably in artificial intelligence and in … lethal instrumentalities.)”

“(Capabilities mean power.)”

The mane flattened. “(More ships of yours could seek us out.)”

“(Not if a leader forbade, a leader with power. He would have better things for his followers to do.)”

“(Stability, enduring purpose, does not appear to be possible to your race.)”

“(We shall see. At the very least, if you get rid of us you will have fourteen thousand of your years in peace; and first I
could suggest defenses, safeguards, to you.)” Brent leaned forward. “(I want to make liaison with your group. We’ll find ways to work together. We’ll bend the future to our will.)”

A rainstorm
turned evening into early night. Water dashed against windows and sluiced shimmering down them. Wind skirled. Sometimes lightning flared and thunder crashed. Interior illumination focused like an antique lamp on the desk where Sundaram studied his notes, as if he sat in a cave. It helped him concentrate. He needed the help.

The door opened. He looked up. Yu stepped through, closing the door behind her while a gust tried to seize it. Sundaram sprang to his feet. “Wenji!” he cried gladly. “Where have you been? Two days without a word—”

He went to her. She stood where she was. Water dripped off the hooded poncho, down to the floor. She did not look straight at him, but beyond. “With Esther.” Her tone was flat.

“The physicist? I was becoming worried about you.” He attempted geniality. “Well, you were in fascinating company, I’m sure.”

She remained silent. He looked beneath the hood at her face. Dim though the light was, he saw that the drops along her cheekbones were not rain. “What is wrong?” he whispered.

“I have solved the equation.”

“Equation?”

“With Esther’s help. En led me through the mathematics. I had to go through it. In mere words—” Her voice broke. “How could I have believed? I wouldn’t dare. Esther was appalled, too. She had not realized, either. It is not something that is taught to students.”

He regarded her for a moment longer. The wind hooted. “Come, darling,” he said low. “Sit down. Rest.” He helped her doff the poncho, hung it up, and guided her to the table where they shared medals and played games when they were alone. Passive, she took the seat he drew back for her.

He flicked a thumb at the culinator. “I have a pot of tea
there,” he offered. “Or would you prefer something stronger?”

Now she met his eyes. A kind of tenderness trembled in her speech. “Just you. Please come be with me.”

He brought his chair around beside hers and lowered himself to it. When he took her hand, it was colder than the weather outside. He cradled it.

As if drawing strength from the clasp, she told him quietly, “We are a menace to creation.”

Seldom before had she seen him amazed. “No, how? The universe? We, less than dust motes?” Lightning set a window ablaze. Darkness clapped black down. Thunder went like monstrous wheels.

She drew breath and now talked rapidly, as if rattling off a litany. “You recall the theory. When the universe formed, the big bang, that first great quantum leap was not to the lowest energy level, the ground state. It stopped higher up, like an electron falling into one of the outer possible orbits around a nucleus. The unspent energy, the substrate, we borrow from it for our zero-zero drive.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “But the state is metastable, isn’t it?” He shaped a smile. “After all, billions of years have gone by, and we are still here.”

“The state can change. Collapse, fall down. Spontaneously, randomly, at any time, any point.” Her voice went thin. “A sphere of nothingness, expanding from that point at the speed of light, swallowing stars, galaxies, life—blotting them out—the past itself annulled, and we not only cease to be, we never
were.
”

“It hasn’t happened yet,” he said as soothingly as might be.

“It may already have happened somewhere. It may be on its way to us. We’ll never know.”

“Darling,” he argued, desperately reasonable, “Olivares explained this five thousand years ago. I have read that for a while there was a certain amount of hysteria about it. But the probability is so tiny. Isn’t it unlikely to happen until long after the last star has burned out? Or, yes, if I remember rightly, the last proton has disintegrated?”

She clenched her teeth. “We raise the chance,” she said.

His grip slackened. “I was afraid of that. My chatter—” He sighed. “I was trying to stave the sentence off. I am a coward.”

Warmth surged in her. “No! You’re as brave as anybody, Ajit, more than most, brave enough to be serene.”

“I can grow terribly afraid for you. … Say on.”

She had become able to talk evenly. “The grand basic equation of the Tahirian physicists isn’t quite identical with ours, even after all the terms have been translated. And this particular solution of it is not at all obvious. It is what Hanny would call very tricky. But the result is that exchange of energy back and forth between substrate and universe—the zero-zero process—is destabilizing.”

“No, surely—” he protested. “How many millions of star crossings have there been, in how many billions of galaxies?”

Her tone grew weary. “Oh, yes, the change in probabilities is minute. I haven’t learned the measure of it. But I have learned that starfaring increases the danger. It’s one reason the Tahirians stopped, That was so long ago, and the point is so esoteric, that few today have ever heard of it, and they shun discussion of it even among themselves. It’s as if they have a sense of ancestral guilt.”

He sat mute. Rain slashed, wind keened.

“Can we take the risk on ourselves?” he wondered at last. “
May
we?”

“That is the question.”

“How certain is this?”

“I don’t know. I’m at the limit of my mathematics and physics. If Esther has a better idea, it’s not something en can make clear to me. We’ll have to wait till Hanny gets back and follows the proof herself.” Bleakly: “If that isn’t the voyage that triggers the downfall.”

“It won’t,” he declared.

“It mustn’t.” She shuddered.

He released her hand and laid his arm around her shoulders. “You’ve had a downfall of your own, dearest,” he murmured.
“A dreadful intellectual shock. Let me get some food into you, and a sedative to sleep on. Things will look brighter tomorrow.”

“I hope so. The stars—life, beauty, love, meaning—”

She clutched at him. They held each other close, taking what they could while they could.

Year five.

The first snow lay crisp around the landing field. It sparkled white, blue in its hollows, broken by shrubs which it dusted with diamond. Air rested cold and still. The folk at Terralina could not see
Envoy
as a spark in orbit through this dazzle, but they clustered at one edge of the pavement, and when another gleam appeared above them, they cheered.

The Tahirian spaceboat bearing the returned explorers descended smoothly. Cleland and Kilbirnie could stand in a compartment, shut off from the world, hearing merely a low thrum, feeling merely a faint shiver.

“Well,” he ventured after silence had become unendurable. Then he could not go on.

He heard the sympathy: “I’m sorry, Tim. I know what you mean to ask, and I have to say no.”

“Not even … a good-bye time … just once, after all these days in the d-damned gimbal dorms, crawling along on jets?”

“I told you at the outset how it would be.”

His shoulders slumped. “Yes, you did.”

“Maybe I should have said it oftener.”

“No, I was glad you didn’t I could pretend.” Cleland raised his head. “Well, let me thank you for what you gave me.”

“I wish I could go on giving it.”

“But.”

“Yes, but.”

After a while, she said, looking straight at him though he kept dropping his glance and lifting it again: “I should have been stronger, Tim. I should have curbed myself that first time. Or if it had to happen, I should have stopped straightaway afterward. But I couldn’t bear to hurt you. Now I must, and beg your forgiveness.”

He achieved a smile of sorts. “I hope you weren’t just being kind to me.”

She smiled back. “I enjoyed it.” Sober: “I even wondered if something more might grow between us. But the expedition was all we shared, really. You deserve better.” She took his hands. They lay passive in hers. “Fare you always well.”

“And you,” he mumbled.

She kissed him lightly, stepped back before he could respond, and felt the slight thud as the boat set down. Her smile flashed full. “Now, my fere,” she said, “let’s go out and put a good face on things. You did conduct one glorious explore. I’m sure you’ll do your next one likewise.”

Slipping out into a passage cluttered with gear and people, she grabbed her personal bags. He stayed behind, in no hurry to debark.

A gangway extruded like a tongue from an open airlock to the ground. Kilbirnie bounded its length and over the paving. Nansen stood ahead of his crew. “Welcome home!” he called.

She dropped her load and dashed to him. “Oh, skipper, what you radioed to us inbound—might we go on from here? To more discovering?”

“We might.” The sky was less blue than her eyes. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d love it, skipper. And so would you.”

Hands linked and tightened. They stood where they were. The others held back, forgotten.

Nor did anyone immediately seek Dayan when she went down the gangway. Her gaze traveled over the group and came to rest on Zeyd and Mokoena, side by side. Very slowly, Mokoena nodded. Zeyd seemed half abashed. Dayan
waved at everybody. Thereafter Sundaram, Yu, and Ruszek met her. She exchanged a hug with the engineer, handshakes with the men. Ruszek took her bags. She went over to Mokoena and Zeyd. A few words passed. Dayan threw an arm around either and held them for a minute.

Cleland and Brent descended together. They said the greetings and received the good wishes. When all were walking toward the settlement, Brent drew Cleland aside.

“Tim,” he muttered, “we’ve got to talk, first chance we get at some privacy. This lunacy about the black hole—”

“I don’t know anything except what was in the captain’s message to us.” A minim of life roused in Cleland. “It’s like a scientific miracle.”

“If it is a miracle,” Brent said, “then it’s the kind that could make me believe in Satan.”

Piece by
piece during the sojourn, the dwellers in Terralina had decorated their meeting hall as they had done their common room aboard
Envoy
. Tonight the bright colors, mural panels of Earth scenes, and kinetic figures were obscured by festoons and spangles. Music rollicked from speakers. The robots had set a table with white napery, crystal, and the noblest menu in their programs. After a time of rest, recollection, and reacquaintance, this was the reunion celebration.

It became a curious mingling of festivity and formality, moodiness not always quite concealed, mirth not always quite restrained. There were toasts, little speeches, and the songs that had gotten to be traditional on special occasions. Although complete reports lay in the database and individuals had talked with each other, viewshows followed. Zeyd presented the most attractive scenery and interesting life-forms encountered on Tahir; Nansen showed views from its sister planets and the engineering works upon them; Dayan discussed her astrophysical findings, with spectacular images of the pulsar, taken by robots that would continue to transmit for many decades; Cleland doggedly described the world he had studied.

(He did not dwell on the near disaster there, and made no mention of its aftermath. But, “
Dios misericordioso
,” Nansen whispered to Kilbirnie, seated beside him, “we almost lost you,” and, “I almost lost you,” she whispered back.)

Things livened when the program was over, the robots had cleared away the table, and it was time to dance.

The four women duly circulated among the six men. Presently Dayan joined Ruszek. That number was the swirl, for separate couples. They undulated across the floor, one hand clasping the partner’s, his other on her waist and hers on his shoulder. The music sang low and easy, composed for intimacy.

“Ah-h,” she murmured, “I appreciate this, Lajos. You’re nimble on your feet.”

He beamed. “
Köszönöm szépen
. Thank you very much.” His glance flickered to Cleland and Brent, with whom she had gone the previous two rounds. They stood at the sideboard drinking and desultorily talking. Remarks would have been tactless. He did attempt modesty. “You’re better, though. And, uh, I hear the captain is an expert.”