Starfarers (57 page)

“It’s about your latest observations, isn’t it?” he asked slowly. They had not been quick or easy, she alone out on the hull. Sundaram, Zeyd, and Mokoena lacked skill to help her; she had declined Nansen’s and Yu’s offers, declaring that, slight though the risk might be, the ship could spare neither of them.

She nodded. “Yes. I’ve finished reducing the data.”

He folded his arms and waited. Ventilation rustled, no louder than bloodbeat in ears. At this point of its cycle the air verged on chilly, with an autumnal smell.

“No further room for doubt,” Dayan said. “Starflight in the region of Sol is—has been—decreasing. Steeply. Toward extinction.”

Twilight shielded faces. “It had begun to seem that way,” Nansen murmured.

“We weren’t sure. Statistical fluctuations—Now, though, the tracks I measured this time—” She swallowed. After a second she had forced dryness on her tone. “A total of nineteen. The maximum distance from Sol was fifty-five light-years, plus or minus three. The mean distance was about twenty.”

“Down from sixty-two flights averaging fifty light-years each,” he recalled. “Ten weeks ago.”

“A thousand years ago, star time,” she reminded him, needlessly, desperately.

“And now—no, ‘now’ is meaningless—these wave fronts new to us are twenty-five hundred years old,” he mused. “Human starfaring peaked maybe four thousand years after we left home. Then the ebb set in.”

“Figurative figures,” she said, regaining prosaicism. “I’ll have more exact values in my report.”

Nansen stood mute for a little. The stars gleamed multitudinous in constellations that still were strange to Earth. “Do the numbers make much difference?” he replied. “What matters is what we find when we come … home. Or don’t find.”

Defiance stirred. “Or as the Yankees used to say, ‘We ain’t licked yet.’ For all we know, enterprise has been recovering.”

He looked at her. Eyes caught starlight and gave it back out of shadow. “Do you really believe that?”

The liveliness died. “I’d like to. But probably I don’t.”

“It does seem as if every other race that tried came at last to the end of its strength, or its desire, and gave up. Or will someday. Why should ours be different? What growth curve of any kind rises forever?”

She trod one step closer. “Don’t take it so to heart, Rico,” she said from low in her throat.

“I shouldn’t, true. The irony of it—” His armor cracked enough for her to hear. “We can’t speak of the cruel irony, can we? The universe isn’t cruel or kind or anything. It simply is. It doesn’t even care about its own survival.”

“Your God ought to.”

“Well,” he sighed, “the Church taught that someday time also will have a stop.”

She touched his hand. “Rico—”

“
¿Sí?
He sounded startled.

“If it is so—if
Envoy
is the last human starship—don’t let it break you.” Dayan’s voice lifted. “A bitter disappointment, yes. To all of us. But we didn’t fare for nothing. We had our voyage, we made our discoveries, we
lived
. And this won’t be the end of life, either.”

“No,” he must agree.

“If humans aren’t adventuring anymore, could they be at peace, as the Tahirians wanted to be?”

“I doubt it.”

“We never really had a hardwired drive, a need or instinct, to explore. You and I heard a lot of rhetoric about that, back in those days, but the fact is, most people in most of history were content to stay put and cultivate their own gardens. Exploration, discovery, was a cultural thing.”

“And an individual thing,” he insisted.

She beheld him crowned with stars. “Individuals like you.”

“And you, Hanny.”

“But would peace be so terrible?” she pursued. “Suppose Earth is tranquil and beautiful. Suppose we can find something for ourselves like your
estancia
. Then I could gladly settle down.”

“Do you remember the
estancia
?” he asked wonderingly.

“How could I forget? That short while I spent there with you was as happy a time as I’ve ever known.”

“Hanny.”

She mustered resolution. “All right, Rico. I’ve been meaning to say this when the chance came. Couldn’t earlier, of course. But it has been more than a year for us since we lost Jean.”

His machismo crumbled. “I—naturally, I’ve had thoughts—but—”

She smiled in the starlit gloaming. “But you’re the captain and a gentleman and wouldn’t let yourself notice how I’ve
lately been waving my eyelashes at you.” In a rush: “Rico, we’ve six months of travel left. After that—We can’t guess what, after that. But we have this half year.”

“To explore what we’ve found, yes.”

“And more than that.”

“To be happy in,” he said, amazed.

Where the
gorge was narrowest the river at the bottom ran at its most furious. Gray-green and white-foamed, it roared between cliffs, spouted off boulders in the shallows, breathed chill and damp into the sunshine above. Debris from farther upland whirled and bounded through the current, sticks, brushwood, sometimes a dead animal, a capsized dugout, or a fallen tree. Here the gap was small enough that the Susuich could throw a bridge over.

Emerging from the shadows and blue foliage of woods, Vodra Shaun stopped at the brink to see what it was she must cross. Iron-ruddy rock fell ten meters to the water, with twice that distance between the sides. A suspension bridge would have been appropriate, but no natural fibers had the strength necessary—at least, none in this region did—and as yet the Susuich trade with the Hrroch did not include steel cable. Instead, the builders had trimmed spindly local trees. Planted in holes and crevices halfway down the cliffs, poles slanted upward to meet other members and form trusses that supported two stringers on which short sections lay transversely. The whole was lashed together with rawhide. Construction had obviously demanded skill and daring, and possibly several lives.

Dau Ernen halted at her side. “It looks fragile, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Well, I could wish we weren’t quite so heavily loaded,” Vodra confessed. She grinned. “But then, I’ve wished that ever since we set out.”

Their burdens were indeed considerable, even in a gravity field 10 percent less than terrestrial. Besides sleeping bags, tent, medikits, and assorted gear, they carried dried food for two months. Nothing that lived on Brent could nourish them. Kithfolk hardly ever had occasion to go backpacking. Vodra herself had done it exactly once before, on her last visit to this planet. Dau had never, and struggled manfully at first. Young, in good condition, he toughened as the days passed on the trail.

Ri had already stepped onto the span. “Follow, follow,” he called. “We have far to go to the next worthwhile campsite.”

Standing there against the sky, he made a handsome spectacle. Long, slender save for a barrel chest, the proportions were hot human, but suggested a refined, abstract sculpture of a man. The head was different, plumed, round-eared, eyes big and golden above a curved beak. A kilt decked the red skin. Little more encumbered him than a rifle and knife, of Hrroch manufacture; traveling through this wilderness, his homeland, he lived off it.

Vodra lifted the transponder hung about her neck to her lips. “We wonder if we can get safely across,” she told him. The instrument converted her utterances to the trills and whistles that she herself could not have produced in any intelligible fashion. Human spellings of Brentan words, including names, scarcely counted as crude approximations.

Nor was the language she used an equivalent of his; it emerged as Hrrochan. Hitherto Kithfolk had only had serious dealings with the civilization beyond the eastern sea, technologically ahead of any others. Ri was among the Susuich who had acquired its tongue. The knowledge came from traders who, pushing west from their coastal colonies, established outposts in the mountains. Over the years it had qualified Ri to act first as an intermediary between them and his overlords, now to guide a pair of strange beings farther west to the heart of his country.

He waved a four-fingered hand. “Be careful to keep your balance,” he advised. “Come!”

“Well, I suppose we can,” Dau said in Kithish after Vodra translated for him.

“We’d better,” she replied. “Plain to see, this culture has no use for the timid. If we’re to get any profit from our expedition, we have to act bold.”

Ri waited for them. His original attitude toward the humans, half wary, half marveling, had turned into comradeship. When Vodra reached him, Dau at her back, he made the clucking sound that perhaps corresponded to a smile and turned about to lead the way.

The bridge was barely a meter wide, without rails. Its thin structure trembled underfoot. Swollen with snowmelt, the river raged beneath.

Ri saw the danger first. He shrilled and burst into a run. Heavier and less gracile by heritage, tens of kilos on their shoulders, the humans dared not.

Ri was also too slow.

That the thing should have happened just then was wildly unlikely. Or was it? Maybe the bridge needed rebuilding every few years. Vodra hadn’t thought to ask.

A tree came downstream, not one of the gaunt local sort but a mountain giant, oak-massive, uprooted by a spate or a mudslide or the crumbling of a bank. Wide-spreading, spinning as it tumbled, its branches snagged in the truss. The battering-ram momentum of the trunk drove them forward. Wood snapped and rattled. The truss broke. The bridge collapsed.

Spacefarers had quick reflexes drilled in. As she felt the footing go, Vodra undid her bellyband and pulled her arms free of the pack. She glimpsed Dau doing the same. The bridge toppled slowly, down through the members that had upheld it. She grabbed hold of the nearest piece and clung. It eased her fall.

But then she was at the bottom and the river had her.

She felt neither fear nor the cold. She was too busy staying alive. A part of her seemed to stand aside, watchful, and quietly issue orders. Fill your lungs before you strike. The
water is thick with glacial flour, you’re nearly blind underneath it, but watch as best you can. Maybe you’ll see a boulder in time to evade it. Swim upward. Break the surface.
Breathe
. The torrent drags you down again. Don’t thrash, move minimally, save your strength; you’ll need every erg of it. Up.
Breathe
. Look around while you’re able. The right bank is closer. Work toward it, but beware of rocks. In this stream, you could hit hard enough to break bones. Under again. No way to kick boots off. Well, they won’t sink you. Not till you’ve grown too weak. Up.
Breathe
. Where’s the sun gone? Shadow; a strip of sky far overhead, insolently blue and calm; brawling water—Look out! Boulder ahead! A big one, to stick into air. Swim sideways. Now, bend legs, kick, use your feet to push yourself off. Onward. Don’t gasp so. You’re not completely winded yet. And the current is slowing a little.

And more. The stream was past the steepest part of its fall toward the lowlands. It had widened, too, and was therefore shoaling, through what was almost a canyon rather than a defile. The palisades were much higher, though. On the right they blocked off the sun. It touched the leftward heights, a wash of gold over their rustiness, but that deepened the gloom down here.

Still, she could see a ways. Not far off lay a small beach. The water was less noisy. “Halloo-oo!” she heard, and cast a glance back. Yonder came Dau. He’d been lucky, caught a balk of wood and gained flotation. Not just for himself, she saw. One arm held Ri across it, face up. The Brentan flopped, ominously passive, as the timber wallowed.

When Vodra’s feet touched bottom, her observer-pilot went away. Suddenly she was herself, aware of painful bruises, sobbing and shuddering with cold. She waded ashore and dropped onto a gravelly crescent nestled against the cliff. Stranded brushwood covered most of it.

Dau grounded. Less exhausted, he carried Ri out. The sight shocked Vodra alert. She scrambled back up.

“Are … are you all right?” Dau stammered. She saw the anxiety on his face and knew it for genuine. It wasn’t merely
because she was the sole fellow human in a thousand kilometers or worse. She was the closest to a real Mend he had gotten thus far. Everybody else in
Fleetwing
was courteous, even helpful, but a newcomer didn’t soon settle into full crewdom. Too many traditions, customs, mores, turns of speech, all the nuances of belongingness, were too dissimilar. Vodra had taken the shy boy from
Argosy
under her wing. It was one reason she’d chosen him for her partner on this trip. Give him a chance to prove himself.

That might turn out not to have been a favor.

The thought flitted off. “Hold!” she exclaimed. “Careful there! He’s hurt. Badly.” Ri lay lax in Dau’s clasp. The long limbs hung down, the head lolled, eyes closed, beak agape.

“He must have hit something when we fell,” Dau said. “I saw him and snatched. Unconscious; I don’t know—”

“You can’t,” Vodra interrupted. “I’ve learned some Brentan anatomy. Here, kneel, let me ease him to the ground.”

Her fingers searched across the red skin. It felt hot. Well, the normal body temperature was higher than hers. She’d like to snuggle close beside him. No, never mind the chill, not till this was done. No serious contusions visible. But—Yes. That jaggedy lump, halfway between neck and waist.

She rose. “Not good,” she said. “I think he has a broken back.”

Dau took his gaze from the water, stone, and murk around them. “We’ll bring him to sick bay—”

“He’s not our species,” Vodra said. “We don’t have regrowth techniques for his biome. Luckily, an injury like this isn’t as bad for them as for us. If we handle him properly, he should recover.”

Dau fumbled in his coverall and drew his radio transceiver from a pocket. Awkwardly, shaking, his numbed hands groped at the keys. A green light came aglow, tiny in the shadow. “It still works,” he said with lips gone blue. And
Fleetwing
had, as always, placed relay satellites in orbit. “I’ll call for help.”

“Wait,” Vodra commanded. “Rescue isn’t that simple.”

He blinked. “Huh?” His teeth clattered. He suppressed it. “Oh, yes, a spaceboat can’t land down here. B-b-but she surely can s-s-somewhere above, nearby.” He looked at the steep. Scored, craggy, bushes and dwarf trees growing wherever seed had found soil, it would be hard but not impossible to ascend. “We’ll c-climb up.”