Starfarers (9 page)

“We can never return home. When we come back to Earth, we will necessarily come as foreigners, immigrants. I think that what we bring will make us welcome, and we will find new friends and found new homes. But none can ever be close to us in the way that we are—that we must be—to each other. We have to become more than a crew. We have to become a family.

“I wish we could start with established, stable relationships between us, especially between men and women. But we are who we are, the handful of people best suited for this voyage, and we cannot wait for a fall set of arrangements to develop, or the voyage will never begin. So we must not only be brave, we must be tolerant, sympathetic, and generous. Let us remember always, above and beyond everything else in us, we are the crewfolk of humankind’s
Envoy.

“All this is perfectly obvious. But—word magic, if you like—I felt it needed saying forth. Now, if you please, I will propose one toast before we dine.” He lifted his dry sherry. “To the stars.”

Coming from anyone else the speech might have been pretentious. Don Ricardo knew how to carry such things off.

After the
ship returned to high Earth orbit, her people had six weeks’ liberty before she departed for the Centaur.

Steel rang.
Nansen parried and riposted. Light flashed at the tip of his saber as it made contact.
“Touché!”
acknowledged Pierre Desmoulins.
“Très belle!”
In a series of lunges, glides, and thrusts, Nansen had driven him back halfway across the floor.

For a minute they stood breathing hard, faces agleam with sweat and smiles. Other pairs contended around the
salle d’armes
, a dance of bodies and blades, but several had stopped to watch these two.
“Encore une fois?”
Desmoulins invited.

Nansen shook his head.
“Merci, non. J’ai
—” His French broke down. He spread his palms.
“Une femme.”

Desmoulins laughed.
“Ah, mais naturellement. Bon jour. Bonne nuit.”
Jauntiness dropped from him, forced off by awe.
“Et … bon voyage, M. le capitaine.”

Nansen shook the proferred hand. His own smile died. He could not altogether keep a catch out of his voice.
“Adieu, mon ami.”

This had probably been the last fencing he would ever do. He didn’t think anyone aboard ship would care to learn, and virtuals were a pathetic surrogate. Ten thousand years from this evening, who would know there had been such a sport?

He could come back here if he chose, of course, but he wouldn’t. Too little time remained for too much else.

He walked quickly off, turned in his outfit, put his street clothes on, and went forth to the rue de Grenelle. Though the
air was warm, he wore a cloak with the hood up—not uncommon hereabouts, and it might keep him unrecognized. A gaily striped awning over a sidewalk café tempted. He could use a cold beer. But no, he had to bathe and change garments at his hotel before he met Odile Morillier. She’d wait if need be—few women would not have waited for a man of the
Envoy
—but someone so beautiful wasn’t used to it, nor did he want to seem arrogant.

A live symphony concert in the Parc Monceau, then dinner in a private room at the Vert Galant, then perhaps a walk along the river or under trees fragrant with spring, and then, yes, the night, and the days and nights to follow. He had cut enough swathes in the past and had begun to think wistfully about marriage, children. … No, the stars had made him an alien. Let him know one woman well and learn to hold her dear—as well and as dear as time allowed—and take the riches away in his memory. That would be worth the pain of farewell. He hoped she would not share it, but remember him kindly and with pleasure.

A constabulary
guard in the foyer verified Yu’s identity and saluted as he admitted her to the ascensor. She rode in blessed solitude to the fiftieth floor. After the crowded streets, people yelling and shoving toward her even as she crossed from her cab to the entrance, this cool quiet was like another world. She found the number she wanted and touched the door. It must have been instructed from below, for it immediately contracted and let her through.

The room beyond was spacious, furnishings sleekly up-to-date, but the vases from which lilies and jasmine perfumed the air were antique. Set for transparency, the south wall showed bustling modern Rehavia. Eastward she saw the Old City, the Temple of the Reconcilement, and the Mount of Olives under a Mediterranean sky where aircraft darted like glittering mites.

Dayan had sprung from a chair. She ran to meet the visitor. “Wenji, welcome—
shalom!”
she cried, and hugged her.
“Come, make yourself comfortable.” She led her to a recliner. “What would you like: tea, coffee, something stronger?”

“Thank you, whatever you take,” Yu replied. She sat down but remained tense.

“Speak up, do. I can barely hear you. It’s kind of early in the day, but, I decree, not too early for a beer. One minute.” Dayan went through an arch to the inner suite. She returned almost as soon as promised, bearing a tray with two frosty steins and a bowl of salted nuts. Setting it down on a minitable, she dropped into the seat opposite and beamed. “Oh, I am glad to see you.”

“Thank you,” the engineer whispered.

The physicist raised her drink.
“Mazel tov
. I don’t know what they say in Chinese.”

Yu smiled a bit.
“Kan bei
, in my part of the country.” She barely sipped.

“What a grand surprise when you called.”

“I … hesitated. Are we not generally keeping away from each other on this last furlough?”

“No doubt. But you’re a breath of pure oxygen, Wenji.” Dayan scowled, drank, and made a chopping gesture. “This damned guarded existence.”

Compassion deepened Yu’s voice. “Do you feel imprisoned?”

Dayan sighed. “Not exactly. I do want to be with my … parents, brother, sister, their children, our kin, our friends—be with them as much as possible. But the government’s carrying its concern for my safety too far. I’m not supposed to leave Jerusalem, or go anywhere outside without an armed escort, or—All those eyes, always watching. I don’t want to disappoint or grieve anybody, but—” She snapped a laugh. “That’s plenty about me! Tell me why I’m having this break in the routine.”

Yu was still for a moment before she said, with difficulty, “I, too, feel watched.”

“How? I took for granted you’d spend your leave in China. You’ve spoken of your home so lovingly.”

The old tile-roofed village in the old green countryside, the Hwang Ho mightily flowing, a bell at twilight, lifeways and a reverence for them that had changed their outward guise only a little as the millennia swept past; science and machines could ensorcel a girl, she could snatch at a scholarship and lose herself in the marvels of city and university and a certain young man, but always, always she would yearn back.

“I cannot,” Yu said. “No, I mean I will not.”

Dayan stared. “What?” When the other did not respond at once, she murmured, “I’ve heard something about your having political difficulties, but you didn’t seem to want to discuss it and I didn’t want to pry. We’ve ample time ahead of us.” Her tone sharpened. “Surely, though, you, your fame and … and standing—they can’t deny you admission. I should think they would make you a national hero.”

Yu had gathered resolution. “They would,” she said starkly. “I will not … appear in public with them, accept their medals and praises, let them lick glory like dogs.”

“This must be hard for you to talk about.”

“It … is. I divorced my husband. You will all on the ship hear the real reason … eventually. I can trust you now, Hanny, if you care to listen. But first promise me to say no word to anyone until we have left. If the truth came out, they—my beloved government—would be embarrassed. They have a hostage who would suffer.”

Dayan caught Yu’s hand. “I swear. May God and my mother forsake me if I don’t keep silence till you set me free.”

She let go and sat gripping her mug tight, while Yu’s words trudged. “When Xi and I came back from Sirius, we were horrified. The Space War had occurred, and in China the Protector was overthrown but the Council of Nine was worse, and—Nevertheless he took the professorship promised him at Nanjing University. I did interplanetary work, developing some of the asteroids China had annexed. We were too much apart. We planned on emigrating to Australia. But without my knowing, he became involved with the Free Sword Society. Yes, he believed democracy could be raised from the dead, in our country and around the Earth.
They caught him. They told me they would pardon him if I volunteered for
Envoy
and was accepted—pardon him and let him go wherever he wished after I was gone, but I must take this on faith and the truth about the bargain must never come out. They want the credit, they want to say they sent a Chinese to meet the Yonderfolk, but they had nobody else quite suitable. I went through the pretenses and the motions. I did tell the Foundation directors I am still fond of Xi and asked them to press for his release. They promised to. I can hope it will happen, and he will guess what is behind it, but I will never know.”

She fell silent, staring before her, her tears long since exhausted. Dayan shed a few, rose, leaned over, and embraced her. “Oh, my dear, my dear.”

The steely calm in Yu entered her, too, and she sat back down.

“Do not pity me,” Yu said. “We will experience wonders. And it does honor me far beyond my worth, that I will keep alive something of what my country and my people were.”

“You … haven’t yet told me … why you came here.”

“I thought I would spend these weeks seeing the best things on Earth. But there is no peace for it. Everywhere the journalists, the cameras, the crowds. And always I must watch my tongue.”

Dayan nodded. “You need a refuge, where you can take a meal without twenty hands sticking autograph pads under your nose and a reporter firing questions about your love life. Well, you’ve come to the right place.”

“I do not wish to intrude,” Yu said, diffident again. “A day or two, if you will be so kind—”

“Nonsense.” Dayan’s tone grew animated. “You’ll stay with me till we go. I have tough men with firearms to keep me unmolested, and we’ll share them. My family, my friends will be delighted to meet my shipsister.” She rubbed her hands together. “We’ll show you some fun, too. And maybe we’ll learn to eat gefilte fish with chopsticks.”

“You are too generous.”

“Not at all. Self-interested. I told you this existence was
getting dismal. You’ll liven it up, in your quiet way.” Dayan paused. “And—hm—I would like to slip out by myself once in a while, alone, nobody knowing. A gentleman or two, do you understand?”

“That is not for me,” Yu said gravely.

“I suppose not. But I think we could work out a scheme where you cover for me. If
you
will be so generous.”

For the second time, Yu smiled. “An interesting technical problem.”

“Hoy, you’ve hardly touched your beer. Don’t you like it, and too polite to speak?”

“No, no—”

“What will you have instead?” Dayan jumped up. “Don’t hang back. We have a lot of living to get done in the rest of this furlough.”

Mokoena’s living
also included gentlemen—more than one or two—and festivities that sometimes became uproarious. After she complained about pestiferous strangers, her king issued an edict, which was enforced with discouraging sternness. However, her guards were mostly a jolly lot, who contributed their share to the fun, as well as to traditional pageantry in her honor.

Yet this was, actually, a rather small part of what she engaged in. She was much with her parents and their immediate circle, calmly and piously. As time passed, she spent increasingly more of it in hospitals. The patients, the children among them above all, were heartwarmingly happy to meet and talk with a person who was going to the stars.

Isla Floreana
loomed steep and dark from a brilliant heaven. Light burned on the sea. Jean Kilbirnie waded out from the beach and went under. Salt kissed her lips. The water slid around her like a caress, cool and silken. Its colors deepened from tawny green toward blue as she swam downward. The bubbles from her breathmask glinted, streamed, danced.
Fish darted past. Two seals drew playfully nigh. Farther off, ghost-dim, a dolphin went by. She exulted.

Poor Tim,
she thought for a second or two. It had not been easy to deny him leave to come along. She didn’t want to hurt him. But he would have been sure to spoil the tricks by which she traveled about incognito. Besides, in any case, she couldn’t be bothered. For the same reason, she had declined an offer of company from a quite charming young man she met She enjoyed male society and had had a few affairs, but acknowledged cheerfully to herself that her sex drive was low. The energy radiated outward, into the world and the universe.

Last week Alaska and Mount Denali. This week the Galápagos. Next week the Andes, followed by a trek through Amazon Park— Virtuals were adequate for historical and cultural monuments. Here was the reality of living Earth, what remained of it; she had not many days left, and nobody knew what lay at the far end of her voyage or what she might find if ever she returned.

For a
generation after he was gone, memory of Ruszek’s passage through taverns and women lingered in the rowdier corners of cities around the globe. Several men felt the weight of his fist, and twice only his status kept him from jail; the authorities strongly suggested he go elsewhere. But when not provoked to anger he was a leviathan of openhanded, noisy good humor.

He had other interests that would have surprised his drinking companions and partners in bed, but he reckoned they could wait.

His shipmates were unwittingly indebted to him. The colorful copy he provided took some of the publicity pressure off them.

Evening light
slanted long above the roofs of Cairo. The call to prayer rang from minarets that it touched with gold. Zeyd
heard directly, not electronically, for he had opened the windows of his apartment now that the day’s heat was waning. He prostrated himself on the carpet. Its biofabric responded with a sensuousness lost on him in this moment.