Between the Stars (15 page)

TWELVE

"The place has changed," Derek said. They had just arrived in Avalon for the big conference Sieglinde had called. HMK was crowded and bustling as usual.

"It looks the same to me," Valentina said.

"You weren't raised here. I can feel it. There's tension, apprehension, things like that. I can predict that there'll be a lot of talk in the bars, but it'll be quieter than usual."

"Why should anything have changed?" she asked. "The big announcement hasn't been made yet."

"Partly it's the new atmosphere on Earth, all the war talk. Plenty of people here remember the last one. Also, everybody knows Aunt Linde's here, and she's called an extraordinary session of the
Althing
. She's one of the few people empowered to do that, and it's been twenty-five years since she last exercised that right. And then there's the Rhea Object, and everybody knows it's all tied together somehow. Space people have a way of sensing things like that."

"When is the session scheduled?" Valentina asked. She leaned over a spindly railing and studied the milling activity below. Whatever anxiety these people were experiencing, it certainly wasn't affecting business. All the usual activities were going full blast.

"Tomorrow. But the family meeting is in six hours. We're to be there."

"When did I join the clan? I don't think even my talents would fool them for long if I tried posing as a Kuroda or a Taggart."

"You could try being a Ciano," he said. "Some of them are truly strange. Actually, you're going to be there because Aunt Linde says so. There'll be others there whose connection to the families is tenuous." He joined her at the railing and looked below. "I hope we stay here a while. I can't wait to see what it's like after Aunt Linde drops her bomb."

Valentina studied him. In the short time she had known Derek, he had grown more mature and serious, but he still had his boyish enthusiasms. "You love this place, don't you?"

He looked at her in astonishment. "Of course I do. I was born here. This is the greatest environment people have ever had. It gets a little rough sometimes, but we're free to do what we want."

"Cooped up in tiny, fragile ships or carving barren rocks into something marginally livable? I suppose it's freedom of a sort. But if you love it so, why are you so anxious to leave? All you've talked about for months is making the big jump."

He thought about it for a while. "Let's go to the museum."

That took her by surprise. "I didn't know there was one."

"Just follow me. And I'm not dodging your question. I think I can explain better there."

They took a tube car to the outermost level of Avalon, where the spin-induced gravity was strongest. The museum was a single, immensely long room. One wall was a continuous window open to the stars. Its door was unpretentious, a simple portal cut in the rough stone. Above the entrance, a holographic sign flashed the words Museum of Man in Space, in a multitude of languages, changing every few seconds.

Immediately within, a gold ball floated at eye level, four whiplike antennae sweeping from it like a comet's tail. "Sputnik One," Derek said. "This is what it all started with. One little ball of metal and circuitry tossed out into orbit. Within just a few years, all this." He waved an arm at holos of the early vessels, most of them looking suicidally crude and fragile. There were holos of the pioneers and racks of spacesuits standing like sentinels along one wall.

"This is how we pushed out." He pointed to a huge floating display of the solar system with glimmering lights denoting the voyages and settlements and the chronology of their development. "Luna, the orbitals, Mars, the first Belt settlement, the Jovian satellites, the Saturnian satellites—always out, toward the edge of the solar system. And there," he pointed to dozens of glimmering lights headed outside the system entirely, "the Island Worlds already headed out under antimatter drive. And the Oort Cloud expedition, on its way now. Always outward. It's in the blood. We have to head out, find new places to live and work and explore."

"Not everybody wants that," Valentina said. "Not even a majority, There are a good many Island Worlders who will be content to stay here."

"There are always a few with the urge, though. Most people prefer to stay where they think it's safe; some only emigrate out of true desperation. But there are always some of us who have to see what's out there. It's always been that way. Otherwise, we'd all still be crowded in some little valley in Africa." He took her hand. "Come here, this is what I really wanted you to see." He led her past the last of the exhibits. Beyond was a huge, echoing space. The long window continued along the outer wall until it disappeared in the distance where the room followed the curvature of the worldlet's surface. The empty space was far larger than the part crowded with exhibits.

"It's empty," she said, puzzled. "Why do you want me to see this?" She wondered whether he was playing some joke on her.

"This is for the rest of it. The future. This is the important part. We'll fill up every bit of it and then they'll have to excavate an extension."

For a moment she was too stunned to say anything. She had always thought the people here were the same as the ones she had left behind on Earth. They might have different customs and habits, but she had thought them to be motivated by the same things, mainly greed and fear and a desire to dominate their fellow humans.

"It's so different," she said. "Back home, everyone is either languishing for the past or obsessed with the present. The future means taking care of tomorrow's catastrophe. I never really believed that there were people who thought in terms of centuries, people who dedicate their lives to a future they'll never see. What's in it for them?"

"It's the urge," he said, smiling. "When the first of the Island Worlds made the big hop more than thirty years ago, using the antimatter drive, Sieglinde told them that she was working on the superluminal drive, but there were no guarantees. If she lived long enough and solved all the problems, ships with the new drive would catch up with them and fit them with the new engines. But there was a possibility, even a likelihood, that it wouldn't work out that way. There might be an insurmountable obstacle. The drive might never be perfected. They chose to go anyway, even though it would be the descendants of the great-grandchildren of those pioneers who'd reach a new solar system."

"Back home," she began, but he interrupted her.

"You don't have to think of it as 'back home' anymore, Val. Come with us." He still held her hand.

She stared at him, stunned. He looked so dreadfully earnest. She couldn't decide whether he was really heroic or just naive and childish. "Derek, I'm not a free agent. I can't just make decisions about my own future. I work for—"

"Carstairs' days are numbered, Val. He knows it. When he's gone, that planet will be no place for anyone who worked with him so closely, especially against Shevket."

"There's still Luna, Mars, the orbitals. I'm an expert, Derek. He'd never find me."

"It wouldn't be much of a life. When my interstellar ship is ready to go, I'm going to pack
Cyrano
in a hold, stock up on cat food for Carruthers and head out. Come with me."

"Derek," she said patiently, "we've been thrown together by forces neither of us has any control over. Don't mistake this kind of forced intimacy for anything more personal than it is. In the first place, I'm at least ten years older than you."

"Let's see," he mused, "what with the latest advances in medical science, we can both expect to live a century and a half. In that time, more advances can be made. Let's figure, barring misadventure, we might make it to two hundred. By that time, ten years will be one-twentieth of my lifetime. Hardly worth considering."

"Look, Derek, that 'barring misadventure' part is taking a lot for granted. There's still the matter of Vladyka to be addressed, and maybe a war, so let's not make any important decisions until the time comes, all right?"

"Okay," he agreed. "No decisions. That doesn't mean I won't keep trying to convince you, though."

"You're exasperating. But when I tell you to shut up about it, shut up."

"Agreed. Let's go get something to eat." They left the vast space that was empty of anything but promise.

The clan meeting was held in the old Kuroda great hall. The clan was an extended one, including a number of families, and there was no way for all the many hundreds of members to attend, but all families were represented. There were at least fifty present in the reed-matted room. Every physiognomy and form of dress known to the Island Worlds was present. Family unity was practically the only kind they all shared.

Derek and Valentina came in slightly late, earning a glare from Ulric, who sat at the head of the room near Nadia Kuroda, the current matriarch. They took seats well toward the lower end of the room, next to the wall. The room was stark and bare of any decoration save for a rack of ancient Japanese swords.

"Now that everyone seems to be here," Nadia said, "close the door." The heavy portal was shut and sealed with a hiss of pneumatics.

"This meeting," Nadia began, "the thirty-fifth since the clan left the motherworld, has been called by our kinswoman, Sieglinde Kornfeld-Taggart. It is the right of any member of the clan to call such a meeting when decisions must be reached concerning matters of great importance to the clan. At this time, please give Sieglinde your close attention."

Sieglinde sat to Nadia's right, and she launched into her speech without preamble. "We have reached another of the great turning points in the history of mankind. I have made a discovery that makes interstellar travel a practical proposition. At any other time I would develop it in a more leisurely fashion. However, events on Earth will not leave us that luxury. We have to leave the solar system, and we have to do it as soon as possible." There was an eruption of conversation, which Nadia silenced with a peremptory gesture.

"First," Sieglinde said, "I will tell you briefly what I have found. For the benefit of those without a specialized education, I'll stick to layman's terms as much as possible. Afterward, I'll conduct a special session for those among you who are physicists or mathematicians. This all began when our kinsman, Derek Kuroda, found two alien artifacts on Rhea."

"Two!" someone said.

"Yes, two. To continue—" For the next hour, she explained the events that had led from Derek's delivery of the object to the Ciano Lab to her experiments that proved its nature. She outlined the possibilities of the phenomenon, then allowed individual questions.

"Is there any indication of the nature of the aliens who left the things?" asked Salome Taggart, a writer for the popular holos.

"None at all, except that they are or were highly intelligent and they were a starfaring species."

"Any ideas as to the age of the things?" asked the professional Ibrahim Sousa.

"They could have been left there a hundred million years ago or an hour before Derek found them. As far as I can tell, they're quite indestructible to anything occurring naturally in the solar system, so condition means nothing. Of course, it also means that the aliens may still be around here someplace. If so, they're keeping to themselves."

"What makes all this so urgent," she went on, "is that the situation on Earth is deteriorating by the minute. The would-be planetary dictator, Mehmet Shevket, is rousing xenophobic hatred for the outerworlders to a fever pitch down there. He is using a new holo technology that makes his haranguing rhetoric enormously effective. It looks as if he is going to realize his ambition of becoming absolute ruler."

"How are you so certain of this?" Nadia asked.

"I've been in contact with Anthony Carstairs and he—" Instantly, people were on their feet and shouting.

"Oh, quiet down!" Ulric bellowed. "I was with her during some of her communications with Carstairs. He was the enemy during the last war. This time, it's Shevket and Larsen. Listen to what she has to say." Crumbling, the others complied.

"Carstairs tells me that Shevket has all but won. By now, even his assassination wouldn't stop the war. Carstairs will buy us all the time he can, but we must be prepared for war in one year, two at the outside."

Martin Shaw Taggart signaled for recognition and Nadia nodded. Like many of his family, the young man wore the uniform of Sálamis, the military world that formed the defense arm of the Confederacy. "My superiors have predicted an inevitable war within five years, although they've had problems convincing the
Althing
of that. How are you so certain that the time is so short?"

"Several reasons, some mine and some brought up by Carstairs. Partly, it's the economic deterioration of Earth, which will be temporarily alleviated by a war. Then there's the hysteria factor, which is easy to rouse, but which can't be maintained indefinitely. I think the major factor, though, is the Rhea Object. They sense that it might mean great power once its secret is cracked, which it certainly does. They suspect that we are not telling them everything we've learned about it. They're wrong about the Aeaeans, but right as far as I am concerned. I'm not going to let them know about it until we're well away from here. Shevket wants to strike before we can exploit the thing fully and maybe make ourselves invincible.

"Carstairs says that they will need at least one year to mount an attack, because they can't start until their new ships are commissioned, crewed and tested. But expect it within a year after that. Does that answer your question, Martin?"

"It does, thank you. Good to see you back, Mom."

"I wish we could get together under happier circumstances."

"None of us," said Nadia, "wants to go through another war. The last one was terrible. This one will be worse. The Terrans have been improving their defenses in all the years since. Last time we bombarded them with a propaganda campaign that undermined the civilians' war spirit. This time, it appears that they have the advantage in that area."

"We want to avoid war," Sieglinde said, "and the best way to avoid war is to avoid the vicinity of a war. It is my urgent advice that we contract with the Aeaeans and a few other scientific-industrial firms to manufacture the drive units I am designing, that we fit these to asteroid ships, and that we vacate the system as soon as possible. I shall put this recommendation before the
Althing
tomorrow, but I wanted the clan to have the news first. Whatever the
Althing
decides, whatever the individual republics of the Confederacy decide, I want the clan to go!"