Starfarers (12 page)

Ramil nodded. “Oh, yes. You remember her.”

Michael did—her, and the wedding, for it chanced to be when he was last on Earth. From time to time starfarers were bound to marry outside their kith. And Ramil’s earlier voyages had been rather short. He was not too alien for her.

Yes, Juana was a darling. But my Eileen—your great-grandmother, Ramil—who died in my arms while the light of Delta Pavonis streamed through the ports—I had the better luck.

“Don’t mistake me,” Ramil added. “I am not sorry for myself. There’s still fight and fun to be had.”

“Keeping our autonomy here?” Michael asked, partly for the sake of tact, partly because he didn’t know. He hadn’t yet caught up with events. When he left, the Greatman of Mongku had been Earth’s ruler, not a figurehead for whatever cabal had most recently seized power.

“No, that isn’t in any danger,” Ramil said, obviously relieved to get away from matters too close to him. “Not so far. Our ships, our cargoes give us leverage. Nothing critical, you know, but the pure chemical elements, the special feed-stocks, the new data—yes, above all, the new information, for science or industry or sparking fresh, saleable ideas—those pay off.”

“As always.”
Does always mean forever?

Ramil’s tone harshened. “The Vicar of Isen, though, the overlord hereabouts—he’s a greedy sod. Unless we can keep playing him and his fellows off against each other, the taxes will eat us.”

Michael frowned. “Why can’t you be getting help, pressure on your behalf, from the Lunarites, the Martians, or the Outerfolk?”

“None of them have any strong incentive to give it. They do help indirectly, just by being. I’ve lately been hinting that if we’re pushed too hard and drained too dry, we can take our business elsewhere in the Solar System.”

“Why not? From what I’ve heard about the current situation, mightn’t we be more comfortable?”

“It would not be Earth,” Ramil said.

No
, Michael thought,
Luna, the asteroids, the moons of the giant planets, even Mars can never be, no matter what humans have done for them. Earth is our mother, no matter what humans do to her. … Oh, the colony worlds at other suns may beckon, but they’re changing their people still more than happens here. We starfarers—our starfaring keeps us changeless.

“I understand,” he said low. “Without this much of a tie between us, a home port, we’d drift away from what we are. Earth is where we meet.”

And marry. Those who love space will marry into us, those who can’t stand the hardships will leave us, and so as genetics and usage work onward, we evolve from a handful of crews to a people, a kith.

Ramil smiled wistfully. “Besides,” he said, “they’d be sad aboard
Envoy
if they came back and found nobody like ourselves to greet them.”

Michael sighed. “I am not sure they will, whatever we do. Ten thousand years is an unholy stretch of time.”
And they are only—what?—750 years into their journey. To them, less than two months, hasn’t it been? … Nonsense, sheer malarky. Under these conditions, “simultaneity” is an empty noise.

Ramil glanced at him. “You knew Ricardo Nansen, didn’t you?”

Michael nodded. “I did. We were on the first Epsilon Eridani expedition. He saved my life on that grim world.”

Ramil took a goodly swallow from his tumbler. “Well,” he said, “this has wandered from the subject.”

Michael chuckled. “Do you mean we had one?”

“I’m sorry your visit has disappointed you.”

Michael’s humor faded. “You did not tell me the Ireland I knew is gone.”

“But it isn’t,” Ramil protested. “They’ve kept part of it, at least, green and beautiful.”

“For the pleasure of its vicar,” Michael spat. “Oh, common folk may nest in their villages if they choose, like us given leave to stay in this burg of ours, but they are not my folk anymore.”

“I’m sorry. I would have told you, if I’d understood what you had in mind.” Their histories had flowed too far apart. “Well, if not there, why not here? We would be honored to have you in Kith Town, and a man like you would never lack for work. In fact, brokerage—”

Michael shook his head. “I thank you,” he interrupted, “but for now I have given up the idea of settling on Earth.”

Ramil gave him a startled look. “What? But—”

“I’ve queried.
Estrella Linda
could use another experienced officer.”

“But … but she’s leaving soon and—you’ve only been here a few weeks. Surely, if you must go, you can take your ease for a year or two first, till
Our Lady
heads out again.”

“Ordinarily I would,” Michael said. “But
Estrella Linda
is off on a wide sweep. As far as I can find out, nothing else like that is planned for the next several decades, just twenty-or thirty-year shuttlings. I’ll snatch the chance and—” His gray head lifted. He laughed. “Greatmen, vicars, I’ll outlive the bastards.”

As the
days aboard
Envoy
mounted to weeks, her crew settled into their various ways of filling their abundant free time. You could share sports, games, recorded shows of every kind; you could pursue hobbies, studies, even research; you could teach two or three interested shipmates something you were knowledgeable about, such as a skill or
a language; you could help arrange live entertainment, a play or a concert or whatever; you could think about questions that were not trivial but for which there had always somehow been too many distractions; you could simply talk with someone, long conversations, perhaps over a drink or two, and get to know that person better.

It did not work perfectly for anyone, and did not work as well as it should for certain ones. Then the temptation was to seek the pseudolife of an interactive virtual-reality program. Every cabin was equipped. But you rationed yourself pretty strictly; prudence and unspoken social pressure remained powerful.

A popular, productive activity was the improvement and decoration of the interior. Individuals or teams contributed according to talent and inclination, after general agreement had been reached on what to do in a given area. One day-watch about three ship months after departure, Mokoena and Brent met in the common room for this purpose.

With the two of them alone there, it felt cavernous. Kilbirnie, Dayan, and Zeyd had painted the bulkheads and overhead in cheerful colors, with flourishes. A wall screen showed a mural composed by Yu: black-and-white scene of mountains and river, house and bamboo grove, a poem of Li Bo inscribed in the upper right. She was programming a second picture. Mokoena thought the place also needed something dynamic, but something that was solid, touchable, not an engineered mirage. Nobody objected.

Brent hunkered at the base of an aluminum framework. It suggested a miniature fir tree stripped bare, with intricately curved boughs and subbranchings. Motor-driven, they could undulate, twirl, and interweave, swiftly, randomly. He had built it in the machine shop according to her design and today, with strength and skill she lacked, secured it to the deck and made sure it operated properly. As it whirled back to quietude, he rose. “There,” he said. “Seems okay. Will it do?”

She beamed, a flash of whiteness in the dark face. “Splendid. I can’t wait to put on the ornaments.” Mirrors, jewels, shining fractals—her creations; they should move and gleam
and glitter endlessly variable, almost alive. “Would you like to help with that, too?”

“No, I’m not the artistic type.”

“Well, then, thank you twice as much.”

“No trouble. I had nothing else to do. With my hands, anyway.”

Mokoena’s smile dissolved. “Yes, I have thought that must be difficult for you, Al.”

Resentment broke abruptly loose. “Yu Wenji’s just-incase backup.”

“Why, you stand your watches, you have your jobs—”

“Busywork. Nothing a robot couldn’t do as well or better. Keep the clod occupied, because if you don’t he might stir up trouble for lack of any other interests.”

She frowned, straight into his eyes. “Now, that’s nonsense. In the first place, you knew full well what the situation would be en route—”

“Oh, yes. In theory. Practice turns out to be harder. Don’t worry, I’ll last out the monotony, hoping we’ll find what’ll make it worth going through.”

“In the second place, Al, we all know you are not an oaf or a monomaniac, and you know we know it. We’ve heard you mention pieces of history we never learned, and snatches of the music you play for yourself, and on Christmas Eve,” celebrating a date that existed only in the ship’s calendar, “over the cognac, when you fell to talking about—” She stopped. Abashed, she had to ask: “What was his name? The composer.”

“Beethoven.”

“Yes. I’d like to know more about him and his music.”

His countenance brightened, his voice lightened. “You would?” Bitterness returned. “You’d be damn near unique. How many give a politician’s promise any longer about the heritage?” The last word he used quite without self-consciousness.

“Times change,” she answered. “Ideas, tastes, ways of doing and saying things, even thinking and feeling.”

“Not necessarily for the better.” He grew earnest. “That’s
one reason I came along. So that somebody would remember what Western civilization was, and bring it back again to Earth.”

Surprised, she said, “You never made that clear to us, Al”

“I didn’t expect anybody would understand. Well, Tim Cleland, a little. And Nansen, maybe, except he’s given up on it. He hugs his traditions to himself and just tries to be the perfect captain, the perfect robot”

“You’re being unfair. Speaking for myself, I admit I don’t know much about this. We had other things to think about in Africa, including our own traditions. But I’d be happy to learn.”

“Really?” Brent stood motionless. When he spoke again, it was warmly. “Why, that’s wonderful, Mam.”

“I’m not sure how—”

“We’ll find our way forward. Look, let me put these tools away and then we’ll go off by ourselves and begin.”

He edged closer. She retreated a step. “That may not be wise, Al.”

He halted. “Huh? You—”

“I think I see what you have in mind. No, I’m not angry. It’s very natural.” She trilled a laugh. “A compliment, actually. Thank you.”

He stiffened anew. “But you won’t.”

“Not so suddenly.”

“You and Lajos Ruszek are open enough about what’s between you.”

“Our business.”

“And Tim, lately—”

“Hold on!” she snapped. “For your information—” She paused. “Do you mean you didn’t know? I thought, as often as you two have been talking—Well, he is a private person. He’s having a thorny time. I’m trying to help him through it. I do not want to make matters worse.”

He reddened. “Instead, you’re serious about that Ruszek hooligan? Because if you’re just screwing for fun—”

“I told you, mind your own business!” she shouted. “And keep a civil tongue in your head, fellow.”

He gulped and glowered.

She relaxed, bit by bit. “Oh, I understand,” she said after a while. “You’re overstressed.”
Less stable than we believed,
she did not add. “Please come see me at my medical office. There are plenty of helpful pharmaceuticals. And I don’t gossip about my patients, Al.”

“I don’t need that kind of help.”

“Well, I can’t compel you,” she sighed. “Only remember, do, it’s always available and you’re always welcome. Meanwhile, shall we forget this incident?”

“All right.” He sounded half strangled. Collecting the tools, he stalked off.

In his cabin he selected a program, made the bioelectronic connections, lay back, and went questing through the wilderness with Daniel Boone. The native women were very hospitable.

On a
hilltop above the valley of the Kshatriya, old Michael Shaughnessy sat alone. Delta Pavonis warmed him, akin to the sun of his childhood, but two daylight moons hung wan among clouds whose whiteness was streaked orange and amber by tiny life. The air he breathed blew pure and sweet, but through its odors of grass and wild thyme drifted a sulfury hint of surviving firebrush. The land swept down to the shining river and rolled back upward on the farther side in familiar curves sculptured by wind and rain, but from one slope jutted a many-towered bulk of clay and small stones that had been the nest of animals now extinct. Beside the river stood a town, but its rounded pyramids and spiraling spires were like nothing he had ever beheld elsewhere. The
people who dwelt there were peaceful and kindly, but time and their world had made them altogether foreign to him.

The old man sat on a log and plucked a harp. He had fashioned it himself, and he half spoke, half sang to its notes, in a tradition that died before he was born and would die anew, forever, when he who had resurrected it was gone.

“I have come to you, Feng Huang, who have never been another Earth and never can be nor should, I have come to lay my bones in your soil. First, however, I will tell you of Earth, I will say to your winds what Earth was when last I walked upon her.

“She lay bleeding, Feng Huang, and the shadow of many deaths over her, and the fear of many more to come. New dreams were astir, as ruthless as the new ever are, and the ancient overlords with their ancient ways stood against it, hoping to kill the newborn dreams and those who bore them. A mighty war was in the making, and none could foresee what ruin it would wreak or what the whims of chance might spare.

“I, who neared the end of my days, wept for the young. I, who was about to depart, went about bidding good-bye to those things that remained on Earth, wonderful, beautiful, and defenseless, from all the ages she had known. I would not be content with images and illusions; I wanted memories of having myself met what had been shaped by hands, seen by eyes, trodden by feet, kissed by lips long down in dust.

“In a green country wet with springtime I found the great stones of Newgrange, where a folk forgotten once buried their kings; and along its western cliffs, where the sea roared gray, I went into a little parish church from when the people found their hope in Christ, and I knelt before his altar.