Starfarers (56 page)

Before patience and discipline broke, they reached the fifth and final terrace. On foundations that must have belonged to a dock, it jutted sheerly out, its edge a cliff. The expanse was all garden and orchard except for a building larger than any above, decked in flowerful vines. The Seladorian temple—no, they called it a communion house. This was hallowed ground.

Several hundred people were there. As abruptly and insanely as the violence started, the attackers had not pursued, not quite yet. Instead they went for the residences and whomever didn’t get away. Those victims couldn’t be many, for believers hadn’t tried to bar doors, nor bolted panicky in every which direction. Somebody had taken quick, effective leadership and brought them here. Mothers bore babies, youngsters trotted at their skirts, men helped the old and the lame along. Children wailed, a few adults wept, but in stumbling wise they moved toward the refuge.

They were garbed like their persecutors, except for one who trotted back and forth beside them. He wore a blue cloak over his gown and carried a staff. With calls and gestures, he herded them on their way.

A few cheered raggedly when they saw the Jensui. The cloaked man waved them to keep moving and hurried over to the platoon. He was short, hard-bitten, less dark than the others, nose craggy, eyes without obliqueness—Kith, by the look of him.

Panthos drew to a halt. “Form your line,” he commanded. “If any rioters show, shoot above them, warn them off.” To the leader: “Are you Houer Kernaldi?”

“Yes,” replied the man, his Jensui accented but fluent and steady. “You arrived in bare time, Optionary. Thank you. The Ultimate is with you.” _

Panthos grinned. “Happenstance is. Are you in charge here? Don’t they have a, uh, priest or councillor?”

“I don’t know where Honrata is. May she be safe.”

“Meanwhile they look up to you, eh? Well, you did a good, forceful job. But this is a blind end. You’re boxed in.”

“There was no other way to go. The sanctuary doors are stout. I hoped they’d withstand battering till a rescue squad came.”

That could have been too long, Panthos thought. He suspected the summarian wouldn’t mind having the Seladorian problem taken off his hands. Afterward he’d shoot several arbitrarily arrested offenders. The Arodish high priest would protest the executions while privately feeling relieved himself, and that would be that.

However, here Panthos was, bearing the authority of his mission. “I’ll call for an airlift to bring you to safety,” he said, and raised his transceiver bracelet.

The response he got hit him in the belly. “We can’t,” a subcommander groaned. “The whole damn city’s erupting. Mobs are collecting around every Jensui property. We’ve got to keep force at the sites, all sites, or else they’ll turn into lynch-and-loot packs.”

“Hoy, you can spare a flyer or two to ferry us.”

“Sorry. The summarian told me to tell you.” He must have monitored the call Panthos thought, but not wanted to give this matter any more time than that at this moment. “It’d be too provocative, he said Better to let this thing bum itself out where it is than risk it spreading through the whole province. We’ve spotted you by satellite. You’re secure where you are, aren’t you? Stand guard till we have calm again. Service to the Coordinator.”

The voice cut off. Panthos lowered his arm. “Did you hear?” he asked Kernaldi.

“I did,” the other said without anxiety. “You will protect us?”

“Of course. You’re subjects of the Governance.”

Men appeared at the top of the stairs. They bounded down. “Fire high,” directed the paceman. Fulgurators flared and boomed. It was a more effective demonstration than bullets or sonics. The men scuttled back up out of sight. Their curses and obscenities trailed them.

“We’re safe,” Panthos said. “We just have to wait. No fun in this weather, but if you can keep your followers quiet, we’ll manage.” He felt confident of that. Here was a natural-born commander.

Kernaldi shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Optionary. No water.”

“What?”

“I checked that immediately when we got here. As I feared, nothing flows. The pipes are fed from above. Somebody has turned the valves. They aren’t all witless hysterics. This hasn’t happened randomly. There has been a certain amount of advance planning.”

“Um.” Panthos considered. Each man of his carried a canteen, and would need each drop in it. “The soil must still be moist. We’ll find vessels, dig down, squeeze out what we can for your weakest”—infants, the aged, the infirm. “That ought to keep them alive till morning.”

“I doubt it.” The tone was dispassionate, setting forth fact and logic. “Besides, will we be free then? This siege could go on for days, if the constabulary takes no action to stop it. And, Optionary, think of the spiritual side. The psychological side, if you prefer. Everything else of these people’s is being destroyed. This garden is their center and symbol. If we—they themselves—uproot it, will they ever have the heart to rebuild?”

“Maybe they can’t,” Panthos said. “Maybe they should go back to the old faith and the old ways, rejoin their folk.”

He promptly regretted his words. The small man stood erect and replied—if a knife could speak, so would it have spoken—“That is impossible. We are what we are. We will die here, or flee to Seladorian communities elsewhere, but we will not surrender.”

Panthos kept silence for a span, watching the fugitives. Most were braving the sun, leaving the shelter of the sanctuary to the vulnerable among them. Mothers comforted children, fathers led them to what meager shade lay at the building or under trees. Exhausted, stunned, they nonetheless
bore themselves well and talked softly. Always their glances went back to the evangelist.

“What is this lifeway of yours?” Panthos asked.

Kernaldi smiled. His voice eased, the tone of one reasonable man to another. “That’s nothing to explain in a single quick lecture, my friend. How much of the history do you know?”

“Very little. Tell me what you can.”

Still Kernaldi spoke calmly. “Selador was not the first to see that all existence is unity and life its culmination—its purpose, for how can a lifeless universe have meaning? Intelligent life, awareness, is the goal. Rather, I should say, it’s the forefront, for it’s to evolve onward, till at the end it is identical with the Ultimate that realizes itself through life. We humans, though, have taken a wrong turning. If we persist as we are, we’ll become more and more irrelevant to the Meaning, or even, on Earth, a threat to it. In the course of time, our race will go through misery to extinction.” He shrugged. “In everyday language, a mistake of nature’s. Selador didn’t want that to happen.”

“He, uh, preached against machines, didn’t he?”

“No. He was not technophobic. It’s unfortunate that some of us today are. Having a technology is part of being intelligent. But humans have taken it too far, and in bad directions. They’ve adapted themselves to it, rather than it to the Meaning. They’ve cut themselves off from the living world. Too often, they’re its enemy.” Kernaldi gestured. “The desert here was once woodland and prairie. Our souls have shriveled like this country. Our duty to it, to the future, and to ourselves is to restore it and begin to live wholly with life.”

He smiled again, ruefully. “But now I am preaching. Sorry. I’ll only add that a great many local people, both high and humble, hate the idea. It would make
them
, or at any rate their descendants, the enclave.”

“I’m surprised they don’t regard it as just a daydream,” Panthos said, wishing he could be kindlier.

Kernaldi took the remark in good part. “Oh, it is possible. I won’t live to see it carried through, but we can make a start,
and will if we’re given the chance. Including the right sort of technology.” He lowered his voice. “Bioengineering doesn’t have to produce monsters. Apologies to those brave men of yours, but they are an example of what I’m talking about Our scientific knowledge is valuable, but we should use it to restore a natural world that is in accordance with our own natures. Spacefaring is another example. It gave us many wonderful things and insights, but it is not an end in itself—that attitude has also produced monsters, of the spirit if not the body—and the time is overpast for us to take what we have gained from it for the enrichment and enlargement of life and mind, here and now.”

Had Kithhood brought him to his faith? wondered Panthos. Generation after generation within metal, cruising the hollowness between the stars; alien planets, alien beings; on his own brief visits to Earth, an ever dwindling Kith. Town from which Earth grew ever more estranged. …

Kernaldi put aside the emotion that had begun to show and went back to practicalities. “Well, obviously, in the course of time we Seladorians have developed our peculiar rites, observances, practices; and we stick together, if only because we have to. That alone gets us disliked. And we have our conflicts with the Governance. As a Kithman, I understand all this very well.”

Sharply: “Have I said enough? Your turn. What about these people you see before you?”

The sun was a fire, the air a furnace. In the darkness of the sanctuary, a baby cried.

Panthos was young. Decision came fast. Yet he felt quite coolheaded as he answered, “You’re right. Holding you guarded is no real protection. We’ll escort you to the garrison.”

Kernaldi regarded him for half a minute before asking, in the same level tone: “Isn’t that against your orders?”

“I’ve received no direct orders.” Panthos felt he had better speak openly; and he wanted to. “When we’ve left this spot, we can’t turn back. That’d certainly mean a fight. When we get to the compound, they can’t refuse you water, food, and
shelter.” As for himself, he should suffer no worse than a reprimand, and maybe nothing more than a tongue-lashing from the summarian. After all, he commanded a special force, dispatched by the Executive, whose grandnephew he was.

Kernaldi raised hand to brow. Though he had had nothing to do with Kithfolk, Panthos recognized the starfarer salute. “Thank you, sir. You are a man.”

Wheeling about, Kernaldi went among his followers, to and fro, in and out, talking, touching, being what he was. Panthos caught fragmentary phrases. He saw what assurance and order they wrought.

“I think we can overawe the mob and pass through,” he told Bokta. “Regardless of what happens, shoot to wound or kill only if there’s absolutely no other choice, and only at those directly up against us. When in any doubt whatsoever, hold your fire. Is that clear, Paceman?”

“Yes, sir,” Bokta replied. “I wish it wasn’t,” he muttered. A veteran could get away with such remarks.

Kernaldi herded the Seladorians into line. Bokta deployed the platoon forward, behind, and on either side. The flitters lifted. “Let’s go,” Panthos said, and led the way.

Up the stairs, where formation got tricky. Over the terrace above. As he expected, the rioters shrank back, right and left. They snarled, some of them screamed, a few threw objects, but they made way for the constables. Smoke reeked. Pale under the sun, flames danced over piles of household treasures. Whirlyblades whickered.

People and platoon surmounted the last level, crossed its defiled greenery, and went up a deserted street. Walls brimmed it with shadow, though heat still sucked on skin. Boots slammed stone. Doorways and windows stood shut. Nobody, called from lean-to shops or hovels built out of shards.

The top of Panthos’s mind crouched watchful. Underneath, he thought how he longed for a cold beer. And when he got back to Sanusco, there was a girl … and then furlough, home. …

A rifle barked. He never heard it, nor felt the slug crash through his skull.

Weapons swiveled about “Hold fire!” the paceman bawled. No telling exactly where behind this crumbling concrete the sniper lurked, or what women and children might be shivering nearby. The optionary had issued his orders.

“O Ultimate—” Kernaldi knelt down by the sprawled body. He closed the eyes.

No further shot came. Probably the killer had laughed and run. “Take him up,” Bokta bade after a short while. A Warrior gathered what was left of Panthos and cradled it against his chest. Kernaldi had been calming his flock. The march proceeded.

“Now,” Kernaldi said, “the Governance will have to keep us protected.”

On the
voyage back to Sol, Nansen often sought the command center. There was seldom any need for it. As ever,
Envoy
mostly conned herself, making leap after zero-zero leap so smoothly that her crew never noticed the transitions. Only when she was about to pause and orbit free, in the normal state, for the taking of observations, did captain and engineer stand by their posts, and that was more from a sense of duty than because they anticipated any problems.

But in between such times, when he wanted to be alone and felt as if his cabin were closing in on him, he would come sit among instruments and quietness, dim the interior lights, activate the great viewscreens, and lose himself in the splendor around.

Late one daywatch, about at midpassage, he heard a light
footfall behind him. Turning his head, he saw Dayan enter through the dusk he had made. She wore a gray coverall and he could not make out the red of her hair, but stars and Milky Way touched it with frost. As he rose from his seat, she caught her breath. He wondered why. It did not occur to him that he stood limned against the cosmos.

“Well, welcome,” he said. His pleasure was as genuine as his surprise.

“I’m … not sure I will be,” she answered.

“You always are, Hanny.”

Her gaze dropped, lifted anew toward his, and held steady. The change in her mood, from the optimism and exuberance of her projects with Yu, was like a sudden cold wind upon him. She plunged ahead: “I’m sorry to interrupt your thinking.”

“I wasn’t. And I wouldn’t be sorry if you did.”

“But—I suppose you can guess why I’m here.”

He smiled. “Because I happen to be?”

His fragile cheerfulness broke under her words. “I thought you should hear first, privately, and I didn’t want to wait till you were in your cabin. I’d have had to fend off everybody else’s questions.” She glanced away, at a cloudlet glimmering in the crystal blackness, a nebula where suns were coming to birth. “Besides, this place is more right, somehow.”