Into the Sea of Stars (11 page)

"Shelley!"

"
It's
okay, Ian, the food's not bad. Some sort of veg
etarian mix, that's all."

He finally understood and broke into a nervous grin.
"Thank you,
ahh
,
friend
."

A number of people around the circle mumbled their
approval at his comment.

He drew closer to Shelley and sat down by her side.
"What happened?"

"Most likely, same as you.
They jumped me, but once I took the helmet off, they calmed down. Something about
dissenters and I assured them I was nothing of the sort,
and after that everything was fine. They brought me back
here,
fed me some broth, then you came in."

The old man brought over a wooden plate filled with
a thick white soup. Ian took a hesitant sip, remembering
all of his anthropological studies about primitive societies
and eating rituals. The woman he admired earlier stepped
out of the crowd and sat by his side.

"You from Earth, or another colony?"

This was a surprise. He expected some mumbo jumbo about gods from other worlds, or some similar nonsense.

"Earth.
How did you guess that?"

"We're not stupid. You obviously aren't from here, at
least not dressed like that."

"But how do you know about Earth? Did your elders
teach you or—"

"Come now," she admonished, and lightly touched him
on the arm, a move that Shelley could not fail to notice.
"We do not understand everything, but some of the teach
ing computers and their programs still work. When we're
young we use them."

"If you can do that, then why do you
?...
"

"You mean, live like primitives. Why not? Maybe you
should ask yourself that."

"Yes,
friend," another woman interjected, "why not
live
like primitives?"

"But how do you keep your system running?"

"Most of it was automated by our forefathers. All we
have to do is routine maintenance, which is simple."

"Which frees us of the slavery of complexity, so that
we can return to simplicity and light," another one said,
and a chorus of voices murmured in the affirmative. Ian
looked up and noticed that several hundred people had
gathered around the roaring fire.

"They're just getting started," Shelley whispered.

"When we foreswear complexity, then all is balanced," a young man said from the back of the crowd. "Then and
only then is true simplicity obtained."

This is crazy, Ian thought, what are we getting into, first-year philosophy?

"But the order of your world is built on complexity," Ian tried cautiously.

"But we have purified it back to the basics," another
replied.

"However, you live in one of the most complex ma
chines ever designed by man. Once you accept that first
step toward complexity, there is no going back."

"But we have," several replied eagerly.

"As I said," Shelley whispered, "don't even try."

"But this is a machine you live in, not Eden," Ian
replied, "and a machine requires technical skills. Just sup
pose something really serious should go wrong."

"Nothing has, and nothing will," the redhead replied.
"We have everything under control, as long as we follow
the simplicity of collective meditation and consensus."

"Tell me more about the dissenters," Shelley asked,
wishing to extract Ian from a potentially dangerous de
bate. Ian, however, shot her a quick look of reproach.
These people obviously got excited, a little too excited,
about the dissenters. He still wasn't sure if he and Shelley
were guests or prisoners, and until he knew more, he
wanted to keep them smiling.

"They are the ones who fell," the gray-bearded elder
replied.

"How so?"
Shelley continued.

"Can't you yourself see their folly?"

Oh, no, Ian thought, step carefully.

"Look out! Incoming!"

A wild explosion of confusion erupted. The people
scattered in every direction, screaming in terror. For a
second Ian thought Shelley had triggered something and they were now going to be ripped apart. Then he noticed
the colonists were all running away, and he wondered if
he and Shelley had broken some taboo, which caused
them to flee.

A roaring, whishing noise thundered overhead.

"What the hell!" Ian felt something brush past his
shoulder and for an instant thought Shelley was pressing up against him.

"Ian?"

"Yeah."
He turned to look at her. But his view was
now blocked. A huge arrow, nearly a dozen feet in length
and as thick around as his thigh, was buried in the ground
between them. The pressure on his shoulder came from
the still-quivering bolt.

The locals looked at him in open-mouthed amazement. He tried a wan smile of bravado, wishing for a quick line.
Ian looked back at the arrow, its heavy point buried only
inches away from his foot. His eyes rolled up and he
fainted dead away.

He heard a roaring sound, as if he were trapped in a waterfall. The shouting was all around him, and the individual voices soon came clear.

"Those sons of bitches!"

There was a wild frenzy of activity. Shelley had dragged
him off to one side of the circle.

"Another incoming!"

The crowd scattered and this time he noticed that most of them disappeared into the vine-covered buildings that surrounded the clearing. He saw the bolt streaking in,
following a strange curving trajectory. The arrow slammed
against the side of a building and shattered.

"Bastards, ass-kissing Dissenters." The crowd poured
out of the buildings, chanting.

"Bastards, bastards, bastards."
The air around them pulsed with a rippling energy. From out of the shadows an object out of ancient history was dragged by an enthusiast mob.

"Double torsion ballista," Ian murmured. The urge of the historian was too much. He crawled out from under the protection of the building and went over and joined the shouting mob.

He walked up close to the machine. It was the real
thing, and he felt a rippling thrill. The twin bundles of
rope that powered it were made of human hair, while the
bowstring appeared to be made of steel cable. Half a
dozen young women carried up a ten-foot arrow and the
crowd roared with pleasure at the sight.

The machine was cocked by hand-powered windlasses
then tilted back so that it pointed halfway up to vertical.

What the hell? Ian stepped back. Why were they shoot
ing an arrow straight up?

The crowd suddenly fell silent, and suddenly he heard
a soft echoing chant.

"Assholes, assholes, assholes."

He looked around wondering where the distant chant
ing came from, until Shelley touched his shoulder and
pointed straight up.

"Look."

Ian tilted his head back and then he suddenly remem
bered. They had seen another fire on the opposite side of
the cylinder. Directly overhead and three hundred meters away was the other side, and a flickering fire illuminated
the sky above them in a soft ruddy glow.

Ian sidled up alongside the redhead. He gulped as he
came closer. The exertion and excitement had covered
her body with
a sheen
of sweat, and her eyes were wild
with excitement that had a most definite sexual aura to
it.

He collected his thoughts and pointed straight up.
"Dis
senters?"

She nodded her head vigorously.

The graybeard took up position alongside the catapult,
which was now
loaded,
and grabbed hold of the trigger.

"We are the truth," he intoned. "Therefore in the name
of the truth and the light we are absolved of this action.
It is not my hand that triggers this, it is the result of our
consensus,
therefore I am not responsible, for the con
sensus
makes me do it. But it is moral nevertheless, since
we are right."

"We are right and they are wrong," the crowd roared.

"Fuck you"
came
a distant reply.

The elder yanked the trigger.

The catapult snapped with a thunderous crack. The
arrow leaped away into the dark.

Ian was amazed. "Say, I thought I read somewhere
that you were founded by believers in peace?"

"But we are followers of peace."

"That looks like a weapon of war to me."

"No, it's not,
it's
random luck. We don't aim it at anyone, if they get hit it's the will of a higher power. We
believe in peace more than they do, and we are right, therefore our protest against them is for the higher cause
of peace."

He tried to follow the logic but gave up.

"It's going to be a long night," the redhead whispered,
drawing closer, and her hand lightly touched his side.

"But it looks like you people are having a war here,"
Ian said weakly. "How can we? I mean, aren't they going
to come down and attack...?"

"No, that would be violence. They stay on their side,
we stay on ours, and we trade spears. What do you think,
we're savages or something?"

She drew closer, her naked breasts brushing against
his arm.

He didn't dare to answer.

As he stepped out of the building into the soft diffused
light of day, Ian felt a sense of guilt. Shelley sat by the ashes of the fire, notepad in hand, punching in observa
tions. He ambled over to her side feeling rather sheepish.

"So, tell me, are primitive mating customs all they're
cracked up to be? Shelley told us what you were up to
in there."

It was Ellen! He turned around and there on the op
posite side of the square stood
Stasz
and Ellen. Ellen's
expression was definitely not one of cheerful good morn
ing.

The redhead came out of the shelter, raised her arms
up over her head, and stretched with a supple feline grace.
Ellen's expression reddened, and on
Stasz's
there was
genuine admiration as he kept looking from the girl and
back to Ian. She smiled a vague sort of hello in their
direction,
then
wandered off into the overgrowth. Shelley
didn't even look up but simply continued with her notes.

"I'm glad to see you were in good hands and safe,"
Ellen snarled. "We wandered over half this god damn
botanical toilet looking for you. Then we get captured by
those, what did they call themselves, 'true dissenters,'
and then..."

"Watch what you say," Shelley snapped.

"Are you addressing me?" Ellen purred, getting ready
to strike.

"I would suggest that if you are referring to our friends up there"—Shelley pointed vaguely toward the other
side—"that you do so quietly. And for God's sake, don't
call them true dissenters. Our friends around here get
upset rather easily."

Ellen knew she couldn't argue with her, but Ian and
Stasz
could see that Shelley had insulted her by pointing
out something she should have realized already.

As if in response, a faint drifting call echoed down from above.
"Collectivist assholes!"

"Oh, no, here we go again." Ian groaned.

"
Naw
, they're too exhausted," Shelley replied. "It was
a hell of a night."

"To be sure,"
Stasz
said, his voice edged with jealousy
as he looked back in the direction the redhead had taken.

A couple of men were still gathered around the cata
pult, which was loaded, and Ian could see this would be
the last shot of the fray, since everyone had gone off to sleep. The old graybeard, however, was still up and di
recting the alignment of the siege engine.

"Gates, the old graybeard, is the leader. By the way,
you might like to know that you spent the night with his
daughter
Ileia
," Shelley said softly.

Ian looked at his feet and muttered a comment about
observing local customs.

"Gates filled me in on some fascinating details," Shel
ley continued, ignoring his embarrassment. "I've re
corded them all, Dr.
Lacklin
, so that you may study them
later, when you feel up to it."

Stasz
snickered and turned away, while Ian tried to come up with a casual reply.

"Freethinker bastards!"
It was Gates and one of his
followers.

"Watch this," Shelley said.

The catapult hurled its shot, which arced up and away.
It followed an arching path, due to the
Coriolis
effect
created by the turning of the cylinder. In the daylight Ian
now realized that the catapult was not aimed straight at
the other campsite but a good sixty degrees off.