James P. Hogan (11 page)

“While we must never forget those to whom we owe our heritage, from this day onward the most important truth that should guide our thinking and our lives is that we are all united as Aurorans.”

Korshak and his companions sat listening in a room built of metal and strange-colored materials that they and the others already inside the white, smooth-skinned bird had been brought to after it arrived at the island flying high above the world. He had thought at first that the island was the ship that crossed the sky. But then the island had begun climbing higher, until the forests and mountains beneath were lost and the clouds themselves reduced to smears painted on a surface that shrank to reveal its curved edge, while above, the sky turned black, and stars appeared. And up there, the island had brought them to the Great Ship that Korshak had seen in the window carried by the metal beast that he had first met long ago. The wheel and its tapering axle grew larger as they approached, awesome in grandeur and line, vaster than any city, until the island was swallowed up in a cavern that opened to just a small part of it.

They were inside it now, moored between metal towers hung with pipes and cables, and constructions the like of which Korshak had never seen, behind huge doors that had closed behind them. It seemed that the ship was at that moment preparing to begin its voyage to another world, and disembarking from the island would be delayed until they were under way. Korshak was stunned. He and his party could never have reached Sofi in time. Yet the Builders had sent their white bird to bring them. Who were these beings of such power and magnanimity that a vagabond trickster, his accomplice, and two fugitives from a petty tyrant could be worth such effort? Masumichi, whose face had been the first to appear in the window of the metal beast, and others who had spoken from it since, had shown interest in Korshak’s magical and other arts. He confessed to himself that he was at a loss. Did they believe that
they
had something to learn from
him
?

He looked down at Vaydien, who was sitting close, one hand clasping his, her head resting against his shoulder. She seemed in a daze and had hardly spoken. Korshak slipped an arm across her shoulders and squeezed reassuringly.

“Are we really here?” she murmured. “All this around me is real?”

“Oh, yes, very real,” Korshak told her.

Vaydien was silent for a while. “Then I’ve woken up from a nightmare,” she said.

Meanwhile, an image of the Great Ship’s king continued speaking from the window on the wall at the far end of the room. Along with the others, Korshak had been given a box small enough to carry in a pocket or clip to a belt or the edge of a tunic, connected by a cord to a plug that the wearer placed in an ear. From the plug, a voice repeated the king’s words in whatever tongue was selected by turning a wheel on the box.

“I know the thought sits heavily with some of you that we will never see nor set foot on Earth again. But is that really such a tragedy? The forces and passions appearing there are the same as those that destroyed it before. Let me share with you some of the things I’ve observed in recent years, and where I think they will lead before very much longer….”

“Does the thought sit heavily with you?” Korshak asked Mirsto, who was sitting on the far side of a small table from them, his cloak draped over the adjacent seat. Sultan was lying alongside Mirsto’s feet, ears erect and eyes shifting constantly, taking in the strange new world.

“Oh, I think I’ve seen as much of it as I care to,” Mirsto replied. He seemed to be recovering from his exertions down on the surface. “A world this size from now on should suit me just fine. Gallivanting around in all that space down there was beginning to be somewhat taxing.”

Ronti was sitting a short distance from them, near the people who had also been brought up in the white bird. They were dressed in all manner of garb and carried an assortment of bags and other objects that looked as if they had been grabbed in haste at short notice. Their speech was different from that of the Arigane and Shengshoan regions, but like Korshak, Ronti had picked up a smattering of it in their travels. What intrigued Ronti most of all was the talking, manlike metal creature that had single-handedly routed an entire troop of Zileg’s cavalry with exploding lights and streaming fiery smoke. If the Builders so chose, they could surely have vanquished the world. But to rule over a world of the vanquished was not what they desired. So what depths of wisdom and insight were there to be learned here?

The creature was sitting beside the captain of the white bird, as it had during the brief journey up to the flying island. Less than two hours before, it had performed a feat greater than that of any hero that Ronti had heard sung of in ballad or told in legend; yet it showed no more emotion than would a house servant after driving away a pack of noisy dogs who were being a nuisance on the street. What manner of creature was it? Did it live, or had the Builders made it, as they had the craft that sailed in the skies and everything else that made up this world of miracles that they were now in?

All the same, Ronti’s natural cockiness hadn’t deserted him entirely. He was pretty certain that he could show it a thing or two when it came to acrobatics, he told himself as he eyed it up and down.

“One thing I can promise you all is that the things we are saying farewell to will fade into insignificance compared to the wonders that lie ahead.
Aurora
represents the greatest concentration of human creativity and inventiveness that has ever been brought together in a single place at one time….”

In the leafy upper level of his abode, Masumichi Shikoba had Ormont’s address playing on the wall screen in the living area. At the same time, he was using a viewpad hooked into the visual system of GPT-2D, still aboard the recently docked carrier, to check over the group of close family and other relatives that the lander had brought up. It turned out there were seven rows of seats in the lander, not six as Lois Iles had conservatively guessed, which gave twenty-eight places, or twenty-four available after allowing four for Korshak’s party. Of these, he had filled twenty – not bad at all, considering the instant decisions that they had been forced to make. Eight had declined to go, as Masumichi had assumed some inevitably would. He supposed that he would now have to explain and justify his actions to the Recruitment Board, whom he hadn’t so much as notified, let alone consulted. However, the fact remained that had it not been for his robot, the lander’s entire mission – which Nath Borden, who sat on the Board, had expressly requested Masumichi to take care of – would almost certainly have been aborted. So all in all, he felt that he had a pretty strong case and could stand his ground. In any case, what were they going to do about it now – throw him overboard?

While the carrier was returning to the
Aurora
, Masumichi had replayed the sequence that GPT-2D had recorded of its extraordinary stunt at the bridge. He’d had no idea that his robots would be capable of such initiative in circumstances so complex and demanding, and he was eager to analyze the associative-matrix audit trail to see what he could make of what had happened. He was beginning to suspect that perhaps he had been underestimating his creations for a long time. It seemed they could be surprisingly resourceful.

“And let’s not forget the new generation that will be appearing and growing up in the years ahead.
Aurora
is the only world that they will ever know. Their trust in and dependence on the future that we build will be total. We owe every one of those yet unborn a unique debt, now, to make sure of…”

Sonja Taag sat out on the patio of the duplex apartment that she would be sharing with Helmut Goben, and listened to Ormont’s words coming through the open glass door from where Helmut was watching on the screen inside. They were on the topmost level of a structural module called Evergreen, devoted primarily to intensive cultivation, with an upper area of simulated outdoor recreational parkland containing a sprinkling of residences. The apartment looked out at a miniature landscape where streams tumbled into grass-banked ponds, and hiking trails wound their way through trees beneath an artificial, variable-weather sky lit by arc discharge and mirror optics. The richness of light and variety of colors brought together in the confined space produced an intensity unrivaled anywhere on Earth, and with the peculiar curvatures of the underlying geometry resulted in an effect that could have come out of a fairy tale. Yes, Soja thought to herself, the children growing up in such surroundings might be deprived in some ways, as a few people maintained. But they would surely gain in others.

“He’s talking about you, Sonja,” Helmut’s voice called from inside.

“Yes, I heard it.”

Since she was a teacher, children were her special interest. She saw
Aurora
as a chance to help make real the kind of teaching environment that she had always dreamed of – to uncover and develop the potential that every human mind was capable of and meant for, free from the baggage of defensive politics, institutionalized prejudices, and obligatory deceptions that came with having to survive amid a patchwork of hostile and competing interests as part of Earth’s legacy. What would arrive one day at the planet Hera could represent a leap forward in the advancement of human culture that would take Earth another thousand years.

She leaned back in her chair and gazed over the treetops to where the starfield was visible through a section of roof low down where the sky ended.

To devote one’s life to something meaningful that was bigger than they were, and which would endure for long after they were gone. Wasn’t that what fulfillment in living was all about?

“Our world will see a new system of relationships and values. No more can it be divided between producers and takers. In the environment into which we will be heading, every one of us will depend utterly on the skills and dedication of everyone else. The worth of every individual will be judged not by what they own, or by the means they have acquired to compel others, but by what they can contribute….”

In the graphics laboratory of the observatory located in the
Aurora
’s Hub section, Lois Iles had routed the audio to the speaker of the terminal where she was working. The main screen on the terminal was showing a reconstruction of an image transmitted from Hera by the probe that had left the old world long ago, before the time of the Conflagration. In a chair at the worktop behind her, Marney Clure, whose exchange she had mediated from Tranth, was using another screen to browse through the archive of images. He had asked to come to the observatory and see the kind of work she did.

Even after enhancement processing, the scenes were of low resolution and poor quality, and much of the instrument data had been corrupted after traveling an immense distance under noisy conditions. To have decoded anything at all that had originated from ancient, partially understood technology was an impressive enough feat in itself. The Sofian test platforms sent ahead in more recent years as part of the
Aurora
program were programmed to carry on all the way to Hera, but the mission would be well on its way before it could expect to receive anything back from there.

In the meantime, the information available about Hera was restricted to what could be gleaned from orbital observation by the single old-world probe. It indicated a planet that was Earthlike in its physical and chemical makeup, with oceans, a breathable, friendly atmosphere, and climatic zones extending between possibly greater extremes than on Earth. The atmospheric composition and surface appearance confirmed the presence of life, though of what kind and progressed to what degree could not be ascertained. There had been no sign of major artificial works or electronic activity that would suggest an advanced civilization.

“I never realized that anything like this existed,” Clure murmured, keeping his eyes on the screen. He was listening to Ormont, but had been too enthralled by the things he was seeing to stop when the announcement came on. “And this was all achieved just by Sofi. What could the whole world do if it could only learn to live together?”

“A lot,” Lois agreed. “But it’s heading the wrong way. You know how things were in Tranth. People who think the way you do were never heard.”

“Do you really believe things can be different?” Clure asked. “Even Sofi was starting to get divided within itself.”

“Finding out is what
Aurora
is all about,” Lois replied.

He learned fast, she thought. When she brought him up from Tranth, it had been simply as a duty that she had been assigned. But now she was beginning to appreciate more the qualities that made him stand out, which had attracted attention beyond Tranth. And now he would be able to help build the kind of world for all that he believed in. Ormont had just said that the worth of individuals would be judged not by what they possessed or the power they held over others, but by what they contributed. If Marney Clure’s kind of world became reality in the course of the mission, and if that set the pattern for a new branch of the human race that would one day spread across Hera, then, Lois told herself, she could say that she had already made her contribution to it.

Something was wrong. Andri Lubanov, who was supposed to be Torus’s prime inside intelligence source on
Aurora
, had said that liftout was six weeks away at least, and possibly longer. Now he had disappeared suddenly, after destroying sensitive records and giving his mistress what was obviously a storyline to delay suspicions, and communications from the ship had gone silent. None of the ground personnel associated with the mission could be raised, shuttle traffic from the bases had ceased, and radar evaluations during the
Aurora
’s last pass overhead had failed to show the usual pattern of attendant-craft activity in the vicinity. Actor had issued the code
Winter Rain
without further delay, and operation Torus was in motion.