Starfarers (5 page)

A visual showed the latter star white-hot. It flickered at the edges. Ghostly whirls raced across it, flung in and out of view by a frantic rotation: storms in an atmosphere compressed to a thickness of a few kilometers. The image drifted
over the screen and out of sight, out of detection range, borne by the thirty-odd million kilometers per hour at which the white dwarf whipped around A.

But a probe had sprung from the station and hurtled inward. Heavily shielded, its instruments had beamed their findings with lasers that plasma clouds could not block. Rage ramped—

The screen went blank. The probe’s defenses had been quickly overwhelmed. Yet its kamikaze dive had given far more than a brief spectacle. Knowledge of mass distributions, vectors, fields, fluxes, a thousand different aspects of reality had been gained. More was still arriving from the station, a tumble of terabytes.

“All seems well,” Yu said, not quite steadily.

Wang leaped from his seat and danced across the deck. This near the spin axis of the ship, weight was only about a fourth of Earthside; he bounced around like a ball. “Wonderful, wonderful!” he caroled. “Now we’ll learn something!”

Yu left her own chair and joined him. They were both young.

“And we can soon go home,” she said when they stopped for breath.

His forebodings came upon him again. At this victorious moment he defied them. “And we will cope with whatever we find there.”

Her gladness wavered. “Do you truly expect trouble?”

“We’ll come back with a fame we can turn into power. We’ll cope.” His fingers stroked her cheek. “Do not be afraid, blossom.”

“Never,” she told him, “while we have one another.” And she murmured a few ancient lines that she treasured, from the
Book of Songs:

“Wind and rain, dark as night,

The cock crowed and would not stop.

Now that I have seen my lord,

How can I any more be sad?”

The mad
old man lay dying. To him came Selim ibn Ali Zeyd.

The suite was high in a hospital. Windows, open to an autumnal afternoon, let in the barest rustle of traffic. A breeze fluttered gauzy white drapes. The windows looked out over the crowded roofs of Istanbul, a Byzantine wall, and the Golden Horn, on which danced boats and little waves. Beyond, hills lifted in tawniness darkened by trees and lightened by homes.

Zeyd trod softly to the bedside and bowed.

Osman Tahir squinted up from his pillow. Bald head, mummy face, shriveled hands, brought forth the massiveness of the bones underneath. His voice was almost a whisper, hoarse and slow, but the words marched without stumbling. “You are very welcome.”

He spoke in Arabic, for Zeyd had no Turkish. Either one could have used English or French. The courtesy was regal.

“I am honored that you wanted me here, sir,” Zeyd answered. “So many wish to pay you their last respects, and the physicians will let so few in.”

“Officious bastards. But, true, I’ve only driblets of strength left.” Tahir grinned. “Time was, you may recall, when I could rough-and-tumble in the Assembly all day, run ten kilometers before the evening prayer, carouse till midnight, make love till dawn, and be back ahead of the opposition, ready to browbeat them further.”

You old scoundrel
, Zeyd could not help thinking.
Nevertheless it’s more or less true.
This man, soldier and politician, had shaken history and gone on to reach for the stars.
We’re all of us mortal though. Biomedicine may have given
us a hundred years or better of healthy life, but in the end the organism has used itself up
. “It is as God wills,” he said.

Tahir nodded. “We’ll not waste time on politeness. I had my reasons for insisting you come. Not that I’m not glad to see you—however much I envy you, envy you—”

Zeyd had been to Epsilon Indi.

Tahir must draw several harsh breaths before he could go on: “The damned nurse will throw you out bloody soon. I need to rest—ha! As if an extra three or four days till I’m done make any difference.”

He was always like this
, Zeyd thought.
A trademark. And he made shrewd use of it
“What can I do for you, sir?”

“You can tell me … the prospects … of the
Envoy
mission.”

Startled, Zeyd protested, “I’m not in the organization, sir. I admire what you have done for us, but I know nothing except what the news releases say.”

An English word snapped forth. “Bullshit! With your record, the connections you are bound to have in the space community—” The voice had risen. Overtaxed, it broke in violent wheezing.

Alarmed, Zeyd stooped close. Tahir waved him back. “Be honest with me,” he commanded.

Zeyd straightened, as if coming to attention. “Well, sir, yes, I—I do hear things. I can’t confirm or disconfirm them. The status of the project is certainly unsure.”

A fist doubled on the coverlet. “Because of the war, this damned, stupid, useless war in space,” Tahir rasped. The hand unfolded, trembled outward, groped for Zeyd’s, and clung like a child’s. “But they’re not going to cancel the undertaking, are they?” Tahir pleaded. “They won’t?”

The most straightforward answer possible would be the best, Zeyd decided. “As nearly as I can discover, no. It’s on standby now, as you know, and all the bureaucrats of all the countries involved are being noncommittal. But it does seem as if people within the Foundation, working together regardless of nationality—I do get the impression they’re holding
their own. We can hope work will resume not too long after hostilities end.”
Whenever that may be.

Tahir’s thought must have been similar, for he said as he let his arm drop, “That lies with God. But thank you, young man, thank you. Now I, too, dare hope—” A fleeting wist-fulness: “I did hope I’d live to see the ship set forth.”

His achievement, his obsession for the past half century, for which he used all the power he had been gathering: wherefore they called him mad. But he got the mission started, he got it started!

“You will watch from Paradise, sir,” Zeyd said.

“Maybe. God is compassionate. Otherwise, what do we know?” Tahir’s eyes, sunken and dim, sought the visitor’s. “You, however, you can
go.”

Tahir stood mute.

“You want to go, don’t you?” Tahir asked anxiously. “Already you’ve sacrificed so much.”

Strange, the lure that caught me. A spectrogram taken by an orbiting network of instruments—oxygen at a planet of Epsilon Indi, a sign of life—and I divorced Narriman, that she be free to find another man, a stepfather for our children—and here I am back, my reputation made but in a world grown more alien than I had imagined. …

It would be wrong, a sin, to make a promise to this man that might never be kept. And yet—“Any who go must needs be … somewhat peculiar,” Zeyd said.

“Everybody realized that from the beginning. I’d like to believe I’ve met one of them.”

“What happens lies with God, sir.”

Tahir tried to sit up. He fell back. His voice, though, took on force. “This is to His glory. And, ten thousand years from now, when everything around us today is gone with Nineveh, you will remember, Zeyd, you will tell—But it’s not for that, it’s for mankind. Mankind, and the glory of God.”

“Yes—”

A nurse entered. “I’m sorry, Dr. Zeyd, but you will have to leave,” she said in English.

Tahir did not roar her down as once he would have done. He lay quietly, drained.

Zeyd bowed again, deeply. “In God’s name, farewell, sir, and peace be upon you.” His eyes stung.

He could barely hear the answer. “Fare
you
well. Well and far.”

He is not mad,
Zeyd thought as he departed.
He never was. It is only that his sanity went beyond most men’s understanding.

Early Sunlight
slanted over old buildings. The mansion stood as it had stood for centuries, red-tiled and amber-walled. The same family dwelt there as always. Modernizations throughout its history had not changed its appearance much or stolen away its soul. Barn, shed, and workshop were likewise little changed, although now they held only artifacts of the past, exhibits. Trees—chestnut, cedar, quebracho—shaded a broad stretch of lawn. Flowers trooped their colors. Several members of the staff were outside, some doing minor tasks, one showing a party of tourists around. Their talk lifted cheerfully but was soon lost in the wind.

It blew slow from the south, cool, scattering insect hordes. The odors awakening in it were as green as the grassland that billowed onward to the horizon. Anthills dotted the plain like dull-red stumps; groves stood scattered, murky except where tossing leaves caught the light. A few emus walked sedately, not far off, and the sky was full of wings, partridge, thrush, dove, parrot, vulture, and more: wildlife that came back after the cattle were gone.

Ricardo Iriarte Nansen Aguilar and Hanny Dayan rode
off. He could have shown her more if they had taken a hovercar, and later they would; but when he suggested an excursion on horseback for her first morning here, she accepted eagerly. To her it was an exciting novelty, to him a return to memories.

Hoofs thudded gently, leather creaked, otherwise they went in silence until they were well out in the open. The whisper of wind through grass became an undertone to the whistles, trills, and calls from above. Dayan looked right, left, ahead, over immensity. She had arrived yesterday evening, when the welcome she got took all her time before she withdrew to her guest room.

“A beautiful country, Paraguay,” she said in the English they shared. “I’ve trouble seeing how you can leave it … forever.”

Nansen shrugged. “It isn’t my country,” he replied without tone.

“No? It’s your family’s, and I can see they’re close-knit, and your own roots are here, aren’t they? Your grandnephew told me—”

She hesitated. That man was gray and furrowed. The man at her side was still young, under fifty. He sat tall in the saddle, lean, shoulders and hands big for such a build. Under straight black hair, his face bore blue-gray eyes, Roman nose, chin clean-depilated and strong. His garb was nothing uncommon—iridescent white shirt, close-fitting black trousers, soft boots—but he wore it with an air that she thought might, long ago, have been a gaucho’s.

Well, he had been to the stars and back.

“—your grandnephew, Don Fernando, told me your ancestor who founded this place came from Europe in the nineteenth century,” Dayan finished. “A history like that must mean a great deal.”

Nansen nodded. “Yes. Though we weren’t all
estancieros
, you know. One son would inherit. Most others went into trade, professions, the Church, the army, sometimes politics in the democratic era—eventually, when the time came, into space.”

“Then don’t you belong here?” Dayan persisted. “The land, the portraits on the walls, books, goblets, jewels, mementos, traditions—the family.” She smiled. “I studied you up beforehand, Captain Nansen, and now I’m seeing for myself.”

“You see the surface,” he replied gravely. “They are cordial to me, yes because I am of the blood, and they’re proud of what I’ve done and will do. But they’re strangers, Dr. Dayan.“ He fell quiet, gazing before him. A hawk swooped low. She recollected from news accounts of him that in his boyhood he had been a falconer. “Or … no, it is I who am the stranger,” he said. “I came home from Epsilon Eridani, and many of the same people were still alive. Things had not changed beyond recognition. Already, however—It seemed well to join the 61 Cygni expedition.”

“Surely not in despair?”

“Oh, no. An exploration. My calling, after all. I don’t regret it. Those planets, lifeless but full of astonishments and challenges.”

His look went aloft. Beyond the blue shone the Centaur. Five thousand light-years hence, other ships fared, and their crews were not human.

“You’re familiar with our reports, I suppose,” he said flatly, as if realizing he had shown more of himself than he wanted to.

Dayan would not release him. “You returned again and everything was different.”

“Yes.” Once more his tone carried a trace of emotion. “When I was growing up, something of the old way of life remained,” the seigneurial way, hard-riding, hard-drinking, athletic, but also cultivated and gracious. “No doubt it had already outlived its time, but it was alive, oh, very alive. For instance, we still learned Guaraní as a courtesy to the Indios who worked for us, although they themselves spoke mostly Spanish. Today the language is extinct. The Indios have vanished into the general population. Cattle breeding is as obsolete as the building of pyramids, and our few horses are for sport. The Nansens have kept some of their
property by turning it into a nature reserve and themselves into its caretakers.”

“Is that bad?”

“No. It is simply change.”

“But you feel rootless enough to make the great voyage.”

He scowled. For a moment she was afraid she had given umbrage. He was not one to tolerate prying. His laugh barked, but relieved her. “Enough of me. More than enough. I invited you for a visit—Fernando agreed—for me to get acquainted with you.” His glance sought hers. “The captain needs to know his crew, doesn’t he?”

She had expected that. “Ask whatever you like, sir. I do hope you will accept me.”

“Frankly, it is not clear to me why you volunteered.”

She could not resist teasing a bit. “Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe everyone aboard the
Envoy
will be.”

“We can’t afford any like that,” he said sharply. Not when sailing into the ultimate loneliness.

She sobered. “True.” In an effort to show she had given the matter hard thought: “Osman Tahir could become obsessed with the idea of contacting the Yonderfolk. He could spend the last half of his life and the whole of his political capital to get a ship built that can go there. But he was just obsessed, not insane. Why should anybody actually leave? Ten thousand years’ round trip! Each of us must be an odd creature. I’ve wondered about you, Captain Nansen. That’s why I tried to sound you out.”