Starfarers (60 page)

“Don’t be too specific with your colleagues, darling, about this or anything else,” Nansen warned Dayan. “Not till we understand the situation better.”

“It won’t be hard to stay vague.” She chuckled. “Right now, it’s impossible not to, what with the communication barrier.” Her mood sank. “Besides, I have a feeling they’re not particularly anxious to learn.”

“Really? Have you any idea why?”

“I get a powerful impression that to them, for God knows how long, science has not been a search but a body of knowledge. Almost like a theology, though without the religious kind of passion.” She forced a grin. “They’ve elaborated their interpretations of natural law and how it works—I’m tempted to compare them to rabbis and the Torah, century after century—but anything really new, calling for reconstruction work on the foundations, that’ll be very hard to accept. My guess is that this generation, and probably the next, never will.”

Mokoena and Zeyd reported a similar attitude toward
their scientific fields. Nobody disputed that there could always be surprises. Certainly, what the travelers had to relate excited an interest that in some individuals became enthusiasm. However, this was detail, another example of what well-established principles could lead to. Tahirian psychology—history, culture, entire perception of reality—drew still less heed. Dayan interpreted the placid reaction as, “So it’s alien, so what?”

Yu said that while technology was obviously high, little appeared to have changed for millennia, except that some parts of it had been dropped because they no longer served any useful purpose. That did not necessarily imply decadence, she remarked. After all, in her birth era people hadn’t built Roman-style aqueducts or gigantic hydroelectric dams. The sort of competitiveness that drove material innovation, whether or not there was any current need for it, was simply not in this society.

Once translator programs were available, conversations went more easily, with a wide variety of persons. Likewise, guides conducted virtual-reality tours of the world, walks through its important or beautiful sights, into worksteads and museums(?) and homes, nearly anywhere requested. Notwithstanding, comprehension continued to be elusive. Capitalism, socialism, despotism, democracy, every arrangement the crew remembered, seemed now as inconsequential as mercantile guilds or divine right of kings had been to them.

It was clear that robotics and nanotechnology had made all necessities, services as well as goods, and perhaps all comforts, too, free, like air and sunshine. There was presumably some way to control their distribution and maintain a stable population, but whatever coercion this required was not obvious. “Probably social pressure does most of the work,” Nansen speculated. “The great majority likes things as they are.”

Yet, talking among each other, the
Envoy
company came to wonder if “stagnation” meant anything, either, on this world in this age. “The equilibrium may be more stable than any of the
long-lived human civilizations of the past achieved,” Sundaram mused, “and that may in large part be due to the fact that, no matter how much internal variegation it enjoys, it is now the only civilization on Earth. The thread of communication with the local stars and the very rare visit of a starship apparently have even less effect than its slight contact with the Roman Empire had on Han Dynasty China. Nevertheless, people have spoken to me of progress. I do not yet grasp quite what they mean by that.” He spread his hands. “Spiritual? Humanistic? I think we shall need a long intimacy before we can begin to understand.”

And then we may not like what we learn
, Nansen refrained from saying.

Bringing him
and Zeyd down was an awkward business, which required much advance planning. Flesh and blood no longer made passages across interplanetary space. Those who wished to experience sister globes contented themselves with virtuals. That art was well beyond anything of eleven millennia ago. The fact that no one seemed addicted to it said something profound about their society, but the newcomers weren’t sure what.

In the end, the two men crossed from the ship to the robotic boat in their spacesuits.

“I
am
sorry,” Nansen told Dayan, holding her close to him in their cabin just before he went. “It does feel like a dirty, selfish trick on you. But—”

“But you’ve explained the reasons, and they’re valid, and mainly, I’m going to miss you like hell. So shut up already and give me a last big, wet kiss.” She grabbed his ears and pulled his head down to her lips.

Areli the Unifier herself had suggested that the first visit, perhaps all, be by a small party and discreetly handled.
Envoy
’s arrival had roused “strong general interest.” (Sundaram had an idea that no word for “sensation” existed, that the culture valued tranquility, self-control, and good manners too much. “Confucian?” asked Yu, and answered herself:
“No, doubtless no analogy really fits.”) It had been necessary to screen applicants for direct contact with the crew, and millions had tuned in on each conversation. (“Well, we are extraordinary,” Mokoena observed, “although I won’t be surprised if most of them stop caring in a few more months.”) A conspicuous, publicized group would be everywhere encumbered by well-meaning crowds, besieged with invitations, swept off to festivities. (“Which seems to contradict your view of the Zeitgeist, Ajit,” Dayan remarked, “except that, no matter how persuasive their social conditioning methods are, I don’t believe they can make everybody identical. It could even be that a few cranks would try to attack us”) If the honored guests from the remote past wished to walk again on their mother world, best they go essentially incognito.

That suited Nansen well—so well that he came to suppose his original dim suspicions had been unjust.
Which perhaps helps show how foreign Earth has really become
, he thought with a slight shiver.

The question was who should go first. His overriding priority was the safeguarding of the knowledge his expedition had brought back, and getting it to those humans to whom it would make a difference.

He considered: Yu, engineer, interpreter of technical data from Tahir and the star cluster. Dayan, physicist, who came closer than anyone else to comprehending what the Holont had had to tell; furthermore, along the way Nansen had given her simulations and a little practice in flying
Courier
, so that she was his auxiliary pilot. Mokoena, who could delegate her biology to the computers but not her hands or her presence as a healer. Sundaram, linguist, the nearest thing the ship had to an anthropologist, who could do his work over the laser channels while reserving himself for the folk of other stars. All, Nansen judged, indispensable. That left him and Zeyd.

His decision had raised only minor protest, which soon died. The years and the light-years had knit them that closely together.

Zeyd’s appointed
(anointed?) guide was a young man called Mundival, of Areli’s mixed-race type. Mnemonic induction techniques had given him a good command of English as reconstructed from the databases. He was ardent, well-nigh worshipful; he could not hear enough about starfaring and its pioneer days, or do enough for the starfarer. Just the same, Zeyd couldn’t help envying, a bit, Nansen, who’d gotten a most attractive young woman. Not that either of them would— However— Oh, well.

Mundival proposed a walk through a city. Clothes varied broadly, sometimes fantastically, according to individual choice within parameters Zeyd had not learned. Dressed in inconspicuous tunics and trousers, they two wandered along the paths that wound over a high hill and around its foot. It was late spring in the northern hemisphere, a season of jubilance after the stark winter of these parts. Sunlight spilled across blossoms and leaves. Trees vibrated with wings and carols. A breeze drifted sweet. Dwellers went loosely clad, children skipping, youth and maiden hand in hand, elders dignified but generally cheerful. Sometimes a car purred by, robotic, more often carrying loads than passengers.

Elya occupied a height between two landscapes. Westward swept plains of grass, dotted with stands of trees, where wild herds roamed—big animals, brown and shaggy, developed from lesser creatures to replace the extinct grazers that belonged in such an ecosystem. East and north the terrain dropped to an enormous bottomland, intensively cultivated. There it was robots that moved, tending the biosynthetic plantations, processing the products.

The population here numbered some one hundred thousand. Most of them lived in houses set well apart among gardens and groves. Their places of business were similarly modest, schools, shops, ateliers, inns, decorous recreational establishments. Many served pilgrims to the Sanctuary and the shrines nearby. That quasi-temple rose majestic above surrounding
trees, natural stone carved with an exuberance of foliage, flowers, fruits, and vines, towers branching like boughs against the sky. When the Sanctuary sang, the music went as waterfall, thunder, and joy from horizon to horizon.

No two the same, other buildings were mainly underground, with only an upper level in the air. Passing an especially curious structure, drapelike curves in blue-and-white stripes surmounted by a roof that was a living organism, Zeyd confessed, “In spite of my virtual tours, I am afraid everything is rather bewildering to me.”

“I ammed—I was not certain how it would be for you, sir,” Mundival replied. “We lost so much information during the evil millennia. And what we keep is too much for one human brain.”

Yes, Zeyd reflected, the total might be fragmentary but must be overwhelming. How closely could he number the rulers of medieval Egypt or say what their individual fortunes had been? “This is marvelous, of course. Is it typical?”

“Not truly. No place is. This one is more historic than most.”

Mundival gestured at some nearby remnants of massive walls, recalling ages when men thought and wrought larger than now. City lay buried upon city beneath Elya, the whole way down to Chicago. Micromachines had done the archeological work on them centuries ago. Ruins like these were merely curiosa.

Like a ship from that same past?

“Elsewhere is different,” Mundival said. “I believe you have seen. You shall betread if you wish. Territories, biomes, inhabitants, lives, all be—are different, all around Earth. Life varies.” He searched for a word. “Spontaneity is life, Selador teached.”

Zeyd frowned, picking his own words with care. “Forgive me, but I still don’t quite understand. I gather that religions, customs, even laws vary from group to group, and each develops as it chooses, or splits off to start something new. Doesn’t that lead to conflict?”

“All are Seladorian,” Mundival said earnestly. “Different
deity or none, different usage, yes, but all accept the oneness of life. That means, too, the oneness of humans.” He hesitated. “It shalled—it should.”

Zeyd knew of no faith that had ever brought universal harmony. He wondered how meaningful these cultural unique-nesses were, and what measures were now and then necessary to maintain the global peace. Regardless of what it called itself, he didn’t think Seladorianism was just a philosophy.

“But not many believe this out among the stars?” he asked cautiously.

“No. It is far to there, and they are strange—”

The young voice did not condemn; suddenly it throbbed. The young face glowed.
Perhaps
, Zeyd thought, with a tingle through his nerves,
we are not quite living fossils after all.

A vast
lake, almost an inland sea, filled the heart of what was once Paraguay. Its creation had been part of the general transformation of Earth through several centuries. Machines, most of them millionfold and invisibly small, kept watch over it, monitoring, correcting, guiding the further evolution of lake, land, and life. Yet as he stood on the shore, to Nansen it seemed as if newly come from the hand of God.

Water sheened argent to the edge of sight. The sun was a great gold-orange globe wheeling down to the horizon. It cast a molten bridge toward him, which broke up in little fires where wavelets lapped in the shallows and lost themselves among reeds. Sometimes a fish leaped, like a meteor that rose before it fell. Wings swarmed through deepening, nearly cloudless blue overhead; cries drifted faintly across distance. Ashore, enormous blossoms and delicate tall trees were new to him, engineered for subtle purposes, but they perfumed the evening coolness and drew an arabesque over heaven.

“Yes,” he said after silence had grown long, “my forebears rest in a good place.”

“I am glad you are pleased,” answered Varday. She touched his arm. “We had better turn back. The guests will be arriving.”

He took a moment to enjoy the sight of her in the sunset glow. Like Zeyd’s companion, she was of the Unifier’s type. Early on, he had suppressed an impulse to ask exactly how equal everybody was. Let it suffice him that the breed was a handsome one—in her case, lovely, for she was gracefully formed, with hair a dark ruddy cascade over bare, amber-hued shoulders.

“Yes, that’s right,” he agreed. “I look forward to meeting them.” They fell into step over the soft turf.

“You are kind to permit that I invite my friends.” Her voice flowed easily, melodiously. Accent added charm. “They were delighted.”

“Well, you have been more than kind to me. Besides, I do want to meet people, not in masses or at some official function, but individually.”

“I wish conversation could be more free. If you were willing to undergo a mnemonic in a modern language—”

“No, thanks.” He had more than once declined the neurological process. “First I should get a general impression of your world. There’ll be time later, if we so decide.” He knew his—and Zeyd’s—excuse was lame, but neither cared to say outright that he didn’t entirely trust whatever else the program might instill.

Varday lapsed into the solemnity of youth. “You cannot know the spirit of a people unless you speak with them unrestricted.”

Nansen shrugged. “Not always then, either.”
Or ever? Are they any more candid today than in the ancient past?