Starfarers (67 page)

“The
High Barbaree
is off to Tau Ceti in another two months,” said his mother. “You won’t have much chance to see Theye, unless—” Her voice trailed off.
Unless you marry her. She’s your sort, Kenri. She would belong well on the
Fleetwing.
She would give me strong grandchildren.

“Some other time,” he repeated. He regretted the brusqueness in his tone, but he couldn’t help it. Turning to his father: “Dad, what’s this about a new tax on us?”

Volden Shaun scowled. “A damned imposition,” he said. “May all their spacesuits spring leaks. We have to wear these badges now, and pay through the nose for them.”

“Can … can I borrow yours for tonight? I have to go into the city.”

Slowly, Volden met the eyes of his son. Then he sighed and got up. “It’s in my study,” he said. “Come along and help me find it.”

They entered the little room together. It was filled with Volden’s books—he read on every imaginable subjects, like most Kithmen—and his carefully polished astrogation instruments and his mementos of other voyages. It all meant something. That intricately chased sword had been given him by an armorer on Procyon V, a many-armed monster who had been his friend. That stereograph was a view of the sharp hills on Isis, frozen gases like molten amber in the glow of mighty Osiris. That set of antlers was from a hunting trip on Loki, in the days of his youth. That light, leaping statuette had been a god on Dagon. Volden’s close-cropped gray head bent over the desk, his hands fumbling among the papers.

“Do you really mean to go through with this resignation?” he asked quietly.

Kenri’s face grew warm. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry, but—Yes.”

“I’ve seen others do it,” said Volden. “They even prospered, most of them. But I don’t think they were ever very happy.”

“I wonder,” said Kenri.

“The
Fleetwing’s
next trip will probably be clear to Rigel,” said Volden. “We won’t be back for more than a thousand years. There won’t be any Star Empire here. Your very name will be forgotten.”

“I heard talk about that voyage.” Kenri’s voice thickened a little. “It’s one reason I’m staying behind.”

Volden looked up, challengingly. “What’s so good about the Stars?” he asked. “I’ve seen twelve hundred years of human history, good times and bad times. This is not one of the good times. And it’s going to get worse.”

Kenri didn’t answer.

“That girl is out of your class, son,” said Volden. “She’s a Star-Free. You’re just a damn filthy tommy.”

“The prejudice against us isn’t racial,” said Kenri, avoiding his father’s gaze. “It’s cultural. A spaceman who goes terrestrial is … all right by them.”

“So far,” said Volden. “It’s beginning to get racial already, though. We may all have to abandon Earth for a while.”

“I’ll get into her class,” said Kenri. “Give me that badge.”

Volden sighed. “We’ll have to overhaul the ship to raise our tau factor,” he said. “You’ve got a good six months yet. We won’t leave any sooner. I hope you’ll change your mind.”

“I might,” said Kenri, and knew he lied in his teeth.

“Here it is.” Volden held out a small yellow loop of braided cords. “Pin it on your jacket.” He took forth a heavy wallet. “And here is a thousand decards of your money. You’ve got fifty thousand more in the bank, but don’t let this get stolen.”

Kenri fastened the symbol on. It seemed to have weight, like a stone around his neck. He was saved from deeper humiliation by the automatic reaction of his mind. Fifty thousand decards … what to buy? A spaceman necessarily invested in tangible and lasting property—

Then he remembered that he would be staying here. The money ought to have value during his lifetime, at least. And money had a way of greasing the skids of prejudice.

“I’ll be back … tomorrow, maybe,” he said. “Thanks, Dad. Goodnight.”

Volden’s gaunt face drew into tighter lines. His voice was toneless, but it caught just a little.

“Goodnight, son,” he said.

Kenri went out the door, into the darkness of Earth.

The first time,
neither of them had been much impressed. Captain Seralpin had told Kenri: “We’ve got us another passenger. She’s over at Landfall, on Ishtar. Want to pick her up?”

“Let her stay there till we’re ready to leave,” said Kenri, “Why would she want to spend a month on Marduk?”

Seralpin shrugged: “I don’t know or care. But she’ll pay for conveyance here. Take Boat Five,” he said.

Kenri had fueled up the little interplanetary flitter and shot away from the
Fleetwing,
grumbling to himself Ishtar was on the other side of Sirius at the moment, and even on an acceleration orbit it took days to get there. He spent the time studying Murinn’s
General Cosmology,
a book he’d never gotten around to before though it was a good 2500 years old. There had been no basic advance in science since the fall of the African Empire, he reflected, and on Earth today the conviction was that all the important questions had been answered. After all, the universe was finite, so the scientific horizon must be too; after several hundred years during which research turned up no phenomenon not already predicted by theory, there would naturally be a loss of interest which ultimately became a dogma.

Kenri wasn’t sure the dogma was right. He had seen too much of the cosmos to have any great faith in man’s ability to understand it. There were problems in a hundred fields—physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, history, epistemology—to which the Nine Books gave no quantitative answer; but when he tried to tell an Earthling that, he got a blank look or a superior smile. … No, science was a social enterprise, it couldn’t exist when the society didn’t want it. But no civilization lasts forever. Someday there would again be a questioning.

Most of the
Fleetwing’s
passengers were time-expired engineers or planters returning home. Few of the big ships had ever transported a Star aristocrat. When he came down to Landfall, in a spuming rain, and walked through the hot wet streets and onto the bowered verandah of the town’s hostel, it was a shock to find that his cargo was a young and beautiful woman. He bowed to her, crossing arms on breast as prescribed, and felt the stiffness of embarrassment. He was the outsider, the inferior, the space tramp, and she was one of Earth’s owners.

“I hope the boat will not be too uncomfortable for you, Freelady,” he mumbled, and hated himself for the obsequiousness of it. He should have said, you useless brainless bitch, my people keep Earth alive and you ought to be kneeling to me in thanks. But he bowed again instead, and helped her up the ladder into the cramped cabin.

“I’ll make out,” she laughed. She was too young, he guessed, to have taken on the snotty manners of her class. The fog of Ishtar lay in cool drops in her hair, like small jewels. The blue eyes were not unfriendly as they rested on his sharp dark face.

He computed an orbit back to Marduk. “It’ll take us four-plus days, Freelady,” he said. “I hope you aren’t in too much of a hurry.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I just wanted to see that planet too, before leaving.” He thought of what it must be costing her, and felt a vague sense of outrage that anyone should throw good money around on mere tourism; but he only nodded.

They were in space before long. He emerged from his curtained bunk after a few hours’ sleep to find her already up, leafing through Murinn. “I don’t understand a word of it,” she said. “Does he ever use one syllable where six will do?”

“He cared a great deal for precision, Freelady,” said Kenri as he started breakfast. Impulsively, he added: “I would have liked to know him.”

Her eyes wandered around the boat’s library, shelf on shelf of microbooks and full-sized volumes. “You people do a lot of reading, don’t you?” she asked.

“Not too much else to do on a long voyage, Freelady,” he said. “There are handicrafts, of course, and the preparation of goods for sale—things like that—but there’s still plenty of time for reading.”

“I’m surprised you have such big crews,” she said, “Surely you don’t need that many people to man a ship.”

“No, Freelady,” he replied. “A ship between the stars just about runs herself. But when we reach a planet, a lot of hands are needed.”

“There’s company too, I suppose,” she ventured, “Wives and children and friends.”

“Yes, Freelady.” His voice grew cold. What business of hers was it?

“I like your Town,” she said. “I used to go there often. It’s so—quaint? Like a bit of the past, kept alive all these centuries.”

Sure, he wanted to say, sure, your sort come around to stare. You come around drunk, and peer into our homes, and when an old man goes by you remark what a funny little geezer he is, without even lowering your voices, and when you bargain with a shopkeeper and he tries to get a fair price it only proves to you that all tommies think of nothing but money. Oh, yes, we’re very glad to have you visit us. “Yes, Freelady.”

She looked hurt, and said little for many hours. After a while she went back into the space he had screened off for her, and he heard her playing a violin. It was a very old melody, older than man’s starward wish, unbelievably old, and still it was young and tender and trustful, still it was everything which was good and dear in man. He couldn’t quite track down the music, what was it—? After a while, she stopped. He felt a desire to impress her. The Kith had their own tunes. He got out his guitar and strummed a few chords and let his mind wander.

Presently he began to sing.

“When Jerry Clawson was a baby

On his mother’s knee in old Kentuck,

He said: ‘I’m gonna ride those deep-space rockets

Till the bones in my body turn to dust.’—”

He sensed her come quietly out and stand behind him, but pretended not to be aware of her. His voice lilted between the thrumming walls, and he looked out toward cold stars and the ruddy crescent of Marduk.

“—Jerry’s voice came o’er the speaker:

‘Cut your cable and go free.

On full thrust, she’s blown more shielding.

Radiation’s got to me.

‘Take the boats in safety Earthward.

Tell the Fireball Line for me

I was born to ride through deep space,

Now in deep space forevermore I’ll be.’”

He ended it with a crash of strings and looked around and got up to bow.

“No … sit down,” she said. “This isn’t Earth. What was that song?”

“Jerry Clawson,
Freelady,” he replied. “It’s ancient—in fact, I was singing a translation from the original English. It goes clear back to the early days of interplanetary travel.”

Star-Frees were supposed to be intellectuals as well as esthetes. He waited for her to say that somebody ought to collect Kith folk ballads in a book.

“I like it,” she said. “I like it very much.”

He looked away. “Thank you, Freelady,” he said. “May I make bold to ask what you were playing earlier?”

“Oh … that’s even older,” she said. “A theme from the
Kreutzer Sonata.
I’m awfully fond of it.” She smiled slowly. “I think I would have liked to know Beethoven.”

They met each other’s eyes, then, and did not look away or speak for what seemed like a long time.

The Town
ended as sharply as if cut off by a knife. It had been like that for 3000 years, a sanctuary from time: sometimes it stood alone on open windy moors, with no other work of man in sight except a few broken walls; sometimes it was altogether swallowed by a roaring monster of a city; sometimes, as now, it lay on the fringe of a great commune; but always it was the Town, changeless and inviolate.

No—not so. There had been days when war swept through it, pockmarking walls and sundering roofs and filling its streets with corpses; there had been murderous mobs looking for a tommy to lynch; there had been haughty swaggering officers come to enforce some new proclamation. They could return. Through all the endless turmoil of history, they would. Kenri shivered in the wandering autumn breeze and started off along the nearest avenue.

The neighborhood was a slum at the moment, gaunt crumbling tenements, cheerless lanes, aimlessly drifting crowds. They wore doublets and kilts of sleazy gray, and they stank. Most of them were Norms, nominally free—which meant free to starve when there wasn’t work to be had. The majority were Norm-Ds, low-class manual laborers with dull heavy faces, but here and there the more alert countenance of a Norm-C or B showed briefly in the glare of a lamp, above the weaving, sliding shadows. When a Standard pushed through, gay in the livery of the state or his private owner, something flickered in those eyes. A growing knowledge, a feeling that something was wrong when slaves were better off than freemen—Kenri had seen that look before, and knew what it could become: the blind face of destruction. And elsewhere were the men of Mars and Venus and the Jovian moons, yes, the Radiant of Jupiter had ambitions and Earth was still the richest planet … No, he thought, the Star Empire wouldn’t last much longer.

But it ought to last his and Dorthy’s lifetime, and they could make some provision for their children. That was enough.

An elbow jarred into his ribs. “Outta the way, tommy!”

He clenched his fists, thinking of what he had done beyond the sky, what he could do here on Earth—Silently, he stepped off the walk. A woman, leaning fat and blowsy from an upstairs window, jeered at him and spat. He dodged the fleck of spittle, but he could not dodge the laughter that followed him.

They hate,
he thought.
They still don’t dare resent their masters, so they take it out on us. Be patient. It cannot endure another two centuries.

It still shook in him, though. He grew aware of the tautness in his nerves and belly, and his neck ached with the strain of keeping his face humbly lowered. Though Dorthy was waiting for him in a garden of roses, he needed a drink. He saw the winking neon bottle and turned in that door.