The Forever Hero (64 page)

“Someone believes there will have to be change, and someone else disagrees. Power shortages are going to get worse, and there's no real backup system. The Empire will quarantine the system, as soon as they can get a fleet here. That's another reason why I need to get some seeds or spores and lift out.”

Constanza sat down beside him.

“I don't know whether I should like you or not. You rescued me from a prison, and then you destroyed everything I grew up with.”

Gerswin shrugged. “Not much I can say to that.”

He waited.

She said nothing.

He cleared his throat. “Do you want to leave Byzania with me? I'm sure you would be welcome on…in a number of places.”

“You are gracious…and very cautious. But, no. No, thank you. I think I would be welcome with Hyveres, more welcome than in the cities, and happier than on a strange world.”

Gerswin touched the controls and the screens filled with the exterior view and the morning sunlight.

Constanza rose.

“I will tell him, and we will get you your seeds.”

“You know, Constanza, the future on Byzania rests with Hyveres.”

“I know. You have determined that. Like a god, you change
worlds. Yet you will never have what a man like Hyveres will, for you will never rest. You will never be content, no matter how long you live.”

Gerswin stood and took her hand. He bent slightly and brushed the back of her hand with his lips. His legs remained steady, but he sat down as he released her fingers, afraid that his legs might yet betray him.

She put her hand on his shoulder, squeezed it, before stepping back.

“I think I am grateful to you. I can now look forward to the unexpected.”

She reached forward to touch his shoulder again, gently, before moving toward the lock door.

“We will bring you the seeds you need. And you will go. You will fight your fate, and we will fight ours. What else is there to say?”

Gerswin lifted the screens and watched from inside the ship as the slender woman went out to touch hands with the rebel captain for the first time. A rebel captain nearly as slender as she, nearly as white-haired, and who sported a bristling white handlebar mustache.

Although she had looked not at all like Caroljoy, neither when his lost Duchess had been young or old, Constanza reminded him of Caroljoy, though he could not say why.

Then, again, perhaps he did not want to know why. The young woman who had been his single-time lover and Martin's mother had become a dream, and no man wants to examine his dreams too closely. Not when the dreams must constantly battle the realities of the present.

Besides, in her own way, Caroljoy had made it all possible.

Yet Constanza had some of the same iron strength.

He shook his head slowly as he watched the screen.

He watched. Watched and waited for the seeds of the house tree. Watched and listened to the beginnings of a society and an Empire crashing into anarchy.

The pilot tapped the last control stud of the sequence and dropped his hand, which was beginning to tremble.

He wanted to shake his head, but, instead, laid back on the black yield cloth of the control couch while the modified scout shivered…and jumped.

At the instant of jump, as always, the blackness inundated the scout, blinding the pilot with the darkness no light could penetrate, then disappearing as the ship reappeared tens of systems from where it had jumped.

Gerswin reached out tiredly and touched the control stud that would recompute the
Caroljoy
's position. He could have asked the AI to do it, but even as exhausted as he was he still hated to ask the AI to do what he felt the pilot should.

He could feel his hand shake, and he compromised.

“Position. Interrogative possible jump parameters.”

His voice even shook, and he wanted to scream at the weakness. His eyes flickered down at his right arm, where the slight thickness under the long sleeved tunic indicated a pressure-tight medpad. The ship's medical system had assured him there was no infection. He was just tired—totally exhausted from fighting off the effects of the nerve poison.

Constanza had questioned whether he was up to leaving, especially to handling a long flight, but he had insisted, not wanting to wait until there might be an Imperial quarantine force in place or until some faction of the Byzanian Armed Forces happened onto his ship, particularly given the shortness of his power reserves.

Now there was nothing he could do but finish the trip.

“Position at two seven five relative, distance two point five, inclination point seven. Ship is in opposition,” the AI announced in its professional and impersonally feminine voice.

“Interrogative short jump. Power parameters.”

“Short jump possible. Depletion of reserves to point five. Interface probability is less than point zero zero nine. Power consumption will leave ship with three point five plus stans at norm, plus half reserves.”

“Jump.”

“Commencing jump.”

This time he let the AI handle the jump, with the milliseconds of apparent jump time so short he scarcely noticed them.

“Time to Aswan?”

“Two plus at norm.”

“Normal acceleration. Notify, full alarm, if
anything
approaches the ship or if any anomalies appear.”

The odds were that he'd hear the alarm at least three times be
fore they hit orbit distance, but he obviously wasn't up to watching himself.

Four alarms later, the
Caroljoy
was in orbit, ready for planetdrop over the planet he called Aswan.

None of the alarms had amounted to anything besides debris, not that Gerswin had expected them to, since the system was out of the way, to say the least.

Aswan was the fourth planet, and the one of two that orbited the G-2 sun in the “life zone.” The third planet of the relatively young system might develop intelligent life someday, unless it already had, but without overt signs of such development. Gerswin doubted it, but since no one had intensively scouted the surface, who could say?

The fourth planet, Aswan itself, offered a different dilemma. Certainly some intelligent life had built the wall of white stone across the flat plain of the perhaps once-upon-a-time ocean. Bridge? Dam? Who could say?

With no moons other than tiny and captured asteroids, and a thin atmosphere mainly of nitrogen, Aswan was not on anyone's list of places to visit. But someone or something had indeed built a bridgelike structure nearly two thousand kays long, straight as an arrow, running from northwest to southeast, or, if one preferred, from southeast to northwest. The bridge was clearly visible from orbit against the maroon dirt/dust/crystal that covered most of the planet, the two-thirds that was not out-and-out rock.

While the dam, as Gerswin mentally identified it, rose out of the maroon crystalline to a height of nearly one kay, the high point was not at either end, nor in the center, but two-thirds of the way from the southeast toward the northwest end. As if to balance, in a strange way, one-third of the way from that southeast end, connected to the dam, rose a four-sided diamond-shaped tower—provided a set of unroofed walls rising more than three hundred meters skyward above the level of the dam itself could be called a tower.

The tower itself was roughly two kays on a side, while the dam was only four hundred meters wide.

The stones which composed both dam and tower seemed identical for their entire length. Identical and huge—each as large as the
Caroljoy
and each a glistening white shot through with streaks of black.

When he had first scouted Aswan, he had taken scans and samples for analysis. Granite, that had been what the geologists at Palmyra had said, but a variety they had never seen, with an internal structure that suggested tremendous building properties.

Gerswin had refrained from laughing.

The samples he had obtained by trimming the interior of the tower. He had found no stone unattached to the dam or tower. None.

The flush-fitted top layer of stones made touchdowns and take-offs easy, with nearly as much ground effect as on Old Earth.

The pilot shook himself out of his reverie and began the descent that would take him to the base he had built within the tower, the core of which was the atmospheric power tap system, which had cost enough, but which produced power in abundance, in more than abundance.

“Descent beyond limits,” advised the AI.

Gerswin shook himself and made the corrections, forcing alertness until the
Caroljoy
was settled next to the power tap connection.

Slowly, slowly, he unstrapped, and pulled on the respirator pack and helmet, dragging himself to the lock.

Once the ship was connected to the power system, he could and would gratefully collapse.

The cable system was bulky, obsolete, but relatively foolproof, and did not require constant monitoring, unlike the direct laser transfer systems used by most ports, and particularly by deep-space installations.

“Still,” he muttered, under his breath and behind his respirator, as he touched the transfer stud to begin the repowering operation, “what isn't obsolete? You? The ship? Your self-appointed mission?”

He licked his upper lip.

“Who cares about Old Earth? Do all the Recorps types really want the reclamation effort to end? Will anyone really remember the devilkids and the blood they spent on a forgotten planet?”

He snorted. The thought occurred to him that, if by some remote chance, his biologics actually worked, that he would be the one in the legends and the devilkids who had made it possible would be the forgotten ones.

As if that would ever happen!

He glanced at the white stone rising overhead into the maroon twilight, stone that seemed to retain the light long past twilight, though that retained light never registered on the ship's screens.

He sighed, shook his head again, and trudged back to the ramp up to the
Caroljoy
, up to swallow ship's concentrates and water, up to sleep, and to heal.

Like the pieces of a puzzle snapping together, the fragmented ideas that had been swirling around in the commodore's head clicked into place as a clear picture.

He shook his head wearily.

So simple, so obvious. So obvious that he and everyone else except, perhaps, the Eye Service had overlooked it. No wonder the Intelligence Service had not acted against him. No wonder the majority of the biologic innovations developed by the foundation had gone nowhere except when he had pushed and developed them. And he had thought the ideas had been accepted on their own merit!

It might work to his own benefit, and to the benefit of the foundation and Old Earth. It might—provided he could lay the groundwork before the Empire understood what he was doing. Once they understood…

He paced around the circular table on the enclosed balcony, stopping to look across the valley, over the black of the lake toward the chalet under construction on the high hill opposite his own retreat. That other chalet would be needed soon, he expected, sooner than he had anticipated.

He smiled in spite of himself, before resuming his pacing, as he considered what to do next.

“Profit isn't enough. It never has been. Profit only motivates those who lead.”

That wasn't the whole problem. How could you motivate people toward self-sufficiency when the technology was regarded as magic by most, when few understood the oncoming collapse when the power limit was reached? Not that there had to be a power limit, but the current technologic and government systems made it almost inevitable.

He halted and looked down at the small console he had not used, a console built into the simple wooden lines of the table, a console with a blank screen still waiting for input.

Smiling briefly, he tapped the stud to shut down the system.

“Since the political leaders follow the people, and the people follow the true believers, that means they need some new true believers to follow.”

The commodore in the gray silk-sheen tunic and trousers that looked so simple yet could be afforded by only the richest pursed his lips as he began to plot the revolution.

The gangly man with the alternate braids of blond and silver hair squirmed in the hard chair, shifting his weight as he reread the oblong card once more.

He studied the cryptic note attached to it yet again, trying to puzzle out what lay behind it.

The card was stiff, formal, and nearly antique stationery, with a single name embossed in the upper left-hand corner. The name? Patron L. Sergio Enver.

The man with the blond and silver braids frowned. He'd assumed that Enver was related to the commercial baron Enver who had founded Enver Enterprises. Certainly the local Enver office had been accommodating when he had faxed for confirmation.

“Yes, Ser Willgel. You are on the patron's calendar. At 1000.” That was all they had said, as if that had explained everything. Either that, or they did not know any more than he did, which made the matter more mysterious than ever, particularly since he had never expected a response from the routine inquiry he had made of a number of newer enterprises.

Because the Appropriate Technology Institute was five small rooms in the back of a rented warehouse, Willes Willgel had arrived early and sat waiting for the mysterious Patron Enver.

He checked the time. One standard minute until his appointment, not that promptness meant anything to the commercial barons. Willgel knew he could be waiting hours after his scheduled time, and he dared not complain. He was the one asking for funding.

The former professor sighed, aware as he exhaled of how thin he had gotten, of how baggy his tunic felt.

“Ser Willgel? Would you come this way?” A stocky woman stood by a closed portal.

Willgel leapt to his feet, then swallowed a curse at his own eagerness, and forced himself to walk slowly the four meters to the portal. He frowned, and tried to wipe it away, but failed. He worried more about the promptness of the patron than if he had been summoned later.

“Unless the patron asks you to remain, you have ten standard minutes. Do you understand?”

Willgel nodded. “I will do my best.”

“Go ahead. He's waiting.” The dark-haired greeter did not return the nervous smile that finally came to Willgel's lips, but gestured toward the opening portal.

Willgel crossed through the gateway and into the office in three strides, head bobbing from side to side on a too-long neck as he tried to take in everything.

The office was large, but not imposing. The wall to his left was covered with a blue-black fabric on which was reproduced a night sky which Willgel had never seen before, from a system farther out in the galaxy, apparently, where the stars were more widely scattered. The ceiling was a faintly glowing gold, while the sheer gold curtains covered the full-wall windows to his right and directly before him. Standing straight in front of him was a smallish man, with tight-curled silver-gray hair and yellow eyes.

Beside him stood two modernistic armchairs, and behind the patron was a combination desk and console, where all surfaces were covered with a tight-grained ebony wood.

“Sergio Enver,” offered the patron. “Have a seat, Ser Willgel.”

His voice, while a light baritone, filled the office.

Willgel sat.

Enver did not. He stepped back until he was leaning against the wooden desk, a functional piece with no apparent projections besides the console itself.

“Your proposition did not explain what you meant by ‘appropriate' technology. How would you define it?”

“That is probably the most difficult challenge the Institute faces, Patron—”

“Harder than fund-raising?” asked the baron, lips quirking.

“Others raise funds easily. I, obviously, do not. But no one has really defined what technologies are appropriate to man, or to society, or whether differing societies should seek differing levels of technology, and what those levels should be.

“Put that way, what are the parameters of an appropriate technology?”

Willgel swallowed. “I'll try to be as succinct as possible. As you know, Patron, man's drive for more and better technology lies far back in history. Underneath that drive is the unspoken assumption that more technology is better and that improved technology will result in a better life for mankind. The problem with applying technology broadscale is that the benefits are uneven. Mass production of communications consoles may improve people's lives by allowing them more freedom in how and where they work and live. Use of technology in agriculture to concentrate control of production in the hands of a few at a cost which prevents competition allows economic control by a small elite. A standardized communications network allows a richer cultural life, but reinforces the possibility of social control by a few.”

“Wait.” The patron held up his hand. “Generalizations address no real problems. You have also not defined what you mean as ‘better.' Is ‘more appropriate' better? Why do you think that certain types or applications of technology are better or more appropriate than others?”

Willgel licked his lips, then licked them again. Outside of the fact that Enver was generally linked into biologic technologies and was a major agricultural supplier, he really hadn't been able to determine what the patron's economic interests were.

“I take it that your need for funding is warring with your ethics,” observed the commercial magnate dryly. “If you don't wish to offend me, you might consider that intellectual dishonesty offends me more than attacks on my income or products.”

Willgel swallowed again. “I see, Patron.”

“Do you? I wonder. Go ahead, Professor, and try to get to the point.”

Willgel coughed.

“As you suggested, I was leading to the question of appropriateness. ‘Better' and ‘appropriate' are tied together, because both are value judgments. Personally, I find that a technology or a use of technology that increases individual freedom is better than one that restricts it. A technology that radically decreases liberty, even if it reduces costs of products, is not.”

“Aren't those definitions arbitrary?” asked the patron. “You are stating that decentralization and greater freedom are ‘better' than centralization and a possibly higher standard of living. What about interstellar travel? What about the need for defense against outsiders?
What about the great cramped artistic communities of the past? What about the still unsurpassed technology of crowded Old Earth?”

“Perhaps I am arbitrary,” answered Willgel with a shrug that ignored the perspiration beading on his forehead. “The problem with larger and more concentrated societies, Patron, is that they require increasingly more complicated social codes or laws, or both, and more social restrictions, to maintain order and to avoid violence. Human beings are distressingly prone to violence and disorder. Further, increasingly concentrated societies create concentrated wastes. Higher technology can support more humans in a smaller area, which spawns a greater and more toxic waste problem, which requires, in turn, a higher level of technology to handle. And for what purpose?”

The scholar plunged on. “While you can argue that the creation of jumpships requires high technology, and that interstellar society requires the communications they supply, it is harder to argue that low population societies like Barcelon really require the centralized control of agriculture and communications for either order or food. History has shown that a moderate number of privately owned agricultural enterprises is normally more successful than large and highly concentrated ones. History has also shown that centralized, but non-government communications systems are more successful—both in terms of maintaining freedom and lower costs—than are government monopolies or the anarchy of small competitors. If you will, there is a level and a type of technology ideally appropriate to each human culture or subculture. Our mission is to define what those types and levels might be, along with the ramifications.”

Willgel paused to catch his breath, then waited as he watched Sergio Enver nod.

“What happens if your Institute declares that the current use of technology on Barcelon amounts to totalitarian slavery and the Barcelon government protests to the Empire? Or if you declare that the Imperial policy of using synthetics is creating a totally inappropriate toxic waste problem that is diverting unnecessary energy resources for ongoing cleanup? What if the Empire decides to ban your publications?”

Willgel smiled. “We are a long ways from either. First, we must study the energy and personnel parameters for critical technologies, balance the input and output against the wastes and other diseconomies, and then pinpoint areas of diminishing returns, where the use of more high technology may not produce commensurate benefits.”

“Diminishing returns? A jumpship is certainly an example of di
minishing returns for a small system. But I wouldn't advocate doing away with them.”

“No. But you would not advocate building millions, either, I suspect.”

Abruptly, Enver straightened and stood away from the desk/console combination.

“There are a considerable number of fallacies in your reasoning, Ser Willgel, as well as monumental naivete in the implications of what you propose. I have neither the time nor energy to disabuse you of the fallacies, nor to better inform you on some hard realities.”

Willgel could feel his face fall.

“But the core of your reasoning is sound. So is the Institute, although I would suggest that you need some solid crusaders and true believers to spread the word. Pick up your draft authorization on the way out. And, Ser Willgel,” added Enver as he walked around the console.

“Yes?”

“Make sure you not only do those studies, but that you publish them. Circulate them, and—I shouldn't have to tell a former professor—get as much of the academic community involved as possible. A good idea circulated and discussed in the schools is worth a million brilliant ones buried in the archives. Good day.”

Willgel shook his head and turned. Such a brief discussion, if he could call it that. Enver had given him the impression that the patron had already considered much of what was only speculation on Willgel's part. Willgel shivered.

The portal closed behind him as he stood in the dimmer green confines of the outer office once more.

“Ser Willgel?”

“Yes?”

“Your authorization.”

Willgel walked to the console where the stocky woman sat. She handed him a single sheet.

He took it and read it. Then he read it a second time, and a third before he lowered it.

One hundred thousand creds! For one year. One year. Renewable at two hundred thousand for a second if published standards and educational efforts met the technical standards of the patron.

Willgel didn't pretend to understand. For whatever obscure reasons he might have, Patron L. Sergio Enver had decided that there should be a strong Appropriate Technology Institute, one with technical excellence and a strong outreach program.

Willgel let himself smile as he held the authorization. Technical excellence and outreach—backed by sound reasoning. Enver had made it all too clear that he wouldn't stand for studies or reports that said nothing, or for fuzzy definitions.

The former professor wondered whether the baron fully understood what such an Institute was capable of, given time and some financial support.

His stride lengthened as he marched down the corridor to the public tube train that would take him back to the warehouse and his budding Institute.