Harvest of Stars - [Harvest of Stars 01]

by Poul Anderson

  Anson stood over him. “What’re you drinking?” he asked cordially.

  Bowen didn’t seem to hear. He stared before him and shook his head like one stunned. “We’re on our way,” he whispered. “We’re on our way.”

  Anson lifted a palm. “Whoa,” he warned. “We’ve got a long, stiff road ahead of us, and I don’t promise we’ll stay the course or even get very far.”

  Bowen’s fingers clutched the chair upholstery. He raised his eyes. “You mean you like the design—”

  “And the computers do.”

  Bowen sagged. “Plenty of people have liked it, year after year,” he mumbled. “But. Always but.”

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve gone at things more gradual.”

  “Anson’s a bull in a china shop,” Juliana said with a smile, “and life is the china shop. But Jerry, listen, we truly are hopeful. That’s what this meeting is about.”

  Bowen straightened. His features kindled anew.

  “We’ve looked into costs,” Juliana went on. “We did quite well in Australia, you know. Having heard about you— Well, we think we have enough capital that we’ll command the leverage for what more will be needed. For a start, at least. If that works out as happily as the analysis suggests it can, we’ll have investors falling over their shoelaces to buy in.”

  The wariness left by unnumbered disappointments and rebuffs must voice itself. “In these times?”

  “We may not draw any Americans except me,” Anson admitted. “What of it? Australians, Japanese, Europeans, and, yes, I know some South Americans.”

  “That’s what we’re counting on,” Juliana added.

  “Scramble out of this poor damned country,” Anson said.

  “What?” Bowen asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious? Now that the Renewal’s in the White House and has a majority in Congress, everything’ll spin from bad to worse till it ends in such a crash that somebody else can maybe pick up the pieces and put them back together in a halfway commonsensical shape. It doesn’t help that most of Islam seems about to go on the warpath.”

  Juliana winced. “Which will mean more restrictions, whatever happens,” she said, unwontedly harsh. “Ratcheting the power of the government upward. Randolph Bourne said it a long time ago, war is the health of the state.”

  Bowen frowned. He had ample salt left in him. “I didn’t mean any stinking politics,” he snapped. “What are your plans?”

  “Our hopes,” Juliana corrected gently.

  “I understand. This is all preliminary.” Bowen grinned. “Ha, preliminary to the preliminaries. I am not a virgin in the business world.” Intensity took over. “But speaking in the most general terms, what do you have in mind?”

  “Ecuador,” Anson replied. “Perfect sites. High mountains, close to the equator or squarely on it, and ... I know people there. Several of the right people.”

  “More important,” Juliana put in, “they’re smart and forward-looking. They see what it would mean for their country.”

  “For everybody,” Bowen breathed.

  “Yeah,” Anson agreed, lacking better words. “Of course, it calls for a pig-sized investment, starting with adequate roads, but once we’ve got your setup installed—”

  A practical laser launcher. Rockets are inevitably, fantastically wasteful when they lumber off the ground. Their proper domain is space itself, and even there the chemical rocket ought to be superseded, except for special purposes, by something abler, an ion drive or a plasma drive or the photon drive itself.

  A practical laser launcher. The gravitational energy cost of getting into low Earth orbit is modest, a few kilowatt-hours per kilogram; and as Heinlein put it, once you’re in Earth orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere. No device can realize this minimum, but, imaginatively designed for efficiency as well as capacity, a laser, feeding energy to air molecules, can approach it.

  If moreover you have a free hand to create and captain your own organization, you need not pay a standing army of ground crews and paper shufflers. You can run your space line as economically as an airline or an ocean freighter line. A mission will cost less, in terms of gross world product, than did any voyage of Columbus.

  You do require capital, plus determination, mother wit, and a few well-placed friends. First and foremost, you must have the dream.

  Excitement rang in Juliana’s tones: “And the Ecuadorans would—will— license us to use nuclear engines on ships in space. We’re sure they can be persuaded and can clear it with the UN.”

  Anson struck fist into palm. “The ground floor, Jerry,” he said hoarsely. “We’ll be in on the ground floor of everything. Commercial launches are the bare beginning. Power. The real solar energy. Forget that groundside fraud and the powersat boondoggle. Save what’s left of our night sky on Earth. Build Criswell collectors and transmitters on the Moon, with Lunar materials. And the mineral resources in the asteroids—”

  Juliana laughed. “Dear, I’m afraid you’re instructing your grandmother in the art of sucking eggs.”

  “So what?” burst from Bowen. “It’d guarantee a permanent human presence in space. I don’t mind hearing that repeated, as often as you like.”

  “Okay!” Anson roared. “We’ll give it our best try, the three of us.”

  Bowen gazed past them. “If Helen had been here today—” He shook himself and sprang to his feet like a young man. “I, I—I’ll take that drink now.”

  * * * *

  19

  E

  arly in the afternoon, Valencia went off with Guthrie. “Wait here,” he told Kyra. “I’ll get a car and pick you up.”

  “Why don’t I come along?” she asked.

  “You don’t need to know where the brotherhood’s local car pool is, Pilot Davis,” he said, politely enough. He’d been quick to gather, in discussion the night before, that that was the honorific she preferred.

  Kyra decided she didn’t mind lingering in the coffee shop. The talk had run very late. She and Guthrie had already hatched a couple of different schemes, but they needed Valencia to help them choose the best and work out details. At that, the plan was hairy with contingencies.

  The gunjin reappeared sooner than she’d expected and led her out to a fire-red Phoenix. “Isn’t this sort of conspicuous?” she wondered.

  He shrugged. “Part of the camouflage, I hope. Fugitives aren’t supposed to ride around in sports cars, are they?” His fingers danced over controls, eased it into traffic.

  “Where’s the jefe?”

  “Next to my weapons, in a well-screened compartment with lots of electronics around for extra cover. The motor’s been modified, though it doesn’t show.”

  This vehicle had carried contraband before, Kyra realized. Glee raised a laugh. She might as well treat her escape as an escapade, at least till it turned around and bit her again.

  Valencia took a ramp onto a skyway, set the board for automatic, and entered their route. The Phoenix accelerated smoothly till city vistas blurred past. Kyra barely heard the cloven air. Yes, she thought, the Chinese could certainly build cars. Valencia reclined his seat a few degrees and let it mold itself to his relaxation. “If all goes well, we should make San Francisco about 1400,” he said. “I know a good place for a late lunch, unless you’d rather stop and eat sooner.”

  “No, that’s fine. Surprise me.”

  “Now let’s start rehearsing you in our story.”

  “I remember it quite well from last night.”

  “With respect, Pilot Davis, you do not. And there are countless details we didn’t get into. If we’re stopped, you’ll need every last one sliding off your tongue without you having to think. Two, three hours of drill, I’d guess.”

  Kyra pouted. “Oh, foo! I was looking forward to this ride.”

  Valencia grinned. His biojewel twinkled blue. “I can imagine more amusing ways to pass the time, myself.” With instant steel sobriety: “But getting arrested, deep-quizzed, and sent up for re-education isn’t among them
.”

  “Of course, Ne—Sr. Valencia. Let’s go.”

  He leaned hard into business. (A while after she fled to Quebec, a Fireball officer there judged that, in view of the startling announcement by Guthrie, she should probably report back to Hawaii. Packer, at Kamehameha, was dubious when they called him.) If the Sepo tried to check on that, they’d pump vacuum. No Fireball consorte in any foreign country would give them the fourth digit of pi without specific orders from the top. Packer, if queried, would smell something in the wind and be noncommittal. (Feeling understandably insecure, she went first to Portland and talked it over with friends she had there.) Her re-entry would be recorded in the database at a border station. The Sally Severins had that much access to the official net. She got the impression that it was through Chaotic moles, with whom they had shifty connections. (Bill Mendoza offered to drive her down to San Francisco and accompany her when she sought permission to board a plane for the Islands. His paralegal business was taking him to that area anyway.) Valencia carried ample ident, and the pseudopersonality had long been in the registries, duly paying its taxes and staying out of trouble.

  Easily mastered. But then Valencia began filling in the outline, day by day, well-nigh hour by hour.

  The skyway curved groundward and merged with the transcontinental. City fell behind. The car fled south over cropland, along a river coursing through aquaculture pens. Ordered, machine-tended greenness reached out of sight, across terraced hills to mountains half hidden by clouds. A boring landscape, Kyra thought; but how beautiful it must once have been, villages, farmsteads, cows ruddy in meadows and apples ruddy in orchards, maybe blue flax or yellow corn, maybe a boy a-gallop on a horse, surely great stretches of forest, shadowy and resin-sweet beneath the sun.

  “Now, snap it out, what’d you do on Thursday?”

  “Bueno, uh—”

  A light blinked red on the panel. Kyra saw, two or three klicks down the road, how traffic was bunching. Her throat went tight. “Oh-oh,” Valencia muttered.

  He punched the receiver button. A shield bearing the infinity symbol appeared in the screen. A genderless voice: “Attention. There is a special inspection point ahead. Proceed on automatic. Do not leave your vehicle unless directed. The delay is estimated at about half an hour. This is an emergency situation and all persons are required to give the authorities their full cooperation. Stand by for further word.”

  Kyra retracted the shade and peered up through the canopy. Two flitters cruised back and forth. “Is this on our account?” she whispered around the lump.

  Valencia’s features had congealed into a bronze mask. “I’d lay odds it is,” he replied without tone.

  “But we could be anywhere. How can they know?”

  “They don’t, but they seem to think they have a scent worth pursuing. A two-way stop, you notice, and no turnoff before we get there. I daresay every road out of Portland Integrate is blocked. No news announcement that might scare us off.”

  “Wait, Esther Blum said something about not having been in a quivira for—decades—”

  Valencia nodded. “That’s probably their hint. I worried about it, but when Sr. Guthrie insisted he couldn’t lose time lying low, I saw no point in mentioning it. We’d just have to take our chances.”

  Kyra shuddered. “Esther! Do you suppose they—”

  “I wouldn’t put it past them. If they have taken her in and, by now, wrung out of her that Kyra Davis is traveling with Anson Guthrie, we’re cooked. However, you recall that that’s unlikely.”

  The pilot nodded stiffly. The mere fact that Blum had done something out of the ordinary shouldn’t seem—to whatever detective was assigned to trail her without having been told why—cause for arrest. From the quivira she had returned to her hotel. There another gunjin waited. He was to smuggle her out, and his organization would hide her for a couple of days. When she came back to Baker she’d tell people she’d been gadding about in Portland. It was not unreasonable to hope that the Sepo would assume this was true and their operative had simply, clumsily, lost her.

  It had seemed almost a needless precaution. It had turned out to be vital. Somebody higher up in the hunt had received the report on Blum. Perhaps, desperate, he had ordered that anything at all unusual concerning anyone associated with Guthrie be called to his attention. A search tree program could readily do that. He’d supposed there was an off chance this was a clue, and had mobilized local forces to throw up road blocks. If Kyra got by, her story accepted, the Sepo ought soon to figure they’d misled themselves, and Blum ought to be safe from them when she came home. If Kyra did not pass— She refused to imagine what would follow.

  Valencia leaned toward her. Under the black bangs, his jewel had gone topaz. “Listen, Pilot Davis,” he said. “They will not detect Guthrie unless they take this car apart. We mustn’t give them reason to think that might be a good idea. I counted on grooming you till you could answer any question shot at you easier than if you were telling the truth. No such luck. But we can still pass if you don’t show you’re worried. Annoyed, curious, yes, but you’ve got nothing to hide, nothing to be afraid of. Can you carry that off?”

  She ran tongue over lips. “I’ll . . . try.”

  Slowing, their car reached the end of the line and halted. After a minute those ahead rolled forward a few meters and theirs followed. The line stopped again. A truck arrived to fill the rear view. They were hemmed in. Kyra smelled the sweat in her armpits, rank, and felt it, cold.

  Valencia regarded her through a thick silence until he murmured, “I’m sorry, Pilot Davis, but I don’t believe you can swing this.”

  “I never was a very skilled liar. Have you any suggestions?”

  His eyes narrowed. Irrelevantly, she noticed that they were long-lashed and russet. “I do,” he answered slowly. “You may not like it.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Por favor, understand, in my brotherhood we don’t funnyjump with a client. If you decline this notion, that’s the end of it and I’ll try to think of something else.”

  Blood thudded in her temples. “You mean—the two of us—”

  He nodded. “Quite natural, if a couple on friendly terms find a better way of passing time in line than turning on the multi. Then one would expect the lady to get rather flustered and out of breath.”

  Suddenly Kyra must laugh. Must howl her laughter till the car rang with it. “Esther said . . . every good cause . . . whoop! . . . demands sacrifices. I’ve . . . whoop! . . . made worse ones. C’mere, you.”

  It was a bench seat, though with separate backrests. His jewel glowed scarlet. He was unrighteously handsome. He glided to her. She laid arms about his neck. His went around her waist. As their lips touched, his hands began to caress her back. The kiss developed at its own pace. When in full bloom, it made every other that she could remember at the moment, except maybe her awkward first, seem thin.

  He explored leisurely. She had a hand under his shirt before his was under her blouse.

  Once, coming up for air, she glimpsed a police car going by. Bueno, so much the better. Put on a convincing show.

  She wasn’t quite on her back when they came to the checkpoint, but knew whirlingly that if the wait had lasted much longer she would have been. Damn. No, better this way. Wasn’t it? She ran fingers through her rumpled hair and gave the officer at the window a blurry smile.

  He grinned back. He was a civil policeman, one of several under the command of a single tan-clad Sepo. That man strode forth and flung the questions he must have uttered a hundred times already. He was haggard, baggy-eyed, probably running on stim, his competence not worn down but his mind, perhaps, a wee bit distractable by a steamy sight. Kyra’s ident as Fireball alerted him to make some additional, nonroutine queries. She answered dreamily. Nero chimed in, showing less calm himself than she felt sure he’d have been able to. Meanwhile the police opened the engine and luggage compartments, checked through their possessions, and scanned about with an instrume
nt that must be a Guthrie detector. Of course, they didn’t know that . . .

  “Pass,” the Sepo clipped. It broke from him: “You might behave more decently in future!”

  Valencia returned a half apologetic smile, took over the controls, and slipped the car forward. A few seconds later it was back on automatic at cruise speed.

  Kyra sagged back. “Whoo-ee,” she breathed. Exultation awoke. “We made it, Nero, we made it!”

  “So far.” He looked straight before him.

  “Oye, don’t be nervous. You were, uh, you were ultra. I enjoyed every hertz of that waveband.”

  He glanced at her. The jewel had faded to pale rose. For an instant, warmth and teeth flashed. “Gracias. I did too.” The smile died. “Don’t worry, Pilot Davis. I won’t presume on it.”