The Stars Are Also Fire

by Poul Anderson

  And yes, he’d grown fond of this machine, in the way he’d formerly grown fond of his old laserblade or a particular plaid shirt or his and Annie’s house on Earth, but that wasn’t the same as affection for a human being or a live pet. Somehow he felt it would be wrong to leave without a farewell, but why?

  Would the ship have been hurt? He couldn’t believe that. Her words, comradely or concerned as the situation called for, gave simply the illusion of feelings like his. What were hers? Meaningless question. He imagined her taking pleasure in the challenge of a difficult maneuver, he imagined her longing to get back into full connection with others, with the cybercosm, and for that span share in a larger awareness than he would ever know; but this was anthropomorphism on his part. It was as inane as his naming her, privately, Barbara, after the first girl he had loved and never gotten.

  Too long aspace, a man went a bit crazy. By Earth standards, anyhow.

  “Commencing descent,” she warned him. Also that was needless. Besides the instruments on the console, he sensed the swingaround. Had the algorithm computed that he would appreciate her gesture?

  Signals flew back and forth. Electrophotonic intelligences meshed. Weight returned, settling Kenmuir in his chair, and the ship climbed down the sky to Port Bowen.

  The thought of Annie lingered in him. His gaze sought Earth. Where was she yonder? Ten years, now, since last he’d heard anything; a dozen years since they parted. Mostly his fault, he supposed. Spacefarers were a poor risk for marriage. But theirs had begun so happily, nestled under Ben Dearg in a land whose heights and heather they had nearly to themselves. … He sighed. “It’s space you love, Ian,” she had said—oh, very quietly, with a bare glimmer of tears. “It doesn’t leave enough of you for me to live on.” Well, he hadn’t quite given up hope of someday having a little touslehead or two of his own. But no woman whom a spacefarer would likely meet shared it as Annie once did, except dream-women in the quivira, and he dared not call those up very often.

  Lilisaire waited! A surge passed through him, half lust, half fear, and left him trembling.

  Touchdown into a cradle was feather-gentle. He saw just two other vessels on the field, a globular freighter and a small, slim suborbital that was probably his transport to Zamok Vysoki. In Fireball’s day the number could well have been a score.

  Seeking to master himself, and thinking of what Lilisaire might want him for, he looked westward, past the control tower. The spark that was L-5 stood above that horizon. But no, he hadn’t set the screen to enhance the stars, and the sun-glare of early Lunar afternoon hid most of them, including the derelict worldlet. Symbolic, an omen?

  Now there was an anachronism for you. Kenmuir’s tautness eased with a grin at himself. Unharnessing, he went to get his luggage. After three daycycles of boost at a fourth again Earth’s gravity, one-sixth was like blowing along on a breeze.

  Stripped, his cabin had become a hollowness he gladly quitted. A single bag sufficed him. He had packed the rest of his effects; robots would fetch and stow them till he phoned instructions. He need not actually carry anything. His hostess could provide him clothes and such, lavishly. Too much. He preferred his plain personal style, as well as his independence.

  As he was about to command an airlock to open, the ship surprised him. “Fare you well, Ian Kenmuir,” she said. “May we travel together again.”

  “Why, why, I’d like that,” he faltered.

  Meaningless wish. If he was assigned a different craft, its intelligence would, routinely, get a download of everything Barbara knew about him. He would find the personalities indistinguishable—if personality, distinct individuality, could be said to exist in sophotects. What then led her to send him off this humanly?

  He didn’t really understand these minds. Did they? Beyond a certain degree of complexity, systems go chaotic, inherently unpredictable and unfathomable even to themselves. No doubt the Teramind saw more deeply, but was that insight absolute, and did it include all of the vast psyche?

  He thrust the question from him. It always gave him an inward shudder. “Until then, Barbara,” he mumbled, and signalled the inner valve. It contracted. He passed through the chamber. The outer valve had already withdrawn, when the portal sealed fast to an ascensor shaft in the cradle. Kenmuir stepped onto the platform. It bore him down to the terminal. He emerged.

  The floor gleamed before him, wide and almost empty. The murals along it seemed to mock the triumphs they celebrated, Armstrong’s landing, the Great Return, Anson Guthrie founding the base that would become this city, Dagny Beynac bossing construction of the hundredth Criswell energy collector. … None dated from the Selenarchy, although that era had seen the Mars colony begun, interstellar missions, Guthrie’s and Rinndalir’s exodus to Alpha Centauri. Lunarians didn’t flaunt public achievements; they were too catlike, individualistic, secretive. … The air felt cold.

  A lone man waited, clad in form-fitting black and silver. Kenmuir recognized him, Eythil, a trusted attendant of Lilisaire’s. Mars-bred, he stood less tall and more broad than the average Moondweller of his race, strong, dangerous when necessary. His complexion was dark, his hair black and curly, but that was not unusual; many different stocks had gone into the ancestry.

  He saluted, hand to breast. “Greeting and welcome, my captain.” His use of his mother tongue, unprompted, was an honorific, implying worth—not status, but inborn worth—equal or nearly equal to the Lunarian. He also refrained from explaining that he would bring the newcomer to his lady, and from asking how the journey had been.

  “To you I am indeed well come, Saljaine,” Kenmuir replied likewise. The title had no Earthside equivalent, for Selenarchs had never bestowed rigid ranks on their followers. It might perhaps be rendered “officer,” perhaps “faithful henchman.”

  They started across the floor. Being a Terran of the Orthosphere, Kenmuir felt obliged to make some conversation. “The port was not quite this deserted”—eerily so—“when I left last year. Has traffic fallen off more, or is it a statistical fluke?”

  “Both are at work, I think,” Eythil said. “I have heard of three large ships retired from service in the past thirteen-month, and might learn of more did I consult the official database.” The insinuation was that he didn’t believe every byte of information was available to everybody, even in such apparently harmless areas as interplanetary commerce.

  Kenmuir, who thought this was true, nodded. “Traffic must have grown sparse, or we’d not see random variations.”

  A part of his mind ran through the reasons—some of the reasons. Population decline wasn’t one. The original steep drop (which had, for example, left spacious reaches of Scotland open to him in his boyhood and to him and Annie in their marriage) had long since flattened out and was approaching the asymptote of zero growth. Lowered demand for raw materials certainly was a reason: efficient recycling, goods made to last, few if any design changes. But what lay behind it? The old, driving dynamism had faded well-nigh out of people—How? Why?

  Ferocity lashed in Eythil’s voice: “Hargh, they will soon swarm again, the ships, when the Habitat comes with its Terrans breeding, breeding. Unless maychance you—” He broke off. Kenmuir couldn’t tell whether that was due caution or because a robot was moving across the floor to intercept them.

  Robot, or sophotect? The turret could hold a human-capability computer. If it didn’t, the body could be remote-controlled by an intelligence. This was a standard multipurpose model, boxlike, with three different pairs of arms, the four legs lifting its principal sensors to a level with his eyes. Where organic components were not in supple motion, metal shone dull gold.

  It drew close. Musical western Anglo floated out of the speaker: “Your pardon, Captain Kenmuir, Freeholder Eythil.”

  They stopped. “What would you?” the Lunarian rapped. It was obvious that Kenmuir, just in from space, would be known; but the system’s identification of his companion must give, more than ever, a feeling of being caged.


  “You are bound for your vehicle?” the machine said. “Regrets and apologies. Clearance to lift will be delayed about an hour.”

  “What the Q?” Kenmuir exclaimed, amazed.

  “An accidental explosion has occurred just a few minutes ago on Epsilon-93. Do you place the designation? An iceberg lately brought here.”

  Kenmuir and, stiffly, Eythil nodded. They hadn’t heard of the object, but that was natural. Beneficiated pieces of comet stuff were, as a rule, set on trajectories that took them from the Kuiper Belt into Lunar orbit, there to be refined and sent down. Robotic, utterly routine, the operation hadn’t been conducted much in recent decades, but no doubt the work was starting up on a larger scale. The influx of settlers after the Habitat was ready would want more water and air than the Moon currently recycled.

  “Fragments are flying about,” the machine continued. “None are expected to crash, but that is as yet not perfectly certain. Until every track is known, Traffic Control is interdicting civilian movement above ground, especially in this vicinity. For about an hour, is the estimate. You landed barely in time.”

  Eythil scowled. Kenmuir shrugged although his impatience was probably sharper.

  “Administration apologizes for any inconvenience,” the machine said. “You are invited to spend the time in the executive lounge, with complimentary refreshments.”

  Eythil and Kenmuir exchanged a glance. Smiles quirked wry. “Never have I been there,” the Lunarian admitted. “You, Captain?”

  “No,” Kenmuir replied. “Why not?” Satisfy a slight curiosity. Besides, the public bar and restaurant, big, well-nigh forsaken, would be spooky surroundings.

  The room to which the machine led them was of a more intimate size. Its furniture, massive Earth-style, seemed somehow faded. Flat pictures of space pioneers hung on the walls. The air held a faint simulation of leather and woodsmoke odors. Kenmuir wondered why this retreat was maintained. How often had it seen use since the spaceport was completely cyberneticized? Well, it couldn’t be much trouble to keep, and occasions like this doubtless arose once in a while. The system provided for improbabilities.

  He and Eythil took chairs. The machine went to a dispenser. “What is your desire, señores?” it asked. Eythil wanted a Lunarian white wine—the vineyards under Copernicus still produced biologically—and Kenmuir chose ale. The machine touched the panel, the containers arrived, the machine poured into suitable goblets from off a shelf and brought them over. “If you wish anything more, call me, por favor,” it said, indicating the nearest intercom input. “I trust you soon may be on your way.”

  “Thanks,” Kenmuir answered. After all, either it or its controller was sentient. It departed. Kenmuir sipped. A goodly brew, yes. Never mind that molecular machineries had assembled it; the formula was tangy, the liquid cold. “Hadn’t you better phone to say we’ll be delayed?” he asked Eythil.

  “Nay, not if the wait stretches no longer,” the other man said. They both stayed with Anglo. Odd, Kenmuir reflected, what a relaxed attitude to schedules most Lunarians had, when survival might depend on precision. Well, with them timing was practically instinctive, as fast as recovery from a stumble was to an Earthman in his high-gravity home. You got to know your competences and their safe boundaries.

  “I wonder what exactly went wrong,” he remarked. “It sounded like the kind of accident that shouldn’t ever happen these days.”

  “Thus the cybercosm tells us,” Eythil growled.

  “M-m, nothing is guaranteed, you know. The planning may be total, but—I simply wonder if this blowup was due to an oversight, or a runaway chaos, or a quantum fluctuation that got amplified. … I really don’t know how these operations are conducted. In a few daycycles, if I have a free hour or two, I’d like to retrieve a full account.”

  “You will get one,” Eythil said cynically. “Whether or nay it relates what truly happened—if aught happened at all—will be for you to guess.’

  He was right, Kenmuir thought. The system could feed pretty much anything it chose into the database, complete with images, numbers, and mathematical analysis. It wouldn’t be hard to bypass the human functionaries who were supposed to be in the loop. “Why should the mind lie,” he protested, “especially when the story isn’t to its credit?”

  Eythil finger-shrugged. “Who knows? Incidentally to some broad design, maychance. Let us assume this happening will help make plausible the diversion of yet more resources to the Habitat project, and thereby hasten the destruction of Lunarian lifeways. Thus might the sociotechnic program esoterically calculate.”

  Kenmuir took a long, heartening draught. “Farfetched. You are bitter, aren’t you?”

  “Have I not cause?”

  It surfaced in the minutes that followed, breaking through the normal reserve of Eythil’s race toward Kenmuir’s. The spaceman was familiar with most of it, but he listened throughout, because here was a need to speak. Moreover, he heard a few aspects that had not touched on him before.

  —While the asteroids were invaluable sources of minerals, as the comets were of ices and both were of organics, by themselves they did not suffice. A large body is required for the chemical fractionation that creates usable concentrations of most industrial materials. Hence prospecting and mining on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. On Mercury they were carried out entirely by machines—

  —although even for them, Venus was too costly. In environments less horrific, humans were marginally employable: those humans whose desire for a frontier brought them there. Above all was Mars—

  —to which Lunarians, especially, went in the high days of the Selenarchy. Terrans, too, could reproduce in that gravity field; but at first their numbers were less, because few were accustomed to land that could kill them. Mars remained a province of Luna until the Federation took them both over—

  —“and we should yet be of Lunarian name,” Eythil said. “Is not a member nation supposed to govern itself? But nay, afar on Mars we have less autonomy left us than here where we circle Earth.”

  “Well, you’ve gotten proportionally more Terrans,” Kenmuir pointed out. “Whether or not they were born there, they’ll think, act, vote according to their psychological bent and their culture.”

  “You speak like a sociotech.” Contempt edged the word.

  “I don’t mean to,” Kenmuir said mildly. “One is apt to read a lot on space hauls. It makes for a bookish vocabulary. Oh, I am not only a Terran by race, I’m an Earthling. But I do sympathize with you Lunarians. All the old, irreconcilable issues are rising again, aren’t they?”

  —which once made Luna declare itself a nation, independent and sovereign: birthright, property right, education, the survival of a civilization that openly rejected certain basic ideals. He had often wondered what would have developed if it had stayed clear of the Federation. Idle imagining, of course. When reaction to the War Strike doomed mighty Fireball, the end of separatist Luna was in sight, however long a delaying campaign Niolente and her cohorts might wage. Yet, in some hypothetical quantum-mechanical alternative reality—

  “Under the Covenant, the Assembly and High Council should at least respect our constitution,” Eythil maintained. “But nay, more and more they reshape the ‘fundamental ethic’ clause to bring down olden law and ways. Decision passes ever more from living beings to machines.”

  Intelligent machines, Kenmuir thought, not subject to human corruption and cruelty. Yet undeniably this was governance by … aliens? The Teramind bore something of the awesomeness of God, out it was not God—too remote, not fallible enough. As for the day-to-day details of life, maybe what gnawed some people worst was just a sense of having become irrelevant.

  “It isn’t due to any conspiracy,” he argued. “It’s the, the logic of events. The former nations scarcely exist any longer. They’ve broken up into thousands of different societies, in fact and often in form. The Federation has had to take over many of their duties. Without an integrated world economy, everyone would starve.�
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  “Scant value has that economy had for us Martians of late.”

  “Well, declining demand for minerals.”

  “We could adapt, in a self-chosen fashion. But nay, it must be in Earth wise. You speak of the Federation as the sole viable government that is left. But that means that naught stands between the lone person and it.”

  “I know. History shows your fear is reasonable. Also, anomie is demoralizing. But you have to agree, the Federation government doesn’t try to run people’s lives for them. In fact, many of its interferences with you Lunarians have been to curb arbitrary powers of the Selenarchs that they aren’t supposed to possess in a republic—”

  Perhaps fortunately, the wall speaker announced: “Ambient space is now known to be safe. You may lift when you please, señores.”

  Silence fell between them, and prevailed while they went to the vehicle, launched, and flew Eythil might have been nursing his anger, or might have gone into some unearthly mind-realm of his own. Kenmuir had begun to feel a vague headache and feverishness. He wondered whether it was nerves, dread that he might somehow fail Lilisaire … whatever she wanted of him.

  The westering sun rose higher as the trajectory bore him in that direction. Earth, too, shifted across his sky, easterly and northerly. It shone at late first quarter, a blue crescent marbled with white clouds which, widespread over nightside, captured enough light from the stars and from below to make that part of it ghostly gray. So had it been when first she summoned him.

  He did not yet know why she did—he, the most ordinary of men, an Earthman at that. “Ey, but you are far from ordinary,” she had purred when he got up the courage to ask. “Your whole career, your doings in the yonder, your ties to the past. You live not in a void nor by illusions, like so many. You know what has gone before, the land and folk and deeds from which your being springs; for you, time has reality, even as space does.” That had not seemed quite an answer to him.