The Stars Are Also Fire

by Poul Anderson

  “She grows old,” Ulla said low. “People change with age.”

  “Hard to imagine her old. I remember her like yesterday, a little curlytop—” Guthrie stopped. That was not quite his yesterday. “But no. Time has only honed Dagny Beynac sharper.”

  “Then what is worrying you, jefe?” Lars inquired.

  “That calls for a review of the background.” Again Guthrie paused. “Look, you’re both well aware of how, ever since they got leave to, Lunarians have been making a strong push to get into deep space on their own hook. Her sons are at the forefront. Purchase, manufacture, training—small-scale stuff to date, but energetic and ambitious.”

  “Yes,” Lars mused. “Ambitious. An ambition that puzzles me, I confess. It isn’t really economic. We have never—Fireball doesn’t want to suppress them, for God’s sake. But when I try to persuade them that at this stage, chartering vessels and hiring out jobs is better—they are polite, but it is as if they do not hear.”

  “Your experience isn’t unique,” Guthrie said dryly.

  “I have told you, dear,” Ulla recalled to her husband. “This is a matter of pride, self-assertion. When will you learn that not everybody is as rational as you are?”

  Guthrie laughed once more. “The besetting irrationality of rationalists. You’re right, my lady. I’m doubtful what is and is not rational to a Lunarian, that wild-ass breed, but basically you’re right.

  “Okay, let ’em go ahead. There’s sure no dearth of things to do in space, even if the rich Lunarians have to subsidize their part of it. But—you wouldn’t know, you two, because it was between Dagny Beynac and me—you wouldn’t know how she’s leaned on me about it, throughout this long while, on behalf of those folks.”

  Lars rubbed his chin and took a smoky sip of whisky. “M-m, I have wondered at some of the assistance Fireball has given, loans of money and facilities and so forth. How could it pay? But I am no economist.”

  “You aren’t alone in wondering, either,” Guthrie said. “Others have been more vocal about it, or downright obstreperous. Not being the absolute dictator of the company that the news media make me out as, I had several knock-down-and-drag-out fights behind the scenes, getting this or that operation okayed and holding it on track.”

  “Why?” inquired Ulla.

  “Trust a woman to ask an embarrassingly straight question. Why’d I go along with Dagny’s requests? Well, as you might guess, partly I looked beyond the money side of it. The nations of Earth, the whole fat Federation, they need somebody in a position to cock a snook at them. At least, we the people do, if we aren’t to see government growing all over us again like jungle rot.” Guthrie’s phrase went past his listeners. He hesitated. “But, well, also … it was Dagny who asked.”

  “And now she has asked for too much?” Fire-crackle mingled with Lars’s muted words.

  “N-no. But it is pretty radical this time, enough to make me wonder real hard. So I thought I‘d check with you.”

  “I am not—an intimate of hers. Not truly. Has she had any since Edmond died?”

  “You know her better than most. And you, Señora Rydberg, seem to have a better than average feel for people. Let’s try.”

  Lars leaned forward. “What does she want?”

  “A torchcraft, designed and built to order, suitable for a Lunarian crew. That’s nothing off the shelf, you realize. Financing it, complete with R and D, would be a tad burdensome for us, and repayment slow, if ever.”

  “Can’t they wait until they are able to produce it themselves?”

  “Evidently not. That could be a decade or more. They’re too antsy. Anyhow, that’s what Dagny claims. They want to get out and explore on their own. Really explore.”

  “That is … not unreasonable, is it?” Lars said. Ulla heard the longing and took his hand.

  “I s’pose not. Still, to go this blue-sky at this earlyish stage of their space program—It looks like betting the store. For what?”

  “She gave you no hint?”

  “None, except that because her children bodaciously want this, she does. Oh, there was talk of it as a symbol that’ll help quiet down the rebellious mood in the younger Moon generation. A sop, I’d call it. And there was talk of it as an investment, training, experience, et cetera. But mainly, she admits, they’re impatient.”

  “They grow no younger,” Lars muttered. Ulla tightened her grip on his hand.

  “I thought you might have the information or ideas to help me decide.”

  “I am sorry, no. That Lunarian generation is as foreign to me as to you.”

  Ulla raised her head. “I suspect this is no simple impulse,” she offered. “They have something specific in mind.”

  “My selfsame hunch,” Guthrie agreed.

  Lars repeated himself: “I cannot believe my mother would endorse it, so wholeheartedly, if it were any threat to us.”

  “No, no, certainly not,” Guthrie said. “But a substantial expense, recoverable maybe, and for me a royal ruckus with my directors.”

  “A treasure trove? Perhaps they have learned of an extraordinary lode on some distant body?”

  “That’s the obvious guess. I asked Dagny forthright. She said no, and asked me in return how the hell they could get wind of any such thing if they didn’t have a ship to prospect in or even robot probes with the needful capabilities.”

  “A spacecraft in orbit is potentially a terrible weapon. One like that—”

  “No!” Ulla cried.

  “No is right,” Guthrie said. “The Lunarians may in assorted ways be crazy, but they aren’t insane. Nor stupid.”

  Lars nodded. “I didn’t mean that seriously,” he explained. “I simply wanted to dismiss it. Also because of what my mother is. They could not hoodwink her, and she would never allow—” He drew breath. “Aside from the economics, what harm, jefe? Knowledge or wealth or whatever they hope to gain, does it not in the end come to all humankind?”

  “That’s a natural-born explorer talking, and, I’m afraid, an idealist. I’m less naive. Nor is Fireball in the business of do-gooding.”

  “It does do good,” Ulla insisted.

  “Sort of, in the course of doing well,” Guthrie said. “Though Lord knows we’ve got our share of shortsighted greed, hog-wild foolishness, and the rest of the human condition. They weren’t left out of my program, either. … But this wanders. Should we or should we not underwrite the venture?”

  “I am inclined to think we should—” Lars began.

  “In hopes of satisfying our curiosity about it, hey?” And again Guthrie laughed.

  “That may never happen. I am thinking of discovery, and diversity, and—But we must talk together more. Can you really only stay until tomorrow?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. Well, in what hours we’ve got, we’ll puzzle along as best we can. I’m inclined to think we’ll end up with ‘Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!’”

  Ulla looked a while at the robot and then said to the mind within it: “Because you too are what you are.”

  25

  Venator had returned to Central after his interview with Matthias, less than satisfied. He had no simple need to do so. He could be as closely in touch with developments, including any thoughts from the cybercosm, anyplace on Earth where there was an interlink terminal But he felt that here he would find the calm and sureness from which his mind could win total clarity.

  He well understood the reason for that feeling. This was holy ground.

  He was among the few humans who knew of it, other than vaguely. He was among the very few who had ever walked it.

  The morning after his arrival, he set forth on an hours-long hike. Though athletic, he was not acclimated to the altitude. However, the evening before he had gotten an infusion of hemoglobin surrogate and now breathed easily. The air entered him cold, quiet, utterly pure.

  Domes, masts, parabolic dishes soon dropped from view behind him. They were no more than a cluster, a meteorological station. Nothing showed
of what the machines had wrought underground. Instruments aboard a monitor satellite could detect radiations from below, but those were subtle, electromagnetic, infrared, neutrino; and the cybercosm edited all such data before entering them in the public base.

  Seldom visiting, Venator was not intimate with the territory. From time to time he took out a hand-held reader to screen a map and a text listing landmarks; he used his informant to check his exact position and bearing. That was his entire contact with the outer world. He wandered untroubled, drawing serenity from magnificence.

  His course was northward. Around him as he climbed, scattered dwarf juniper, birch, rhododendron gave way to silvery tussocks between which wildflowers bloomed tiny and rivulets trilled glistening. Sunlight spilled out of blue unboundedness; shadows reached sharp from lichenous boulders. Sometimes for a while he spied an eagle-vulture on high, sometimes a marmot whistled, once a cock pheasant took off like an exploding jewel. Ahead of him rose the Great Himalaya, from left horizon to right horizon, glaciers agleam over distance-dusky rock, the heights radiant white. A wind sent snow astream off one of those tremendous peaks, as if whetting it.

  Venator’s muscles strained and rejoiced. His breath went deep, his sight afar. From the might of the mountains he drew strength; trouble burned out of him; he was alone with infinity and eternity.

  But those were within him. The highland had only evoked them. Among the stars, it was a ripple in the skin of a single small planet lost in the marches of a single galaxy. Life was already old on Earth when India rammed into Asia and thrust the wreckage heavenward. Life would abide after wind and water had brought the last range low—would embrace the universe, and abide after the last stars guttered out—would in the end be the universe, the whole of reality.

  For intelligence was the ultimate evolution of life.

  He knew it, had known it from before the day he was enrolled in the Brain Garden, not merely as words but as a part of himself like heart or nerves and as the meaning of his existence. Yet often the hours and the cares of service, the countless pettinesses of being human, blurred it in him, and he went about his tasks for their own sakes, in a cosmos gone narrow. Then he must seek renewal. Even so—he thought with a trace of sardonicism—does the believer in God make retreat for meditation and prayer.

  Now he could again reason integrally and objectively. When he stopped for a meager lunch, on the rim of a gorge that plunged down to a sword-blade glacial river, he called up for fresh consideration the memories he had brought with him from Vancouver Island, halfway around the globe.

  Rain blew off the sea, dashed against the house, blinded the antique windowpanes. A wood fire crackled on the hearth. Its flames were the sole brightness in the high, crepuscular room. Their light ghosted over the man in the carven armchair.

  “Yes,” Matthias rumbled, “Ian Kenmuir was here last week. And spent the night. Why do you ask, when obviously you know?”

  Seated opposite him, Venator gave a shrug and a smile. “Rhetorical question,” he admitted. “A courtesy, if you will.”

  Eyes peered steadily from the craggy visage. “What’s your interest in the matter, Pragmatic?”

  Equally obviously, it was considerable. Venator was present in person and had declared his rank in order to impress that on the Rydberg. Nevertheless he kept his tone soft. “My service would like to find out what his errand was.”

  “Nothing criminal.”

  “I didn’t say it was.”

  “Ask him.”

  “I wish I could. He’s disappeared.”

  Brows lifted. The big body stirred. “Do you suspect foul play?”

  This might be a chance to make use of the loyalties that bound the Fireball Trothdom together. “It’s possible,” Venator said. “Any clue that you can give us will be much appreciated.”

  Matthias brooded for a minute, while the rain whispered, before he snapped, “A man can drop out of sight for many different reasons. We’re not required by law to report our whereabouts every hour. Not yet.”

  Did he dread a stifling future? “Not ever, sir,” Venator replied. He was sincere. Why should the cybercosm give itself the trouble? “Police protection is a service, not an obligation. It does, though, need the cooperation of the people.”

  “Police. Hm.” Matthias rubbed his chin. He scorned cosmetic tech, Venator saw; the veins stood out upon his hand, under the brown spots. “If one individual may have come to grief, it concerns the civil police, not the Peace Authority.” Had he been fully informed, he would doubtless have added: Most especially not a synnoiont agent of it. “You’re being less than candid, señor.”

  Venator’s preliminary data retrievals had led him to anticipate stubbornness. “Very well, I’ll try to explain. To begin indirectly: Do you support the Habitat project?”

  “You mean putting L-5 in Lunar orbit?” The voice quickened. “Of course!”

  “I should think your members all ought to,” Venator pursued.

  Matthias scowled. “Some among us have Lunarian sympathies. That’s their right.”

  “Do they include Kenmuir?” Venator intensified his timbre. “Doesn’t he care about other Terrans who hope to go where he’s gone, make their lives where he’s made his?”

  “Spare the oratory, por favor,” Matthias said.

  Venator assembled words. “It’s no secret how hostile most Lunarians are to the Habitat. Nor is it a secret that Kenmuir not only pilots for the Venture, he has … close personal ties to his employer.” Venture, Venator, passed through him. What an ironic similarity. “We have reason to believe he came to Earth on her account.”

  “To sabotage the project?” scoffed Matthias. “Pragmatic, I’m an old man. Not much time’s left me to spend on stupid games.”

  Venator suppressed irritation. “My apologies, sir. I’d no such intention. Nor do I accuse Kenmuir of anything unlawful. It’s only—the potentialities, for good or ill—” He let the sentence trail off, as if he forbore to speak of spacecraft and meteoroids crashed with nuclear-bomb force on Earth, malignant biotech and nanotech, every nightmare that laired at the back of many a human skull.

  “What ill?” the Rydberg snorted. “At worst, the Habitat gets cancelled. I agree that for a small minority of us, that would be a disaster, or at least a heartbreaking setback. But let’s have no apocalyptic fantasies, eh? Kindly be specific.”

  That was no easy task when Venator could not hint at the truth. “We’re trying to understand the situation,” he said carefully. “It appears the Lunarian faction has something in train. But what? Why don’t they proceed openly, through normal politics or persuasion? Call this a bugaboo if you wish, but the Peace Authority dares not stand idly by. Events could conceivably get out of hand, with disastrous consequences.” So had they done throughout history, over and over, always; for human affairs are a chaotic system. Not until sophotectic intelligence transcended the human had there been any hope of peace that was not stagnation, progress that was not destruction; and how precarious was still the hold of the steersman’s hand! It was encouraging to see the white head nod. “At the same time, we have no legal grounds for direct action. We cannot prove and in fact we do not claim that Captain Kenmuir, or any particular person, has evil intentions. They may be … misguided. Inadequately informed. As we ourselves are at present.”

  “You may be on a false trail altogether.”

  “Yes, we may. Without more information, we cannot just assume that. You know what duty is.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “Tell me what Kenmuir wanted of you.”

  The face congealed. “It’s normal for consortes to pay respects at Guthrie House when they get the chance.”

  “I doubt that Kenmuir was making a pilgrimage or seeking help in a private difficulty. Else why has he disappeared?”

  Matthias sat unyielding. “The Trothdom honors the confidences of its consortes.”

  Venator eased his manner a little. “May I guess? You keep a secr
et here. You have for centuries, the same as you’ve kept that historic spacecraft.”

  “We’re far from being the only association that has its mysteries, sanctuaries, and relics,” Matthias said low.

  “I’m aware of that. But did Kenmuir perhaps ask you what the secret is?”

  Silence responded.

  Venator sighed. “I don’t suppose I may ask the same thing?”

  Matthias grinned. “Oh, you may. You won’t get an answer.”

  “If I came back with an official order and asked?” Venator challenged.

  Implacability: “Still less would you get an answer. If necessary, I’d blow out my brains.”

  Venator shaped a soundless whistle. The fire spat sparks. “Is it that large a thing?”

  “It is. To us.” Matthias paused. “But not to you. Nothing important to you. So much I will say.”

  “If you did tell me, and if you’re right about that, which you probably are, I’d take the secret with me to my cremation,” Venator promised.

  “Would you? Could you?”

  Venator thought of screened rooms and sealed, encrypted communication lines. “Why do you mistrust us like this?” he asked softly.

  “Because of what you are,” Matthias told him. “Not you as an individual, or even as an officer. The whole way things are going, everywhere in the Solar System. It makes small difference to me. I’m old. But for my grandchildren and their children, I want out.”

  “How is the Federation government oppressing you? It means to give you the Habitat.”

  “The purpose of government is government,” Matthias said. Venator recognized a quotation from Anson Guthrie. “Muy bien, this one meddles and extorts less than any other ever did, I suppose. But that’s because it isn’t the real power, any more than the national and regional governments below it are. The cybercosm is.”

  “We rely on the cybercosm, true—”