The Stars Are Also Fire

by Poul Anderson

  It was a temperate-zone forest. Near Port Bowen, a tropical environment was under development, less far along because excavators did not have the fortune of starting out with hollows as big as were here. Talk went of making a prairie, or else a small sea, below Korolev Crater, but probably population and industry on Farside would remain too sparse for decades to support such an effort.

  Eyrnen guided his kinfolk down a path along which elm and ash and the occasional oak arched leaves above underbrush where wild currants had begun to ripen. Deeper in the wood, birch gleamed white and light-spatters speckled shade. Butterflies fluttered brilliant in the air; the call of a cuckoo rippled its moist stillness. Where leaves from former years had blown onto the trail, they rustled underfoot. Smells were of summer. Yet this was no Terrestrial wild. Biotechnology had forced the growth; low gravity would let it go dizzyingly high.

  A winged creature swept past and vanished again into the depths. It had been small, brightly furred, with a ruddering tail. A shrill cry died away in its wake. “What was that?” Rydberg asked.

  “A daybat,” Eyrnen told him. “One of our genetic experiments. Besides being ornamental, we hope it will help keep the population of necessary insects stable.”

  “It’ll be quite a spell, with quite a few mistakes along the way, before you have a real, self-maintaining ecology,” Beynac predicted.

  “It is evolving more quickly than was forecast,” Eyrnen replied. “I will live to walk through a true wilderness.”

  “Oh, scarcely that,” Rydberg demurred. At once he regretted it. Bad habit, correcting other people’s impressions.

  Eyrnen glared at him and snapped, “How genuine is any of your so-called nature on Earth?”

  “Down, boys,” Beynac said. She could bring it off. To Rydberg: “Don’t be persnickety, dear. What is nature, anyway? There’ll be life that can do without human or robot attention, as long as the energy comes in; and don’t forget, that’s solar energy, good for several billion years.”

  Rydberg nodded. “True.” The optical conduits that led it from the surface wouldn’t likely give out. The molecular resonances that imposed a twenty-four-hour night-and-day cycle and the changing of the seasons might get deranged, but while some species would die off, others would adapt.

  And, eventually, new breeds appear? As the sun grew hotter until runaway greenhouse effect seared and boiled Earth barren, could this forest endure, gone strange, in the deeps of the Moon?

  He made his remark prosaic: “From what I have heard, a solidly viable ecology requires more space than this.”

  “So the scientists declare,” Eyrnen conceded. “I think forms can be bred that would not need it. However, the point is moot, because the realms will in fact be vastly increased. At last, perhaps a century hence, all will be linked together.”

  “Hm, what a monstrous job.”

  “In future we will not depend on machinery to carve out volumes where geology has not provided them. Bacteria already in the laboratories can break down rock, multiplying as they do. It will take more energy than is available today, and of course they must be modified to fit into the ecology, but these are matters readily dealt with when the time comes.”

  Although Rydberg had encountered such ideas before, it had been as speculations. To hear them calmly set forth as certainties was exciting. “How much expansion do you suppose will happen in your lifetime?” he asked.

  A supple shrug raised and lowered Eyrnen’s shoulders as his hands flickered. “Less than might be. We have too many various demands on our resources, and Earth is a sink for them.”

  Beynac lifted a fist. “I told you, God damn it, no politics today!” she cried.

  Eyrnen cast Rydberg a rueful, almost friendly grin and relaxed. The Earthling returned it.

  Inwardly, though, he knew a cold moment. He wanted, he truly wanted kindliness between himself and the other children of his mother, and their children. Never had he won to more than a polite tolerance. It wasn’t simply that they were different. He had gotten along well with metamorphs more radical than these. She knew what the overt problem was, and had just given it a name—politics, the wretched politics. But it was itself merely a symptom, a working, of the real trouble, like fever and buboes in medieval plague.

  Property; the common heritage issue. Taxation. Education. Census. Home rule: legislation, legislature, the very concept of democracy and its desirability. Exclusivism. Legitimacy of power: negotiation, criminal law, sanctuary. And more disputes and more, some trivial in themselves but salt rubbed into the wound. …

  What brought conflict on, Rydberg thought, was a heightening strife between an old civilization and one that was nascent; no, between an old biological species and one that was new, perhaps unstable.

  While Dagny, his mother, stood torn between them.

  Why had she hushed and shunted aside his questions about the death of Sigurd-Kaino, his half-brother? Somehow, on some remote asteroid—He had asked no further, because that was clearly what she wanted. But why?

  Her Lunarian children claimed silence of her.

  His mind went to his half-sister Gabrielle-Verdea, still in her sixties as fierce, as insurgent a speaker as her gene-kindred possessed. Through him keened a song of hers. Lunarian, it could not well be rendered in Terrestrial words, and his knowledge of its native tongue was limited to the practicalities in which all languages are about equal; but—

  With your Pacific eye, observe my scars

  Of ancient wars.

  Your bones remember dinosaurs.

  29

  Morning light brought alive the mandala of many colors in an arched window. White walls shone, relieved by pilasters that rose to join with the vaulted ceiling. Duramoss carpeted the floor, green and springy. Chairs, couches, table, desk were of wood and natural fiber, graceful as willows. Nothing in the chamber defied the complex of consoles, keyboards, screens, and other equipment that ruled over it. All was like a declaration that life, humanness, and the cybercosm belonged together.

  A declaration much needed, Kenmuir thought. This multiple engine of communication and computation, advanced beyond anything he had ever encountered before, was a daunting sight at best.

  The wordless reassurance did not speak to him. He was come as an enemy.

  Aleka at his side, he entered into cool quietness. The doorway contracted behind them. They were shut away, sealed off, private, until they opened the gates to the cybercosm.

  She swallowed, squared her shoulders, and walked forward. He went more slowly. His heart thudded, his tongue lay dry. This bade fair to be the day of victory, failure, or ruin. Again he knew himself for a fool, who ought to flee and confess it. But no, then he would be less than a man.

  Aleka settled at the primary console and gestured him to take the seat beside hers. When he did, she caught his hand and squeezed it. He felt her warmth, as if blood flowed between them. She smiled. “Bueno,” she said, “let’s go for broke.” He had turned his face toward her. She leaned over and kissed him.

  Before he could really respond, she had drawn back, laughing a little, and her fingers were on the keys. Knowing it wasn’t quite logical, he had disdained to take a tranquilizer. Now all at once the fears and doubts were burned out of him. That wasn’t logical either, but what the Q. When committed to a course of action, he had always gone calm. Never, though, had he felt more clear and quick in the head than now.

  “Direct me,” she said.

  Yesterday they had drafted a general plan. Afterward he had spent much time alone, pondering when his mind did not drift freely in hopes of inspiration. Nonetheless, they must grope their way forward, improvising, his knowledge of space and astronautics guiding her skill with the system.

  “The history of interplanetary exploration,” he told her unnecessarily. “For openers, a summary.” That should make their undertaking seem an innocuous bit of research, perhaps by someone with nothing better to do.

  Hypertext appeared in three-dimensional con
figuration. Aleka entered the commands that led topic by topic outward from the asteroid belt to the Kuiper and beyond. Casualties. … Sigurd Kaino Beynac did not come home. The purpose and destination of his voyage were never put in any public database. Whatever tale was kept sequestered was probably lost in the disastrous ending of Niolente’s rebellion. So the computer said.

  “We knew this stuff,” Aleka complained.

  “Yes, but I want it in an entire context, or as nearly entire as exists,” Kenmuir replied. “Next we’ll focus on scientific missions to asteroids.”

  The established associations quickly brought up Edmond Beynac and his death. Kenmuir nodded. He had expected that. “Beynac was after confirmation of his ideas about the early Solar System. Let’s check on exactly what they were. It’s vague in my memory. I’m beginning to realize that that’s largely because I’ve scarcely ever seen it mentioned. Because he was in fact mistaken, or because there was something there that somebody would like to suppress? He was too important in his science for all record of this to be erasable.”

  When he had studied the precis, which took time, Kenmuir whistled low. “M-m-hm. I get a suspicion of what kind of body Kaino went out to. But that was years after his father died, and he wouldn’t have taken off blind. First, an astronomical search. But nobody’s ever heard—” He sketched instructions for Aleka to track down the account.

  And: “Ah, yes, I’d forgotten, or maybe never knew, a brother of Kaino’s directed the major Lunar observatory of that period. We’ll run through a list of what reports and papers came out of it between those two deaths.”

  And: “Some curious gaps, wouldn’t you say? Distant comets discovered and catalogued, nothing anomalous, but … I should think the surveys would have found more of them. We know they’re out there. Were certain findings left unreported?”

  And: “If I were seriously interested in spotting, m-m, Edmond Beynac’s hypothetical mother asteroid, I’d get better parallaxes than you can from the Moon. Robotic probes—those launches will be recorded, even if the results are not.”

  Aleka giggled. It sounded like a guitar string breaking. “How lucky for us the cybercosm is a data packrat. It hoards everything.”

  “Aye, but a part of the hoard stays permanently underground.” Kenmuir was silent a while. “Duck back to Kaino. The departure date of his last voyage, exact type and capabilities of his ship, initial boost parameters as far as they were routinely tracked, date of the return without him. That will all have been public.”

  And: “Yes, it’s consistent with an expedition to the Kuiper Belt, though that still leaves an unco huge region.” Kenmuir frowned. “The last decade or two of the Selenarchy. Missions dispatched by the aristocrats of Zamok Vysoki: Rinndalir till he left for Alpha Centauri, Niolente afterward. Very little information would ever have been released about them, but we’ll see what’s available, including whatever the Peace Authority found in her files.”

  “You’ve told me they claimed a lot of that was accidentally destroyed,” Aleka said.

  “They claimed. Let’s look. Again, ship types and launch parameters. Those could not have been hidden, at least not if they left from the Moon. And maybe you can locate a few cargo manifests or the like, scraps of fact, pointing to what they may have carried. … Uh, I’d better explain how such matters work.”

  Having assembled the figures, Kenmuir turned to an auxiliary board and calculated trajectories, fuel consumption, the range of what could have happened. When he was through, he sat back and said in his driest voice, “Plain to see now, Lilisaire’s suspicions and mine are right. Some sort of project in deep space, involving construction. Clandestine, which means trips to the site had to be few and far between and minimally manned. But even in those days, you could do quite a lot with well-chosen, well-programmed robots, if the raw materials were handy.”

  He rose and paced. His hands wrestled one another. “Yes,” he said in a monotone. “Do you see, Aleka? It’s almost got to be Edmond Beynac’s giant iron asteroid, orbiting out where only dust and gravel and cometary iceballs large and small are supposed to be. His children kept the discovery to themselves, thinking it might prove valuable. The secret was passed down the generations, doubtless to just one or two each time, else it couldn’t have been kept so long. Finally Rinndalir and Niolente decided to try making use of it.”

  “A long shot, a what’s-to-lose move,” the woman breathed. “Otherwise somebody would have tried earlier. After Fireball made war on the Avantists, it was doomed, however slowly its dying went. The Selenarchs were threatened too. Without Fireball, they had no realistic hope of maintaining their independence against a determined Federation. Unless—Beynac’s world—but how? What help was there?”

  “Something the government doesn’t want known.”

  “Not the whole government. How could it, century after century, and nobody blab?”

  “The cybercosm. The—” Kenmuir decided not to say, “Teramind.” Instead: “It could rather easily keep the knowledge to itself, except for a few totally trustworthy human agents. When Lilisaire grew curious, that synnoiont Venator took charge of investigating how much she might have learned and what her Lunarians might be thinking of.”

  She nodded. His last sentence had been automatic, unnecessary.

  He halted. “Well, I believe we’ve gotten everything we can out of the open files,” he said. “In remarkably short time, thanks to these facilities.” Indeed, so thorough a probe into a quasi-infinity of bytes would hardly have been possible to a less-equipped station. “Still, several hours. Do you want to take a break, or shall we plunge ahead?”

  “I couldn’t relax, waiting. Could you?”

  “Frankly, no.” He rejoined her. They exchanged a cold grin.

  Hers faded. As if reaching out for comfort, she murmured, “I wonder if Dagny Beynac knew.”

  “You’ve heard of her?”

  “She was quite a power on the Moon, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes, I rather imagine she did know. The siblings would have needed her help in covering the trail. But she took the secret with her to the tomb.”

  Aleka shook herself. “C’mon. Anchors aweigh.”

  They spent minutes formulating their question. It was simple enough, but it must look like one onto which she had stumbled, a bit of aroused curiosity. Kenmuir put in what specifics he had been able to guess at, such as the broad arc of heaven in which the object most likely was wandering, but in its final form the query amounted to: Does a very large ferrous asteroid, perturbed out of the inner Solar System, orbit through the Kuiper Belt?

  Aleka straightened, moistened her lips, and entered it.

  A sharp note sounded. A red point of light blinked in the screen. Below it, words leaped out:

  FILE 737. ACCESS IS RESTRICTED TO AUTHORIZED PERSONS. DNA IDENTIFICATION IS REQUIRED.

  The Anglo changed to a series of other languages. Aleka shut the display off.

  She and Kenmuir sat for a span in silence. Again he felt a steely steadiness. “Hardly a surprise, eh?” he said at length. “Shows we’re on the scent.” He gestured at the little bag Aleka had carried along. “Shall we?”

  “One minute,” she answered. Her voice was as level as his, but he saw sweat on her forehead. He thought it would smell sweet, of woman, were the reek of his not smothering that. “An ordinary scholar would wonder why.”

  “Good girl!” His laugh rattled. “You’ve a gift for intrigue, evidently.”

  Her mouth quirked. May I ask for the reason the file is classified? she tapped. Throughout, they had left vocal connections dead, so they could talk freely, and likewise the visual pickup. Besides, a real researcher would avoid distractions like that.

  CONSIDERATIONS OF GENERAL SAFETY NECESSITATE THAT CERTAIN ACTIVITIES AND CERTAIN REGIONS OF DISTANT SPACE BE INTERDICTED TO ALL BUT PROPER CYBERNETIC ASSEMBLIES. OTHERWISE THE DANGER WOULD EXIST OF STARTING SOME OBJECTS, WHICH HAVE UNSTABLE ORBITS, INWARD. THAT COULD EVENTUALLY HAVE SERIOUS CONSEQUENCE
S. IT IS A CYBERNETIC RESPONSIBILITY TO PROVIDE AGAINST FORESEEABLE MISFORTUNES, NO MATTER HOW FAR AHEAD IN TIME. DETAILS ARE WITHHELD TO AVOID TEMPTATION.

  HOWEVER, IT IS PERMISSIBLE TO STATE THAT NO BODY RESEMBLING YOUR DESCRIPTION IS KNOWN, AND ON COSMOLOGICAL GROUNDS IS IMPLAUSIBLE. SEE—The screen proffered a list of references. Kenmuir knew by the titles and dates that they were papers published in Edmond Beynac’s lifetime, arguing against his theory.

  “You lie,” he muttered at the machine. “You lie in the teeth you haven’t got.”

  “That takes sentience,” Aleka whispered. “We’ve contacted a sophotect.”

  “Highly specialized, a node in the network,” Kenmuir deemed. “It’s best to have some flexibility, not a simple, blank refusal.” He sighed. “We could continue the pretense, I suppose, and call up those ancient disputes, but I’m for going straight on ahead.”

  Aleka raised a hand. “Wait a minute. Let me think.”

  Quietude lasted. The faint colors thrown by the mandala window onto the wall opposite had noticeably shifted downward since she and Kenmuir arrived.

  He glimpsed that she had turned her regard upon him, and looked back. Her eyes were gold-flecked russet. “This is mucho important business,” she said very softly.

  “Yes,” he answered for lack of a better word.

  “Somebody high, high up wants it kept kapu. The haku, the kahuna—I don’t know who or what, but I think that in the past it got the Teramind’s attention, and can get it again.”

  Chill touched him. “Could well be.”

  “Is the purpose bad?”

  “Perhaps not. Why mayn’t we decide for ourselves?”

  “Do you still want to go through with this?”

  He considered for an instant. “If you do.”

  She nodded. “Yes. But listen. You remarked that keeping information squirreled away—for a long, long time, as this has been—that needs more than a lock. It needs flexible response. Bueno, will the guardian really be satisfied with a DNA scan?”

  “That was all it demanded.”