The Stars Are Also Fire

by Poul Anderson

  No one hailed him as he proceeded, everyone made way, not in fear or humility but a natural, courteous deference. The body he employed was an ordinary general-purpose model, two meters high where the sensory turret rose upon a smoothly curved chassis with four legs and four arms. It sheened a modest deep blue, trimmed in silver. Plain to see, though, it either housed or was under the remote control of an intelligence, whose linkages ultimately traced to the Teramind.

  At a dropway he went down three levels to Lousma Passage. A short distance beyond was the hotel he sought, where flickerlight characters spelled SHIH TIEN GAN above an ornate door. The lobby scanned him, found in its database that he was expected, gave him Captain Lirion’s suite number, and admitted him to the appropriate corridor. When he reached the door there it immediately retracted, closing again behind him.

  The chamber he entered was furnished in Lunarian style and luxuriously spacious. Someone had transferred a substantial amount of credit, he thought. The man from Proserpina stood awaiting him. “Well beheld,” Lirion greeted.

  His tone was, if not cordial—a mannerism his race seldom displayed anyway—at least interested, and he smiled for a moment. “My thanks, donrai,” Venator replied in the same language. He chose the honorific carefully, to imply equivalent if not identical status. He could have spoken idiomatic Lunarian, but kept his range of expressions limited. Why demonstrate more abilities than he must?

  “I cannot offer you refreshment, can I?” Lirion murmured. A gibe?

  Venator formed a chuckle. “Hardly. But refresh yourself if you like.”

  “I do and will.” Lirion went to a spidery table on which stood a carafe and goblets.

  As he poured and sipped, Venator studied him. He was of characteristic Lunarian male stature, two meters, long-limbed, well formed, erect in diamond-dusted black tunic and hose. Pale brown features showed more Asian ancestry in their bones than was usual, but the big oblique eyes were amber-hued and the hair that fell to his shoulders was grizzled bronze. Otherwise, only a leanness in face and hands betokened an age approaching the century mark.

  “I hope you are comfortable and content here,” Venator said. The banality was another move to disarm wariness. Likewise had he come in person, rather than call on the eidophone or summon this visitor to Authority headquarters.

  “It has its differences from home. After many years agone, they strike at me,” Lirion admitted. “But I am cosseted, and no longer cramped inside a spacecraft.”

  Alone, Venator remembered. Several months alone, accelerating and decelerating at one Lunar gravity. So immense was the distance. Light itself took three days. Well, most Lunarians minded solitude less than most Terrans did, and of course Lirion would have had a database full of books, music, shows, games, perhaps pastimes more esoteric, quite possibly a dreambox. The ship ran herself; companions for him would have meant more mass to boost, more precious antimatter to spend.

  But then why was the ship so large? There must be carrying capacity for several people, including life support, and for tonnes of cargo. When asked upon arrival, Lirion said casually that this had been what was available. Venator doubted that. He badly wanted an excuse to go aboard and inspect.

  “Yes, it has ever been good to come back,” Lirion finished.

  Each time to brew trouble, Venator thought.

  Across his awareness flashed what biography his service had been able to piece together. Descended from the great Selenarchic rebels Rinndalir and Niolente, Lirion was born in Zamok Zhelezo at Ptolemaeus Crater. His father, who retained a certain amount of wealth, power, and connections, went into politics, struggling and conniving to keep the Moon from conversion into a republic in fact as well as in name. The establishment of the Habitat doomed that endeavor. Meanwhile, the existence of Proserpina had been revealed and the migration of disaffected Lunarians began. After his father’s death in a brawl with Terran newcomers, Lirion took over management of the phratry’s interests, which included a share in the Rayenn transport association. He was often in contact with Earthfolk. They liked him, deeming him a moderate. In reality, it now seemed, he was among the secret founders and leaders of the Scaine Croi. At age fifty he sold out his rapidly depreciating holdings and moved to Proserpina—among the last who did, as scant as was the antimatter left in Lunarian possession. He prospered yonder, building Zamok Drakon and founding a family that grew prominent in a revived Selenarchy. His gifts for organization and intrigue served him well, bringing him to the forefront of enterprises among the comets and in councils at home. Despite the abyss between, he maintained encrypted contact with unidentified persons on Luna; and sometimes he returned. …

  “You should grace us oftener,” Venator said.

  “Belike it will not happen again,” Lirion replied. “Passage in a ship with naught better than fusion to drive it would eat a twain of years or worse. I have not many left me.”

  And yet the Proserpinans had laid out what was necessary for this journey of his, Venator thought. “Your business is important, then.”

  “So thinks your service,” Lirion answered dryly.

  “The Peace Authority has a natural concern, yes.”

  “My mission was announced beforehand. I am here on behalf of my world to seek persuasion, that Earth provide us with more antimatter.”

  Not just for spacecraft motors, Venator knew. For heavy engineering works of every kind, to make Proserpina over. The iron core that gave it a gravity comparable to Luna’s and offered riches to industry also made it monstrously more difficult to hollow out habitations than on this basaltic globe. “Pardon me if I ask elementary questions. Communications are thin, and your people have not been exactly forthcoming, you know. How small has your supply”—that the original settlers brought along—“gotten?”

  “The end of it is in sight,” Lirion said, which Venator judged rather noncommittal. “We have no access to Mercury, that we might forge our own.”

  A vision of the inmost planet rose before Venator. He had never been there. No living creature had, nor any machine that was not armored and specialized against its inferno. But the vivifer had presented it to him, had let his mind range the pocked and scarred terrain, through freezing nights and furnace days. From the nearby sun raged energy measurable but unimaginable, captured and brought to focus by huge installations across the land and up in orbit, an achievement worthy of gods. Photons slammed into nucleons, quantum convulsions went through the vacuum, newborn particles positive and negative hurtled down magnetic lines of force to their separate destinations—Operated at full capacity, the Mercurian plant had yielded hundreds of kilos of antimatter per Terrestrial day.

  He no longer felt awed. Now he was a machine, and all machines were his kin. Although his reborn individual self did not comprehend, nor remember as more than fragments, what it knew when it was one with the cybercosm, he recalled how it had embraced the whole universe.

  Yet that self was human too, with a feel for human things. He decided that enough polite phrases had passed back and forth, few though they were. If he piqued Lirion, he might provoke a reaction that would give him a little insight, a bit of a clue to the man’s real intentions.

  “Do you feel we owe you access?” he began, keeping his tone mild. “Your folk chose to go live on the fringe of deep space because they wanted no part of our civilization.”

  “We lack the means to follow Anson Guthrie to Alpha Centauri, like Rinndalir and his camarilla,” Lirion responded as quietly. “Proserpina is the last hope of our breed in the Solar System, not to be engulfed and in the end go extinct.”

  Lunarians generally preferred challenge to blandness. “Have you then concluded that altruism is, after all, a virtue? You want this World Federation that you loathe to supply you, when you have nothing to exchange that we need.”

  “We wish for a single large consignment. Given that, the engineers say they can build a fusion-powered factory to make more, not as copiously as on Mercury, but sufficient.”

>   “I ask you again, why should we? You’re not dying of hunger or cold.”

  One rarely got a glimpse of a Lunarian’s heart, if that was what Venator saw. “Better so, maychance, than what must happen if you deny us,” Lirion told him somberly. “We foresee imprisonment, where we and all who stem from us are locked into eternal sameness, as adventurous and alive as barnacles on a stone.”

  “Have you no inner resources?”

  “A machine spoke there,” Lirion scoffed. “Abstractions, mental constructs, the Teramind admiring its own exaltedness, is that for living creatures? Behold Earth’s gain for aiding us—a society new and strange, doing deeds and dreaming dreams to shake you out of your stagnation.”

  Yes, thought Venator, that is exactly what we fear. Aloud: “We think of it as equilibrium. World-weariness? Why, the world is so rich that no human lifetime is enough to explore all of it.”

  “You are satisfied, then—stabilized, you say. Lest new discovery threaten your order of things, you are ending antimatter production.”

  “Read in what motives you will. The plain fact is that it’s no longer needed. We are caching a supply for any foreseeable contingencies.” Venator paused. “The cache is thoroughly guarded, you understand. May I speak frankly? Power like that, in—uncontrolled—hands, is too risky, however distant from us they may be.”

  Lirion showed no umbrage. He laughed, a low trill in his throat. “Eyach, you did not come here for us to toss clichés at one another.”

  “No. I hope to sound you out.”

  Lirion raised his brows. “In what wise?” He sipped his wine, savoringly, while he listened.

  “You’ve announced your aim of persuading the Federation to release a quantity of antimatter to Proserpina. You’re free to argue for that, of course. I daresay you have inducements to offer influential Terrans.” Saying “bribes” would be impolite, and would doubtless amuse the Lunarian. “But you have been observed doing very little persuading, either on public channels or in private talks.”

  Lirion finger-shrugged. “I soon saw there was small point in it. Yes, Federation citizens may publish their words, elect their parliamentarians, debate in their committees, vote on their measures, but you know still better than I, it is the cybercosm that decides.”

  “Do you honestly think of it as our overlord? I can’t believe that. You’re intelligent and educated. You realize humans and machines are parts of the same system, and sophotects are individuals as conscious as you are.”

  “Nay, not quite thus. Their minds are avatars of the One, and it has come to have its own ends, which are not remotely human.”

  How could they be? thought Venator. “Is a hammer your enemy because it can drive a nail better than your fist? It’s all mind evolving, human and machine together.”

  “Maychance, once humans have ceased to be human.” Lirion made a chopping gesture. His voice, though, turned gentle, and he smiled. “Let us not stumble into philosophical dispute, alike tedious and bootless. Truth to say,”—if it was truth, Venator thought—“your coming raises a wisp of optimism. Can it be that through you the cybercosm will speak directly to me?”

  A milligram of candor would be wise. “I’ll be happy to convey any messages, but I am not a sophotect myself.”

  Lirion cocked his head. “So, a download? I suspected as much. Then I should in courtesy ask your name.”

  Venator would not explain that it wasn’t that simple, that even in life he had been a synnoiont who from time to time entered into a communion with the cybercosm as full as was possible for an organic being. But he might as well be frank about things that meant nothing to the other. “Once I was Lucas Mthembu.”

  Unexpected memories came astir, a little cradle song of his mother’s, a lion walking golden on a summer-golden veldt, the Brain Garden where he lost his childhood and gained his life’s meaning, savory food and drink, stalking a killer down a nighted alley, fishing on a lake that sheened beyond the horizon, conflict, comradeship, Lilisaire of the flame-red mane, who tricked him to his sharpest defeat and lived on in him ever afterward—“But I’ve used many different tags since then. Venator will do.”

  No need to explain that it meant “hunter” in a language forgotten by all but the great database. Nor should Lirion know that this was not a straightforward download from a living human with which he dealt, but one copied back from its union with the One—Oh, longing for Nirvana!

  “I would be most interested to hear whatever you care to tell me about your life, Donrai Venator,” the Lunarian said. “And belike it would give me some helpful insights. We are indeed isolated on Proserpina, out among comets and stars.”

  Venator formed a laugh. “I shan’t recite you an autobiography. But yes, let’s talk, let’s get acquainted.”

  The conversation went on for two or three hours, lively and pleasant in a sword’s-point fashion. Each had much to ask and much to relate. The Lunarian was by turns discursive, incisive, pragmatic, lyrical, witty, always charming. Venator recollected stories told of him while he lived here, tales of a champion athlete and go player, ruthless entrepreneur and historical scholar, gourmet and gourmand, sexually voracious and given to long spans alone, corrupt politician, neo-feudal lord, dangerous conspirator, and, just possibly, idealist on behalf of his people. Although he was too haughty to boast, it grew clear that after he moved to Proserpina his saga became an epic.

  Yet at the end almost nothing germane to the issue had been said by either party. (Almost nothing.) There was a desultory discussion of trade. (Would they not like more water on Mars?—No, not at present, and should the need arise, robots could go bring in a comet.) There was mention of safeguards. (Surely any notion of warheads launched from Proserpina against Earth, or vice versa, was ridiculous!—Yes, but if ever violence broke out in yonder deeps, an Earth that had supplied the means must answer heavily to herself.) Both recognized the futility and dropped the subjects. Lirion said he had talks scheduled with two more persons, but unless the government relented, he expected soon to start home. Meanwhile, what Donrai Venator had remarked, concerning the status and encouragement of private ventures in a postcapitalist economy, was fascinating, and would he explain further? …

  They parted company with expressions of mutual respect and goodwill. In life Venator had been able to make his face a fluid mask when he chose; but he was rather glad that now he had no face. As he walked back to headquarters, his mind went in full cry on the spoor of his quarry.

  Already earlier he had winded scents. The intelligence corps of the Peace Authority numbered few Lunarians, none of whom would have been trusted in this business. No Terran could have trailed Lirion unnoticed, especially down into an old section where only Lunarians and other metamorphs lived. But maintainor robots went everywhere, as vital as breath and scarcely more heeded. Before Lirion landed, Venator had put observation programs into certain of them.

  The man from Proserpina repeatedly, quietly made his way to an apartment in the old quarter. Sometimes he spent hours there. The place was leased to one Seyant, a Lunarian about whom little could be discovered except that he traveled a good deal, everywhere around the Moon.

  It took considerable detective work on Venator’s part—he was a bit surprised when he finally succeeded—but he learned that, about a year ago, equipment had been brought into the apartment and work had been done that indicated something to do with communications.

  Since then, unbreakable quantum encryptions had often gone in and out. That was no crime, of course, nor very unusual, and Venator had no proof that anyone inside had been tapping into the government’s secret database. It wasn’t supposed to be possible.

  However, once alerted, the system was able to sketch out several different ways in which it might be done. All required certain unique capabilities. Venator judged that, if his corps raided the apartment, they would not find a program for the purpose, or any other hard evidence. The information, whatever it was, had been stolen, the coded news had reac
hed Proserpina, and Lirion was here to take charge of the operation—whatever it was.

  What instructions had he sent in advance? Probably laser beams had been making their days-long journeys back and forth for years, tenuous threads slowly woven into a plot. Venator had no idea what the intent was; or else he had too many conflicting ideas. But the time for action must be drawing nigh, because Lirion said he would soon depart.

  The corps might arrest him on grounds of suspicion, which might barely be tenable under the law, less in hopes of wringing out the truth—he must have provisions against that, a suicide bomblet merely the most obvious—than to upset the conspiracy. Venator was dubious whether that would work either. At best, it would leave the organization unprobed, intact, ready to wreak new mischief.

  Today he had met with the ringleader. His human intuition, which no pure sophotect could quite have matched, confirmed him in a decision he had been nurturing. Surveillance was the method, secretly watching and listening to the enemy in his councils. It was his fortune to have a means available.

  Ancient though the apartment was, its plans remained in the city’s archival database, together with records of structural changes made over the centuries. Those were few. Terrans seldom cared to take over places meant for Lunarians, taller than they and with curious tastes in layout and decor. During a former period of unrest, tenants had installed heavy screening against all kinds of eavesdropping, which had subsequently been kept up-to-date. Later, others added what they presumably meant for an emergency bolt-hole. From a cabinet, a trap gave on a vertical shaft that led to a tunnel on the next level down, and so away through a labyrinth of fixed machines: air and water recyclers, pumps, thermal equalizers, and the like.