Stranger Suns

by George Zebrowski

“What is to be done, dear lady?” Tasarov replied. “The endless reform and adjustment of social systems will never be enough, because they all must rest on power and authority that is external to most of the individuals who must live in them. No man is an island—but sometimes I'm convinced that it would be better if we were each absolutely autonomous. Perhaps people would treat each other better if they could only visit each other once in a while.”

  “You protest against your humanity too much,” Lena said.

  “Why shouldn't I?” Tasarov replied with a wave of his hand. “I can be free within myself, see clearly the gulf between what I am and what I should be. Not to confront this gulf, at least in one's thoughts, is to wear blinders.”

  “I know how you feel,” Juan said, thinking of his own whims, impulses, and stray feelings. They made him feel mean-spirited and tawdry, hidden from himself. Humanity pretended to change the world, but could not change itself.

  “Life should be about much more than it is,” Tasarov added. “We all once expected more.” He looked away. “I shall make tea now.” He rummaged around for the burner, samovar, and cups.

  “There's a dome here,” Juan said, “a kind of alien planetarium.”

  “Yes,” Tasarov replied as he lit the burner with a match. “We avoid the place. It affects us when we're in there.”

  “How?”

  “Things get into our minds. It's obviously an informational storage and retrieval area, but we don't have the minds to match it.”

  “Have you learned anything else about this place?” Juan asked.

  “Nothing. All this alien technology resists basic analysis. It can't be taken apart and studied. Believe me, we have clever people who have tried.”

  “You can see the future of science in its workings,” Juan said. “A profound understanding of the fluidity of nature exhibits itself. The technology gives freedom from material rigidity by using the more basic fluidity of nature. To do this requires the energy of whole suns.”

  Tasarov laughed as the water began to boil. He put the tea in to steep and sat back.

  “So will you go back with us?” Juan asked.

  Tasarov stared at the samovar. “An agonizing choice.” He smiled. “My mind is convinced, but the rest of me is weak.”

  Juan said, “Is there anything I can say to help you decide?”

  Tasarov sighed. “Say it, then. I don't know what it is.” As he gazed at the seated mathematician, Juan realized that here was a potential ally, someone with whom he might pool his discontents and discover a plan of action.

  “Shut up!” a sleepy voice shouted from the floor.

  Juan peered between the partitions and saw a group of convicts sitting just beyond. They had apparently been listening to the conversation.

  “They're curious about what's going on back home,” Tasarov said. “I'm afraid they've found our talk disappointing.” He leaned over, poured the tea, and handed Juan and Lena their cups. Then he stood up. “Excuse me,” he said as he kicked down one section of the partition. “Now you can all hear better!”

  The half dozen seated convicts gazed at Juan with narrowed eyes. Tasarov said, “Perhaps you can tell them something.”

  Juan nodded to the shadowed faces. What could he say to them? “It's the same world back there,” he started haltingly, “the same humankind—”

  “Humankind!” a voice shouted. “A fancy word for something that's neither human nor kind.”

  “—choking cities,” Juan continued, “ruined countrysides, growing deserts. The coastal cities are working hard to hold off flooding as the temperature rises—”

  “We know all that!” another voice shouted. “When are they going to send us more women?”

  “And younger boys!”

  Lights began to go on in the dark dome. People were sitting up to listen. Juan gulped some tea and put the cup down on the floor, then stood up and looked around at the faces that were watching him. “We will tell what we've seen here.”

  “Leave us your woman!” a distant voice cried. “You can have her back next time.”

  Juan raised his voice against the laughter. “We'll let you duplicate all we have!”

  “Let us?” a voice asked. “We can take what we want!”

  Juan felt a moment of dizziness. His head was once again throbbing from the blow he had received.

  “Quiet!” Tasarov ordered as he got to his feet. “These people are not our enemies. They came to ask me about some work they thought I'd done, nothing more. They'll do what they can for us when they go back. Now get some rest!” He started to raise his partition. Juan helped him set it up again. “There is so much pride here,” Tasarov said softly. “We'll never run out of it. You two sleep here.”

  “Thank you,” Lena said as two convicts brought their packs and Juan's helmet.

  “We'll dupe your belongings while you sleep,” Tasarov said.

  Lena began to open their backpacks. As lights began to wink out, Tasarov made his way back between the shapes on the dark floor to his sleeping place.

  37. WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

  “Juan,” Lena whispered.

  His aching head told him to keep his eyes closed. Lena touched his shoulder. He opened his eyes. Her head seemed to float in the yellow glow of the dome.

  “What's wrong?” she asked softly.

  “Head hurts more now.”

  “We must get you checked,” she said. “There's nothing more we can do here. We'll leave everything. Leave your helmet. The shuttle might be there again.”

  He sat up. “Where's Tasarov?”

  “He's still with his fivesome.”

  Juan struggled to his feet. Lena steadied him. They came out from behind the partition and quietly made their way around the mass of sleepers to the exit. Together, they stepped toward the door. It glowed, and they passed—

  —through into the bright alien night.

  The silence of the desert landscape sang in his ears. “Can you stand by yourself?” Lena asked.

  He nodded. “Let's go.” They walked between the domes. He kept his eyes on the ground in front of him, trying to keep his balance. “I need to rest,” he said as they came to the tree. A shadow slipped out from beneath the branches, as if detaching itself from the trunk, and came toward him. Juan was about to speak as the man's arm went up, holding something. Lena cried out as the bludgeon struck him across the head; he fell and lay on his back, unable to open his eyes, listening to Lena struggling with the man. He felt bodies strike the ground, and tried to get up. He raised his head, but his arms refused to move. The starry sky was inside his head. Lena called his name. He forced his eyes open. Red flooded his vision and drowned him.

  * * *

  He woke up in his sleeping bag. Tasarov was kneeling over him, his face a mask in the dim yellow light.

  “Better?” the face asked.

  “Yes,” Juan said.

  Tasarov leaned back and turned on a standing lamp. “You cried out at any light during the last two days.”

  “Two days?”

  “Don't you remember?”

  Juan tried to think. Lena and he had been asleep. They had left for the shuttle. A fist closed in his chest.

  “Where is she?” he demanded.

  “Be calm, my friend. You've a concussion, and must stay quiet.”

  Juan lay back and closed his eyes. He heard whimpers in the back of his head, then silence. He tried to move his arms, but they were tied to his sides. He lay still and fell asleep.

  * * *

  Tasarov was sitting in a chair, watching him, when he awoke. “You seem better,” the Russian said. “I hope you agree.” His words seemed dreamlike. Juan felt as if he could float into a standing position with no effort. “I've freed your arms.”

  Juan raised himself to a sitting position against his pack. “I do feel better.”

  “Do you recall what happened?”

  Juan's chest tightened. He drew a deep breath. “Maybe if you tell me.”


  Tasarov stood up. Juan looked around. The dome was silent. Everyone was asleep.

  Juan said, “Tell me.”

  “The shuttle keeper. He attacked you and the woman by the tree. She's dead. He broke her neck during the rape. I heard you both going out, and followed as soon as I was fully awake, but it was too late by the time I dragged him from her. We tied him to the tree.”

  “He's still there?” Juan asked, taking short breaths. He closed his eyes and saw the void closing in around him.

  “He's there,” Tasarov said in the darkness, “for when you are ready.”

  “And Lena?” Juan asked through clenched teeth.

  “We buried her under the tree. Do you object?”

  Juan shook his head, unable to weep.

  * * *

  For three days he drifted in a half-waking state, unable to feel or think. Once he dreamed of carrying Lena's body with him through the variants, to keep from encountering her alternates. When he could stand, they took him out to the tree. The shuttle keeper was on a long chain, squatting on the mound of Lena's grave.

  “You can kill him now,” Tasarov said, offering a knife.

  The man under the branches did not react.

  “Kill him!” the small gathering shouted.

  The shuttle keeper was oblivious, resting his chin on his knees.

  Tasarov said, “It's your right here to kill him.”

  Juan stepped closer and tried to see the man's face in the patches of white sunlight. The man was breathing slowly.

  “He cares nothing for your scruples,” Tasarov said.

  Juan turned away and pushed through the crowd.

  “Kill him!” a voice hissed.

  “Cut him so he bleeds slowly!” another added.

  “Rip his guts so he takes a week to die.”

  Juan broke out into the open and wandered between the domes. At his right he saw a line slowly passing into the dome which housed the replicator. The men did not look at him as he passed.

  He heard a long shriek and looked back. Tasarov's large shape was under the tree, working on the shuttle keeper with the knife. The big man thrust hard into the torso, and the chained figure went limp.

  “I killed him for you, my friend!” he shouted as he came out from under the tree. Something in Juan was satisfied, but he also felt shame.

  He turned away. Tasarov caught up with him. Juan reached into his pocket. “Here. You might as well have my weapon. I don't think you can do much worse with it.”

  “My friend,” Tasarov said, pushing it away, “you take this too seriously. He wanted to die. I made him want to live as he died.”

  Juan stopped and saw blood on the other man's shirt.

  “What do you want to say to me?” Tasarov demanded. “I will understand.”

  “There's nothing I can say.”

  “But down deep you're glad.” Tasarov touched his shoulder. “I am sorry about your Lena. The shuttle keeper was never one of us. We knew whenever he came here that he was outside our code.”

  Juan nodded and turned away. Tasarov did not follow him.

  “But, of course!” the Russian shouted after him. “You will see her again!”

  Juan quickened his pace. A breeze blew dust into his face, but he marched on, hoping that the shuttle would be waiting. He came over the rise and ran when he saw the sphere, afraid that it would leave before he reached it.

  He staggered through the open lock, feeling weak as he went up the winding passage to the drum-shaped chamber. He sat down and waited for the viewspace to come on. It seemed to take a long time, but it finally lit up. The planet fell away as he watched. He felt empty.

  Tasarov was wrong. He might not find Lena again. She might not be alive in the next variant, or in the next dozen. In any case, she would never again be the Lena he had known.

  The sun grew larger in the viewspace. For a moment he imagined that the vessel would not switch into otherspace, but would run at the star and be consumed. Finally, tears welled up, and he wept.

  The shuttle was in final approach to the suncore station when he looked up again. He gazed at it and tried to think. What could anyone have done? He and Lena had taken a risk; she had chosen to come. They might have come back safely.

  The great globe of the core station filled the viewspace as the shuttle was pulled into the glowing entrance. Suddenly, he felt a raging hatred of his own kind. Its first use of the alien web was to find a dumping ground for criminals; and Lena, who had not doubted humanity as he did, had paid with her life.

  38. SEEKING

  He stepped into the frame, emerged into darkness, and moved slowly toward the exit. It glowed and he slipped out into the winding passage.

  Hands seized him from both sides and pushed him forward. He staggered and turned to face two soldiers pointing automatic rifles at him.

  “Take me to Titus Summet,” he said. “I'm Juan Obrion.”

  The soldiers motioned with their weapons; he started slowly up the passage. “You'll be met at the drop well!” a voice barked after him.

  * * *

  “Sit,” Summet said in his office. “You look awful. What happened?”

  “How long have I been gone?”

  “Four days. Does that agree with your time?”

  Juan nodded. “I went alone?”

  “Lena showed up with Moede and Rassmussen. They went after you immediately.” Juan gripped his armrests. “You didn't run into them?” Summet asked.

  “No.”

  “They thought you might need help. You wanted them along, didn't you?”

  Juan asked, “Are you aware of the variant effect here?”

  “We are,” Titus answered, drumming on his desk with his fingers. “We sent you out to find Yevgeny Tasarov, who might help us learn something about the nature of the effect. What did you learn?”

  “Nothing. Tasarov claims he did no work in possible worlds.”

  “Was he lying?”

  “I doubt it. It would have been to his advantage to lie about having done the work.”

  “Are you up to going again? Your friends might need you.”

  Juan started to tell him about Lena, but his head throbbed as grief and anger rushed into him.

  “What is it?” Titus asked.

  “I'm very tired.”

  “So tell me about the prison.”

  Juan's throat tightened. “It's a reasonable facsimile of hell. They can get everything they have over and over. Death is a mercy.”

  Titus put his hands together on his desk. “Describe it.”

  “The economy of your penal colony,” Juan said, “depends on the replicator. Available goods are copied. Sooner or later there will be a struggle over who controls the copy dome.”

  “Why hasn't it happened?”

  “It's orderly there now, as I saw it, because they all look up to Tasarov. But it's a corrupt life—no goals, no meaning. Tasarov has an inner life, which is probably part of the reason for his influence. They sense a kind of salvation in him, but they envy as much as admire him.”

  Titus rubbed his chin and leaned forward. “Extraordinary, Economists warned us about the consequences of using the replicator. If we make the ship a mass production factory, it will unbalance our scarcity-based economies. We're copying essential and costly things—mostly drugs and rare metals.” He sat back. “Well, they're welcome to what they can make of their existence out there, and we don't have to feed them.”

  “It doesn't disturb you, to let it happen?” Juan asked.

  “Let what happen?”

  “To permit people who have already been stripped of their human connections through prison and exile be further deprived of all human purpose? Do you have any idea of the cruelties that may become possible?”

  Titus smiled. “It's all too metaphysical and removed from us now. No one is starving. It's up to them to make the best of it.”

  Juan took a deep breath and sat back. “Don't you have any personal feelings?”


  “They don't count. I do what's possible—second and third best, according to you—to make something from human nature as it is. I choose between immediate disasters and what you find repugnant.” He shrugged. “Good will continue to be achieved with the bad. Maybe that criminal society will learn to do something creative with their circumstances.”

  “Tasarov was right,” Juan said, “when he told me that politicians are the best-organized criminal class.”

  Titus stood up. “But what else can exist! What is to be done? Shall we beget angels?”

  Juan closed his eyes as his head throbbed.

  “What is it?” Titus asked softly.

  “I was struck on the head.”

  “Why didn't you say so? I'll get a doctor. Can you walk to your quarters?”

  Juan stood up and leaned on Summet's desk. The director stared at him as if from a poster. Juan fell forward and tore him down the middle.

  * * *

  He woke up feeling that he was a boy again, when days delighted him by simply following one another, before the fools who named things made everything familiar.

  The moment fled as he remembered that Lena was dead. He sat up, realizing that her variant might return with Malachi and Magnus, then lay back again, afraid that he was trapped in a run of probabilities where she would always die.

  The door slid open and Titus came in. “Good, you're awake. The doctors say your concussion has healed nicely. Do you still want to try again?”

  Juan got up and started to dress. “So you think there's a Tasarov who can give you some basic knowledge?”

  Titus sat down in a chair. “I can't afford to ignore the possibility. Don't you want to go after your friends?”

  “I guess I have to. They came after me here.”

  “Did they in your last variant?”

  Juan said, “Lena caught up with me just before I reached the frame chamber.”

  “What—then where is she?”

  Juan told him, then finished dressing.

  “I'm sorry, Juan,” Summet said.

  “You forced her.”

  Titus gave a nervous laugh. “Sure. Here I let you go alone, then sent the others as soon as they got here. I wonder if I'm smarter here.” He stood up and said, “You'll need a new pack and headgear. I'll go with you as far as the deep chamber.”