The Day After Doomsday

by Poul Anderson

  The captain’s cabin was a small, comfortable, book-lined room. She sat beneath pictures of her husband, many years dead, and her sons and grandsons who must now also be dead. Her face showed little sign of tears and she had set forth a bottle of good wine. “Come in, do,” she said. “Be seated. Let’s discuss our situation.” But when she poured the wine, she spilled some on the tablecloth.

  “Has the captain examined the pictures we took?” Alexandra began.

  Edith Poussin nodded. Her mouth grew tight. “Unquestionably that was a Kandemirian missile,” she stated. “But one thing puzzles me. Those symbols written on the bulkhead near the pilot computer.” As if to keep from looking at the pictures above her, she grabbed a sheet of paper. “Here, let me reproduce the lines. I won’t copy them exactly. You’d have too much trouble distinguishing signs all of which are new to you. I’ll substitute letters of our own alphabet. For this wiggly thing in the middle of most of the lines, I’ll use a colon. Now see what it looks like—” She wrote rapidly:

  A B C D E F

  M N O P Q MR

  BA : NQ

  ABIJ : MOQMP

  JEHC : NMQPPO

  She continued similarly until everything had been transferred, then threw her penstyl down. “There! Can you make anything of that?”

  “No,” said Alexandra. “But weren’t some of those symbols actually Kandemirian numbers?”

  “Yes. I’ve represented those by the letters A through L. The others I’ve rendered as M through R. I don’t know what signs they are, what language or—Anyhow, you’ll notice that they are always separated from the Kandemirian numerals.”

  “I think,” Sigrid ventured, “this must be a conversion table.”

  “That’s obvious, I would say,” the captain agreed. “But conversion into what? And why?” She paused. “And who?”

  ALEXANDRA struck a fist on her knee. “Let us not play games, Madam. The Kandemirian imperialists have subjugated many different language groups on a dozen or more planets. This must have been a notation made by some workman belonging to an enslaved race.”

  “May have been,” Edith Poussin corrected. “We don’t know. We dare not leap to conclusions. Especially when we have been out of touch with local events for more than two years.”

  Two years, Sigrid thought. Two magnificent years. Not just the glory of the Galaxy, new suns, new folk, new knowledge as the Europa circumnavigated the great Catherine’s wheel of stars, though that was enough splendor for a lifetime. But the final proof to a continent still skeptical of international cooperation and complete sexual equality, that many nations together could do this thing and that it could be done by women.

  The years were bitter in her mouth.

  She squared her shoulders. “What does Madam plan to do?” she asked.

  The captain sipped for a while without answer. “I am holding private conferences like this with the most sensible officers,” she admitted. “I am open to suggestions.”

  “Let me, then, propose we go to . . . Monwaing, or one of its colonies,” Alexandra said. “We can find out there what happened. And they will help us.”

  Gertrud shuddered. “If they don’t cut our throats,” she said. “Are you so sure they did not do this? Yes, yes, those traders and teachers who lived on Earth for years at a time. They were polite and gentle, yes. But they were not human!”

  “In any event,” Edith Poussin said bleakly, “no planet acts as a whole. The kindliest ordinary citizens might have fiends for leaders.” She frowned at her wine. “I wish we had followed the American and British example, and taken a nonhuman pilot along, even though we were bound for regions equally strange to everyone in this cluster. We might have gotten a little insight—No. I feel myself it is too risky to seek out anyone who might have had any interest, one way or another, in Earth’s fate.”

  “What do we risk?” Alexandra fleered.

  Sigrid raised her head. “There were other ships from Earth. They may still be out there.”

  “If the missiles haven’t gotten them,” Gertrud said. She snatched her glass and drank deeply.

  “THE all-male European expedition can’t have gotten home,” Sigrid declared. “They planned on at least three years in the Magellanic Clouds. No one knows where the Russians went, or the Chinese. And the Chinese crew included both sexes. And the Russians might have completed their own female ship and gotten her into space before—Maybe several other countries launched ships too. They were talking of it when we left. They were going to purchase ships, at least, now that they had the financial means.” She clenched her jaw. “We’ll meet someone again, some day.”

  “How?” Captain Poussin raised her brows. “The difficulties . . . well, I’ve threshed those out with the first and second mate already. There is no interstellar radio. If we go outside the local civilization-cluster, there is hardly any interstellar travel. How can two or three or a dozen dustmotes of ships, blundering blind in the Galaxy, come upon each other before we die of old age?”

  Sigrid stared at the deck, crossed and uncrossed her long legs, sent a warmth of wine down her throat and listened to silence. There must be an answer, she told herself desperately. Her father, the shrewd and gentle ship’s chandler who became a rich man by his own efforts, had taught her to believe there was little men couldn’t do if they really wanted to. And women, he had added with his big laugh which she would not hear again. When a woman set out to be an irresistible force, he said, any immovable objects in the neighborhood had better get out of the way.

  “We don’t want to cower on some empty planet where no one will ever come,” Alexandra declared. “We should go to a civilization. Our skills will be useful; we can earn our keep.”

  Sigrid nodded, recalling cities and ships where folk had been mightily impressed. Not that humans were so outstanding in themselves, but they carried the arts of their own cluster, which were not identical with those of other places, A blue-faced reptile had given her an energy gun in exchange for one of her paintings; she had delighted a six-limbed shipyard master by explaining to him certain refinements in the pilot board which a British engineer had added to the Monwaingi design. And this was in spite of their having picked up only a few words of each other’s languages, in the brief time the Europa stayed.

  Surely a hundred highly skilled Terrestrials could make themselves valuable somewhere!

  “To another civilization-cluster, then,” Gertrud said, almost eagerly. “That will be safest. No one there will have any interest in . . . in hurting us. We will come as total strangers.”

  “I believe so,” the captain said. “You echo my own thoughts. However, the problem remains. If we go that far afield, how shall we inform any other surviving humans of our whereabouts? Of our existence, even?”

  It was as if her father’s laugh sounded in Sigrid’s head. She sprang to her feet. Her glass tipped and crashed to the deck. No one noticed. “I have an idea, Madam!”

  V

  In this world a man must be either anvil or hammer.

  —Longfellow

  THE hall was built with massive dark timbers, the beam ends chiseled into the gaping heads of sea monsters. Exquisitely carved screens from a former era emphasized rather than hid that brutal vigor which the single long room embodied. Fluorescent globes threw their light off polished cups, shields, crowns, guns, booty from a dozen planets, and off the bronze wall plaques that displayed the emblems of Vorlak’s warlords. At one end of the hall, flames roared and whirled up the chimney. The statue of the Overmaster at the other end was in shadow.

  And that was symbolic, Donnan reflected. Eight thousand years of planetary unification had ended when the first space visitors came to Vorlak, two centuries ago. Now the imperium was a ghost, continuing its ghostly rituals in the High Palace at Aalstath.

  The reality of power was the Dragar class, masters of warships and warriors, touchy, greedy, recklessly brave—beings such as these, who sat their thrones down the length of the hall and stared over
their golden goblets at the human.

  Hlott Luurs, the Draga of Tolbek, leaned forward. The wooden serpents which trellised his seat cast gloom on the jeweled, many-colored luster of his robes; but the muzzled, furry face was thrust plainly into the light. “Aye,” he said, “as nearly as we know, Earth perished less than one of her own years gone. Otherwise the matter is a mystery.”

  The volume of his voice seemed to stir the battle banners hung from dimly seen rafters. Through open doors came a noise of surf and shrill night-birds; a saurian spouted and roared beyond the reef. The air filled Donnan’s nostrils with cold unearthly smells.

  He gauged his reply with care, according to what he knew about these folk. If he insulted them, he would be killed as soon as he left the sacred precincts of the council hall, and the orbiting Franklin would be blown to subatoms. On the other hand, a Draga was not insulted by the assumption he might be merciless.

  “We came to Vorlak, my captain,” he said, “because we did not really believe your people had done the deed. We thought to offer you our services in your war against Kandemir. But you will understand that first we’ve got to be certain you are not our enemy.”

  They both spoke in Uru, a modified form of the language used by the first interstellar visitors to this region. Some such lingua franca was necessary throughout a cluster; every spaceman mastered it as part of his training. Uru was flexible, grammatically streamlined, and included standardized units of measurement. Any oxygen breather could pronounce its phonemes, or at least write its alphabet, well enough to be understood. In fact, several other clusters, their own civilizations first seeded by explorers of that ancient race, had adopted the same auxiliary speech.

  “You have my word we never harmed Earth,” Hlott Luurs declared. “And I have been president of the Dragar Council for the past four years. I would have known.”

  HE might not remain president, Donnan knew. The ever-shifting coalitions of these baronial admirals might overthrow him any day. But at the moment he dominated them, and therefore ruled his entire species.

  To question his word of honor would be a mortal insult. And most likely he was telling the truth about the matter. But nevertheless—

  Donnan exchanged a glance with Ramri, whom he had taken along to this meeting. You’ll know better how to be tactful, old chap, he appealed.

  The shining blue Monwaingi form trod forward. “My captain, may I beg your indulgence,” Ramri fluted. “The situation among the Terrestrial crew is precarious. You can understand what a shock the destruction of their planet was to them. Disorder culminated in near mutiny. Carl Donnan took the lead in restoring discipline, and was therefore elected chief. But as yet his authority is not firm. You must recall that modern humans have no tradition of absolute loyalty to one’s captain. Many men questioned his decision to come here. Some are ignorant of Vorlakka customs. They would not realize that the word of Hlott Luurs is more than sufficient. Suspicious, they would cause trouble.”

  “Kill them,” advised a Draga from the row of thrones.

  “No,” said Donnan harshly “With almost the whole human race gone, I can’t destroy any others for any reason.”

  “And yet,” said Hlott, “you bring your ship here and offer to fight on our side.”

  “That’s what we call a calculated risk.” Donnan shifted on his feet. More and more, the situation began to look hopeless. They hadn’t even given him a chair. That meant he was an inferior, a poor relation at best, fair game at worst.

  His eyes flickered along the ranked captains. They were supposed to be humanoid, he reminded himself. Biped, about as tall as he was, with powerful arms ending in regular five-fingered hands, they were placental mammals and biochemically very similar to men. (That had been one reason for coming here. Humans could eat the local food, which they could not on any Monwaingi planet.) But the torso was shorter and thicker, the legs longer and heavier, the feet webbed. The head was flattened and low-browed, the brain case bulging out behind. The small external ears could fold to keep out water, the eyes had a nictitating membrane. The face was bluntly doglike, black-nosed, with carnivore teeth. Sleek brown fur covered the entire body. This race was adapted to a planet whose land mass was mostly islands, which the tides of the nearby moon made into brackish swamps. Their history had eventuated in a maritime world empire, whose hereditary skippers and merchants had now—since the breakdown of the empire—become the Dragar, warlords and traders through an immense volume of space.

  SILENCE waxed in the hall. It was broken by one who sat on Hlott’s left. His plain black robe was conspicuous amidst that color and metal.

  “Honorable Captain Donnan,” he said, as softly as a Vorlakka throat could manage, “this unworthy person believes he has an indication that may serve as convincing evidence. Formerly it was a state secret, but the never-to-be-sufficiently-regretted destruction of your beautiful home has rendered such secrecy pointless. My captains know whereof I speak. If I may be allowed to use the archives?”

  Stillness descended again. Even the fire and surf seemed to hush themselves.

  Odd, Donnan thought. Ger Nenna sat in this council as representative of the Overmaster, who was the merest figurehead. The imperial scholar-bureaucracy to which Ger belonged had even less reason for continued existence. And yet, grudgingly, the Dragar deferred to him. Hlott rubbed a chinless jaw for two or three minutes, pondering. But in the end he said, “As the honorable minister will.”

  One refreshing aspect of feudalism was, to Donnan, the ease with which such decisions could be made. Ger Nenna rose, bowed, and walked across to a replicom unit. He stood punching buttons while the Dragar drank and servants hurried to refill their golden goblets. Ramri whispered in English: “Do you see any hope for our plans, Carl-my-friend?”

  “Dunno,” the man answered as softly.

  “If we fail here—you will understand, will you not, how I can at once hope for your success and your failure?—surely then you will come to my home. I am positive we can offer still better proof of innocence than any which these beings may possess.”

  Donnan tried to smile into the wistful beaked face. “You know I know you didn’t do it,” he said.

  After getting the captaincy on Tau Ceti II, he had managed some change in Ramri’s status. The avian was no longer in danger from the human crew. They accepted Donnan’s making him unofficial first mate of the ship, though he was careful never to give any direct orders. There was no longer a guard on him. But if Donnan had sent Ramri home, the crew would not have liked it.

  They didn’t accuse Monwaing oi slaying Earth. They didn’t know. The fact remained, however, that the Monwaingi planets had had the most to do with Earth and might thus most easily have found some reason to eliminate it. Until more facts were available, Ramri was a hostage of sorts. He accepted his status without complaint.

  HE reached quickly to give Donnan’s arm a grateful squeeze. The replicom extruded a reel, duplicating material in the archives at Aalstath. Ger Nenna brought it over to Donnan.

  “Naturally the honorable captain reads Russian,” he said.

  “A little,” Donnan answered. “We’ve got men aboard who’re good at it.”

  “Then here is a treaty made between this Council and the Soviet Union, almost three years ago. The Russian exploratory ship which departed about the same time as your own, Captain, carried officials empowered to deal with outworld governments. They concluded this agreement, which had been under secret negotiation for some time previously. The Soviet Union was to produce for us a large amount of arms in certain categories, at a favorable price; and numerous of their military personnel were to serve us as auxiliaries, thereby gaining experience in modern warfare. The Russian vessel then proceeded into far space, and we have no subsequent knowledge of it. But several armament cargoes were delivered to our ships—secretly, at a rendezvous on Venus. Here are copies of the manifests. And this correspondence shows that the first contingent of Soviet officers was due to depart for Vorlak ve
ry soon. Then the sorrow came that Earth was destroyed.”

  Donnan bent his attention to the reel. Yes, here, parallel Russian and Vorlakka texts. He could read enough of the former to get the drift. “—common cause of the peace-loving peoples against imperialist aggressors . . . unity in the great patriotic struggle—”

  He didn’t think any nonhuman could have done the phrasing that exactly. Plus all this other documentation. The Vorlakka could not have known the Franklin would arrive to ask for an accounting. They would hardly have prepared this file against an improbable contingency: the more so since they were openly contemptuous of the Franklin’s power. Besides, the Dragar were not cloak and dagger types. If they had blown up Earth, they wouldn’t have hidden the fact; not so elaborately, anyhow.

  And the evidence fitted Terrestrial facts also.

  The Communists never had given up their ambitions, even when the fluid situation after the Monwaingi arrived forced them to pull their horns while they reassessed matters. The secrecy of this agreement with Vorlak was not just to protect Earth against Kandemirian reprisal. It was so the Soviets could quietly get ahead of every other country in the development of a really up-to-date war machine. Here again, Donnan didn’t believe that the Vorlakkar, who had never had any extensive contact with Earth, could have faked so precise a picture.

  He was convinced.

  HE looked up. The lines from nose to mouth stretched and deepened in his face as he said: “Yes, my captains, proof aplenty. And further evidence against Kandemir. If their spies found out what was going on—”

  He couldn’t continue.

  “Quite likely,” Hlott nodded. He seemed to have reached a decision while the human read. “Since you have come as our guests, begging sanctuary, and there is no feud between us, honor demands that we grant your wish. A place will be prepared for you. Your skills can earn you good pay in my own factories . . . unless, as I suspect, my honorable colleagues want a share of you. Return now to your boat, and see my chief aide tomorrow.”