“No,” I said. “There’s enough to do within the Ships to satisfy me. So many things to do. But, tell me, if I had belonged, would that be reason for exclusion?”
“Not for that alone,” she said, but her tone seemed to indicate that it would be close to sufficient.
“I didn’t realize there were rules against belonging to the Universal Heirs of Man or your Sons of Prometheus.”
“It’s my duty to see that troublemakers are not permitted to disturb Seirapodi. We have a nice safe stable Ship here, and we want to keep it that way. It’s been my observation that reconciliationists are troublemakers. Not all of them, but too many.”
“Ah, yes,” I said. “I’ve had my own bad moments with them.”
“You have?” she said. “But look here. You did spend your early days on a planet. On New Albion.” She checked the name.
“Heaven knows, ma’am,” I said, “that’s true. It was an accident I’d like to be forgiven. I’ve spent all these years since I was restored to Moskalenka trying in one way after another to make up for it. I’ve done one thing after another. I would never think of the colonies until I had thought of the Ships first.”
“That’s only proper,” she said.
“There’s so much to do, so much left to be done.”
“So few feel that way. I don’t think I like your advisers. Why would they want to change you?”
“I don’t always do as much as I feel I should,” I said modestly. “But I do try.”
Mrs. Smallwood said, “I can save you from all this Heriberto Pabon nonsense by rejecting your petition.”
“I must respect my teachers,” I said, and lowered my eyes.
“I suppose,” she said, and reached for her stamp.
I said, “This could even be an opportunity. It’s a matter of attitude.”
Bang, she went. “I suppose if you choose to see it that way, it might be.”
I left Mrs. Smallwood in her office. Perky little Susan Smallwood was waiting for me outside. I had been wondering if she would be, and was pleased to find that my guess had been correct.
I still needed a guide.
“Well,” she said, “are you allowed to stay?”
I nodded.
“See, just as I said. As long as you don’t belong to extreme organizations, you’re all right with Mother.”
“I have an appointment to see someone about my choice of a place to live. What would you suggest I ask for?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that,” she said. “A thing like that can make a big difference. People can set store by who you live among.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know that can make a difference. Who do you live among?”
“Oh, nobody. Just new Citizens. We aren’t anybody. Mostly we haven’t found other neighborhoods yet, I guess.” Then she offered, “Do you want to stay in my apartment until you decide? Or will you want to talk first to Heriberto Pabon?”
I smiled. “I’ll call him from your apartment,” I said.
I don’t pretend to subtlety. If I were roundabout, I couldn’t cram everything in. I don’t have that kind of time to waste. When push comes to shove, I do. Anything that gets lost in the shove I never miss.
I set to work directly. The secret to moving people is to touch their hearts. It isn’t as difficult as it might seem. Shippies are amazingly local and have such secret hunger for the marvelous.
I set up court in Susan Smallwood’s apartment while I was still living with her, and recruited my first converts. Kids they may be, but they are also voting Citizens. Older people sometimes lose sight of that. And there are advantages to a retinue.
I began by making muscles for them. I came on slightly dangerous. I was from off-Ship. I was associated with Heriberto Pabon. Man of Mystery, me. I knew answers they had no questions for.
I told them tales of wonder. I told them of the League of Shiphoppers, for one. This was a group of unknown invisibles, unbounded by Ship custom.
“On the move all the time, using Ships and Colonies as indifferent resting places, they go where they like, when they like, as they like.”
The young ones asked young questions:
“Where do they come from?”
“How do they do it?”
“Really? You’re not telling stories?”
“From Ship to Ship? Oh, that would make me feel giddy.”
I said, “It’s a secret floating life. Unwatched, unnoticed. They use the Ships as indifferent stepping stones.”
A sceptic, a boy named Joe Don Simms, said, “And we’re expected to believe this is happening all around us?”
Sceptics are almost always burly people, I have found. They add bulk to a retinue.
“Yes,” I said.
“Even here? Even here? Do you claim that these Shiphoppers can and do pass through Seirapodi?”
“Maybe Sarah Peabody has gotten left out of the game,” I said.
“But you said they go everywhere.”
“So I did,” I said.
“But now you say they don’t ‘hop’ here.” His voice added the doubting quotation marks. If his voice hadn’t, his expression would have.
I included the ten of them in the sweep of my arms. “Of us here tonight in this room, around this candle, at least two.”
They showed awe. Simms demanded, “Who?”
“You expect identifications?”
“I suppose you will say yourself, since you are from another Ship.”
“I’m not from another Ship,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I was born on the planet of New Albion and I go where I please.”
Simms said, “I don’t believe you!”
I said, “If you were clever enough, it could be checked,” and turned the conversation to other things. Saluji, primarily.
But at the end of the evening Simms stayed behind with Susan and me when everyone else had left and demanded to know whether the Shiphoppers were “real” or “only a story.”
“That’s all right, Joe Don Simms,” I said. “It’s not too late. There’s still time for you to start. It isn’t all done before you. You can be anything you want to be. We’ll let you play.”
He burst into tears. I let him cry.
When he was done, he said, “Who is the second Shiphopper?”
“You,” I said.
And he cried again.
For those primed to be touched by it, the prospect of unending rolling meadows can be just as potent as mother badgers in their dens.
I set up my own apartment after a few days. Not among the kids. I didn’t bar them. In fact, I encouraged them to visit. But I gave them a little distance to travel to come to me. Not among any group of similars of my own age, interests, or ambitions. I feel no need to copy the limitations of a faction. And not near Pabon, of course. We might have embarrassed each other.
I decided my best part was presumption, and so I settled among a gang a hundred years my senior, where I stood out conspicuously. These people were the last memory of the vogue for a peculiar game called Saluji that had swept the Ships before my father was yet a Citizen. Old as they were, these people still had their courts and their competition.
They sent their ax to deal with me—a hard old Saluji player named McKinley Morganfield. But better than anything, better than impressionable young girls, or officials, or sceptics, in all the world I deal best with crotchety old Saluji players. I remember who they were.
McKinley Morganfield began by asking who I thought I was, elbowing my way in where my presence was not appreciated. But my following admired him, and I spoke to him of my father’s friend, Ira Ayravainen.
“There was talk of the two of you meeting once, wasn’t there?”
“Egh, talk,” he said. “Nothing came of it. Nothing ever came of it. When there was interest, nobody did anything like that. It might be possible now, but nobody plays Saluji anymore and there isn’t any interest.”
“There’s interest,
” I said. And my people nodded.
I said, “And you never met Cropsey.”
“You know about Cropsey, too?” He was impressed with me against his judgment.
“Of course,” I said.
“He was a first-class pecker in Saluji. By report.”
“You may meet them yet in a Seniors match,” I said.
“Where?” he asked. “How?”
I had my own people’s attention, too. I had introduced them to the pleasures of Saluji, and named the names—like McKinley Morganfield’s—but I had not told them anything of this. I don’t believe in wasting my marvels and miracles.
“Sixteen months from now, all of the Ships will rendezvous at the South Continent of New Albion. Games will be held. You will have your chance at both Ayravainen and Cropsey.”
“Is this possible?” McKinley Morganfield asked.
“There’s never been a rendezvous,” said Simms. He still had moments when he wondered, but that was good. It helps to have a variety of notes in a claque. It sounds less claquish that way.
“The Ship men gather to play their games, down on the worlds of men,” I said. “They pitch their tents and fly their pennons.”
“I’ve never heard of any of this,” said McKinley Morganfield.
“It’s still in the organizational stages,” I said, “but it will happen. It isn’t being widely talked about until it has been completely coordinated. But in sixteen months there will be a rendezvous. The first one. And there will be Senior Saluji matches.”
“But what of the Ship’s schedule? That can’t just be abandoned.”
“The Ship’s schedule can be modified,” I said. “A Ship can go anywhere its Citizens decide to take it.”
And that was a new thought to them.
During the next few months I spent my spare time talking constructively to people. At first you enlist individuals and it all seems painfully slow. You think nothing will ever happen. But then the individuals add their own associates, just as a poet starts with one or two words that ring brightly and watches them accumulate company.
I did nothing but talk. I do it all with my hands behind my back.
I didn’t talk much with Heriberto Pabon about what I was doing. He once asked whether there was anything to the talk he was hearing about a Rendezvous on New Albion—“Rendezvous in ’32” was the slogan he had heard.
I said, “Yes.”
“Are they really going to have the first Universal Saluji Championships?”
“I believe so. Yes.”
“Amazing. I remember the pylongs used to last for hours when I was a boy. And the young people are playing Saluji again. I’ll have to get out my batons.”
He walked off practicing hand shifts. And hand shifts out of style in Saluji for eighty years. Those were the early crude days before the game was refined.
My sturdiest opponents were the Sons of Prometheus. Not at all the way you would think. But we were far from natural allies.
They were originally chapters of do-gooders. If you belonged, you promised to bring light to the colony planet on which you passed Trial. Eventually they broadened and shallowed to become an entrenched pro forma Opposition. While one might think they would be ready for an opportunity to abandon the schedule, that wasn’t at all the case. They were in business to squabble about the schedule, not abandon it. The schedule was their tie to their people handing out bandages on the colony planets.
I went in to talk with them. I asked for a quiet conversation with two of their leaders. I took a small herd of supporters along, but I left them at the door.
After I listened to them I said, “The very best of all possible reasons—information. One very interesting fact emerged when this Ship and Moskalenka recently met. I bring it with me and I have permission to tell you. On your vow of secrecy, of course.”
“What?” said one. He was the less sympathetic. The other responded to my smile, or I thought she did. A short, slight, dark woman.
I looked at them both, one face to the other, and smiled at her. Then I nodded as though I believed I had their agreement.
“Earth was never destroyed. That was a story that was given out, but it isn’t true. It isn’t true.”
“I’ve heard that rumor,” she said.
“What proof do you offer,” he said.
“None,” I said. “But if you looked into it, you might find that we have only assumed that Earth was destroyed. Or that we have been deliberately misled. It’s easier for them that way. You know they dislike the acceptance of responsibility.”
That was a favorite charge of the Universal Heirs of Man.
“It’s true,” she said. “They do sometimes lie to us.”
“Only rarely,” he said.
“If there were a Rendezvous, maybe someone would go back and see if Earth really is only a cinder,” I said. “It’s worth knowing, isn’t it, Mr. Dentremont?”
“Abandon the schedule?”
“To find ourselves.”
“Leave the Colonies who depend on us?”
“Let them swim.”
“Give up the chance of power?”
“Seize power. When seven Ships meet, new revelations should be had for the asking. Turn them to use. Kill with a word.”
She said enthusiastically, “If we did abandon the schedule, I’d like to take a Ship and travel to the heart of the Galaxy. I want to know what company we have.”
He said, “You’ve said that before.”
Ah, the yearnings of Shippies. Well, I understand that one.
I took her aside afterward and introduced her to some of my people. Some of them were toying with that dream, too.
She came. He followed.
When I first discovered that I was able to move people, I sometimes did it just to see myself do it. It is little short of amazing what hoops people will leap through if they are encouraged. It was the arrogance of discovery. Now I’m more restrained and more purposeful.
I don’t move people gratuitously. Well, seldom. When I do move them, however, it gives me a true pleasure.
The mythless are easy. Those who believe come harder. What it takes is a better myth.
Heriberto took up Saluji for several months, but then abruptly one day he put his batons away again. I asked him about that.
“It was fun,” he said. “My shifts are as sound as ever. But I haven’t time for that now. Three new projects came to me today, and I must begin them and see which is worth the pursuit.”
“You won’t be playing at Rendezvous?”
“Oh, I may watch a match or two if I have time,” he said. “Right now it looks as if all my time will be tied up in association meetings.”
“Mm,” I said. “Meetings?”
“I’ve been solicited by three and absolutely barred from two. They find me disturbing. I believe I’m chairing one series.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well.”
The opportunity for conspiracies of all sorts had occurred to me, but I hadn’t actually plotted them. Let everybody have the fun of making his own story.
Mrs. Smallwood, Ship’s Mobility Officer and mother of my old friend Susan, said, “It seems I was too hasty in allowing you aboard, young man. Don’t think we’re not aware of what you have been doing. We are aware of you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“In the old days, and not so long ago, you would have been Expelled from the Ship. When I was a young Citizen, I voted twice with the majority to Expel. If you were brought up now, I’d vote you out. You are a troublemaker.”
Mrs. Smallwood had called twice when I was out. She wanted to talk to me. Having seen me once, she might have preferred to keep vid distance between us. I’m not sure what she was thinking of.
I went to her office, finding my own way. I took only two warm bodies as sideboys. I left them in her outer chamber.
I said, “As far as I know, I haven’t done anything quite that serious.”
“You’ve been lying to people,” s
he said. “You know as well as I that this Rendezvous is all a lie. Moskalenka said nothing of this. And when we meet Jaunzemis next month, I’m sure neither will they.”
“Probably not,” I said. “If you ask official sources.”
“I should be recording this.”
“But one year from now, seven Ships will meet off New Albion. There will be games, meetings, convocations, assemblies, parades, bazaars, and celebrations. All for the first time.”
“Stop that,” she said. “It’s not going to happen. It’s not. We won’t abandon the schedule.”
“You will abandon the schedule if enough Citizens call for it.”
“They won’t.”
“Ah, but they might. They will.”
“Nobody will come to this Rendezvous.”
“This Ship,” I said. “And when it arrives, the others will be there, too.”
“No,” she said. “No.”
“I have a proposal,” I said, smiling. “Lock me in my room for eleven months and take away my vid.”
“You’re laughing at me,” she said. “I wish I could.”
“Then exile me on the South Continent of New Albion.”
“You were born on New Albion.”
“Long ago. And on Eastcape, a long distance to swim.”
“How would it look if that were brought out?”
“I don’t care particularly,” I said. “If it weren’t too late and if South Continent didn’t have such fine weather and pleasant countryside, I’d ask for the site to be changed.”
She shook her head. I’d really gotten to her. She shouldn’t have asked to see me. I’m no pleasure to officials.
“You are a very devious young man, Mr. Margolin.”
That did bring me up short. I think my major shortcoming, aside from the fact that my sense of humor isn’t appreciated by everyone, is that I’m excessively straightforward. But after I considered it for a while, I decided that it was all right. If they choose to misunderstand me, it can only be to my advantage.
Farewell to Yesterday's Tomorrow Page 11
