Moon Flower

by James P. Hogan

  “An actor,” Shearer realized suddenly. “It’s when you socialize and entertain others.”

  “Not just an actor.” Chev burst into song, delivered as several bars of resonant baritone. The NIDA rendered them rhymelessly as:

  “When the two kings rule high, and the night fades and dies,

  The body seeks rest and cool water’s delights,

  But the soul has its wine and the pretty girls-O”

  He glanced sideways, mouthing a silent “Ow” that Shearer took to be the Cyrenean equivalent of a wink.

  “Is that a Yocalan song?” Shearer asked.

  “From an island called Quoselt — three days sailing west from Revo. They have some pretty girls there, all right.”

  “Are their ways and customs like yours here — in Yocala?” Shearer asked.

  “Oh, very similar,” Chev said. “We are the same culture.” A NIDA-injected comment cautioned Shearer that “race” might have been meant. “But they are close to us. In farther parts of the world — months of sailing, maybe — you find others that are different.”

  “Don’t you ever end up fighting with each other?” Shearer asked. “Are there never wars?” The NIDA apparently had difficulty finding an association for the word, and presumably failed to activate any suitable concept in Chev visually. Shearer had to supplement it with an explanation. Chev seemed astounded and unable to see how it could achieve any worthwhile aim. “Whatever the problem is about, fighting over it will always end up costing everybody more than it would have taken to solve it,” he opined.

  That was a sentiment with which Shearer agreed totally, and had been arguing — usually in vain — for a good part of his life. But he was still curious as to how they managed to avoid such things on Cyrene. “How do you stop both sides from plunging into it, each one thinking they’re going to gain?” he asked.

  “They would both be wrong,” Chev said.

  “True. But getting them to understand it up front is another matter. And even after they’ve learned, they’ll forget, and do the same thing all over again next time.”

  “That’s how it is on Earth?” Chev queried.

  “All the time. Our whole history.”

  “Yes. So I have heard.”

  “But it doesn’t happen like that here?”

  Chev shook his head. “No. It wouldn’t happen that way on Cyrene.”

  “How do you prevent it?”

  “Cyreneans would never believe they could gain from something like that. They would know.”

  Shearer sat back on the seat nonplussed. Just when he’d thought he was about to get a straight answer at last, once again there was no attempt at an explanation or reasoning to justify the assertion. Just this eternal, impervious Cyrenean falling back on gut-feel intuition again, which told him nothing.

  He tried another angle. “You said that you make swords.”

  “The best,” Chev agreed.

  “We met a Cyrenean the day we landed at the base. A man called Korsofal. He lives south from the city somewhere.”

  Chev shook his head. “I do not know him.”

  “He was carrying one. It was hanging from his saddle. Why would he need it if you don’t resort to force?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Chev replied. “I said that whole peoples don’t take to slaughtering each other and destroying each other’s lands in the ways you described. Because no good could come of it, and they would know.” He tossed up a hand, the reins draping over it loosely. “But some people will always exist who would live by taking for themselves what others create, and returning nothing. And who can only be restrained from doing so by force.”

  “Criminals, you mean?”

  “Yes, exactly. So it is a wise thing to have weapons.”

  “For defense,” Shearer said. He didn’t have much argument with that. But to his surprise he saw that Chev was frowning as if not fully agreeing with him.

  “It’s more than that,” Chev said at last. “If you have to use it, then its purpose has already been defeated.”

  “You mean it’s a deterrent,” Shearer said, getting the point... he thought.

  But Chev continued frowning. “More than even that. A deterrent would discourage a criminal from committing a criminal act. What I’m talking about is stopping the criminal from becoming a criminal in the first place.”

  This time it was Shearer’s turn to frown. “I’m not sure what you mean. How could that work?”

  “Well, I’ll put it this way. If it was in your nature to try and make your living that way, in which kind of a society would you be more likely to prosper if you were to act on it and become a robber, and in which kind would you be more likely to prosper and live longer if you decided on an honest job? One that had swords, or one that didn’t have swords?”

  “Okay.” Shearer held up a hand and nodded. “I take your point. Its just that...” He hated being negative, but he had to shake his head. “Can you really expect to rely on the kind of people who become criminals to figure out something like that?”

  “On Earth, maybe. Yes, from what I’ve heard that’s probably very true.”

  “So why should it be any different here?” Shearer asked.

  “Oh, here we’re not much good at figuring out anything,” Chev replied. “A Cyrenean would just know.”

  Shearer gave up and returned to contemplating the view.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  As part of his specialty training for the Cyrene mission, Dolphin, currently operating as Jeff Lang, had undergone a speed course to familiarize him with the basics of the Yocalan language — as much as could be gleaned in the brief period of human contact, anyway. Even though the mission had been thrown together at short notice, he found it was sufficient to get by.

  Dressed native-fashion in a hooded cloak, cord-tied tunic, and baggy pants with boots to add plausibility to his story, he sat at a table in an alcove near the serving counter of an inn near the waterfront on the northern side of the river dividing Revo town. The day had cooled after the fierce morning period, and people were beginning to leave and go about their business. A young waitress with fair hair tied in two long tails, and wearing a full, ankle-length skirt was bringing trays loaded with dishes of food through from a room at the rear. The brew in the earthenware mug in front of him tasted malty and nutty with a slightly sour edge — not bad, but on the warm side for his taste. His injection into Cyrenean society had happened a lot more suddenly than anyone had anticipated. It was too soon yet for him to have formed any firm impressions of it.

  The innkeeper, whom Lang had spoken with earlier, got up from where he had been talking to three men at a bench beneath the window and came over. “Would they have ‘ad an animal with ’em?” he inquired, lowering himself to rest against one of the stools. “A black one with a long face. Makes a funny noise like a stuck door scrapin’.”

  “That sounds like them,” Lang said, straightening up.

  The innkeeper turned his head back toward the group he had just left. “‘E says it might be. ’Ow many was they, Orban?” He looked at Lang. “Two men an’ a girl, was it yer said?”

  “Right.”

  “Two men an’ a girl, we’re looking for,” the innkeeper called over.

  “Well, I don’t know how many were in there...” one of the three answered, followed by something Lang didn’t catch.

  “Come over ‘ere and tell ’em, then.” The innkeeper waved an arm. A thin, dark headed man in a blue smock and short black jacket, who was presumably Orban, got up and shuffled over. The innkeeper gestured at Lang. “‘E’s another one of ’em that’s wants out. ‘E was supposed to meet up with some others, ’e says, but ‘e missed ’em some’ow an’ thinks they might be in the town. Two men an’ a girl, ‘e says they are.”

  “Well, I never actually saw them myself...”

  “Tell ‘im, not me.”

  Orban turned his face toward Lang. “I didn’t see them myself. But there was a carriage that went alon
g the Corn Market Street that caused a bit of a stir. It had this black animal sticking its head out the window and making a noise, starting all the gloks off. And one boy I heard who was there said there was a woman in it too. Dark hair, kind of red.”

  “That’s them,” Lang said, nodding.

  “An’ you said they were comin’ from Soliki’s?” the innkeeper checked.

  “Well, I don’t know that for sure. But I did hear tell this morning that some Terrans were staying with Soliki these last two nights.”

  The innkeeper looked at Lang. “Soliki the draper’s. In the square where the monument is. You know it?”

  Lang spread his hands. “I only got here a few days ago.”

  “‘E don’t know where it is,” the innkeeper relayed to Orban.

  Orban scratched his chin. “A few days? Why are they in such a rush to leave?”

  “‘E don’t know where Soliki’s is,” the innkeeper said again.

  “Do you think we’ll have a whole world of them coming here?”

  Lang took a Cyrenean coin from a pocket in his tunic and slid it along the table to the innkeeper. “That’s to cover one for him, on me, when he gets back,” he said.

  Orban looked mildly grieved. “Oh, I’ll take you to Soliki’s,” he said. “You didn’t have to do that, sir. But I don’t mind if I do. Thank you very much.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The name of the place the carriage arrived at late in the day after descending into a steep-sided valley was Doriden. It consisted of four main stone buildings situated around a central quadrangle, standing beside a deeply cut stream, and several smaller buildings around the outside and across the stream, that appeared to have been added later. Two bridges spanned the stream to connect the two parts of the institution, and standing between them on the opposite bank was a mill house with a waterwheel. Beyond the outbuildings on the far side were vegetable plots, a fruit orchard, and paddocks with various types of animals. The hillside above was planted with rows of plants that could have been some kind of corn or vine.

  Shearer’s NIDA translated its function as a “monastery of learning.” From what he could make of the answers he got from Chev, it didn’t confer diplomas or degrees, and so probably didn’t qualify as a “university,” but nevertheless had sufficiently strong connotations with more than just the process of learning to be let off as an “academy” or a “college.” The NIDA’s choice of “monastery” seemed odd, since Cyrene — or at least, the Yocalan part of it — didn’t boast much to speak of in the way of structured religion. More questioning by Shearer produced the impression that what the NIDA had latched on to was the concept of dedication to seeking truth and understanding to help make the world a better place.

  This was reinforced later in the evening, when the four arrivals sat down at one of the long tables in the communal dining hall for dinner with a member of the staff called Blanborel, who had greeted them, and several others. The guests had been expected as a result of Chev’s talking with the people from Doriden who had ridden ahead the previous day, and had found rooms prepared and baths heated for them to clean up after their day of traveling.

  “Other people produced this food I’m eating and the clothes I’m wearing,” Blanborel explained. “And then there are those who can make a house that stays up or a boat that doesn’t leak. And those are not the kinds of things I’m best at or have any great fondness for, to be honest. But those things all require work. And through better understanding of how the world works...” he made a sweeping gesture that took in Shearer, Jerri, and Uberg, “which Chev tells us is what you do in life, we try to find ways in which work can achieve better results. So that is our claim to worth and respect.” Blanborel made the silent “Ow” that was the Cyrenean equivalent of a wink and lowered his voice behind a raised hand. “At least, that is what we have to say. And it’s true as far as it goes. But if you really want to know the truth, sheer curiosity plays as big a part. It does for me, anyway. I just have to know. Isn’t it the same for you Terrans? I mean, really — deep down inside. Eh?”

  He was large and rotund, with a fleshy, ruddy face, graying beard, and shaggy hair. After the NIDA’s determination of “monastery,” Shearer couldn’t help thinking of him as the Abbot. He even had a cowl-like hood thrown back from the long jacket that he was wearing.

  “That wouldn’t do for me,” Chev, eating heartily, told the table.

  “Different people everywhere think in their own way,” Uberg said. Since there were only enough NIDA sets to equip Chev, Blanborel, and a colleague of Blanborel’s called Zek, the Terrans either spoke through them, or else slowly in pidgin sentences that mixed in bits of Yocalan. In addition, some of them had a grasp of rudimentary English, perhaps picked up from other travelers.

  Darco, a young man sitting next to Blanborel, who could have been some kind of student and had been listening intently, leaned forward to address the Terrans. “Tell me, is it true,” he said. “The far distance stars like from where you are come from.” He used the point of the knife that he was eating with to separate out a seed grain suspended in a smear of sauce on the edge of his plate. “There is your Earth star, yes? Or is maybe like Henkyl. Because is said Henkyl star also. Just more near.”

  “Okay,” Shearer agreed.

  “Then next near other star same size is where Revo city. True is this, yes?”

  “That’s about it.” Shearer nodded.

  “But Earth star is not next near. Is far away very more. Maybe like other side Yocala. True is this, yes?”

  “Right on.” Shearer nodded again.

  “Amazing,” Blanborel said, shaking his head..

  “Don’t worry about it. It still amazes us too,” Jerri told him. Darco sat back and exchanged mystified looks with colleagues who had been helping each other to follow.

  One of them put a question to Blanborel, who relayed, “You come here in ships that are bigger than the bird-ships that land at your camp by Revokanta.” That was the name of the lake east of Revo city.

  “You can see them crossing the sky at night,” Chev put in.

  “They don’t have sails like ships or wings like birds. And anyway, they must travel much faster than sails or wings could make. So what do they have?”

  Shearer and Uberg looked at each other helplessly. How did one begin explaining a Heim drive? Then Shearer remembered the stream outside, that flowed through the middle of Doriden. “Imagine that the space between the stars... the whole universe that you see... is like the water that a fish in the stream down by the mill swims in,” he said. They all watched him intently. “The fish only knows the water. That is its universe. To get to, let’s say Revokanta, it would have to swim down, out to the ocean, and around through all the water that exists between Doriden and there. But now think of the bird who can rise above that universe and fly there outside the water.... Our ship is like the bird.” He looked around, but it didn’t seem he had quite got the point across. The questions were not exactly pouring back in a flood.

  Darco came in. “I think the question was more what makes the...” He looked around, asking for the word.

  “Force,” Blanborel supplied.

  “Okay, the force that pushes the ships.” Darco held up a cupped hand and blew into it, at the same time moving it away. “Like with the sail ship, is the wind. Because you don’t have bird-horses, no?” He grinned and the others laughed.

  “It’s an invisible force,” Uberg tried. He picked up a bread bowl from the table and rocked it up and down on the palm of a hand as if weighing it. “Like the force that you can feel pulling things down toward the ground. But the one we produce is a lot stronger.”

  “Do you mean electricity?” Zek asked. Shearer blinked in surprise. Zek looked at Blanborel, and then both of them beamed at the Terrans proudly, as if it had been a secret that they had been waiting for the right moment to reveal.

  “Oh yes, we are familiar with it here,” Blanborel said. “It’s not all wind, wat
er, and animals, you know.”

  “Well, yes, electrical forces do come into it,” Shearer said. He hoped he wasn’t going to be asked just how strong they were. He had once calculated the relative strengths of the gravitational and electrical forces — thirty-nine orders of magnitude — was about the same as a millionth of a millimeter to a hundred thousand times the size of the known universe.

  However, Zek went on, “Although I admit we haven’t worked out how to put it to much practical use yet. But I’m sure that will all come in its own time.”

  Blanborel took in the expressions on the faces of his three alien guests with evident satisfaction. “We had intended to show you around tomorrow to see some of the things we’re doing here,” he informed them. “But since you seem interested, we could make it this evening, after we finish eating, if you wish.”

  They interrogated each other silently, each nodding in turn. “Yes,” Uberg answered for all of them. “I think we’d like that very much.”

  “Well, let’s eat up, then,” Blanborel said, waving at the table.

  Zek turned his head to the students who were with them. “And any of you can join us too,” he told them. “I’d recommend it. This isn’t a chance that you get every day. And it might be some of the best education you’ll get this year.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The mixed party of Cyreneans and Terrans crossed the stream via one of the bridges and followed a path to the entrance of a long, low building of adobe-like walls with a peculiarly curved sloping roof, one end of which abutted the mill house. Nim had already found new admirers and was being entertained elsewhere. Inside, the stone floors, heavy timber framing, and large spaces connecting through wide openings gave a first impression of a large stable or farm building. But the rooms they passed through turned out to be workshops, with tool racks, benches fitted with vises, shelves of jars and bottles, tables with burners and assorted glassware, and a number of ovens and furnaces. Shearer was able to identify several hydraulic devices and a piece of clockwork of some kind that seemed to be experimental setups. In addition there were various systems of levers and pulleys, a crank-driven piston and cylinder that looked like a pump, and other mechanisms whose function was not immediately apparent. Although quiet now, the place had the look about it of being busy during the day. It was a long way from Berkeley and belonged to another age, but Shearer had a feeling of being at home.