Moon Flower

by James P. Hogan

  From the directions they had been given at Doriden, they would drop down into the valley of a west-flowing river called the Geevar before ascending again on the far side into the mountains of the Harzonne. There were settlements along the Geevar valley, and the hope had been to find accommodation of some kind there for the night. However, as late afternoon came, and they were forced to make a detour to find a ford across a stream on account of a bridge being partly down, it became clear that they were not going to make it down into the valley before dark.

  It was the time of month when there was no moon, and the broken nature of the ground they were passing over, with steep drops falling away from the roadside in places, made it too treacherous to think of continuing. As Ra Alpha reddened and sank in the west, Chev decided on a ravine sheltered by rock walls as a suitable place to call a halt. A stream flowed through the bottom that would provide fresh water, and there was grass for the horses and brushwood that would make a fire to cook supper on and keep them warm through the short but intense night. The front boot of the carriage below the driver’s box held a stock of blankets, pots, and utensils, and they had picked up provisions at Doriden sufficient to rustle up a stew with bread followed by fruits and cakes, and supplemented by a couple of flasks of Doriden’s home-produced wine.

  The fire attracted peculiar insects, and here and there pairs of eyes out in the darkness threw back reflections — but without whatever they belonged to venturing too close. Chev said he didn’t think there would be any animals in these parts to be concerned about. Nevertheless, it would do no harm to take turns at standing watch, even though, from what he had seen, Nim would let them know soon enough of any intruders.

  After they had eaten, Chev entertained for a while with tales from his seafaring interludes. Then Jerri brought up the question that had been going around in Shearer’s mind earlier: How did Cyreneans feel about the thought of one day possessing the kinds of technology that the Terrans had?

  Chev didn’t answer at once, but seemed to think it over while using a stick to retrieve some pieces of meat that he had set by the side of the fire, and then flipping them to Nim, who was alert and restless, no doubt because of the proximity of other strange animals. Finally he replied, “Yes we think such things are all very wonderful: Go to other worlds; see and talk across any distance; build machines to do lots of work.” He tapped the NIDA unit that he was wearing. “And this! A hat that hears other tongues and makes voices that speak in your head. I would have said it has to be magic. But the scholars back at Doriden tell me no. So maybe one day I will understand.” He looked around at the three Terrans. The boisterousness and playacting that had attended his sailing yarns had gone, and been replaced by a seriousness that Shearer hadn’t seen in him before.

  “Cyreneans admire the knowledge and ability that it takes to do such things,” Chev went on. “To become capable of them too would make us proud and earn much respect. But your question did not ask how we would feel about doing or being anything. It asked how we would feel about possessing the results of work performed by others.” Chev shook his head. “I have heard this before about Terran ways, from people who work with Vattorix, and I still do not understand it. Is it true that simply the amount of possessions decides how the worth of a person is measured where you come from? And that people sell their freedom, even their whole lives, to outperform others in amassing possessions that they don’t need?” He half-turned to wave a hand toward the two horses at the edge of the circle of light from the fire, munching from a pile of grain that he had poured out of a sack to supplement the grass. “Look there. The horses are consuming feed that was planted and grown and harvested and threshed by our friends back at Doriden, or maybe a nearby farmer. And it is right that I should respect the farmer for that. But your system would have me honor the horse!”

  Shearer’s eyes widened as he listened. This was what he had thought his whole life, but he’d had to travel to another star to hear an alien put it into such succinct words.

  Chev paused. The Terrans looked at each other questioningly, but they remained silent. “Forgive me if I am being offensive,” he said.

  Uberg shook his head hastily. “No, not at all. What you say is right. Don’t imagine that all of us agree with the way things are on Earth.” He waved a hand. “Please.... Carry on.”

  “The morning that we left Soliki’s,” Chev said. “Before I collected the carriage, I had breakfast with some people who had been at Vattorix’s the evening before, at the dinner.”

  “Okay.” Shearer nodded.

  “There was a woman there who had just arrived from Earth with the new ship in the sky. She was said to represent Earth. The principal guest sent to meet Vattorix.”

  “Gloria Bufort,” Jerri put in. She caught Shearer’s eye and rolled her own upward momentarily.

  “That is she,” Chev said. “She asked nothing of what Vattorix has done to earn the trust and respect that we hold for him. Neither did anyone tell of what she had done to be so exalted among Terrans. But it was implied that her status is superior to his because she occupies a larger house. How can this be? If the quality of houses is to be the measure of who should represent Earth, then why was she there and not the craftsmen who built it?” Chev opened his hands in a way that said it made no sense, and inviting an explanation if anybody had one. Evidently no-one did. “She described at some length how she and her husband own many paintings by artists who are highly regarded on Earth,” Chev went on. “And it is right that fine works of art should be valued, and the artists who have the talent to produced them duly honored.” He shook his head, again with the look of incomprehension. “But none of the artists were present, and nothing was said in their honor. Instead, she, who has no talent, was honored for possessing them. If mere possession of goods is to be the measure of who should represent Earth, why did you not send a thief?”

  A long silence persisted. Chev leaned forward to toss some more wood onto the fire. Shearer and Jerri watched the new flames brightening. Finally Uberg looked across at them from the far side. “I think we’ve answered the question of what kind of government they have here, anyway,” he said. “It is an aristocracy. But an aristocracy based on ability. It’s an aristocracy because those of inadequate talent or character are excluded from the higher ranks. But it avoids the evils that follow from the use of force to acquire material wealth, because the Cyrenean form of wealth can’t be acquired that way. Neither can it be stolen. And customs and laws aren’t necessary to exclude those who don’t measure up. They automatically exclude themselves.”

  Since there were only four hours or so of full darkness at this time of year before the rising of the first sun, and neither of them was especially sleepy, Shearer and Jerri decided to share the first watch together and make it double length, which would let Uberg and Chev benefit from the most restful period. Chev fashioned a cocoon from blankets and skins, and was soon stretched out by the fire, his hat over his face, while Uberg, feeling the chill more, made up a bed for himself in the carriage. Nim, with the uncanny guarding instinct of his species, settled down on the outer side of the fire, positioning himself between his charges and the great unknown beyond. Shearer and Jerri found themselves a niche among some boulders to the side and snuggled up together under their blankets. It was practically the first private moment that they’d had together since leaving the ship. The ship seemed like another world that they had lived in a long time ago — which in many ways it was.

  Shearer leaned his head back on the folded coat that he had spread on the rock behind them. It was a clear night, with myriads of unfamiliar stars shining brilliantly. The sight reminded him of Jerri’s interest in ancient mythology. “Do you recognize any of your constellations?” he asked her curiously. It was not a subject that he’d spent much time on himself. He knew Venus, low near the setting Sun when it was the only other light in the sky, but would have been unable to pick out any of the other planets.

  “No,” she said. �
�I’ve looked, but they’re all different from here. I haven’t even learned where our sun is yet.”

  “Do you think they had events in their skies here too — like the ones you told me about, when the poles shifted and different gods moved to the center?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we’d need to know more about old Cyrenean myths.”

  “What caused them?... Back on Earth, I mean.”

  Jerri shrugged and leaned her head on Shearer’s outstretched arm to gaze upward along with him. “It would have to be encounters with other bodies. According to some theories, Venus and Mars were involved. There’s not much doubt now that Venus is a relatively young object, still hot. Astronomers used to think that the Solar System has been pretty much the way we see it billions of years, but nobody really believes that anymore. Violent changes have happened within recorded human history. And with electrical discharges between them on that kind of scale, the kinds of plasma discharge effects you’d get in the sky would be awesome — colossal, eerie, terrifying.”

  Shearer had come across some of that. In keeping with the behavior of charged bodies immersed in a plasma — in this case the heliosphere, or plasma environment extending around the sun — the planets formed isolating sheaths around themselves, which in the normal course of events shielded them from each other’s electrical effects and resulted in regular, repeating, quiescent conditions determined only by gravity. But if instabilities were introduced sufficient for the sheaths to come into contact, powerful electrical forces would suddenly come into play, and the well-behaved models based on neutral bodies moving in a vacuum that had been blithely assumed since the times of Newton and Laplace would cease to apply.

  After continuing to stare upward in silence for a while, Jerri went on, “I sometimes think that was where religions came from — the original ideas of gods battling each other in the sky, and sending thunderbolts and vengeance down on Earth. Maybe you’re right. Maybe nothing like that happened here, and that’s why the Cyreneans seem to be able to get along well enough without.”

  “Without what? You mean religion?”

  “Uh-huh. Well, it’s a thought....” She shook her head as if that still didn’t explain everything. “But, oh, I don’t know... We’ve already said it. They might be just into steam engines, but they get the important things right: truth, honesty, justice, kindness — the things that will make a better world in the long run. Something gives them the moral guidance and lets them see through scams and phony short-term fixes. But it doesn’t have to be forced. It comes from inside.”

  “It’s the only place that kind of restraint can come from and be effective,” Shearer said. “It can’t be imposed from the outside.”

  Jerri turned her head to look at him in the starlight and the glow from the fire. “So what is it?” Shearer could only shake his head. “Is it something about this planet, about Cyrene?... Tell me something, Marc. Can you feel it, just sitting out here right now? Something different. Like being more alive, somehow. As if you were a complete person for the first time in your life.”

  Shearer nodded slowly. “Yes. I know what you mean. I’ve noticed it too.” He hadn’t said anything about it because he had wondered if it was his imagination, or maybe a reaction to strange surroundings and the knowledge of being so remote from everything that was familiar.

  “You have? Really?” Jerri said.

  He nodded. “It happens at night. I think of it as being more ‘in touch’ with the universe.”

  “I felt it the first night we were at Soliki’s — just looking out over the town after Evassanie was asleep. It was so strange, as if Earth and everything about it was a million years ago, fading into a fog, and only Cyrene existed in the future. It sounds crazy, but we’d only been here a matter of days, and it felt like home already.... I felt I didn’t want to go back.”

  It was uncanny. “I know,” he said.

  “You too?”

  He watched her face for a moment, the silent pleading written across it. “Yes.”

  “You could stay here and make a new life? Find a home?”

  He tightened his arm around her shoulder, drew her closer, and grinned. “Sure. But it would have to have a dog in it,” he told her.

  The mini sambot hidden in the darkness under the fernlike plants growing a few yards away was about the size of a human hand and configured as a six-legged spider. It had made its way from the reconnaissance drone that had landed with a whisper a quarter of a mile away soon after darkness fell. As it listened, it interspersed periodic images with the transmission that it was sending back. When Shearer and Jerri finally got up and went to the carriage to awaken Uberg, the robot followed them. When they moved away, it scurried up one of the wheels, reconfigured two of its legs into longer grasping appendages, and found itself a lodgement among the axle and suspension.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The first dawn was cloudy and misty with some light rain, but it broke up with the second rising, and by the time they set off again the skies were partly sunny and brightening. Soon they found themselves passing between two high, rocky shoulders at the head of a gorge, with the valley of the Geevar spread out below as a carpet of trees, and the ribbon of river winding along the bottom. Hills rose again on the far side, and from their elevated situation they could see higher land beyond, which had to be the Harzonne region.

  As they descended, the wind that had been noticeable higher up died away. Trees reappeared and became thicker, and the land grew greener. Occasional huts and groups of domesticated animals starting to put in appearances, and the rutted track gradually transformed into a reasonably kept road.

  It took until the middle part of the day to reach the valley floor and get to the river. The trees had been cleared in places for fields and small farms, and the houses in some places were quite numerous — although with nothing that could really be described as a village. Eventually they stopped at a house with a large animal shed and some outbuildings, where a woman attended by a bevy of small children made them welcome and provided soup with bread, in exchange for which Chev gave her some provisions from Doriden. The dialect was different from that around Revo, and for the most part the Terrans had to rely on Chev with his NIDA to follow what was being said. Her husband was working with neighbors a short distance away along the valley, digging ditches. She was clearly fascinated to meet some of the aliens that she had heard of but so far never seen. It seemed odd to her that they could fly from other stars and yet were traveling in a carriage — but who was she to question the ways of people of whom she knew nothing? The children, as usual, became instant fans of Nim.

  They crossed the Geevar river by a ford a couple of miles farther on that the woman directed them to, where the water widened into shallow sand and pebble beds in a steeply banked glade overhung by enormous trees. On the far side they turned right to follow the river back upstream toward the east, which would bring them to the only way within many miles of continuing northward to the Harzonne. The road was soon engulfed on all sides by dense forest, which closed overhead, sometimes for miles at a time, to form an unbroken canopy. Uberg expressed feelings of relief. He had been concerned about their exposure on the higher, open ground for the last two days, and the risk of being spotted by Terran satellites and other surveillance.

  “Why would they take any particular interest in this carriage?” Jerri asked. “There must be hundreds of things going on in every direction around Revo.”

  Uberg sook his head and didn’t seem reassured. “You just never know with those people,” he said.

  “Maybe that was why Wade chose an area like this to hole up in,” Shearer suggested.

  “That would make sense, I suppose,” Uberg agreed.

  With the onset of the double-sun period of the day, the air in the forest became heavy and humid. There was little to see but immense trunks, curtains of hanging creepers, and tangles of undergrowth receding into shadows. Opening the windows of the carriage let in annoying, bu
zzing insects; closing them again made it hot and oppressive inside. Uberg took of his jacket, loosened his shirt, and arranged some cushions around himself, among which he sank into a doze. On the seat opposite, Jerri lay back to rest her head on Shearer’s shoulder. At least the road now was covered in needles and leaf mold, a lot smoother than the bumpy ride down from the heights earlier that morning.

  “That woman back there,” Jerri said absently after a while. “The soup was probably for her kids.”

  “I’m sure they’ll enjoy the fish and the bird that Chev gave them,” Shearer said.

  “Yes, I know. But even before he said anything about that, we just show up and she’s ladling out dishes.... It reminds me of a lot of places I’ve seen on Earth that people where we come from would think of as a bit backward.”

  “In your field work you mean?”

  “Yes. Parts of southeast Europe, where they’ve always had trouble of some kind or another going on. Places in South America. It’s always the people who have the least who are the most generous. They’ll share their last bowl of soup with you — the way she did. The ones who have the most are the meanest. You’d think it would be the other way around.”

  Shearer wasn’t sure he felt like getting into another philosophical debate. He was on the point of dropping off to sleep himself. “That’s probably how you come to have the most to begin with,” he said, shrugging.

  She dug him in the ribs with an elbow. “Cynic.”

  “Maybe it’s because people here have never had to listen to four-hundred-pound armchair generals who’ve never been in anything riskier than a computer game talking tough about how you have to be mean to survive,” Shearer said. “You’ve seen how Cyreneans played the nuts game.

  “Cyreneans wouldn’t. It’s the way Darco said back at Doriden. They don’t need something outside to give them direction. Somehow they find it inside....” Shearer stopped speaking as the carriage halted. A moment later there was a rap on the side from up above, and Chev’s voice called down.