Asimov’s Future History Volume 13

by Isaac Asimov

  “They couldn’t risk such a search, so they had to see to it that I was returned to Rhodia. And that’s where they took me.”

  “What!” cried Biron. “But that must have been an even greater risk. How did they do that?”

  “I don’t know.” Gillbret passed his thin fingers through his graying hair, and his eyes seemed to be probing uselessly into the backward stretches of his memory. “They anesthetized me, I suppose. That part all blanks out. Past a certain point there is nothing. I can only remember that I opened my eyes and was back in the Bloodsucker; I was in space, just off Rhodia.”

  “The two dead crewmen were still attached by the tow magnets? They hadn’t been removed on the rebellion world?” asked Biron.

  “They were still there.”

  “Was there any evidence at all to indicate that you had been on the rebellion world?”

  “None; except for what I remembered.”

  “How did you know you were off Rhodia?”

  “I didn’t. I knew I was near a planet; the massometer said so. I used the radio again, and this time it was Rhodian ships that came for me. I told my story to the Tyrannian Commissioner of that day, with appropriate modifications. I made no mention of the rebellion world, of course. And I said the meteor had hit just after the last Jump. I didn’t want them to think I knew that a Tyrannian ship could make the Jumps automatically.”

  “Do you think the rebellion world found out that little fact? Did you tell them?”

  “I didn’t tell them. I had no chance. I wasn’t there long enough. Conscious, that is. But I don’t know how long I was unconscious and what they managed to find out for themselves.”

  Biron stared at the visiplate. Judging from the rigidity of the picture it presented, the ship they were on might have been nailed in space. The Remorseless was traveling at the rate of ten thousand miles an hour, but what was that to the immense distances of space. The stars were hard, bright, and motionless. They had a hypnotic quality about them.

  He said, “Then where are we going? I take it you still don’t know where the rebellion world is?”

  “I don’t. But I have an idea who would. I am almost sure I know.” Gillbret was eager about it.

  “Who?”

  “The Autarch of Lingane.”

  “Lingane?” Biron frowned. He had heard the name some time back, it seemed to him, but he had forgotten the connection. “Why he?”

  “Lingane was the last Kingdom captured by the Tyranni. It is not, shall we say, as pacified as the rest. Doesn’t that make sense?”

  “As far as it goes. But how far is that?”

  “If you want another reason, there is your father.”

  “My father?” For a moment Biron forgot that his father was dead. He saw him standing before his mind’s eye, large and alive, but then he remembered and there was that same cold wrench inside him. “How does my father come into this?”

  “He was at court six months ago. I gained certain notions as to what he wanted. Some of his talks with my cousin, Hinrik, I overheard.”

  “Oh, Uncle,” said Artemisia impatiently.

  “My dear?”

  “You had no right to eavesdrop on Father’s private discussions.”

  Gillbret shrugged. “Of course not, but it was amusing, and useful as well.”

  Biron interrupted, “Now, wait. You say it was six months ago that my father was at Rhodia?” He felt excitement mount.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me. While there, did he have access to the Director’s collection of Primitivism? You told me once that the Director had a large library of matters concerning Earth.”

  “I imagine so. The library is quite famous and it is usually made available to distinguished visitors, if they’re interested. They usually aren’t, but your father was. Yes, I remember that very well. He spent nearly a day there.”

  That checked. It had been half a year ago that his father had first asked his help. Biron said, “You yourself know the library well, I imagine.”

  “Of course.”

  “Is there anything in the library that would suggest that there. exists a document on Earth of great military value?”

  Gillbret was blank of face and, obviously, blank of mind.

  Biron said, “Somewhere in the last centuries of prehistoric

  Earth there must have been such a document. I can only tell you that my father thought it to be the most valuable single item in the Galaxy, and the deadliest. I was to have gotten it for him, but I left Earth too soon, and in any case”–his voice faltered–” he died too soon.”

  But Gillbret was still blank. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t understand. My father mentioned it to me first six months ago. He must have learned of it in the library on Rhodia. If you’ve been through it yourself, can’t you tell me what it was he must have learned?”

  But Gillbret could only shake his head.

  Biron said, “Well, continue with your story.”

  Gillbret said, “They spoke of the Autarch of Lingane, your father and my cousin. Despite your father’s cautious phraseology, Biron, it was obvious that the Autarch was the fount and head of the conspiracy.

  “And then”–he hesitated–” there was a mission from Lingane and the Autarch himself was at its head. I–I told him of the rebellion world.”

  “You said a while ago you told nobody,” said Biron.

  “Except the Autarch. I had to know the truth.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Practically nothing. But then, he had to be cautious too. Could he trust me? I might have been working for the Tyranni. How could he know? But he didn’t close the door altogether. It’s our only lead.”

  “Is it?” Biron said. “Then we’ll go to Lingane. One place, I suppose, is like another.”

  Mention of his father had depressed him, and, for the moment, nothing mattered much. Let it be Lingane.

  Let it be Lingane! That was easy to say. But how does one go about pointing the ship. at a tiny speck of light thirty-five light-years away. Two hundred trillion miles. A two with fourteen zeros after it. At ten thousand miles an hour (current cruising speed of the Remorseless) it would take well over two million years to get there.

  Biron leafed through the Standard Galactic Ephemeris with something like despair. Tens of thousands of stars were listed in detail, with their positions crammed into three figures. There were hundreds of pages of these figures, symbolized by the Greek letters () (rho), () (theta), and () (phi).

  (rho) was the distance from the Galactic Center in parsecs; (theta), the angular separation, along the plane of the Galactic Lens from the Standard Galactic Baseline (the line, that is, which connects the Galactic Center and the sun of the planet, Earth); (phi) the angular separation from the Baseline in the plane perpendicular to that of the Galactic Lens, the two latter measurements being expressed in radians. Given those three figures, one could locate any star accurately in all the vast immensity of space.

  That is, on a given date. In addition to the star’s position on the standard day for which all the data were calculated, one had to know the star’s proper motion, both speed and direction. It was a small correction. comparatively, but necessary. A million miles is virtually nothing compared with stellar distances, but it is a long way with a ship.

  There was, of course, the question of the ship’s own position. One could calculate the distance from Rhodia by the reading of the massometer, or, more correctly, the distance from Rhodia’s sun, since this far out in space the sun’s gravitational field drowned out that of any of its planets. The direction they were traveling with reference to the Galactic Baseline was more difficult to determine. Biron had to locate two known stars other than Rhodia’s sun. From their apparent positions and the known distance from Rhodia’s sun, he could plot their actual position.

  It was roughly done but, he felt sure, accurately enough. Knowing his own position and that of Lingane’s sun,
he had only to adjust the controls for the proper direction and strength of the hyperatornic thrust.

  Biron felt lonely and tense. Not frightened! He rejected the word. But tense, definitely. He was deliberately calculating the elements of the Jump for a time six hours later. He wanted plenty of time to check his figures. And perhaps there might be the chance for a nap. He had dragged the bed makings out of the cabin and it was ready for him now.

  The other two were, presumably, sleeping in the cabin. He told himself that that was a good thing and that he wanted nobody around bothering him, yet when he heard the small sound of bare feet outside, he looked up with a certain eagerness.

  “Hello,” he said, “why aren’t you sleeping?”

  Artemisia stood in the doorway, hesitating. She said, in a small voice, “Do you mind if I come in? Will I be bothering you?”

  “It depends on what you do.”

  “I’ll try to do the right things.”

  She seemed too humble, Biron thought suspiciously, and then the reason for it came out.

  “I’m awfully frightened,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

  He wanted to say no, not at all, but it didn’t come out that way. He smiled sheepishly, and said, “Sort of.”

  Oddly enough, that comforted her. She knelt down on the floor beside him and looked at the thick volumes opened before him and at the sheets of calculations.

  “They had all these books here?”

  “You bet. They couldn’t pilot a ship without them.”

  “And you understand all that?”

  “Not all that. I wish I did. I hope I understand enough. We’ll have to Jump to Lingane, you know.”

  “Is that hard to do?”

  “No, not if you know the figures, which are all here, and have the controls, which are all there, and if you have experience, which I haven’t. For instance, it should be done in several Jumps, but I’m going to try it in one because there’ll be less chance of trouble, even though it means a wasteful use of energy.”

  He shouldn’t tell her; there was no point ill telling her; it would be cowardly to frighten her; and she’d be hard to handle if she got really frightened, panicky frightened. He kept telling himself all that and it did no good. He wanted to share it with somebody. He wanted part of it off his own mind.

  He said, “There are some things I should know that I don’t. Things like the mass density between here and Lingane affect the course of the Jump, because that mass density is what controls the curvature of this part of the universe. The Ephemeris–that’s this big book here–mentions the curvature corrections that must be made in certain standard Jumps, and from those you’re supposed to be able to calculate your own particular corrections. But then if you happen to have a super giant within ten light-years, all bets are off. I’m not even sure if I used the computer correctly.”

  “But what would happen if you were wrong?”

  “We could reenter space too close to Lingane’s sun.”

  She considered that, then said, “You have no idea how much better I feel.”

  “After what I’ve just said?”

  “Of course. In my bunk I simply felt helpless and lost with so much emptiness in all directions. Now I know that we’re going somewhere and that the emptiness is under our control.”

  Biron was pleased. How different she was. “I don’t know about it’s being under our control.”

  She stopped him. “It is. I know you can handle the ship.”

  And Biron decided that maybe he could at that.

  Artemisia had tucked her long unclad legs under her and sat facing him. She had only her filmy underclothes for cover, but seemed unconscious of the fact, though Biron was definitely not.

  She said, “You know, I had an awfully queer sensation in the bunk, almost as I were floating. That was one of the things that frightened me. Every time I’d turn, I’d give a queer little jump into the air and then flop back slowly as if there were springs in the air holding me back.”

  “You weren’t sleeping in a top bunk, were you?”

  “Yes, I was. The bottom ones give me claustrophobia, with another mattress six inches over your head.”

  Biron laughed. “Then that explains it. The ship’s gravitational force is directed toward its base, and falls off as we move away from it. In the top bunk you were probably twenty or thirty pounds lighter than on the floor. Were you ever on a passenger liner? A really big one?”

  “Once. When Father and I visited Tyrann last year.”

  “Well, on the liners they have the gravitation in all parts of the ship directed toward the outer hull, so that the long axis of the ship is always ‘up,’ no matter where you are. That’s why the motors of one of those big babies are always lined up in a cylinder running right along the long axis. No gravity there.”

  “It must take an awful lot of power to keep an artificial gravity going.”

  “Enough to power a small town.”

  “There isn’t any danger of our running short of fuel, is there?”

  “Don’t worry about that. Ships are fueled by the total conversion of mass to energy. Fuel is the last thing we’ll run out of. The outer hull will wear away first.”

  She was facing him. He noted that her face had been cleaned of its make-up and wondered how that had been done; probably with a handkerchief and as little of the drinking water as she could manage. She didn’t suffer as a result, for her clear white skin was the more startlingly perfect against the black of her hair and eyes. Her eyes were very warm, thought Biron.

  The silence had lasted a little too long. He said hurriedly, “You don’t travel very much, do you? I mean, you were on a liner only once?”

  She nodded. “Once too often. If we hadn’t gone to Tyrann, that filthy chamberlain wouldn’t have seen me and–I don’t want to talk about that.”

  Biron let it. go. He said, “Is that usual? I mean, not traveling.”

  “I’m afraid so. Father is always hopping around on state visits, opening agricultural expositions, dedicating buildings. He usually just makes some speech that Aratap writes for him. As for the rest of us, however, the more we stay in the Palace, the better the Tyranni like it. Poor Gillbret! The one and only time he left Rhodia was to attend the Khan’s coronation as Father’s representative. They’ve never let him get into a ship again.”

  Her eyes were downcast and, absently, she pleated the material of Biron’s sleeve where it ended at the wrist. She said, “Biron.”

  “Yes–Arta?” He stumbled a bit, but it came out.

  “Do you think Uncle Oil’s story can be true?”

  “Do you suppose it could be his imagination? He’s been brooding about the Tyranni for years, and he’s never been able to do anything, of course, except to rig up spy beams, which is only childish, and he knows it. He may have built himself a daydream and, over the years, gradually come to believe in it. I know him, you see.”

  “Could be, but let’s follow it up a little. We can travel to Lingane, anyway.”

  They were closer to one another. He could have reached out and touched her, held her in his arms, kissed her.

  And he did so.

  It was a complete non sequitur. Nothing, it seemed to Biron, had led to it. One moment they were discussing Jumps and gravity and Gillbret, and the next she was soft and silky in his arms and soft silky on his lips.

  His first impulse was to say he was sorry, to go through all the silly motions of apology, but when he drew away and would have spoken, she still made no attempt at escape but rested her head in the crook of his left arm. Her eyes remained closed.

  So he said nothing at all but kissed her again, slowly and thoroughly. It was the best thing he could have done, and at the time he knew it.

  Finally she said, a bit dreamily, “Aren’t you hungry? I’ll bring you some of the concentrate and warm it for you. Then, if you want to sleep, I can keep an eye on things for you. And–and I’d better put on more of my clothes.”

  She turned
as she was about to go out the door. “The food concentrate tastes very nice after you get used to it. Thank you for getting it.”

  Somehow that, rather than the kisses, was the treaty of peace between them.

  When Gillbret entered the control room, hours later, he showed no surprise at finding Biron and Artemisia lost in a foolish kind of conversation. He made no remarks about the fact that Biron’s arm was about his niece’s waist.

  He said, “When are we Jumping, Biron?”

  “In half an hour,” said Biron.

  The half hour passed; the controls were set; conversation languished and died.

  At zero time Biron drew a deep breath and yanked a lever the full length of its arc, from left to right.

  It was not as it had been on the liner. The Remorseless was smaller and the Jump was consequently less smooth. Biron staggered, and for a split second things wavered.

  And then they were smooth and solid again.

  The stars in the visiplate had changed. Biron rotated the ship, so that the star field lifted, each star moving in a stately arc. One star appeared finally, brilliantly white and more than a point. It was a tiny sphere, a burning speck of sand. Biron caught it, steadied the ship before it was lost again, and turned the telescope upon it, throwing in the spectroscopic attachment.

  He turned again to the Ephemeris, and checked under the column headed “Spectral Characteristics.” Then he got out of the pilot’s chair and said, “It’s still too far. I’ll have to nudge up to it. But, anyway, that’s Lingane right ahead.”

  It was the first Jump he had ever made, and it was successful.

  Twelve: The Autarch Comes

  THE AUTARCH OF Lingane pondered the matter, but his cool, well-trained features scarcely creased under the impact of thought.

  “And you waited forty-eight hours to tell me,” he said.