Harvest of Stars

by Poul Anderson

  Had others noticed? Might somebody raise an alarm? When the Sepo turned around again would he prove more observant than most people? Between the shoulderblades, Kyra ached with tension. If her gamble failed—Contingency plans called for overt action, but Rinndalir had been vague about its nature. Would he improvise? Or didn’t he want her to know, because she would object?

  She pushed the questions away. This wasn’t a bad bet. She passed around a cargo walloper. Its bulk screened view of her, if she plotted her course properly down the tunnel. The ache began to lessen. She wiped a hand across her face. Best not be seen sweating. Best be only another consorte, bound on some unimportant errand. Blend into the L-5 crowds, as no Lunarian could. The Sepo comandante might well have been briefed on the entire situation, including her part in it, but he wouldn’t have put her image on the screens with a “Wanted” notice.

  At the nearest fahrweg she commenced her trek to the outer levels. She broke it at a minor industrial section she knew, searched out a public phone, and called Tamura’s office.

  The live operator who answered was a surprise, and was surprised in her turn at Kyra’s request. “I’m sorry, Mister Tamura isn’t in,” she said unsteadily, in accented English. “He is … detained. I thought everyone had heard.”

  A fist clamped on Kyra. Somehow she replied, “No, I had not. I’ve been outside on a long job.” Quickly, before the operator would have time to think whether there had been any such task of late: “Could I speak to the señorita, his daughter?”

  The operator’s eyes probed across the transmission line. Kyra shifted position a little, to make sure the pickup got her insignia. The operator sat motionless a few seconds, distinct seconds. Balancing troth against suspicion and fear? Then: “Miss Tamura is on leave of absence. She may be at home.”

  “Gracias.” Kyra switched off and spent a minute rallying her own wits. She decided to go to the apartment in person. Its communications were surely monitored. (Like-wise the office’s, but with hundreds of calls in and out every day, plus computer interactions, hers had a fairly large chance of not being flagged or, at least, not reaching a human evaluator’s attention for hours.) Probably, though, the place wasn’t under physical surveillance. The Sepo had limited numbers in a huge, diverse, sullenly hostile community. They’d focus on potential troublemakers. Eiko Tamura was about as shy and inoffensive a soul as you’d ever come upon.

  Unless you got to know her well. Kyra proceeded down weight and pressure levels, along multifarious passages, blindly across parks and gardens and graceful Belt River Bridge. In the throngs were bound to be several dear friends of hers. She hoped desperately she wouldn’t encounter any.

  Like many doors, the Tamuras’ was marked by an emblem as well as a number. Eiko had painted this. Kyra stood for a moment before the familiar lily while memories tumbled over her. What if nobody was inside? How long could she halfway safely hang around waiting? She touched the plate and confronted the scanner.

  The door opened. She stumbled through. Eiko was there, small in kimono and obi. They embraced. “Hush,” Kyra whispered into the ear below her, “don’t say a word. I’m on the dodge.” Sensing no one else, the door closed.

  Faintly fragrant, loosely gathered hair brushed Kyra’s lips as Eiko nodded. They disengaged. Eiko’s countenance was drawn. Tears trembled on her eyelashes. She took Kyra by the hand and led her into a well-remembered room at the rear.

  Paper, marked with sketches or scribbled words, littered a desk on which Chujo slept beside the computer. The cat, who was apt to be out most times prowling the byways, woke, got to his feet, and stared. Kyra scratched him on the neck, mostly a reflex on her part till he rubbed his head against her palm and bestowed a wisp of comfort. Eiko sat down at the computer. It had no exterior connection; some of what she entered was for no one else to know. Welcome, welcome, she keyed into the screen. I have been so afraid for you.

  She rose. Kyra took the chair, thinking how ridiculous it would be if they bounced back and forth like a couple of ping-pong balls. No time to spare, she tapped. The Sepo may have a sonic planted on you, but I’d guess that’s all I gather they’ve jailed your father. Is he otherwise all right? She glanced at Eiko, who nodded, and smiled to say, “Good” while she continued: I’m here with a Lunarian party to fetch Guthrie. Do you have him? The nod was violent. Wonderful! We’ll need to smuggle him out. Can do?

  Eiko signed her to yield the chair, took it, and wrote: Perhaps. Follow me.

  Kyra nudged her aside. Bring something to carry him in. She hadn’t, because if she’d been stopped at the ship an empty bag would have suggested too much. Besides, her gang had no idea what the circumstances were. Better to act on the spot.

  Did Eiko just barely frown? That is already at the hiding place.

  Oh, hell, I’m sorry, Kyra wanted to say. Idiotic of me not to realize you’d think ahead.

  Eiko gestured her to wait, and left. Kyra played with Chujo. Stroking him, his sensuous response, raised other memories. Repeat, she’d learned her lesson, she was not about to let a fling scramble her judgment. But lechery offered a refuge from doubts and dreads. Not that Rinndalir was any coldly murderous Valencia. …

  Eiko returned in coverall and boots. Kyra bade Chujo farewell and the women departed.

  Soon Kyra felt puzzled. Where were they bound? Eiko took the nearest fahrweg inward as far as it went, which was to Marginal Village—cheap rentals for those who could well tolerate weight that low or were willing to take the consequences, and who did not have growing children nor intend to. An obese man hailed her in the passage. Kyra recalled the monster in Quark Fair and set her teeth. But this was simply a friend. Eiko gave him a slurred reply and hurried on. The next fahrweg took them lengthwise to a cluster of nanotanks, where they boarded a radial that debouched at an aerodynamic testing chamber, deserted now when much activity was suspended.

  Of course, Kyra concluded. Eiko was taking the least populated route, however zigzag, to wherever she was bound. Thus they avoided more than a single meeting, and it casual.

  They left the system at a stop in Trevorrow Preserve on the half-g level and walked along a path that wound among grassy meadows and hillocks, upward to meet a sky that was blue fluorescence and illusory clouds. Here and there a solitary spruce, maple, elm rustled in a breeze that bore earth odors, Earth, memories, needs a billion years old? … The area lay deserted. “Now we can talk,” Eiko said. “Now I can truly bid you welcome, Kyra.”

  They stopped to doubly clasp hands and smile through vision that blurred a little. But time scissored behind them. Kyra let go and strode onward. “You did retrieve him,” she said. Her pulse thuttered. “How? What’s happened?”

  When the spare account was finished: “Oh, splendid, superb, querida. What nullhead ever claimed poets are no use for anything but poetry? Aeschylus was a soldier, Omar was a scientist, Jeffers was a stonemason—”

  “You are a pilot,” Eiko said.

  Kyra laughed. “Yes, and a competent cook, a ferocious poker player, and a pretty good lay. But a poet? No. Doggerel.” She sobered. The mirth had been half hysterical, she recognized. “Bueno, as for my end of the story—” She outlined it in a few words, omitting the personal details. “Once I have Guthrie, I could go straight back to the ship, but that looks mucho risky.”

  “It would be,” Eiko agreed in her temperate fashion. “I have told you how they are working their way through the kuni—the colony, in search of him. The sentry might not stop you from embarking, but he would call his superiors and they would forbid that you leave until they had checked everything.”

  Kyra nodded. “Right. Instead, I’ll pass Guthrie on to the Lunarians, and stay behind when they go.”

  “And then?”

  Kyra shrugged. “Then Rinndalir programs the operation.”

  Trumpets: He can, he can!

  Undertone: What if he couldn’t? For him, no great loss. The North Americans would scarcely do more than deport him and his following; i
f he insisted, Kyra might as well accompany them. But Guthrie—The Selenarchs would consider it an interesting game, to spar with an anti-Guthrie who believed he had cinched his power tight.

  Heed the trumpets. What else cried hope?

  Eiko walked silent a distance before she said, “If Guthrie-san is willing, let it happen.”

  Kyra heard the trouble. “You don’t like the prospect?”

  Eiko shook her head. “I feel too uncertain about what will come of this. If only we could free him by some other means.” She sighed. “But we have no choice, do we?”

  Kyra swallowed a retort. Why should the Lunarians give themselves this effort if they didn’t want Guthrie back at the helm of Fireball? Granted, they saw that as being best for them; but it was an enlightened self-interest.

  Then why should Kyra feel irritated with dear Eiko? Because her own misgivings had been stirred? It hurt that she could think of nothing more to say.

  In silence they reached the Tree. “I will get him,” Eiko said within its gloaming. “You keep watch at the bottom rest stage.”

  Kyra had looked forward to the climb, working off tension, finding again for a moment the peace that dwelt on the stupendous, whispery heights. Eiko was right, though. “Muy bien.”

  Standing alone on the platform after her companion vanished upward, in green light and shade, in the warmth and sweet odors that the ruddy roughness breathed out, Kyra let her mind freefall. Why did this colossus exist? Scientific research and development, yes. Simply the bio-mechanisms of fluid transport through such a gradient were a special field of study. But surely the same things could have been learned in easier ways, without hauling so much mass here that L-5 needed modifications to preserve dynamic stability. (Moon dust, comet ice, can these bones live?) Parks and gardens and the great preserve had their rationales, environmental benefit, recreation, esthetics; cycles of light and dark, heat and cold, summer and winter kept steady the rhythms of life; tricks of geometry, electronics, randomization gave richness, surprise, a sense of this world being more than walls; yes, yes. But what was the need for a living thing inhumanly huge, of strength to endure inhumanly long?

  She harked back to stones whirling frosty amidst stars, never betrodden before she found them; sunrise rousing pinnacles out of shadow from a horizon-long chasm on Mars; storms in Jupiter, seen from a shelter on a glacial moon around which radiation seethed, lovely swirl-patterns that could swallow all Earth; jewelwork Saturn; Gothic needles piercing an ocherous Titanian sky—How much of yonder adventure and majesty had she really won to by herself? Always it was the machines, suit or ship or outpost fortress, sensor and computer and effector, that nurtured and enabled. How much machine had she become, who had never yet felt life quicken beneath her heart nor even wanted to?

  Always what she found was barren. Dim fossils in Martian rocks. Tales told across light-years by the robot probes and tales brought home by download Guthrie—no, anti-Guthrie; no, that difference was meaningless—tales of one other living world, oceanic life, which barely clung to the shores while doomsday closed in. Two more worlds that might evolve further, millions of years hence, or might not. Everywhere else, as far as the seeking had reached, inanimate matter; and beyond that, silence, except for the muttering of the stars.

  Did the Tree have its roots in despair?

  A movement within the green jarred Kyra free of her thoughts. Eiko had returned.

  She stepped out onto the stage and, with a half smile, nodded at the daypack she now carried. Kyra’s hand shook as she undid the flap. Eyestalks glided up. “Hi, there,” grated the basso. “Grand show, lassie.”

  “Jefe, oh, jefe,” she sobbed.

  His blunt practicality struck the turmoil out of her. With it went the somberness—irrational, irrelevant. “Eiko’s told me a bit. You’re here with Rinndalir and his merry men. What next?”

  “I, I turn you over to them and … they take you to Luna.”

  “How do you propose to do this? I can’t see the Sepo letting him flit off carrying me in his hot little. They may not know exactly what their dragnet is after, but they’ll stall him while they check with their boss, and he’ll call Quito, and—my alter ego will handle any diplomatic awkwardness later. I would.”

  “Of course.” Kyra explained her intention. “I hope we can bring it off.”

  “If not, well, too bad.” The voice grew concerned. “But seems like you’ll be left behind.”

  “I don’t know how I could sneak back aboard unnoticed and, if they learn I’ve been loose, or if they think I’m a passenger the Lunarians are taking along—”

  “They’ll want more information. Yeah. How’ll you manage?”

  “I know my way around this hulk.”

  “I can help,” Eiko said calmly. “She had best not stay at my home for any length of time, but several obscure families would give her shelter and say nothing about it.”

  “God damn that I can’t hug you both,” Guthrie growled. “Once this mess is untangled, anything Fireball has is yours.”

  “No need, sir,” Eiko answered. “Troth.”

  Which she had never given, Kyra recalled. But her father had.

  “We’d better move,” the pilot said.

  Eiko nodded, slipped off the pack, looked into the lenses and murmured, “Un yoi. Good luck.” A wistful smile. “When reality cuts through, poets can no more find words than anybody else.” She closed the pack and gave it to Kyra, who donned it. They descended.

  “I will go and arrange a refuge for you,” Eiko said. “Come to my home at—1700? I will be back by then, or earlier. Can you stay free meanwhile?”

  Kyra grinned. “I’m well-versed in skulking.” Actually, she’d saunter around as if she had ordinary business, through sections where embarrassing encounters were unlikely. Excitement hammered in her, almost joyously. “Hasta la vista.” She went out the torii gate to meadows and a simulation of sky.

  She had herself proposed and described to Rinndalir the area to which the Lunarians demanded to be taken. It was approximately at the one-sixth-g level, agricultural, mostly for giant corn and soybean plants. Machines tended it, but visitors and passersby were not so rare that she would attract any special attention. Rinndalir was to declare that he had a tentative idea of putting a business he owned into partnership here, to raise recently developed pharmaceutical crops. It might be preferable to making new fields in the Moon. Before broaching the scheme to the L-5 directors, he wanted to inspect the site, test whether the basic conditions were suitable, judge whether Lunarian personnel would agree to stay in such an environment. The abrupt beginning fitted the common Earthside image of his race. He had assured her he could carry it off.

  Emerging from a corridor onto open deck, she saw him, his men, their escort, and half a dozen curious onlookers apart from them, across ten meters of duramoss. The stalks beyond were like a stockade wall, intensely green, immensely high, darkening and dwarfing everything human. But this was no halidom of the Tree. Air hung tropical, rank with fertilizer smells. Heaven was a ceiling studded with grow lamps. Beneath their dull glare a cultivator chugged along the turf, summoned to some job by an overseer that resembled a man-sized insect.

  Go. Kyra set her poker face and walked forth. Rinndalir observed her first. He stood tall above Arren and Isabu, who hunkered over the instruments they had taken from their cases. His own features remained inexpressive, but platinum hair brushed marble cheeks as he made the least of nods. A Sepo noticed her, unthinkingly touched the butt of his stun pistol, mopped his wet brow and glowered covertly at the Selenarch. What had seemed like challenging, maybe dangerous duty had turned into an uncomfortable bore.

  Kyra joined the spectators. Had they chanced individually by or had they tagged after this unique company? It didn’t matter, as long as none of them knew her. Arren glanced up. A meter wavered slightly in his grasp. He busied himself again. Isabu kept stolid.

  After a few more minutes, Rinndalir spoke to them, then to the squad lead
er. Kyra couldn’t hear what he said, but knew: words to the effect of “I think we have done as much as we can. We shall go home now. … Nay, call your chief if you wish, but I will decline any offer of hospitality.”

  Kyra manufactured a yawn and strolled back the way she had come. Let it be obvious that she had decided not to waste time on them. At one-sixth-g Guthrie weighed little, but how she felt the mass of him!

  The passage was bare, drably painted. Machines didn’t care. Along it was the door to a lavabo. Kyra went in. As was customary in L-5, it was unisex. And it was empty. She took a toilet stall and waited. A ventilator whirred unnecessarily loudly.

  A tap sounded. Her blood shouted reply. She opened. Arren came in. For a moment her feeling was disappointment. If only Rinndalir—But of course not. He who excused himself en route to the ship needed to be carrying an instrument case. Evidently no Sepo accompanied him. Had that happened, Arren would have outstayed the man; trust Rinndalir to make plain he would not tolerate the insult of outright spying. As was, the Lunarian had headed for the stall that read “Occupied.”

  His eyes glinted. “Have you him?” he breathed.

  Kyra nodded. The pack already rested on a shelf. Quickly, they made the exchange, Arren’s instruments and tools into it, Guthrie into the case. It was fairly well screened against electronics—wouldn’t stand a close check, but in that event the crapshoot was over anyway. Most of the Sepo were seeking their quarry in chambers and passages distressingly numerous. They couldn’t think of everything. Rinndalir’s tongue should keep these few and the officer to whom they reported from thinking of this.

  Just before the lid closed on him, Guthrie waved an eyestalk at her. She guessed his thought. “Yeah, I gained my freedom in a john. It figures.” She began to laugh. Arren cast her an inquisitive glance but didn’t linger. Kyra must remain for some minutes, till the others were well away. She stood alone and laughed on.