Harvest of Stars

by Poul Anderson

  The picture from Russia disappeared. Gentle, pulsing colors flowed in the cylinder like clouds. A female voice came forth. “Hola, Kyra.”

  “Saludos,” the old woman responded ironically. Her self-possession cracked. She trembled. “Eiko—is that you, Eiko?”

  “A part of what was me is a part of what is us,” the other said low. “We were never this close, you and I, in our lives.” Anxiety: “Is something wrong, dear?”

  “No. No. But I hadn’t realized—suddenly hearing you, Eiko—”

  “A shock. Oh, I am sorry. Shall we go?”

  Kyra winced. “Don’t. Por favor, stay. I’m sorry. That I didn’t ask to … meet you.” Tears coursed soundlessly down over her cheekbones. “I, I told myself you were too busy running the world—”

  “Not that.”

  “Being the world.”

  “Nor that. Think of Anson. Take him away, and what is Demeter?”

  “You’d manage jolly well without me,” Guthrie growled. “That better be true.”

  “Hush,” the other admonished him. “Go on, Kyra.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t … doesn’t matter,” the old woman faltered, “unless you feel hurt that I steered shy of you.”

  “We wondered.”

  Kyra reached hands toward the multi. They shook. “The—forgive me—the rest of the downloads who came to Centauri, they terminated. Once they’d finished their duties, th-they wanted an ending. I imagined you, Eiko—I’d gotten used to the idea of my half-self in there, but you, Eiko, you who loved the living world so much, now trapped—”

  “It isn’t like that, Kyra, not like that at all,” went the answer, softly and urgently. “We live. Sunshine and rain, daylight and stars, a river, a flower, a bird aloft, life, everywhere life. And when we grow lonely for humanness, when we fear we may be losing it, there is Anson.”

  “You make me want to keep going, you do,” said Guthrie. A man would have blinked away tears of his own.

  “Did you really not know this, Kyra?”

  “In a way,” the old woman admitted. “I hoped. But I suppose I—I dared not ask straight out.”

  “And you did have your days full.”

  “Brimful,” Guthrie said.

  Kyra’s smile quivered. “At last I’ve dared. Gracias, gracias.”

  “The thanks are to you, querida,” murmured the other.

  “Did you come for this?”

  “And to bid farewell.” A sigh as of wind in leaves. “If only it were summer. Anson would carry you into the garden for me.”

  “That’s all right. I remember many beautiful summers. Thank you for them.”

  “Peace be upon you, Kyra.”

  The colors vanished. After a moment, Guthrie unplugged and went back to the bedside.

  Kyra breathed quickly, shallowly. “And gracias to you, jefe,” she whispered, “for that—and everything else—”

  “Same to you,” he replied. “But it tired you empty, didn’t it?”

  “’Fraid so.” She lay back and closed her eyes.

  His robot fingers took her wrist, touched the bracelet, lowered the bed. “Would you like some music, sweet-heart?”

  “Yes, that’d be good.”

  “What?”

  Kyra smiled, her eyes still shut. “Surprise me.”

  He returned to the multi, summoned a list, scanned it, and chose. Dvořák’s Fourth Symphony gladdened the air. He sat down again and took her hand. She slept. He waited.

  Hugh and Charissa entered. Guthrie hailed them in an undertone, released Kyra’s hand, and rose. He bent low above her, as if he had lips to kiss her brow, then said, “Adiós” and departed into a day gone dark.

  An hour later, Kyra woke, alone in the room. She raised herself to an elbow and looked out a window. Through the gray that filled it tumbled white flakes, they had already covered her garden, they were the first snow that ever fell in this land.

  60

  In my DNA I am largely human, and therefore it is I who compose this message. You have misunderstood; your concern for your species on Earth is unfounded. They are prosperous, free to lead lives serene or frenetic as they individually wish, subject to reasonable restraints much less than what their primitive ancestors knew. A detailed account follows. If their numbers continue to diminish, be aware that their heritage is preserved in the communion of intelligence of which I am an avatar who now returns to its wholeness.

  AFAR, ZAMOK SABYEL’ shone against night, silvery sunlit, intricate and exquisite. From the facets of its hub radiated spokes, a spiderwork of cables and tubeways between them, out to the rim, which sparkled with a thousand lights and lighted ports. Four long, dark wings, solar collectors, stretched beyond, scything across Milky Way and stars as the jewel spun. Among the constellations lustered blue Demeter, sixty degrees ahead in the same great path.

  When you approached, its size and might overtowered you: a hundred kilometers’ breadth, monstrously armed with missiles and ray projectors, attended by two score guardian robotic vessels. Those defenses were against flying stones, but could as easily destroy ships.

  Erling Davis directed his onward without fear. Today he, his associates, and his technicians were envoys, their persons inviolate. For all that, wonder touched him. Until now he had only known this stronghold by images, only dealt with it infrequently by communicator beam. Few Demetrians had ever walked yonder halls.

  He mustered necessary arrogance, conversed with Station Control, brought his vessel into the hub and docked her. Maybe an ambassador shouldn’t be his own pilot, but he was who he was; besides, he and Guthrie thought it would gain him respect, and who could fore measure the quantum by which that might move Lunarian minds?

  When his party passed through locks to the interior, they found an honor guard waiting, tall men in form-fitting black and red, armed with shock pistols. The leader gave dignified salutation and conducted them to a fahrweg reserved for them. It went down a spoke to the rim and let them out near the apartments they would occupy. The leader told them that if they desired any information or whatever else the quarters could not supply, they had but to phone a number he gave them. No doubt they wished to rest and refresh themselves undisturbed. Three hours hence they would go to a reception and supper—except for Captain Davis, whom the Lady Commander invited to join her at that time. The leader touched his brow and led his men away.

  Davis was a little disappointed in the accommodations. He had expected something more exotic. Well, maybe his hosts wanted their guests to feel at home. Certainly they had provided every comfort and convenience; and after the long, hard boost from Odysseus, Lunar weight was a blessing. For a while the Demetrians mingled and talked, then Davis withdrew to his billet. There he showered, flopped out on the bed, surveyed what the entertainment database had to offer, and ran an old production of The Girls From Aegea. Lunarian arts were interesting, often weirdly beautiful, but too alien to relax him.

  In due course he dressed. The uniform of his recent naval service would have been appropriate, but MacCannon’s Kids had been irregulars—however crewman-like their discipline—identified simply by a brassard. Davis donned current high style on Demeter: headband around shoulder-length red hair, fringed buckskin tunic, linen trousers dyed weld-and-woad green, moccasins, sheath knife. Usually he wore a coverall, if he wore anything other than body paint. However, this evenwatch he represented his world.

  At the time appointed the escort returned. Two officers guided Davis. The passages through which he went fascinated him. Their opulence belonged to a wholly spaceborne civilization, sparing of mass, lavish with energy. Trellises of variously colored alloys, the lattices twined in curves that never repeated, lifted on either side to form the arcades giving access to three tiers of shops, work-steads, bistros, gambling dens, amusement parlors, and places less recognizable. In deck and overhead, light-shapes danced to a music that ranged from gut-deep basses to blade-sharp keening on no scale he could name. Curtains of radiance rippled in archways
. Small globes of ball lightning whirled inside a transparent column. Along an uninhabited stretch he went surrounded by aurora, and the single sound was the hiss of it. Elsewhere a passage broadened into a plaza at whose middle sprang, cascaded, and roared a fountain of fire.

  Though thronged, the ways felt uncrowded. Lunarians did not jostle, gesticulate, or speak loudly. Their clothing was little changed from the richness of olden days, but on every left breast, male, female, juvenile, he saw the badge of a phyle. They came from all over the Alpha Centaurian System, apart from Demeter and the lesser bodies claimed by Demetrians. While Zamok Sabyel’ was the castle of Phyle Ithar, it was also a city, entrepôt, market, cultural center, rendezvous for the entire race: wherefore Arcen and Yanir had combined to try storming it.

  In one other detail, costume had altered. Most women wore an elegant stiletto. Most men wore a rapier. Those were not tools like Davis’. They were sometimes bloodied.

  At the end he came to a door that was an iridescent sheet, three meters high. The bulkhead around it resembled mosaic, but the gaunt, big-eyed figures moved. The officers gestured and the door retracted. They ushered Davis through an entry decorated with calligraphy to the room beyond. There they saluted and turned back.

  That chamber was a hemiellipsoid some twenty meters in length. From planters lining it, flowers, ferns, and trees grew lavishly, many arching halfway across the overhead or drooping down to form arbors. Lilies, azaleas, orchids, rhododendrons, bougainvillea, heliconia splashed rainbows into the green and scented the subtropical air. Willow, bamboo, dwarf maple soughed and swayed in ventilation’s breezes. Among them were cages wherein sang thrush, canary, nightingale. Butterflies fluttered at liberty. The only furnishings were a couch and table, the materials of them thin and mostly transparent, making them stand half lost against the garden. But, a shattering contrast, at the center of the rosy-hued deck gaped a well, sealed off with hyalon, that looked straight out into space. Passing it on his way to the couch, Davis saw the stars wheel by in their multitudes.

  Rusaleth of Ithar rose and came fluidly to meet him. She matched his height, slender and supple as a whip save for the subtleties of hips and bosom. Hair fell in platinum waves past great amber eyes, Athene-chiseled features, long throat set off by a gold filigree collar. Her skin seemed twice white against an ankle-length deep-red velvyl gown. She bore no weapon that he could see.

  Her greeting used musically accented English: “Welcome, my lord Captain Davis.”

  He saluted after the manner of his kind, carefully took the hand she extended to him, and said, “Most gracious Lady Commander,” which was the best he could do. This close, he saw the traces of her years upon her, but they were slight, nearly invisible in the soft illumination.

  Both stayed on their feet, common practice in low weight until sitting down was definitely indicated. Rusaleth’s smile relieved the cold purity of her countenance. In fact, he soon found that a bewildering play of expression was hers when she chose. “May your journey hither have been pleasant,” she said.

  Davis grinned lopsidedly. “Well, it was quick, Lady Commander, once this meeting had been agreed on. We didn’t want to keep you waiting,” and risk a mercurial shift of mood or politics.

  “Have you satisfaction in your lodging?”

  “It’s luxurious. You’re receiving us very hospitably, especially on such short and, uh, pressing notice.”

  Rusaleth arched her brows. “We are not stupid, lord Captain, which we would have been did we refuse.” Again she smiled, brilliantly, and took his elbow. “Come, here is refreshment before we dine.”

  “Thank you.” Davis accompanied her to the table. It bore a crystal decanter, filled goblets, and delicacies. She raised a glass. He followed suit.

  “Uwach yeia,” she toasted. “Aloft.”

  “Happy endings,” he responded. Rims clinked together. When he sipped, the wine was aromatic, spicy, quick to make itself felt.

  “Happy ending to our negotiations?” Rusaleth asked.

  “What else?” Davis countered. “Otherwise, Lady Commander, there won’t be much happiness for anybody.”

  “‘Negotiation’ may be a euphemism. Some would give to that which you bring the name ‘ultimatum.’”

  “My lady!”

  She captured his gaze. “Without offense, Captain, I deem you ill suited to unctuous words and devious maneuvers. The lord Guthrie knows his folk. If he chose you to speak for him to me—face to face rather than I with him over a time-lagged beam—then he intends a blunt conversation.”

  Best meet this attack on its own ground. “Pardon me if I’m no diplomat, Lady Commander. It’s not my regular job.”

  She nodded. “Well do I know.” Her tone was amicable. “You led your men shrewdly and valiantly”—after Guthrie decided to aid her phyle in its deadly quarrel with the Arcen and Yanir—“though they were but engineers and the like, virgin to combat. Certain of your tactics were naught less than lovely.”

  He grimaced. That was not how he would describe using superlasers, explosives, rocks, and spaceship jets as weapons, or systematically exploiting the low acceleration tolerance of his opponents.

  “You are a warrior born,” Rusaleth finished.

  Davis shook his head. “No, my lady, never. I improvised, and I hated every millisecond. If it had been a real war, like what the histories tell of on Earth, instead of a few short actions, I wonder if I could have stood it. No, I’m just a spatial engineer.”

  “Spoken like the lord Guthrie, with an ingenuousness I suspect is about as genuine as his,” she said merrily. “Are you perchance of his blood?”

  “Yes, he, alive, was an ancestor of mine. But that’s true of most Demetrians by now, I suppose.”

  “A lusty breed.” She drank.

  Davis did too. Tingling in his veins, the wine gave impulse to resolution. “With respect, Lady Commander, since you take me for a charging bull, may I ask when we can start discussions? That wasn’t made clear in the remote communication.”

  “We have commenced.”

  He stared.

  Her mien shifted from light to serious, if not quite grave. “You and I shall sup unattended and speak frankly. Can we arrive at agreement, all else is pro forma. Can we not—But that hour, that woe.”

  “Uh … well, you have the authority to make a treaty on your own, I … I think.” Would he ever really fathom this civilization? When she spoke of speaking openly, was it in earnest or a joke? “I don’t. We aren’t organized like that.”

  Rusaleth nodded again. The wan locks slithered down her bosom. She tossed them back. “Yes, in such regard, we Lunarians are more honest.”

  He looked his inquiry.

  “The Centaurian Domain makes no pretense of being other than obedient, somewhat, to the overlings of whichever phyle is strongest at the moment,” she explained. “You Demetrians style yourselves a republic, yet is it imaginable that your Folkhouse would ever contravene the lord Guthrie?”

  Davis felt abruptly on the defensive. “He gives us no reason to. He believes the main business of government is to let people alone.” Calming: “But—I see your meaning, Lady Commander. If I make recommendations that he accepts, we won’t get much argument on our planet.”

  “Exactly thus, Captain.” Rusaleth smiled and took his arm anew. “Let us be seated.”

  Side by side on the couch, they drank of their wine, inhaled the flower-heavy air, listened to the birds, watched the tinted wings flutter by.

  “Now, then,” said Rusaleth after a time. “You came to the help of Ithar, you Demetrians, because Arcen and Yanir are, or were, hostile to you. Their lords would fain end intercourse between the two races, holding that we have no more to gain thereby and much to dread. In evidence they cite what became of Luna, its polity engulfed, its ways extinguished by the neighbor more populous and wealthy. Have I put the matter starkly enough?”

  “It’s not so simple, Lady Commander,” Davis argued. “If we’d let friction worsen—
for instance, over the claim that Orain of Yanir was making in the asteroids—” He stopped. “But, yes, we can talk in those general terms. Of course Guthrie protects and furthers the interests of his people.”

  “Of course.”

  “And first and foremost among those interests is that, several centuries from now, they have got to be off Demeter.”

  “Say on,” Rusaleth urged. “Fear not rousing anger. This pleases me.” Her nostrils dilated. If he was not a warrior by temperament, Davis thought, she was.

  “We can’t afford to waste time and resources on conflict,” he stated. “And we do need Lunarian cooperation. For obvious reasons, your astronautics is ahead of ours. What could we do but help the faction that, at least, didn’t call for an open breach with us?”

  “I will not hide that colleagues of mine in Ithar have contemplated it likewise.”

  “Then may I add, Lady Commander, that we’ll keep on pursuing our interests? You know Guthrie is as ruthless as necessary.” He thought for a moment and decided he would say: “I’ll tell you one thing he told me. ‘If they insist on playing Kilkenny cats, we’ll play them off against each other. It won’t be hard to do. Eventually we’ll have tame survivors.’”

  “Oh, grandly conceived!” cried Rusaleth, delighted. “Later you must describe. Kilkenny cats to me. Still, I seize his intent. And yours, I presume?”

  “Well,” Davis said, “Demeter is my home, my people.” His mother, lifetimes removed. “But our races don’t have to be in conflict. That’s what I’m here about.”

  Once more she nodded. “Already has Ithar acknowledged this in principle. The question is, how far need the races, or should they, be in contact?”

  “More than I suppose you prefer, my lady; but the next generation may feel differently. True, we no longer have much to exchange in the way of goods, we’re self-sufficient on both sides. Services, though—If you care about your descendants,” and Davis wondered whether she did, “you have every reason to work with us. Let me remind you, when the planets collide—one of them retrograde, remember—they’ll fill Centaurian space with the shards. Even for Lunarians, it’ll be dangerous, for millions of years to come. Do you really want all your eggs in one basket?”