Harvest of Stars

by Poul Anderson

  She laughed. “Another delicious expression. The lord Guthrie’s, I daresay. Go on, Captain, I bid you.”

  He looked straight at her. That, and the wine singing in him, made it an effort to stay businesslike. “Better join us in preparing. We’ve got resources to offer that you lack, including a larger population and a higher acceleration tolerance.”

  “Robustness, yes,” she purred.

  “Uh, investigating other stars, founding a new colony where possible—between us, our races have built the industrial base for it. We ought to start at once. It’ll take a couple hundred years at least.”

  Eagerness blazed. “And if soon we begin, a sufficiency of heroes may yet be born. Much later will be too late.”

  “I, I beg your pardon, my lady?”

  “It is an ancient quandary,” she said. “What shall a society do when its heroic age draws to a close? Our forebears trekked hither, strove, suffered, died but first begot, and wrought gigantically, until today we reign in ampleness. What next? I believe you dwell in peace on Demeter only because you have your revered, immortal leader, the lord Guthrie, and the awesome presence of the Life Mother. Yet despite them, I learn, folk more and more go their own petty ways, whether into nature for an existence simple and contemplative or in the hectic selfishness of the towns. Now that their world is tamed, what is there to dream of and sacrifice for, when ultimately it is doomed? And thus the sense of despair creeps inward.”

  Though she exaggerated, Davis realized, unprepared, that she had brains not merely for politics. “What … about you Lunarians?”

  “Erstwhile we bred fewer fratricidal contentions.”

  Joy leaped. “A fresh common purpose—keep the heroic age going—”

  “In the face of reality.”

  “Uh m-m?”

  “The nature of things, of this our universe.” Rusaleth pointed at the well where the stars went marching.

  “Guthrie’s told me more than once,” Davis said, “he has a, a gut feeling, he calls it—that the universe isn’t as lifeless as the sophotects on Earth claim.”

  “We cannot dismiss their word, whether or not we hate the solitude in it,” Rusaleth answered, instantly somber. “Their intellect has flared beyond our reach.”

  “Guthrie said about that, uh, he said anybody can find infinite Mandelbrot figures in his navel.”

  Rusaleth threw back her head. Laughter pealed. “I’d fain meet him! He’s like a gust of the sea wind I’ve never felt save in a quivira. Failing him—” She gave Davis a sidelong glance and leaned closer.

  Unsure, he said fast, “We get rumors you Lunarians are on the track of designs for real interstellar ships.”

  “That lies outside my orbit,” she replied. “But since we shall be candid, you and I, seeking for a range of harmony—a physicist has told me he thinks we may become able to course on the very heels of light.”

  “What?” exclaimed Davis. “How?”

  “He spoke of transferring momentum between ship and cosmos, reaction against space itself. But his arts are not mine.”

  Davis’ mind bounded to and fro. “Space? Virtual particles? We can get work out of the vacuum, that’s been known since the twentieth century, the Casimir effect—tiny, but—If something like your physicist’s idea is right, then the energy cost of reaching a given speed drops way down, and—”

  “Can we reach agreement, I and you and the lord Guthrie, your scientists shall see the mathematics and the laboratory results. He warned me this is no full release. The energy needed, though far less, continues immense.”

  “Obviously. A small vessel, similar to the one that brought the downloads to Demeter, could push light velocity. But if you tried to move a big ship, hundreds or thousands of bodies in suspended animation, no, it wouldn’t go. Even if it could be built, which I doubt, radiation leakage would cripple it and kill them. Besides, we’ve extended the time we can keep a suspend revivable, but to no more than about a hundred years, and background count and quantum effects make me think we never will get much beyond that.”

  Rusaleth ran fingers across the back of his hand. “Ah, you are indeed an engineer,” she gibed gently.

  Startled, he returned to immediacies. “Your pardon, Lady Commander. Limitations or no, it’s such an exciting prospect. If nothing else, it increases our exploratory range enormously. Keep your man at it, and we’ll see what we can do on our side.”

  “First must come this meeting of minds that you seek, with an exchange of promises and hostages.”

  “Hostages?”

  Rusaleth smiled into his eyes. “Emissaries, spokes-people, if you will. Lunarians in satellite at Demeter, Demetrians out among us. They ought not find their service wearisome, as I trust I may prove to you.”

  His temples thudded. “I, I do expect I’ll be here for some time while we, uh, discuss matters.”

  “And indulge in other games,” she murmured. “Refill our glasses, lord Captain, that we may drink at leisure before we go to our supper and whatever else may follow.”

  61

  It is evident from your recent communications that you and the limited artificial intelligences you employ no longer find us comprehensible. Unless you care for news of what unintegrated humans are left on Earth, and we project that that would be of no more significance to you than to us, further contact is purposeless and probably, for you, inadvisable.

  ALTHOUGH LARGER AND more powerful than anything had been at Sol before the exodus, its components extending across interplanetary space, the Astronomy Web at Alpha Centauri had found no more planets with oxygen in their atmospheres. Those that were known circled the stars 82 Eridani, Beta Hydri, and one in Puppis which had merely a catalogue number, HD44594. The colonists studied them intensively, learned much, and in due course began to explore them.

  The spacecraft dispatched for this purpose were not the robotic probes that went to less interesting systems. That was too slow. Instead, three small superships ran at close to light speed. Besides the means of scientific investigation, each bore a copy of Guthrie. A consciousness that, furthermore, remembered what humanness was like, gave purpose and urgency and, in his words, got hunches about what to look for.

  Almost two Earth centuries had gone by when the last of them returned from the last and farthest of those suns, downloaded into his “original” and was, in the process, terminated. Or were he and his predecessors? Every experience, every thought—every dream, perhaps—that had been theirs was now in and of the single Guthrie. “One of me is plenty, if not excessive,” he said. Yet, even as our living constantly remakes us, he after the mergings was not altogether the same as before.

  Having left the psychonetics laboratory for his private control center, he rested a long while silent, alone. Finally he activated a very special communicator. It searched a secret net, which was less physical than a set of codes and connections, until, elsewhere on the planet, it found the focus of attention that it sought. A minute passed, because she was engaged on a matter of some importance and intricacy, before her voice responded. “Have you need of me, Anson?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Could you spare several hours?”

  “For you, always.”

  “Don’t overcommit yourself, sweetheart. I realize you’re busy—counteracting that blight in Aetolia, and no doubt fifty dozen more jobs.” He fashioned a laugh. “Goddesses don’t get vacations.”

  “Wrong thinking. You know quite well I am not a divinity, and the only vacation from life is the permanent one.” Her tone, half serious, half banter, softened. “Of course I have time. Say on.”

  “Words don’t reach to this. Can we commune?”

  Demeter hesitated a second. For their minds to join had grown ever more difficult as she evolved toward transfiguration. Full understanding was impossible for him and, in ways, for her. But—“Certainly. Come. I’ll be waiting.”

  “Thanks,” he answered inadequately and broke the circuit.

  The means they required l
ay well inland. Guthrie called three of his lieutenants, made arrangements for an absence of a day or two, and departed.

  First his multipurpose body went downshaft to an underground garage and ordered a flitter. A man happened to be there on the same errand, rakish in formfitting red with gold trim. Since his dress mask, a stylized silver bird face, was cocked atop his head, Guthrie recognized him—Christian Packer, pilot—and gave greeting. “Hola. Going to the spaceport?”

  Startled, the man turned to confront the machine that had noiselessly rolled up behind him. “Is that you, sir? Uh, luck and life.” The irony of the formal salutation in this presence must have struck him while he uttered it; his brown countenance flushed and he added fast, “Yes, I’m outbound for a semiannum.”

  Guthrie’s voice indicated surprise. “That long? Where to, for heaven’s sake? I haven’t heard about anything but routine missions being scheduled out of here.” He wouldn’t necessarily; they might be private enterprises.

  However, Packer was in the space service of the Republic, and it was small.

  “This isn’t. Director Rudbeck gave me leave when I applied, and the use of a torchcraft. I’m joining the Dis expedition.”

  Guthrie did know of the Lunarian venture to that planet of Proxima. “Hm. Not a bad idea, I suppose, us having an observer and a liaison with them. But—”

  Sudden enthusiasm flashed to interrupt him, heedless of a respectfulness on which he seldom insisted anyway. “Sir, congratulations!”

  “On what?”

  “Your voyage to Puppis and back. What else? Splendor! A really alive world!”

  “Wonderful, sure.” How infinitely, eerily wonderful, not a biosphere primitive and marginal but a cornucopia like that which was Earth’s before man.

  “A world for us. And you found it.”

  “Well, not really for us. You’ve seen my preliminary report, haven’t you? The chemistry’s too different from ours. We’d have to destroy too much before we could settle. I went along with crowding out a lot of Demetrian species, but never felt easy about it, and as for whole living continents—No, while I’ve got a say, the race won’t load anything like that onto its conscience.”

  “Oh, I agree, sir, absolutely. What we can discover, though, what we can experience—And that other planet in the system that we can transform, like those in Eridani and Hydri—”

  “True. We do after all have a future.”

  A light went out. “Yes,” Packer said dully, “the future,” which nobody alive would see. Was HD44594 II, Bion, even reachable, ever, by anything but robots and downloads?

  “Thanks for your kind words,” Guthrie said in haste. “But tell me more about this jaunt of yours. What’s it for?”

  Packer’s slumped shoulders straightened a bit. “Why, I thought everybody knew. Geological studies, mainly.”

  “Sure, I’ve heard, and can’t quite make sense of it. What new knowledge—what of interest or profit, unless you count small factual details—can they hope for, risking their necks again on that frozen hellhole?”

  “It’s better than going to a quivira,” Packer snapped.

  “M-m, yeah,” Guthrie admitted.

  Packer’s mood lightened somewhat. “Also, the women who’ll be along.” He grinned.

  In this body, Guthrie was able to nod. “Uh-huh. I gather they’re better than a quivira too.”

  Lunarians were real, at least, yet carried almost as little danger of lasting commitment on either side. Such relationships were increasingly sought by both races. It was as if dwellers in city and in space had wearied of promiscuity among each other and preferred a sterility that was inherent.

  Guthrie’s vehicle had arrived. “Well, good faring to you, son,” he said, and offered a humanlike hand. Packer stared, recalled from history lessons or historical entertainments that once upon a time this was a common gesture, and took it.

  The politeness he had learned made him genuflect and respond, “Chance favor you, sir.” Guthrie extended legs, boarded his flitter, and drove off.

  From the landing strip outside he went aloft and headed west. The day was summer-bright, both suns high among scattered white galleons of cumulus. Exterior sensors brought him the warmth that radiated from below, the coolness that rushed on the wind. Shelter Bay sheened blue and foam-laced, indigo toward the horizon. Port Fireball spread mightily along its shores in spires, domes, pyramids, polyhedrons, multiple colors and great, curving transparencies. The population that filled them and trafficked the streets was mostly machine. Human homes, in little groups here and there, were nearly lost to sight, except for the trees, lawns, and gardens that warded them. Some stood empty. Passing over a playground, Guthrie magnified vision and saw exactly three children amidst the slides and swings and merry-go-rounds.

  No doubt it was well, it was meritorious that people were thinking ahead. He had found new worlds, such as they were; but between now and doomsday, less than two centuries hence, there was no way to ship multiple millions off. Regardless of industrial productivity, the logistics were ludicrous. If that problem were somehow solved, the fact remained that emigrants couldn’t wait, suspended, until enough habitation was ready for them. They would run out of time.

  His nation had no further need of population growth. Rather, bring numbers down, generation by generation, until they were few enough to flee. It was perfectly logical, humane, and unhuman. “Unlife,” Demeter had said, sorrowfully, while her own legions grew, ran, flew, swam, seeded, bred victorious across the last bare deserts.

  Sea and city fell behind. Green, gold, sometimes coppery or lapis lazuli, farmland decked the hills beyond. An Earthdweller or a pioneer resurrected from early days on this planet would not have recognized it. No machines were in sight, nor did any come save to harvest and carry off. Woods, meadows, marshes intermingled in a seemingly random sprawl. But from here issued food of every kind, fiber, timber, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, domestic bacteria and their products, minerals selectively concentrated, abundance. Made to nurture humankind, the commensality took care of itself.

  No, not in full truth. Without Demeter, all must soon fall to ruin. Usefulness would mutate away, dumb ferocity arise; disease, weeds, pests, grazers would enter to lay waste; rain would erode topsoil abruptly exposed; whatever survived would be hardy, scrubby, sparse, and existent only for its own sake. She sensed each menace as it appeared. She chose and sent in her soldiers, engineers, physicians—be they nanomachines, tiny robots, plants, insects, hawks, ferrets, wolves—to combat and restore. Although computation was a facet of her intelligence, this was no task for computers. The most powerful and skillfully programmed of them must eventually, inevitably, resort to the brute simplicity of direct cultivation. What Guthrie saw was the work of a living organism, maintaining and healing herself.

  The country rose to highlands. Agronomy gave way to wilderness, forest. Those trees, vines, brushwoods, reedy tarns and fishful streams were also Demeter’s. Without their wealth of life to draw upon, she could not have kept her fields and orchards; without her guiding presence, the wilds could not long have stayed as majestic. Mind had become one with its creation.

  Paradoxically, there were numerous clearings. The houses nestled in them were generally low, of unpainted fireproofed wood, blending into their tall backgrounds. Guthrie flew above a village as well. Some kind of ceremony was going on, a procession around a post carved in leaf and animal forms. His audio sensors caught a snatch of song, pipes, drums, before he passed beyond range.

  It was probably a rite in honor of Demeter. The outbackers didn’t worship but they did venerate her. They hadn’t retrogressed. They stayed educated and informed, they sent their delegates to the councils of the Republic, visits went to and fro along with a limited amount of trade in art objects and other luxury goods. But their souls had withdrawn. “Like Amish when I was a youngster on Earth,” Guthrie remarked once to an acquaintance, who failed to catch the reference, “except that these don’t frown on fanciment—con
trariwise, if it’s handmade—nor do they have any special religion. Maybe you could say they have a piety, maybe you could call them quietist. I dunno. It’s a new culture.” A lifetime later he first noticed its influence on the towns, not merely dress styles and catchwords but ways of doing music and graphics, dancing and thinking.

  Several hundred kilometers onward, the forest came to an end. Glens remained densely wooded, intensely green; poplar, willow, cottonwood flanked valley streams, leaves pale and ashiver; stands of pine and beech crowned many ridges; but mostly the uplands belonged to grass, daisies, poppies, broom, thistle, in places a clump of ling remembering olden days. Lifthrasir Tor lifted straight from that growth, which cloaked its ruggedness in wind-ripples and small shouts of color. The trees at its feet had aged and died a century ago, after serving the aims of the scientists who themselves had learned everything here that they could and abandoned the site. Oak, thorn, and a high ash surrounded the building on the crest. White glimpses of it gleamed from among them.

  Guthrie slanted his flitter down, landed, got out, and rolled up the narrow road to the top. A couple of machines were repairing it; otherwise he met sunshine, a lizard on a lichenous boulder, a pheasant taking flamboyant wing, a pungency of mint bruised by a wheel. When he reached the grove, wind soughed through the branches overhead and set light a-flicker on the moss and mould beneath.

  Half decked in ivy, the station had become a sanctum. Guthrie entered into cool dimness and a murmur of activity, soft as the blood-beat in brain or heart. Robots received him with a deference not quite robotic; unforced, it was like the honor given a beloved. They conducted him past arrays wherein pulsed electronics, photonics, quantum nucleonics, the artifact part of Demeter, to a room at the core. There they took the case that housed his psyche from the machinery it controlled and linked it into the device that she had ordered made for him alone.