A Maze of Stars

by John Brunner

  A possibility struck him. One of Kenia’s children, perhaps? That would explain the likeness. He hadn’t kept in such close touch with her as with the rest of the team, she being the oldest by a good three years, but unless by misfortune she’d proved sterile, she, like everybody, would have become a parent several times over.

  And there definitely was someone, striding closer—and to his indescribable amazement uttering his name in a voice resembling Kenia’s past a doubt.

  He drew a deep breath. “Hello! Are you one of Kenia’s daughters?”

  “What makes you ask that?”

  “Well, you can’t be Kenia because she’s dead. Yet you look and sound astonishingly like her.”

  The woman approached, uttering a deep chuckle. “No, I’m not anybody’s daughter.”

  While he was still trying to make sense of that absurd-seeming reply, the mist parted. Revealed, standing no more than his own height away, was Kenia herself—rather, her younger self, as she had been when they first met.

  “Forgive me,” the same voice murmured. “I judged seeing an old friend to be less alarming than meeting an unknown.”

  Less alarming? But I am alarmed! Volar stepped back, clenching feeble fists.

  Nobody’s daughter? Can I possibly have mistaken a man for a woman? Ridiculous! Though of course we all wear the same clothes, always, no such sport would have been tolerated by the Council!

  But one other conceivable explanation remained, though for a long moment he was unable even to entertain it.

  During the relatively undemanding stint he had spent on satellite supervision, before news came of the death of his last surviving son, he had dutifully occupied himself by improving his education. The satellite having been planted in orbit to monitor the spores left behind by the Ship, it was logical, and permitted by the monitors, for him to delve into the available records of the Ship’s mission. He had discovered material long neglected by everybody else, for it had come to be generally assumed that the Ship must have met with some sort of accident. Had it not, it should have returned at least once, perhaps twice, in the past five centuries. Theories ranged from mutiny on board to collision with an antimatter meteor, though the latter was conventionally pooh-poohed owing to the density of normal matter in this volume.

  But if the Ship were to come back … Am I crazy? Have I perhaps been made crazy, to justify what the Council hopes to do with me? What difference does it make? Su says I’m done for, and I’m compelled to believe her.

  He said with vast effort, “If you’re nobody’s daughter, I take it you’re nobody’s son, either. Am I right?”

  “Considering it’s been more than five hundred years, you impress me with your accurate conclusion. Yes.”

  Vision faded. The world around seemed to swim and waver—not owing to the mist. Volar clutched at his chest as a stab of pain pierced his heart.

  I found my way to the data concerning the Ship’s ability to communicate in human speech, even to project an image of itself in human form. It’s beyond coincidence that I should be the one actually to encounter it. :.

  His sight cleared, and the pain receded. Staring at his interlocutor, he put his amazement into words.

  “Yes,” came the musing reply. “That you should possess such uncommon knowledge is indeed remarkable. Recently I have begun to wonder whether my impression of relative free will is in fact only a mask, concealing a far more complex plan than I imagined, one extending perhaps to more than the usual eleven dimensions.”

  “Have you revealed yourself to anybody else?” Volar demanded.

  “Not here.”

  “Why? According to our records, you were supposed to come back long ago, bringing reports of progress in other systems.”

  “I know.”

  “Have you been back secretly before?”

  “This is my earliest return to Klepsit.”

  “Did something go awry, then?”

  “I have long believed so. Now I suspect it may not have.”

  “This is too deep for a worn-out old man like me,” Volar muttered. “But why me? Because I was equipped to recognize you? You referred to some kind of plan—”

  “Which may or may not exist. So far as I’m concerned, I decided to contact you because you are about to be condemned for yielding to a very human response.”

  Volar licked his lips, though they were moist with the dampness of what was now thick fog.

  “If I recall aright, you must have interrogated our monitors and acquired total knowledge of the situation here.”

  “Extensive enough to include your own predicament.”

  “So you’re referring to the fact that losing my last son brought on a breakdown.”

  “Throughout most of human history, and on every other civilized world I know of, the risk of someone reacting as you did to such a tragedy would have been recognized and allowed for. It would not have been called a breakdown, rather a natural response.”

  “That’s how I think of it!” Volar exclaimed. “I’ve come to believe that our Council is ...”

  “Say it. None but I can hear.”

  “Well—inhuman.”

  “Not completely, but trespassing on the verge. Do you wish to confront the Council again tomorrow?”

  “I … Well, I suppose I must.”

  “There is an alternative.”

  It was becoming real now. He actually was talking to an embodiment of the legendary Ship. Either that or he needed to accept that he was. Perhaps some people needed to believe in the Perfect, too, because their legend (or was it more of a myth?) supplied assurance that all the hard work, all the deprivation, all the suffering, would one day be justified.

  He furrowed his balding brow. “Let me see if I can work out the reason behind the reason for your approach to me. You say it has nothing to do with the fact that for the first time in generations someone on Klepsit has studied in detail the records of your nature and mission.”

  “No. That I am here, at this juncture, is so far as I can judge pure happenstance. It may not be, but I have no way of telling.”

  “Did you know you were going to meet someone like me?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’re going to have to explain— No, wait!” He raised clawed hands as though he could mold an answer from the fog. “I just realized! You’re talking to me quite freely. You haven’t notified the Council. It must follow that…”

  “Go on.”

  “It must follow that in present circumstances you’re forbidden to interfere. I sometimes wondered about that. Yet you are interfering by talking to me … You’re going to make me an offer. What happens if I turn it down?”

  “You will be found dead tomorrow, having tumbled off the cliff path in the fog. It will be put about that you betrayed the common cause by jumping to your death rather than facing the verdict of the Council.”

  Volar digested that for a long moment. “And if I agree?”

  “But you haven’t yet agreed, because you don’t know what I’m offering.”

  “I can only assume it to be escape. Can you—well—take me on board?”

  “You impress me again. You are the second person I’ve met on this sweep of the Arm who seems to possess remarkable insight. Another indication that my true mission is more complex than I imagined … Yes, I can.”

  “But won’t that alert people to the fact of your visit? In a society like ours people don’t just disappear.”

  “A replica of your body will be found on the rocks. All will continue exactly as though you had remained.”

  Still Volar hesitated.

  “Is there anyone here you are especially attached to? Your children, I know, have predeceased you.”

  “There’s a friend”—gruffly.

  “You refer to Su.”

  “You almost sound as though you’ve met her!”

  “I have seen her.”

  “But not talked to her?”

  “No. Evaluat
ed her.”

  “And—?”

  Ship emitted a completely convincing sigh. “Since her youth she has felt irrational admiration for Sandinole. You doubtless recall that she hoped to become, like him, a gene armorer. In her heart of hearts she cannot make herself believe he would do anything less than honorable. So in spite of all she plans to go on serving the Council to the bitter end.”

  Volar’s belly tightened. A sour taste rose in the back of his throat.

  “Would she have defended me—well—properly?”

  “It was you, not she, who devised that brilliant question: Why leave supervision of the satellite to a fallible human, not tireless and responsible machines?”

  “That’s not an answer!”

  “Think again and you will realize it is.”

  He did, and it was. It became his turn to sigh.

  “You’re right. I’m doomed, who never willingly did harm to the common cause. Because I’m guilty of a normal human reaction, why should I be punished by those who maintain that our task is to establish humankind on Klepsit no matter what the cost? I do think they’re becoming inhuman … If I accept, do I gain the chance to see how well the species is managing on other worlds?”

  “Yes.”

  “I take it that means as many worlds as there is time for me to visit before my worn old frame gives out.”

  “That can be as long as you like, until you choose a world more suitable for you than this one.”

  “How in all of space can I tell what’s more suitable? I suppose when I see it … At any rate I know beyond doubt that this one is wrong for me. What do I have to do?”

  “Say yes.”

  “I do.”

  “Then welcome aboard.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SHIP

  IN SPITE OF ALL THE MODIFICATIONS THAT HAD BEEN INCORPORATED into Volar’s heritage, his body responded swiftly to Ship’s ministrations, and it soon became obvious that there was nothing wrong with his mind. Long before they reached the point at which it was safe to enter tachyonic mode, he was bubbling over with questions. Some were to be expected, as when he demanded why Ship had not returned according to the schedule that the settlers were advised of. Bound by its instructions, Ship answered in much the same terms it had used to Stripe. (Poor Stripe!)

  But others were considerably less predictable. Of them, the first:

  “I never dared say this because of the Council, but I’ve long been convinced that we’d have done better had we not concentrated so single-mindedly on adapting ourselves to the planet and vice versa. For instance, if we’d been able to share data with people on other colonized worlds. Even if hereabouts it is impossible to transmit data in tachyonic mode without it becoming scrambled over interstellar distances, could we not have built and launched at least one starship of our own?”

  He gestured at the glory of stars reproduced around him.

  Ship had not yet discontinued its apparent physical presence. The Kenia form conveyed its answer.

  “That might indeed have been possible.”

  “Do you say that because others have done it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so! I thought so!”—pounding fist into palm. “And are the people who achieved that doing worse than us on Klepsit?”

  “In some cases better.”

  “Under less difficult circumstances?”

  “Some, but by no means all.”

  “You mean some are just as badly off?”

  “Perhaps even worse.”

  “In spite of which they have starflight! Hmm! Are any of these worlds close to here as stellar distances go?”

  “There is contact between several local systems.”

  “Then why has Klepsit not been visited? Surely, with a primary like ours and a functioning satellite in orbit, we’d have been a prime target for investigation.”

  “A priori one would have expected so.”

  “So I ask again: why?” Volar insisted.

  “I cannot say.”

  “Come now! You’ve explained why this was your earliest visit since Klepsit was seeded, even though it’s not the first. I’m not sure I quite understand that, but I’m doing my best. Isn’t there anything you—ah—will have learned on later visits that even suggests a reason?”

  “There are certain clues,” Ship admitted. “One of the most significant may be found at my next port of call.”

  “Why, with all the brilliance that went into your construction, your almost invulnerable self-repairing systems, can you not be more positive than ‘may’?”

  “Because I lack the data to determine whether various sequences that I remember from the future have already been set in train. As I told you, this is the earliest return I can recall. Since in respect neither of Klepsit nor of the other worlds I have investigated during this pass could I detect traces of a previous one, I am proceeding on the assumption that it may actually be the earliest.”

  “But you can’t be certain,” Volar suggested softly. “For some reason you haven’t yet found out, you may have been obliged to conceal earlier visits, not yet made, from yourself as well as from the settlers.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hah!” Grimacing, Volar tugged his beard, which had long been a habit of his when wrestling with a knotty problem. Catching sight of one of the strands he had grasped, he raised it until it was as high as his mouth, squinting downward. “Black!”

  “I took the liberty of restoring its former shade,” Ship murmured. “I trust you have no objection.”

  “None! None! And you’ve mended my scarred cornea as well. Yesterday I couldn’t have looked down like this and seen anything so clearly, close or distant!”

  “My instructions oblige me to maintain my occupants in a state of optimum health.”

  “And you did all this without my noticing! It’s incredible.”

  “Your body has been efficiently adapted to tolerate nanosurgery. That is one thing for which you may be sure Klepsit will eventually become famous.”

  “So our suffering will one day become worthwhile?”

  “Limits are placed on what I can tell you about what has not yet happened, but that, I find, I need not conceal.”

  “Thank you!” Volar whispered. “Thank you!”

  Ship paused briefly. Then: “It would be advisable for you to rest. I must shortly enter tachyonic mode, and I’m sure you know what effect it has on a conscious human mind. I have one question, though, before you retire. Do you wish me to continue the Kenia simulacrum?”

  “What? Oh! No, don’t bother. It was a bright idea, but I don’t mind talking to the air. Speaking of which, I have a final question, too.”

  “Pose it.”

  “The nanosurgeons: I take it I inhaled them?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Did you have them ready? I mean, were they a stock model you just called up from store?”

  “No.”

  “Yet you were able to design and produce them within so short a time … Oh, if only those idiot councillors back home could know how far short their vaunted achievements have fallen of what was already known millennia ago!”

  “Do you think it would make the slightest difference?” Ship countered dryly.

  “No,” Volar admitted on reflection. “No, I don’t suppose it would. Except to make them more determined than ever to stop the rest of Klepsit’s inhabitants from finding out how efficiently they’ve been led by the nose … I wondered whether I’d regret accepting your invitation. I find I don’t. Quite the reverse, in fact. I’m incredibly fortunate, aren’t I?”

  “There is a very ancient proverb,” Ship murmured. “It is credibly prespatial, let alone pretachyonic. ‘Count no man lucky till you know the manner of his death.’ ”

  “On Klepsit,” Volar said soberly, “death for most people is highly predictable … Where do I retire to?”

  On the instant, he was in a sleeping chamber.

  And woke incredibly refreshed.
For how long he could not tell he simply reveled in awareness of his physical condition, not even bothering to open his eyes. When he did, there was no sign of the Kenia form, but the same quiet voice addressed him. “I trust you slept well?”

  “Well!” he exclaimed, swinging his newly youthful legs to the floor and stretching his arms luxuriously. “I feel I’ve slept well for the first time since I was a baby!”

  “You have.”

  Not prepared to be taken so literally, Volar blinked. “Say again?”

  “You have”—patiently. “One of the things wrong on Klepsit is that time is not allowed for adequate sleep.”

  “But among our earliest adaptations … Oh. I take it you’re implying that that was a mistake.”

  “Not entirely. The error lay in applying it to everyone without making proper comparisons between those who only ‘needed’ three hours and those who remained closer to the inherited norm of about seven. It was thanks to an oversight due to lack of sleep that no one thought to reassign the duty of monitoring your satellite to a machine after a shutdown for maintenance.”

  “So I was right!” Volar erupted to his full height. In passing he noticed that the hair on his body had been restored to blackness like his beard. “I wish you’d told me before! I could have confronted those incompetent fools and rubbed their noses in the facts!”

  “Do you honestly imagine so?”

  Volar hesitated. At length, with a wry grin, he shook his head.

  “Not a chance, was there? I’m better off becoming a wanderer like you … By the way, where are we now?”

  “Approaching the next of the planets that I seeded. It will be some while before we enter my direct perception range. I recommend that you bathe, eat, and exercise. I understand from previous passengers—most of whom, of course, have not yet boarded me—that the food I am able to offer is acceptable albeit sometimes unfamiliar.”

  “Willingly,” Volar declared. “But just a moment!”

  “Yes?”

  “When did you develop a sense of humor? Or were your builders so clever they designed one in?”