A Maze of Stars

by John Brunner

  The older man had still been looking doubtful, however, when they set off just after dawn, and they had traversed several kilometers before he accepted that the baska was everything Sohay claimed.

  Of course, if anything had gone amiss, there was always Scout to turn to. Floating at neutral buoyancy fifty meters above the trail, adjusting its position by puffing out jets of air warmed by sunlight, or under cloud and at night by a fusion tube no larger than a man’s thumb, it was their permanent link to everyone and every place on the planet. If the worse came to the worst, it could lift the men bodily, one at a time, and carry them a good ten kilometers. Though not, of course, their mounts. The horse weighed even more than the baska.

  As if struck by a sudden thought, Ezar twisted in his saddle.

  “Does that beast of yours have a name?”

  “I’ve no idea. Never asked it.” Sohay’s long face was a mock-serious mask. Ezar remembered that expression from childhood. It must, he reflected, have stood his brother in good stead professionally. He was a member of Sumbala’s interstellar diplomatic corps, one of barely two thousand handpicked, computer-confirmed expert negotiators, investigators, researchers, explorers …

  “Very funny!” Ezar grunted.

  “Not really. What I mean is that it may have been given a name by its original owner, but no one passed it on to me, and in any case on a planet where there’s only one of it, a name seems somewhat superfluous, hmm?” And before his brother could contrive a retort: “What about your horse?”

  “Oh … Ceeyo-efbar.”

  “Don’t tell me!” Sohay raised one hand, needing the other to stabilize himself as the baska surged across a particularly rough patch beset with boulders the size of a man’s torso. “Let me see if I can remember … It’s his gene code, isn’t it?”

  “Of course. Or, rather, part of it.”

  “Hmph! Wouldn’t be any use for a baska, then. These beasties are so utterly different from anything else we ever ran across …” He made to slap his mount’s flank but remembered in the nick of time that that might be mistaken for a command to halt or, worse, turn right. On that side of the trail were dense thorn brakes that would have torn his clothes to tatters and his skin as well.

  After a moment’s cogitation: “Ah! Species, mass, sex, color, and— No, I’ve forgotten what ‘bar’ means.”

  Ezar’s eyebrows were climbing toward his hair. “You must have an excellent memory! I swear you didn’t consult your wristlet! But you can’t have done any work in genetics for decades, probably not since you left home.”

  “Sixty-five years ago,” Sohay responded soberly. “And you’re right: The best I’ve managed is to ask a few well-informed friends now and then. Still, when we were kids, we both used to help design the farm stock, didn’t we? Remember those chickens that went so wrong?”

  “Ah, I tried that approach again a year or two ago. Got ’em right this time.”

  “Did you, now? Why didn’t you show me last night? We had little enough to do with the rain pelting down.”

  “Didn’t think you’d want to be reminded.” Ezar shifted in his saddle, glancing at what was left of the rise they were ascending. “We’ll be over the crest in a couple of minutes. Brace yourself.”

  “Will do … But you haven’t told me what ‘bar’ means.”

  “Oh—more or less what you might imagine. He’s the first of a modified strain, and I didn’t want to risk breeding from him until I’d worked at least one of the new model through an adult year.”

  “I see! Bar equals barrier. Sterile.”

  “Kinder that way, I think, than cutting the poor devil’s balls off when he’s just beginning to enjoy them— Sohay, I’m sorry! That was tactless!”

  “What?” The younger man looked puzzled for a second. Then he laughed unfeignedly. “Oh, Ezar! You and your obsession with old-style physical descendants! Just because I never got a woman pregnant by the traditional method doesn’t mean I haven’t passed on my endowment, you know.”

  “Really?” Ezar blinked.

  “Yes indeed, and not only on Sumbala, at that. On four planets women have asked me to donate for them, and every time I was passed at the first examination. Mark you, they had to do some nifty armoring, of course.”

  “I should think so! But that’s good news, anyway. Very good news!”

  At this point, a few meters below the notch through which the trail passed at the crest of the ridge, the path widened. Ezar urged his horse to one side.

  “Go past,” he invited. “You’ll get a better view. I’ve seen it before, and you haven’t.”

  Sohay chuckled. “You’ve sent me enough pictures! I only hope the real thing stands up to what you’ve told me.”

  Ezar forbore to answer but waved him by. And waited. He waited a good three minutes. Only then did Sohay utter a gusting breath, as though he had held it ever since he came in view of what lay beyond the hilltop.

  “I take it,” Ezar said dryly as he moved to join his brother, “the reality does indeed outstrip the image.”

  “Oh, it does! It does indeed!”

  On the approach side of the hill most of the vegetation was bush and scrub, intermingled with thorn and bramble. On the far side, in total contrast, there was forest. Birch and beech, vivid with the hues of autumn, stretched to the horizon and beyond, a sea of red and russet, gold and tan. Here and there a stand of copper beech loomed darkly like a vein of ore too rich to need refining. As breezes crossed it the landscape rippled like an ocean dyed to incredible hues by miraculous plankton, or the gas from an exploding star made visible and colorful to human eyes by computer intervention.

  “And this goes on,” Sohay whispered between dry lips, “for three thousand kilometers?”

  “More than that. This summer has extended it by another two or three hundred. Nothing will stop it until it meets the sea.”

  “Ezar, it’s amazing! And in so short a time!”

  With a grunt: “You think sixty-five years is a short time? It’s plain you’ve never sat around waiting for trees to grow! Even with our best accelerants … But really, I can’t claim the credit.”

  “Nonsense! After all your hard work—”

  “Luck was on our side, remember. It just so happened that we wound up on a planet where our stock turned out to be tougher than the native strains. ’Course, we have taken considerable advantage of the spores from space … You know, I can’t understand the people you’ve told me about who’ve neglected that most valuable resource.”

  “Even in one case—one I’ve only heard about, not on a planet that I’ve actually been to—going so far as to try and stop them drifting in. But apparently that bunch went through a worldwide epidemic of religious insanity. No way of predicting what happens under those circumstances, hm?”

  “Strictly chaos type,” Ezar concurred, nodding.

  After that they were silent for a while, feasting their eyes on the glory of the polychrome leaves. At length, however, Sohay seemed to pull himself together.

  “Do you have no trouble at all with the native species?”

  “Not any longer. Oh, now and then they manifest as a blight, but by this time we’ve armored our own stuff so thoroughly … What finally turned the trick was— Hmm! No, I’ll let you work it out. Dad and I had already begun to suspect where the weak point was before you left home. Let’s see if that memory of yours can track it down. And don’t consult your wristlet!” Sohay grinned. “I don’t need to. Molds? Fungi?”

  “Exactly. We had to redesign about two hundred species—rearmor them, rather—before the roots stopped suffocating in the trees’ own nondecaying by-products: leaves mainly, of course, but also fallen trunks and branches after a gale … Gently there, gently!”

  Ceeyo-efbar had raised his head to snuff the wind and shied a little. Ezar patted him reassuringly on the side of his neck.

  Also sniffing, Sohay said after a moment, “I know what may have upset him. Can’t you smell it?”

&nb
sp; “Smell what?”

  “Smoke!”

  “Oh! Nothing to worry about. That’ll be from the home of the person I brought you here to meet.”

  “I thought we just came to admire the view,” Sohay countered.

  “Not entirely.” Ezar suppressed a chuckle, sounding pleased with himself. “Would you ever have guessed that there are families on Sumbala who don’t believe in making contracts with their brains, let alone their other organs?”

  Sohay blinked. “No, never! Is this some kind of new—well— cult that’s grown up since I’ve been away?”

  “In a sense, yes.”

  “Then I can only say the idea is absurd. Of course, on all the other worlds I’ve visited that’s the way people live anyhow, relying on instinct like our remote ancestors, but so far as I’m concerned, the custom is among the chief reasons why we’ve made such progress compared to them. We don’t simply leave our mind-to-body interaction to chance and heredity. Instead, we—”

  Ezar was holding up a hand, wincing. “Spare me the full propaganda lecture! You may have to deliver it on other planets and to other people, but not to me, please … Some time you must describe how foreigners react; I gather the principle isn’t exactly leaping from system to system like the Perfect.”

  “Somewhat to my surprise, no, it isn’t. I suppose people would need to come here and see what results we get before they took to the idea. And it is rather hard work, which most humans are reluctant to undertake. But as you say, we can talk about that another time. You’ve still not told me why some of us are rebelling against it.”

  “Oh, there’s a lot of philosophical foofaraw to underpin their attitude, but basically I suspect you just defined the real reason: too much like hard work. The argument goes this way, at any rate. By recognizing that we are in fact colony creatures, evolved originally from independent organisms that came together for mutual benefit and wound up unable to survive without each other’s support, we are turning our backs on the possibility of future development. They make comparisons with organic and inorganic chemistry, saying, for example, that separating a living organism into its chemical components destroys its ability to function. Which is incontestable, of course. But then they extend the argument to claim that by recognizing our own separate areas of functionality we likewise destroy the wholeness—they say unity—that makes us genuinely human.”

  “Hmm!” Sohay combed his beard with his fingers. “In that case I don’t imagine they’re accessible to reason.”

  “Not really. Doesn’t stop some of them being perfectly decent people, though. Like the bloke I’m taking you to see. He used to be one of my landholders. When he got so to say converted, he asked if I’d appoint him a forester instead, and since I needed someone to fill a vacant post, I agreed. I make a point of dropping in on him now and then, see how he’s getting on, and so far nothing has gone sufficiently wrong to make me pull him back under orders.” Ezar sniffed again. “Judging by that smoke, his family is likely organizing a banquet for us. A useful spin-off from our work with the fungi has been a free crop of perfectly delicious edible varieties, though some do need prolonged cooking to make them properly digestible.”

  Sohay looked briefly alarmed. “Are you sure a person like me, who’s been away so long—?”

  Ezar cut him short. “Absolutely! The worst upset so far recorded was due to simple overeating because the fungi taste so good. Come on! Unless we hurry, we shan’t reach his home before midday.”

  Driving his heels into his horse’s flanks, he set off down the treeward slope at a vigorous trot.

  WITH SCOUT BOBBING OVERHEAD, THEY SHORTLY REACHED the foot of the hill and continued down a narrow trail on level ground. Neither of them spoke for some minutes, for they were relishing the endless variety of color displayed by the leaves still on the tree or blown down by last night’s high wind.

  Half a kilometer or so farther on, however, Sohay uttered a wordless exclamation, and Ezar—still leading the way— glanced over his shoulder, raising his eyebrows.

  “I just realized,” his younger brother explained. “The leaves are rustling. And blowing about—look!”

  “So?” Ezar returned.

  “So they’re dry. I’d expected them to be soaked by that storm we had.”

  “Ah, that often happens at this time of year. You get a humid airstream blowing across the whole of this plain”—with a wave at the land ahead—“but precipitation may not occur until it hits the ridge we just crossed. An hour or two before you arrived home there was a wall of gray on the skyline, and we heard the first thunder, but the actual storm didn’t break on this side. We bore the brunt of it, as usual. Just as well, maybe. I’m not sure Hesker’s home could withstand that kind of deluge.”

  “Hesker being the person we’re going to meet?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  A pause. Then: “I take it you aren’t serious. Even if he is a bit of an eccentric, surely he doesn’t live in a—a hovel! Besides, I gather he doesn’t live alone. He has a family, right?”

  Again: “Mm-hm.”

  “And he’s prepared to put them at risk?”

  “Obviously I didn’t make myself clear. You seem to have conjured up a picture of someone living in a log cabin.”

  “What’s a log cabin?”

  “You can ask Scout to relay a picture of one.”

  Sohay complied and, having studied the midair solido projected by his wristlet, shook his head.

  “I can see the principle, but why use totally unprocessed material? Except maybe for some kind of spiritual exercise, trying to identify with our infinitely primitive ancestors. That sounds like the inverse of what you told me about Hesker’s— Hesker’s?—views.”

  Ezar sighed. “I told you you’d got hold of the wrong end of the stick.”

  Sohay shook his head in total confusion. “All this started when you said a storm like last night’s might wash away his home.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Ezar said, and drew a deep breath before completing the sentence, “I didn’t. I said it might not have withstood that kind of deluge. Water, in case you happen to have forgotten the fact during your travels, is highly conductive. Hesker and his family depend wholly on electromagnetic contact with the outside world, so too violent a downpour could temporarily cut them off. Moreover, it was an electrical storm. You saw the lightning.”

  Sohay blinked. “I do seem to have—what was that curious phrase you used? I got the sense of it, but I don’t recollect I ever heard it before.”

  “Probably because this is the only planet that we know of in the Arm where there are trees, real trees, in the same kind of numbers as legend attributes to the birthworld.” Ezar sounded as though he wanted to growl but was being prevented by politeness. “ ‘To get hold of the wrong end of the stick’ means to extrapolate from a false assumption. Suppose we wait until we reach Hesker’s place, how about that? Then you can see for yourself how complex a job a forester actually has to tackle.” Sohay bit his lip. “Ah,” he muttered at length. “That must be what threw me on a wrong track. A term like that—well, I don’t suppose there’s one person in a million who would recognize ‘forester.’ ”

  “If,” Ezar returned dryly, “you’re taking into account the population of all the worlds that don’t have forests, I’m sure you’re right. But you’re back home, remember, and now we do. According to the records, the chances are that mine is the first—I mean, ours is the first of such a size since the birth-world, certainly the largest containing only introduced species.”

  He hesitated, then resumed in a firmer voice.

  “You know, Sohay, I don’t regret the choice I made.”

  “The choice?”

  “My decision to stay home. In the infinite variety of this one continent I found as much to fascinate and occupy me as you’ve found on all the other worlds you’ve visited. I’ve never been bored, never been disappointed, never felt envious. Honestly.”

  The trail here was wide
enough despite the besetting trees for them to be riding side by side. Moved by an impulse he could not have defined, Sohay reached out to take his brother’s hand.

  “You must tell me everything, and I’ll do the same. We have a month together before I leave again—surely that will be enough.”

  “To explain everything?” Ezar shook his gray head. “A century wouldn’t be enough. But it’s better than nothing.” He glanced up at the sky, from which by now a rising wind had broomed away all trace of cloud so that it shone uniformly blue from horizon to horizon.

  “Has it never struck you,” he continued after a few seconds, “how strange it is that for some people the whole universe feels constricting, and others can find contentment in a garden? Yet all are equally involved, equally occupied, with what they’re doing.”

  Sohay gave a sober nod.

  “It’s like the difference between viewing the spread of these glorious colors from orbit—which of course I’ve done, and I assure you it’s magnificent—and riding among the individual trees as we are doing now. Life’s too short not to make a choice between them, though. To study everything on every scale … No, that’s doubtless reserved for the Perfect!”

  From his tone it was clear he intended a joke, but Ezar turned a serious face to him.

  “I’d advise you not to bring that subject up in Hesker’s company.”

  “Why in space not?” was Sohay’s immediate response, but he checked his brother’s answer with an upraised hand. “No need, let me guess. Does he imagine that by rejecting our acceptance of the autonomy of our constituent organs he and his are following the path that will lead ultimately to the Perfect?”

  “As I told you, views like his are underpinned by philosophical foofaraw. But I’d advise postponing the rest of this conversation until you’ve actually met him. We’re nearly there.” Ezar sniffed again. “That’s quite a fire he has going, isn’t it?”