The Stars are also Fire - [Harvest the Stars 02]

by Poul Anderson

  "Um, yes, this sounds reasonable," Packer said at last. Don't just cut out the unreliable rock and replace with concrete. The metal frame of the building would carry downward the blaze at midday, the space-coldness at midnight; in the course of years, differing coefficients of thermal expansion could have fatigue effects. Therefore, seal a heat exchanger grid into the plug, such as automatically equalized temperatures. It would take some designing, but probably no more than an off-the-shelf program could handle, and the concept might well prove useful at other sites.

  "Oh, sure, first we run a simple model through the computer to see whether the notion's loco," Packer went on. "No, first we hear what Dr. Beynac thinks." He was forever deferential to the man who saved his life and limb, not in any servile way but in an abiding gratitude that Edmond and Dagny respected.

  "He's due back soon," she said. "Overdue, in fact. I'll talk with him and call you this time tomorrow, okay?" Earth's tomorrow; the sun over Lunar Taurus would stand a dozen degrees higher. "Happy landings."

  She switched off, rose, stretched cramped muscles, and wished for an extra go in the whirly. No, too much trouble, and dinner to fix. Later, this evening, early bedtime—She grinned. Horizontal exercise didn't count, officially, but damn if she didn't wake at dawnwatch perkier than after anything else.

  She went aft. Study time was past. Gaby and Sigurd had not resumed their curious game. Dagny wondered if they would before they were home in Tychopolis and the privacy of their rooms. The girl slouched on a seat, staring beyond the windows, an electronic pad on her knees. Her lips moved, she scribbled something with the stylus, then again she was in reverie. Dagny decided not to pry. Francy had put a show of fractals on one terminal, or gotten a sibling to do it for him, and watched fascinated. Hunched over a table, Sigurd moved his toy soldiers and their machines through a battle. "Ee-ee-pow," he breathed. "S-s-s-s. Crack." They represented UN peacekeepers and imaginary villains, but Dagny doubted that was what he had in mind. She hardly dared ask.

  Not that she and 'Mond let their youngsters terrorize them. Not that affection and cheer were missing. But these, and their kind being born to other couples, would inherit the Moon, which was not Earth.

  Helen slept peacefully. Yet already you could see, in the big oblique eyes, the odd convolutions of the ears, the bones underneath the baby fat, that this too would become a face such as none of her forebears had worn.

  Sigurd turned his head. His countenance was going to be rugged, bearing at least a memory of his father's. "Hiu-yo!" he piped, as if the small clash earlier had never happened. "Madre, you promised you'd tell 'bout Jefe Guthrie at Mars. Now?"

  He could reach out and take hold of her heart any time he wanted. All of them could. Though he didn't know about his kinship, and maybe never would, Fireball's lord was as much a legend to him as to everyone else. Dagny, who had stories directly from her grandfather, couldn't stop mention of them from slipping free once in a while.

  "This instant?" she demurred. "I've soon got to rustle the rations."

  "De-tails later."

  "Tell, tell!" Francy cried.

  Dagny yielded. It was a funny story, how Anson Guthrie shot himself into orbit around Deimos and thereby confounded his opponents. What the incident had meant to politics and policy did not matter to this audience.

  "—and that's why spacefolk call the crater Whisky's Grief." What was keeping the geologists?

  "Why didn't the gov'ment want Fireball there?" Gaby had joined the group. Her mother couldn't well fob the girl's question off, could she?

  "That's complicated to explain, darling. It wasn't one government, it was three of them at loggerheads. Space is supposed to belong to the whole human race, but everybody is a citizen of some or other country— you and I count as Ecuadorans, your father's French, the Guptas are Indian—and our governments make demands on us that often aren't the same. Then, if we're with Fireball—Hoy! There come our wanderers."

  Through a window Dagny saw the camión trundle around the eastern flank of this mountain. Absurd, the relief that washed through her. If 'Mond’s party had met trouble, they'd have called to let her know. Nevertheless, they were notably later than usual, and Anson had been with them. . . . "Another time," she pledged. "Right now I'd better hustle."

  She had no real need for haste, but making ready worked the tension off. Start dinner. When she had leisure for it, she cooked according to standards she had learned from Edmond, unless he wanted to himself. In the field, and she riding herd on the gangs at Tychopolis, they settled for prepackaged stuff. But bring forth apéritifs and glasses. Change her coverall for a dress. 'Mond would do the corresponding thing, after a shower, and the kids would be quiet, though welcome to join in the talk. Happy hour, Guthrie called it. Oh, but nearly all her hours were happy.

  At odd moments she watched the vehicle arrive, the riders unload what they had collected, the graduate assistants carry those boxes into the field van, Ross and Marietta slept there, and generally had their meals there. It wasn't exclusion on the Beynacs’ part. The young people rated some privacy; eating, sleeping, and laboratory studies weren't everything they did in those quarters. Father and son approached their roving house. Against dun rock and long shadows, their spacesuits dazzled with whiteness. What a liberation dust-repellent impregnants were! "Don't snub technofixes," Guthrie used to say. "Progress consists of ‘em. Has, ever since Ung Uggson chipped his first flint."

  Dagny lost sight of them as they stepped onto the gangramp. Noise followed, outer airlock valve opened and shut, gas pumped back into the reserve tank while boots banged down the companionway to the lockers: A bass grumble drifted up, "God damn, I smell like a dead goat," and Dagny smiled.

  Skinsuits went into the washer, which began to purr. Edmond and Anson returned to deck level. Dagny met them at the hatch. Both wore bathrobes. No puritan, the man remained uncomfortable with the casual nudity common among Moon folk. At least, he felt adults should avoid it before children of the opposite sex.

  Dagny sprang to him. "I think you smell exciting," she laughed. "C'mere, you." She cast her arms around his neck and her mouth against his.

  After a second or two she let go and stepped back. "Hey," she said, "that was like kissing a robot. A sweaty robot, but otherwise not programmed for it. What's the matter?"

  He scowled. Anson stood sullen. "Clean yourself," Edmond ordered him. "Then go to your bunk."

  "Hold on," Dagny exclaimed. "What's this about?"

  "No supper for him," Edmond snapped. "He was insubordinate and reckless." To the boy: "Go."

  "Wait just a minute," Dagny countermanded. "What did he do?"

  "He left us," Edmond said. "We were sorting our specimens into the boxes and did not notice before he was gone. We called and got no answer. His tracks went upslope to bare rock where we could not trail him. For more than an hour we searched, until we found him in a cleft. He had not answered us, that whole while."

  "I couldn't receive you." Anson spoke with a clipped precision which in him registered fury. "The ridges screened it. That overhang below your site must have blocked the satellite relay."

  "You told me already. And I told you—bloody hell, how many times?—you do not leave your party without permission."

  "When I started off, you didn't call me to stop."

  "You knew we were not watching. Hein? I told you, if you want to walk around, you must stay in line of sight. If you get into a no-reception zone, you retrace your steps. Immediately! Mon Dieu, you could ‘ave been lost, somesing could 'ave 'appened—" The father's voice wavered. "After daycycles, we might 'ave found your mummy."

  Dagny wondered whether this was their first real exchange or they were going over the ground again for her. Undoubtedly Anson had received an awesome tongue-lashing, but it had only stiffened his spine. "That's far too true," she said to him, keeping her tone low. "Why did you do it?"

  The boy met her gaze. He was the beautiful one of her brood, slim, straight, cat-graceful, bird-s
oaring in this gravity for which he was made. Already the great height that would be typically Lunarian had brought his head even with his father's. Ash-blond hair fell in bangs over milk-white temples wherein a vein stood as blue as the big, slanty Lunarian eyes. The cheekbones were Asian, the nose and mouth and chin Hellenic, though neither blood was in him; it went with the altered genotype and had surprised the geneticists themselves. They talked of chaos inherent in biological systems, but she gathered this meant "We don't know."

  At her he smiled, to her he spoke gently. "It was all right, Madre. I wasn't in danger. The sun gave me a direction, and the high, jagged peak south of us, that'd be a landmark any time I climbed to where I could see it"

  "Merde!" Edmond roared.

  Dagny shushed him with a gesture. "But why did you go, dear?"

  "Bueno, I got out of sight before I noticed, and then I thought how I wanted a better look at those formations we found in the cleft, that Padre doesn't think are interesting." Anson shrugged. "Honest, I'd have come back before they were ready to leave."

  "If you did not bloody lose your way in that—that jumble, that labyrinth." Edmond's hands trembled a bit. He'd want comforting tonight, Dagny knew.

  "I wouldn't have," Anson argued. "I never do."

  It could well be the truth, she thought. Not that he'd been anywhere alone before now, but on guided excursions he acted as though he'd drawn maps in his head. Virtually no visitors, and few long-time residents, could do that, on this world that was not Earth.

  This world that was to be his.

  She mustn't undercut 'Mond. . "You could have discovered the hard way that it's possible," she said. "In any case, you were selfish and inconsiderate, you made a whopping lot of trouble, and most especially, you breached discipline. If you don't learn better, someday you may cause somebody's death. Go wash and lie down."

  Mute, haughtily erect, the boy departed. When he was out of sight, the man embraced the woman. She laid her head against the hard solidity of him, inhaled his warmth and male smell, clutched him tightly. "I 'ate sis," he whispered in her ear. "But we are obliged."

  "Oh, yes, oh, yes," she breathed. "For their sakes."

  If he and she knew what was right. How many of the old rules held? These were not children like any that had ever been before. In a sense, they were not human. They'd never be able to breed with her kind, nor even abide for very long on Earth. Not for them were wind and wave, blue heaven, thunderheads, rainbows, the great wheel of the seasons; theirs were the naked stone and the scornful stars and a life to make from a new beginning. She had not believed the otherness of their flesh would matter too much. Else she would not have borne them. But how foreign were their souls?

  * * * *

  11

  A

  s soon as she left the tubeway that had taken her from the airport, Aleka Kame realized she needed a warmer garment than she had brought along. The sky hung low and leaden. A raw wind harried tatters of fog borne in off the sea. Earth's atmosphere didn't always respond as it should to the nudges it got from Weather Control, and sometimes even short-range local prediction failed. Ultimately, the planet was chaotic.

  Having noticed a dispenser in the station, she went back. The booth was basic, but she didn't want anything fancy. In fact, she did not need to strip for the scan, as lightly clad as she was. When she had specified a brown calidex coverall and debited herself, the system took three minutes to prepare it and drop it out the chute. She put it on over her blouse and shorts, picked up her bag, and went forth again.

  The carrier had let her off within a few blocks of her first destination. Walking up Fell Street, she saw that more of the houses that lined it had gone empty since her last visit. They stood shingled, turreted, painted, sealed and silent in their old, museum pieces. What tenants remained were generally old, caretaking to earn a bit of extra credit. However, a number of small businesses were interspersed: personal services, entertainment, curio shops, hand-prepared food and drink, a place to linger and chat over coffee. Traffic went sparse, pedestrians, motorskaters, minicars, the occasional machine on duty at which she could only guess. Passing Steiner, she saw what was new, a quivira opposite Alamo Square. It was designed to blend in with its archaic surroundings; she would not have known its nature except for the schematic cosmos discreetly flashing above the entrance.

  So people were now coming here to lie in the tanks and enjoy the dream-lives they could not find in reality? Then the neighborhood wasn't actually dying . . . unless a sociotechnic computation had shown that this might restore a little vitality to it, and that that was desirable for some larger end. . , .

  The Albergo Vecchio filled a building which the occupants had gotten permission to remodel. A signboard creaked in the wind, with a garish amateur painting of peasants in a harvest field passing a leather bottle around. The walls behind the door, similarly decorated, enclosed a tiny bar and several tables with red-checked cloths. Cooking odors drifted from a reconstructed primitive kitchen. Mama Lucia bustled out to cry, "Benvenuta, carissima!" and hug Aleka to her vast bosom. Nothing would do but that the guest immediately have a tumbler of wine and a slab of bread and cheese.

  Upstairs in her room, which was also small and meticulously antiquated, Aleka sighed, shook her head, and smiled a bit sadly. She always stayed here when she came to San Francisco Bay Integrate. It wasn't fake, not really; it was a family's gallant effort to keep themselves independent, doing work they could care about. And, yes, it offered a haven from the machines. Her window overlooked a vegetable garden. As far as she knew, the plants were all traditional.

  If you wanted this kind of respite, a quivira could give it in totality; but the real thing, though limited, cost rather less.

  Of course, you didn't get away from a multiceiver and an eidophone. Aleka called the Mary Carfax number. An aged female face appeared on the screen. "Buenos tardes?" it quavered.

  Aleka named herself. "I'm a friend of your grand-niece Dolores Nightborn," she said. "She suggested I come by, since I'm in town, give you some news you may not have heard—nothing major, but nice—and see if you need anything. I'll be glad to help wherever I can."

  "Oh, yes, yes. Dear Dolores. Gracias, mil gracias, señorita. Can you come over pronto, for tea?"

  Hard to believe that this was an electrophotonic intelligence speaking while a program modulated the transmission. Aleka held her own features stiff, her voice calm. The effort made her forget and say, "Mahalo" by way of thanks, but no matter, she herself wasn't playing identity games, not yet. "Sure, I'll be happy to. In about half an hour, bien?"

  Quickly she changed to a decorous unisuit, flipped the coverall together around it, and went back downstairs. "I've a lot of errands," she told Mama. "Don't know when I'll be in." Beneath the easy words, she shivered.

  The display at the station directed her to a stop on Columbus Avenue. She had never seen that district before. It busied itself, but not directly with human concerns. On her right a wall rose a sheer hundred meters and ran for a kilometer or more, like a palisade, windowless, seemingly doorless. Recesses and flutings made a subtle pattern over which smoked the hues of a thousand different sunsets. Light also played, in coruscant sparkles, across a building on the other side, whose soaring intricacy suggested a fountain. Complementing it with height and grace, a metal framework reared beyond, where cables made a moving network around silvery control nodes. Aleka sometimes wished she had the brains to understand sophotectic esthetics, not simply admire it or stand bewildered.

  A sense of enormous energies filled her, though the wind whistled through silence and traffic was still thinner than along Fell. The cybercosm sent communications to work scenes far oftener than it dispatched material bodies. Perhaps a score of machines were in her visual field. A huge, torpedo-shaped transport murmured by, self-steered. Two little flyers buzzed overhead, optics bulging out of bluish metal, arms trailing aft below the wings. A fractally dendritic manipulator glided past, three meters tall; its fines
t extremities quivered and shimmered in the gusts. A wheeled, multiply tentacular globe was a sight new to her. And on and on. . . . Which were robots, which were intelligent and aware, which were puppets of a thing that might reside halfway around the planet? How much did the question mean? Electrophotonic minds could mesh at will in every possible configuration, achieving every potential—

  She was not quite the sole human. A man strode by, so purposefully that he must have some occupation here. A consultant, a technician? A woman stood at a distance, apparently discoursing with an anthropomorph that could almost have been taken for a spacesuit. Could she be a synnoiont? Two other men, grizzled and vaguely shabby, walked in surly conversation. Local residents? Probably. Those would be few, because flesh and blood tended to feel uncomfortable in environs like this, but on that account lodgings in side streets would be cheap.

  "Mary Carfax" had one. The seething data traffic everywhere around must help screen hers. She'd be free of people living close by, who might wonder why she never left home. All that had been necessary was to smuggle the apparatus in and install it. The precaution of slipping a false registry into the database would have been more difficult to take, but, given Lilisaire's connections, not impossible. Aleka knew something about that kind of trick.