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

by Poul Anderson

  "Won't you be seated?" she asked. Unusual on the Moon so early in a visit, that was an amicable gesture. Besides, her old bones wouldn't mind. She'd been pacing overmuch lately, when she wasn't off on a long walk, through the passageways and around the lake or topside across the crater floor. High time she started returning to everyday.

  The guest inclined her head, more or less an equivalent of "Thanks," and flowed into a chair. Dagny sat down facing her and continued, "Do you care for tea or coffee, or something stronger?"

  "Grace, nay." Etana looked at the hands tightly folded in her lap. "I came because—I would be sure you understand—" Lunarians were seldom this hesitant.

  "Go ahead, dear," Dagny invited softly.

  The dark eyes lifted to meet her faded blue. "We thought of how we could leave him . . . in his honor . . . beneath a cairn on Iron Heath. Or else we could bring him home, that his kinfolk cremate him and strew his ashes over his mountains. But—"

  Dagny waited, hoping her expression spoke gentleness.

  "But a freeze-dried mummy!" Etana cried. "What use?" More evenly: "And although we must perforce lie about where and how he ended, to do it at his services were unworthy of him, nay?"

  "You'd have attended?" wondered Dagny, taken unawares. Lunarians didn't bother to scoff at Earth ceremonies, they simply avoided them. Christmas without grandchildren got pretty lonesome.

  "Ey, your friends would have come and misliked it did his siblings and companionates hold away." Etana paused. "But without a body to commit to its rest, our absence is of indifference, true?"

  "Actually, I wouldn't have staged a funeral," Dagny said. "My man didn't want any. I don't for myself. It's enough if you remember."

  "Nothing else? His companionates will—No matter."

  Dagny didn't inquire about those rites, or whatever they were. The younger generations weren't exactly secretive; they just didn't share their customs with outsiders, in word or deed. Recalling the frustration of several anthropologists, she felt a smile skim her lips, the first since she got the news.

  Etana went on: "In the end, Brandir and I did what we judged was due his honor and ours."

  Dagny nodded. "I know." The brother had told her. When the velocity of the homebound ship was optimal for it, Kaino departed, lashed to a courier rocket, on a trajectory that would end in the sun.

  Etana struggled further before she could get out: "I feared Brandir might not have made clear how—I felt—and therefore I have come to you."

  "Thank you," Dagny said, genuinely moved. They weren't heartless, the Lunarians, her children, their children. They weren't, not really. But wisest to steer clear of anything this personal. "How is Ilitu?"

  She had been too busy to inquire, after learning that he returned alive but in need of spinal cord regrowth and lesser biorepair. Too busy with grief, and handling condolences, and blessed, blessed work.

  Etana brightened. "He fares well, should soon be hale. Thus he becomes a memorial unto Kaino."

  That sounded rehearsed. However, the girl's happiness about the fact appeared sincere, so probably her gratitude was also. "You care for him, then?"

  Etana went masklike.

  Dagny made haste to change the subject. "That world my son helped explore, I'd like to think he'll be remembered there as well. If only—" No, better not pursue this either.

  Etana did, turning sympathetic while remaining firm. "Nay, you realize it must wait in the knowledge of a chosen small few. Else would Earth close it to us."

  Paranoia? Maybe, maybe not. Temerir's discovery did have the potential of a colony—for Lunarians. The gravity was right; the minerals were abundant and easily available, not buried under many kilometers of ice as in comets; water, ammonia, and organics were present, with more to be had in the same general region of space.

  Who, though, would want to dwell that far from the sun, in a cold close to absolute zero?

  Dagny supposed Brandir and his confederates were being cagey. After all, today Lunarians weren't forbidden, but neither were they encouraged to prospect and develop the asteroids of the Belt and the lesser moons of the outer planets. And that was in spite of their being far better suited for the conditions than Earth-type humans, in some respects possibly superior to robots.

  She couldn't resist probing a bit: "When will you open it to yourselves?"

  "When the time is befitting. That may well be long after we today are dead."

  It was inhuman to think so far ahead, and to feel assured the secret would stay inviolate. Dagny sighed. "Yes, Brandir, Temerir, Fia, they've discussed it with me. Never fear, I'll keep my promise, I won't betray you."

  "Honor shall be yours," said Etana with rare warmth.

  She clearly didn't want to talk about Kaino, she who had shared him. What now was in the breasts of his other mates? It had been good of this one to come speak, however briefly, with his mother. Dagny wouldn't risk pushing her any further. Just the same, here was a chance to set forth something that could be . . . his invisible cenotaph.

  "I do have a suggestion," Dagny began. "Have you decided on a name for your little planet?"

  Etana showed surprise, which was gratifying. "Nay. Brandir and I touched on it once during the voyage, but reached no idea. Nor have others considered it since, to my knowledge." And that wasn't quite human either. The young woman sat still for a bit. "A name will be useful, yes."

  "Proserpina," Dagny said.

  "Hai?"

  "As distant and lonely as it is, out beyond Pluto, who was the god of the underworld and the dead—his queen sounds right to me."

  "Have we not already a Proserpina?"

  Dagny shrugged. "Probably. An asteroid? I haven't checked. Never mind. Duplications exist, you know."

  "What suppose your children of this?"

  "I haven't asked them yet. It only occurred to me yesterday. What do you think?"

  Etana cradled her chin and gazed into air. "A musical name. The goddess of the dead—because you lost a son to her?"

  The sea noises roared and wailed.

  Dagny sat straight as she said, "And because every springtime Proserpina comes back to the living world."

  * * * *

  27

  P

  rajnaloka was as lovely as its setting. From that mountaintop you looked far across the Ozark range, forest-green below the sun, down into a valley where a river ran quicksilver and up to cumulus argosies scudding before a wind freighted with earthy scents. A mockingbird trilled through quietness, a cardinal flitted like flame. These were old mountains, worn down to gentleness, their limestone white or pale gold wherever it stood bared. The life upon them was ageless.

  A small community clustered around the ashram, service establishments and homes. Those buildings were of natural wood, low and rambling under high-pitched roofs, most of them fronted by porches where folk could sit together as twilight deepened. Flowerbeds bordered them with color. They seemed a part of the landscape. The ashram itself rose at the center, its massive edifices surrounding quads where beech or magnolia gave shade; but the material was native stone and the architecture recalled Oxford. A transceiver-winged communications mast soared in harmony with them, the highest of their spires.

  Kenmuir and Aleka were still too exhausted to appreciate the scene. Tomorrow, he thought. At the moment he had all he could do, accompanying the mentor who guided them over campus and following what the dark, white-bearded, white-robed little man said.

  "No, por favor, don't apologize. We were informed in advance that you didn't know exactly when you would arrive—"

  —by Mary Carfax, which had made the reservation for Aleka Kame and Johan. Kenmuir reminded himself once more that that was his name while he stayed here.

  "—and in any event, we have a relaxed attitude toward schedules. There are usually accommodations to spare. Most participation in our programs is remote."

  Most participation in most things was, Kenmuir thought dully. Eidophone, telepresence, multiceiver, vivife
r, quivira, how much occasion did they leave anybody to go any real distance from home?

  "I am not quite sure just what you are seeking," Sandhu continued.

  "Enlightenment," Aleka answered.

  "That word has many meanings, and the ways toward any of them are countless."

  "Of course. We are hoping to get a glimmering of it from the cybercosm. For that, we need the kind of equipment you have." Kenmuir wished he could talk as brightly and readily as she did. Well, she was young, she could bounce back fast from tension and terror.

  The mentor came close to frowning. "None but synnoionts can achieve direct communion with the cybercosm."

  "Certainly, señor. Doesn't everyone know that? But the kind of insight, guidance, the understanding of space-time unity and mind that come from the database and sophotectic teachers—" Aleka smiled. "Am I sounding awfully pretentious?"

  Sandhu smiled back. "Not really. Earnest, naive, perhaps. The explorations and meditations you speak of, they are what most of us here undertake. But they are the work of a lifetime, which is never long enough to complete them. And you say you have but a short while to spend."

  "We hope to try it, señor, and find out whether we're . . . worthy. Then maybe later—"

  Sandhu nodded. "Your hope is not uncommon. Bueno, I can see you are both weary. Let us get you settled in. Tomorrow we shall give you preliminary instruction and test your skills. This evening, rest." He gestured about him. "Drink beauty. Drink deep."

  He showed them to dormitory-style quarters. The men's section was sufficiently full that Kenmuir would share a room—two cots, two desks, two chairs, a cabinet—with a novice from the Brazilian region. At a simple meal in the refectory, Aleka whispered to him that she was alone. This was a piece of luck although, had it not happened, she could have made her arrangements anyway, less conveniently.

  Talk at table was amicable, not very consequential, in several languages. Afterward a number of the fifty or sixty visitors and some of the permanent Soulquesters mingled socially or relaxed with sedate games. Kenmuir, who didn't feel up to it, went outside. Nobody took that amiss; these people were as diverse as their Daos. He stood on a terrace, breathing summer odors. Below him the lights of the village fell away toward darkened woods, above him shone stars and the thin young Moon, around him danced fireflies. At last he sought his bed.

  His roommate had already arrived and sat studying a text in a reader. He was an intense youth who introduced himself as Cavalheiro. Kenmuir saw no way out of a conversation. It proved interesting.

  "I search for God in the quivira," Cavalheiro tried to explain. The surprise on his listener's face was unmistakable. "Ah, yes. You wonder, am I dement? A quivira gives nothing but the full-sensory illusion, the dream, of an experience. True. However, one does not passively let the program run. One interacts with it, not so? The result is that the episode affects the brain and goes into the memory just as if it were real."

  "Not quite," Kenmuir demurred. "That is, whenever I've been there, well, afterward I knew I was actually lying in the tank."

  "All you want is entertainment, or sometimes knowledge," Cavalheiro said. Not always, Kenmuir thought. On long space missions, sessions in the quivira were a medicine for sensory impoverishment. Their input helped keep a man sane.

  "I seek the meaning of things," Cavalheiro went on. "The programs I use were written by persons who spent their lives pursuing the divine. They had the help of sophotects long intimate with humans, that draw on the whole of every religious culture in history and think orders of magnitude more powerfully than us. The conceptions in the programs go beyond words, images, consciousness. They go to the depths of the spirit and the bounds of the cosmos. I think the Teramind is in them."

  "Urn, may I ask what it. . . feels like?"

  "It is no single thing. I have cried to Indra and he has answered me out of the thunders. I have questioned Jesus Christ. I have felt the compassion of Kwan-Yin. I have—no, it is not possible to speak of nearing samadhi. But do you not see, it is interaction. In a little, little way, I give form to the divine, while it fills me and shapes me."

  "You are both finding and making your God, then?" Kenmuir ventured.

  "I am trying to understand and enter into God," Cavalheiro replied. "I am not unique in taking this path. None of us has lived to walk it to the end, and I do not imagine any human ever will. But it is what our lives are about."

  * * * *

  Aleka having demonstrated high competence and sketchily described what she and Kenmuir claimed were their intentions, they received permission to proceed. By then the sun stood at mid-afternoon. They said they would like to relax with a walk now and begin next morning. "An excellent idea," Sandhu approved. "What you desire lies as much in the living world as in any abstractions," He signed the air. "Blessings."

  Trails wound down the mountain through its woodland. They chose theirs because it looked unfrequented. Their goal was solitude in which to plan their strategy. Time passed, though, while they fared in silence.

  High above them, the greenwood rustled to a breeze. That and their footfalls on soil were the only sounds at first, except when a squirrel chittered and sped aloft or a bird-call came liquid from shadowy depths. Light-flecks danced. Air beneath the leaves lay rich and warm. They passed some crumbling, moss-grown blocks that Kenmuir guessed were remnants of a highway; but if a town had once been hereabouts, it was long abandoned, demolished to make room for the return of nature. Presently he began to hear a trill of running water. The path reached a brook that swirled and splashed in a small cascade, down to a hollow where blackberries beckoned robins.

  He and Aleka stopped for a drink. The water was cool. It tasted wild. Straightening, he wiped his mouth and sighed, "Bonny country. And so peaceful. Like a whole different planet."

  Aleka gave him a quizzical glance. Here, where the canopy overhead was thinner, her skin glowed amber below a faint sheen of sweat. "Different from what?" she inquired.

  He grimaced. "Those places we've lately been."

  "You've got it wrong, I think. They are the alien planets. This is the normal one, ours."

  "How?" he asked, puzzled.

  "Why, what you said. Here things are beautiful and peaceful. Bueno, isn't most of Earth?"

  "Why, uh—"

  He harked back. The heights and heather and bluebells, glens and lochs, old hamlets and friendly taverns of his earlier life. Immensities of forest, prairie, savannah, splendor of horned beasts and lethally graceful predators, birds in their tens of thousands aflight across the sky. An antique walled city, lovingly preserved. A city that was a "single kilometer of upwardness triumphant amidst its parkland. A city that floated on the sea. A village where each home was a dirigible endlessly cruising. A guitar plangent through tropical dusk or in an Arctic hut. And nobody crowded, nobody afraid . . . unless they wanted to be?

  "Y-yes," he admitted. "Most of it. And where it isn't, by our standards, maybe that's what the people choose." He thought of the Drylanders. "I'm not sure how much choice they have, given what they are. But they're not forced."

  Aleka cocked her head—the obsidian-black hair rippled—and considered him. "You're a thoughtful kanaka," she murmured.

  Unreasonably, he flushed. "You make me think."

  "Naw, with you it's a habit."

  "Well, you open my eyes to what's around me on Earth."

  Suddenly in the sunshine, he felt cold. What did he know of Earth, really? Of common humanity? His universe had become rock and ice, the far-strewn outposts of beings whose blood was not his, and one among them whom he utterly desired but who he knew very clearly did not love him. How glad he was when Aleka pulled him back from the stars: "I don't claim this world is perfect. Parts of it are still pretty bad. But by and large, we're closing in on the Golden Age."

  In argument was refuge. "How can you say that, when you yourself—"

  Aleka stamped her foot. "I said it isn't perfect. A lot needs fixing. Sometimes the fixin
g makes matters worse. Then we have to fight. Like now."

  Kenmuir recalled the bitterness of Lilisaire and other Lunarians against the whole smooth-wheeling system. He recalled how the machines of that system were competing them out of space. Asperity touched him. "I take it you don't share the standard belief in the absolute wisdom and beneficence of the cybercosm?"

  She shrugged. "Never mind the cybercosm. We deal with people, after all. And they're as shortsighted and crooked as ever."

  "But the system—the advice, that governments never fail to take—the services, everywhere around us like the atmosphere, and we as dependent—" Services that had lately included doping a drink, it seemed; and what else?