We Have Fed Our Sea

by Poul Anderson

  "Hello, Nibelung," said Ryerson.

  Maclaren started. "Are you getting to be a telepath?"

  "It's possible," said Ryerson. His voice had become a harsh whisper. His glance searched darkness. "Anything is possible here."

  "After we put this load through," said Maclaren, evading the other thought, "we'd better move the slag out of the ship. That ninety-nine-plus per cent of material we don't use piles up fast."

  Ryerson clumped heavily to the truck and began unloading. "And then out once more, cutting and loading and grinding and . . . merciful God, but I'm tired! Do you really imagine we can keep on doing heavy manual work like this, after the last food has been eaten?"

  "We'll have to," said Maclaren. "And, of course, there is al­ways—" He picked up a rock. Dizziness whirled through him. He dropped the stone and sank to his knees on the ground.

  "Terangi!" Ryerson's voice seemed to come from some Del­phic deep, through mists. "Terangi, what's wrong?"

  "Nothing," mumbled Maclaren. He pushed at the other man's groping arms. "Lea' me be . . . all right in a min­ute . . ." He relaxed against the stiffness of armor and let his weakness go through him in tides.

  After a while, some strength returned. He looked up. Ryer­son was just feeding the last rocks into the crusher. The ma­chine ate them with a growl that Maclaren felt through the planet and his body. It vibrated his teeth together.

  "I'm sorry, Dave," he said.

  "‘S all right. You should go up and bunk for a while."

  "Just a spell. Maybe we shouldn't have cut our rations as short as we have."

  "You do seem to've been losing weight even faster than me," said Ryerson. "Maybe you ought to have an extra ration."

  "Nah. It's metabolic inefficiency, brought on by well-spent years of wine, women, and off-key song."

  Ryerson sat down beside him. "I'm a bit short of breath myself. Let's both take a break while the stuff goes through the crusher."

  "Well," said Maclaren, "if your tailbone insulators can stand it, I suppose mine can."

  THEY remained in silence for a while. The machine rum­bled in their flesh and the stars muttered in their heads.

  "How long do you think it will take to prepare the web?" asked Maclaren. "I mean, what's your latest estimate?"

  "Hitherto I've underestimated the time for everything," said Ryerson. "Now, I just don't know. First we'll have to get our germanium. Then, to make the units . . . I don't know. Two weeks, three? And then, once all the circuits are functioning, they'll have to be tuned. Mostly by guesswork, since I don't really know the critical constants. That will take x time, de­pending on how lucky we are."

  "We'll open the last can of food soon," said Maclaren. In itself it was a totally useless reminder, but it was leading up to something they had both avoided.

  Ryerson continued to squirm: "They say tobacco helps kill appetite."

  "It does," said Maclaren, "but I smoked the last butts months ago. Now I've even lost the addiction. Though of course I'll happily rebuild same the moment we strike Earth."

  "When we come home—" Ryerson's voice drifted off like a murmur in sleep. "We haven't talked about our plans for a long time."

  "It got to be too predictable, what every man would say."

  "Yes. But is it now? I mean, do you still want to take that sailboat cruise around Earth, with . . . er . . . a female crew and a cargo of champagne?"

  "I don't know," said Maclaren, faintly surprised to realize it. "I hadn't thought—Do you remember once in space, we talked about our respective sailing experiences, and you told me the sea is the most inhuman thing on our planet?"

  "Hm-m-m—yes. Of course, my sea was the North Atlantic. You might have had different impressions."

  "I did. Still, Dave, it has stuck in my mind, and I see now you are right. Any ocean is, is too—big, old, blind for us—too beau­tiful." He sought the million suns of the Milky Way. "Even this black ocean we're wrecked in."

  "That's odd," said Ryerson. "I thought it was your influence making me think more and more of the sea as a . . . not a friend, I suppose. But hope and life and, oh, I don't know. I only know, I'd like to take that cruise with you."

  "By all means," said Maclaren. "I didn't mean I'd become afraid of the water, just that I've looked a little deeper into it. Maybe into everything. Hard to tell, but I've had a feeling now and then, out here, of what Seiichi used to call insight."

  "One does learn something in space," agreed Ryerson. "I began to, myself, once I'd decided that God hadn't cast me out here and God wasn't going to bring me back, it wasn't His part—Oh, about that cruise. I'd want to take my wife, but she'd understand about your, uh, companions."

  "Surely," said Maclaren. "I'd expect that. You've told me so much about her, I feel like a family friend."

  I feel as if I loved her.

  "Come around and be avuncular when we've settled— Damn, I forgot the quarantine. Well, come see our home on Rama in thirty years!"

  No, no, I am being foolish. The sky has crushed me back toward child. Because she has gallant eyes and hair like a dark flower, it does not mean she is the one possible woman to fulfill that need I have tried for most of my life to drown out. It is only that she is the first woman since my mother's death whom I realize is a human being.

  And for that, Tamara, I have been slipping three-fourths of my ration back into the common share, so your man may inno­cently take half of that for his. It is little enough I can do, to repay what you who I never saw gave to me.

  "Terangi! You are all right, aren't you?"

  "Oh. Oh, yes, of course." Maclaren blinked at the other ar­mored shape, shadowy beside him. "Sorry, old chap. My mind wandered off on some or other daisy-plucking expedition."

  "IT'S an odd thing," said Ryerson. "I find myself thinking more and more frivolously. As this cruise of yours, for instance. I really mean to join you, if you're still willing, and we'll take that champagne along and stop at every sunny is­land and loaf about and have a hell of a good time. I wouldn't have expected this . . . what has happened . . . to change me in that direction. Would you?"

  "Why, no," said Maclaren. "Uh, I thought actually you—"

  "I know. Because God seemed to be scourging me, I believed the whole creation must lie under His wrath. And yet, well, I have been on the other side of Doomsday. Here, in nightmare land. And somehow, oh, I don't know, but the same God who kindled that nova saw equally fit to . . . to make wine for the wedding at Cana."

  Maclaren wondered if the boy would regret so much self-revelation later. Perhaps not if it had been mutual. So he answered with care, "Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, my thinking has drifted in the other direction. I could never see any real reason to stay alive, except that it was more fun than being dead. Now I couldn't begin to list all the reasons. To raise kids into the world, and learn something about the universe, and not compromise with someone's version of justice, and— I'm afraid I'm not a convert or anything. I still see the same blind cosmos governed by the same blind laws. But suddenly it matters. It matters terribly, and means something. What, I haven't figured out yet. I probably never will. But I have a reason for living, or for dying if need be. Maybe that's the whole purpose of life: purpose itself. I can't say. But I expect to enjoy the world a lot more."

  Ryerson said in a thoughtful tone: "I believe we've learned to take life seriously. Both of us."

  The grinder chuted its last dust into the receptacle. The gasifier was inboard; and the cold, not far from absolute zero, was penetrating the suit insulators. Ryerson got up. Shadows lapped his feet. "Of course," he said, his voice suddenly cracked, "that doesn't help us a great deal if we starve to death out here."

  Maclaren rose with him. The floodlamps ridged both their faces against the huge hollow dark. Maclaren caught Ryer­son's eyes with his own. For a moment they struggled, not moving under theconstellations, but sweat sprang out upon Ryerson's forehead.

  "You realize," said Maclaren, "that we actually c
an eat for quite a while longer. I'd say, at a guess, two more months."

  "No," whispered Ryerson. "No, I won't."

  "You will," Maclaren told him.

  He stood there another minute, to make certain of his vic­tory, which he meant as a gift to Tamara. Then he turned on his heel and walked over to the machine. "Come on," he said, "let's get to work."

  MACLAREN woke up of himself. For a moment he did not remember where he was. He had been in some place of trees, where water flashed bright beneath a hill. Someone had been with him, but her name and face would not come back. There was a lingering warmth on his lips.

  He blinked at the table fastened to the ceiling. He was lying on a mattress— Yes. The Southern Cross, a chilly knowledge. But why had he wakened early? Sleep was the last hiding place left to him and Dave. They stood watch and watch at the web controls, and came back to their upside-down bunkroom and ate sleep. Life had shrunken to that.

  Maclaren yawned and rolled over. The alarm clock caught his eye. Had the stupid thing stopped? He looked at the second hand for a while, decided that it was indeed moving. But then he had slept for holy shark-toothed sea gods, for thirteen hours!

  He sat up with a gasp. Bloodlessness went through his head. He clung to his blankets and waited for strength to come back. How long a time had it been, while his tissues consumed them­selves for lack of all other nourishment? He had stopped count­ing hours. But the ribs and joints stuck out on him so he sometimes listened for a rattle when he walked. Had it been a month? At least it was a time spent inboard, with little physi­cal exertion; that fact alone kept him alive.

  Slowly, like a sick creature, he climbed to his feet. If Dave hadn't called him, Dave might have passed out, or died, or proven to have been only a starving man's whim. With a host of furious fancies—Maclaren shambled across to the shaftway. The transceiver rooms were aft of the gyros, they had been meant to be "down" with respect to the observation deck when­ever there was acceleration and now they were up above. For­tunately, the ship had been designed in the knowledge she would be in free fall most of her life. Maclaren gripped a rung with both hands. I could use a little free fall right now, he reflected through the dizziness. He put one foot on the next rung, used that leg and both hands to pull the next foot up beside it; now, repeat; once more; one for Father and one for Mother and one for Nurse and one for the cat and so it goes until here we are, shaking with exhaustion.

  Ryerson sat at the control panel outside the receiving and transmitting chambers. It had been necessary to spotweld a chair, with attached ladder, to the wall and, of course, learn how to operate an upside-down control panel. The face that turned toward Maclaren was bleached and hairy and caved-in; but the voice seemed almost cheerful. "So you're awake."

  "The alarm didn't call me," said Maclaren. He panted for air. "Why didn't you come rouse me?"

  "Because I turned off the alarm in the first place."

  "What?" Maclaren sat down on what had been the ceiling and stared upward.

  "You'll fall apart if you don't get more rest," said Ryerson. "You've been in worse shape than me for weeks, even before the . . . the food gave out. I can sit here and twiddle knobs without having to break off every eight hours."

  "Well, maybe." Maclaren felt too tired to argue.

  "Any luck?" he asked after a while.

  "Not yet. I'm trying a new sequence now. Don't worry, we're bound to hit resonance soon."

  MACLAREN considered the problem for a while. Lately his mind seemed to have lost as much ability to hold things as his fingers. Painfully, he reconstructed the theory and practice of gravitic mattercasting. Everything followed with simple logic from the fact that it was possible at all.

  The signals necessarily used a pulse code, with amplitude and duration as the variables; there were tricky ways to in­clude a little more information through the number of pulses per millisecond, if you set an upper limit to the duration of each. It all took place so rapidly that engineers could speak in wave terms without too gross an approximation. Each trans­ceiver identified itself by a "carrier" pattern, of which the ac­tual mattercasting signal was a modulation. The process only took place if contact had been established, that is, if the trans­mitter was emitting the carrier pattern of a functioning re­ceiver: the "resonance" or "awareness" effect which beat the inverse-square law, a development of Einstein's great truth that the entire cosmos is shaped by what momentarily hap­pens to each of its material parts.

  The '‘caster itself, by the very act of scanning, generated the signals which recreated the object transmitted. But first the ‘caster must be tuned in on the desired receiving station. The manual aboard ship gave the call pattern of every established transceiver: but, naturally, gave it in terms of the standard­ized and tested web originally built into the ship. Thus, to reach Sol, the book said, blend its pattern with that of Rashid's Star, the initial relay station in this particular case. Your sig­nal will be automatically bucked on, through several worlds, till it reaches Earth's Moon. Here are the respective voltages, oscillator frequencies, et cetera, involved; add them up and use the resultant.

  Ryerson's handmade web was not standardized. He could put a known pattern into it, electronically, but the gravitics would emit an unknown one, the call signal of a station not to be built for the next thousand years. He lacked instruments to measure the relationship, so he could not recalculate the ap­propriate settings. It was cut and try, with a literal infinity of choices and only a few jackleg estimates to rule out some of the possibilities.

  Maclaren sighed. A long time had passed while he sat think­ing. Or so his watch claimed. He hadn't noticed it go by, him­self.

  "You know something, Dave?" he said.

  "Hm-m-m?" Ryerson turned a knob, slid a vernier one notch, and punched along a row of buttons.

  "We are out on the far edge of no place. I forgot how far to the nearest station, but a devil of a long ways. This haywire rig of ours may not have the power to reach it."

  "I knew that all the time," said Ryerson. He slapped the main switch. Needles wavered on dials, oscilloscope tracings glowed elthill green, it whined in the air. "I think our appara­tus is husky enough, though. Remember, this ship has left Sol farther behind than any other ever did. They knew she would—a straight-line course would just naturally outrun the three-dimensional expansion of our territory—so they built the transceiver with capacity to spare. Even in its present bat­tered state, it might reach Sol directly, if conditions were just right."

  "Think we will? That would be fun."

  Ryerson shrugged. "I doubt it, frankly. Just on a statistical basis. There are so many other stations by now—Hey!"

  Maclaren found himself on his feet, shaking. "What is it?" he got out. "What is it? For the love of heaven, Dave, what is it?"

  Ryerson's mouth opened and closed, but no sounds emerged. He pointed with one bony arm. It shook.

  Below him—it was meant to be above, like a star—a light glowed red.

  "Contact," said Maclaren.

  The word echoed through his skull as if spoken by a creator, across a universe still black and empty.

  Ryerson began to weep, silently, his lips working. "Tamara," he said. "Tamara, I'm coming home."

  Maclaren thought: If Chang and Seiichi had been by me now, what a high and proud moment.

  "Go on, Terangi," chattered Ryerson. His hands shook so he could not touch the controls. "Go on through."

  Maclaren did not really understand it. Not yet. It was too swift a breaking. But the wariness of a race which had evolved among snakes and war spoke for him:

  "Wait, Dave. Wait a minute. Just to be certain. Put a signal through. A teletype, I mean; we've no voice microphone, have we? You can do it right at that keyboard."

  "What for?" screamed Ryerson. "What for? If you won't go through, I will!"

  "Just wait, is all." Suddenly Maclaren was begging. All the craziness of months between stars that burned his eyes woke up; he felt in a dim wa
y that man must live under conditions and walk in awe, but this is one of the prides in being a man. He raised powerless hands and cried—it was not much above a whisper—"There could be some distortion, you know. Acci­dents do happen, once in a great while, and this web was made by hand, half of it from memory—Send a message. Ask for a test transmission back to us. It won't take long and—My God, Dave, what kind of thing could you send home to Tamara if the signal was wrong?"

  RYERSON'S chin quivered in its beard, but he punched the typer keys with hard angry strokes. Maclaren sat back down, breathing quickly and shallowly. So it was to be­come real after all. So he would again walk beneath the tall summer clouds of Earth.

  No, he thought. I never will. Terangi Maclaren died in an orbit around the black sun, and on the steel planet where it is always winter. The I that am may go home, but never the I that was.

  Ryerson bent over so he could look into the screen which gave him an image of the receiving chamber.

  Maclaren waited. A long while passed.

  "Nothing," said Ryerson. "They haven't sent a thing."

  Maclaren could still not talk.

  "A colonial station, of course," said Ryerson. "Probably one of the outpost jobs with two men for a staff . . . or, another spaceship. Yes, that's likeliest, we're in touch with an inter­stellar. Only one man on watch and—"