The Florians

by Brian Stableford

  But the man wasn’t listening now.

  “It’s really the wrong way around,” he mused. “It should be the young who look ahead, into the future, and see possibilities instead of threats. It’s the old who are orientated backward in time, wondering about mistakes, trying to validate the past by maintaining the status quo. You should see the future in the stars instead of in the soil. You should believe in the colonies. If it were only a personal rebellion, it might be easier to figure, but you’re the voice of your generation. Why? What have you got against dreams? But there’s the ship, too, named for Daedalus when it was Icarus who wanted to fly at high as possible.”

  “Icarus was punished for his presumption,” interrupted the boy.

  “But our wings aren’t made of wax and feathers,” said the man—still to himself rather than to his son. “And in any case, the name has nothing to do with that particular myth. It’s another classical joke. Daedalus was the first genetic engineer—the man who made the Minotaur...another exercise in co-adaptation, you see....”

  “Forget it,” said the boy. “Just forget it.” His weariness was deliberate, overacted.

  The man wanted to find a way back to the beginning, thinking that if he could only start again it might somehow turn out a little better, a little easier. He hadn’t come to argue, but to say good-bye. But there seemed no way it could be said without resentment, without rancor. He was going away, for six—perhaps seven—years. It was nothing new—he had been away for the greater part of the boy’s life, but there is a profound difference between miles and light-years. Even seven years isn’t forever, but it would be a far greater slice out of the boy’s life than his own. And so the meeting...and the parting...were important, and difficult.

  “They’ll make a part of my salary available to you,” said the man. “No strings. If you need it, take it.”

  The boy was on the point of shaking his head, but apparently thought better of it. There was no point in refusing, to provoke more shallow and pointless argument. It was better to wait.

  They reached a slit in the concrete face, where a long staircase ascended toward the living city. They began to climb. It was no longer possible to walk side by side. The boy went first. When they reached the top, the car was waiting.

  “Can we give you a lift?” asked the man.

  “No,” said the boy. “It’d take you out of your way.”

  It was on the tip of the man’s tongue to insist, but he too let the moment pass. For once, they exchanged a lingering glance. There was a hint of guilt about it, on both sides. Neither could escape the suspicion that at some time in the indeterminate future they might regret that this parting had passed so emptily, without any real feeling on either side—a formality.

  In truth, they were being honest now in revealing no depths of emotion, maintaining an easy distance from one another. It would be in the future, with the creeping regrets and the notions of what ought to have been, that hypocrisy would cover up the reality.

  They had nothing in common. In spite of heredity, it is often the way.

  They shook hands, mouthed meaningless sounds, and parted. The son, consumed by the affairs of life and immediate circumstance, walked away into the city. The father, in getting into the car, cut himself out from that complex pattern, and headed for the stars.

  * * * * * * *

  “It was difficult?” said Pietrasante.

  “He doesn’t understand,” Alexander replied. “He hasn’t much sympathy with viewpoints other than his own.”

  “He’s a neo-Christian, isn’t he?”

  Alexander, who had let the acceleration of the car ease him back into the soft seat, felt a sudden tightness in his muscles.

  “It’s not illegal,” he said.

  Pietrasante smiled. “No need to be so touchy, Alex,” he purred. “No need at all. I approve of the things the neo-Christians stand for: the refusal to yield to violence...the utter rejection of violence as a means of human intercourse...turning the other cheek. Of course, the violence they abhor is sometimes the violence of the establishment. They clash with authority...but we need the kind of determination the neo-Christians show. There are too many people who find violence too easy to tolerate.”

  “They’re Monadists as well as Christians,” said Alexander. “They don’t want the space age back. If they found out where the Daedalus is they’d be lying underneath her daring us to take off over their dead bodies. As far as Peter is concerned, that’s what I’m doing...going to the stars over his dead body. He wouldn’t lift a finger to stop me, of course, because he’s a neo-Christian. But that’s what he thinks.”

  “That’s the strength of the movement,” said Pietrasante. “They don’t stop anyone doing anything. They stand before the barrel of the gun, and they say ‘Shoot.’ And people don’t...sometimes. Most men with guns need an excuse to shoot, inside themselves. Even a petty criminal shooting an unarmed man in order to rob him needs to see his victim as an enemy, and himself as a potential victim. The neo-Christians, by attacking that assumption, are making the first constructive move against the socialization of violence that our poor little planet has seen in many years.”

  “And a lot of them get shot,” said Alexander quietly. “Martyrs to the cause. Maybe the guys who kill them feel guilty as hell about it afterward, but they’re still dead. Dying for all mankind, they reckon, like Christ himself. But dying.”

  “You think that may happen to your son?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid that when I come back, in six or seven or ten years, I’m going to find Peter six feet under, because he stood in front of a gun and expressed his willingness to be shot...I don’t have the same confidence in the conscience of gunmen that you seem to have.”

  “Would it make any difference,” asked the UN man quietly, “if you were here when it happened?”

  “No,” said Alexander. “None at all.”

  Pietrasante allowed a few minutes to pass, while he stared over the shoulder of the driver at the road ahead. Alexander looked sideways, his eyes not really focusing, letting the world become a blur as it whipped past the fast-moving car.

  When the two men looked at one another again, they were ready to change gear, to turn their attention to problems of an entirely different order.

  Pietrasante was carrying a number of files, which the other man had returned to him before the meeting with his son. Now he tapped the files with a stout forefinger, and said, “What do you think of Dr. Kilner’s observations?”

  “How is Kilner?” countered Alexander.

  “Still active,” said Pietrasante smoothly. “He wasn’t drummed out of the service. He’s in charge of a reclamation project.”

  “The Sahara?”

  “Farther east.” Pietrasante flashed a tiny smile as he said it. Alexander did not return it.

  “You couldn’t expect him to be pleased by what he found,” said Alexander. “Five colonies—four making a somewhat precarious living, one dead. Kilner believed in the colonies. He went out looking to find healthy societies, expanding populations, happy people. Instead, he found people ready to spit in his face because they thought they’d been deserted, left to rot. He couldn’t live with the fact that they’d lost faith—that the contacts didn’t renew their hope and revitalize the dreams the original colonists set out with. He had a hard time. And he despaired. Lost his own faith...became a convert to the antis. I think I understand—but I also think he was wrong. He did help those colonies. He did renew their hope, in a practical sense. He shouldn’t have let their lack of gratitude get under his skin. It was no part of his job to be a hero. I still think he might have been all right if it hadn’t been for the dead world. But that’s what really knocked him down...it was too much, on top of everything else.”

  “Suppose it had happened to you,” said Pietrasante.

  Alexander looked the UN man full in the face, without any hesitancy in his manner. It was something he had not been able to do to his son. “It may yet happen
,” he said. “I’m not going out wearing rose-tinted spectacles. If that’s what Kilner found, that’s what we’ll find. I’m not going out there with the same optimism that he carried. I’m not searching for a new Arcadia. But I won’t lose faith because I find the colonies struggling desperately to keep going and hating Earth because Earth has spent the best part of a century in a historical twilight zone when the whole space program died. We have to start again, now. We have to look to the future.”

  Pietrasante met the steady gaze with an expression of infinite calm. There was not the least sign of approval in his manner.

  “Setting aside Kilner’s personal reactions,” he said, “what do you deduce from his reports on the individual worlds? Why were the colonies failing? In the beginning, each one was set up under the assumption that it would succeed even without further contact with Earth. All the volunteers were warned that no meaningful support might be possible for many years—even the two hundred years which have elapsed in the most extreme cases. The colonies were expected to survive in spite of that. Where did our thinking go wrong? Why were the colonies not the way Kilner expected to find them?”

  Alexander, slightly resentful of the interrogation, turned away briefly. “There was no single reason,” he said. “Even in the case of the colony that failed, there was no single thing that we could point to and say, ‘This was the cause. This is what we had not anticipated.’ It’s the whole class of problems—problems of co-adaptation between the life-systems. But these are problems which were bound to arise. And it’s in the period of time which had elapsed in the recontacted colonies that we might have expected these problems to emerge and reach a critical point. I can’t agree that the colonies Kilner helped would have failed utterly without him. They could have got past the crises on their own...things wouldn’t have continued to get worse. Kilner saved lives and he saved time, but I believe that some of the colonies, at least, were viable in any case.”

  “I’m not at all sure that I agree with you,” said Pietrasante. “But my viewpoint is rather different from your own. Your interest is scientific, mine—I fear—has to be political as well. You see, these reports raise a good many questions with respect to the Daedalus project, and thus to the future of any new space program. It is not simply a matter of deciding whether any new colonies are to be set up, or even what needs to be done about those already in existence...though these decisions have to be made, and Kilner’s reports will be a powerful factor in influencing the decisions. There are more basic questions to be asked. Chief among them is this: Is the success or failure of any colony on an alien world primarily determined by biological factors or by social ones?

  “As a biologist you are inclined to see the whole issue in terms of biological problems—the class of problems which you call co-adaptation. Here, as you say, Kilner helped the colonists...and, as you have also said, perhaps such problems would not have been insuperable even without expert help. But I am a diplomat, and I find in these reports evidence of another set of problems altogether: the problems experienced by human beings extracted from one set of historical circumstances and introduced into another which is totally alien—and you’ll appreciate, I’m sure, that I use the word ‘alien’ here in a rather different sense. The question I must ask is this: Can men environmentally adapted to the kind of society we have today—or had a hundred or two hundred years ago—readapt themselves and their social precepts to the kind of circumstances which they find on the colony worlds? You talk about biological adaptation, Alex, but I am thinking more of social adaptation. It is possible that in the ancient world there were many human societies which could have provided colonists capable of surviving on an alien world...the Cro-Magnons, the Kalahari bushmen, the pygmies of the Ituri forest...these people possessed cultures adapted to the business of survival without technology, without material possessions. But such cultures no longer exist. There is no man on Earth who lives now in a society without wealth and without the produce of technology. In making these men into colonists, are we not trying to turn back the cultural clock? Is this practical...and if not, how can we make it practical? Do you see what I mean?”

  “I see,” said Alexander.

  “In the future,” said Pietrasante, “the whole philosophy of colonization may have to change. We may have to think very seriously about training colonists in a much more extreme sense than the last project did. But first, we must look much more closely at the present colonies, and find out why they are as they are. We must redefine our concepts of possible and impossible, in this area. We must ask questions that have not been asked before.”

  “It isn’t my field,” said the biologist.

  “Of course not,” said the UN man hastily. “I’m not trying to redefine your job, at this late stage. The role which you have to play will be the same role that Kilner played...except for one thing.”

  “What you’re trying to tell me is that I won’t be in charge. You’re demoting me.”

  “It’s not a matter of demotion, Alex. You will be in charge of your own side of the mission. But there will be another side. You must see how necessary it is. In view of Kilner’s reports we simply can’t restrict the scope of the Daedalus missions to biology...to rat-catching, if you’ll forgive the use of the vulgar term. You’ll be the sole authority in your own field, and your status will remain the same. The only difference is that your lab staff will be cut to two. The man in charge of the sociological study will take over the diplomatic functions which Kilner handled so badly. His name is Nathan Parrick—he’s a historian and a social anthropologist.”

  “But if we’re jointly in charge,” objected Alexander, “who makes the ultimate decisions? Divided authority can lead to problems.”

  “Authority would be divided in any case,” Pietrasante pointed out. “In all matters pertaining to the conduct of the ship itself the captain is the final authority. You and Nathan will be engaged in tasks which are somewhat different in nature, but your interests should be very similar. There should be no difficulties in coming to an agreement over any question which concerns you both. If any deadlock does arise, Captain Rolving will arbitrate.”

  Alexander stared out of the window for a moment or two, turning the matter over in his mind.

  “Who are the staff I have left?” he asked finally.

  “Conrad Silvian—he was with Kilner and his experience should be invaluable. We couldn’t even consider leaving him out. The other berth went to Linda Beck. Did you meet her?”

  Alexander nodded.

  “I’m sure they’ll be adequate to any task which you have to face.”

  “I’m sure they will,” said the biologist. “Qualitatively speaking. But why only two? If there are two crew members and Parrick, that leaves one berth unaccounted for, doesn’t it? Or does Parrick have an assistant?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Pietrasante. “The seventh member of the expedition will, in fact, be under his authority. But she is not exactly an assistant. Her name is Mariel Valory. She’s a talent.”

  “What kind of talent?”

  “It’s what they call in common parlance ‘the gift of tongues.’ She is extraordinarily adept with languages. She is, of course, very young, and the idea of giving her a place on the expedition was opposed by some members of our team. I myself was doubtful of the wisdom of including her. But in view of the questions raised by Kilner’s reports it seemed most important that we should provide the second expedition with better information-collecting facilities. We want to provide as broad a base to the areas of intellectual inquiry as possible. It is obvious that Kilner completely failed to open up any constructive areas of communication with the colonists which he contacted. He arrived to find them hostile, and despite the help he gave them he never overcame that hostility. We hope that Mariel will help to offset this difficulty.

  “In addition, there is another compelling reason. You are scheduled to recontact six colonies. Two of these colonies were established on worlds wher
e the reports of the survey teams suggested that there were already intelligent life-forms. Although these species had no discernible culture or civilization, it was suggested that they had language and a certain degree of social organization. The framework within which the survey teams operated did not permit further investigation of these lines of inquiry, but the colonists dispatched to these worlds were instructed to make all possible attempts to open channels of communication with these life-forms. On these two worlds, if nowhere else, Mariel’s talent may prove to be of crucial importance.”

  “How old is she?” asked Alexander.

  “Fourteen. I know that it’s very young, Alex, but she’s advanced for her age in the intellectual sense. And fourteen is not only above the age of consent but above the age of majority in a great many countries. Talents burn out, Alex and if we want to use them we have to use them young.”

  After a pause, Alexander said, “You’re certainly hitting me with everything at once, aren’t you? I’ve been in on this project for months, and this is the first I’ve heard of any of this. Oh, I know that I joined when plans were still in a very fluid state, and that my ideas don’t count for much in the planning because I’m only the poor bastard that has to go out there, and not one of the UN execs with a career in politics to think about...but, Nico, this is the eleventh hour! Only now do you show me Kilner’s reports. Only now do you tell me my staff’s been cut, that I’m now only joint leader of the expedition with your pet diplomat, and that there’s a child on the strength as well. Do you think that’s fair? Suppose I were to turn around now and tell you that if this is the way things are going to be you can count me out?”

  “You won’t do that,” said Pietrasante.

  “No,” said the other. “I won’t. You know damn well I won’t. But you’re sure as hell trespassing on my good nature.”