Infinity One

by Robert Hoskins (Ed. )

  “I t’ought from your behavior, you must be reading more easy dan you pretended, and it was terrible w’at you read but glorious too. Maybe a weapon you could use for conquering de Solar System? Not likely. Men already got lots; and de Order is not structured for conquering; and anyway, it loks like de star folk don’t make war on demselves like us. It has always been men w’at took ideas from de stars and turned dem to war use, like a photon-drive battleship. Right? Well, maybe you saw a doomsday machine in de latest information—but den you should have showed plain fear.

  “W’at was a better guess? Well, suppose I was in charge at Kappa Ceti. I would t’ink, here are dese creatures at Sol. Dey don’t play question and answer like anybody else; dey are slow to grasp many ideas, and interested in odd subjects like botany and zoology; yas, dey are very strange. Sometimes dey actually stop transmitting for decades or centuries. Dis last breakoff . . . maybe de final message received spoke of a hurricane coming? I t’ink likely so. De last men here before dey evacuated it and went home to die, would dey not have wanted to send a cry across de light-years, ‘Remember us’?”

  Luizo’s gaze dropped. “Yes,” he whispered.

  The Baikalan pressed his advantage. “Question is, was de language so well developed by den dat de cry could be even half understood? W’edder it could or not, how else to learn de inwardness of dis peculiar race, after it falls silent for w’at might be forever—how else, except go in person?”

  Luizo rallied and looked back up. “On what basis do you say your hypothetical ship will arrive in six decades?"

  “T’irty-two light-years between. Records show dey sent a reply to de final message from us, and tried again w’en dey got no answer, because deir own last word came in here about a hundred years ago. Well, I allow maybe ten years after de second one drew blank, for building de ship and accelerating to full speed and so on. Dat fits in wit’ de date dat last transmission was received, surely announcing dey was on deir way. At one-sixt’ light velocity, dey will get here w’en I told you.”

  Luizo sat in a silence where Roban counted pulsebeats.

  Until the Primary said: “The arrival date they gave is fifty-eight years hence.”

  Duna leaned on the bunkframe and let out a whistling breath.

  Almost of itself, the gun moved from Roban’s belt and centered on the Baikalan. “Stay where you are, Colonel,” said a voice.

  Duna congealed.

  “What is this, Brother?” Luizo asked, sadly more than surprisedly, and not leaving his seat.

  “Can we let him go, sir?” Roban replied.

  Duna showed emotion only in the squaring of his shoulders. “I t’ink you damn better,” he said.

  “Dare we, sir?” Roban begged. “Whether or not we have to die for his death? If the Domination expects them, it’ll arrange to meet them alone—tell them lies—get them on its side—”

  Duna spoke softly: “W’ereass, if you reach dem first, you can hope for deir help in making independent Norrestland. Or maybe a Norrestlander Empire?”

  Roban’s aim never wavered. But his tones did. “No! Simple freedom—for everybody . . .” The terror that had made him draw the gun began to fade. “Though maybe it d-d-doesn’t matter what we do, we three tonight,” he said. “A civilization that old, without war, in touch with its kind across how many light-years . . . they’ve got to be wise, benign, unfoolable. They’ve got to come as teachers and liberators—don’t they?”

  Now Luizo climbed to his feet. He stayed out of the line of fire, but hardened his stare upon Duna. “WhatI fear,” he said, “is a hysterical attempt—by your country, by anyone—to destroy the Kappans as they enter the Solar System. It might succeed. They might not suspect defenses are needed. At best, imagine six decades of wrangling, intriguing, probably fighting, over which band of glorified apes shall have the right to meet the Galactic Ancients with what empty pomposities! ”

  Tall in his robe, he told them both, “One human institution alone is conceivably fit to be man’s representative before them. It is for this that the Order of Communicators has existed.”

  Silence anew, until Roban wondered wildly at the back of his head if the buzzing he heard there was, somehow, the talk between the stars.

  Iwan Duna’s eyes sought his. “You have read little history, Brudder,” he said, almost caressingly. “But you must know legends, you must have imagination. I could tell you how de barbarians overran China or Rome to help one faction against anodder, de English India in deir turn, after deir ancestors took first Britain and den Ireland, how Cortez had native allies dat hated de Aztecs, how de Jovian moon colonies lost deir freedom—oh, over and over, always strangers getting into internecine wars. You can read de books later, dough. Tonight, Roban, t’ink, only t’ink. How easier can conquest happen and everybody come under de yoke—dan by one side asking for alliance? Divide and conquer—and dis time de conquerors will not be your fellow men!”

  Luizo flung back: “You make the paranoid assumuption that a single spaceship represents a menace.”

  “She does,” Duna said, “wit1 de knowledge aboard, if we let her.”

  “You cannot accept that the Kappans are above such infantile games as conquest?”

  “ ‘Conquest’ is maybe de wrong word,” Durta replied. “Maybe dey t’ink of it as ‘help,’ like evangelists bringing a true fait’ to de pagans wit’ fire and sword, or a technologically advanced society choking a pastoral one by sheer weight of economics."

  He folded his arms. “Primary,” he said, “you could argue for holding de facts from me. But do you mean to keep from Roban de true nature of de Kappans? He could live to see dem come.”

  Luizo smote first in palm and said, “Brother, you are right. We have to take care of this man, at whatever cost”

  “You can kill me,” Duna said, “but den you cannot hear me. Roban, does it mean not’ing to you dat dis ship is traveling at one-sixt’ light speed?”

  “Be still,” Luizo said.

  “He has de gun,” Duna reminded them.

  “I am your superior—” Luizo began, but Duna’s voice overrode.

  “Organic life cannot survive de radiation. We learned dat. No reason to believe dere were any lies. W’at can, den? Robots. Dat ship is crewed by robots. Computer brains, machine effectors, I don’t know how dey work but I do know dey got to be machines.”

  “And what of it?” Luizo trod toward Duna. The colonel caught his wrist and stopped him, while keeping attention wholly on Roban and saying, in quick merciless words:

  “Maybe organic beings would do it dat way. Not impossible. We would, if we had no choice.

  “T’ink furder, dough, my friend. W’y is every planet de Order has contacted or been told about—a tiny sample, but consistent—w’y is all but ours so uniform? W’y do dey not take for granted we are interested in living creatures? W’y do dey use computer and physics symbolisms always? W’y never a sign of dat irrational t’ing we call de spirit?

  “Oh, yas, you got a few pictures w’at you suppose are of intelligent animals . . . finally, casually, a sop to your odd curiosity. Maybe dose animals are not extinct yet— everyw’ere. Maybe on some worlds dey survive, tame, in small numbers—but makes no difference. Dey are obsolete, dey are being phased out, not by any dramatic revolt of de robots but by de logic of de machine civilizations dey demselves had founded.

  “In de end—seems like in dis part of de galaxy, at least-technological society ends inevitable wit’ replacing silly, limited organic life by efficient computers and robots. Dey t’ink, yas; dey have awareness, curiosity, a kind of creativity; but all else we care about is dead and forgotten.”

  Duna swung upon. Luizo. “Primary,” he rasped, “obviously de Kappans have realized dat we arc not machines. W’en dey come, do you hope dey will give its dat same Nirvana?”

  Caught in the manacling grasp,the Communicator wet his lips and got out: “He’s crazy, Roban. We must silence him. Man isn’t enslaved, is he? What danger have
we ever been in . . . except from our own lunacies?”

  “Maybe.dose lunacies are w’at save us,” Duna said. “De odder races dat dwell on odder planets, maybe dey are more logical and meek dan de wild hunter man. We get so far in civilization, and den we feel de walls closing in and we revolt.”

  “And smash the world and start over,” Luizo retorted. “Would you keep us forever bound to that wheel?”

  “I did not say so,” Duna answered, calmer now. “I do not say, eider, we should attack de ship. No, no. Let us be very careful, but let us also learn w’at we can .. . and den, maybe, fare out among de stars and prove on behalf of our poor gone kinsfolk dat once loved and hated and feared and longed like us . .. fare out and prove w’at life can do.”

  Luizo disengaged himself and turned to Roban. “I do not necessarily advocate anything else,” he said. “In fact, it would be folly to try to predict in advance what the Kappan robots can bring us, for good or ill. I do say that none but the Communicators are fit to deal with them.”

  “Yas,” Duna said, “de little, ingrown, order-worshipping Order. No fishermen, no clansmen, no patriots, nobody w’at cares about his ancestors no poets, no warriors, no lovers, only intellectuals talking wit’ machines. Should not de whole of mankind meet dem and decide w’at destiny dey want for deir children?”

  “With the Domination of Baikal—your country’s oppressor, Roban—their self-appointed spokesman?” Luizo challenged.

  “We have fifty-eight years to change dat,” Duna said.

  Then he waited.

  After the tears had started to blind him, Roban stammered, “Sir, we . .. we can’t murder; we can’t take sides. It’s not in our t-t-tradirion.” His hand shook so badly that he had trouble giving Duna back knife and pistol.

  The colonel holstered them and said, “I feel no need to tell w’at has happened between ns, after you give me your full report tomorrow.”

  “I suppose not,” Luizo could barely be heard. “Goodnight to you. Eternally returning night.”

  “How else can dere be sunrises?” Duna asked, and left the Communicators alone.

  3 Fables: Three

  THE MAN ON THE HILL

  Michael Fayette

  The man, who was the last, stood at the exit to the shelter that had successfully kept him alive for nearly a century. The others were dead now; the last rites of Man’s final funeral were finished. He moved out into the glaring sunlight on the top of his hill.

  He wore a heavy, metallic suit that at the same time protected and supported his frail, aged body. He looked out at his world of sliding mud and slag through cataract eyes. Images danced and wavered over the barren landscape.

  Finally, with an effort, he reached up and removed the bulky, transparent helmet that covered his head.

  He drew in a breath of contaminated, diseased and radioactive air and exhaled it noisily.

  It was his first breath of fresh air in over ninety years, and the first change from almost a century of unending boredom and repetition. His eyes might see a few more barren sunrises and sunsets, but no more ... no more.

  “So it goes,” he said, and sighed.

  It would be worth it

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