The Long Night df-10

by Poul Anderson

  Can I?

  “We soon began to despair,” Graydal said. “We were nigh to the limit—”

  “No matter,” Demring interrupted.

  She looked steadily first at one man, then the other, and said, “I dare trust Daven Laure.” To the Ranger: “Belike no secret anyhow, since men on Serieve must have examined our ship with knowledgeable eyes. We were nigh to our limit of travel without refueling and refurbishing. We were about to seek for a planet not too unlike Kirkasant where—But then, as if by Valfar’s Wings, came the traces we sought, and we followed them here.

  “And here were humans!

  “Only of late has our gladness faded as we begin to see how they temporize and keep us half prisoner. Wholly prisoner, maybe, should we try to depart. Why will they not rely on us?”

  “I tried to explain that when we talked yesterday,” Laure said. “Some important men don’t see how you could be telling the truth.”

  She caught his hand in a brief, impulsive grasp. Her own was warm, slender, and hard. “But you are different?”

  “Yes.” He felt helpless and alone. “They’ve, well, they’ve called for me. Put the entire problem in the hands of my organization. And my fellows have so much else to do that, well, Fm given broad discretion.”

  Deinting regarded him shrewdly. “You are a young man,” he said. “Do not let your powers paralyze you.”

  “No. I will do what I can for you. It may be little.”

  The trail rounded a thicket and they saw a rustic bridge across the river, which ran seaward in foam and clangor. Halfway over, the party stopped, leaned on the rail and looked down. The water was thickly shadowed betwéen its banks, and the woods were becoming a solid black mass athwart a dusking sky. The air smelled wet.

  “You realize,” Laure said, “it won’t be easy to retrace your route. You improvised your navigational coordinates. They can be transformed into ours on this side of the Dragon’s Head, I suppose. But once beyond the nebula, I’ll be off my own charts, except for what few listed objects are visible from either side. No one from this civilization has been there, you see, what with millions of suns closer to our settlements. And the star sights you took can’t have been too accurate.”

  “You are not going to take us to Homeland, then,” Demring said tonelessly.

  “Don’t yoti understand? Homeland, Earth, it’s so far away that I myself don’t know what it’s like anymore!”

  “But you must have a nearby capital, a more developed world than this. Why do you not guide us thither, that we may talk with folk wiser than these wretched Serievans?”

  “Well . uh… Oh, many reasons. I’ll be honest, caution is one of them. Also, the Commonalty does not have anything like a capital, or—But yes, I could guide you to the heart of civilization. Any of numerous civilizations in this galactic arm.” Laure took a breath and slogged’ on. “My decision, though, under the circumstances, is that first I’d better see your world Kirkasant. After that… well, certainly, if everything is all right, we’ll establish regular contacts, and invite your people to visit ours, and—Don’t you like the plan? Don’t you want to go home?”

  “How shall we, ever?” Graydal asked low.

  Laure cast her a surprised glance. She stared ahead of her and down, into the river. A fish—some kind of swimming creature—leaped. Its scales caught what light remained in a gleam that was faint but startling against those murky waters. She didn’t seem to notice, though she cocked her head instinctively toward the splash that followed.

  “Have you not listened?” she said. “Did you not hear us? How long we searched in the fog, through that forest of suns, until at last we left our whole small bright universe and came into this great one that has so much blackness in it—and thrice we plunged back into our own space, and groped about, and came forth without having found trace of any star we knew—” Her voice lifted the least bit. “We are lost, I tell you, eternally lost. Take us to your home, Daven Laure, that we may try to make ours there.”

  He wanted to stroke her hands, which had clenched into fists on the bridge rail. But he made himself say only: “Our science and resources are more than yours. Maybe we can find a way where you cannot. At any rate, I’m duty bound to learn as much as I can, before I make report and recommendation to my superiors.”

  “I do not think you are kind, forcing my crew to return and look again on what has gone from them,” Demring said stiffly. “But I have scant choice save to agree.” He straightened. “Come, best we start back toward Pelogard. Night will soon be upon us.”

  “Oh, no rush,” Laure said, anxious to change the subject. “An arctic zone, at this time of year—We’ll have no trouble.”

  “Maybe you will not,” Graydal said. “But Kirkasant after sunset is not like here.”

  They were on their way down when dusk became night, a light night where only a few stars gleamed and Laure walked easily through a clear gloaming. Graydal and Demring must needs use their energy guns at minimum intensity for flashcasters. And even so, they often stumbled.

  Makt was three times the size of Jaccavrie, a gleaming torpedo shape whose curve was broken by boat housings and weapon turrets. The Ranger vessel looked like a gig attending her. In actuality, Jaccavrie could have outrun, outmaneuvered, or outfought the Kirkasanter with ludicrous ease. Laure didn’t emphasize that fact. His charges were touchy enough already. He had suggested hiring a modern carrier for them, and met a glacial negative. This craft was their property and bore the honor of the confederated clans that had built her. She was not to be abandoned.

  Modernizing her would have taken more time than increased speed would save. Besides, while Laure was personally convinced of the good intentions of Demring’s people, he had no right to present them with up-to-date technology until he had proof they wouldn’t misuse it.

  One could not accurately say that he resigned himself to accompanying them in his ship at the plodding pace of theirs. The weeks of travel gave him a chance to get acquainted with them and their culture. And that was not only his duty but his pleasure. Especially, he found, when Graydal was involved.

  Some time passed before he could invite her to dinner a deux. He arranged it with what he felt sure was adroitness. Two persons, undisturbed, talking socially, could exchange information of the subtle kind that didn’t come across in committee. Thus he proposed a series of private meetings with the officers of Makt. He began with the captain, naturally; but after a while came the navigator’s turn.

  Jaccavrie phased in with the other vessel, laid alongside and made air-lock connections in a motion too smooth to feel. Graydal came aboard and the ships parted company again. Laure greeted her according to the way of Kirkasant, with a handshake. The clasp lasted a moment. “Welcome,” he said.

  “Peace between us.” Her smile offset her formalism. She was in uniform—another obsolete aspect of her society—but it shimmered gold and molded itself to her.

  “Won’t you come to the saloon for a drink before we eat?”

  “I shouldn’t. Not in space.”

  “No hazard,” said the computer in an amused tone. “I operate everything anyway.”

  Graydal had tensed and clapped hand to gun at the voice. She had relaxed and tried to laugh. “I’m sorry. I am not used to… you.” She almost bounded on her way down the corridor with Inure. He had set the interior weight at one standard G. The Kirkasanters maintained theirs fourteen percent higher, to match the pull of their home world.

  Though she had inspected this ship several times already, Graydal looked wide-eyed around her. The saloon was small but sybaritic. “You do yourself proud,” she said amidst the draperies, music, perfumes, and animations.

  He guided her to a couch. “You don’t sound quite approving,” he said.

  “Well—”

  “There’s no virtue in suffering hardships.”

  “But there is in the ability to endure them.” She sat too straight for the form-fitter cells to make her comfortable.


  “Think I can’t?”

  Embarrassed, she turned her gaze from him, toward the viewscreen, on which flowed a color composition. Her lips tightened. “Why have you turned off the exterior scene?”

  “You don’t seem to like it, I’ve noticed.” He sat down beside her. “What will you have? We’re fairly well stocked.”

  “Turn it on.”

  “What?”

  “The outside view.” Her nostrils dilated. “It shall not best me.”

  He spread his hands. The ship saw his rueful gesture and obliged. Space leaped into the screen, star-strewn except where the storm-cloud mass of the dark nebula reared ahead. He heard Graydal suck in a breath and said quickly, “Uh, since you aren’t familiar with our beverages, I suggest daiquiris. They’re tart, a little sweet—”

  Her nod was jerky. Her eyes seemed locked to the screen, He leaned close, catching the slight warm odor of her, not quite identical with the odor of other women he had known, though the difference was too subtle for him to name. “Why does that sight bother you?” he asked.

  “The strangeness. The aloneness. It is so absolutely alien to home. I feel forsaken and—” She filled her lungs, forced detachment on herself, and said in an analytical manner: “Possibly we are disturbed by a black sky because we have virtually none of what you call night vision.” A touch of trouble returned. “What else have we lost?”

  “Night vision isn’t needed on Kirkasant, you tell me,” Laure consoled her. “And evolution there worked fast. But you must have gained as well as atrophied. I know you have more physical strength, for instance, than your ancestors could’ve had.” A tray with two glasses extended from the side. “Ah, here are the drinks.”

  She sniffed at hers. “It smells pleasant,” she said. But are you sure there isn’t something I might be allergic to?”

  “I doubt that. You didn’t react to anything you tried on Serieve, did you?”

  “No, except for finding it overly bland.”

  “Don’t worry,” he grinned. “Before we left, your father took care to present me with one of your saltshakers. It’ll be on the dinner table.”

  Jaccavrie had analyzed the contents. Besides sodium and potassium chloride—noticeably less abundant on Kirkasant than on the average planet, but not scare enough to cause real trouble—the mixture included a number of other salts. The proportion of rare earths and especially arsenic was surprising. An ordinary human who ingested the latter element at that rate would lose quite a few years of life expectancy. Doubtless the first refugee generations had, too, when something else didn’t get them first. But by now their descendants were so well adapted that food didn’t taste right without a bit of arsenic trioxide.

  “We wouldn’t have to be cautious—we’d know in advance what you can and cannot take—if you’d permit a chromosome analysis,” Laure hinted. “The laboratory aboard this ship can do it.”

  Her cheeks turned more than ever coppery. She scowled. “We refused before,” she said.

  “May I ask why?”

  “It… violates integrity. Humans are not to be probed into.”

  He had encountered that attitude before, in several guises. To the Kirkasanter—at least, to the Hobrokan clansman; the planet had other cultures—the body was a citadel for the ego, which by right should be inviolable. The feeling, so basic that few were aware of having it, had led to the formation of reserved, often rather cold personalities. It had handicapped if not stopped the progress of medicine. On the plus side, it had made for dignity and self-reliance; and it had caused this civilization to be spared professional gossips, confessional literature, and psychoanalysis.

  “I don’t agree,” Laure said. “Nothing more is involved than scientific information. What’s personal about a DNA map?”

  “Well… maybe. I shall think on the matter.” Graydal made an obvious effort to get away from the topic. She sipped her drink, smiled, and said, ‘Mm-m-m, this is a noble flavor.”

  “Hoped you’d like it. I do. We have a custom in the Cormwonalty—” He touched glasses with her. “Charming. Now we, when good friends are together, drink half what’s in our cups and then exchange them.”

  “May I?”

  She blushed again, but with pleasure. “Certainly. You honor me.”

  “No, the honor is mine.” Laure went on, quite sincere: “What your people have done is tremendous. What an addition to the race you’ll be!”

  Her mouth drooped. “If ever my folk may be found.”

  “Surely—”

  “Do you think we did not try?” She tossed off another gulp of her cocktail. Evidently it went fast to her unaccustomed head. “We did not fare forth blindly. Understand that Makt is not the first ship to leave Kirkasant’s sun. But the prior ones went to nearby stars, stars that can be seen from home. They are many. We had not realized how many more are in the Cloud Universe, hidden from eyes and instruments, a few light-years farther on. We, our ship, we intended to take the next step. Only the next step. Barely beyond that shell of suns we could see from Kirkasant’s system. We could find our way home again without trouble. Of course we could! We need but steer by those suns that were already charted on the edge of instrumental perception. Once we were in their neighborhood, our familiar part of space would be visible.”

  She faced him, gripping his arm painfully hard, speaking in a desperate voice. “What we had not known, what no one had known, was the imprecision of that charting. The absolute magnitudes, therefore the distances and relative positions of those verge-visible stars… had not been determined as well as the astronomers believed. Too much haze, too much shine, too much variability. Do you understand? And so, suddenly, our tables were worthless. We thought we could identify some suns. But we were wrong. Flitting toward them, we must have bypassed the volume of space we sought… and gone on and on, more hopelessly lost each day, each endless day…

  “What makes you think you can find our home ?” Laure, who had heard the details before, had spent the time admiring her and weighing his reply. He sipped his own drink, letting the sourness glide over his palate and the alcohol slightly, soothingly burn him, before he said: “I can try. I do have instruments your people have not yet invented. Inertial devices, for example, that work under hyperdrive as well as at true velocity. Don’t give up hope.” He paused. “I grant you, we might fail. Then what will you do?”

  The blunt question, which would have driven many women of his world to tears, made her rally. She lifted her head and said—haughtiness rang through the words: “Why, we will make the best of things, and I do not think we will do badly.”

  Well, he thought, she’s descended from nothing but survivor types. Her nature is to face trouble and whip it.

  “I’m sure you will succeed magnificently.” he said. “You’ll need time to grow used to our ways, and you may never feel quite easy in them, but—”

  “What are your marriages like?” she asked.

  “Uh?” Laure fitted his jaw back into place.

  She was not drunk, he decided. A bit of drink, together with these surroundings, the lilting music, odors and pheromones in the air, had simply lowered her inhibitions. The huntress in her was set free, and at once attacked whatever had been most deeply perturbing her. The basic reticence remained. She looked straight at him, but she was fiery-faced, as she said:

  “We ought to have had an equal number of men and women along on Makt. Had we known what was to happen, we would have done so. But now ten men shall have to find wives among foreigners. Do you think they will have much difficulty?”

  “Uh, why no. I shouldn’t think they will,” he floundered. “They’re obviously superior types, and then, being exotic—glamorous…”

  “I speak not of amatory pleasure. But… what I overheard on Serieve, a time or two… did I miscomprehend? Are there truly women among you who do not bear children?”

  “On the older planets, yes, that’s not uncommon. Population control—”

  “We sha
ll have, to stay on Serieve, then, or worlds like it.” She sighed. “I had hoped we might go to the pivot of your civilization, where your real work is done and our children might become great.”

  Laure considered her. After a moment, he understood. Adapting to the uncountably many aliennesses of Kirkasant had been a long and cruel process. No blood line survived which did not do more than make up its own heavy losses. The will to reproduce was a requirement of existence. It, too, became an instinct.

  He remembered that, while Kirkasant was not a very fertile planet, and today its population strained its resources, no one had considered reducing the birth. rate. When someone on Serieve had asked why, Demring’s folk had reacted strongly. The idea struck them as obscene. They didn’t care for the notion of genetic modification or exogenetic growth either. And yet they were quite reasonable and noncompulsive about most other aspects of their culture.

  Culture, Laure thought. Yes. That’s mutable. But you don’t change your instincts; they’re built into your chromosomes. Her people must have children.

  “Well,” he said, “you can find women who want large families on the central planets, too. If anything, they’ll be eager to marry your friends. They have a problem finding men who feel as they do, you see.”

  Graydal dazzled him with a smile and held out her glass. “Exchange?” she proposed.

  “Hoy, you’re way ahead of me!.” He evened the liquid levels. “Now.”

  They looked at each other through a little ceremony. He nerved himself to ask, “As for you women, do you necessarily have to marry within your ship?”

  “No,” she said. “It would depend on… whether any of your folk… might come to care for one of us.”

  “That I can guarantee!”

  “I would like a man who travels,” she murmured. “if I and the children could come along.”

  “Quite easy to arrange,” Laure said.

  She said in haste: “But we are buying grief, are we not? You told me perhaps you can find our planet for us.”