The Long Night df-10

by Poul Anderson

  “Illusion,” said Jaccavrie’s voice out of immensity. “What?” Laure started. It was as if a mother goddess had spoken.

  She chuckled. Whether deity or machine, she had the great strength of ordinariness in her. “You’re rather transparent to an observer who knows you well,” she said. “I could practically read your mind.”

  Laure swallowed. “The sight, well, a big, marvelous, dangerous thing, maybe unique in the galaxy. Yes, I admit I’m’ impressed.”

  “We have much to learn here.”

  “Have you been doing so?”

  “At ,,a near-capacity rate,, since we entered the denser part of the cluster.” Jaccavrie shifted to primness. “If you’d been less immersed in discussions with the Kirkasanter navigation officer, you might have got running reports from me.”

  “Destruction!” Laure swore. “I was studying her notes from their trip outboard, trying to get some idea of what configuration to look for, once we’ve learned how to make allowances for what this material does to starlight—Never mind. We’ll have our conference right now, just as you requested. What’d you mean by ‘an illusion’?”

  “The view outside,” answered the computer. “The concentration of mass is not really as many atoms per cubic centimeter as would be found in a vaporous planetary atmosphere. It is only that, across light-years, their absorption and reflection effects are cumulative. The gas and dust do, indeed, swirl, but not with anything like the velocity we think we perceive. That is due to our being under hyperdrive. Even at the very low pseudo-speed at which we are feeling our way, we pass swiftly through varying densities. Space itself is not actually shining; excited atoms are fluorescing. Nor does space roar at you. What you hear is the sound of radiation counters and other instruments which I’ve activated. There are no real, tangible currents working on our hull, making it quiver. But when we make quantum micro-jumps across strong interstellar magnetic fields, and those fields vary according to an extra ordinarily complex pattern, we’re bound to interact noticeably with them.

  “Admittedly the stars are far thicker than appears. My instruments can detect none beyond a few parsecs. But what data I’ve gathered of late leads me to suspect the estimate of a quarter million total is conservative. To be sure, most are dwarfs—”

  “Come off that!” Laure barked. “I don’t need you to explain what I knew the minute I saw this place.”

  “You need to be drawn out of your fantasizing,” Jaccavrie said. “Thought you recognize your daydreams for what they are, you can’t afford them. Not now.”

  Laure tensed. He wanted to order the view turned off, but checked himself, wondered if the robot followed that chain of his impulses too, and said in a harshened voice: “When you go academic on me like that, it means you’re postponing news you don’t want to give me. We have troubles.”

  “We can soon have them, at any rate,” Jaccavrie said. “My advice is to turn back at once.”

  “We can’t navigate,” Laure deduced. Though it was not unexpected, he nonetheless felt smitten.

  “No. That is, I’m having difficulties already, and conditions ahead of us are demonstrably worse.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Optical methods are quite unsuitable. We knew that from the experience of the Kirkasanters. But nothing else works, either. You recall, you and I discussed the possibility of identifying supergiant stars through the clouds and using them for beacons. Though their light be diffused and absorbed, they should produce other effects—they should be powerful neutrino sources, for instance—that we could use.”

  “Don’t they?”

  “Oh, yes. But the effects are soon smothered. Too much else is going on. Too many neutrinos from too many different sources, to name one thing. Too many magnetic effects. The stars are so close together, you see; and so many of them are double, triple, quadruple, hence revolving rapidly and twisting the force lines; and irradiation keeps a goodly fraction of the interstellar medium in the plasma state. Thus we get electromagnetic action of every sort; plus sunchroton and betatron radiation, plus nuclear collision, plus—”

  “Spare me the complete list,” Laure broke in. “Just say the noise level is too high for your instruments.”

  “And for any instruments thp.t I can extrapolate as buildable,” Jaccavrie replied. “The precision their filters would require seems greater than the laws of atomistics would allow.”

  “What about your inertial system? Bollixed up, too?”

  “It’s beginning to be. That’s why I asked you to come take a good look at what’s around us and what we’re headed into, while you listen to my report.” The robot was not built to know fear, but Laure wondered if she didn’t spring back to pedantry as a refuge: “Inertial navigation would work here at kinetic velocities. But we can’t traverse parsecs except by hyperdrive. Inertial and gravitational mass being identical, too rapid a change of gravitational potential will tend to cause uncontrollable precession and nutation. We can compensate for that in normal parts of space. But not here. With so many stars so closely packed, moving among each other on paths too complex for me to calculate, the variation rate is becoming too much.”

  “In short,” Laure said slowly, “if we go deeper into this stuff, we’ll be flying blind.”

  “Yes. Just as Makt did.”

  “We can get out into clear space time, can’t we? You can follow a more or less straight line till we emerge.”

  “True. I don’t like the hazards. The cosmic ray background is increasing considerably.”

  “You have screen fields.”

  “But I’m considering the implications. Those particles have to originate somewhere. Magnetic acceleration will only account for a fraction of their intensity. Hence the rate of nova production in this cluster, and of supernovae in the recent past, must be enormous. This in turn indicates vast numbers of lesser bodies—neutron stars, rogue planets, large meteoroids, thick dust banks—things that might be undetectable before we blunder into them.”

  Laure smiled at her unseen scanner. “If anything goes wrong, you’ll react fast,” he said. “You always do.”

  “I can’t guarantee we won’t run into trouble I can’t deal with.”

  “Can you estimate the odds on that for me?” Jaccavrie was,silent. The air sputtered and sibilated. Laure found his vision drowning in the starfog. He needed a minute to realize—he had not been answered. “Well?” he said.

  “The parameters are too uncertain.” Overtones had departed from her voice. “I can merely say that the probability of disaster is high in comparison to the value for travel through normal regions of the galaxy.”

  “Oh, for chaos’ sake!” Laure’s laugh was uneasy. “That figure is almost too small to measure. We knew before we entered this nebula that we’d be taking a risk. Now what about coherent radiation from natural sources?”

  “My judgment is that the risk is out of proportion to the gain,” Jaccavrie said. “At hest, this is a place for scientific study. You’ve other work to do. Your basic—and dangerous—fantasy is that you can satisfy the emotional cravings of a few semibarbarians.”

  Anger sprang up in Laure. He gave it cold shape: “My order was that you report on coherent radiation.”

  Never before had he pulled the rank of his humanness on her.

  She said like dead metal: “I have detected some in the visible and short infrared, where certain types of star excite pseudoquasar processes in the surrounding gas. It is dissipated as fast as any other light.”

  “The radio bands are clear?”

  “Yes, of that type of wave, although—”

  “Enough. We’ll proceed as before, toward the center of the cluster. Cut this view and connect me with Makt.”

  The hazy suns vanished. Laure was alone in a metal compartment. He took a seat and glowered at the outercom screen before him. What had gotten into Jaccavrie, anyway? She’d been making her disapproval of this quest more and more obvious over the last few days. She wanted him
to turn around, report to HQ, and leave the Kirkasanters there for whatever they might be able to make of themselves in a lifetime’s exile. Well… her judgments were always conditioned by the fact that she was a Range vessel, built for Ranger work. But couldn’t she see that his duty, as well as his desire, was to help Graydal’s people?

  The screen flickered. The two ships were so differently designed that it was hard for them to stay in phase for any considerable time, and thus hard to receive the modulation imposed on spacepulses. After a while the image steadied to show a face. “I’ll switch you to Captain Demring,” the communications officer said at once. In his folk, such lack of ceremony was as revealing of strain as haggardness and dark-rimmed eyes.

  The image waverered again and became the Old Man’s. He was in his cabin, which had direct audiovisual connections, and the background struck Laure anew with outlandishness. What history had brought forth the artistic conventions of that bright-colored, angular-figured tapestry? What song was being sung on the player, in what language, and on what scale? What was the symbolism behind the silver mask on the door?

  Worn but indomitable, Demring looked forth and said, “Peace between us. What occasions this call?”

  “You should know what I’ve learned,” Laure said. “Uh, can we make this a three-way with your navigator?”

  “Why?” The question was machine steady.

  “Well, that is, her duties—”

  “She is to help carry out decisions,” Demring said. “She does not make them. At maximum, she can offer advice in discussion.” He waited before adding, with a thrust: “And you have been having a great deal of discussion already with my daughter, Ranger Laure.”

  “No… I mean,, yes, but—” The younger man rallied. He did have psych training to call upon, although its use had not yet become reflexive in him. “Captain,” he said, “Graydal has been helping me understand your ethos. Our two cultures have to see what each other’s basics are,if they’re to cooperate, and that process begins right here, among these ships. Graydal can make things clearer to me, and I believe grasps my intent better, than anyone else of your crew.”

  “Why is that?” Demring demanded.

  Laure suppressed pique at his arrogance—he was her father—and attempted a smile. “Well, sir, we’ve gotten acquainted to a degree, she and I. We can drop formality and just be friends.”

  “That is not necessarily desirable,” Demring said.

  Laure recollected that, throughout the human species, sexual customs are among the most variable. And the most emotionally charged. He put himself inside Demring’s prejudices and said with what he hoped was the right slight note of indignation: “I assure you nothing improper has occurred.”

  “No, no.” The Kirkasanter made a brusque, chopping gesture. “I trust her. And you, I am sure. Yet I must warn that close ties between members of radically different societies can prove disastrous to everyone involved.”

  Laure might have sympathized as he thought, He’s afraid to let down his mask—is that why their art uses the motif so much?—but underneath, he is a father worrying about his little girl. He felt too harassed. First his computer, now this He said coolly, “I don’t believe our cultures are that alien. They’re both rational-technological, which is a tremendous similarity to begin with. But haven’t we got off the subject? I wanted you to hear the findings this ship has made.”

  Demring relaxed. The =human universe he could cope with. “Proceed at will, Ranger.”

  When he had heard Laure out, though, he scowled, tugged his beard, and said without trying to hide distress: “Thus we have no chance of finding Kirkasant by ourselves.”

  “Evidently not,” Laure said. “I’d hoped that one of my modern locator systems would work in this cluster. If so, we could have zigzagged rapidly between the stars, mapping them, and had a fair likelihood of finding the group you know within months. But as matters stand, we can’t establish an accurate enough grid, and we have nothing to tie any such grid to. Once a given star disappears in the fog, we can’t find it again. Not even by straight-line backtracking, because we don’t have the navigational feedback to keep on a truly straight line.”

  “Lost.” Demring stared down at his hands, clenched on the desk before him. When he looked up again, the bronze face was rigid with pain. “I was afraid of this,” he said. “It is why I was reluctant to come back at all. I feared the effect of disappointment on my crew. By now you must know one major respect in which we differ from you. To us, home, kinfolk, ancestral graves are not mere pleasures. They are an important part of our identities. We are prepared to explore and colonize, but not to be totally cut off.” He straightened in his seat and turned the confession into a stragetic datum by finishing dry-voiced: “Therefore, the sooner we leave this degree of familiarity behind us and accept with physical renunciation the truth of what has happened to us—the sooner we get out of this cluster—the better for us.”

  / “No,” Laure said. “I’ve given a lot of thought to your situation. There are ways to navigate here.”

  Demring did not show surprise. He, too, must have dwelt on contingencies and possibilities. Laure sketched them nevertheless:

  “Starting from outside the cluster, we can establish a grid of artificial beacons. I’d guess fifty thousand, in orbit around selected stars, would do. If each has its distinctive identifying signal, a spaceship can locate herself and lay a course. I can imagine several ways to make them. You want them to emit something that isn’t swamped by natural noise. Hyperdrive drones, shuttling automatically back and forth, would be detectable in a light-year’s radius. Coherent radio broadcasters on the right bands should be detectable at the same distance or better. Since the stars hereabouts are only light-weeks or light-months apart, an electromagnetic network wouldn’t take long to complete its linkups. No doubt a real engineer, turned loose on the problem, would find better answers than these.”

  “I know,” Demring said. “We on Makt have discussed the matter and reached similar conclusions. The basic obstacle is the work involved, first in producing that number of beacons, then—more significantly—in planting them. Many man-years, much shipping, must go to that task, if it is to be accomplished in a reasonable time.”

  “Yes.”

  “I like to think,” said Demring, “that the clans of Hobrok would not haggle over who was to pay the cost. But I have talked with men on Serieve. I have taken heed of what Graydal does and does not relay of her conversations with you. Yours is a mercantile civilization.”

  “Not exactly,” Laure said. “I’ve tried to explain—”

  “Don’t bother. We shall have the rest of our lives to learn about your Commonalty. Shall we turn about, now, and end this expedition?”

  Laure winced at the scorn but shook his head. “No, best we continue. We can make extraordinary findings here. Things that’ll attract scientists. And with a lot of ships buzzing around—”

  Demring’s smile had no humor. “Spare me, Ranger. There will never be that many scientists come avisiting. And they will never plant beacons throughout the cluster. Why should they? The chance of one of their vessels stumbling on Kirkasant is negligible. They will be after unusual stars and planets, information on magnetic fields and plasmas and whatever else is readily studied. Not even the anthropologists will have any strong impetus to search out our world. They have many others to work on, equally strange to them, far more accessible.”

  “I have my own obligations,” Laure said. “It was a long trip here. Having made it, I should recoup some of the cost to my organization by gathering as much data as I can before turning home.”

  “No matter the cost to my people?” Demring said slowly. “That they see their own sky around them, but nonetheless are exiles—for weeks longer?”

  Laure lost his patience. “Withdraw if you like, Captain,” he snapped. “I’ve no authority to stop you. But I’m going on. To the middle of the cluster, in fact.”

  Demring retorted in a
cold flare: “Do you hope to find something, that will make you personally rich, or only personally famous?” He reined himself in at once. “This is no place for impulsive acts. Your vessel is undoubtedly superior to mine. I am not certain, either, that Makt’s navigational equipment is equal to finding that advanced base where we must refuel her. If you continue, I am bound in simple prudence to accompany you, unless the risks you take become gross. But I urge that we confer again.”

  “Any time; Captain.” Laure cut his circuit.

  He sat then, for a while, fuming. The culture barrier couldn’t be that high. Could it? Surely the Kirkasanters were neither so stupid nor so perverse as not to see what he was trying to do for them. Or were they? Or was it his fault? He’d concentrated more on learning about them than on teaching them about him. Still, Graydal, at least, should know him by now.

  The ship sensed an incoming call and turned Laure’s screen back on. And there she was. Gladness lifted in him until he saw her expression.

  She said without greeting, winter in the golden gaze: “We officers have just been given a playback of your conversation with my father. What is your” (outphasing occurred, making the image into turbulence, filling the voice with staticlike ugliness, but he thought he recognized) “intention?” The screen blanked.

  “Maintain contact,” Laure told Jaccavrie.

  “Not easy in these gravitic fields,” the ship said.

  Laure jumped to his feet, cracked fist in palm, and shouted, “Is everything trying to brew trouble for me? Bring her back or so help me, I’ll scrap your…”

  He got a picture again, though it was blurred and watery and the voice was streaked with buzzes and whines, as if he called to Graydal across light-years of swallowing starfog. She said—was it a little more kindly?—“We’re puzzled. I was deputed to inquire further, since I am most… familiar… with you. If our two craft can’t find Kirkasant by themselves, why are we going on?”

  Laure understood her so well, after the watches when they, talked, dined, drank, played music, laughed together, that he saw the misery behind her armor. For her people—for herself—this journey among mists was crueler than it would have been for him had he originated here. He belonged to a civilization of travelers; to him, no one planet could be the land of lost content. But in them would always stand a certain ridge purple against sunset, marsh at dawn, ice cloud walking over wind-gnawed desert crags, ancient castle, wingbeat in heaven… and always, always, the dear bright nights that no other place in man’s universe knew.