Authors: Poul Anderson
Dew soaked his breeches as he stepped out. The eastern sky had paled, but most light still came from the stars, and from the campfire that fluttered before a tent. Redfeather and Strongtail squatted there, half seen in shadows. A pot on a framework of sticks bubbled above, merrily competing with the first sleepy bird-chirps. The air was raw, and Kahn shivered and felt glad to settle down with hands held near the coals.
Strongtail murmured some notes. “I think that means ‘welcome,’ ” Redfeather said. Strongtail nodded. “Breakfast will be ready soon. Or lunch or something. Hard to get used to his diurnal period. What do the base people do?”
“About twenty hours awake, ten asleep, around the clock,” Kahn said. “Have you had a good outing?”
“Lord, yes. Strongtail’s a mighty fine guide, even if he can’t talk to me. Very kind of you to take me.” Strongtail trilled in pleasure. “I do wish I could hunt, but my pal here doesn’t quite approve. Oh, well, I’m glad to get out in the woods anyway.” Redfeather stirred the pot. “I suppose you’re joining us?”
“No, that wasn’t why I called.” Kahn lit a cigaret and smoked in short, hard puffs. “Business. Regrets, but you will have to come directly back with me.”
“Huh? What’s the rush? I mean, unless the people changed their minds about staying.”
“No, they haven’t. They have been threshing the matter this whole night. Hardly any of them wish to leave with us. I argued, but I might as well have talked to those trees.”
“Why bother, Jake? We don’t have positive orders to bring them back.” Redfeather smiled. “Give me a few days here, and I could well decide to stay myself.”
“What?” Kahn stared at the firelit face. “Yes, I see. I am not personally one for the bucolic life—”
“No need to be. Having made the final decision, we … they’ll want mines, factories, sawmills, everything you can name.”
Kahn glanced at Strongtail. “What do you say to that?” he asked. “Do you wish these things done?”
The Mithran nodded slowly. A qualified “Yes,” Kahn assumed; he didn’t like the idea, but various regions could be given the humans and there was plenty of room elsewhere. If, indeed, anything that formal was contemplated. Thrailkill had remarked that the autochthons had no concept of real estate as property.
Kahn finished his cigaret, ground out the stub with a vicious gesture, and rose. “Excuse me, Strongtail,” he said. “We have private affairs to discuss. Come into the flitter, Bill.”
Privacy was another notion, incomprehensible, with which Strongtail cooperated to oblige. He tended the pot, drank in its odors and the green scent of the awakening forest, was briefly saddened by the trouble he had sensed, and then turned his mind to more easy and pleasurable thoughts. Once .he started, Kahn’s yell pierced the flitter canopy. “God damn you, I am the captain and you will obey orders!” He knew that humans often submitted themselves, however reluctantly, to the will of someone else. The fact that Mithrans left a job whenever they got bored had occasioned friction in the early days. Later generations solved the problem by rarely employing Mithrans.
Well-a-day, they made up for their peculiarities by such things as houseboats. It would be amusing, no, wonderful to see what they did when they really felt themselves part of the land.
Unless—No, while the prowltiger episode, and certain others, had been unfortunate, limits were not exceeded. Should that ever happen, Strongtail would be forced to kill. But he would continue to love as he did.
The canopy slid back and the Earthmen returned. Kahn looked grim, Redfeather was quiet and shaken. Sweat filled his brows. “I’m sorry,” he told the Mithran, “I must go to the spaceship.”
The meeting hall in Treequad was so big that the entire human population could gather within. Mounting the stage, Kahn looked beyond gaily muraled walls to the faces. The very graybeards, he thought, had an air of youth which did not exist for any age on Earth. Sun and wind had embraced them throughout their lives. They had had a planet to wander in, as men had not owned since Columbus.
He turned to Thrailkill, who had accompanied him. Normally an elected speaker presided over these sessions, but today they listened to him and naturally his host went along. “Is everybody here?” he asked.
Thrailkill’s gaze swept the room. Sunlight streamed in the windows, to touch women’s hair and men’s eyes with ruddiness. A quiet had fallen, underscored by rustlings and shufflings. Somewhere a baby cried, but was quickly soothed.
“Yes,” he said. “The last field expedition came in two hours ago, from the Icefloe Dwellers.” He scowled at Kahn. “I don’t know why you want this assembly. Our minds are made up.”
The spaceman consulted his watch. He had to stall for a bit. His men wouldn’t get down from orbit for some minutes yet, and then they must walk here. “I told you,” he said. “I want to make a final appeal.”
“We’ve heard your arguments,” Thrailkill said.
“Not formally.”
“Oh, all right.” Thrailkill advanced to the lectern. The PA boomed his words forth under the rafters.
“The meeting will please come to order,” he said. “As you know, we’re met for the purpose of officially ratifying the decision that we have reached. I daresay Captain Kahn will need such a recorded vote. First he’d like to address you.” He bowed slightly to his guests and took a chair. Leonie was in the front row with Vivian; he winked at them.
Kahn leaned on the stand. His body felt heavy and tired. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “you have spent many hours this past night talking things over in private groups. Quite an exciting night, no? I have asked you to come here after sleeping on the question, because your choice should be made in a calmer mood, it being irrevocable.
“Hardly any of you have agreed to leave with us. I wonder if the majority have considered what their own desires mean. As was said long ago, ‘II faut vouloir les consequences de ce que Ton veut.’ ” Blankness met him, driving home how far these people had drifted from Earth. “I mean you must want the results of what you want. You are too few to maintain a culture at the modern level. True, your ancestors brought along the means to produce certain amenities, and you have a lot of information on microtape. But there are only so many heads among you, and each head can hold only so much. You are simply not going to have enough engineers, medical specialists, psychopediatricians, geneticists … every trained type necessary to operate a civilization, as opposed to a mere scientific base. Some of your children will die from causes that could have been prevented. Those who survive will mature ignorant of Earth’s high heritage.
“A similar thing happened before, on the American frontier. But America was close to Europe. The new barbarism ended in a few generations, as contact strengthened. You will be alone, but no more than one thin thread of radio, a lifetime passing between message and answer. Do you want to sink back into a dark age?”
Someone called, “We’ve done okay so far.” Others added remarks. Kahn was content to let them wrangle; thus he gained time, without drawing on his own exhausted resources. But Thrailkill shushed them and said:
“I believe we’re aware of that problem, Captain. In fact, we’ve lived with it during the whole existence of this … colony.”
There
, Kahn thought.
He spoke the word
. “We haven’t really been bothered. From what we hear about Earth, we’ve gained more than we’ve lost.” Applause. “And now that you’ve made us realize this is our home, this is where we belong, why, we won’t stay small. For purely genetic reasons we’ll have to expand our population as fast as possible. My wife and I always did want a houseful of kids. Now we can have them.” Cheering began. His reserve broke apart. “We’ll build our own civilization! And someday we’ll come back to you, as visitors. You’re giving up the stars. We’re not!”
They rose from their chairs and shouted.
Kahn let the noise surf around him, while he stood slumped.
Soon
, he begged.
Let it be soon.
Seeing that he remained where he was, the crowd grew gradually still. He waited till the last one had finished talking to his neighbor. Then the silence was so deep that he could hear the songbirds outside.
“Very well,” he said in a dull tone. “But what is to become of the Mithrans?”
Thrailkill, who had also stayed on his feet, said rapidly, “You mentioned that to me before, Captain. I told you then and I tell you now, the planet has room for both races. We aren’t going to turn on our friends.”
“My mate Bill Redfeather is an Amerind,” Kahn said. “Quite a few of his ancestors were friends to the white man. It didn’t help them in the long run. I am a Jew myself, if you know what that means. My people spent the better part of two thousand years being alien. We remember in our bones how that was. Finally some started a country of their own. The Arabs who were there objected, and lived out the rest of their lives in refugee camps. Ask Muthaswamy, my chief engineer, to explain the history of Moslem and Hindu in India. Ask his assistant Ngola to tell you what happened when Europe entered Africa. And, as far as that goes, what happened when Europe left again. You cannot intermingle two cultures. One of them will devour the other. And already, this minute, yours is the more powerful.”
They mumbled, down in the hall, and stared at him and did not understand. He sucked air into his lungs and tried anew:
“Yes, you don’t intend to harm the Mithrans. Thus far there has been little conflict. But when your numbers grow, when you begin to rape the land for all the resources this hungry civilization needs, when mutual exasperation escalates into battle—can you speak for your children? Your grandchildren? Their grandchildren, to the end of time? The people of Bach and Goethe brought forth Hitler. No, you don’t know what I am talking about, do you?
“Well, let us suppose that man on this planet reverses his entire previous record and gives the natives some fairly decent reservations and does not take them away again. Still, how much hope have they of becoming anything but parasites? They cannot become one with you. The surviving Amerinds could be assimilated, but they were human. Mithrans are not. They do not and cannot think like humans. But don’t they have the right to live in their world as they wish, make their own works, hope their own hopes?
“You call this planet underpopulated. By your standards, that is correct. But not by the natives’. How many individuals per hectare do you expect an economy like theirs to support? Take away part of a continent, and you murder that many unborn sentient beings. But you won’t stop there. You will take the world, and so murder an entire way of existence. How do you know that way isn’t better than ours? Certainly you have no right to deny the universe the chance that it is better.”
They seethed and buzzed at his feet. Thrailkill advanced, fists clenched, and said flatly, “Have you so little pride in being a man?”
“On the contrary,” Kahn answered, “I have so much pride that I will not see my race guilty of the ultimate crime. We are not going to make anyone else pay for our mistakes. We are going home and see if we cannot amend them ourselves.”
“So you say!” Thrailkill spat.
O God of mercy, send my men.
Kahn looked into the eyes of the one whose salt he had eaten, and knew they would watch him for what remained of his life. And behind would gleam the Bay of Desire, and the Princess’ peak holy against a smokeless heaven, and the Weatherwomb waiting for ships to sail west. “You will be heroes on Earth,” he said. “And you will at least have memories. I—”
The communicator in his pocket buzzed. “Ready.” He slapped it once: “Go ahead.”
Thunder crashed on the roof, shaking walls. A deeptoned whistle followed. Kahn sagged back against the lectern. That would be the warboat, with guns and nuclear bombs.
The door flew open. Redfeather entered, and a squad of armed men. The rest had surrounded the hall.
Kahn straightened. His voice was a stranger’s, lost in the yells and cries: “You are still citizens of the Directorate. As master of an official ship, I have discretionary police authority. Will or no, you shall come back with me.”
He saw Leonie clutch her child to her. He ducked Thrailkill’s roundhouse swing and stumbled off the stage, along the aisle toward his men. Hands grabbed at him. Redfeather fired a warning burst, and thereafter he walked alone. He breathed hard, but kept his face motionless. It wouldn’t do for him to weep. Not yet.
And so end these chronicles of the folk who took the long road to the stars. And long it is, not at all like those here, nor the highways of other fictional universes. It is unlike them in another way, too. It is a road that is always open. It is real …
OUR MANY ROADS TO THE STARS
There are countless varieties of science fiction these days, and I would be the last to want any of them restricted in any way. Nevertheless, what first drew me to this literature and, after more years than I like to add up, still holds me, is its dealing with the marvels of the universe. To look aloft at the stars on a clear night and think that someday, somehow we might actually get out among them, rouses the thrill anew, and I become young again. After all, we made it to the Moon didn’t we? Mean wile, only science fiction of the old and truly kind takes the imagination forth on that journey. Therefore I put up with its frequent flaws; and so does many another dreamer.
But are we mere dreamers, telling ourselves stories of voyages yonder as our ancestors told of voyages to Avalon and Cibola? Those never existed, and the stars do; but, realistically, does any possibility of reaching them?
The case against interstellar travel traditionally begins with the sheer distances. While Pioneer 10 and 11, the Jupiter flybys, will leave the Solar System, they won’t get as far as Alpha Centauri, the nearest neighbor sun, for more than 40,000 years. (They aren’t actually bound in that direction.) At five times their speed, or 100 miles per second, which we are nowhere close to reaching today, the trip would take longer than recorded history goes back. And the average separation of stars in this galactic vicinity is twice as great.