Anderson, Poul Fleet of Stars

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end he grew still and stood breathing hard. Afterward he stared for minutes across the abyss.
It's really hit him, Fenn thought. Even more than I expected. Will the knowing be worse for Lunarians
than for Terrans? And what about the Keiki? Yes, what about them?
Elverir's head swung back toward him. The face was mostly frozen, but a tic jerked at the left corner of
the mouth. "It will be long yet before they yonder find us," Elverir whispered. "Nay?... But the cybercosm
amidst us, it will go forward at once, triumphant."
Things won't be that simple, Fenn thought. They never are in human affairs. However The same
rebellion, which in him had had time to harden, spoke: "Listen. This is why I've come to you. I don't want
to be just the messenger back to my people. Slag and slaughter, no! If I can do anything else, anything at
all, I'll try."
A desperate eagerness cried, "Hai-ach, what?"
"You Inrai have been in touch with the Proserpinans. Are vou still? At least a little, now and then?"
The boy went wary. "Maychance."
Fenn gathered his strength. Too many memories clung to what he was about to say. But he must.
"Here's what I have in mind. We've all heard about a ship that's come to Proserpina from Alpha
Centauri. We took for granted they were Centaurians aboard, Lu-narians like you. But why would they
be? What could they do in Proserpina that they couldn't do faster and easier over the laser beams? And
that long a voyage, cold sleep or no If they ever came back home, everybody they knew would be
aged or dead. They'd be strangers, without seigneurs or followers, powerless. Would you do it, you, a
Lunarian?
"But the Terrans at three other stars, they'll want to know what things are like here at Sol, after the hiatus
in communication. They could send downloads in a c-ship, first to Centauri, which they'd always have
been in touch with. There they'd get another ship, bigger, slower, but better outfitted. That way they
could arrive here prepared to do whatever they'd have to, fight if need be and it wouldn't take them the
centuries that a direct crossing from home in that kind of craft would. But it stands to reason, doesn't it,
that they won't stay just at Proserpina. They'll want to look around for themselves."
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Kinna, this was your idea, that night in Xanadu Gar-dens, when we discovered amazed that we were
both in love. Kinna, you live in this, if in nothing else.
"I have a ship too, not like theirs but she'll get me into space. I'm hoping I can find out, for all of us, what
they know about this out at the stars, what they think, what they can do. Could your gang somehow
make con-tact for me?"
Tears on brown skin shattered sunlight. "Eyach," El-verir stammered, "it, it may be. It may be." He cast
his arms around Fenn, altogether unlike a Lunarian, youth-fully impulsive like Kinna.
After dark, following hours during which Fenn mostly waited in a room behind a locked door, Elverir
returned and led him out to a flitter. Its canopy was blanked. The flight zigzagged, and neither said much.
Eventually they set down. It was somewhere in the wilderness, doubtless north of Valles Marineris. Fenn
didn't attempt to locate it any closer. Dust thickened the night, but as he walked he glimpsed boulders,
minor craters, wasteland; and the terrain was hilly. Beneath an overhanging bluff lay a cave, similar to the
one he could never forget but larger. Inside were a sealtent and other equipment. Some of that was
communications gear, which could be deployed in the open. Armed men in skinsuits stood watch. Elverir
spoke with them in Lunarian.
Shortly Fenn found himself seated under the sky, among the rocks. He saw the transceiver brought forth,
used, and taken back into concealment. Yes, he thought, pieces of the Inrai organization survived for a
while yet. He could imagine several different ways in which mes-sages could travel undetected, as well as
other precau-tions. Doomed, of course, but momentarily valuable to him.
Time went past. He pictured the stars wheeling over-head, above the dust-veil. Kinna had dreamed of
years to come when Mars would again be alive, waters sheen by day and stars shining clear by night,
around the moon that life had made huge and brilliant. He would gladly have abided on the planet and
worked for that tomorrow, with her. Now just the stars remained.
He must not let go; he must not mourn. The drugs in him helped stave it off. Until he was free, he dared
only be angry. But while he waited, he could remember. Couldn't he? He'd been doing so already on this
expe-dition, and had kept the memories from taking him over completely, how she walked, how she
laughed, the gray eyes and tangled curls and the lips beneath his, her ear-nestness and her little jokes, a
bit of verse she'd made for him. Her ashes ought not to blow about forever across dead deserts. It was
right that someday their atoms again form living flesh and beat in living blood. Come from the four winds,
O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.
Fenn didn't recall where in his random reading he had seen that line. It didn't matter.
He hadn't anticipated that the outlaws here would be talkative, and they weren't. Stubborn holdouts,
they would never feel reconciled, though probably in the end they would swallow defeat and go back to
a hateful everyday. Also Elverir kept aside. Did he understand that Fenn had no wish for company?
Quite likely. Kinna had found him worthy of her friendship.
Yes, he oh, all Lunarians rated a share in whatever future the human genus had.
Toward morning, Scorian arrived.
He and Fenn sat alone in the sealtent. It was surroundings nearly as barren as outside, but they had some
food and a samovar of tea. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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