The Long Night

“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 shall 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.”

“Yes. I hope, though, if we succeed, that won’t be the last I see of you.”

“Truly it won’t.”

They finished their drinks and went to dinner. Jaccavrie was also an excellent cook.