always anguished, that overtook obsolete communities and ways of hie, the ghost towns, empty campsites, forsaken graves. Instead, he searched about him for the secret of this folk’s endurance.
Those on the street were a mingled lot, every race of mankind, together in their faith, wish, and fear. A church, tallest of their buildings, lifted its steeple cloudward; the cross on top declared that life eternal was not of the flesh but of the soul. Children were the desire, the reward. When and where else had Wanderer last seen a small hand clutching mother’s, a round face turned his way to marvel? Calm gray heads bore the sense of having staved off dehumaniza-tion.
They recognized the newcomer; word had indeed gotten about. None crowded close. Their greetings to Davison were self-conscious, and Wanderer felt the looks, heard the buzz at his back. Not that the atmosphere was hostile. Doubtless only a minority begrudged him his privilege, as nearly meaningless as it was. Most seemed as if they looked forward to knowing him, and were simply too polite to introduce themselves at once. (Or else, since they were few and close-knit, it had been agreed they wouldn’t.) Adolescents instantly lost the sullenness that hung on them.
That last struck Wanderer first as peculiar, then as disturbing. He paid closer attention. The elderly were a bare handful. Drawn shades and neglected yards showed what houses stood vacant.
“Well, you begin by relaxing and enjoying yourself,” Davison advised. “Take the tours. Meet the jakos. They’re okay, we screen ‘em pretty carefully. How about dinner at my place tomorrow? My wife’s anxious to meet you too, the kids are starry-eyed, and we’ll invite two-three other couples that I think you’ll like.”
“You’re awfully kind.”
“Oh, I’ll benefit, and Martha, and—“ The hotel was ahead, a rambling structure whose antiquarian verandah looked over the bay and the sea beyond. Davison slowed his gait and lowered his voice. “Listen, we don’t just want to hear stories from you. We want to ask about... details, the kind that don’t get in the news or the databank, the kind we don’t notice ourselves when we go outside, because we don’t know what to watch for.”
The chill deepened in Wanderer. “You mean you wish I’d explain how life there feels to me—to a person who didn’t grow up in those ways?”
“Yes, that’s it, if you please. I realize I’m asking a lot, but, well—”
“I’ll try,” Wanderer said.
Unspoken: You’re giving serious thought to moving away, Charlie, to renouncing this whole existence and creed and purpose.
I knew the enclave is shrinking, that its children usually leave soon after they reach legal adulthood, that recruits have become vanishingly scarce. I knew it’s as doomed as the Shakers were in their day. But your middle- aged are also quitting, so quietly that the fact wasn’t in what I studied about you. I’d hoped for a mortal lifetime or two of peace, of belonging. Set that aside, Wanderer.
Guests were clustered on the porch. They pointed and jabbered. He stopped and turned to see. Barely visible through the haze, three giant shapes slipped past the mouth of the bay.
“Whales,” Davison told him. “They’re multiplying fine. We spot more every year.”
“I know,” said Wanderer. “Right whales, those. I remember when they were declared extinct.” I wept.
They were recreated in the laboratories, reintroduced to a nature that is completely managed. This is no wilderness other than in name. It’s a control reserve, a standard of comparison for Ecological Service to use. No true wilderness is left, anywhere on Earth, unless in the human heart, and there too the intellect knows how to govern.
I shouldn’t have come here. Now I’ll have stay a week or so, for courtesy’s sake, for the sake of this man and his kin; but I should have known better than to come.
I should be stronger than to let this hurt me so.
5
Nowhere was Yukiko ever alone with the stars.
Solitude she could have, yes. The powers and, mostly, the people were gracious to Survivors. She often thought that graciousness had become the common and principal virtue of humanity. It led to an impersonal kindliness. Unhindered room was the sole good in which the world was impoverished. Nevertheless, when she expressed her longing, this atoll became hers. Minuscule though it be, that was an Aladdin’s gift.
Yet the stars were denied her.
A few blinked wan after dark, Sirius, Canopus, Alpha Centauri, sometimes others, together with Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Their constellations lost in the nacreous luminance, she was rarely sure which she saw. Satellites twinkled swift across heaven. The moon shone mistily, and on its dark part she made out steady sparks, the light of tech-nocomplexes and the Triple City. Aircraft went in firefly swarms. Occasionally a spacecraft passed, majestic meteor, and thunders rolled from horizon to horizon; but that was seldom, most operations being off Earth and robotic.
She had resigned herself to the loss. Weather control, atmosphere maintenance, massive energy transfers were necessary; they caused fluorescence; that was that. She could fill the walls and ceiling of her house with a starscape as grand as if she stood in an Arizona desert before Columbus, or she could visit a sensorium and know naked space. Still, ungratefully, when she was outdoors in this her refuge, she wished she didn’t have to conjure the night sky out of memories.
The ocean murmured. Reflection sheened off much of it, where aquaculture did not blanket the waves. Brightnesses bobbed yonder, boats, ships, a bargetown plodding along. Surf made white unrest beyond the lagoon, which was a well of sky-glow. The noise felt hushed, less loud than coral gritting beneath her feet. Her lungs drank cool purity. Each day she wordlessly thanked untold gigabillions of microorganisms for keeping the planet clean. That humans—computers—had designed and produced them to do it made no difference; theirs was a wonderful karma.
She passed by her garden, dwarf trees, bamboo, stones, twining paths. A machine was noiselessly busy there. Newly returned from Australia, where she had found herself involved in one more “fleeting affair, she hadn’t thus far taken over that work again.
Well, she wasn’t very gifted for it. If only Tu Shan—but he didn’t like these surroundings.
Her house lay shadowy, a small and subtle blending of curves. Her worldlet, she was apt to think. It provided or had brought to her everything she needed and more. Self-repairing, it could do so for as Jong as the energy arrived. Now and then she wished it would make sense for her to take a dusting cloth in her hand.
And I was once a lady of the court, she thought. Wryness tugged her lips upward.
Dismiss those feelings. She had gone to sit by the sea and empty her mind, open her soul, until she felt ready to use her intelligence. Whatever harmony she had won to was fragile.
A wall opened for her. Light bloomed within. The room was furnished in ascetic ancient style. She knelt on a straw mat before the computer terminal and raised the electronic spirit.
A portion of that immense rationality identified her and spoke in suitable, musical language and phrases. “What is your desire, my lady?”
No, not really suitable. Desire was the snare. She had even forsaken her old, old name of Morning Glory and become—once again, after a thousand years—Small Snow, as a sign to herself of renunciation. But that too had failed. “I have meditated on what you told me about life and intelligence among the stars, and decided to learn as much of this as I am able. Teach me.”
“It is a matter complex and chaotic, my lady. As far as the exploratory robots have taken our knowledge, life is rare, and only three unmistakably sentient species are known, all technologically in an equivalent of the human paleolithic era. Three others are controversial. Their behavior may be elaborately instinctive, or it may arise in minds too unlike the Terrestrial to be recognizable as such. Whatever they are, these creatures too possess only simple implements. On the other hand, the Web has detected anomalous radiation sources at greater distances, which may mean high-energy civilizations analogous to ours. Depending on how the data are interpreted, they may number as many as seven hundred fifty-two. The nearest is at an estimated remove of four hundred seventy-five parsecs. Additionally, the Web is receiving signals that are almost certainly informational from twenty-three different sources, identified with bodies or regions that are astrophysically unusual. We doubt that these signals are
