“The sun and planet chosen” for you lie in Pegasus, near the present limit of our communication sphere. You will recall that in that direction, beyond it, about fifteen hundred light-years hence, is the nearest of those radiation sources that may be high-energy civilizations.
“We do not know whether it is in fact any such thing; the anomalies are numerous. Nor do we know whether your presence can significantly advance the date at which we make contact. Probably not, since the robots en route to there have reported nothing but natural phenomena as far as they have gone. Going to that planet means you will face more unknowns, therefore more dangers, than otherwise— although we shall be receiving additional information about it while your ship is under construction. But, assigning the most plausible weights to the various uncertainties and imponderables, we have concluded that, on the whole, it is best that your expedition be toward the nearest neighbors comparable to ourselves that we may possibly have.”
It makes sense. I should have thought of it beforehand. But I’m only one man. We’re only eight, only human, woundable flesh and sheddable blood.
“Do you and your associates accept these terms?”
“Yes.” Boundlessly yes.
11
Bid Earth farewell.
Something of her as once she was abides yet, an enclave, a reserve, a restoration, things small and ahVe in crannies, simple folk, archaisms, remembrance. Most people are gracious. They grant permission, they draw aside to create solitude or they come together in fellowship, they give whatever may be in their gift throughout these last few days.
Ocean roars, rises, rushes downward and up again. The waves are gray-green in a thousand hues and wrinkles along their backs, white-maned above the steep troughs. The boat surges to their swing and tramp, rigging sings, sails strain. Shrill and chill, the wind tastes of salt.
Wheat goldens toward harvest. It rustles whenever the air stirs, and ripples run across the leagues of it. Bees buzz in a clover meadow, from which the sun bakes sweetness. Some ways off, several cows rest, vividly red, by a chestnut tree whose crown snares light and scatters it back. A clod crumbles warm in the hand.
Candleglow turns faces as soft as the lilting music. Silver, porcelain, linen sheen with it. In tall goblets, champagne sends jewels aloft. It tickles the palate. Laughter runs around the table with the same lightness. The soup is leek-pungent, cream-rich. Fragrance from courses to come eddies about like a promise of merrymaking afterward until dawn.
The canyon wall lifts rusty red toward indigo heaven. Eons band it. Crags rear wind-whittled out of the down-slope; but today is so still that a raven’s “Gruk!” explodes through the heat. That blackness wings over pungency of sage and scrub juniper, which clutch at every roothold. The green is less sparse at the bottom, where a streamlet gleams and whispers.
Though pilgrims come no longer to the shrine, a latter-day kind of piety maintains it, and memories are many. Near its doorway an ancient cypress grips a ledge, limned in gnarled and silvery austerity. Thence vision descends the mountain, past a cliff cloven by a waterfall, over groves and terraces and the curve of a roof, into dawn mists filling the valley and on to blue heights beyond. Breath is cool. Suddenly a cuckoo calls.
A rainshower has ended. The birch forest sparkles with drops, on the blades that shiver overhead, on fern and moss beneath. Trunks rise girl-slim out of dappled shadows. Ahead, their whitenesses open on reeds, a lake, a deer that looks about startled and soars away. The mould is soft and wet underfoot. The odors are green.
Things and places may be had again in future, but as illusion, a ghost dance of electrons, photons, neurons. Here is the graspable reality. This picture on the wall came from a riverside stall long ago, that one was taken back when folk employed cameras. The table is nearly as old, its wood scarred by use, twice charred where a lighted cigar fell. The rest of the furniture is as comfortably shabby. The book has weight, its brown-spotted pages crackle between fingers, a name penned on the flyleaf is faded but unforgotten.
There are no more graveyards. Death is too rare, land too precious. The burial records of the humble seldom endured anyway. It is guesswork what sites to seek—in a city turned alien, in a remnant of countryside where grass and wild-flowers have taken back the plowland—and stand for a while, feeling not altogether alone, before saying very quietly, “Goodbye now, and thank you.”
12
Fire raised the wind on which Pytheas fared outward. Sol dwindled aft, slowly at first under the low acceleration, but already, as the ship approached Jupiter, scarcely more than the brightest among the stars.
They filled the encompassing night with keen and steady radiances, white, silver-blue, amber-yellow, ruby- red. The Milky Way coursed heaven like a river of frost and light. Nebulae glowed in the death and birth of suns. Southward gleamed the Clouds of Magellan. Exquisite at its distance, a spiral, a sister galaxy, beckoned.
Hanno and Svoboda stood in the command center, looking at the optically enhanced sky. They often did. “What are you thinking about?” he asked at last.
“Finality,” she answered low.
“What?”
“This maneuver ahead of us. Oh, yes, it’s not absolutely irrevocable. We could still turn back—for quite some time to come, can’t we? But what’s soon going to happen, the course change, it’s like—I don’t know. Not birth or marriage or dying. Something as strange.”
He nodded. “I believe I know what you mean, and I’m the hardheaded pragmatist. Wanderer certainly does. He mentioned to me that he and Corinne are planning a ceremony. Maybe we should all attend.”
She smiled. “Rite of passage,” she murmured. “I should have realized Wanderer would be the one who understands. I hope he can make a part for me.”
Hanno gave her a sharp glance. They had all paired off, informally and more or less tacitly, he with her, Wanderer with Macandal, Patulcius with Aliyat, Tu Shan and Yukiko renewing their alliance. Not that each man and each -woman had never shared one another. It had been inevitable that they’d swap around occasionally, during the long time of their masquerade. But since, they had been more apart than together. How much emotional risk dared they take on this voyage? Fifteen years under way, with God knew what at the end—Separations or no, after centuries a couple gained considerable mutual sensitivity. Svoboda’s hand caught Hanno’s. “Not to worry,” she said in the American English that was their favorite dead language. “I only have a, a solemnity in mind. We do need something to lift us out of ourselves. It’s wrong to carry our pettinesses along to the stars.”
“We will, though,” he said. “We can’t help it. How do you escape being what you are?”
13
Screen fields warded particle radiation off as Pytheas slipped close by Jupiter. The planet laid its mighty gravitational hand upon the ship and swung it out of the ecliptic, northerly toward Pegasus. Inboard a drum tbuttered, feet danced, a song called to the spirits.
When it was safely away, robots went outside. Flitting around the hull, they deployed the latticework of ramscoop and fire chamber. By this time, low boost under torch drive had built up a considerable speed. Interaction with the interstellar medium was becoming significant. By terrestrial standards it was a hard vacuum, averaging about one atom per cubic centimeter, overwhelmingly hydrogen. Yet a wide funnel traveling fast would gather a great deal. When the robots returned inside, Pytheas resembled a btunt torpedo caught in the net of a giant fisherman.
Its folk flashed their last laser beam to Earth, made their little speeches, received ceremonial good wishes.
