Capitol

THE STARS THAT BLINK

If the goodman of die house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.

Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.

-- Matthew 24:43-44

The Governor owned a telescope, and knew how to use it. It was far from being the most powerful telescope in the colony, but the others were photographic, and the Governor's was the only scope on Answer that one could look through with the naked eye.

And he looked. Other men might relax with liquor and conversation, or in rough games, or with books, or with sex, but the Governor's diversion was looking at the stars.

Answer was only three hundred years old, as a human colony. But it was a good world, and already the original 334 inhabitants had grown to more than five million. Families averaged six children. There were no natural predators, and disease was rare and never killed. Here where somec never reached, of course, lives were still short-- few lived more than a hundred years. But the Governor, who was only forty, could still remember when there hadn't been a building over two stories tall in the world

Now he stood on the top of the government building, watching the sky. He lived, with his wife and the four children who remained at home, in a suite at the top of the building. It was luxurious by the standards of Answer-- a separate room for each of them, and the cooking and eating were not done in the same place. Luxury. Opulence. But not exorbitant-- dozens of rich families on Answer lived better than he.

Indeed, he was Governor not so much because he was the most outstanding man on Answer, but because he was willing to take the job. And he was willing to take it because it did not take all his day or all his mind. It left him hours and thoughts of peace, and paid him a good living, and gave him and his family respect, and besides, he was quite a good governor and he knew it. He was respected, and his judgments and decisions were honored and obeyed without trouble. They hadn't had to call a legislature since he had been elected.

After the day, however, of duty, he came up here.

"Why do you watch the stars so much?" one of his assistants had asked him one day.

"Because," he answered, "they never fall asleep when I talk to them."

But it was a good question, and he wondered at the answer.

He knew that around many of them (and he could name which ones, and point them out, and say how far away they were) orbited the planets of the Empire. Billions and billions of people-- it was difficult for him to comprehend. He knew that if he could count all the stars he could see through his telescope in one year, it would not equal the number of people in the Empire. And yet when he thought of people, he could only think of Answer, where whole continents were still uninhabited, where no city had more than thirty thousand people, where farms were still being carved in virgin land and mines were still discovering untouched metal. The Empire may be large and old, but here mankind was new, was small, was still humbled by the vastness of a planet, even though men had conquered the far greater distances between stars.

And as he watched the sky, the Governor imagined he could see the starships like threads spanning the reaches between suns. They made a web, and in it he was caught.

We dance on the web of starships, he said to himself (or to the stars), and think they make us free. But it's the absence of starships that frees us.

Once, once the ships liberated us, and we left overcrowded Earth to discover that far more beautiful and productive and homelike planets were available just for the taking. Odd, that Earthbred man should discover so many places that were more like Earth than Earth was. But had there ever been such grace as the mountains of Answer? The clear water that sang or shouted or roared its song through mountains and across plains and in shattering waves against the shore? Had there ever been stone like this? he thought, touching the rough, shining stones of the government building.

The starships brought us here, but now let the web be cut. Let us stand alone on our world, and find our own way around the sun, and if time should come when we want to go visiting, then let us rebuild the links. Until then, why can't the stars be mysterious, their movements miraculous, their light a gift of the gods? Why can't this telescope be a discoverer?

Those with somec lived long enough to see the stars move. Yet none of them, the Governor was sure, none of them ever looked. Someday soon a ship will come to Answer, he realized, will come with an inspection team from the department of colonization and- declare us ready to enter the Empire on equal status, and suddenly somec will come, and I will be put on a high level, and those just under me a lower level, and so on until the majority of the people get no somec at all. Then the governorship will not go to the only man willing and able-- it will go to the greediest and most ambitious, the ones who crave immortality of the easy kind and aren't willing to live forever by making an indelible mark in the hearts of men. The peace of Answer will be gone. Instead there will be jealousy and hatred.

But then, the Governor thought, then I will be able to see the stars move. I will be able to live for centuries and know that the constellations are not where they were, that this star and that one are drifting together.

And if I live long enough, shall I see the stars, one by one, flare up, dazzle for a moment in the sky, and blink out?

He watched the sky, and a light appeared. It moved perceptibly. It moved irregularly. It was a starship. It set up orbit around Answer.

The Governor went downstairs to the offices where the all-night skywatchers worked. They looked up at him as he came in. "Good you're awake, Sir. Starship. REnS-455-t, and they request permission to land a party to meet with you."

"Of course."

The crew of the starship did not look like an inspection team. They were worried, obviously, as they approached the Governor.

"Is something wrong?" the Governor asked.

"You're a colony, right?" the captain asked in return.

"Probably not, after the next inspection. I assume you're not inspectors?"

The captain shook his head. "We have a warship. Loaded with weapons. I warn you, there's still a crew up there, if something happens to us. We're prepared to blast this planet out of the sky."

The Governor's eyes widened in mock surprise. "And you're from the Empire, making threats to a loyal colony?"

The captain looked ashamed. "You wouldn't blame me, if you'd seen what we've seen."

"What have you seen?"

"Capitol," said the captain. "It's dead."

"Of what?"

"Terminal humanity, I suppose. It was a revolution. That bastard usurper, Abner Doon--"

"Usurper?"

"You've been away from the news for a long time. He began messing with somec. And the nonusers got angry and there was a revolution and they killed all the sleepers."

"All!"

"And they've been seizing starships wherever they landed, all over the Empire. The Rebels, too. Killing the crews and smashing the somec. It's mad. Do you realize what it's doing? There aren't any starships going, between planets anymore! And Capitol-- Capitol slit its own throat. The revolution started there, and now they have no food, and there are only a few survivors, and they can't last long. Cannibalism. The planet's dead. A place of savages trying to survive in metal."

"And you?"

"Where could we land? We tried stopping at Garden, but even they've gone crazy. Tried to shoot us down. We went as far as we could, trying to find a colony that didn't have somec yet, where they wouldn't be part of the revolution."

The Governor smiled. "We're not part of any revolution."

The captain relaxed then. "Thank God. We've come so far."

"You're welcome to come down."

"We won't have to live on charity, you know," said the captain. "We have some things you could use. We have enough somec to supply the top people of your world for ages. And our computer knows the formula. And we have a braintaper. And more than two hundred tapes. You can go full status right now, with our equipment. All we ask is to be able to stay on somec ourselves."

"Why would you want to do that?" the Governor asked.

The captain laughed. "Such a sense of humor."

The Governor thought for a moment. "Let me go up to your ship. Let me see this equipment."

The captain looked perturbed. "Of course we have it. How could we have gotten here without it?"

The Governor only smiled. "I didn't doubt that you had it. I only wanted to see it."

They led him to their landing craft and took off. The acceleration was surprisingly powerful. The Governor had never traveled so fast in his life.

And then they did the slow dance of docking, and the Governor experienced weightlessness, and the stars shone without twinkling through the window of the crah.

This is what it feels like, he thought, to be in space. No wonder men have clung so long to it. And he wanted to go with them to another star.

And soon I will have immortality within reach. I will see the stars move. And he wanted to have his brain taped and go on somec immediately and watch until the stars blinked out.

But then, as the docking slowly moved to completion, he knew that he would not accept the somec. Knew, in fact, that he would continue the revolution. Not with hatred. Not with blood. But because there were trees on Answer that had never been touched, mountains that had never been seen. Who needs immortality, when every day is still full to overflowing? The long sleeps of somec are only useful to those who are bored, who hope that by skipping over time they will live long enough to see something new.

Do I need to see something new? Only the end of the stars. And somec will never let me live so long as that. Because if we let it come to Answer, there would soon be hatred, and before long a revolution, and I would be one of the sleepers who was killed.

They led him aboard the huge starship, and he walked among the weapons, and they took him to the room where the braintaper was. "If anything went wrong to the braintaper, what would happen?" the Governor asked dubiously.

"Well," the captain said with a laugh, "nobody'd want to take somec. If you take somec without a braintape to be played back into your head, you might as well be dead. All your memories gone."

"I just had to be sure," the Governor said with a smile, and then he pressed the button on the hatchet in his pocket and the machine blew up.

The crew was furious, but the captain seemed unsurprised.

"You can kill me if you like," the Governor said. "But it won't repair your machine."

"We'll blast your planet!" cried one of the crew.

The Governor shrugged. "You can if you like. But where would you go then?" And the crew thought about it, and reahzed that they would never fly the starship again.

"We welcome you," the Governor said, "as I told you before. You can come and live with us. All you have to do is send this starship away."

"This is a pretty expensive piece of--" began one of the crew.

The captain interrupted. "Why did you do that?" he asked the Governor. "Got something against immortality?"

"What immorality? Somec doesn't make your life any longer. Just more useless. And it makes other people hate you."

"It makes starships possible," the captain said, and his voice Was grieved.

"But where would you go? Where would we go? You saw our world. It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"It is!" the captain said. "I guess you have us cold! We'd be fools to refuse. We're joining your colony, I guess."

"We'll die!" one of the crew whined. "Without somec, we'll live to be a hundred and die!"

The captain. looked at him contemptuously. "You'll live as many days as you would have otherwise. Now get whatever you want to take with you. You have ten minutes."

"No weapons, please," the Governor said. "We try to avoid them."

"Except your hatchet," murmured one of the crew.

"I'm the Governor," he said.

Ten minutes later the landing craft was loaded. The men had pitifully small bundles-- what was there to accumulate aboard a starship? And the captain piloted them down to Answer.

Once on the ground they looked up, and saw the starship erupt in a burst of flame and begin its journey. "Where is it going?" asked the Governor.

The captain raised his eyebrows. "I sent it into the sun, of course. We plan to be here a long time. A little extra mass will keep the sun burning that much longer."

"The starship will add less than a second."

"Every little bit helps." And the captain laughed.

The Governor didn't. He took him by the arm and led him to the roof of the government building, where the telescope still waited. Not to show hinm the scope. Just to ask him a question.

"Captain, there were two braintapers on that ship, weren't there?"

The captain shrugged.

"There have to have been two. One for the crew, when you awoke them. And one for you alone. The one that wakens you automatically."

The captain nodded. "Yes, that's right. There were two."

"So you could have flown on."

"Yes."

Why? the Governor did not ask.

"This looked like a nice place," the captain answered anyway.

The Governor went to sleep at dawn, when the starship people were put to bed in two inns that had vacancies. He was tired, and not at all sure that he had done the right thing. What would the people of Answer say, when they learned what he had done? Would there be a legislature then, and a new governor? Quite possibly. Or, perhaps, recognizing that what was done was done, they would forgive him for having deprived them of somec, and let him stay in office.

The webs between the stars are gone, he thought, and both mourned and rejoiced.

During his sleep he dreamed. He dreamed that he was standing with one foot on Answer and the other foot on the sun, and he could reach out and gather stars. He reached out, but every star he went to touch popped into a tiny nova in his hand, and disappeared. Soon all the stars were blinking out, and at last the only light in the universe was from the sun, which burned brightly under his feet.

And then he awoke, and he was content. He would not live forever, but he had, in fact, seen the stars blink out. Not in person, but the only way man was ever meant to see such things-- in his dreams.

He was content, but he took up gardening to fill his spare time, relaxing by looking down into the earth: Only the spiders used his telescope anymore, and then only as a prop where they could weave their webs.