Collision Course

SIXTEEN

The private chamber of the Technarch McKenzie had a harsh, almost hieractic simplicity, with its black stone walls and its bright, shimmering marble floor. The windowless chamber had been designed to impress both its occupant and his visitors with the somber importance of the Technarch’s responsibilities—and in that it succeeded, Martin Bernard thought. He felt a tinge of something quite like awe as he followed McKenzie in.

Few words had been interchanged since the landing of the XV-ftl in Central Australia an hour before. The wanderers had come forth; and perhaps the Technarch had seen from their tense, bleak faces that the news they bore was not to be blurted out hastily. In any event, he had asked no questions, merely nodded a Technarchical greeting as the men left the ship. Bernard had come up to him.

“Hearkening, Excellency.”

“Hello, Bernard. What news?”

“Might I report to Your Excellency in your private chambers?”

The audience had been granted. One by one, stepping through the transmat, they had crossed the gap from the spacefield to the Archonate Center. Now Dominici, Stone, and Havig waited in the Technarch’s antechamber, while Bernard, alone, faced McKenzie within.

The Technarch slipped into his seat behind his broad, bare-topped desk and gestured to Bernard to sit facing him. Glad to get off his shaky legs, Bernard took the seat. He knew what he was going to say, but tension gripped him all the same.

He stared levelly at the Technarch’s face. At the dark, brooding eyes, the thick hump of a nose, the wide, tightly clamped lips, the jutting chin, the corded neck. McKenzie seemed to have the strength of a bull. Bernard wondered how much of that strength McKenzie was going to need in order to withstand the blow that was coming.

“You wish to report to me, Dr. Bernard. Very well. I’m extremely interested in learning how your voyage went—in detail.” The Technarch’s voice was level, well modulated, with the sharp edge of strength shaping every syllable.

Bernard said, “I’ll begin at the beginning, then, Excellency.”

“An excellent idea.”

Quit stalling! Bernard told himself sharply. The Technarch’s eyes reflected impatience, mockery perhaps. In a calm voice Bernard said, “We had no technical difficulties in reaching the planet of the alien colony. We landed, observed the aliens for a while, and finally made ourselves known to them. Dr. Havig did an excellent job of teaching several of the aliens to speak Terran. They call themselves Norglans, by the way. We made it clear to them that we had come to negotiate a treaty, whereupon our Norglan contact left us and returned, some time later, with two of his superiors—larger physically and evidently much more intelligent, since they were able to absorb a week’s instruction in Terran in only a few hours, from their comrade. When they met with us, they could speak fairly well, and they improved every minute.”

“What did they say?” McKenzie asked.

Bernard leaned forward, knotting his hands together tensely. “We explained quite clearly to them that it was inevitable that the boundaries of our respective spheres of expansion were bound to overlap and clash, and we showed them that it was Earth’s wish to arrive at a peaceful settlement now, rather than let matters slide until the actual collision came, and with it war.”

“Yes? And how did they react?”

“Badly. They listened to what we had to say, and then they presented a counter-proposal: that Earth confine itself to the worlds already colonized, leaving all the rest for Norgla.”

“What?” Fury blazed in the Technarch’s eyes. “Of all the preposterous nonsense! You mean they simply told you to agree to an end of all Terran expansion? That we abdicate as a galactic power?”

Bernard nodded. “That was precisely the way they put it. The galaxy was theirs; we would be allowed to keep the worlds we had already taken, but no more.”

“And you rejected this insanity, of course.”

“We didn’t get the chance to.”

“What?”

“The two Norglan ambassadors hurled their ultimatum and walked out—went back to their home planet. Evidently they have the equivalent of transmat travel between worlds of their system too, Excellency. We protested to the colony supervisor, but he said he could do nothing; the ambassadors had left, and would not be returning. So the talks broke down. We blasted off for Earth.”

McKenzie goggled incredulously. Spots of color appeared on his cheeks; his nostrils widened in suppressed rage. “You realize what this ultimatum means. We’re at war with these creatures after all, despite everything…”

Bernard held up one hand, fighting to keep it steady. “Your pardon, Excellency. I haven’t finished telling of our journey.”

“There’s more?”

“Much more. You see, we became lost trying to return home. Commander Laurance and his men spent hours trying to get us back on course, but there was nothing they could do. We emerged from no-space, finally, in the region of the Greater Magellanic Cloud.” Bernard felt a band of tightness in his stomach. The words rolled glibly from his lips, though he knew each one drove a maddening wedge deep into the Technarch’s mind. “We were lost, fifty thousand parsecs from Earth, and no way of returning. But suddenly our ship was taken over by an irresistible force. We were drawn down to a planet in the Magellanic Cloud, inhabited by beings that identified themselves as the Rosgollans. Strange beings—with wonderful mental powers. Teleportation, psychokinesis, and many other abilities. They—read our minds. Interrogated us. Found out about our mission to the Norglans. And then—then they brought the two Norglan ambassadors across space to meet with us again.”

The Technarch’s facial expression had been changing all during Bernard’s last few sentences. Now McKenzie seemed to be staring silently off into a void, face growing pale, eyes glazed and reflective.

“Go on,” the Technarch said in a terribly quiet voice.

“The Rosgollans staged a kind of courtroom scene—examining our claims, dismissing them. The Norglans got indignant, so the Rosgollans humiliated them—levitated them, let them hang in the air, dropped them in a heap. It was a demonstration of unmatchable power. And after it was over—after the Rosgollans had shown us we could not hope to question their orders—they divided the galaxy into Terran and Norglan spheres.”

“Divided it?”

“Yes. Here—I have the chart on a flat projection. It’s a line that runs right through the heart of our galaxy. Everything on this side is ours; everything on the other side, Norglan. And if either side crosses the boundary line, or if we leave the confines of our galaxy, the Rosgollan scouts will discover it and administer punishment.”

The Technarch took the star-chart from Bernard with a leaden hand, looked at it for an instant, shoved it roughly to one side. He seemed to sigh.

“You aren’t—making all this up, Bernard?”

“No, Excellency. It’s all true. The Rosgollans are out there, half a million years cleverer than we are—and they hinted that there were other races even more powerful, in the distant reaches of the universe.”

“And we have to keep in line— like small boys in school— Norglans over here, Terrans over there—while the Rosgollans make sure we don’t get out of step. Is that it?” The Technarch’s face became a mask of rigid anguish. He leaned forward, gripping the top of his desk with big, powerful hands. He squeezed the desk top, closing his eyes, grimacing with inner torment.

Something shattered inside the Technarch. His shoulders seemed to slump; his face sagged, the wide mouth drooped, the massive forearms lost their strength and dangled limply. Bernard stared at the floor. Watching McKenzie break in this instant was like watching a monument tumble to destruction; it was painful to see.

When McKenzie spoke again, it was in a different voice, with none of the metallic inner strength of his Technarch tone. “I guess this expedition didn’t work out so well, then. I sent you out as representatives of the finest race in the galaxy—and you come back defeated— crushed…”

“But we got what we went for, after all!” Bernard protested. “You sent us out to divide the galaxy with the Norglans—and we succeeded in that!”

The sophistry sounded hollow the moment he had uttered it. McKenzie smiled strangely. “You succeeded? I sent you out to divide the universe; you came back with half a galaxy apportioned to you. It’s not the same thing at all, is it, Bernard?”

“Excellency…”

“So all my dreams are over. I thought in my lifetime I’d see Terrans ranging the farthest reaches of the universe— and instead we’re hemmed into half a galaxy, by the mercy of our masters. And that’s the end, isn’t it, Bernard? Once a limit has been set, once someone puts a fence around us— that ends all our dreams of infinity.”

“No, Excellency! That’s where you’re wrong!”

“Eh?” McKenzie asked, startled. It was probably the first time since he had assumed the mantle of the Technarchonate that anyone had so flatly contradicted him. But now he had hardly the strength to be angry.

Bernard said, “This isn’t the end, Excellency. I admit we aren’t in the same position of supremacy we were in before Laurance discovered the Norglans— but we never were in that position of supremacy! We never were the lords of creation. It only seemed that way, because we’d never come across any other race. Now, for the first time, we see our true position.

“Sure, it isn’t a position of supremacy. We’re a long way from that. We’re too young, too new, to have the kind of power we thought we had. There are the Norglans in our own galaxy, just as strong as we are, probably. And outside the galaxy the Rosgollans, and who knows what greater races than those? But now we have something definite to work for. We have finite goals instead of vague, indefinite ones. We know we have to work to evolve past the Norglans, toward the Rosgollans. When we’re in their class, we’ll legitimately be able to hold our heads up in pride, except that we’ll be past the point of needing pride.

“I think we’re an even younger race than the Norglans, Excellency. But we’ve caught and equalled them, for all their speed in building colonies—and I think the Rosgollans are afraid of us, too. They see how fast we’re developing—they know it’s only a thousand years since we entered the age of machines, and they see how far we’ve come in that time. They’re watching us, worried, anxious. They want to put checks on us now so we don’t overdevelop, spill out into the universe faster than we ought to.

“The Rosgollan boundary will guarantee that we don’t bite off more than we can chew, Excellency. But we’ve got all the future ahead of us. Tomorrow belongs to us. We’ve had a setback, maybe, but it isn’t really a setback—just an end to our complacency, a beginning of the realization that we’re not the be-all and end-all of creation. That we still have a long way to go. So that’s why we can’t let this throw us, Technarch McKenzie.”

Bernard stopped. He felt like a small boy lecturing his schoolmaster. But the old relationships no longer held; and this strangely limp man behind the big desk was no longer the figure of awe he had once been.

In a muffled, hollow voice, McKenzie said. “Maybe— maybe you’re right, Bernard. But—but it isn’t easy to accept.”

“Of course not, Excellency.”

McKenzie looked up. “I wanted to forge Man’s empire in the stars. With these hands, I wanted to build it.”

“We haven’t lost that hope, Excellency.”

“No. We haven’t. But I have. You’ll never know how I dreamed, Bernard. And now those dreams can only be realized by our remote descendants—thousands of years from now.”

Bernard shook his head vehemently. He struggled for some way of communicating to the Technarch the surge of optimism that gripped him.

“Excellency—don’t you see that we can’t be stopped? We’ve got the current running with us. We’ll climb back to the place where we thought—in our blindness—that we were. On the top.”

“Yes. Someday, perhaps, we will,” said McKenzie tonelessly. “But I won’t live to see it, Bernard, nor will you nor any of us nor even our children’s children. And I had wanted to see it. To build it, Bernard. To shape tomorrow with my hands. Can you understand that, man? I! Me! I! While I live!”

A deep sob racked the Technarch’s body. Bernard looked away awkwardly, trying to pretend he had not seen. He felt helpless to stop this man’s grieving. There was nothing he could possibly say, no imaginable word of sympathy, nothing whatever to be done for this massive man whose dreams of cosmic empire-building had tumbled so quickly into the dust.

The Technarch’s lips moved wordlessly, beyond the man’s control for a moment. Then, with a powerful effort, he mastered himself and said flatly, quietly, “All right, Bernard. You can put the report in writing and submit it the proper way. Tell the entire story, from beginning to end, just as you told it to me. Don’t gloss anything over. Understood?”

“Yes, Excellency. Is there—is there anything else I can do…?”

A pause. Then: “Get out of here, that’s all. Just leave me alone. Tell Naylor I won’t be seeing anyone else today. Get out of here!”

“Hearkening, Excellency.”

A lump of pity clogged Bernard’s throat as he made a formal bow to the Technarch, still a formidable figure in his black cloak of office. McKenzie was obviously fighting to keep his craggy features under control while Bernard still remained in the room. Then, unable to bear the sight, Bernard turned and rushed away, through the irising sphincter into the ante-chamber.

Dominici, Stone, and Havig waited there for him, sitting tensely upright on the carved bench at the far well. Bernard realized that his face and body were soaked with perspiration, that his hands were clenching and unclenching of their own volition.

“Well?” Stone asked jumpily. “How did he take the news, Bernard?”

The sociologist shrugged. “Badly.”

The single word made its effect. Dominici asked, “Did you tell him everything?”

“The works,” Bernard said solemnly. “I didn’t pull any punches. You could see his face crumble when it all sank in. He wanted to see mankind out and planting colonies in Andromeda while he was still Technarch. I guess he won’t.” Bernard let a slow smile cross his face. “I pity him. The man’s a monolith. He may not be able to adjust to the situation.”

“Don’t underestimate him,” Stone said. “He’s a great man.”

“Great, yes, but this may destroy him; I hope not,” Bernard said. “Maybe he’ll have the strength to adjust to it. But he’ll never be the same man again.”

Naylor, the Technarch’s man, came shuffling into the antechamber, his face a careful professional blank. Bernard wondered how Naylor would react when he found his master in a state of near-shock. Probably go into shock himself, Bernard thought.

Naylor said, “Have you gentlemen concluded your audience with the Technarch?”

“Yes, we have,” Bernard said. “And the Technarch asked me to pass a message along to you.”

“Sir?”

“He said that he doesn’t want to see anyone else for the rest of the day.”

“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.” Naylor flicked the matter into the back of his mind. “Shall I make arrangements for your homeward trips?”

“Yes.”

While Naylor busily set up the transmat coordinates, Bernard made his last goodbyes to the men with whom he had joined in this unhappy venture into the kingdoms of the stars. Stone, now a dismal, hopeless figure, his life’s basis as shattered as that of the Technarch; Dominici, cocky as always, unruffled by his experience, at least outwardly; Havig, austere, withdrawn, pious, but at least no longer aloof.

They were all men, Bernard thought.

He was glad to have known them.

The moment had come to leave now. “Mr. Bernard, sir?” Naylor called.

“So long,” Bernard said.

“God go with you,” Havig called after him.

Bernard smiled and stepped through the transmat, emerging in his own flat, four thousand miles away in London. Everything was as he left it; everything seemed to be waiting for him. Even the air smelled fresh, not at all as though he had left the apartment for so long a span as he had. It was all there—the books, the pipe, the music, the brandy—waiting for him to slip back into his comfortable life at the point where he had stepped out of it.

But it would never be the same again, Bernard thought.

Never the same again for any of us.

He walked to the window, looking out past the foggy London night to the faint glimmering stars that managed to make their way through the haze.

Never the same again. But, somehow, deep within his soul, he felt that everything was going to work out for the best; that—though neither he nor the unhappy Technarch nor any man now walking the Earth would live to see it—mankind would someday be taking its rightful place in the stars.