Into the Sea of Stars

Chapter 13

Nearly six and a half feet tall, he towered over Ian and beneath his simple robe was a powerful build. His chocolate features were wreathed in a salt-and-pepper beard that matched his bushy hair.

Smith stepped closer to Ian and gave him a hard, appraising stare that seemed to slice into his soul. Ian tried to hold Smith's gaze, but after a brief painful struggle, he broke off the one-sided contest of wills.

"Ah, yes." Smith turned away from Ian and walked back up to the dais, regaining the seat occupied in the last interview by Gregor. Smith pointed to the far corner of the dais.

"There's a chair over there. Fetch it and come sit be fore me."

"Should I kneel first or something like that?"

"Very good, Ian, very good. But if any of my people heard that comment in that tone, you'd be dead before even I could stop them." He paused for a moment then stared him straight in the eye. "So don't be a wise-ass, or your shit will be cooked."

Ian grabbed the chair and sat down.

Smith was silent for some minutes, and Ian thought it best to let him take the lead in whatever it was that was going to happen.

Still staring straight into his eyes, Smith finally started. "You're a historian, are you not? That's what the ship's records indicate."

"Yes, I'm a historian."

"Then as a historian I know you have a million questions. I have my questions, too, but perhaps they will be answered better if I see what path it is that you choose."

Smith stretched and mumbled a quiet curse while rub bing his back. "Go ahead, historian, ask."

As the fullness of his opportunity washed over him, for a moment Ian was struck speechless. The past was but a dream, a dream lived more richly by any good historian, but still a dream. He thought for a moment that he had touched it with the life-extension colony, but that had turned to the ashes of senility. Yet here sat Franklin Smith, someone out of a past as distant and dead as Ssu — ma Zhung, Hitler, Napoleon, or Clarke. He had read of Smith, had charted his activities during the days leading up to the Holocaust and studied his in strumental role in the grand conspiracy of the colonies to escape disaster. And now he sat across from him. Was it really even him at all? he suddenly wondered, growing suspicious.

"How?"

"How. Ah, yes, how am I here; not forgotten ashes, nor half-remembered legend." He stretched again and leaned forward. "You know, Ian, I suspected that would be your first question. The others"-he waved vaguely, as if indicating the entire universe-"take it as a miracle. But it was nothing more than a damn good research pro gram at U.S.C. Have you heard of U.S.C.?"

Ian shook his head.

"Not a great school-the Chinese research programs were far better at that point-but still not bad. Well, they had isolated a number of the properties of hibernation. It was on the eve of the war…" His voice trailed off for a moment and he was silent.

He suddenly looked up at Ian with a start. "Just re membering, you see, it really wasn't that long ago for me. Before the war, an old professor of mine who was in on the project was exiled to the life-extension colony. I looked him up afterward. I heard that your records indicate a visit there, as well?"

Ian nodded but said nothing.

"He gave me a number of doses and the antidote for it, in consideration for a favor of mine."

"Such as not destroying the life-extension colony the way you did a couple of the others?"

Smith was silent again, and Ian wondered if he had gone too far. Smith smiled as if in warning, then contin ued.

"Through the accident of being scheduled in one of his classes while still an undergraduate, and a later chance meeting, I can sit here today, a millennium hence. While he…" His voice trailed off again for a moment. "Well, while he, if unfortunate enough to survive what happened, has long ago been taken by the inevitable thief of life and gone into the darkness.

"So, with such a simple turn of fate, I am injected with the drug and fall into a deep dreamless sleep. It can be for a day, or it can, as in one case, last for over a century- as long as I am occasionally given an intravenous injection and my unsensing limbs are manipulated so that they do not atrophy. A century, I said, and to my body not a month has passed. When there is need for me, I am wakened by the antidote. And so it was that Gregor, whose grandfather had once so served me, decided that I should be called, so that I might judge for myself what it is that you bring to me."

"And the passage of the centuries is nothing then to you?"

"The leave-taking, the war, the first months of madness are not two years past for me. A millennium, Ian Lacklin, is as if only yesterday. This long inexorable journey but a brief flicker in time. Your wondrous machine, Ian Lack lin, which has taken the journey of over fifty generations and compressed it into a moment, does in some ways compare with the journey that I have taken, as well. You remember Earth as it is today. And I, I have memories just as fresh, but of an Earth now gone for a thousand years."

He chuckled sadly in that rich, full voice.

"Only one question answered so far, Ian Lacklin. There must be yet ten thousand more."

He was right, and Ian wondered for a moment if the conversation could just continue forever, postponing what he feared was the inevitable order for his death.

"I know that you've had contact with several colonies from Earth, but you haven't run into anything else? You know, contact of some kind?"

"You mean an alien civilization?"

Ian nodded.

"We've picked up some signals, most from the original SETI point. I was told there was one quite close not a generation ago, but so far, Ian, nothing. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, just curious, that's all."

Smith looked at Ian closely, as if he suspected something, so Ian quickly pushed ahead with another question.

"I know the how of your cheating death and time. But why?"

"Wouldn't you cheat it? Think for a moment, Ian Lack lin. How long does the average man now live on Earth?"

"Three score is pretty good."

"Ah, yes, I imagine the aftereffects of the war. Before that madness came, we were averaging a full century on Earth. Some aboard the geriatric units were approaching a century and a half."

"On the life-extension unit many have passed the mil lennium mark," Ian replied, "but it wasn't a very pretty sight."

"Yes, yes, I can imagine. But as I was saying, suppose you could be given the chance to go to sleep and awaken for one or two days in each of the centuries to come- down through the ages, forever seeing what new and won drous things would await us in our future. Wouldn't you take it?"

Ian could only agree, but underneath it all he imagined that it would be exciting and terribly empty-to awaken each time in a world where he knew no one. He sensed something else; a faint glimmer of excitement shone in Smith's eyes that wasn't there before.

"But there is another reason, isn't there?"

Franklin smiled. And the smile to Ian was one of threat.

"There is my mission, as well." His voice increased in power, as if he was suddenly addressing a multitude rather than one nervous historian.

"Your mission, you say?"

"Yes, but another time for that, Ian Lacklin. You'll learn soon enough."

Ian sensed that a door had just been closed on a possible line of questioning, at least for the present, so he gathered in his thoughts for a moment and struck out in a new direction.

"According to Beaulieu, you were one of the key fig ures of the secretive Alpha Psi Council, the group that was instrumental in organizing the plan to evacuate all colonial units."

"Who is this Beaulieu?"

"One of the greatest historians alive today. It was Beau lieu who proved that man first landed on the Moon during the rule of Truman."

"Close enough," Smith muttered.

"He's leading the dig at Base Seven on Mars. The Copernican dig, the one that uncovered all the records of the Great Migration, was initiated by him, as well."

"I knew we should have blown that base as we moved out," Smith said evenly.

Ian didn't bother to follow up on that either but decided to wait for an answer. He could see that Smith was en joying himself. In a strange way Ian was a contemporary of the near-mythical man, perhaps one of the few people alive who could understand the ramifications and intri cacies of Smith's time and place.

"Yes, the Psi Council, as we called it," Smith contin ued. "I think, Ian, you understand the time and its events. My grandsires had made the Great Leap forward into space-that realm with all its promise and dreams. Then there was my generation, a generation taught to believe that we were the ones who would unbind ourselves for ever from the confines of Earth.

"I was born in space, Unit 333, my mother a Nigerian linguist, my father an American mission coordinator for a Powersat unit."

Ian was having a hard time understanding some of Smith's monolog but he didn't interrupt. Smith was warm ing to his subject, his full voice rising and falling as if he were telling a story to a group of young children who were fascinated by every word he said. Ian had his first suspicions that Smith was slightly mad.

"I was sent Earthside and, of all things, it was philosophy that took me. And with it came an Earthside position teaching. Those were hard times, Ian, ripe with a promise. Man could have gone far. But the darkness was already overwhelming us in a world of haves and have-nots. The great rivals of the previous century banded together out of fear of those whom they now had to suppress. The world was carrying a burden of twelve billion souls, Ian. Twelve billion. Once we had dreamed that space could take them. But faster than we could take them off-planet, more were born-and so the mad ness came.

"I was banished from Earth in seventy-eight, after the Second Arizonan Incident. I had become a leader in a disarmament drive; I and a hundred thousand others, mostly from the southwestern part of our country, were banished to a penal colony. This place here-" He shouted out the words and slammed the arm of the chair that he was sitting in. "One hundred thousand in a unit that could not sustain more than twenty-five thousand in closed-system regime."

He stopped, then smiled softly, like an old man who is concerned that he has just frightened the child he was talking to. Ian smiled back wanly and Smith continued.

"I could see what was coming. The darkness descend ing. All the nations of Earth would call upon their colonies to join in the nationalistic madness of their mother coun tries. And such madness! We had been living in space for nearly a century. We of space, from a dozen different nations, had far more in common with each other than with those mad fools below. It had been the same with America when at last her people had realized they were no longer Europeans. And so it was with us. Why should we slaughter each other for the sake of those madmen who were of a dying breed-the last generations of Homo sapiens?"

He said " Homo sapiens " with a disdain that was fright ening.

"We were of the next generation of man!" Smith shouted. "And I knew that in the end it would come down not to a confrontation between the petty nationalistic states but a confrontation between those below and those of us above.

"But we were too weak yet. It would be a hundred years, perhaps a millennium before we would be ready.

"Security at the penal colony was lax, especially for one such as myself who already had a name and was widely known on Earth. A few well-placed bribes and I was allowed a class-one visa for space-to-space flight. Just as long as I did not return below. It was thus that I started to meet with those from the other units and formed the network you call Alpha Psi. It was an open secret-the governments of Earth knew what we were planning from the start. But they needed us, our products, the energy we beamed down, so they did not attempt to stop us from planning and stockpiling the necessary systems that would get us out of there. No one on Earth wanted to force the confrontation. And they assumed, as well, that no unit was one hundred percent self-contained. To the second decimal of the ninety-ninth percentile, yes-but there were still some few items that we needed from Earth on a regular basis. And as you know, a unit is only self-contained to the degree of its first perishable life-sustaining substance.

"But we labored on that, as well. That was our true secret, while we openly prepared in other ways. That is where we pushed our research, and soon we could im prove self-sufficiency by a factor of ten. Then the Exodus began. One unit left, and then another, finally it was in the dozens, and then the hundreds. The men of Earth couldn't stop us without forcing a major confrontation. Finally when they worked up the nerve to do it, the end was already upon them."

He smiled sadly and looked off into the distance, as if recalling a half-forgotten dream.

"The Soviet-Pakistani Incident precipitated the first exchange. Even from fifty thousand miles out, we could see the flashes and firestorms. We made our moves as planned-before we ourselves would be dragged into the conflagration-and abandoned Earth to the fate created by those who were too inferior to understand.

"Yes, Ian, I was an Alpha Psi leader. I was the phi losopher who motivated the others. We evacuated, Ian Lacklin, but it came far too soon for our unit. I want you to contemplate this, Ian Lacklin. We had one hundred thousand aboard, of which we calculated only twenty- five thousand could be supported by the ecosystem. Con template what that meant to us, contemplate what that did to a philosophy professor who was now the appointed leader of a colony doomed to die from overpopulation. I cursed them all. I cursed those who destroyed what might have been, and set me upon this Hegira."

"I'm not sure I understand. What is a hegira?"

"Ah, yes, but of course you wouldn't understand. I am weary, Ian, and shall soon leave you. But don't — worry. This conversation shall continue, for I do find it amusing. Yes, the Hegira. When Muhammad the Prophet was not recognized by the fools and unbelievers of Mecca, he and his followers were driven out of the city into exile. That is the time that the True Believers date their calendar from, the Hegira or exile of the Prophet. And so we were driven out, as well, Ian Lacklin — a hegira that has lasted eleven centuries."

Franklin Smith stood up, stretched slowly, and walked past Ian and out toward the far door, his silken robes rustling lightly with his passage.

"My Hegira-which I as the Father have lived through from the beginning. And which now, thanks to you and the present you bring, will soon end with fire and sword."

Ian was alone for three days, as near as he could es timate, before he was allowed to rejoin the others.

Surprisingly their captors had allowed some of their familiar items to be brought back from the Discovery, and Richard greeted Ian with a tumbler and a sad lament.

"I had two cases left, two cases, and the bastards only let me take this one bottle off." And he held up the last precious container, now three-quarters of the way to empty.

"Take it as a great honor and sign of my friendship," Richard said melodramatically, "that I saved this final drink for you." He poured the rest of the contents into the tumbler and offered it to Ian.

"What did they do to the ship?" Ian asked.

Stasz drew closer. "It seems our messiah friend is a little nervous about his catch," he whispered softly. "We were allowed to take off some personal items, but then the ship was sealed."

"Any cargo removed?"

"Nothing that I could see, " Stasz replied. "They did detect the radiation in that old thermomine in the aft stor age compartment. That really set them off, and they put a secure lock on the door and left it there."

Ian smiled at this information and reached into his pocket to hold the alien cylinder, as if it were a talisman to ward off evil.

Shelley came to lan's's side and wrapped her arms around him. For a second he regretted his earlier confession, but he went ahead anyhow and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

"We thought maybe you weren't coming back," Ellen said, a note of concern in her voice.

"We saw him, we did. Saw their great dark Father," Elijah proclaimed. "He invited me to their communion of honor for you. I can hardly wait."

Still not used to Elijah's predilections, Ian backed away from him.

So the friends talked quietly among themselves. Each had met with Smith. With Stasz the talk was technical and dealt with the operation of an overdrive ship. From Stasz's descriptions they all realized he had lied to the point of absurdity with Smith when discussing the de fenses of Earth and the limitless fleets of overdrive ships that swarmed the galaxy.

Ian smiled as Richard described their comparisons of medical technology and shook his head sadly. Here was an old friend, lost four-score light-years from home, brought to an early end by his mismanagement. lan's eyes started to fill, and he looked away.

Ellen said they had spoken of language and culture. She had even asked to use one of her precious survey forms, which she had saved for just such a moment. Smith had laughed and said he would consider it. With Shelley he reminisced about his days as a graduate student.

Only Elijah would not speak of their conversation and, when asked, would only mumble snatches of verse.

Ian knew that each of them was being judged and weighed for the slaughter. He knew that for the moment Smith was using them as a means of entertainment, a way of looking into the past. But that would soon change, he was sure of it.

They came for Ian while the others were asleep, and he quietly slipped away, not wishing to create another emotional scene. Smith was waiting for him in the same chamber but led Ian away through a side corridor and up into the docking bays. Not a single person did they meet, and Ian finally asked why.

"This whole unit is a shrine. If the ship of Columbus could be found, do you think we would sail it and use it? The same is true of this vessel-this once-crowded penal colony. Only my priests and priestesses live here, to over see my needs."

"Your priests and priestesses?" He knew the tone of disdain couldn't be concealed.

Smith looked at him and smiled. "Come and gaze upon my power."

Smith led the way to the zero-gravity docking section. Passing Discovery's port, the two boarded a small vessel and strapped into side-by-side couches. Smith activated a command screen then quickly rattled off a statement into the console mike. The shuttlecraft was activated, and they were off.

"Voice-activated commands?" Ian asked, impressed with the technology.

"Yes, I was rather amazed at the primitive piloting systems of your own vessel."

They traced a parabolic arc away from the main ship, and as they came up on the opposite side of the vessel, Ian couldn't help but gasp in amazement. In the harsh blue-white light of Delta Sag, hundreds of ships hung sus pended in high orbit like fiery diamonds of light.

"What was once above Earth at the height of her power in space pales to insignificance when compared to this. Gregor says that there are now over ten thousand home vessels, from small ones such as the relic I now live in to giants, one hundred and fifty kilometers in length. Most are in orbit around this once-dead airless planet, which is so rich in the resources that we desire.

"When we arrived here nearly three hundred years ago, there were but twenty-five thousand of us. We fashioned crude landing vessels for the surface below and finally managed to gain a toehold. Those were exciting times, Ian Lacklin. Heroic times. Within several years the first mass-drivers were throwing up desperately needed supplies of silicon, iron, hydrogen, and oxygen, locked beneath the surface. Then we built the skyhooks, the powersats, and the first new habitation units. That took us fifty years. And then I approved the growth. Yes, the growth, where a mother could have more than two children. I now encouraged my people to have as many as possible. Since that time we've doubled our population every eighteen years."

Ian tried some quick mental arithmetic but Smith had already guessed his goal.

"According to Gregor, there are over one billion people living in space. If we continue for another two hundred years at this rate of growth, we'll have over a trillion souls. One trillion souls. And that small planet down below shall disappear from our insatiable need. Think of that, Ian Lacklin. One trillion souls."

There was a sudden connection, and Ian couldn't help but ask.

"Why do they call you the Father?"

"Ah, yes." He chuckled softly with an obvious note of pride. "Simple, Ian Lacklin. Of that first generation of growth, I was the father of at least one child from every mother."

Ian looked at him and couldn't help but smile.

"You from the Outside, you can smile in my presence, but not in front of the others. That could be deadly.

"I know what you're thinking, that it must have been a laborious task. Some were done in, how shall I say, 'the traditional way,' but the vast majority were per formed through artificial techniques. Of the next gen eration the same was done again, and again thereafter and thereafter. The genealogies are watched of course and the males of my community sire children, as well, but ultimately they all trace themselves back to me. So you see, Ian Lacklin, by now all one billion alive today are my descendents in one degree or another. It's strange, Ian, to meet a man twice my age, bent over with time, and to realize that I am his father or grandfather. Soon for me, only a matter of months from now in my life span, there will be a trillion who are descendents from my loins.".

He said it with the pride of a biblical patriarch. One billion to date, Ian thought.

"I almost had the same arrangement myself," Ian said matter of factly.

"Oh, what happened?"

"The details of the contract didn't work out." And he wouldn't say another word on the subject.

They sat in silence for several minutes and Ian hoped that Smith would be duly impressed by that little reve lation about the IFF and that there would be no more questions in that vein.

So, they were all descendents of Smith. The sociological implications were fabulous, and he wished that Ellen was with them at this moment. Smith had taken the prim itive concept of the clan, with its family bondings, and raised it to the level of an entire civilization. He was Adam incarnate, master of an entire star system-and how much of a master, Ian would soon see.

Ian watched as Smith guided them on their trajectory toward one end of a cylinder that must have been a hundred kilometers in length.

Smith called out several approach commands and their shuttle swung in on the final run that was only a couple of hundred meters above a rotating surface so big that Ian felt he was orbiting a planet. His curiosity was aroused as to the mass of this ship and the gravitational field that it created.

As they approached the end of the cylinder, the shut- tlecraft started to decelerate and Ian was surprised at the sudden realization that Smith's people had mastered in ertia dampening for a sublight vessel.

Clearing the end of the man-made planet, the shuttle finally docked at the very center, in the zero-gravity area.

"This will only take a couple of minutes. Would you care to come along?"

How could he refuse? Ian eagerly followed behind Smith.

Their docking port was devoid of people, and it seemed to be encased, floors, walls, and ceilings, in gold. They floated into a small golden room with a single circular doorway at the other end.

"I shall go first, of course," Smith said. "I'd appreciate it if you would stay behind me. If you should drift along side of me or in front of me, I'm afraid that wouldn't follow protocol at all. I'd be forced to kill you." He smiled. "Do we understand each other?"

Ian nodded.

"Good then." Smith pushed off and floated toward the door. At his approach it slid open, a sudden roar engulfed them, as if a storm-tossed sea was breaking outside the golden room.

Smith grabbed hold of a circular railing of gold, stop ping his forward momentum. He stood there surrounded by thunder.

Ian cautiously slipped up to the doorway and peaked out. "My God, it's full of people," he whispered.

He was looking out into a vast cylinder-shaped audi ence chamber: a kilometer or more in diameter, its length ten kilometers back up into the vessel. The entire popu lation of the one habitat-millions of them-had gathered in this one place.

"O my children," Smith shouted, and his amplified voice rose above the thunderous roar.

"For you are the Father of us all!" ten millions answered in return.

"Our promise shall be fulfilled, our glory magnified a thousandfold. Our revenge shall be just."

"For so you have promised!"

"Our Hegira shall come to an end in the gardens of Paradise!"

Smith reached to his belt and with a dramatic flourish drew a sword that glinted in the harsh blue sunlight pour ing in through the windows that surrounded the docking port like a beaded halo.

Ian gasped with amazement as, like a field of steely wheat, a wavering shimmer of metal rippled up over the multitude. Until all human forms were blotted out beneath ten million upraised swords.

"Father, Father, Father…"

Smith pushed off from the golden ring and reentered the golden room.

"That is power, Ian Lacklin," he said with a cold glim mer of menace. "Think of that power when, in vengeance for what we suffered, I unleash it across the world that so cruelly drove us out into the night."

Ian was silent as together they reboarded the shuttle.