The Day of Their Return

VII

Covering a hill in the middle of Nova Roma, the University of Virgil was a town within the city, and most of it older than most of the latter. The massive, crenelated wall around it still bore scars from the Troubles. Older in truth than the Empire, Desai thought. His glance passed over man-hewn red and gray stones to an incorporated section of glassy iridescence. A chill touched his spine. That part is older than humanity.

Beyond the main gateway, he entered a maze of courts, lanes, stairs, unexpected little gardens or trees, memorial plaques or statues, between the buildings. Architecture was different here from elsewhere. Even the newer structures—long, porticoed, ogive-windowed, until they rose in towers—preserved a tradition going back to the earliest settlers. Or do they? wondered Desai. If these designs are from ancient Terra, they are crossbreeds that mutated. Gothic arches but Russko spires, except that in low gravity those vaultings soar while those domes bulge … and yet it isn’t mismatched, it’s strong and graceful in its own way, it belongs on Aeneas as … I do not.

Chimes toned from a belfry which stood stark athwart darkling blue and a rusty streak of high-borne dustcloud. No doubt the melody was often heard. But it didn’t sound academic to him; it rang almost martial.

Campus had not regained the crowded liveliness he had seen in holos taken before the revolt. In particular, there were few nonhumans, and perhaps still fewer humans from other colonies. But he passed among hundreds of Aeneans. Hardly a one failed to wear identification: the hooded, color-coded cloaks of teaching faculty, which might or might not overlay the smock of researcher; student jackets bearing emblems of their colleges and, if they were Landfolk, their Firstmen. (Beneath were the tunics, trousers, and half-boots worn by both sexes—among nords, anyhow—except on full-dress occasions when women revived antique skirts.) Desai noticed, as well, the shoulder patches on many, remembrance of military or naval units now dissolved. Should I make those illegal? … And what if my decree was generally disobeyed?

He felt anger about him like a physical force. Oh, here a couple of young fellows laughed at a joke, there several were flying huge kites, yonder came a boy and girl hand in hand, near two older persons learnedly conversing; but the smiles were too few, the feet on flagstones rang too loud.

He had visited the area officially, first taking pains to learn about it. That hadn’t thawed his hosts, but today it saved his asking for directions and thus risking recognition. Not that he feared violence; and he trusted he had the maturity to tolerate insult; however—His way took him past Rybnikov Laboratories, behind Pickens Library, across Adzel Square to Borglund Hall, which was residential.

The south tower, she had said. Desai paused to see where Virgil stood. After two years—more than one, Aenean—he had not developed an automatic sense of how he faced. The compass on a planet was always defined to make its sun rise in the east; and a 25-degree axial tilt wasn’t excessive, shouldn’t be confusing; and he ought to be used to alien constellations by now. Getting old. Not very adaptable any longer. Nor had he developed a reflex to keep him from ever looking straight at that small, savage disc. Blind for a minute, he worried about retinal burn. Probably none. Blue-eyed Aeneans kept their sight, didn’t they? Let’s get on with business. Too much else is waiting back at the office as is, and more piling up every second.

The circular stairway in the tower was gloomy enough to make him stumble, steep enough to make him pant and his heart flutter. Low gravity didn’t really compensate for thin air, at his age. He rested for a time on the fourthfloor landing before he approached an oaken door and used a knocker which centuries of hands had worn shapeless.

Tatiana Thane let him in. “Good day,” she said tonelessly.

Desai bowed. “Good day, my lady. You are kind to give me this interview.”

“Do I have choice?”

“Certainly.”

“I didn’t when your Intelligence Corps hauled me in for questionin’.” Her speech remained flat. A note of bitterness would at least have expressed some human relationship.

“That is why I wished to see you in your own apartment, Prosser Thane. To emphasize the voluntariness. Not that I believe you were arrested, were you? The officers merely assumed you would cooperate, as a law-abiding—citizen.” Desai had barely checked himself from saying “subject of His Majesty.”

“Well, I won’t assault you, Commissioner. Have you truly come here unescorted as you claimed you would?”

“Oh, yes. Who’d pay attention to a chubby chocolate-colored man in a particularly thick mantle? Apropos which, where may I leave it?”

Tatiana indicated a peg in the entry. This layout was incredibly archaic. No doubt the original colonists hadn’t had the economic surplus to automate residences, and there’d been sufficient pinch ever afterward to keep alive a scorn of “effete gadgetry.” The place was chilly, too, though the young woman was rather lightly if plainly clad.

Desai’s glance recorded her appearance for later study. She was tall and slim. The oval face bore a curved nose, arched brows above brown eyes, broad full mouth, ivory complexion, between shoulder-length wings of straight dark hair. Old University family, he recalled, steeped in its lore, early destined for a scholarly career. Somewhat shy and bookish, but no indoor plant; she takes long walks or longer animal-back rides, spends time in the desert, not to mention the jungles of Dido. Brilliant linguist, already responsible for advances in understanding certain languages on that planet. Her enthusiasm for the Terran classics doubtless kindled Ivar Frederiksen’s interest in them and in history … though in his case, perhaps one might better say the vision of former freedom fighters inflamed him. She appears to have more sense than that: a serious girl, short on humor, but on the whole, as good a fiancée as any man could hope for.

That was the approximate extent of the report on her. There were too many more conspicuous Aeneans to investigate. The Frederiksen boy hadn’t seemed like anyone to worry about either, until he ran amok.

Tatiana led Desai into the main room of her small suite. Its stone was relieved by faded tapestries and scuffed rug, where bookshelves, a fine eidophonic player, and assorted apparatus for logico-semantic analysis did not occupy the walls. Furniture was equally shabby-comfortable, leather and battered wood. Upon a desk stood pictures he supposed were of her kin, and Ivar’s defiant in the middle of them. Above hung two excellent views, one of a Didonian, one of Aeneas seen from space, tawny-red, green- and blue-mottled, north polar cap as white as the streamers of ice-cloud. Her work, her home.

A trill sounded. She walked to a perch whereon, tiny and fluffy, a native tadmouse sat. “Oh,” she said. “I forgot it’s his lunchtime.” She gave the animal seeds and a caress. A sweet song responded.

“What is his name, if I may ask?” Desai inquired.

She was obviously surprised. “Why … Frumious Bandersnatch.”

Desai sketched another bow. “Pardon me, my lady. I was given a wrong impression of you.”

“What?”

“No matter. When I was a boy on Ramanujan, I had a local pet I called Mock Turtle … Tell me, please, would a tadmouse be suitable for a household which includes young children?”

“Well, that depends on them. They mustn’t get rough.”

“They wouldn’t. Our cat’s tail went unpulled until, lately, the poor beast died. It couldn’t adjust to this planet.”

She stiffened. “Aeneas doesn’t make every newcomer welcome, Commissioner. Sit down and describe what you want of me.”

The chair he found was too high for his comfort. She lowered herself opposite him, easily because she topped him by centimeters. He wished he could smoke, but to ask if he might would be foolish.

“As for Ivar Frederiksen,” Tatiana said, “I tell you what I told your Corpsmen: I was not involved in his alleged action and I’ve no idea where he may be.”

“I have seen the record of that interview, Prosser Thane.” Desai chose his words with care. “I believe you. The agents did too. None recommended a narcoquiz, let alone a hypnoprobing.”

“No Aenean constable has right to so much as propose that.”

“But Aeneas rebelled and is under occupation,” Desai said in his mildest voice. “Let it re-establish its loyalty, and it will get back what autonomy it had before.” Seeing how resentment congealed her eyes, he added low: “The loyalty I speak of does not involve more than a few outward tokens of respect for the throne, as mere essential symbols. It is loyalty to the Empire—above all, to its Pax, in an age when spacefleets can incinerate whole worlds and when the mutiny in fact took thousands of lives—it is that I mean, my lady. It is that I am here about, not Ivar Frederiksen.”

Startled, she swallowed before retorting, “What do you imagine I can do?”

“Probably nothing, I fear. Yet the chance of a hint, a clue, any spark of enlightenment no matter how faint, led me to call you and request a confidential talk. I emphasize ‘request.’ You cannot help unless you do so freely.”

“What do you want?” she whispered. “I repeat, I’m not in any revolutionary group—never was, unless you count me clerkin’ in militia durin’ independence fight—and I don’t know zero about what may be goin’ on.” Pride returned. “If I did, I’d kill myself rather than betray him. Or his cause.”

“Do you mind talking about them, though? Him and his cause.”

“How—?” Her answer faded out.

“My lady,” Desai said, and wondered how honest his plea sounded to her, “I am a stranger to your people. I have met hundreds by now, myself, while my subordinates have met thousands. It has been of little use in gaining empathy. Your history, literature, arts are a bit more helpful, but the time I can devote to them is very limited, and summaries prepared by underlings assigned to the task are nearly valueless. One basic obstacle to understanding you is your pride, your ideal of disciplined self-reliance, your sense of privacy which makes you reluctant to bare the souls of even fictional characters. I know you have normal human emotions; but how, on Aeneas, do they normally work? How does it feel to be you?

“The only persons here with whom I can reach some approximation of common ground are certain upper-class Townfolk, entrepreneurs, executives, innovators—cosmopolites who have had a good deal to do with the most developed parts of the Empire.”

“Squatters in Web,” she sneered. “Yes, they’re easy to fathom. Anything for profit.”

“Now you are the one whose imagination fails,” Desai reproved her. “True, no doubt a number of them are despicable opportunists. Are there absolutely none among Landfolk and University? Can you not conceive that an industrialist or financier may honestly believe cooperation with the Imperium is the best hope of his world? Can you not entertain the hypothesis that he may be right?”

He sighed. “At least recognize that the better we Impies understand you, the more to your advantage it is. In fact, our empathy could be vital. Had—Well, to be frank, had I known for sure what I dimly suspected, the significance in your culture of the McCormac Memorial and the armed households, I might have been able to persuade the sector government to rescind its orders for dismantling them. Then we might not have provoked the kind of thing which has made your betrothed an outlaw.”

Pain crossed her face. “Maybe,” she said.

“My duty here,” he told her, “is first to keep the Pax, including civil law and order; in the longer run, to assure that these will stay kept, when the Terran troops finally go home. But what must be done? How? Should we, for example, should we revise the basic structure altogether? Take power from the landed gentry especially, whose militarism may have been the root cause of the rebellion, and establish a parliament based on strict manhood suffrage?” Desai observed her expressions; she was becoming more open to him. “You are shocked? Indignant? Denying to yourself that so drastic a change is permanently possible?”

He leaned forward. “My lady,” he said, “among the horrors with which I live is this knowledge, based on all the history I have studied and all the direct experience I have had. It is terrifyingly easy to swing a defeated and occupied nation in any direction. It has occurred over and over. Sometimes, two victors with different ideologies divided, such a loser among them, for purposes of ‘reform.’ Afterward the loser stayed divided, its halves perhaps more fanatical than either original conqueror.”

Dizziness assailed him. He must breathe deeply before he could go on: “Of course, an occupation may end too soon, or it may not carry out its reconstruction thoroughly enough. Then a version of the former society will revive, though probably a distorted version. Now how soon is too soon, how thoroughly is enough? And to what end?

“My lady, there are those in power who claim Sector Alpha Crucis will never be safe until Aeneas has been utterly transformed: into an imitation Terra, say most. I feel that that is not only wrong—you have something unique here, something basically good—but it is mortally dangerous. In spite of the pretensions of the psychodynamicists, I don’t believe the consequences of radical surgery, on a proud and energetic people, are foreseeable.

“I want to make minimal, not maximal changes. They may amount to nothing more than strengthening trade relations with the heart stars of the Empire, to give you a larger stake in the Pax. Or whatever seems necessary. At present, however, I don’t know. I flounder about in a sea of reports and statistics, and as I go down for the third time, I remember the old old saying, ‘Let me write a nation’s songs, and I care not who may write its laws.’

“Won’t you help me understand your songs?”

Silence fell and lasted, save for a wind whittering outside, until the tadmouse offered a timid arpeggio. That seemed to draw Tatiana from her brown study. She shook herself and said, “What you’re askin’ for is closer acquaintance, Commissioner. Friendship.”

His laugh was nervous. “I’ll settle for an agreement to disagree. Of course, I haven’t time for anywhere near as much frank discussion as I’d like—as I really need. But if, oh, if you young Aeneans would fraternize with the young marines, technicians, spacehands—you’d find them quite decent, you might actually take a little pity on their loneliness, and they do have experiences to relate from worlds you’ve never heard of—”

“I don’t know if it’s possible,” Tatiana said. “Certainly not on my sole recommendation. Not that I’d give any, when your dogs are after my man.”

“I thought that was another thing we might discuss,” Desai said. “Not where he may be or what his plans, no, no. But how to get him out of the trap he’s closed on himself. Nothing would make me happier than to give him a free pardon. Can we figure out a method?”

She cast him an astonished look before saying slowly, “I do believe you mean that.”

“Beyond question I do. I’ll tell you why. We Impies have our agents and informers, after all, not to mention assorted spy devices. We are not totally blind and deaf to events and to the currents beneath them. The fact could not be kept secret from the people that Ivar Frederiksen, the heir to the Firstmanship of Ilion, has led the first open, calculated renewal of insurgency. His confederates who were killed, hurt, imprisoned are being looked on as martyrs. He, at large, is being whispered of as the rightful champion of freedom—the rightful king, if you will—who shall return.” Desai’s smile would have been grim were his plump features capable of it. “You note the absence of public statements by his relatives, aside from nominal expressions of regret at an ‘unfortunate incident.’ We authorities have been careful not to lean on them. Oh, but we have been careful!”

The tenuous atmosphere was like a perpetual muffler on his unaccustomed ears. He could barely hear her: “What might you do … for him?”

“If he, unmistakably of his own free will, should announce he’s changed his mind—not toadying to the Imperium, no, merely admitting that through most of its history Aeneas didn’t fare badly under it and this could be made true again—why, I think he could not only be pardoned, along with his associates, but the occupation government could yield on a number of points.”

Wariness brought Tatiana upright. “If you intend this offer to lure him out of hidin’—”

“No!” Desai said, a touch impatiently. “It’s not the kind of message that can be broadcast. Arrangements would have to be made beforehand in secret, or it would indeed look like a sellout. Anyhow, I repeat that I don’t think you know how to find him, or that he’ll try contacting you in the near future.”

He sighed. “But perhaps—Well, as I told you, what I mainly want to learn, in my clumsy and tentative fashion, is what drives him. What drives all of you? What are the possibilities for compromise? How can Aeneas and the Imperium best struggle out of this mess they have created for each other?”

She regarded him for a second period of quiet, until she asked, “Would you care to have lunch?”

The sandwiches and coffee had been good; and seated in her kitchenette bay, which was vitryl supported on the backs of stone dragons, one had an unparalleled view across quads, halls, towers, battlements, down and on to Nova Roma, the River Flone and its belt of green, the ocherous wilderness beyond.

Desai inhaled fragrance from his cup, in lieu of the cigarette he had not yet ventured to mention. “Then Ivar is paradoxical,” he remarked. “By your account, he is a skeptic on his way to becoming the charismatic lord of a deeply religious people.”

“What?” He’d lost count of how often today he had taken the girl aback. “Oh, no. We’ve never been such. We began as scientific base, remember, and in no age of piety.” She ran fingers through her hair and said after a moment, “Well, true, there always were some believers, especially among Landfolk … m-m, I suppose tendency does go back beyond Snelund administration, maybe several lifetimes … reaction to general decadence of Empire?—but our woes in last several years have certainly accelerated it—more and more, people are turnin’ to churches.” She frowned. “They’re not findin’ what they seek, though. That’s Ivar’s problem. He underwent conversion in early adolescence, he tells me, then later found creed unbelievable in light of science—unless, he says, they dilute it to cluck of soothin’ noises, which is not what he wants.”

“Since I came here for information, I have no business telling you what you are,” Desai said. “Nevertheless, I do have a rather varied background and—Well, how would this interpretation strike you? Aenean society has always had a strong faith. A faith in the value of knowledge, to plant this colony in the first place; a faith in, oh, in the sheer right and duty of survival, to carry it through the particularly severe impact of the Troubles which it suffered; a faith in service, honor, tradition, demonstrated by the fact that what is essentially paternalism continued to be viable in easier times. Now hard times have come back. Some Aeneans, like Ivar, react by making a still greater emotional commitment to the social system. Others look to the supernatural. But however he does it, the average Aenean must serve something which is greater than himself.” Tatiana frowned in thought. “That may be. That maybe. Still, I don’t think ‘supernatural’ is right word, except in highly special sense. ‘Transcendental’ might be better. For instance, I’d call Cosmenosis philosophy rather than religion.” She smiled a trifle. “I ought to know, bein’ Cosmenosist myself.”

“I seem to recall—Isn’t that an increasingly popular movement in the University community?”

“Which is large and ramified, don’t forget. Yes, Commissioner, you’re right. And I don’t believe it’s mere fad.”

“What are the tenets?”

“Nothing exact, really. It doesn’t claim to be revealed truth, simply way of gropin’ toward … insight, oneness. Work with Didonians inspired it, originally. You can guess why, can’t you?”

Desai nodded. Through his mind passed the picture he had seen, and many more: in a red-brown rain forest, beneath an eternally clouded sky, stood a being which was triune. Upon the platformlike shoulders of a large monoceroid quadruped rested a feathered flyer and a furry brachiator with well-developed hands. Their faces ran out in tubes, which connected to the big animal to tap its bloodstream. It ate for all of them.

Yet they were not permanently linked. They belonged to their distinct genera, reproduced their separate kinds and carried out many functions independently.

That included a measure of thinking. But the Didonian was not truly intelligent until its—no, heesh’s—three members were joined. Then not only did veins link; nervous systems did. The three brains together became more than the sum of the three apart.

How much more was not known, perhaps not definable in any language comprehensible to man. The next world sunward from Aeneas remained as wrapped in mystery as in mist. That Didonian societies were technologically primitive proved nothing; human ones were, until a geologically infinitesimal moment ago, and Terra was an easier globe on which to find lawfulness in nature. That communication with Didonians was extraordinarily difficult, limited after seven hundred years to a set of pidgin dialects, proved nothing either, beyond the truism that their minds were alien beyond ready imagining.

What is a mind, when it is the temporary creation of three beings, each with its own individuality and memories, each able to have any number of different partners? What is personality—the soul, even—when these shifting linkages perpetuate those recollections, in a ghostly diminuendo that lasts for generations after the experiencing bodies have died? How many varieties of race and culture and self are possible, throughout the ages of an entire infinite-faceted world? What may we learn from them, or they from us?

Without Dido for lure, probably men would never have possessed Aeneas. It was so far from Terra, so poor and harsh—more habitable for them than its sister, but by no great margin. By the time that humans who lacked such incentive had filled more promising planets, no doubt the Ythrians would have occupied this one. It would have suited them far better than it did Homo sapiens.

How well had it suited the Builders, uncertain megayears in the past, when there were no Didonians and Aeneas had oceans—?

“Excuse me.” Desai realized he had gone off into a reverie. “My mind wandered. Yes, I’ve meditated on the—the Neighbors, don’t you call them?—quite a bit, in what odd moments fall to my lot. They must have influenced your society enormously, not just as an inexhaustible research objective, but by their, well, example.”

“Especially of late, when we think we may be reachin’ true communication in some few cases,” Tatiana replied. Ardor touched her tone. “Think: such way of existence, on hand for us to witness and … and meditate on, you said. Maybe you’re right, we do need trans-humanness in our lives, here on this planet. But maybe, Commissioner, we’re right in feelin’ that need.” She swept her hand in an arc at the sky. “What are we? Sparks, cast up from a burnin’ universe whose creation was meanin’less accident? Or children of God? Or parts, masks of God? Or seed from which God will at last grow?” Quieter: “Most of us Cosmenosists think—yes, Didonians have inspired it, their strange unity, such little as we’ve learned of their beliefs, dedications, poetry, dreams—we think reality is always growin’ toward what is greater than itself, and first duty of those that stand highest is to help raise those lower—”

Her gaze went out the window, to the fragment of what had been … something, ages ago … and, in these latter centuries, had never really been lost in the wall which used it. “Like Builders,” she finished. “Or Elders, as Landfolk call them, or—oh, they’ve many names. Those who came before us.”

Desai stirred. “I don’t want to be irreverent,” he said uncomfortably, “but, well, while apparently a starfaring civilization did exist in the distant past, leaving relics on a number of planets, I can’t quite, um-m, swallow this notion I’ve heard on Aeneas, that it went onto a more exalted plane—rather than simply dying out.”

“What would destroy it?” she challenged. “Don’t you suppose we, puny mankind, are already too widespread for extinction, this side of cosmos itself endin’—or, if we perish on some worlds, we won’t leave tools, carvin’s, synthetics, fossilized bones, traces enough to identify us for millions of years to come? Why not Builders, then?”

“Well,” he argued, “a brief period of expansion, perhaps scientific bases only, no true colonies, evacuated because of adverse developments at home—”

“You’re guessin’,” Tatiana said. “In fact, you’re whistlin’ past graveyard that isn’t there. I think, and I’m far from alone, Builders never needed to do more than they did. They were already beyond material gigantism, by time they reached here. I think they outgrew these last vestiges we see, and left them. And Didonian many-in-one gives us clue to what they became; yes, they may have started that very line of evolution themselves. And on their chosen day they will return, for all our sakes.”

“I have heard talk about these ideas, Prosser Thane, but—”

Her look burned at him. “You assume it’s crankery. Then consider this. Right on Aeneas are completest set of Builder ruins known: in Orcan region, on Mount Cronos. We’ve never investigated them as we should, at first because of other concerns, later because they’d become inhabited. But now … oh, rumors yet, nothin’ but the kind of rumors that’re forever driftin’ in on desert wind … still, they whisper of a forerunner—”

She saw she might have spoken too freely, broke off and snapped self-possession into place. “Please don’t label me fanatic,” she said. “Call it hope, daydream, what you will. I agree we have no proof, let alone divine revelation.” He could not be sure how much or how little malice dwelt in her smile. “Still, Commissioner, what if bein’s five or ten million years ahead of us should decide Terran Empire is in need of reconstruction?”

Desai returned to his office so near the end of the posted working day that he planned to shove everything aside till tomorrow and get home early. It would be the first time in a couple of weeks he had seen his children before they were asleep.

But of course his phone told him he had an emergency call. Being a machine, it refrained from implying he ought to have left a number where he could be reached. The message had come from his chief of Intelligence.

Maybe it isn’t crucial, went his tired thought. Feinstein’s a good man, but he’s never quite learned how to delegate.

He made the connection. The captain responded directly. After ritual salutations and apologies:

“—that Aycharaych of Jean-Baptiste, do you remember him? Well, sir, he’s disappeared, under extremely suspicious circumstances.

“ … No, as you yourself, and His Excellency, decided, we had no reasonable cause to doubt him. He actually arranged to travel with a patrol of ours, for his first look at the countryside.

“ … As nearly as I can make out from bewildered reports, somehow he obtained the password. You know what precautions we’ve instituted since the Hesperian incident? The key guards don’t know the passwords themselves, consciously. Those’re implanted for posthypnotic recognition and quick reforgetting. To prevent accidents, they’re nonsense syllables, or phrases taken from obscure languages used at the far side of the Empire. If Aycharaych could read them in the minds of the men—remembering also his nonhuman brain structure—then he’s more of a telepath, or knows more tricks, than is supposed to be possible.

“Anyhow, sir, with the passwords he commandeered a flyer, talked it past an aerial picket, and is flat-out gone.

“ … Yes, sir, naturally I’ve had the file on him checked, cross-correlated, everything we can do with what we’ve got on this wretched dustball. No hint of motivation. Could be simple piracy, I imagine, but dare we assume that?”

“My friend,” Desai answered, while exhaustion slumped his shoulders, “I cannot conceive of one thing in the universe which we truly dare assume.”