The Long Way Home

4

There was a party in the home of Minister Yulien, high commissioner of metallurgies; the cream of Solar and foreign society would be there, and Chanthavar brought the Explorer crew along.

Langley accompanied the agent down tall, columned passages where the air glowed with a soft light and murals traced shifting patterns on the gleaming walls. Behind him sat half a dozen bodyguards, identical giants. Chanthavar had explained that they were his personal slaves and the result of chromosome duplication in an exogenesis tank.; There was something not quite human about them.

The spaceman was getting over his feeling of awkwardness, though he still couldn’t imagine that he looked like much with hairy skinny legs sticking out from under his tunic. He, Blaustein, and Matsumoto had hardly been out of their palace suite in the day since they were released. They had sat around, saying little, now and then cursing in a whisper full of pain; it was still too new, too devastatingly sudden. They accepted Chanthavar’s invitation without great interest. What business did three ghosts have at a party?

The suite was luxurious enough, furniture that molded itself to your contours and came when you called, a box which washed and brushed and massaged you and finished up by blowing scent on your scrubbed hide, softness and warmth and pastel color everywhere you looked. Langley remembered checked oilcloth on a kitchen table, a can of beer in front of him and the Wyoming night outside and Peggy sitting near.

“Chanthavar,” he asked suddenly, “do you still have horses?” There was a word for it in this Earthspeak they had taught him, so maybe—

“Why... I don’t know.” The agent looked a bit surprised. “Never saw one that I remember, outside of historicals. I believe they have some on... yes, on Thor for amusement, if not on Earth. Lord Brannoch has often bored his guests by talking about horses and dogs.”

Langley sighed.

“If there aren’t any in the Solar System, you could have one synthesized,” suggested Chanthavar. “They can make pretty good animals to order. Care to hunt a dragon some day?”

“Never mind,” said Langley.

“There’ll be a lot of important people here tonight,” said Chanthavar. “If you can entertain one of them enough, your fortune’s made. Stay away from Lady Halin; her husband’s jealous and you’d end up as a mind-blanked slave unless I wanted to make an issue of it. You needn’t act too impressed by what you see... a lot of the younger intellectuals, especially, make rather a game of deriding modern society, and would be happy to have you bear them out. But avoid saying anything which could be construed as dangerous. Otherwise, just go ahead and have a good time.”

They were not walking: they sat on comfortable benches and let the moving floor carry them. Once they went up a gravity shaft, it was a rather eerie experience to ride on nothing. At the end of the trip, which Langley estimated as three miles, they came to a gateway flanked by artificial waterfalls, and got up and went in past armed guards in gilt livery.

The first impression Langley got was of sheer enormousness. The room must be half a mile in diameter, and it was a swirling blaze of flashing color, some thousands of guests perhaps. It seemed roofless, open to a soft night sky full of stars and the moon, but he decided there was ah invisible dome on it. Under its dizzy height, the city was a lovely, glowing spectacle.

There was perfume in the air, just a hint of sweetness, and music came from some hidden source. Langley tried to listen, but there were too many voices. Nor did the music make sense, the very scale was different. He murmured sotto voce to Blaustein: “Always did think there wasn’t much written after Beethoven, and seems like I was right into the indefinite future, world without end.”

“Amen,” said the physicist. His thin, long-nosed face was bleak.

Chanthavar was introducing them to their host, who was unbelievably fat and purple but not without a certain strength in the small black eyes. Langley recalled the proper formulas by which a client of one Minister addressed and genuflected to another.

“Man from past, eh?” Yulien cleared his throat. “Int’restin’. Most int’restin’. Have to have long talk with you sometime. Hrumph! How d’y’ like it here?”

“It is most impressive, my lord,” said Matsumoto, poker-faced.

“Hm-m-m. Ha. Yes. Progress. Change.”

“The more things change, my lord,” ventured Langley, “the more they remain the same.”

“Hmph. Haw! Yes.” Yulien turned to greet someone else.

“Well put, fellow. Well put indeed.” There was a laugh in the voice. Langley bowed to a thin young man with mottled cheeks. “Here, have a drink.” A table went by, and he lifted two crystal goblets off it and handed one over. “I’ve been wanting to meet you, ever since the word got around. I’m at the university here, doing an historical study. The common element in all the thinkers who’ve tried to correlate the arts with the general state of society.”

Chanthavar raised one eyebrow. His own severely simple dress was conspicuous against the jewels and embroideries which flickered around him. “And have you reached any conclusions, my friend?” he asked.;

“Certainly, sir. I’ve found twenty-seven books which agree that the virile, unconscious stage of culture produces the corresponding type of art, simple and powerful. Over-ornamentation, such as ours, reflects a decadent state where mind has overcome the world-soul.”

“Ah, so. Have you ever seen the work done in the early stages of settlement on Thor, when they were fighting nature and each other all the time and known as the roughest two-fisted tribe in the universe? The basic pattern is the most intricate looping of vines you ever saw. On the other hand, in the last days of the Martian hegemony they went in for a boxlike simplicity. Have you read Sardu’s commentaries? Shimarrin’s? Or the nine spools of the Tthnic Study?”

“Well... well, sir, I’ve got them on my list, but even with the robots to help there’s so much to read and—”

Chanthavar, obviously enjoying himself, went on to cite contrary and mutually contradictory examples from the past three thousand years of history. Langley took the chance to fade out of the picture.

A rather good-looking woman with somewhat protuberant eyes grasped his arm and told him how exciting it was to see a man from the past and she was sure it had been such an interesting epoch back when they were so virile, Langley felt relieved when a sharp-faced oldster called her to him and she left in a pout. Clearly, women had a subservient position in the Technate, though Chanthavar had mentioned something about occasional great female leaders.

He slouched moodily toward a buffet, where he helped himself to some very tasty dishes and more wine. How long would the farce go on, anyway? He’d rather have been off somewhere by himself.

It was summer outside. Always summer on Earth now, the planet had entered an interglacial period with the help of man, more carbon dioxide in the air. With Peggy, this could have been a high and proud adventure; but Peggy was dead and forgotten. He wanted to go outside and walk on the earth to which she had returned, long and long ago.

A flabby person who had had a bit too much to drink threw an arm around his neck and bade him welcome and started asking him about the bedroom techniques of his period. It would have been a considerable relief to- Langley unclenched his fists.

“Want some girls? Min’ster Yulien most hospitable, come right this way, have li’l fun ’fore the Centaurians blow us all to dust.”

“That’s right,” jeered a younger man. “That’s why we’re going to have the hide beaten off us. People like you. Could they fight in your time, Captain Langley?”

“Tolerably well, when we had to,” said the American.

“That’s what I thought. Survivor types. You conquered the stars because you weren’t afraid to kick the next man. We are. We’ve gotten soft, here in the Solar System. Haven’t fought a major war in a thousand years, and now that one’s shaping up we don’t know how.”

“Are you in the army?” asked Langley.

“I?” The young fellow looked surprised. “The Solar military forces are slaves. Bred and trained for the job, publicly owned. The higher officers are Ministers, but—”

“Well, would you advocate drafting your own class into service?”

“Wouldn’t do any good. They aren’t fit. Not in a class with the slave specialists. The Centaurians, though, they call up their free-born, and they like fighting. If we could learn that too—”

“Son,” asked Langley recklessly, “have you ever seen men with their heads blown open, guts coming out, ribs sticking through the skin? Ever faced a man who intended to kill you?”

“No... no, of course not. But—”

Langley shrugged. He’d met this type before, back home. He mumbled an excuse and got away. Blaustein joined him, and they fell into English. “Where’s Bob?” asked Langley.

Blaustein gave a crooked grin.

“Last I saw, he was heading off-stage with one of the female entertainers. Nice-looking little piece, too. Maybe he’s got the right idea.”

“For him,” said Langley.

“I can’t. Not now, anyway.” Blaustein looked sick. “You know, I thought maybe, even if everything we knew is gone, the human race would finally have learned some sense. I was a pacifist, you know—intellectual pacifist, simply because I could see what a bloody, brainless farce it was, how nobody gained anything except a few smart boys—” Blaustein was a little drunk, too. “And the solution is so easy! It stares you right in the face. A universal government with teeth. That’s all. No more war. No more men getting shot and resources plundered and little children burned alive. I thought maybe in five thousand years even this dim-witted race of ours would get that lesson hammered home. Remember, they’ve never had a war at all on Holat. Are we that much stupider?”

“I should think an interstellar war would be kind of hard to fight,” said Langley. “Years of travel just to get there.”

“Uh-huh. Also, little economic incentive. If a planet can be colonized at all, it’s going to be self-sufficient. Those two reasons are why there hasn’t been a real war for a thousand years, since the colonies broke loose.”

Blaustein leaned closer, weaving a trifle on his feet. “But there’s one shaping up now. We may very well see it. Rich mineral resources on the planets of Sirius, and the government there weak, and Sol and Centauri strong. Both of them want those planets. Neither can let the other have them, it’d be too advantageous. I was just talking to an officer, who put it in very nearly those words, besides adding something about the Centaurians being filthy barbarians.”

“So I’d still like to know how you fight across four-plus light-years,” said Langley.

“You send a king-size fleet, complete with freighters full of supplies. You meet the enemy fleet and whip it in space. Then you bombard the enemy planets from the sky. Did you know they can disintegrate any kind of matter completely now? Nine times ten to the twentieth ergs per gram. And there are things like synthetic virus and radioactive dust. You smash civilization on those planets, land, and do what you please. Simple. The only thing to be sure of is that the enemy fleet doesn’t beat you, because then your own home is lying wide open. Sol and Centauri have been intriguing, sparring, for decades now. As soon as one of them gets a clear advantage—wham! Fireworks.” Blaustein gulped his wine and reached for more.

“Of course,” he said owlishly, “there’s always the chance that even if you beat the enemy, enough of his ships will escape to go to your home system and knock out the planetary defenses and bombard. Then you have two systems gone back to the caves. But when has that prospect ever stopped a politician? Or psychotechnical administrator, as I believe they call ’em now. Lemme alone. I want to get blotto.”

Chanthavar found Langley a few minutes later and took him by the arm. “Come,” he said. “His Fidelity, the chief of the Technon Servants, wants to meet you. His Fidelity is a very important man... Excellent Sulon, may I present Captain Edward Langley?”

He was a tall and thin old man in a plain blue robe and cowl. His lined face was intelligent, but there was something humorless and fanatical about his mouth. “This is interesting,” he said harshly. “I understand that you wandered far in space, captain.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Your documents have already been presented to the Technon. Every scrap of information, however seemingly remote, is valuable: for only through sure knowledge of all the facts can the machine make sound decisions. You would be surprised how many agents there are whose only job is the constant gathering of data. The state thanks you for your service.”

“It is nothing, my lord,” said Langley with due deference.

“It may be much,” said the priest. “The Technon is the foundation of Solar civilization; without it, we are lost. Its very location is unknown to all save the highest ranks of my order, its servants. For this we are born and raised, for this we renounce all family ties and worldly pleasures. We are so conditioned that if an attempt is made to get our secrets from us, and there is no obvious escape, we die—automatically. I tell you this to give you some idea of what the Technon means.”

Langley couldn’t think of any response. Sulon was proof that Sol hadn’t lost all vitality, but there was an inhumanness over him.

“I am told that an extraterrestrial being of unknown race was with your crew, and has escaped,” went on the old man. “I must take a very grave view of this. He is a completely unpredictable factor—your own journal gives little information.”

“I’m sure he’s harmless, my lord,” said Langley.

“That remains to be seen. The Technon itself orders that he be found or destroyed immediately. Have you, as an acquaintance of his, any idea of how to go about this?”

There it was again. Langley felt cold. The problem of Saris Hronna had all the VIPs—the VGDIPs—scared sweat-less; and a frightened man can be a vicious creature.

“Standard search patterns haven’t worked,” said Chanthavar. “I’ll tell you this much, though it’s secret: he killed three of my men and got away in their flier. Where has he gone?”

“I’ll... have to think,” stammered Langley. “This is most unfortunate, my lord. Believe me, I’ll give it all my attention, but—you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

Chanthavar smiled; the cliche, dead and now resurrected, amused him, and Langley thought what a reputation he could get for himself by merely cribbing from Shaw, Wilde, Leacock- Sulon said stiffly: “This horse had better drink, sir, and soon,” and dismissed them with a nod. Chanthavar saw an acquaintance and plunged into a hot argument on the proper way to mix some kind of drink called a recycler.

Langley was pulled away by a plump, hairy hand. It belonged to a large pot-bellied man in foreign-looking dress: gray robe and slippers, loops of diamond and rubies. The head was massive, with an elephantine nose, disorderly flame-red hair and the first beard Langley had seen in this age, surprisingly keen light eyes. The rather high voice was accented, an intonation not of Earth: “Greeting, sir. I have been most anxious to meet you. Goltam Valti is the name.”

“Your servant, my lord,” said Langley.

“No, no. I’ve no title. Poor old greasy lickspittle Goltam Valti is not to the colors born. I’m of the Commercial Society, and we don’t have nobles. Can’t afford ’em. Hard enough to make an honest living these days, with buyers and sellers alike grudging you enough profit to eat on, and one’s dear old homestead generations away. Well, about a decade in my case, I’m from Ammon in the Tau Ceti system originally. A sweet planet, that, with golden beer and a lovely girl to serve it to you, ah, yes!”

Langley felt a stirring of interest. He’d heard something about the Society, but not enough. Valti led him to a divan and they sat down and whistled at a passing table for refreshments.

“I’m chief factor at Sol,” continued Valti. “You must come see our building sometime. Souvenirs of a hundred planets there, I’m sure it’ll interest you. But five thousand years’ worth of wandering, that is too much even for a trader. You must have seen a great deal, captain, a great deal. Ah, were I young again—”

Langley threw subtlety aside and asked a few straightforward questions. Getting information out of Valti took patience, you had to listen to a paragraph of self-pity to get a sentence worth hearing, but something emerged. The Society had existed for a thousand years or more, recruited from all planets, even non-human races: it carried on most of the interstellar trade there was, goods which were often from worlds unknown to this little section of the galaxy. Luxuries chiefly, exotic things, but there were also important industrial materials involved, an item which was growing as the civilized planets used up their own resources. For Society personnel, the great spaceships were home, men and women and children living their lives on them. They had their own laws, customs, language, they owed allegiance to no one else. “A civilization in its own right, Captain Langley, a horizontal civilization cutting across the proudly vertical ones rooted on the planets, and in its poor way outliving them all.”

“Haven’t you a capital—a government—”

“Details, my friend, details we can discuss later. Do come see me, I am a lonely old man. Perhaps I can offer you some small entertainment. Did you by any chance stop in the Tau Ceti system? No? That’s a shame, it would have interested you, the double ring system of Osiris and the natives of Horus and the beautiful, beautiful valleys of Ammon, yes, yes.” The names originally given to the planets had changed, also within the Solar System, but not so much that Langley could not recognize what mythical figures the discoverers had had in mind. Valti went on to reminisce about worlds he had seen in the lost lamented days of his youth, and Langley found it an enjoyable conversation.

“Ho, there!”

Valti jumped up and bowed wheezily. “My lord! You honor me beyond my worth. It has been overly long since I saw you.”

“All of two weeks,” grinned the blond giant in the screaming crimson jacket and blue trousers. He had a wine goblet in one brawny hand, the other held the ankles of a tiny, exquisite dancing girl who perched on his shoulder and squealed with laughter. “And then you diddled me out of a thousand solars, you and your loaded dice.”

“Most excellent lord, fortune must now and then smile even on my ugly face; the probability-distribution curve demands it.” Valti made washing motions with his hands. “Perhaps my lord would care for revenge some evening next week?”

“Could be. Whoops!” The giant slid the girl to earth and dismissed her with a playful thwack. “Run along, Thura, Kolin, whatever your name is. I’ll see you later.” His eyes were very bright and blue on Langley. “Is this the dawn man I’ve been hearing about?”

“Yes—my lord, may I present Captain Edward Langley? Lord Brannoch dhu Crombar, the Centaurian ambassador.”

So this was one of the hated and feared men from Thor. He and Valti were the first recognizably Caucasoid types the American had seen in this age: presumably their ancestors had left Earth before the races had melted into an almost uniform stock here, and possibly environmental factors had had something to do with fixing their distinctive features.

Brannoch grinned jovially, sat down, and told an uproariously improper story. Langley countered with the tale of the cowboy who got three wishes, and Brannoch’s guffaw made glasses tremble.

“So you still used horses?” he asked afterward.

“Yes, my lord. I was raised in horse country—we used them in conjunction with trucks. I was... going to raise them myself.”

Brannoch seemed to note the pain in the spaceman’s voice, and with a surprising tact went on to describe his stable at home. “I think you’d like Thor, captain,” he finished. “We still have elbow room. How they can breathe with twenty billion hunks of fat meat in the Solar System, I’ll never know. Why not come see us sometime?”

“I’d like to, my lord,” said Langley, and maybe he wasn’t being entirely a liar.

Brannoch sprawled back, letting his interminable legs stretch across the polished floor. “I’ve kicked around a bit, too,” he said. “Had to get out of the system a while back, when my family got the short end of a feud. Spent a hundred years external time knocking around, till I got a chance to make a comeback. Planetography’s a sort of hobby with me, which is the only reason I come to your parties, Valti, you kettle-bellied old fraud. Tell me, Captain, did you ever touch at Procyon?”

For half an hour the conversation spanned stars and planets. Something of the weight within Langley lifted. The vision of many-faced strangeness spinning through an endless outer dark was one to catch at his heart.

“By the way,” said Brannoch, “I’ve been hearing some rumors about an alien you had along, who broke loose. What’s the truth on that?”

“Ah, yes,” murmured Valti in his tangled beard. “I, too, have been intrigued, yes, a most interesting sort he seems to be. Why should he take such a desperate action?”

Langley stiffened. What had Chanthavar said—wasn’t the whole affair supposed to be confidential?

Brannoch would have his spies, of course; and seemingly Valti did, too. The American had a chilling sense of immense contending powers, a machine running wild and he caught in the whirling gears.

“I’d rather like to add him to the collection,” said Brannoch idly. “That is, not to harm him, just to meet the creature. If he really is a true telepath, he’s almost unique.”

“The Society would also have an interest in this matter,” said Valti diffidently. “The planet may have something to trade worth even such a long trip.”

After a moment, he added dreamily: “I think the payment for such information would be quite generous, captain. The Society has its little quirks, and the desire to meet a new race is one. Yes... there would be money in it.”

“Could be I’d venture a little fling myself,” said Brannoch. “Couple million solars—and my protection. These are troubled times, captain. A powerful patron isn’t to be sniffed at.”

“The Society,” remarked Valti, “has extraterritorial rights. It can grant sanctuary, as well as removal from Earth, which is becoming an unsalubrious place. And, of course, monetary rewards—three million solars, as an investment in new knowledge?”

“This is hardly the place to talk business,” said Brannoch. “But as I said, I think you might like Thor—or we could set you up anywhere else you chose. Three and a half million.”

Valti groaned. “My lord, do you wish to impoverish me? I have a family to support.”

“Yeah. One on each planet,” chuckled Brannoch.

Langley sat very still. He thought he knew why they all wanted Saris Hronna—but what to do about it?

Chanthavar’s short supple form emerged from the crowd. “Oh, there you are,” he said. He bowed casually to Brannoch and Valti. “Your servant, my lord and good sir.”

“Thanks, Channy,” said Brannoch. “Sit down, why don’t you?”

“No. Another person would like to meet the captain. Excuse us.”

When they were safely into the mob, Chanthavar drew Langley aside. “Were those men after you to deliver this alien up to them?” he asked. There was something ugly on his face.

“Yes,” said Langley wearily.

“I thought so. The Solar government’s riddled with their agents. Well, don’t do it.”

A tired, harried anger bristled in Langley. “Look here, son,” he said, straightening till Chanthavar’s eyes were well below his, “I don’t see as how I owe any faction today anything. Why don’t you quit treating me like a child?”

“I’m not going to hold you incommunicado, though I could,” said Chanthavar mildly. “Isn’t worth the trouble, because we’ll probably have that beast before long. I’m just warning you, though, that if he should fall into any hands but mine, it’ll go hard with you.”

“Why not lock me up and be done with it?”

“It wouldn’t make you think, as I’ll want you to think in case my own search fails. And it’s too crude.” Chanthavar paused, then said with a curious intensity: “Do you know why I play out this game of politics and war? Do you think maybe I want power for myself? That’s for fools who want to command other fools. It’s fun to play, though—life gets so thundering tedious otherwise. What else can I do that I haven’t done a hundred times already? But it’s fun to match wits with Brannoch and that slobbering red-beard. Win, lose, or draw, it’s amusing; but I intend to win.”

“Ever thought of—compromising?”

“Don’t let Brannoch bluff you. He’s one of the coldest and cleverest brains in the galaxy. Fairly decent sort—I’ll be sorry when I finally have to kill him—but—Never mind!” Chanthavar turned away. “Come on, let’s get down to the serious business of getting drunk.”