William Forstchen - Into the Sea of Stars

"I thought that was part of the reason you kept my friends and me alive."

"But events, Ian Lacklin, will soon force the end of this nostalgic interlude. I was a professor, but now I am something entirely different."

Ian found it remarkable that he was gripped by an icy feeling of calm. The path was open to him. He could sense it in Smith's words. The reason he had not heard from Smith or, for that matter, the reason they had not yet been eliminated was simply because Smith was not sure of the path to follow. Smith as the Angel of Death was poised, but something behind him held him back. Ian now knew that it rested with him-an overweight, nearsighted, certifiably incompetent history teacher-to talk the man out of slaughtering the entire population of the Earth, or he would die trying.

He thought about that for a moment. He could die as soon as the session was over. To his surprise his bowels didn't turn to water, and his knees didn't quake at the mere thought of it all. His arguments were already form ing, and he started.

"I guess it's obvious that you intend to use the plans for our faster-than-light vessel. You'll build a fleet and in short order return to Earth."

Smith smiled softly and nodded.

"With fire and sword," his deep voice boomed, "as they say."

Ian took a deep breath. "You're a fool!" His voice echoed in the chamber. And for a moment there was a look of shock on the face of Smith.

The sword seemed almost to leap into Smith's hand and arc back in a sweep that would culminate in death. Ian steeled himself for the numbing blow and stilled the terror in his heart. He looked into Smith's eyes and held him with a challenge.

Smith held his gaze, and wild desire was mirrored in his eyes, as if he wrestled with himself. Ian waited, amazed at the sudden intensity of reality and thought that held him. It was as if in a single second he could clearly con sider a dozen different thoughts. He was amazed at the almost ludicrous realization that he was engaged in a diplomacy that the world might never know of. He was amazed, as well, at the cold-blooded logic that had driven him to insult Smith.

And Ian Lacklin felt a secret pride. He had, for one moment, at least, transcended; and as an old word had described, he was no longer a wimp. Ian Lacklin had equaled, at last, his fabled heroes of old.

Smith kept the sword poised, and then with a sudden flourish he drove it into the flooring by his side and re leased it-so that the handle quivered and swayed as if it held a trembling life of its own.

"Explain!" Smith barked. And shaking with sup pressed emotion, he turned away.

"There is no need for me to be pedantic, your education is better than mine. And as is so very rare, you do not let that education hamper you with useless rhetoric. You therefore understand the nature of societal movements. That has been my career. I studied your movements, your age.

"A society must have a tangible goal, a Utopian dream of what it can transcend to. It can be, as in the Middle Ages, a drive to religious oneness and establishment of the kingdom of God. To my own ancestors it was an all- consuming passion to transcend the near-fatal damage of the Holocaust and return us to space. For you it is re venge."

"Yes, revenge!" Smith shouted. "You were not there. I was. I saw the light slip out of Janet's eyes, I saw the bloodied floor of the fighting pits, I carry the blood of the tens of thousands on my soul. And I saw what they did on Earth. They did it! They did it!" His voice rose to a scream of rage.

"They are dead a thousand years," Ian whispered in reply. "Franklin Smith, you are nearly the last of your age; you dream a revenge against those who are dust, their legacies forgotten, their age destroyed in a Holocaust of their own making. Damn it, Smith, they're nothing except your memory."

He fell silent, waiting for the reply, but there was no response. And Smith still kept his back to him. Ian searched for the historical example.

"Your logic is the same as if the blacks of your age were to punish the whites of your South for an experience gone two hundred years, or a Jew of my time to punish what were once Germans for that first Holocaust more than a millennium ago."

"But the memories are still here and alive." Smith turned and pointed to his heart. "Still alive and burning in here."

"You've had revenge enough, Franklin Smith, revenge enough. That traveler of mine, Elijah, he said 'For I alone have lived to tell thee this tale.' You know, you murdered his entire colony. That poor mad fool quoting ancient literature is all that is left of an entire world, and that is your work."

"It was necessary."

"So was what happened to you."

Smith's hand rested again on the sword.

"Go ahead, if that's your answer to what might save you, then go ahead and get it over with. I'm tired of waiting for it."

"Speak then, damn you."

"The world was tottering toward madness. To an insane world the voice of sanity is usually viewed as insane. You're lucky they didn't kill you on the spot. At least you had a chance. You're no better than they are, for you'd have done the same. In fact you have done the same in the name of saving your society.

"Think of it, Smith. The madness that seized the world forced over seven hundred colonies and nearly thirty million people to flee the Earth. It was violent, in many cases nearly hopeless, and millions died. But the bonds had been broken. Right now hundreds of civilizations are spreading slowly across this area of the galaxy. The birth of a child is attended by blood and trauma. So, too, usually with a civilization. That madness, that trauma forced you to flee and, yes, forced the tragedy of your life. But I see here a billion people, bonded together in a new civilization that you have forged out of your own power and desire. That has only happened to a handful of men in history. You are the Adam, Abraham, and Moses of a new civi lization."

"And now the angel of war," Smith replied.

"Death, you mean. And as I said before, you'd be a fool."

"You're just arguing to save your own life and your own world."

"Of course I am. Only a madman desires death. Only a madman desires his world to die. But I see the death of all in this; your world and mine will die."

"How so? I've looked at your records; I know your capabilities. In ten years I could destroy you completely. Even if your people learned of my coming, still I would overwhelm them."

"Yes, even if my people knew. You already outnumber us nearly four to one, and in ten years time it will be six to one. Your technology is generations beyond our own, all except for that one small quirk of fate that caused one of our people to discover the way of circumventing light- speed. That is our only superiority, and you now have that, as well.

"But I tell you this, Franklin Smith. Lead your people for a revenge that only you need have, and it will destroy you and your civilization in the process."

"Give me your argument then, and be done with it. I am growing weary of this talk."

"My opening argument is that a civilization needs a goal. You've set up the goal for your people: the desire for revenge. You've created a perfect machine for that goal: a billion people linked together by common blood, a people trained in what you called Bushido, and a tech nological level that transcends Earth's-as if your twenty- first-century world had found a way to wage war on a rabble of medieval knights.

"But remember that concept about a goal. So you go ahead, you build and then you attack. You use atomics to blast us and sweep life off the face of the Earth. You have triumphed, Franklin Smith. Imagine that triumph."

He looked into Smith's eyes expecting the vision he painted to be one that would excite, but to his surprise there was nothing, as if Smith could already see the path that Ian was pointing to.