Poul Anderson - The Long Way Home

“You saw Brannoch today.”

Langley raised his brows. The coolness was still on him, but it only made his stiff-necked resentment more controlled. “Is that illegal?” he asked.

“What did he want of you?”

“What do you think? The same as Valti and you and everybody else wants. I told him no, because I haven’t anything to give.”

Chanthavar’s sleek dark head cocked forward. “Haven’t you?” he snapped. “I wonder! I wonder very much. So far my superiors have kept me from opening your mind. They claim that if you don’t know, if you really haven’t figured it out, the procedure will keep you from ever doing so. It’s not a pleasant experience. You won’t be quite the same man afterward.”

“Go ahead,” challenged Langley. “I can’t stop you.”

“If I had time to argue my chiefs down, I would,” said Chanthavar bluntly. “But everything’s happening at once. A munitions plant on Venus was blown up today. I’m on the track of a ring which is trying to stir up the Commons and arm them. It’s—Brannoch’s work, of course. He’s gambling his whole organization, just to keep me too busy to find Saris. Which suggests he has reason to believe Saris can be found.”

“I tell you, I’ve thought about it till I’m blue in the face, and... I... don’t... know.” Langley met the wrathful black eyes with a hard gray stare. “Don’t you think I’m smart enough to save myself a lot of trouble? If I did know, I’d tell somebody or other, I wouldn’t horse around this way.”

“That may be,” said Chanthavar grimly. “Nevertheless, I warn you that if you haven’t offered some logical suggestion within another couple of days, I’ll take it on myself to have you interrogated. The hunt’s going on, but we can’t scour every nook and cranny of a whole world—especially with so many powerful Ministers fussy about having their private estates searched. But Saris will be found if I have to rip the planet apart—and you with it.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Langley. “This is my planet too, you know.”

“All right. I’ll settle for that, but very temporarily. Now, one other thing. My watchers report a female slave was sent you by Brannoch. I want to see her.”

“Look here—”

“Shut up. Fetch her out.”

Marin entered of herself. She bowed to Chanthavar and then stood quietly under the rake of his eyes. There was a long stillness.

“So,” whispered the agent. “I think I see. Langley, what are your reactions to this? Do you want to keep her?”

“I do. If you won’t agree, I’ll guarantee to do my best to see you never find Saris. But I’m not going to swap a whole civilization just for her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No... it isn’t. I’m not afraid of that.” Chanthavar stood with feet wide apart, hands clasped behind his back, scowling at the floor. “I wonder what his idea really is? Some of his own brand of humor? I don’t know. I’ll have her guarded, too.”

He was silent for a while. Langley wondered what was going on inside that round skull. And then he looked up with elfish merriment in his eyes.

“Never mind!” said Chanthavar. “I just thought of a joke. Sit back and do some hard thinking, captain. I’ve got to go now. Good day to you both—enjoy yourselves.” He bowed crisply and went out.

The rain stopped near sunset, but there were still clouds and blackness overlay the city. Langley and Marin ate a lonely supper in their apartment. With the sedative worn off, the man had to focus his mind on impersonalities, he dared not think of her as a fully human being yet. He flung questions at her, and she answered. What he learned tended to confirm Valti’s account of the Society: it really was a nomad culture, patriarchal and polygamous, owning warships but behaving peacefully; its rulers really were unknown, its early history obscure. She gave a less favorable account of Centaurian culture and intentions than Brannoch’s, but, of course, that was only to be expected.

“Two interstellar imperialisms, moving on a collision course,” said Langley. “Thor really does seem better to me than Earth, but- Maybe I’m prejudiced.”

“You can’t help it,” said Marin seriously. “Thorian society has an archaic basis, it’s closer to what you knew in your period than modern Earth. Still, it’s hard to imagine them making much progress, if they should win out. They’ve been frozen too, nothing really new happening, for a good five hundred years now.”

“What price progress?” shrugged Langley. “I’ve gotten pessimistic about change for the sake of change; a petrified civilization may be the only final answer for man, provided it’s reasonably humane. I don’t see much to choose between either of the great powers today.”

Unquestionably, the conversation was being recorded, but he no longer gave a damn.

“It would be nice to find a little mousehole and crawl into it and forget all this fighting,” said Marin wistfully.

“That’s what ninety-nine per cent of the human race has always wanted to do, I think,” said Langley. “The fact that they try to bring on their own punishment for being lazy and cowardly—rulers who flog them into action. There will never be peace and freedom till every individual man out of a majority, at least, is prepared to think for himself and act accordingly; and I’m becoming afraid that day will never come.”

“They say there are thousands of lost colonies,” answered Marin softly, with a dream in her eyes. “Thousands of little groups who went off to find their own particular kind of Utopia. Surely one of them, somewhere, has become something different.”

“Perhaps. But we’re here, not there.” Langley got up. “Let’s turn in. Good night, Marin.”

“Good night,” she said. Her smile was shy, as if she were still unsure how he looked at her.

Alone in his room, Langley donned pajamas, crawled into bed, and got out a cigarette. It was time for him to decide. Chanthavar had given him a couple of days; he couldn’t bluff any longer, because he was reasonably sure he did have the answer about Saris. There’d be no use in undergoing the personality-wrecking degradation of a mental probe.

More and more, it seemed that the only logical action was to tell Chantavar. From the standpoint of personal safety: he was, after all, on Earth; in spite of the nets woven by Brannoch and Valti, the dominating power here was Chanthavar’s. Going to someone else would involve all the risks of contact and escape.

From the standpoint of humanitarianism: Sol was defending the status quo; she was not openly aggressive like Centauri, but would be content to have the upper hand. If it came to war in spite of everything, the Solar System held more people than the Centaurian. It would take Brannoch almost nine years to get a message to his home and get the fleet back here; in nine years, the Saris effect could probably be turned into a standardized weapon. (And, be it noted, a relatively gentle weapon, which did not in itself harm any living creature. )

From the standpoint of history: Sol and Centauri had both reached a dead end, no choice there. The Society was too unknown, too unpredictable. Furthermore, Centauri was under the influence of Thrym, whose nature and ultimate intentions were a mystery. Sol was at least fairly straightforward.

From the standpoint of Saris Hronna, who had been Langley’s friend: well, Saris was just one individual. It was better that he be vivisected, if necessary, than that a billion humans have their skin burned off and their eyes melted in a single flash of nuclear disintegration.

The safe, the obvious, the conforming course was open before Langley. Turn his deductions over to Chanthavar, find a niche for himself on Earth, and settle down to drag out his days. It would get dull after a few years, of course, but it would be safe; he’d be spared the necessity of thinking.