Poul Anderson - New America

What’d you have said, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, if you’d been told that someday some people would travel twenty light-years, cut themselves off from the planet that begot mankind, just to keep alive the words you lived by?

I suspect you’d say, “Don’t copy us. Learn from us—from our mistakes, what we overlooked, as well as what we got right.”

We’re trying, gentlemen.

“The erection of a new government, whatever care or wisdom may distinguish the work, cannot fail to originate questions of intricacy and nicety—”

Bop , it said on the door. He knew that shy knock. “Come in,” he called.

His great-granddaughter entered. “Hi,” she said.

“I figured you’d be playing with the other kids, Alice,” he answered, referring more to those of the staff than to her younger brother.

“I’m tired, too.” The slight form in the crisp white frock snuggled against his trousers. “Story?”

“Calculating minx. Well, c’mon.” He helped the girl scramble to his lap. Her eyes were blue and enormous, her curls and color and odor of sunlight—if memory served, exactly like those of Mary Lochaber when she was young. No surprise, considering that Mary was also an ancestor of Alice….

She gave him a happy sigh. “What kind of story do you want?” he asked.

” ‘Bout you an’ Eva-Granny.”

For an instant he knew Eva was gone, no more than three years gone, and darkness went through him in a flood. It left; he could look at her picture on the desk and think how it was good to give this flesh of her flesh what he could of what she had been and done; for then, after he himself, and later the children they had gotten together, were likewise departed, a glow of her would live on.

And it was no longer pain for him, really, it was a special kind of pleasure to hark back.

“Hm-m-m, let me see,” he murmured. He blew a series of smoke-rings, which made Alice giggle in delight and poke her finger through them as they went by. Images drifted before him, sharper and brighter than anything in this room except the girl and her warmth. Were they truly from so far in the past? That didn’t seem believable. Of course, these days time went like the wind….

“Ah, yes,” he decided. “You recall I told you how we were explorers before we settled down, Eva-Granny and I.”

“Yes. You tol’ me ‘bout when the t-t-t-TERASAURS,” she got out triumphantly, “they went galloop, galloop ‘roun’ an’ roun’ the big rock till you made’m stop.”

“I couldn’t have done that without Eva-Granny’s help earlier, Alice. Okay, shortly afterward she got the idea of taking a boat out to some islands where nobody had ever landed, only flown over, but that looked wonderful from the air.” (The fantastic coraloid formations might give a clue to certain puzzles concerning marine ecology, which in turn were important if fisheries were to develop further. No need to throw these technicalities at the youngster—nor, actually, any truth if he did, as far as her viewpoint went; because Eva and he had really wanted to explore the marvel for its own sake. She was always seeking the new, the untried. When she became a mother and the mistress of a plantation, it had not taken the freshness from her spirit; she originated more ideas, studies, undertakings than he did, and half of his innovations had been sparked by her eagerness.) “In those days there weren’t enough motors and things to go around, no, not nearly enough. All the motorboats were being used other places. We kept a sailboat by the sea. It was the same kind, except bigger, as I have on the lake, and, in case you don’t know, that’s called a sloop.”

“Becoss it goes sloop-sloop-sloop inna water?”

Coffin laughed. “Never thought of that! Anyhow—”

The phone bonged: its “urgent tone. “‘Scuse me, sweetheart,” Coffin said, and leaned over to press the accept button.

The screen filled with the features of Dorcas Hirayama, mayor of Anchor and thus president of the Constitutional Convention. Her calm was tightly held. “Why, hello,” Coffin greeted. “Happy holidays.”

She smiled at the girl on his lap. “Happy holidays, Alice,” she said. To Coffin: “I’m afraid you’d better send her out.”

He didn’t ask the reason, knowing it would prove valid. He simply inquired, “For how long?”

“Shouldn’t take more than five minutes to tell. Then I suppose you’ll want to spend a while thinking.”

“A moment, please.” Coffin lowered Alice to the floor, rose, and clasped her hand. “Do you mind, dear?” He didn’t see any public question as worth ignoring the dignity of a child. “My Lady Hirayama has a secret. Why don’t you take this book—” she crowed in glee as he gave her a photo album from his roving days—”and go look at it in my bedroom? I’ll call you as soon as I’m through.”

When the door between was shut, he returned to the mayor. “Sorry, Dorcas.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Daniel. But this won’t wait… in spite of going back about thirty-five years.”

For several heartbeats he stood moveless. Chills chased along his spine and out to the ends of his nerves. Lightning glared, thunder exploded, rain dashed against the glass.

Thirty-five years. Rustum years. That’s about twenty of Earth’s. The time it takes light to go between Eridani and Sol.

He sat back down, crossed ankle on knee, tamped the coals in his pipe. “It’s happening, then?” he said flatly.

“It has happened. The message was, they planed to launch a colonizing fleet toward us within five years—five of their years. Unless something interfered, and that doesn’t seem likely, those ships are, at this moment, a third, maybe almost half of the way here. We may have as much as fifty years before they arrive, but no more and probably less.”

“How many aboard?”

“It’s a bigger fleet than carried our founders. The message gave an estimate of five thousand adult passengers.”

In the little death of suspended animation, that they entered dreaming of a glorious resurrection on Rustum—

“What do people have to say about this?” Coffin asked.

“The man who read the tape had the sense to come straight to me, thank God. I swore him to silence. You’re the first I’ve talked to.”

“Why me?”

Hirayama smiled again, wryly this time. “False modesty never did become you, Daniel. You know how I respect your judgment, and I’m hardly alone in that. Besides, you’re the convention delegate from the Moondance region, its leader at home and its spokesman in Anchor, and it’s the largest and wealthiest in the lowlands, which makes you the most powerful person off High America and comparable in influence to anybody on it. Furthermore, you know your folk better than a highlander like me, who can’t come down among them without a helmet, ever will. Must I continue spelling it out?”

“No need. I’d blush too hard. Okay, Dorcas, what can I do for you?”

“First, give me your opinion. We can’t sit on the news more than a few days, but meanwhile we can lay plans and rally our forces. Offhand, what do you suppose the lowland reaction will be?”

Coffin shrugged. “Mildly favorable, because of glamour and excitement and the rest. No more than that. We’re so busy overrunning the planet. Nor do five thousand immigrants mean a thing to us, as regards crowding or competition, when we don’t yet total a lot more ourselves.”

“You confirm my guess, then.”

“Besides,” Coffin said, not happily, “very few of the newcomers will be able to live down here anyway.”

“Doubtless true. The devil’s about to break loose on High America, you realize that, don’t you?”