Poul Anderson - The Boat of a Million Years

“You’ll only find strength in yourself, sir,” declared Henry Stanley. “Not in spooks like us.”

“But you aren’t! You’re made out of what was real—”

“If something of what we did and were survives to this day, we should be proud, my friends,” said Nansen. “Come, let us put it back into service. Let us try to find good counsel.”

Willem Barents shivered. “For so strange a voyage, most likely to a lonely death? Commend your soul to God, Hanno. There is nothing else.”

“No, we owe them more than that,” said Nansen. “They are human. As long as men and women fare outward, they will be human.”

Macandal sent her glance slowly from one to the next of the six who sat around the table in the saloon with her. “I suppose you’ve guessed why I’ve asked you to come,” she said at length.

Most of them stayed unstirring. Svoboda grimaced. Wanderer, beside her, laid a hand on her thigh.

Macandal took a bottle and poured into a glass. The claret gurgled dusky rose; its pungency sweetened the air. She passed the bottle on. Glasses had been set out for everyone. “Let’s have a drink first,” she proposed.

Patulcius attempted a jest. “Are you taking a leaf from the early Persians? Remember? When they had an important decision to make, they discussed it once while sober and once while drunk.”

“Not the worst idea ever,” Macandal said. “Better than these modern drugs and neurostims.”

“If only because wine has tradition behind it,” Yukiko murmured. “It means, it is more than its mere self.”

“How much tradition is left in the world?” Aliyat asked bitterly.

“We carry it,” Wanderer said. “We are it.”

The bottle circulated. Macandal raised her goblet. ‘To the voyage,” she toasted.

After a moment: “Yes, drink, all of you. What this meeting is about is restoring something good.”

“If it has not been wholly destroyed,” Tu Shan grated, but he joined the rest in the small, pregnant ceremony.

“Okay,” Macandal said. “Now listen. Each of you knows I’ve been after him or her, arguing, wheedling, scolding, trying to wear down those walls of anger you’ve built around yourselves. Maybe some haven’t noticed it was in fact each of you. Tonight’s when we bring it out hi the open.”

Svoboda spoke stiffly. “What is there to talk about? Reconciliation with Hanno? We have no breach. Nobody has dreamed of mutiny. It’s impossible. A change of course back to Phaeacia is impossible too; we haven’t the antimatter. We’re making the best of things.”

“Honey, you know damn well we are not.” Steel toned beneath Macandal’s mildness. “Cold courtesy and mechanical obedience won’t get us through whatever waits ahead. We need our fellowship back.”

“So you’ve told me, us, over and over.” Wanderer’s voice was raw. “You’re right, of course. But we didn’t break it. He did.”

Macandal regarded him for a quiet spell. “You’re really hurting, aren’t you?”

“He was my best friend,” Wanderer said from behind his mask.

“He still is, Johnnie. It’s you who’ve shut him out.”

“Well, he—“ Speech trailed off.

Yukiko nodded. “He has made approaches to you also, then,” she deduced. “To everyone, I’m sure. Tactful, admitting he could be wrong—”

“He has not groveled,” Tu Shan conceded, “but he has put down his pride.”

“Not insisting we are the ones mistaken,” Svoboda added, as if unwillingly.

“We may be, you know,” Yukiko argued- “The choice had to be made, and only he could make it. At first you wanted this way yourself. Are you certain it was not just your own pride that turned you against him?”

“Why did you change your mind and join us?”

“For your sakes.”

Tu Shan sighed. “Yukiko has worked on me,” he told the others. “And Hanno, well, I have not forgotten what he did for us two in the past.”

“Ah, he has begun to make himself clear to you,” Pa-tulcius observed. “Me too, me too. I still don’t agree with him, but the worst rancor has bled off. Who advised him how to speak with us?”

“He’s had a long time alone for thinking,” Macandal said.

Aliyat shuddered. “Too long. It’s been too long.”

Svoboda’s words fell sharp. “I don’t see how we can ever again be whole-hearted about him. But you are right, Cor-inne, we must rebuild ... as much faith as we can.”

Heads nodded. It was no climax, it was the recognition of something foreseen, so slow and grudging in its growth that the completion of it came as a kind of surprise.

Macandal need merely say, “Grand. Oh, grand. Let’s drink to that, and then relax and talk about old times. Tomorrow I’ll cook a feast, and we’ll throw a party and invite him and get drunk with him—“ her laugh rang—“in the finest Persian style!”

Hours afterward, when she and Patulcius were in her room making ready for bed, he said, “That was superbly handled, my dear. You should have gone into politics.”

“I did, once, sort of, you recall,” she answered with a slight smile.

“Hanno put you up to this, from the beginning, didn’t he?”

“You’re pretty shrewd yourself, Gnaeus.”

“And you coached him in how to behave—carefully, patiently, month after month—with each of us.”

“Well, I made suggestions. And he had help from ... the ship. Advice. He never told me much about that. I think it was an experience too close to his heart.” She paused. “He’s always guarded his heart—too carefully; I guess because of the losses he suffered in all those thousands of years. But he’s no fool either, where it comes to dealing with people.”

Patulcius looked at her a while. She had slipped off her gown and stood dark, supple before him. Her face1 against the wall, which was muraled with lilies, made him remember Egypt. “You’re a great woman,” he said low.

“You’re not a bad guy.”

“Great for ... accepting me,” he slogged on. “I know it pained you when Wanderer went to Svoboda. I think it still pains you.”

“It’s good for them. Maybe not ideal, but good; and we do need stable relationships.” Macandal flung her head back and laughed afresh. “Hey, listen to me, talking like a twentieth-century social worker!” She swung her hips. “C’mon over here, big boy.”

Clouds massed huge, blue-black over the high place. Lightning flared, thunder crashed. The fire before the altar leaped and cast sparks like stars down the wind. The acolytes led the sacrifice to the waiting priest. His knife glimmered. In the grove below, worshippers howled. Afar, the sea ran white and monsters rose from its depths. “No!” Aliyat wailed. “Stop! That’s a child!”

“It is a beast, a lamb,” Wanderer called back against the noise; but he kept his glance elsewhere. “It is both,” Hanno said to them. “Be still.” Knife flashed, limbs threshed, blood spurted and flowed dark over stone. The priest cast the body into the flames.

Flesh sizzled on coals, fell away from bones, went up in fat smoke. Through the storm, terrible in their splendor, came the gods.

Pillar-tall, bull-broad, beard spilling down over the lion skin that clad him, eyes capturing the fire-gleam, Melqart snuffed deep. He licked his lips. “It is done, it is well, it is life,” he boomed.

Wind tossed the hair of Ashtoreth, rain jeweled it, lightning-light sheened on breasts and belly. Her own nostrils drank. She clasped his gigantic organ as if it were a staff and raised her left hand into heaven. “Bring forth the Resurrected!” she cried.

Baal-Adon leaned heavily on Adat, his beloved, his mourner, his avenger. He stumbled, still half blind after the murk of the underworld; he trembled, still half frozen from the grave. She guided him to the smoke of the offering. She took the bowl filled with its blood and gave him to drink. Warmth returned, beauty, wakefulness. He saw, he heard how men and women coupled in the grove and across the land in honor of his arising; and he turned to his consort.