Poul Anderson - The Boat of a Million Years

Other exceptions are cosmic, astrophysical—extraordinary stars, clouds where stars are coming to birth, recent supernovae, black holes in peculiar circumstances, the monstrosities at the core of the galaxy, and comparable rarities. You will dispatch your observers that far (thirty thousand light-years from Sol to galactic center) and wait.

All of the few starfaring civilizations will do likewise. Therefore all that have reached these goals will beamcast from them, in hopes of making contact. They will wait.

All have become entities that can wait.

Here is the second half of the solution to the riddle.

It is not sentient organic life that the robots seek to summon. It is other robots.

Machines do not conquer their mother worlds. They gently, gradually absorb their creators into their systems, at the wish of those beings, whose overmatching physical and intellectual superiors they have become. Then in the course of time, more and more they direct their attention from mere life, toward problems and undertakings they find wormy of themselves.

When the original thinking animals five on, as happens occasionally, it is because they too have turned their concerns elsewhere, inward, searching for joys and fulfillments or possibly imaginary enlightenments toward which no machine can aid them, realms quite outside the universe of the stars.

“No,” said Svoboda, “we do wrong if we feel hostile. Postbiotic evolution is nevertheless evolution, reality finding newness in itself.” She colored and laughed. “Oh, but thai sounds pretentious! I only meant that the advanced, independent robots are no threat to us. We’ll continue keeping robots of our own, we have to, but for purposes of our own. Well do what the postbiotics not only don’t care to do any more, they never really could. That’s to deal with life of our kind, the old kind, not by peering and listening, centuries between question and answer, but by being there ourselves, sharing, yes, loving. And so we’ll come to understand what we can’t now imagine.”

“Those of you who choose to be seekers.” Patulcius’ remark fell doubly dry after her torrenting enthusiasm. “Like Tu Shan, I shall cultivate my garden. I daresay most of our descendants will so prefer.”

“No doubt,” Hanno said. “That’s fine. They’ll be our reserve. Peregrine’s right; some will always want more than

“The Phaeacians won’t settle down into rustic innocence” Macandal predicted. “They can’t. If they aren’t to the way of Earth—and that would make their whole meaningless, wouldn’t it?—they’ll have to find some path for themselves. They’ll have to evolve too.”

“And those of us in space will, along our own lines,” Wanderer added. “Not in body, in genes; I aim to be around for a mighty long spell. In our minds, our spirits.”

Yukiko smiled. “The stars and their worlds for our teachers.” Earnestly: “But let us remember what a hard school that will be. Today we count for nothing. Every crew of starfarers the Alloi have any knowledge of—and they are less than a dozen—are like us, leftovers, malcontents, atavisms, outcasts.”

“I know. I don’t admit we count for nothing, though. We are.”

“Yes. And if we are wise, if we can humble ourselves enough to hear what the lowliest of living beings have to tell us, at last we will meet the postbiotics as equals. In a million years? I don’t know. But when we are ready, it will be as you said, we will have become something other than what we are now.”

Hanno nodded. “I wonder if, at the end, we and our allies won’t be more than the equals of the machines.”

His comrades regarded him, a little puzzled. “I’ve been playing with an, idea,” he explained. “It seems to have worked this way on Earth, and what we’ve seen here and heard from the Alloi suggests it may be a general principle. Most steps in evolution haven’t been triumphal advances. No, the failures of the earlier stages made them, the desperate ones—in Yukiko’s words, the atavisms and outcasts.

“Why should a fish doing well in the water struggle onto the land? It was those that couldn’t compete that did it, because they had to go somewhere else or die. And the ancestors of title reptiles were forced out of the amphibians’ swamps, the birds forced into the air, and mammals forced to find niches where the dinosaurs weren’t, and certain apes forced out of the trees, and—and we Phoenicians held only a thin strip of territory, so we took to the sea, and hardly anybody went to America or Australia who was comfortable at home in Europe—

“Well, we’ll see. We’ll see. A million years, you guessed, Yukiko.” He laughed. “Shall we make a date? One million years from this day, we’ll all meet again and remember.”

“First we must survive,” said Patulcius.

“Surviving is what we’re good at,” replied Wanderer.

Macandal sighed. “So far. Let’s not wax overconfident. No guarantees. Never were, never will be. A million years are a lot of days and nights to get through. Can we?”

“We shall try,” said Tu Shan.

“Together,” vowed Svoboda.

“Then we’d better learn,” said Aliyat, “better than before, how to share.”

The ships departed, Pytheas and friend. For a while, some months, until speeds grew too high, word went between them, imagery, love; rites celebrated the mysteries of community and communion; for everywhere around them thronged suns.

“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him?”

Hanno and Svoboda stood in the darkened command center, looking out. Through clasped hands they felt each other’s nearness and warmth. “Is this why we were born?” she whispered.

“We’ll make it be,” he promised.

EXCEPT FOR the first, all dates are Anno Domini. Each is the year in which its chapter begins. Occasionally the narrative thereafter moves forward or backward in time.

I. Thule: 310 B.C.

II. The Peaches of Forever: 19

III. The Comrade: 359

IV. Death in Palmyra: 641

V. No Man Shuns His Doom: 998

VI. Encounter: 1050

VII. The Same Kind: 1072

VIII. Lady in Waiting: 1221

IX. Ghosts: 1239

X. In the Hills: 1570

XI. The Kitten and the Cardinal: 1640

XII. The Last Medicine: 1710

XIII. Follow the Drinking Gourd: 1855

XIV. Men of Peace: 1872

XV. Coming Together: 1931

XVI. Niche: 1938

XVII. Steel: 1942

XVIII. Judgment Day: 1975

XIX. Thule: ?

Chinese names are transcribed according to the Wade-Giles system. This probably remains somewhat more familiar to Anglophone readers than Pinyin or Yale, and is no more inaccurate a rendition of ancient or regional pronunciations.

Armorica: Brittany.

Berytus: Beirut.

Bravellir: Probably near modern Norrkoping, Sweden.

Britannia: England and Wales.

Burdigala: Bordeaux.

Ch’ang-an: Near modern Sian (Pinyin “Xian”).

Constantinople: Istanbul.

Damasek: Damascus.

Dumnonia: Cornwall and Devon.

Duranius: The River Dordogne.

Emesa: Horns.

Falemia: An area in the region of Naples, anciently noted for its wines.

Gadeira: Cadiz (Lathi “Gades,” Semitic “Agadir”).

Gallia: Gaul, France with parts of Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland.

Gardhariki: Western Russia.

Garumna: The River Garonne.

Gauiland: Southern Sweden, apparently between Scania and Lake Vanern.