Poul Anderson - For Love and Glory

“Most of their awareness in linkage.” A slight shiver passed through Hebo. “The world-mind. Yeah.”

Okuma shook his head. “That is a misnomer. It is—forgive me, sir—a common misconception. My group had learned that much beforehand. Consciousness on Earth—human, parahuman, quantum-net—is not joined in one entity. Relationships are more subtle and changeable than that.”

“I know, I know. Sort of, anyway. I’m just not sure how far the business has, uh, evolved.”

“That is a major part of what we are trying to discover. I suspect increasingly that we’ll get answers we cannot quite comprehend.”

Okuma paused. Surf beyond the reefs murmured, wind whispered, bird-cries began to die away as the sun went low.

“In a sense,” he mused, “we who live among the stars, we whose ancestors moved there and founded what they imagined were new societies, are the relics, the archaic life-forms. We remain in our old human ways because we are suited to them. Longevity, rejuvenation, reinforces this basic conservatism, but our children grow into it likewise. Ours is, after all, a rich, infinitely diverse and exciting environment—from the old human viewpoint. But so, no doubt, is yonder sea to the sharks in it. They have scarcely changed for many millions of years. Yet for the past millennium, they have survived on human sufferance.”

“Hey!” exclaimed Hebo. “You don’t mean we’re in that situation?”

“No, no, not precisely. Earth poses no threat to us. The life on it, including the synthetic and machine life, has passed us by. It has other interests than spreading out into a material universe.”

Hebo relaxed. “Well, maybe that’s how it sees the matter. But look, why hasn’t the same development overtaken—or transfigured, or whatever word you want—any nonhumans?”

“They are too unlike us. You probably know better than I how vastly their psychologies, instincts, drives, capabilities differ from ours, and from each other’s. Please correct me if I’m mistaken, but I think we interact with them, and they with us, only on a rather superficial level. Partnership is possible between human and alien, yes. Sometimes even what the human feels as friendship. But how does the alien feel it? That may be ultimately unknowable, on either side.”

Hebo rubbed his chin. “M-m, yes, in a way I have to agree. Kind of like a—a falcon and a dog. Men used to hunt with them.”

Okuma’s eyes widened. “Indeed? When?”

“Before my time. But I do go far enough back to’ve read about it and seen historical shows.”

“Fascinating,” the scientist breathed. “As, I am sure, is all of your long experience.”

Hebo sighed. “Too long, maybe.”

“I would be glad to hear something about it,” said Okuma eagerly.

Talk went on while clouds crossed the horizon. When Hebo explained why he had come back, Okuma assured him, “I am certain you will be well treated at the clinic, not merely with competence but with consideration, sympathy, and, yes, warmth. Good practice calls for it.”

“Sure, they’ve got excellent interactive programs,” Hebo said cynically.

Okuma shook his head. “True, but I expect that you will deal with living humans, too, if only because you will interest them as you do me. And their feelings for you will be perfectly genuine. A person on Earth today can at any instant attain any chosen emotional state.” After a moment: “I have an idea that this is a major factor in making them foreign to us.”

When at last Hebo said goodnight and returned to his room, he could have had whatever virtual surroundings he wanted; but his wish was only for sleep.

He didn’t drift off at once, though. For a while he lay wondering whether maybe the Forerunners had gone the way of Earth and that was why they were no longer around and what they might have become by now.

Oh, sure, strictly speaking, there was no such thing as simultaneity when you looked at interstellar distances. He’d heard about experiments with sending a hyperbeam signal into the past. But nobody had managed to boost a spacecraft to speeds high enough that the effect amounted to anything you didn’t need ultrasensitive instruments to detect. Energy considerations and friction with the interstellar medium seemed to forbid. Besides, didn’t theory say the effect was necessarily limited? A causal loop… you can’t rewrite what God’s already written.… Leave the philosophy to the physicists. For practical purposes, when he got home he’d have lived just about as many seconds, minutes, days, months as the folks who’d stayed there. Meanwhile, he could call them on a hyperbeam if he had some reason for taking the trouble to arrange it. He might as well think of them as they were at “this moment.”

Forerunners reminded him… how was Lissa Windholm getting along? Quite a girl, that…

Inga never quite slept. After dark the towers and slipways of its centrum flared with light, pulsed with traffic, life that the free city, largest on Asborg, drew unto itself from the whole planet and beyond. The harbor district lay quiet, though, watercraft and machines waiting for sunrise. Walls along the docks lifted sheer, their darknesses blocking off all but sky-glow. Thus eyes found stars above the bay. Past full, the bigger moon was nonetheless rising bright enough to throw a bridge over the waves, which they broke into shivers and sparkles. Their lap-lap against the piers sounded clear through the throbbing westward. Smells of salt, engines, cargoes drifted cool.

Gerward Valen stopped before his apartment building. “Here we are,” he said needlessly. Was it shyness that thickened his accent? Ordinarly he spoke fluent Anglay. The vague illumination showed him tensed within the gray tunic and breeks of a Comet Line officer. “The hour’s gotten later than I expected. If you’d rather postpone the, the conference—”

Lissa considered him. He stood a head taller than her, with the slenderness, sharp features, fair complexion of his Brusan people. As was common these days on Asborg, he went beardless and kept his hair short. Those blond locks had thinned and dulled, furrows ran through brow and cheeks, he must be well overdue for a rejuvenation. She hadn’t ventured to ask why. The eyes, in their deep sockets amidst the crow’s-feet, remained clear. “No,” she said, “I think we had best get to our business,” putting a slight emphasis on the last word, lest he misunderstand.

It had, after all, been a pleasant evening, dinner at the Baltica, liqueurs, animated conversation throughout, that continued while they walked the three kilometers to this place. They discovered a shared passion for Asborg’s wildernesses; he resorted especially to the Hallan Alps, and had had some colorful experiences there. Otherwise he said little about himself, nothing about his past. However, she felt she had come to know him well enough for her purposes. Several personal meetings, after her agents had compiled a report on him, should suffice. They’d better. Time was growing short.

“Very well,” he agreed. “If you please, milady.” The door identified him and retracted. He let her precede him into a drab lobby and onto the up spiral. It carried them to the fourth floor.

Admitted to his lodging, she glanced about, hoping for more clues to his personality, and found disappointment. The living room was small, aseptically clean, sparsely furnished. While she had gathered he was an omnivorous reader, it seemed he owned nothing printed but drew entirely on the public database. Well, maybe he’d picked these quarters because a transparency offered what must be a spectacular daylight view of bay, headlands, and ocean.

“Please be seated,” he urged. “Can I offer you a drink?”