Филип Фармер - The Lovers

The Uzzite behind Hal sighed heavily, and Hal knew that he was not the only man in the room capable of feeling fear.

'One of the hierarchy noticed, while going over his reports, that you had applied for permission to travel to Tahiti. Knowing how high a security rating the island has, he investigated. As a result, we were able to intercept you. And I, after examining your record, concluded that you might be just the one we needed to fill a certain position on the ship.'

By now, Macneff had walked from behind his desk and was pacing back and forth, his hands clasped behind him, his body stooped forward. Hal could see how pale yellow Macneff's skin was, much the same color as the elephant tusk Hal had once seen in the Museum of Extinct Animals. The purple of the cowl over his head brought out the sallowness.

'You will be asked to volunteer,' said Macneff, 'because we want none but the most dedicated men aboard. However, I hope you do join us, because I would feel uneasy about leaving on Earth any civilian who knew the existence and destination of the Gabriel. Not that I doubt your loyalty, but the Israeli spies are very clever, and they might trick you into revealing what you know. Or kidnap you and use drugs to make you talk. They are devoted followers of the Backrunner, those Israeli.'

Hal wondered why the use of drugs by the Israeli was so unrealistic and by the Haijac Union so shib, but he forgot about that when he heard Macneff's next words.

'A hundred years ago, the first interstellar spaceship of the Union left Earth for Alpha Centaurus. About the same time, an Israeli ship left. Both returned in twenty years and reported they had found no habitable planets. A second Haijac expedition came back ten years after that and a second Israeli vessel twelve years after it. None found a star with any planets human beings could colonize.'

'I never knew that,' murmured Hal Yarrow.

'Both governments have kept the secret well from their people, though not from each other,' said Macneff. 'The Israeli, as far as we know, have sent no more interstellar craft out since the second one. The expense and time involved are astronomical. However, we sent a third vessel out, a much smaller and faster one than the first two. We have learned much about interstellar drives since a hundred years ago; that is all I can tell you about them.

'But the third ship came back several years ago and reported–'

'That it had found a planet on which human beings could live and which was already inhabited by sentient beings!' said Hal, forgetting in his enthusiasm that he had not been asked to speak.

Macneff stopped pacing to stare at Hal with his раle blue eyes.

'How did you know?' he said sharply.

'Forgive me, Sandalphon,' said Hal. 'But it was inevitable! Did not the Forerunner predict in his Time and the World Line that such a planet would be found? I believe it was on page five seventy-three!'

Macneff smiled and said, 'I am glad that your scriptural lessons have left such an impression.'

How could they not? Hal thought. Besides, they were not the only impressions. Pornsen, my gapt, whipped me because I had not learned my lessons well enough. He was a good impresser, that Pornsen. Was? Is! As I grew older and was promoted, so was he, always where I was. He was my gapt in the creche. He was the dormitory gapt when I went to college and thought I was getting away from him. He is now my block gapt. He is the one responsible for my getting such low M.R.'s.

Swiftly came the revulsion, the protest. No, not he, for I, and I alone, am responsible for whatever happens to me. If I get a low M.R., I do so because I want it that way, or my dark self does. If I die, I die because I willed it so. So, forgive me, Sigmen, for the contrary-to-reality thoughts!

'Please pardon me again, Sandalphon,' said Hal. 'But I did the expedition find any records of the Forerunner having been on this planet? Perhaps, even, though this is too much to wish, find the Forerunner himself?'

'No,' said Macneff. Though that does not mean that there may not be such records there. The expedition was under orders to make a swift survey of conditions and then to return to Earth. I can't tell you now the distance in light-years or what star this was, though you can see it with the naked eye at night in this hemisphere. If you volunteer, you will be told where you're going after the ship leaves. And it leaves very soon.'

'You need a linguist?' said Hal.

'The ship is huge,' said Macneff, 'But the number of military men and specialists we are taking limits the linguists to one. We have considered several of your professionals because they were lamedhians and above suspicion. Unfortunately . . .'

Hal waited. Macneff paced some more, frowning. Then, he said, 'Unfortunately, only one lamedhian joat exists, and he is too old for this expedition. Therefore–'

'A thousand pardons,' said Hal. 'But I have just thought of one thing. I am married.'

'No problem at all,' said Macneff. 'There will be no women aboard the Gabriel. And, if a man is married, he will automatically be given a divorce.'

Hal gasped, and he said, 'A divorce?'

Macneff raised his hands apologetically and said, 'You are horrified, of course. But, from our reading of The Western Talmud, we Urielites believe that the Forerunner, knowing this situation would arise, made reference to and provision for divorce. It's inevitable in this case, for the couple will be separated for, at the least, eighty objective years. Naturally, he couched the provision in obscure language. In his great and glorious wisdom, he knew that our enemies the Israelites must not be able to read therein what we planned.'

'I volunteer,' said Hal. 'Tell me more, Sandalphon.'

Six months later, Hal Yarrow stood in the observation dome of the Gabriel and watched the ball of Earth dwindle above him. It was night on this hemisphere, but the light blazed from the megalopolises of Australia, Japan, China, Southeast Asia, India, Siberia. Hal, the linguist, saw the glittering disks and necklaces in terms of the languages spoken therein. Australia, the Philippine Islands, Japan, and northern China were inhabited by those members of the Haijac Union that spoke American.

Southern China, all of southeast Asia, southern India, and Ceylon, these states of the Malay Federation spoke Bazaar.

Siberia spoke Icelandic.

Hal's mind turned the globe swiftly for him, and he visualized Africa, which used Swahili south of the Sahara Sea. All around the Mediterranean Sea, Asia Minor, northern India, and Tibet, Hebrew was the native tongue. In southern Europe, between the Israeli Republics and the Icelandic-speaking peoples of northern Europe, was a thin but long stretch of territory called March. This was no man's land, disputed by the Haijac Union and the Israeli Republics, a potential source of war for the last two hundred years. Neither nation would give up their claim on it, yet neither wished to make any move that might lead to a second Apocalyptic War. So, for all practical purposes, it was an independent nation and by now had its own government (unrecognized outside its own borders). Its citizens spoke all of the world's surviving tongues, plus a new one called Lingo, a pidgin whose vocabulary was derived from the other six and whose syntax was so simple it could be contained on half a sheet of paper.

Hal saw in his mind the rest of Earth: Iceland, Greenland, the Caribbean Islands, and the eastern half of South America. Here the peoples spoke the tongue of Iceland because that island had gotten the jump on the Hawaiian-Americans who were busy resettling North America and the western half of South America after the Apocalyptic War.

Then there was North America, where American was the native speech of all except the twenty descendants of French-Canadians living on the Hudson Bay Preserve.