Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

“Until fifteen bornings ago, the Waxing Star represented above had no measurable proper motion. Then, shortly after the last Science Fair, I succeeded in measuring its motion. The drift is small: less than a minute of arc during all the time I have observed it, but more than large enough for me to predict the future position of the Star.”

The murmuring around us was louder, more anxious. Thorc Graun clenched and unclenched his hands, all the while glaring at Dragnor.

The scientist continued, “I’ll reserve the details of my calculations for a technical lecture. At this time, I will content myself with showing you our sky as it will appear only a few generations from now.”

The Science Fair technician must have turned that arc light up to full. I shut my eyes but the glare seemed to go right through the eyelids. Every inch of exposed skin felt as though it were being flayed. Old Dragnor’s calm voice went on. “The Waxing Star’s closest approach to Ge will occur just eight generations from now. At that time, the Star will be many times brighter than the representation hung above us here. For two hundred fifty-six tides it will glow so brightly and then slowly fade, as it passes on by us.”

The arc lamp was turned down, till it was merely a very bright light. I opened my eyes and looked around. Lenska Dragnor sagged against my side, her face hidden behind her hands. The audience seemed wilted, almost hypnotized.

At the far end of our row, Thorc Graun looked as though he were gathering himself up to pounce onto the stage.

“My lords, do you know what this close passage will do to our world? I do not. Our ignorance is immense. Our instruments are crude. Within the range of error of my estimates, the Waxing Star might burn away our oceans. Failing that, it could easily melt the glaciers and drown us all.

“Our only hope for certain survival is the development of a science and a technology to meet the challenge. To achieve this, we must abolish all proprietary rights to inventions and discoveries. This Science Fair must be declared permanent!”

The crowd’s dazed silence lasted only a moment. Then there was pandemonium. Half the noblemen and corporate chairmen in the pavilion were on their hooves, shouting. It was hard to blame them. They sank much of their resources into research, and now someone was suggesting that they give away the fruits of those endeavors. For that matter, where did Dragnor’s suggestion put me? If all research were public knowledge, what use would there be for an industrial spy?

I had to pull Lenska back down onto her pallet as Thorc Graun bvo-Graun scrambled onstage and pushed Dragnor to one side. If the old man were not safe with his secret told, he would never be. The prince of Graun raced back and forth along the edge of the platform, shouting at the top of his lungs. I couldn’t hear a word.

Behind us the city folk and the scientists pushed and jostled one another as various factions tried to approach the stage. For them, Dragnor’s revelation far outshone the question of extending the Fair, and their shouted questions and speculations drowned out everything else.

Still, I doubt if a single one of them guessed that the Waxing Star was not nearly so important as what was near it.

When the Altengaden lifted, there was a prompt investigation. Magniac was brought before the Count, who said, “Your wives despise you and your children hate you. We have lived for half a century on Neuland and you remain an apostle for lost Earth. You are a renegade, you preach sedition, and you are now responsible for the deaths of six young men and six young women.”

“They will return.”

“If they do return, they will not find you in Castle Gyepu or the City Gyepu. As an anachronism in our society—”

“You and I were young together at the court of the Emperor—” Magniac began, and stopped, sullenly ashamed of himself.

“And so I am foolishly clement. Magniac, you are banished. You may have a wain of goods, oxen and domestic animals. Do not return. You have made your life a matter of indifference to me.”

The architect of the exodus from Earth left Gyepu with dogs barking and children dancing, his ponderous wagon loaded with previously discarded books and clothing and laboratory equipment. All of his proper tools were aboard the Altengaden. He followed the river north and turned west to the low hills. He built a shelter in a small valley. He transplanted seedlings to establish a coppice of pines. He worked a ledge of native sandstone and built a tower. He planted vines and made wine. As carbon becomes diamond with heat and pressure and time, Magniac’s loathing of this new world crystallized to an adamant hatred that enabled him to endure his solitary life for five lonely years.

He had seduced twelve young men and women to his purposes, removed the machinery from Castle Gyepu by guile and bribery, and built a second spaceship. He had spent his last resources of influence and credit to equip the Altengaden, but he had not expected to remain behind to answer for his actions. The young people had responded to his exhortations, believed his promises of bountiful Earth, submitted to his tyranny during the construction, and left without him. He could only ascribe the nonreturn of the spaceship to the perfidy of the crew. Seduced once, they would be seducible again. The thought of the twelve, disporting themselves among the teeming millions of old Earth, made Magniac grind his white teeth in rage.

He was standing on the roof of his tower the day the Altengaden returned. The mote in the sky distracted him from the thousandth weary consideration of a third spaceship. The englobement machinery, the great Orffyreus wheels and the entrainment tubes, these were possible. The Steyr steam engines could be replaced with great labor but the harmonic amplifiers could not, even with the resources of this world at his disposal. There must be electricity for the carbon arc lights that kept the forage alive in the deep void, but to achieve space at all, the harmonics were fundamental. He turned his white impassive face from Gyepu and took comfort in the dark solace of the little pines.

He turned again and there was the Altengaden , dropping through the heavens. At a distance of six kilometers he saw it whole, half earth and half sky, a perfectly spherical spaceship with the hunting lodge in the center. It sank below the hills and into the lake its departure had left. A sheet of water rose and spread over the valley floor, draining to the river, gullying the river road. Horsemen from Castle Gyepu picked their way toward it through the mud.

The only outward sign of Magniac’s burning impatience during the next two days was the habit he fell into of buttoning up the tails of his coat. He missed the familiar swish of cloth against the backs of his knees and unbuttoned them. He cleaned and loaded the Parabellum Luger with the special cartridges whose bullets he had cast himself. He carried the awkward pistol under his shirt in a special holster. He buttoned his coattails and unbuttoned them again.

The committee was a group of his peers who had left old Earth with him. They rode three horses and led a fourth. “It is the Count’s wish you inspect the machinery,” said de Juilly in French.

Weissech said in Polish, “The ban is not lifted, Magniac.”

“Flumdiddle,” grumbled Welby. “Come now, don’t lollygag about as if our time’s not worth a scrope. We may be metagrobilized, but bring you out of Coventry to carry a lanthorn? Rum show, a rummy show altogether.”

Magniac swung to the saddle without a word. There was one good thing about Neuland, after all: the younger generation had adopted German as a common language. It was very well to be polyglot on old Earth, but to do Welby the courtesy of learning schoolboy English was tedium and a bore.