We Who Stole the Dream

By James Tiptree

The children could survive only twelve minims in the sealed containers.

Jilshat pushed the heavy cargo loader as fast as she dared through the darkness, praying that she would not attract the attention of the Terran guard under the floodlights ahead. The last time she passed he had roused and looked at her with his frightening pale alien eyes. Then, her truck had carried only fermenting-containers full of amlat fruit.

Now, curled in one of the containers, lay hidden her only-born, her son Jemnal. Four minims at least had already been used up in the loading and weighing sheds. It would take four more, maybe five, to push the load out to the ship, where her people would send it up on the cargo conveyor. And more time yet for her people in the ship to find Jemnal and rescue him. Jilshat pushed faster, her weak gray humanoid legs trembling.

As she came into the lighted gate the Terran turned his head and saw her.

Jilshat cringed away, trying to make herself even smaller, trying not to run. Oh, why had she not taken Jemnal out in an earlier load? The other mothers had taken theirs. But she had been afraid. At the last minute her faith had failed. It had not seemed possible that what had been planned so long and prepared for so painfully could actually be coming true, that her people, her poor feeble dwarf Joilani, could really overpower and subdue the mighty Terrans in that cargo ship. Yet there the big ship stood in its cone of lights, all apparently quiet. The impossible must have been done, or there would have been disturbance. The other young must be safe. Yes—now she could make out empty cargo trucks hidden in the shadows; their pushers must have already mounted into the ship. It was really and truly happening, their great escape to freedom—or to death… . And now she was almost past the guard, almost safe.

“Oy!”

She tried not to hear the harsh Terran bark, hurried faster. But in three giant strides he loomed up before her, so that she had to halt.

“You deaf?” he asked in the Terran of his time and place. Jilshat could barely understand; she had been a worker in the far amlat fields. All she could think of was the time draining inexorably away, while he tapped the containers with the butt of his weapon, never taking his eyes off her. Her huge dark-lashed Joilani gaze implored him mutely; in her terror, she forgot the warnings, and her small dove-gray face contorted in that rictus of anguish the Terrans called a “smile.” Weirdly, he smiled back, as if in pain too.

“I wo’king, seh,” she managed to bring out. A minim gone now, almost two. If he did not let her go at once her child was surely doomed. Almost she could hear a faint mew, as if the drugged baby was already struggling for breath.

“I go, seh! Men in ship ang’ee!” Her smile broadened, dimpled in agony to what she could not know was a mask of allure.

“Let ‘em wait. You know, you’re not bad-looking for a Juloo moolie?” He made a strange hahnha sound in his throat. “It’s my duty to check the natives for arms. Take that off.” He poked up her dingy jelmah with the snout of his weapon.

Three minims. She tore the jelmah off, exposing her wide-hipped, short-legged little gray form, with its double dugs and bulging pouch. A few heartbeats more and it would be too late, Jemnal would die. She could still save him—she could force the clamps and rip that smothering lid away. Her baby was still alive in there. But if she did so, all would be discovered; she would betray them all. Jailasanatha, she prayed. Let me have love’s courage. O my Joilani, give me strength to let him die. I pay for my unbelief.

“Turn around.”

Grinning in grief and horror, she obeyed.

“That’s better, you look almost human. Ah, Lord, I’ve been out too long. C’mere.” She felt his hand on her buttocks. “You think that’s fun, hey? What’s your name, moolie?”

The last possible minim had run out. Numb with despair, Jilshat murmured a phrase that meant Mother of the Dead.

“Joobly-woobly—” His voice changed. “Well, well! And where did you come from?”

Too late, too late: Lai, the damaged female, minced swiftly to them. Her face was shaved and painted pink and red; she swirled open a bright jelmah to reveal a body grotesquely tinted and bound to imitate the pictures the Terrans worshiped. Her face was wreathed in a studied smile.

“Me Lai.” She flirted her fingers to release the flower essence the Terrans seemed to love. “You want I make fik-fik foh you?”

The instant Jilshat felt the guard’s attention leave her, she flung her whole strength against the heavy truck and rushed naked with it out across the endless field, staggering beyond the limit of breath and heart, knowing it was too late, unable not to hope. Around her in the shadows the last burdened Joilani filtered toward the ship. Behind them the guard was being drawn by Lai into the shelter of the gatehouse.

At the last moment he glanced back and scowled.

“Hey, those Juloos shouldn’t be going into the ship that way.”

“Men say come. Say move cans.” Lai reached up and caressed his throat, slid skillful Joilani fingers into his turgid alien crotch. “Fik-fik,” she crooned, smiling irresistibly. The guard shrugged, and turned back to her with a chuckle.

The ship stood unwatched. It was an aging amlat freighter, a flying factory, carefully chosen because its huge cargo hold was heated and pressurized to make the fruit ferment en route, so that some enzyme the Terrans valued would be ready when it made port. That hold could be lived in, and the amlat fruit would multiply a thousandfold in the food-converter cycle. Also, the ship was the commonest type to visit here; over the decades the Joilani ship cleaners had been able to piece together, detail by painful detail, an almost complete image of the operating controls.

This one was old and shabby. Its Terran Star of Empire and identifying symbols were badly in need of paint. Of its name the first word had been eroded away, leaving only the alien letters:… N’S DREAM. Some Terran’s dream once; it was now the Joilani’s.

But it was not Lai’s Dream. Ahead of Lai lay only pain and death. She was useless as a breeder; her short twin birth channels had been ruptured by huge hard Terran members, and the delicate spongy tissue that was the Joilani womb had been damaged beyond recovery. So Lai had chosen the greater love, to serve her people with one last torment. In her hair flower was the poison that would let her die when the Dream was safely away.

It was not safe yet. Over the guard’s great bulk upon her Lai could glimpse the lights of the other ship on the field, the station’s patrol cruiser. By the worst of luck, it was just readying for its periodic off-planet reconnaissance.

To our misfortune, when the Dream was loaded, the Terran warship stood ready to lift off, so that it could intercept us before we could escape by entering what the Terrans called tau-space. Here we failed.

Old Jalun hobbled as smartly as he could out across the Patrol’s section of the spaceport, to the cruiser. He was wearing the white jacket and female jelmah in which the Terrans dressed their mess servants, and he carried a small napkin-wrapped object. Overhead three fast-moving moonlets were converging, sending triple shadows around his frail form. They faded as he came into the lights of the cruiser’s lock.

A big Terran was doing something to the cruiser’s lock tumblers. As Jalun struggled up the giant steps, he saw that the spacer wore a side arm. Good. Then he recognized the spacer, and an un-Joilani flood of hatred made his twin hearts pound. This was the Terran who had raped Jalun’s granddaughter, and broken her brother’s spine with a kick when the boy came to her rescue. Jalun fought down his feelings, grimacing in pain. Jailasanatha; let me not offend Oneness.

“Where you think you’re going, Smiley? What you got there?” He did not recognize Jalun; to Terrans all Joilani looked alike. “Commandeh say foh you, seh. Say, celeb’ation. Say take to offiseh fi’st.”

“Let’s see.”

Trembling with the effort to control himself, smiling painfully from ear to ear, Jalun unfolded a corner of the cloth.

The spacer peered, whistled. “If that’s what I think it is, sweet stars of home. Lieutenant!” he shouted, hustling Jalun up and into the ship. “Look what the boss sent us!”

In the wardroom the lieutenant and another spacer were checking over the microsource charts. The lieutenant also was wearing a weapons belt—good again. Listening carefully, Jalun’s keen Joilani hearing could detect no other Terrans on the ship. He bowed deeply, still smiling his hate, and unwrapped his packet before the lieutenant.

Nestled in snowy linen lay a small tear-shaped amethyst flask.

“Commandeh say, foh you. Say must d’ink now, is open.”

The lieutenant whistled in his turn, and picked the flask up reverently.

“Do you know what this is, old Smiley?”

“No, seh,” Jalun lied.

“What is it, sir?” the third spacer asked. Jalun could see that he was very young.

“This, sonny, is the most unbelievable, most precious, most delectable drink that will ever pass your dewy gullet. Haven’t you ever heard of Stars Tears?”

The youngster stared at the flask, his face clouding.

“And Smiley’s right,” the lieutenant went on. “Once it’s open, you have to drink it right away. Well, I guess we’ve done all we need to tonight. I must say, the old man left us a generous go. Why did he say he sent this, Juloo boy?”

“Celeb’ation, seh. Say his celeb’ation, his day.”

“Some celebration. Well, let us not quibble over miracles. Jon, produce three liquor cups. Clean ones.”

“Yessir!” The big spacer rummaged in the lockers overhead.

Standing child-size among these huge Terrans, Jalun was overcome again by the contrast between their size and strength and perfection and his own weak-limbed, frail, slope-shouldered little form. Among his people he had been accounted a strong youth; even now he was among the ablest. But to these mighty Terrans, Joilani strength was a joke. Perhaps they were right; perhaps he was of an inferior race, fit only to be slaves…. But then Jalun remembered what he knew, and straightened his short spine. The younger spacer was saying something.

“Lieutenant, sir, if that’s really Stars Tears I can’t drink it.”

“You can’t drink it? Why not?”

“I promised. I, uh, swore.”

“You’d promise such an insane thing?”

“My—my mother,” the youngster said miserably.

The two others shouted with laughter.

“You’re a long way from home now, son,” the lieutenant said kindly. “What am I saying, Jon? We’d be delighted to take yours. But I just can’t bear to see a man pass up the most beautiful thing in life, and I mean bar none. Forget Mommy and prepare your soul for bliss. That’s an order. … All right, Smiley boy, equal shares. And if you spill one drop I’ll dicty both your little pnonks, hear?”

“Yes, seh.” Carefully Jalun poured the loathsome liquor into the small cups.

“You ever tasted this, Juloo?”

“No, seh.”

“And never will. All right, now scat. Ah-h-h … Well, here’s to our next station, may it have real live poogy on it.”

Jalun went silently back down into the shadows of the gangway, paused where he could just see the spacers lift their cups and drink. Hate and disgust choked him, though he had seen it often: Terrans eagerly drinking Stars Tears. It was the very symbol of their oblivious cruelty, their fall from Jailasanatha. They could not be excused for ignorance; too many of them had told Jalun how Stars Tears was made. It was not tears precisely, but the body secretions of a race of beautiful, frail winged creatures on a very distant world. Under physical or mental pain their glands exuded this liquid which the Terrans found so deliciously intoxicating. To obtain it, a mated pair were captured and slowly tortured to death in each other’s sight. Jalun had been told atrocious details which he could not bear to recall.

Now he watched, marveling that the hate burning in his eyes did not alert the Terrans. He was quite certain that the drug was tasteless and did no harm; careful trials over the long years had proved that. The problem was that it took from two to five minims to work. The last-affected Terran might have time to raise an alarm. Jalun would die to prevent that—if he could.

The three spacers’ faces had changed; their eyes shone.

“You see, son?” the lieutenant asked huskily.

The boy nodded, his rapt gaze on nowhere.

Suddenly the big spacer Jon lunged up and said thickly, “What—?” Then he slumped down with his head on one outstretched arm.

“Hey! Hey, Jon!” The lieutenant rose, reaching toward him. But then he too was falling heavily across the wardroom table. That left only the staring boy.

Would he act, would he seize the caller? Jalun gathered himself to spring, knowing he could do little but die in those strong hands.

But the boy only repeated, “What? … What?” Lost in a private dream, he leaned back, slid downward, and began to snore.

Jalun darted up to them and snatched the weapons from the two huge lax bodies. Then he scrambled up to the cruiser’s control room, summoning all the memorized knowledge that had been gained over the slow years. Yes—that was the transmitter. He wrestled its hood off and began firing into its works. The blast of the weapon frightened him, but he kept on till all was charred and melted.

The flight computer next. Here he had trouble burning in, but soon achieved what seemed to be sufficient damage. A nearby metal case fastened to what was now the ceiling bothered him. It had not been included in his instructions—because the Joilani had not learned of the cruiser’s new backup capability. Jalun gave it only a perfunctory blast, and turned to the weapons console.

Emotions he had never felt before were exploding in him, obscuring sight and reason. He fired at wild random across the board, concentrating on whatever would explode or melt, not realizing that he had left the heavy-weapons wiring essentially undamaged. Pinned-up pictures of the grotesque Terran females, which had done his people so much harm, he flamed to ashes.

Then he did the most foolish thing.

Instead of hurrying straight back down through the wardroom, he paused to stare at the slack face of the spacer who had savaged his young. His weapon was hot in his hand. Madness took Jalun: he burned through face and skull. The release of a lifetime’s helpless hatred seemed to drive him on wings of flame. Beyond all reality, he killed the other two Terrans without pausing and hurried on down.

He was quite insane with rage and self-loathing when he reached the reactor chambers. Forgetting the hours of painful memorization of the use of the waldo arms, he went straight in through the shielding port to the pile itself. Here he began to tug with his bare hands at the damping rods, as if he were a suited Terran. But his Joilani strength was far too weak, and he could barely move them. He raged, fired at the pile, tugged again, his body bare to the full fury of radiation.

When presently the rest of the Terran crew poured into the ship they found a living corpse clawing madly at the pile. He had removed only four rods; instead of a meltdown he had achieved nothing at all.

The engineer took one look at Jalun through the vitrex and swung the heavy waldo arm over to smash him into the wall. Then he replaced the rods, checked his readouts, and signaled: Ready to lift.

There was also great danger that the Terrans would signal to one of their mighty warships, which alone can send a missile seeking through tau-space. An act of infamy was faced.

The Elder Jayakal entered the communications chamber just as the Terran operator completed his regular transmission for the period. That had been carefully planned. First, it would insure the longest possible interval before other stations became alarmed. Equally important, the Joilani had been unable to discover a way of entry to the chamber when the operator was not there.

“Hey, Pops, what do you think you’re doing? You know you’re not supposed to be in here. Scoot!”

Jayakal smiled broadly in the pain of his heart. This Terran She’gan had been kind to the Joilani in his rough way. Kind and respectful. He knew them by their proper names; he had never abused their females; he fed cleanly, and did not drink abomination. He had even inquired, with decorum, into the sacred concepts: Jailasanatha, the Living-with-in-honor, the Oneness-of-love. Old Jayakal’s flexible cheekbones drew upward in a beaming rictus of shame.

“O gentle friend, I come to share with you,” he said ritually.

“You know I don’t really diwy your speech. Now you have to get out.”

Jayakal knew no Terran word for sharing; perhaps there was none.

“F’iend, I b’ing you thing.”

“Yeah, well bring it me outside!” Seeing that the old Joilani did not move, the operator rose to usher him out. But memory stirred; his understanding of the true meaning of that smile penetrated. “What is it, Jayakal? What you got there?”

Jayakal brought the heavy load in his hands forward.

“Death.”

“What—where did you get that? Oh, holy mother, get away from me! That thing is armed! The pin is out—”

The laboriously pilfered and hoarded excavating plastic had been well and truly assembled; the igniter had been properly attached. In the ensuing explosion, fragments of the whole transmitter complex, mingled with those of Jayakal and his Terran friend, rained down across the Terran compound and out among the amlat fields.

Spacers and station personnel erupted out of the post bars, at first uncertain in the darkness what to do. Then they saw torches flaring and bobbing around the transformer sheds. Small gray figures were running, leaping, howling, throwing missiles that flamed.

“The crotting Juloos are after the power plant! Come on!”

Other diversions were planned. The names of the Old Ones and damaged females who died thus for us are inscribed on the sacred rolls. We can only pray that they found quick and merciful deaths.

The station commander’s weapons belt hung over the chair by his bed. All through the acts of shame and pain Sosalal had been watching it, waiting for her chance. If only Bislat, the commander’s “boy,” could come in to help her! But he could not—he was needed at the ship.

The commander’s lust was still unsated. He gulped a drink from the vile little purple flask, and squinted his small Terran eyes meaningfully at her. Sosalal smiled, and offered her trembling, grotesquely disfigured body once more. But no: he wanted her to stimulate him. She set her emphatic Joilani fingers, her shuddering mouth, to do their work, hoping that the promised sound would come soon, praying that the commander’s communicator would not buzz with the news of the attempt failed. Why, oh why, was it taking so long? She wished she could have one last sight of the Terran’s great magical star projection, which showed at one far side those blessed, incredible symbols of her people. Somewhere out there, so very far away, was Joilani home space—maybe even, she thought wildly, while her body labored at its hurtful task, maybe a Joilani empire!

Now he wished to enter her. She was almost inured to the pain; her damaged body had healed in a form pleasing to this Terran. She was only the commander’s fourth “girl.” There had been other commanders, some better, some worse, and “girls” beyond counting, as far back as the Joilani records ran. It had been “girls” like herself and “boys” like Bislat who had first seen the great three-dimensional luminous star swarms in the commander’s private room—and brought back to their people the unbelievable news: somewhere, a Joilani homeland still lived!

Greatly daring, a “girl” had once asked about those Joilani symbols. Her commander had shrugged. “That stuff! It’s the hell and gone the other side of the system, take half your life to get there. I don’t know a thing about ‘em. Probably somebody just stuck ‘em in. They aren’t Juloos, that’s for sure.”

Yet there the symbols blazed, tiny replicas of the ancient Joilani Sun~in-splendor. It could mean only one thing, that the old myth was true: that they were not natives to this world, but descendants of a colony left by Joilani who traveled space as the Terrans did. And that those great Joilani yet lived!

If only they could reach them. But how, how?

Could they somehow send a message? All but impossible. And even if they did, how could their kind rescue them from the midst of Terran might?

No. Hopeless as it seemed, they must get themselves out and reach Joilani space by their own efforts.

And so the great plan had been born and grown, over years, over lifetimes. Painfully, furtively, bit by bit, Joilani servants and bar attendants and ship cleaners and amlat loaders had discovered and brought back the magic numbers, and their meaning: the tau-space coordinates that would take them to those stars. From discarded manuals, from spacers’ talk, they had pieced together the fantastic concept of tau-space itself. Sometimes an almighty Terran would find a naive Joilani question amusing enough to answer. Those allowed inside the ships brought back tiny fragments of the workings of the Terran magic. Joilani, who were humble “boys” by day and “girls” by night, became clandestine students and teachers, fitting together the mysteries of their overlords, reducing them from magic to comprehension. Preparing, planning in minutest detail, sustained only by substanceless hope, they readied for their epic, incredible flight.

And now the lived-for moment had come.

Or had it? Why was it taking so long? Suffering as she had so often smilingly suffered before, Sosalal despaired. Surely nothing would, nothing could change. It was all a dream; all would go on as it always had, the degradation and the pain… . The commander indicated new desires; careless with grief,

Sosalal complied.

“Watch it!” He slapped her head so that her vision spun.

“Excuse, seh.”

“You’re getting a bit long in the tooth, Sosi.” He meant that literally: mature Joilani teeth were large. “You better start training a younger moolie. Or have ‘em pulled.”

“Yes, seh.”

“You scratch me again and I’ll pull ‘em myself— Holy Jebulibar, what’s that?”

A flash from the window lit the room, followed by a rumbling that rattled the walls. The commander tossed her aside and ran to look out.

It had come! It was really true! Hurry. She scrambled to the chair.

“Good God Almighty, it looks like the transmitter blew. Wha—”

He had whirled toward his communicator, his clothes, and found himself facing the mouth of his own weapon held in Sosalal’s trembling hands. He was too astounded to react. When she pressed the firing stud he dropped with his chest blown open, the blank frown still on his face.

Sosalal too was astounded, moving in a dream. She had killed. Really killed a Terran. A living being. “I come to share,” she whispered ritually. Gazing at the fiery light in the window, she turned the weapon to her own head and pressed the firing stud.

Nothing happened.

What could be wrong? The dream broke, leaving her in dreadful reality. Frantically she poked and probed at the strange object. Was there some mechanism needed to reset it? She was unaware of the meaning of the red charge dot—the commander had grown too careless to recharge his weapon after his last game hunt. Now it was empty.

Sosalal was still struggling with the thing when the door burst open and she felt herself seized and struck all but senseless. Amid the boots and the shouting, her wrist glands leaked scarlet Joilani tears as she foresaw the slow and merciless death that would now be hers.

They had just started to question her when she heard it: the deep rolling rumble of a ship lifting off. The Dream was away— her people had done it, they were saved! Through her pain she heard a Terran voice say, “Juloo-town is empty! All the young ones are on that ship.” Under the blows of her tormentors her twin hearts leaped with joy.

But a moment later all exultation died; she heard the louder fires of the Terran cruiser bursting into the sky. The Dream had failed, then: they would be pursued and killed. Desolate, she willed herself to die in the Terrans’ hands. But her life resisted, and her broken body lived long enough to sense the thunderous concussion from the sky that must be the destruction of her race. She died believing all hope was dead. Still, she had told her questioners nothing.

Great dangers came to those who essayed to lift the Dream.

“If you monkeys are seriously planning to try to fly this ship, you better set that trim lever first or we’ll all be killed.”

It was the Terran pilot speaking—the third to be captured, so they had not needed to stop his mouth.

“Go on, push it! It’s in landing attitude now, that red one. I don’t want to be smashed up.”

Young Jivadh, dwarfed in the huge pilot’s chair, desperately reviewed his laboriously built-up memory engram of this ship’s controls. Red lever, red lever … He was not quite sure. He twisted around to look at their captives. Incredible to see the three great bodies lying bound and helpless against the wall, which should soon become the floor. From the seat beside him Bislat held his weapon trained on them. It was one of the two stolen Terran weapons which they had long hoarded for this, their greatest task: the capture of the Terrans on the Dream. The first spacer had not believed they were serious until Jivadh had burned through his boots.

Now he lay groaning intermittently, muffled by the gag. When he caught Jivadh’s gaze he nodded vehemently in confirmation of the pilot’s warning.

“I left it in landing attitude,” the pilot repeated. “If you try to lift that way we’ll all die!” The third captive nodded, too.

Jivadh’s mind raced over and over the remembered pattern. The Dream was an old unstandardized ship. Jivadh continued with the ignition procedure, not touching the red lever.

“Push it, you fool!” the pilot shouted. “Holy mother, do you

want to die?”

Bislat was looking nervously from Jivadh to the Terrans. He too had learned the patterns of the amlat freighters, but not as well.

“Jivadh, are you sure?”

“I cannot be certain. I think on the old ships that is an emergency device which will change or empty the fuels so that they cannot fire. What they call abort. See the Terran symbol a .”

The pilot had caught the words.

“It’s not abort, it’s attitude! A for attitude, attitude, you monkey. Push it over or we’ll crash!”

The other two nodded urgently.

Jivadh’s whole body was flushed blue and trembling with tension. His memories seemed to recede, blur, spin. Never before had a Joilani disbelieved, disobeyed, a Terran order. Desperate, he clung to one fading fragment of a yellowed chart in his mind.

“I think not,” he said slowly.

Taking his people’s whole life in his delicate fingers, he punched the ignition-and-lift sequence into real time.

Clickings—a clank of metal below—a growling hiss that grew swiftly to an intolerable roar beneath them. The old freighter creaked, strained, gave a sickening lurch. Were they about to crash? Jivadh’s soul died a thousand deaths.

But the horizon around them stayed level. The Dream was shuddering upward, straight up, moving faster and faster as she staggered and leaped toward space. All landmarks fell away— they were in flight! Jivadh, crushed against his supports, exulted. They had not crashed! He had been right: the Terran had been lying.

All outer sound fell away. The Dream had cleared atmosphere, and was driving for the stars!

But not alone.

Just as the pressure was easing, just as joy was echoing through the ship and the first of his comrades were struggling up to tell him all was well below, just as a Healer was moving to aid the Terran’s burned foot—a loud Terran voice roared through the cabin.

“Halt, you in the Dream! Retrofire. Go into orbit for boarding or we’ll shoot you down.”

The Joilani shrank back. Jivadh saw that the voice was coming from the transceiver, which he had turned on as part of the lift-off procedures.

“That’s the patrol,” the Terran pilot told him. “They’re coming up behind us. You have to quit now, monkey boy. They really will blow us out of space.”

A sharp clucking started in an instrument to Jivadh’s right. MASS PROXIMITY INDICATOR, he read. Involuntarily he turned to the Terran pilot.

“That’s nothing, just one of those damn moons. Listen, you have to backfire. I’m not fooling this time. I’ll tell you what to do.”

“Go into orbit for boarding!” the great voice boomed.

But Jivadh had turned away, was busy doing something else. It was not right. Undoubtedly he would kill them all—but he knew what his people would wish.

“Last warning. We will now fire,” the cruiser’s voice said coldly.

“They mean it!” the Terran pilot screamed. “For god’s sake let me talk to them, let me acknowledge!” The other Terrans were glaring, thrashing in their bonds. This fear was genuine, Jivadh saw, quite different from the lies before. What he had to do was not difficult, but it would take time. He fumbled the transceiver switch open and spoke into it, ignoring Bislat’s horrified eyes.

“We will stop. Please wait. It is difficult.”

“That’s the boy!” The pilot was panting with relief. “All right now. See that delta-V estimator, under the thrust dial? Oh, it’s too feking complicated. Let me at it, you might as well.”

Jivadh ignored him, continuing with his doomed task. Reverently he fed in the coordinates, the sacred coordinates etched in his mind since childhood, the numbers that might possibly, if they could have done it right, have brought them out of tau-space among Joilani stars.

“We will give you three minims to comply,” the voice said.

“Listen, they mean it!” the pilot cried. “What are you doing? Let me up!”

Jivadh went on. The mass-proximity gauge clucked louder; he ignored that, too. When he turned to the small tau-console the pilot suddenly understood.

“No! Oh, no!” he screamed. “Oh, for god’s sake don’t do that! You crotting idiot, if you go tau this close to the planet we’ll be squashed right into its mass!” His voice had risen to a shriek; the other two were uttering wordless roars and writhing.

They were undoubtedly right, Jivadh thought bleakly. One moment’s glory—and now the end.

“We fire in one more minim,” came the cruiser’s toneless roar.

“Stop! Don’t! No!” the pilot yelled.

Jivadh looked at Bislat. The other had realized what he was doing; now he gave the true Joilani smile of pursed lips and made the ritual sign of Acceptance-of-ending. The Joilani in the passage understood that: a sighing silence rustled back through the ship.

“Fire one,” the cruiser voice said briskly.

Jivadh slammed the tau-tumbler home.

An alarm shrieked and cut off, all colors vanished, the very structure of space throbbed wildly—as, by a million-to-one chance, the three most massive nearby moons occulted one another in line with the tiny extra energies of the cruiser and its detonating missile, in such a way that for one micromicrominim the Dream stood at a seminull point with the planetary mass. In that fleeting instant she flung out her tau-field, folded the normal dimensions around her, and shot like a squeezed pip into the discontinuity of being which was tau.

Nearby space-time was rocked by the explosion; concussion swept the moons and across the planet beneath. So narrow was the Dream‘s moment of safe passage that a fin of bright metal from the cruiser and a rock with earth and herbs on it were later found intricately meshed into the substance of her stern cargo hold, to the great wonder of the Joilani.

Meanwhile the rejoicing was so great that it could be expressed in only one way: all over the ship, the Joilani lifted their voices in the sacred song.

They were free! The Dream had made it into tau-space, where no enemy could find them! They were safely on their way.

Safely on their way—to an unknown destination, over an unknown time, with pitifully limited supplies of water, food, and air.

Here begins the log of the passage of the Dream through tau-space, which, although timeless, required finite time….

Jatkan let the precious old scroll roll up and laid it carefully aside, to touch the hand of a co-mate. He had been one of the babies in the amlat containers; sometimes he thought he remembered the great night of their escape. Certainly he remembered a sense of rejoicing, a feeling of dread nightmare blown away.

“The waiting is long,” said his youngest co-mate, who was little more than a child. “Tell us again about the Terran monsters.”

“They weren’t monsters, only very alien,” he corrected the child gently. His eyes met those of Salasvati, who was entertaining her young co-mates at the porthole of the tiny records chamber. It came to Jatkan that when he and Salas were old, they might be the last Joilani who had ever really seen a Terran. Certainly the last to have any sense of their terror and might, and the degradations of slavery burned into their parents’ souls. Surely this is good, he thought, but is it not also a loss, in some strange way?

“—reddish, or sometimes yellow or brownish, almost hairless, with small bright eyes,” he was telling the child. “And big, about the distance to that porthole there. And one day, when the three who were on the Dream were allowed out to exercise, they rushed into the control room and changed the gyroscope setting, so that the ship began to spin around faster and faster, and everybody fell down and was pressed flat into the walls. They were counting on their greater strength, you see.”

“So that they could seize the Dream and break out of tau-space into Terran stars!” His two female co-mates recited in unison: “But old Jivadh saved us.”

“Yes. But he was young Jivadh then. By great good luck he was at the central column, right where the old weapons were kept, that no one had touched for hundreds of days.”

A co-mate smiled. “The luck of the Joilani.”

“No,” Jatkan told her. “We must not grow superstitious. It was simple chance.”

“And he killed them all!” the child burst out excitedly. A hush fell.

“Never use that word so lightly,” Jatkan said sternly. “Think what you are meaning, little one. Jailasanatha—”

As he admonished the child, his mind noted again the incongruity of his words: the “little one” was already as large as he, as he in turn was larger and stronger than his parents. This could only be due to the children’s eating the Terran-mixed food from the ship’s recycler, however scanty. When the older ones saw how the young grew, it confirmed another old myth: that their ancestors had once been giants, who had diminished through some lack in the planet’s soil. Was every old myth-legend coming true at once?

Meanwhile he was trying once more to explain to the child, and to the others, the true horror of the decision Jivadh had faced, and Jivadh’s frenzy of anguish when he was prevented from killing himself in atonement. Jatkan’s memory was scarred by that day. First the smash against the walls, the confusion—the explosions—their release; and then the endless hours of ritual argument, persuading Jivadh that his knowledge of the ship was too precious to lose. The pain in Jivadh’s voice as he confessed: “I thought also in selfishness, that we would have their water, their food, their air.”

“That is why he doesn’t take his fair share of food, and sleeps on the bare steel.”

“And why he’s always so sad,” the child said, frowning with the effort to truly understand.

“Yes.” But Jatkan knew that he could never really understand; nobody could who had not seen the horror of violently dead flesh that once was living, even though alien and hostile. The three corpses had been consigned with due ritual to the recycling bins, as they did with their own. By now all the Joilani must bear some particles in their flesh that once were Terran. Ironic.

A shadow passed his mind. A few days ago he had been certain that these young ones, and their children’s children, would never need know what it was to kill. Now he was not quite so certain…. He brushed the thought away.

“Has the log been kept right up to now?” asked Salasvati from the port. Like Jatkan. she was having difficulty keeping her young co-mates quiet during this solemn wait.

“Oh, yes.”

Jatkan’s fingers delicately riffled through the motley pages of the current logbook on the stand. It had been sewn together from whatever last scraps and charts they could find. The clear Joilani script flashed out at him on page after page: “Hunger … rations cut… broken, water low … repairs … adult rations cut again … oxygen low … the children … water reduced … the children need… how much more can we… end soon; not enough … when….”

Yes, that had been his whole life, all their lives: dwindling life sustenance in the great rotating cylinder that was their world. The unrelenting uncertainty: would they ever break out? And if so, where? Or would it go on till they all died here in the timeless, lightless void?

And the rare weird events, things almost seen, like the strange light ghost ship that had suddenly bloomed beside them with ungraspably alien creatures peering from its parts— and as suddenly vanished again.

Somewhere in the Dream‘s magical computers, circuits were clicking toward the predestined coordinates, but no one knew how to check on the program’s progress, or even whether it still functioned. The merciless stress of waiting told upon them all in different ways, as the hundred-day cycles passed into thousands. Some grew totally silent; some whispered endless ritual; some busied themselves with the most minute tasks. Old Bislat had been their leader here; his courage and cheer were indomitable. But it was Jivadh, despite his dreadful deed, despite his self-imposed silence and reclusion, who was somehow still the symbol of their faith. It was not that he had lifted the Dream, had saved them not once but twice; it was the sensed trueness of his heart…. Jatkan, turning the old pages, reflected that perhaps it had all been easiest for the children, who had known no other life but only waiting for the Day.

And then—the changed writing on the last page spoke for itself—there had come the miracle, the first of the Days. All unexpectedly, as they were preparing for the three-thousandth- and-something sleep period, the ship had shuddered, and unfamiliar meshing sounds had rumbled around them. They had all sprung up wildly, reeling in disorientation. Great strainings of metal, frightening clanks—and the old ship disengaged her tau-field, to unfold her volume into normal space.

But what space! Stars—the suns of legend—blazed in every porthole, some against deep blackness, some shrouded in glorious clouds of light! Children and adults alike raced from port to port, crying out in wonder and delight.

It was only slowly that realization came: they were still alone in limitless, empty, unknown space, among unknown beings and forces, still perishingly short of all that was needful to life.

The long-planned actions were taken. The transmitter was set to send out the Joilani distress call, at what old Jivadh believed was maximum reach. A brave party went outside, onto the hull, in crazily modified Terran space suits. They painted over the ugly Terran star, changing it to a huge Sun-in-splendor. Over the Terran words they wrote the Joilani word for Dream. If they were still in the Terran Empire, all was now doubly lost.

“My mother went outside,” said Jatkan’s oldest co-mate proudly. “It was dangerous and daring and very hard work.”

“Yes.” Jatkan touched her lovingly.

“I wish I could go outside now,” said the youngest.

“You will. Wait.”

“It’s always ‘wait.’ We’re waiting now.”

“Yes.”

Waiting—oh, yes, they had waited, with conditions growing ever worse and hope more faint. Knowing no other course, they set out at crawling pace for the nearest bright star. Few believed they were waiting for anything more than death.

Until that day—the greatest of Days—when a strange spark burst suddenly into being ahead, and grew into a great ship bearing down upon them.

And they had seen the Sun-in-splendor on her bow.

Even the youngest child would remember that forever.

How the stranger had almost magically closed and grappled them, and forced the long-corroded main lock. And they of the Dream had seen all dreams come true, as in a rush of sweet air the strange Joilani—the true, real Joilani—had come aboard. Joilani—but giants, as big as Terrans, strong and upright, glowing with health, their hands upraised in the ancient greeting. How they had narrowed their nostrils at the Dream‘s foul air! How they had blinked in wonderment as the song of thanksgiving rose around them!

Through it all, their leader had patiently repeated in strange but understandable accents, “I am Khanrid Jemnal Visadh. Who are you people?” And when a tiny old Joilani female had rushed to him with leaves torn from the hydroponics bed and tried to wreathe him, crying, “Jemnal! Jemnal my lost son! Oh, my son, my son!” he had smiled embarrassedly, and stooped to embrace her, calling her “Mother,” before he put her gently aside.

And then the explanations, the incredulity, as the great Joilani had spread out to examine the Dream, each with his train of awestruck admirers. They had scanned the old charts, and opened and traced the tau-program with casual skill. They too seemed excited; the Dream, it seemed, had performed an unparalleled deed. One of the giants had begun questioning them: arcane, incomprehensible questions as to types of Terran ships they had seen, the colors and insignia numbers on the Terrans’ clothes. “Later, later,” Khanrid Jemnal had said. And then had begun the practical measures of bringing in food and water, and recharging the air supply.

“We will plot your course to the sector base,” he told them. “Three of our people will go with you when you are ready.”

In all the excitement Jatkan found it hard to recall exactly when he had noticed that their Joilani saviors all were armed.

“They are patrol spacers,” old Bislat said wonderingly. “Khanrid is a military title. That ship is a warship, a protector of the Joilani Federation of Worlds.”

He had to explain to the young ones what that meant.

“It means we are no longer helpless!” His old eyes glowed. “It means that our faith, our Gentleness-in-honor, our Jailasanatha way, can never again be trodden to the dirt by brute might!”

Jatkan, whose feet could not remember treading dirt, yet understood. A marveling exultation grew in them all. Even old Jivadh’s face softened briefly from its customary grim composure.

Female Joilani came aboard—new marvels. Beautiful giantesses, who did strange and sometimes uncomfortable things to them all. Jatkan learned new words: inoculation, infestation, antisepsis. His clothes and the others’ were briefly taken away, and returned looking and smelling quite different. He overheard Khanrid Jemnal speaking to one of the goddesses.

“I know, Khanlal. You’d like to strip out this hull and blow everything but their bare bodies out to space. But you must understand that we are touching history here. These rags, this whole pathetic warren, is hot, living history. Evidence, too, if you like. No. Clean them up, depingee them, inoculate and dust and spray all you want. But leave it looking just the way it is.”

“But, Khanrid—”

“That’s it.”

Jatkan had not long to puzzle over that; it was the day of their great visit to the wonderful warship. There they saw and touched marvels, all giant-size. And then were fed a splendid meal, and afterward all joined in singing, and they learned new words for some of the old Joilani songs. When they finally returned, the Dream seemed to be permeated with a most peculiar odor which made them all sneeze for days. Soon afterward they noticed that they were doing a lot less scratching; the fritlings that had been a part of their lives seemed to be gone.

“They sent them away,” Jatkan’s mother explained. “It seems they are not good on ships.”

“They were killed,” old Jivadh broke his silence to remark tonelessly.

The three giant Joilani spacers who were to get them safely to the sector base came aboard then. Khanrid Jemnal introduced them. “And now I must say good-bye. You will receive a warm welcome.”

When they sang him and the others farewell, it was almost as emotional as on the first day.

Their three guardians had been busy at mysterious tasks in the Dream‘s workings. Old Bislat and some of the other males watched them keenly, trying to understand, but Jivadh seemed no longer to care. Soon they were plunged back into tau-space, but how different this time, with ample air and water and food for all! In only ten sleep periods the now-familiar shudder ran through the Dream again, and they broke out into daylight with a blue sun blinding in the ports.

A planet loomed up beside them. The Joilani pilot took them down into the shadow-darkened limb, sinking toward a gigantic spaceport. Ships beyond count stood there, ablaze with lights, and beyond the field itself stretched a vast jeweled webwork, like myriad earthly stars.

Jatkan learned a new word: city. He could hardly wait to see it in the day.

Almost at once the Dream‘s five Elders had been ceremoniously escorted out, to visit the High Elders of this wondrous place. They went in a strange kind of landship. Looking after them, the Dream‘s people could see that a lighted barrier of some sort had been installed around the ship. Now they were awaiting their return.

“They’re taking so long,” Jatkan’s youngest co-mate complained. He was getting drowsy.

“Let us look out again,” Jatkan proposed. “May we exchange places, Salasvati?”

“With pleasure.”

Jatkan led his little family to the port as Salasvati’s moved back, awkward in the unfamiliar sternward weight.

“Look, out beyond—there are people!”

It was true. Jatkan saw what seemed to be an endless multitude of Joilani in the night, hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of pale gray faces beyond the barrier, all turned toward the Dream.

“We are history,” he quoted Khanrid Jemnal.

“What’s that?”

“An important event, I think. See—here come our Elders now!”

There was a commotion, a parting in the throng, and the landship which had taken the Elders away came slowly out into the free space around the Dream.

“Come look, Salasvati!”

Craning and crowding, they could just make out their Elders and their giant escorts emerging from the landship, and taking warm ritual leaving of each other.

“Hurry, they’ll tell us all about it in the Center!”

It was difficult, with the ship in this new position and everything hanging wrong. Their parents were already sitting sideways in the doors of the center shaft. The youngsters scrambled to whatever perches or laps they could find. The party of Elders could be heard making their slow way up from below, climbing the long-unused central ladders to where they could speak to all.

As they came into view Jatkan could see how weary they were, and how their dark eyes radiated excitement, exultation. Yet with a queer tautness or tension stretching their cheekbones, too, he thought.

“We were indeed warmly received,” old Bislat said when all had reached the central space. “We saw wonders it will take days to describe. All of you will see them, in due time. We were taken to meet the High Elders here, and ate the evening meal with them.” He paused briefly. “We were also questioned, by one particular Elder, about the Terrans we have known. It seems that our knowledge is important, old as it is. All of you who remember our previous life must set yourselves to recalling every sort of small detail. The colors of their spacers’ clothing, their ornaments of rank, the names and appearance of their ships that came and went.” He smiled wonderingly. “It was … strange … to hear Terrans spoken of so lightly, even scornfully. We think now that their great Empire is not so mighty as we believed. Perhaps it has grown too old, or too big. Our people”—he spoke with his hands clasped in thanksgiving—“our people do not fear them.”

A wordless, incredulous gasp of joy rose from the listeners around the shaft.

“Yes.” Bislat stilled them. “Now, as to what is ahead for us. We are, you must understand, a great wonder to them. It seems our flight here from so far away was extraordinary, and has moved them very much. But we are also, well, so very different-like people from another age. It is not only our size. Their very children know more than we do of practical daily things. We could not quietly go out and dwell among the people of this city or the lands around it, even though they are our own Joilani, of the faith. We Elders have seen enough to understand that, and you will, too. Some of you may already have thought on this, have you not?”

A thoughtful murmur of assent echoed his words from door after door. Even Jatkan realized that he had been wondering about this, somewhere under his conscious mind.

“In time, of course, it will be different. Our young, or their young, will be as they are, and we all can learn.”

He smiled deeply. But Jatkan found his gaze caught by old Jivadh’s face. Jivadh was not smiling; his gaze was cast down, and his expression was tense and sad. Indeed, something of the same strain seemed to lie upon them alj, even Bislat. What could be wrong?

Bislat was continuing, his voice strong and cheerful. “So they have found for us a fertile land, an empty land on a beautiful world. The Dream will stay here, as a permanent memorial of our great flight. They will take us there in another ship, with all that we need, and with people who will stay to help and teach us.” His hands met again in thanksgiving; his voice rang out reverently. “So begins our new life of freedom, safe among Joilani stars, among our people of the faith.”

Just as his listeners began quietly to hum the sacred song, old Jivadh raised his head.

“Of the faith, Bislat?” he asked harshly.

The singers hushed in puzzlement.

“You saw the Gardens of the Way.” Bislat’s tone was strangely brusque. “You saw the sacred texts emblazoned, you saw the Meditators—”

“I saw many splendid places,” Jivadh cut him off. “With idle attendants richly gowned.”

“It is nowhere written that the Way must be shabbily served,” Bislat protested. “The richness is a proof of its honor here.”

“And before one of those sacred places of devotion,” Jivadh went on implacably, “I saw Joilani as old as I, in rags almost as poor as mine, toiling with heavy burdens. You did not mention that, Bislat. For that matter, you did not mention how strangely young these High Elders of our people here are. Think on it. It can only mean that the old wisdom is not enough, that new enterprises not of the Way are in movement here.”

“But, Jivadh,” another Elder put in, “there is so much here that we are not yet able to understand. Surely, when we know more—”

“There is much that Bislat refuses to understand,” Jivadh said curtly. “He also has omitted to say what we were offered.”

“No, Jivadh! Do not, we implore you.” Bislat’s voice trembled. “We agreed, for the good of all—”

“I did not agree.” Jivadh turned to the tiers of listeners. His haggard gaze swept past them, seeming to look far beyond.

“O my people,” he said somberly, “the Dream has not come home. It may be that it has no home. What we have come to is the Joilani Federation of Worlds, a mighty, growing power among the stars. We are safe here, yes. But Federation, Empire, perhaps it is all the same in the end. Bislat has told you what these so-called Elders kindly gave us to eat. But he has not told you what the High Elder offered us to drink.”

“They said it was confiscated!” Bislat cried.

“Does that matter? Our high Joilani, our people of the faith—” Jivadh’s eyelids closed in sadness; his voice broke to a hoarse rasp. “Our Joilani… were drinking Stars Tears.”

Table of Contents

Start