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CHAPTER TEN

To Roark, the world of Harath-Asor seemed to exist simultaneously in the distant past and the remote future, with nothing of the present about it at all.

The sense of ancientness belonged to the planet itself, rising like a mist from the worn-down hills—you couldn't call them mountains—and slow-flowing rivers of its mature landscape, for this was an old planet of an old sun. That sun hung larger and yellower than Sol in a deeper-blue sky than Earth's. It moved slowly across that sky, for its tidal drag had slowed the planet's rotation over the ages. At some point in its past, Harath-Asor had given birth to a race of beings capable of erecting the awesome but unintelligible edifices whose ruins dotted the planet's waste places. But something had wiped them out—some mutant microorganism, probably, for there was no indication that they'd possessed the technology to do the job themselves. When the Lokaron pioneers had arrived, they'd found a fecund but untenanted world into whose biochemistry a Lokaron-friendly ecology could be insinuated with minimal genetic modification of most species, including the colonists themselves. For these latter, it was effectively their homeworld, the natural habitat of their subspecies—or, to be precise, the habitat for which their subspecies had been designed. They were part of it, and it of them, as though they had spent millennia of history and eons of prehistory among its ripe landscapes.

But it was only later that this aspect of Harath-Asor made itself manifest to the two humans. To reach it, they first passed through realms of technology beyond Earth's engineering horizons.

The transport, after emerging from a transition gate, threaded its way insystem through the crowded spacelanes. They sat under the observation dome and watched in openmouthed wonder. Ponderously turning space habitats surrounded by firefly-swarms of small craft . . . vast spidery communications arrays . . . inconceivable powersats . . . all drifted silently by. Finally the planet waxed in the display, its nightside a constellation of city lights, its dayside less blue and more sandy-white than Earth's. A barely visible silvery thread extended three diameters straight out from a point on its equator.

"Is that an . . . an orbital tower?" Katy asked Thrannis, pointing unsteadily at the impossibly rigid thread.

"Yes. I gather your civilization is familiar with the concept."

"In theory, yes. But as a practical matter it's well beyond our materials technology." Bitterness entered Katy's voice. "It probably would be even if the EFP hadn't halted our development a generation ago."

"Ah." Roark could practically hear the wheels turning as Thrannis contemplated a potential market. "Actually," the Lokar resumed, "this one has become largely a tourist attraction since the advent of reactionless drives." If there was any condescension in his voice, the translator edited it out.

A shuttle took them down to the surface, crossing the terminator from day to night before descending over a cityscape like a glowing forest of lofty, brightly lit towers, and settling onto a landing platform with scarcely a bump. They emerged under a sky from which the city lights and the orbital powersats banished the stars, leaving two crescent moons as the only vestiges of the natural night. The platform on which they stood extended out from one of the towers near its base, only a few stories above the vehicle-teeming streets. Staring at that base's massiveness, they saw at once that the needlelike slenderness they'd marveled at from aloft was an illusion. The tower was slender only in relation to its inconceivable height. Only by looking at the more distant towers could they form any real impression of these edifices' dimensions.

"They must need pressurization on the top floors," Katy said in a small voice. It was chilly, but her breath didn't steam in this somewhat thin, dry air to which their sinuses had had to adjust aboard the ship.

Roark looked at her, saw that familiar profile silhouetted against the light-blazing cityscape, and all at once he knew, with a certainty beyond mere intellectual understanding, just how far beyond ordinary human ken they'd wandered. Deep within him, something he'd forgotten was there wanted to run until it found a certain sunlit street of small neat houses, and keep running until it was through the screen door of one of those houses and in the arms of she who, like the street and the house, would surely never change.

A trio of tall Lokaron figures stepped from the shadows that hemmed in the harshly lit landing platform. Though armed with no visible weapons, they bore the unmistakable look of security guards. Their leader spoke briefly with Thrannis, who then turned to his human charges. "All is in readiness. Let's go inside. I'll show you to your quarters."

"Uh, Thrannis," Roark said hesitantly, "aren't there any . . . well, formalities?" He hadn't expected quarantine procedures; it was widely known that human and Lokaron biochemistries had enough subtle differences to prevent either species from playing host to the other's microorganisms. But . . . "Surely there must be some kind of customs or immigration check."

Thrannis looked vaguely puzzled, and Roark sensed that the translator had conveyed something subtly different from his intended meaning. "No, no, don't worry. There's nothing irregular about your arrival here. And there's no need for the gevah functionaries to concern themselves. This is purely a Hov-Korth matter. I've brought you directly to the hovah's headquarters"—he indicated the architectural mountain from whose side the landing platform was cantilevered out—"for convenience, and to avoid premature public exposure. The sight of you might occasion more comment than we want at this stage."

"Are you saying we're going to be confined to this place?"

"Oh, no. Your excursions will, of necessity, be subject to a certain degree of supervision. But I have every intention of showing you as much of this planet as possible in the time we'll have available. This is Svyatog's express wish. But for now, let's proceed."

They followed him inside, where they found themselves on a gallery surrounding a central well whose floor was several stories below, at ground level, and whose ceiling was lost in the dimness far above. For all the structure's titanic mass, there was an air of ethereal grace, born of advanced materials and transcendent architecture. The vastness and the unfamiliar artistic idioms rendered the scene a swirl of strangeness, impossible for their minds to grasp before Thrannis hurried them on. They took an elevator which used a powered-down version of what made the Lokaron space vehicles move. In an amazingly short time they were in a small suite of rooms whose windows overlooked the illimitable cityscape from an aircraftlike altitude.

"And now," Thrannis said as they settled in, "I'll let you get some rest. I know you must be tired." (This was tact; the ship's day/night cycle had been slaved to Harath-Asor's, thus avoiding the interstellar equivalent of jet lag.) "There are some people who'll want to see you tomorrow."

Roark groaned inwardly as he visualized Lokaron graduate students in anthropology asking about the quaint native mating customs. Katy dragged her eyes away from the panorama outside the windows and spoke up. "What about showing us the planet, as you said a while back?"

"Have no fear. You'll be able to get out and play tourist soon enough, subject to the restrictions I mentioned. I think I can safely predict you'll find it rather different from your usual tourist experience! And now, I'll bid you good evening."

 

The "people who'll want to see you" turned out to be Hov-Korth security types, with sensible questions about how the Company and its uninvited Eaglemen guests had gone about infiltrating the Enclave on Earth. Roark suppressed the closed-mouthed habits of decades and answered them truthfully. It took most of the long day, leaving them drained and out of sorts.

But afterwards Thrannis proved as good as his word, taking them over, through and beyond the city, which was of vast extent. They viewed from close range the orbital tower, just as impossible-seeming as it had been from a distance. They walked slowly through wonders in the Lokaron equivalent of museums. They saw what had to be called factories, where the manufacturing was done on the molecular level.

It was at one such place that Katy asked a question that had perplexed them, and many other humans. "Thrannis, why do you Lokaron bother to engage in trade at all? I mean, if you can just make goods to order on the spot—?"

"Ah, yes. Svyatog told me to expect this question. I gather that your civilization has reached the stage of being able to conceptualize nanotechnology, but that the concept is still at the . . . the . . . "

"The `gee whiz' level," Roark suggested.

There was a pause as Thrannis tried to make sense of the translator's rendition of that. "I believe I catch your drift. Yes. The dazzling possibilities have distracted you from certain practical limiting factors involving both energy and precise control. And as for the self-replicating nanomachines that certain of your popularizers have visualized . . . well, atomic energy is a harmless toy by comparison. It is self-evident that no sane society would tolerate them." Roark wasn't certain it really was all that self-evident, but he held his peace as Thrannis continued. "No, nanotechnology isn't magic. It is, however, a revolutionary industrial process. Indeed, it increases manufacturing capacity by such orders of magnitude that it promptly creates a shortage of the rarer elements. Transmutation on a large scale is not feasible, for any number of excellent reasons. So we have to look elsewhere to fill the demand."

"But," Katy persisted, "why trade with less-developed races on inhabited planets for what you need? Why not just strip-mine lifeless planets and moons and asteroids?"

Thrannis started to speak, then stopped and began again, as though what he was trying to say was so obvious to him as to be difficult to put into words. "First of all, the elements of which I speak are more likely to be present on large planets than on space rocks. But aside from that, consider the economics of interstellar commerce. The kind of operation you're visualizing would require us to transport everything necessary to set up a hostile-environment colony, at staggering cost. Worlds where we can live without elaborate life-support are a more attractive proposition. Likewise, when we can offer the inhabitants of those worlds technology so far beyond their ability to duplicate that we can set our own prices, trade is far cheaper than . . . " The translator subsided as Thrannis left "conquest and enslavement" unsaid. Before the pause could grow awkward, the Lokar proceeded briskly. "And as long as we're trading in bulk anyway, we've built up a very profitable sideline trade in luxury goods for the Lokaron market, which has an insatiable appetite for novelty as long as it's authentic novelty."

"Like authentic personal servants?" asked Roark. Since arriving on Harath-Asor he'd seen members of some of the same non-Lokaron species he'd noted in the Enclave. No humans, he thought. Yet.

"Yes. It's economically indefensible, of course—as are most luxuries. It's a matter of . . . prestige. Of status."

"You're very forthright with us," Katy observed.

"I've been instructed to be. But now, let's proceed. There is much else for you to see."

That was an understatement. They lost track of time as one strangely long day followed another in this world of disorienting alienness and awesome power. In their moments of privacy—or at least what they chose to assume was privacy—they sought each other with even more than their usual eagerness, for at such times they could, together, create a private universe of the humanly familiar. Roark suspected he would have gone mad if he'd been alone in a world which held not a single accustomed reference point.

Then there came a day when Thrannis' air-car, returning to the Hov-Korth tower, slanted upward rather than descending toward its accustomed landing platform. "What's happening, Thrannis?" asked Roark as he watched the mists of low-lying clouds in the cabin's wraparound viewscreen. "Where are we going?"

"There." The Lokar pointed ahead and upward, toward a small landing flange that jutted from the cliff-wall of the tower. "Someone wants to see you."

"More Lokaron spooks," Roark muttered to Katy.

"Must be a better class of them, though." She indicated the flange. It was near the prestigious top of the tower.

Roark turned back to Thrannis. "Uh, is it going to be cold at this altitude?" It was summer in this hemisphere of Harath-Asor, and they were dressed accordingly.

"Don't worry about it."

They soon saw what Thrannis meant. The air-car touched down on the flange against the ruddy backdrop of Harath-Asor's setting sun, then moved slowly through a version of the Lokaron spaceships' atmosphere curtains, and came to rest in a kind of hangar-cum-reception area alongside another craft, essentially similar but bearing what they now recognized as the hallmarks of VIP-level luxury. Thrannis led them past unobtrusive security devices into hushed, softly lit corridors where only a few Lokaron moved. He motioned them through a door that slid aside for them.

They were at one end of what was unmistakably a conference room, with a long oval table surrounded by Lokaron-proportioned chairs. But it held only one occupant, silhouetted against the sunset outside the window at the far end of the room.

Katy, with more practice at recognizing individual Lokaron, spoke before Roark. "Svyatog! We thought you were still on Earth."

"So I was, until very recently. I've only just arrived, but I wanted to see you without delay." Svyatog sat down at the head of the table, and motioned them to do the same. They perched uncomfortably, despite the chairs' efforts to reconfigure themselves.

"How are things on Earth?" Roark ventured.

"Well enough. After much diplomatic procrastination, the American government representatives have finally agreed to pay the reparations we demanded for the New York incident. They also claim to be making every effort to apprehend the Eaglemen responsible, and we claim to believe them. This has defused the crisis, and all has been quiet at the Enclave. We have continued to keep the infiltrators there under unobtrusive surveillance, and while they are obviously engaged in communication with their contacts they have attempted no overt acts." The Lokar gave a dismissive gesture. "But what of you? Are you finding your time here interesting?"

"Interesting?" Roark echoed. He sought for words. "Yes, you might put it that way. It's been . . . "

"There's no describing it," Katy blurted. "Beyond what we owe you for sending us to safety, we owe you even more for letting us see all this."

"I am glad you feel that way, inasmuch as I am about to ask a favor of you."

"What?" The last of the sunset brought out reddish highlights as Katy gave her head a puzzled shake. "Svyatog, what can a couple of exiles like us possibly do for you?"

"Yeah," Roark agreed, "here on this planet where we're aliens, and the only members of our race at that."

"You misapprehend. What I want you to do isn't here on Harath-Asor, but on Earth. And it's only partially for me. The chief beneficiaries will be your own people, because what I intend—with your help—is to open up the future for them."

Roark and Katy exchanged a puzzled glance. Before they could respond, Svyatog resumed.

"From the beginning, we Harathon have recognized, on the intellectual level, that your world is more than merely a source of raw materials and folk art. But we've never really thought out the implications of that fact. Deep down, we've continued to think of you as primitives. This was, I suppose, understandable. We've had no other model for dealing with aliens, as the only non-Lokaron societies we've encountered have been prescientific and preindustrial." Svyatog must have noted their expressions, for he continued hastily. "No, don't be offended. I have come to the conclusion that this was a mistake. There is a qualitative difference between your civilization and those others, to which we were blinded by common alienness. You have the capacity to develop, in a relatively short time, into something more: a real trading partner for Hov-Korth and the other hovahon of Gev-Harath.

"Furthermore . . . " Svyatog paused as though preparing to voice distasteful conclusions. "Gev-Harath and the other mainstream gevahon are, in the long run, at a disadvantage in resisting the expansionism of Gev-Rogov. You might say we lack antibodies against that virus. We need allies. And, given Earth's weakness, you have even more reason than we to fear their . . . imperialism." This time the translator's pause suggested that Svyatog was awkwardly verbalizing an alien concept. "So you and I have a common interest: a strong Earth."

Roark found himself recalling what Katy had said to him the night of their reunion, explaining her willingness to work with the being who had now paralleled her thoughts so closely. He repeated an objection he'd voiced to her that night. "But can Earth become strong? I mean, with the universe already preempted by your race—"

"Not so." Svyatog touched the controls on the tabletop in front of his chair, and a holographic display appeared above the center of the table. It contained a myriad of tiny lights, filling a space which, Roark decided after a moment's thought, must represent a segment of a disc. Around the edges, the lights were white; but the circular region at the center was filled with all the shades of the spectrum, grouped very roughly by color although there were no sharply delineated boundaries between those groups.

"Shouldn't the density be thicker in bands, to represent the spiral arms?" Katy asked.

"That's a misconception. The density of stars is fairly constant throughout the galactic disc—the spiral arms hold only about five percent more stars per cubic parsec than the regions between them. What's denser in the spiral arms is the cosmic dust from which stars are formed. That's why they show up so clearly when viewing a galaxy from the outside: they're full of young supergiant stars that don't live long enough to wander away from their nurseries. But that's all beside the point. As you've gathered, this is a representation of the part of the galaxy in which our race is active. The colored lights are the stars within the control of the various gevahon." Svyatog manipulated another control, and a white light at one side of the varicolored swarm began to flash stroboscopically. "That is your sun. It lies on the very wave-front of our expansion, in the direction of the galactic core. So coreward of you there is an open frontier, into which you can spread along with Gev-Harath and the other three gevahon active on that frontier.

"Nor is the other direction, toward the galaxy's rim, as closed to you as it may appear. No gevah claims whole volumes of interstellar space—the very idea of such boundaries is too absurd for discussion. Only star systems are claimed, and those only by actual occupation or at least garrisoning. Interspersed among those systems are many others which no one has thought worth claiming, but which hold planets that could readily be terraformed—something we've never been inclined to do. If you were prepared to make the initial investment, you could reap a rich harvest of potential colony-worlds, your title to which no one would question."

Katy turned her eyes from the display and addressed the Lokar. "Why are you telling the two of us all this?"

The English echo of Svyatog's voice grew stern, and his words again echoed Katy's. "Before any of this can happen, you humans must set your own house in order. The regime that currently rules America has to go—your Eaglemen are right in this, if in nothing else. It has locked your country—and, through your country's dominance, the entire planet—into a state of arrested development. It is a parasitic entity, draining away your race's future in order to perpetuate its own meaningless power in an unending present."

Given his total agreement with every word the alien had said, Roark wondered why his ears were growing hot with resentment at those words. Precisely because it was an alien who said them, he admitted to himself. "Damn it," he said aloud, "you Lokaron haven't exactly helped! By doing business exclusively through the EFP, you've cemented its power. Everybody on Earth has to come to it hat in hand for access to your technology."

"True," Svyatog acknowledged. "We have followed our ingrained practice in dealing with primitives, using the most powerful local chieftain as our go-between. Thus we have enabled the regime to achieve its long-standing goal of keeping the rest of the planet stagnant so America could stagnate in competition-free safety. This must be rectified. To fulfill its potential, Earth must be unified, not under the hegemony of America—or of any other one power, which would be just as bad—but as a genuinely representative federation. America will continue to be the leader, at first. So America must be under the rule of people committed to bringing Earth into the modern galaxy, for unless pushed the majority will always choose safety over risk and serfdom over individual responsibility."

"You still haven't answered my question," Katy said stubbornly. "What's this grand design of yours got to do with us in particular?"

"The answer is simple: I want your help in bringing it about."

"How?"

"We have to start somewhere. We can't impose change on your country—we have to act through those of its own people who want change. That means the Eaglemen. I want you to contact them and solicit their aid."

"Svyatog," Roark began, then stopped. Where to begin? He tried again. "Look, first of all, the Eaglemen want nothing to do with Gev-Harath, or any Lokaron."

"This is why it would be counterproductive for us to approach them directly, even if we knew how. We need you two, especially Katy. Her admission that she is a former Eagleman was what made me decide to go ahead with this plan. Her inside knowledge of the organization makes it feasible."

"But when they learn it's your plan, they'll reject it out of hand!"

"It will be up to you to persuade them of what you've come to understand, that Gev-Harath is their natural ally. You must play on the other pillar of their belief: the need to overthrow the EFP and restore the old American constitutional system—which, while hardly as idyllic as they like to believe, at least allowed for fruitful pluralism. The prospect of our support for such a restoration will at last bring it into the realm of the possible. And I believe their xenophobia can be overcome. They are American nationalists first and foremost, and their hatred of us is merely an inevitable reaction to a perceived threat to America's integrity. Once that fear can be laid to rest—"

"Maybe. But for now, that xenophobia is still firmly in place. And it extends to the two of us, for working for you. Damn it, Svyatog, the very reason we're here is that you couldn't keep us inside our whole skins on Earth, where the Eaglemen, manipulated by Havelock, were gunning for us! Even if they don't shoot us on sight—which they will!—they have no reason to listen to us."

"We can return you to Earth quietly. Before they become aware of your presence, you will have to go to them, armed with evidence that Havelock is working for Gev-Rogov. That should suffice to disillusion them with their leader and make them willing to listen to new alternatives."

"What evidence?"

"We'll go into that later . . . if you agree to help me. I can't deny that there is an element of danger for you." Svyatog looked from one of them to the other, and all at once he seemed even taller and more alien than he was. "I also can't deny that I'm acting out of self-interest . . . or, to be accurate, the interest of Gev-Harath. But it shouldn't be necessary for me to hypocritically pretend otherwise. Our interests coincide, for we have the same enemies: Gev-Rogov, the EFP, and Havelock. And we are never likely to have a better chance of attaining our common objective. Do you agree?"

Roark's eyes met Katy's for a moment. She nodded. He turned to the alien. "Tell us about this evidence, Svyatog."

 

 

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