Tau Zero

“We’ll be together for a number of years. Quite possibly for the rest of our lives.”

“It makes me wonder why you spent today with me, then.”

“You invited me.”

“After you gave me a call at my hotel. You must have checked with the crew registry to find where I was.”

Millesgarden vanished in swift-deepening darkness aft. Lights along the cha

“No relatives left. I’m only touring the fleshpots of Earth. Won’t be any where we are bound.”

Her sight lifted again, toward Jupiter this time, a steady tawny-white lamp. More stars were treading forth. She shivered and drew her cloak tight around her, against the autumnal air. “No,” she said mutedly. “Everything alien. And when we’ve hardly begun to map, to understand, that world yonder — our neighbor, our sister — to cross thirty-two light-years—”

“People are like that.”

“Why are you going, Carl?”

His shoulders lifted and dropped. “Restless, I suppose. And frankly, I made enemies in the Corps. Rubbed them the wrong way, or outdistanced them for promotion. I was at the point where I couldn’t advance further without playing office politics. Which I despise.” His glance met hers. Both lingered a moment. “You?”

She sighed. “Probably sheer romanticism. Ever since I was a child, I thought I must go to the stars, the way a prince in a fairy tale must go to Elf Land. At last, by insisting to my parents, I got them to let me enroll in the Academy.”

His smile held more warmth than usual. “And you made an outstanding record in the interplanetary service. They didn’t hesitate to make you first officer of your first extrasolar ship.”

Her hands fluttered in her lap. “No. Please. I’m not bad at my work. But it’s easy for a woman to rise fast in space. She’s in demand. And my job on Leonora Christine will be essentially executive. I’n have more to do with … well, human relations … than astronautics.”

He returned his vision forward. The boat was rounding the land, headed into Saltsjцn. Water traffic thickened. Hydrofoils whirred past. A cargo submarine made her stately way toward the Baltic. Overhead, air taxis flitted like fireflies. Central Stockholm was a many-colored unrestful fire and a thousand noises blent into one somehow harmonious growl.

“That brings me back to my question.” Reymont chuckled. “My counter-question, rather, since you were pressing in on me. Don’t think I haven’t enjoyed your company. I did, much, and if you’ll have di

She sat unspeaking.

“Your Swedish reserve,” he said after a while. “Appropriate to the rulers of mankind. I ought not to have intruded. Just give me the same right of privacy, will you?”

And presently: “Would you like to join me at di

“Yes,” she answered. “Thank you. I would.”

She rose to stand beside him, laying one hand on his arm. The thick muscles stirred beneath her fingers. “Don’t call us rulers,” she begged. “We aren’t. That’s what the whole idea was behind the Covenant. After the nuclear war … that close a brush with world death … something had to be done.”

“Uh-huh,” he grunted. “I’ve read an occasional history book myself. General disarmament; a world police force to maintain it; sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? Who can we trust with a monopoly of the planet killer weapons and unlimited powers of inspection and arrest? Why, a country big and modem enough to make peace-keeping a major industry; but not big enough to conquer anyone else or force its will on anyone without the support of a majority of nations; and reasonably well thought of by everyone. In short, Sweden.”

“You do understand, then,” she said happily.

“I do. Including the consequences. Power feeds on itself, not by conspiracy, but by logical necessity. The money the world pays, to underwrite the cost of the Control Authority, passes through here; therefore you become the richest country on Earth, with all that that implies. And the diplomatic center, goes without saying. And when every reactor, spaceship, laboratory is potentially dangerous and must be under the Authority, that means some Swede has a voice in everything that matters. And this leads to your being imitated, even by those who no longer like you. Ingrid, my friend, your people can’t help turning into new Romans.”

Her gladness drooped. “Don’t you like us, Carl?”

“As well as anybody, considering. You’ve been humane masters to date. Too humane, I’d say. In my own case, I ought to be grateful, since you allow me to be essentially a stateless person, which I think I prefer. No, you’ve not done badly.” He gestured toward the towers down which radiance cataracted, to right and left. “It won’t last, anyhow.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I’m only certain that nothing is forever. No matter how carefully you design a system, it will go bad and die.”

Reymont stopped to choose words. “In your case,” he said, “I believe the end may come from this very stability you take pride in. Has anything important changed, on Earth at least, since the late twentieth century? Is that a desirable state of affairs?

“I suppose,” he added, “that’s one reason for planting colonies in the galaxy, if we can. Against Ragnarok.”

Her fists clenched. Her face turned upward again. The night was now entire, but few stars could be seen through the veil of light over the city. Elsewhere — in Lapland, for instance, where her parents had a summer cottage — they would shine unmercifully sharp and many.

“I’m being a poor escort,” Reymont apologized. “Let’s get off these schoolboy profundities and discuss more interesting subjects. Like an apйritif.”

Her laugh was uncertain.

He managed to keep the talk inconsequential while he nosed into Strцmmen, docked the boat, and led her on foot across the bridge to Old Town. Beyond the royal palace they found themselves under softer illumination, walking down narrow streets between high golden-hued buildings that had stood much as they were for several hundred years. Tourist season was past; of the uncounted foreigners in the city, few had reason to visit this enclave; except for an occasional pedestrian or electrocyclist, Reymont and Lindgren were nearly alone.

“I shall miss this,” she said.

“It’s picturesque,” he conceded.

“More than that, Carl. It’s not just an outdoor museum. Real human beings live here. And the ones who were before them, they stay real too. In, oh, Birger Jarl’s Tower, the Riddarholm Church, the shields in the House of Nobles, the Golden Peace where Bellman drank and sang — It’s going to be lonely in space, Carl, so far from our dead.”

“Nevertheless you’re leaving.”

“Yes. Not easily. My mother who bore me, my father who took me by the hand and led me out to teach me constellations. Did he know what he was doing to me that night?” She drew a breath. “That’s partly why I got in touch with you. I had to escape from what I’m doing to them. If only for a single day.”

“You need a drink,” he said, “and here we are.”

The restaurant fronted on the Great Marketplace. Between the surrounding steep facades you could imagine how knights had clattered merrily across the paving stones. You did not remember how the gutters ran with blood and heads were stacked high during a certain winter week, for that was long past and men seldom dwell on the hurts that befell other men. Reymont conducted Lindgren to a table in a candlelit room which they had to themselves, and ordered akvavit with beer chasers.