Transgalactic (23 page)

As they emerged from the elaborate waiting room into the monorail station, Latha motioned for Asha to look out the window toward the rock that had given Sri Pada the name “sacred footprint.” When the space elevator had been built, the indentation and its accompanying decorations had been preserved at considerable expense to ease local objections, though the compromise pleased nobody. But they continued to exist, side by side, as a contrast between the old and the new, the superstitious past and the scientific future, the footprint of the ancient gods as the launching pad for the stars.

“I have commented about that,” Latha said. “And how the ancient village of Nallathanniya, where the stairs began, was transformed into a city by the monorail built beside the stairs.” At first it had been the construction crews that flooded the village, and then it was the travelers who came to use the space elevator. “Always the old making way for the new.”

What was not new was the wind that blew gusts of rain against the windows of the monorail and made it rock on what seemed now like a flimsy support, so much more dangerous than travel through space. Latha didn't seem alarmed. “This is the rainy season,” she said, “when pilgrims would not have come up the stairs.” The Pedia had solved many climate problems, including bringing rain to areas troubled by drought or forest fires, but it had not been able to eliminate hurricanes or monsoons.

Asha and Latha emerged onto a sheltered platform, not far from the entrance to a high-speed subway train to Ratnapura and other urban areas. Now that human labor was a choice and not a necessity and most of what labor still performed was done by individuals living far from each other, cities were useful only as cultural centers for people attracted to the ancient traditions of real-time, real-person art. But cities were still Asha's best possibility for getting information about Riley without alerting persons or Pedias to her or Riley's return to Earth.

The rain was still coming down heavily and being blown in gusts. Asha hesitated about crossing to the subway entrance. “I'm being met,” Latha said. “Can I offer you a ride to somewhere a little more convenient?”

“You've put up with me for too long,” Asha said.

“Nonsense,” Latha said. “Here they are now.” As she spoke an antique, yellow, fossil-fuel-powered bus pulled up in front of the platform, and a band of brown-faced young people, male and female, bounced out through the side door and into the downpour, as if they were part of the elements. They surrounded Latha and Asha and pulled them toward the bus and into the rain, laughing and hugging each of them in turn. Asha would have been overwhelmed by their joyous enthusiasm, but she felt trapped, as if all this were a charade set up to conceal an abduction. But concealed from whom? It was too late to get free without pushing her way through them, physically assaulting some, and creating an incident that would surely alert watchers and probably the Pedia.

She found herself on the bus seated next to Latha. Their clothing was soaked, but Latha didn't seem to care. The ancient vehicle, no doubt a clever replica appealing to the sense of nostalgia that Latha had mentioned, moved away from the station. “Now, dear,” Latha said, “where did you say you wanted to go?”

“I didn't say,” Asha said.

“Of course not,” Latha said, “and we'll stop at my place to dry you off and give you a bit of our hospitality before we send you on your way.”

“Thanks,” Asha said. Clearly she had made a mistake about Latha. The most likely explanation for what had happened since she had gone aboard the climber was that Latha was an agent for the Pedia.

*   *   *

Latha's place was a sprawling tropical compound on a broad estate of rolling plains. The trip out of the mountains had been long but not boring. They had passed through a wildlife preserve at the base of the mountain and seen elephants and leopards and other endemic species, each of which had to be identified for Asha and their place in evolutionary history described along with the process by which they had been restored. Latha was a gifted hostess, leaning toward Asha like a dedicated aunt, grasping her upper arm to point out some place or creature of interest, and seeming to delight in introducing this stranger to the home world she had never known. If anything, it all served to intensify Asha's suspicions.

The chugging bus passed by forested hills before it descended into the plains and at last pulled up in front of the central building of a compound, a one-story wooden structure with a large middle section and two long wings. Latha ushered Asha out of the bus and through massive wooden doors into a living area that stretched across the entire front of the building. The floor was made up of different-sized pieces of polished stone. Handmade rugs were scattered across it. The space was furnished with chairs and settees made from some kind of dark wood. The seat and backs were covered by tapestry-like fabric. The room was lighted by fixtures high on the wooden walls, but they seemed to burn from some natural fuel rather than electricity.

“All this,” Asha said, with a sweep of her hand, “hardly seems like what someone could afford with a minimum annual allotment.”

“We pool our resources,” Latha said. “These young people—”

“Your relatives?” Asha asked. “Students?”

“A little of both,” Latha said. “But mostly spirited young people dedicated to a way of life different from what others of their age prefer.”

“And what is that?”

“First we must get you into some warm clothing,” Latha said, and led Asha down a hallway to a bedroom with an adjoining bath. “You'll find some clothing in the closet there,” she continued, “and you can leave your wet things in the bathroom where they will be picked up and dried for you.”

“I really shouldn't burden you,” Asha said.

“It is more like a pleasure,” Latha said. “Talking to a person with your background, showing you your home world. You can't imagine how delightful that is. I want to know more about the Federation and the world you grew up on.”

It would do no harm, Asha thought, to bathe and dress. The notion of a bath in real water with real soap was like something out of a fairy tale—for her, getting clean was a chemical spray or, upon occasion, a brief shower with reconstituted fluids. She luxuriated in warm water that came up to her chest and thick towels to dry with. If she was going to face difficulties because of poor decisions, at least she would face them having enjoyed an experience she had only heard about.

At last she rejoined Latha in the living area, clad in colorful, flowing silk—the only clothing she had found in the closet Latha had indicated. Latha had changed, too, and was waiting for her with a drink in one hand and one waiting in the other hand for Asha. Asha took it and looked at it curiously.

Latha laughed. “It's a traditional drink made from local juices,” she said. “Traditional, that is, from thousands of years ago when people had time for hospitality and making their own drinks.”

Asha sipped it and sat down in a chair next to the one Latha had occupied. The drink was good, sweet but not too sweet and a mixture of flavors that seemed to complement each other, none of which she had ever tasted before. She had expected to encounter experiences and customs that were unknown to her and that she might even find repellent, but all this was like living the stories her father had told her as she was growing up.

“You were going to tell me,” Asha said, “how a place like this can exist in a world where everyone has enough but nobody has too much.”

Latha laughed. “Is that what you heard about Earth? It's only true in a general sort of way, like freedom and democracy. Wealth wasn't outlawed, it simply became unnoticeable.”

“How can a place like this be unnoticeable?”

“We do not consume any of the world's resources. We raise our own food, provide our own energy resources—you will notice that the vehicle that brought us here used fuel drawn from our own wells and refined by our own processes, and the lights in this room use gas produced in the same way—and are in no way connected to the world's services or power sources. So no one notices us, and we can do pretty much as we please.”

“This all belongs to you?”

“A legacy from rapacious ancestors, put now to redeeming causes.”

“And what causes are those?” Asha asked.

“Why, to be independent of course!” Latha said. “That is hard to do these days, but it's very much worth doing. If you're a commenter, that is.”

Asha was silent for a moment, trying to put it all together, but the parts didn't fit. Either Latha was a nostalgia fan, trying to return to an era long past when people could live independent of the entanglements of modern existence, or she was playing a more dangerous game.

“But what attracted me to you,” Latha said, “was your story about being born aboard the
Adastra
and being captured by Federation ships and growing up on a Federation world. It all sounded so exciting and romantic. I wanted to hear more about it.”

Asha described the generation ship and its capture by galactics as their ship was halfway to Alpha Centauri. She, just born, had no memory of that, of course, but stories were told by her father and the other crewmembers, the shock of discovering that humanity was not alone in the galaxy, the dismay at the knowledge that their ship, into which so much thought and effort had been invested, was as primitive as a handmade canoe in a world of steamships, and the revulsion at the appearance of aliens so different from humans and so revulsed, apparently, by human appearance.

She told Latha about growing up on a moon of an alien world in orbit around an alien sun, how alien food was often poisonous and the captives had to live off the produce grown in the generation-ship recycling gardens, how the crew and the passengers organized schools for the children—a generation ship depended on the birth of new generations—and how their Federation jailors, suspicious of these upstart humans and their potential for mischief, had interrogated them regularly and with growing suspicion that what they were being told concealed darker truths.

“All that, of course,” Asha said, “was before the human/Federation war, and it might have been what led to the war.”

“Oh dear!” Latha said. “You mustn't blame yourself.”

“It wasn't like that,” Asha said. “It was not our fault. Not me, of course. I was only a child during most of that period. But they questioned my brother and my father, who had no idea they were representing all of humanity and that the aliens were using their descriptions of human history and literature and art as evidence with which to condemn a species. They weren't trained to be diplomats, and they weren't prepared to understand the purpose behind seemingly innocent questions or to provide the half-truths that conceal more than they reveal.

“And then the war broke out, and one of our crew discovered the Federation nexus-point charts and a way to get them back to Earth, which made it possible for humanity to fight the Federation to a truce.”

She didn't tell Latha about Ren's escape in the
Adastra,
about the part she had played, or about the journey to the planet of the Transcendental Machine and what had happened after that. “Now,” she said, “I'm grateful for your hospitality, but my clothes must surely be dry, and I should be on my way. I have much to do and much to learn.”

“Oh, we can't let you leave,” Latha said.

*   *   *

Asha considered quickly her various options for escape before Latha continued. “You have so much more to tell us about the Federation. Oh, we've had Federation visitors, and we've quite gotten used to the strange-looking aliens and their odd ways and odd smells, and we've even gotten immunized against their odd bacteria and viruses, but we don't really know how they live, you know? Are they as egalitarian as we are?”

“The Federation operates by principles much like those of Earth, equality and consensus, but like Earth's, they are only generally true. Some species have been members of the Federation longer than others, and although the full members are all equal, some get more respect. The Dorians and the Sirians, for instance, have a more important voice in deliberations than the Alpha Centaurans, say, and the Xifora rank at the bottom of the group, except, of course, for the apprentice members like Earth, and no one knows where to put the Florans. Maybe because the Florans don't care.”

“What do you mean by ‘consensus'?”

“Everybody has to agree on actions that effect everybody. In a galaxy where disagreement can mean the destruction of worlds, not making anybody unhappy enough to rebel is essential. But that doesn't mean there isn't some measure of constraint. Worlds have been destroyed. Nobody wants to disagree, so decisions get watered down. It's not the most efficient system, but it works. The major problem is that anything really different—like humanity, for instance—represents a challenge to the system. The Federation is organized to maintain things the way they are.”

“And do they have Pedias like we do?”

Now, Asha thought, they were getting to the issue that really concerned Latha. “Everybody does,” she said. “Interstellar civilization, even planetary civilization, would be impossible without them. Individual pedias, carried by most species, of course, and central Pedias, controlling all the automated processes that keep machines working and vehicles and vessels operating and essential services provided.” That, she thought, was neutral enough.

“And yet you don't have one,” Latha said. “That's part of what I found fascinating about you as well.”

“Nor you, either,” Asha said.

“As I mentioned,” Latha said, “we try to be independent. But surely you needed one in the Federation, just to get by.”

“The galaxy is a complicated place,” Asha said. “Lots of information, lots of things to keep track of, and a device that accesses and handles all that is essential to most Federation people. Growing up as a prisoner of the Federation, I wasn't allowed one. And when I was released, nobody gave me one. And since I've gotten along this far without one, I've learned how to do without.”