“I think I understand. Partly for that reason I’m gonna be heading out soon. Out there.” He gestured skyward with his head. “Nothing to fear but adventure now, and they’re converting ships for human use at a great rate. Bute, Vulture, Min, and Chung have a new ship all nicely outfitted for their own forms. You know that transmutation was so complete that little sucker Vulture has all three of them pregnant now? That’s gonna be a hell of a Chanchukian spacefaring dynasty. The Alititian crowd is done modifying Kaotan and may well have the only water-breather freebooter ship in history. More and more freebooters and ships are coming out of the woodwork, and Chunhoifan and Bahakatan are so fancy in their modifications and have so much damned pull, they’re carving out the prime trade routes for themselves. Maria and Midi, they’re getting their own ship and are talking about an all-Matriyehan freebooter tribe. Talk of something scary, you think about that for a minute.”
Hawks chuckled. “China, of course, is overseeing the reactivation and work on Master System and the mountain complex. I know that. We are in touch. I understand her genius now, far more than I did before, and also her torment. The only way out for her, to keep from a still-long life of sexual slavery, is essentially to surrender her humanity. I hope her choice is the right one.”
“Well, maybe there’s some hope in between there, as well. I’m told that the multiple transmuter pass problem might be solvable. The limitation was real physics, not some Master System trick, but once it got to that point, the old computer figured it was a good place to stop. After all, can’t have those colonials ever thinking they can get back, right? Not that any want to, after all this time.”
“That may be another of the ironies of all this. She might have to make her choice in order to develop and solve that problem. Which reminds me, how are the Chows?”
Arnold Nagy sighed. “Well, Chow Dai is gonna have to hope for that breakthrough, as you know. Without the transmuter option they had to amputate both arms and rebuild some of the chest and insides. It was a near thing. She’s okay—the robot prosthetics are good—but the Janipurian form isn’t well suited to that kind of thing, what with the dual-purpose limbs. She’s basically got four legs and no hands. They haven’t fully decided yet, but they’re talking about going back to Janipur with the natives you held—and the kids, of course—so they can be in a more normal environment for them. They want some land, they want to farm. I think it can be arranged.”
Hawks nodded. “We owe them more than that. Chow Dai in particular. Who would have thought that at the last moment, in crisis, it would be that simple, illiterate girl who would solve the puzzle of the rings?”
Nagy nodded. “Yeah. And you will never know how close it was, too. I damned near got my head blown off!”
“And you? What of you?”
Nagy shrugged. “Well, Ikira discovered that being a goddess on Matriyeh was a pretty lonely life and not much to her tastes. I think we’ll be able to start a project there to raise the living standards without her. And she’s a half-breed like me, only she’s firmly programmed in that goddess role. We got to thinking, her and I, that with all this interstellar human travel coming into its own, it was about time to establish a nice trading and rest and relaxation joint out there in the center of the action. I’m uniquely qualified to be the only one who can really keep up with her, you know. Maybe we’ll get Warlock as chief of security. That would be something, wouldn’t it?”
Hawks had to laugh. “I can see you, in that outfit, hosting the wild and woolly of the spacelanes. The two of you will rival Master System in wealth and power in a few years!”
Nagy looked at him and frowned. “And you? What about you? You get at least one shot at the transmuter yet, except maybe for those ornamental cheekbones. Maybe more if they solve that transmuter problem.”
“Cloud Dancer and I have discussed the transmuter but we have not yet decided upon it. My time is past, Nagy. My destiny is fulfilled. I’m an old man now, writing his memoirs and waiting for his first grandchild.”
Nagy sat up. “Now, that’s bullshit and you know it! You’re stuck in autumn, old man, when things are turning brown and the earth is growing cold and there is only winter ahead. Look around you, man! It’s spring!”
“Your winter is past, Nagy, not mine. The others might well be different, too. I have relinquished my ring. In the many long years aboard Thunder only once did I try that interface with Star Eagle, never again. You and I know that there’s only one way to keep Master System honest, and that’s the virtual interface. Human and machine become one, then, now, and forever. Somehow I just can’t see that as an improvement. They should turn it off. Shut it down. Let us get back, for good or evil, on our natural track.”
Nagy nodded. “I heard your arguments before. But it ain’t gonna happen, and you and I know it. You can’t separate China from her toy, and you can’t just let things run wild again. The fact is, without some maintenance many of those worlds out there and many of the cultures here simply couldn’t exist. It went too far, Hawks. Without wiping out whole cultures and civilizations, there’s no way we can put anything back the way it was, and who’s to say we should? Master System wasn’t the disease, it was the cure. A drastic, nasty cure to be sure, but it was the only cure available for a terminal illness. A preemptive nuclear strike had actually been launched and the retaliation already ordered. The figures are clear. We had only one world then, and very limited space capability. That damned computer saved the human race, just like it was supposed to.”
“But at what cost, Nagy? At what cost?”
“On the personal level—great. But in the long term? I’m not so sure about the long-term cost. A thousand years later we all still lived. There are no signs of colonial worlds out there that have died out. Not one. And the system could still produce people like you and China and Cloud Dancer and Raven and all the rest. You got so fixated on Raven’s death you forgot his message. We had a system that worked, all right, but at the cost of human values—honor, morality, courage of spirit, art, beauty. Not just the big things but the little ones. The magic in a child’s laughter, or within a raindrop on a leaf. But they weren’t really lost, not in the individual. Not even in one as jaded as Raven. That’s what the Vals saw, in each individual, as they read the mindprints and thoughts and memories and sensations and analyzed them. Deep down, no matter what the form, no matter what we breathed or what color was our sky, no matter where our home was or what gods we worshipped, we never lost that. The Vals knew, and they compared, and they caught a bit of it themselves. That was the true enemy, Hawks, that Master System couldn’t stamp out. That was the enemy that really did it in.”
Hawks sighed. “Maybe you’re right. The fact is, Nagy, we’re at another crossroads. With freedom in space, with contact and perhaps trade or at least an exchange of history and knowledge between the colonials, there could be something brand new out there—provided the new masters of this race don’t take to rationing and controlling spaceships once again. You—and your more mechanical brethren—are a new race, a new factor. You can dominate, or be dominated, or you can be the cops on the beat, the middlemen between the rulers and the subjects who keep all sides honest. We are an old race, Nagy, but young as the universe goes. Now we stand once more, as our ancestors did back in that mountain complex, faced with a possible new spring for our people or an even more devastating winter. Perhaps that is what I fear most. Perhaps I am afraid of knowing the road we will take.”
Nagy shook his head from side to side. “Maybe you should remember the Thunder. Lots of people from very different backgrounds who were willing to sacrifice their forms, their cultures, even their lives for a goal that was so unselfish that many who paid the biggest price got no reward and are trapped as beings they never wished to be. A floating colonial mix, too. Not just of the colonial types they were forced to become but the varying races of the freebooter ships.”
“I think often of the Thunder” Hawks replied. “In many ways it is the ideal that humans have searched for. Cloud Dancer once disliked Raven simply because he was a Crow. How absurd that distinction seems now! Humans have historically distrusted and disliked one another to the point of murder and war over such minor differences as religion, color, language, and the like. That’s one rationale Master System had for keeping each colonial world a homogenous race and culture. Yet my children could never truly comprehend why a Crow or a Sioux or a Cheyenne—or a Janipurian or a Chanchukian or even an Alititian—should be judged in any way but by what kind of people they are. But such things have always worked on a small scale, Nagy, particularly when we are crisis-driven or bound together by mutual self-interest, but never in the mass. That is our tragedy. Never in the mass.”
Arnold Nagy shrugged. “Well, we gave everyone a tomorrow, and that’s something. Maybe the Thunder is atypical, but it stands as an example of what good people can do and should strive for,” he said. “For me, after years cooped up in that fancy mausoleum out there waiting out the exploits of the legends I helped assemble, every day’s a crossroads and every path is new. You don’t just lie out here and stare at the stars, Hawks! You’ll just get rain in your face. You reach out and you grab them sons of bitches and you live!” He paused a moment. “And you can start by coming over here and sampling some of the most amazing bourbon that I have ever discovered. One of those little things, I admit, but proof positive there are many things of wonder out there to be discovered.”
Hawks got up and went over to where Nagy’s packs lay and waited while the man withdrew a flask and passed it to him. The Hyiakutt took it and drank deeply, then froze, like a living statue, for what seemed like several minutes. Then, slowly, a smile crept over his craggy, tattooed face and he looked at the flask as a child might regard a favorite new toy.
“Well,” said Hawks at last. “I suppose it’s a start…”
About The Author
Jack L. Chalker was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on December 17, 1944, but was raised and has spent most of his life in Baltimore, Maryland. He learned to read almost from the moment of entering school, and by working odd jobs amassed a large book collection by the time he was in junior high school, a collection now too large for containment in his quarters. Science fiction, history, and geography, all fascinated him early on, interests that continue.
Chalker joined the Washington Science Fiction Association in 1958 and began publishing an amateur SF journal, Mirage, in 1960. After high school he decided to be a trial lawyer, but money problems and the lack of a firm caused him to switch to teaching. He holds bachelor degrees in history and English, and an M.L.A. from Johns Hopkins University. He taught history and geography in the Baltimore public schools between 1966 and 1978 and now makes his living as a freelance writer. Additionally, out of the amateur journals he founded a publishing house, The Mirage Press, Ltd., devoted to nonfiction and bibliographic works on science fiction and fantasy. This company has produced more than twenty books in the last nine years. His hobbies include esoteric audio, travel, working science-fiction convention committees, and guest lecturing on SF to institutions such as the Smithsonian. He is an active conservationist and National Parks supporter, and he has an intense love of ferryboats, with the avowed goal of riding every ferry in the world. In 1978 he was married to Eva Whitley on an ancient ferryboat in midriver. They live in the Catoctin Mountain region of western Maryland with their son, David.