Unless memory failed after centuries. Or unless the past was as uncertain, as flickeringly quantum-variable, as everything else in the universe of physics.
Seated alone, Hanno winced, partly at recollection of a ;time when he sought advice from the electronic revenant of Cardinal Richelieu, partly at recalling how he and Svoboda ; had been together, then. “I don’t want any single companion,” he said to the machine. “Nor a synthetic personality. Give me … several ancient explorers. A meeting, a coun-can you do that?”
“Certainly. It is a nonstandard interaction, requiring creative preparation. One minute, please.” Sixty billion nanoseconds.
The first of the faces looking out was strong and serene, “I don’t quite know what to say,” Hanno began hesitantly, well-nigh timidly. “You’ve been … told about the situation here? Well, what do I need? What do you think I should do?”
“You should have taken more thought for your folk,” answered Fridtjof Nansen. The computer translated between them. “But I understand it is too late to change course again. Be patient.”
“Endure,” said Ernest Shackleton. Ice gleamed in his beard. “Never surrender.”
“Think of the others,” Nansen urged. “Yes, you lead, and so you must; but think about how it feels to them.”
“Share your vision,” said Marc Aurel Stein. “I died gladly because it was where I had wanted to go for sixty years. Help them want.”
“Ha, why are they sniveling?” roared Peter Preuchen. “My God, what an adventure! Bring me back to see when you get there, lad!”
“Give me your guidance,” Hanno entreated. “I’ve discovered I’m no Boethius, to console myself with philosophy. Maybe I have made a terrible mistake. Lend me your strength.”
“You’ll only find strength in yourself, sir,” declared Henry Stanley. “Not in spooks like us.”
“But you aren’t! You’re made out of what was real—”
“If something of what we did and were survives to this day, we should be proud, my friends,” said Nansen. “Come, let us put it back into service. Let us try to find good counsel.”
Willem Barents shivered. “For so strange a voyage, most likely to a lonely death? Commend your soul to God, Hanno. There is nothing else.”
. “No, we owe them more than that,” said Nansen. “They are human. As long as men and women fare outward, they will be human.”
25
MACANDAL SENT her glance slowly from one to the next of the six who sat around the table in the saloon with her. “I suppose you’ve guessed why I’ve asked you to come,” she said at length.
Most of them stayed unstirring. Svoboda grimaced. Wanderer, beside her, laid a hand on her thigh.
Macandal took a bottle and poured into a glass. The claret gurgled dusky rose; its pungency sweetened the air. She passed the bottle on. Glasses had been set out for everyone. “Let’s have a drink first,” she proposed.
Patulcius attempted a jest. “Are you taking a leaf from the early Persians? Remember? When they had an important decision to make, they discussed it once while sober and once while drunk.”
“Not the worst idea ever,” Macandal said. “Better than these modern drugs and neurostims.”
“If only because wine has tradition behind it,” Yukiko murmured. “It means, it is more than its mere self.”
“How much tradition is left in the world?” Aliyat asked bitterly.
“We carry it,” Wanderer said. “We are it.”
The bottle circulated. Macandal raised her goblet. ‘To the voyage,” she toasted.
After a moment: “Yes, drink, all of you. What this meeting is about is restoring something good.”
“If it has not been wholly destroyed,” Tu Shan grated, but he joined the rest in the small, pregnant ceremony.
“Okay,” Macandal said. “Now listen. Each of you knows I’ve been after him or her, arguing, wheedling, scolding, trying to wear down those walls of anger you’ve built around yourselves. Maybe some haven’t noticed it was in fact each of you. Tonight’s when we bring it out hi the open.”
Svoboda spoke stiffly. “What is there to talk about? Reconciliation with Hanno? We have no breach. Nobody has dreamed of mutiny. It’s impossible. A change of course back to Phaeacia is impossible too; we haven’t the antimatter. We’re making the best of things.”