“You appreciate, I imagine, where that leaves the Federation! When imitation is carried to the point of identity . . . ” Federation Councilman Mavig shook his head once more, concluded, “It is utterly absurd, in direct contradiction to everything we have understood to date! You’ve regarded yourselves as human beings, and believed that your place was among us. And we can only agree.”
Attitudes
It was now six of their hours since the Federation escort ships had signaled that they had completed their assignment and were turning back. Soon, Azard told himself, it would be safe to act . . . to take the final steps in the great gamble which had seemed so dangerous and had been so necessary. Without the Malatlo Attitude, it would have been impossible. Malatlo had helped him in more ways than one.
He stared from the back of the big control compartment at the three Federation humans. They were turned away, intent on various instruments, as the giant cargo carrier made its unhurried approach to the planet. Sashien had said he would begin landing operations in an hour. It would seem unnatural if Azard wasn’t with them to observe the process in the screens. Therefore the arrangements he had to make must be made now.
He turned, left the room silently. They mightn’t miss him. If they did, it wouldn’t matter. He’d established on the voyage out from the Hub that he was constantly preoccupied with the condition and security of the immeasurably precious cargo destiny had placed in his care. As in all other matters, they did nothing to interfere with him in this.
He stepped into a transfer drop and emerged five levels below in a dully gleaming passage studded by many doors. This ship was huge, greater than anything he could have imagined was possible before he came to the Hub. A large part of it contained the layered multitudes of artificially grown inert human bodies, each of which presently would be imprinted with a mature eld and thus come to conscious, intelligent life. A gift to lost Malatlo from the Federation of the Hub. Gifts, too, were the endless thousands of tools, machines, and instruments stored in shrink-containers elsewhere on the ship; the supplies and means of immediate colonial life. The Federation was rich and generous. And it had respected, if it did not share generally, the Malatlo Attitude. It respected Azard and his mission . . . the mission to let Malatlo come into renewed existence on the world which now lay ahead.
Azard hurried down the echoing passages to the sealed ship area to which, by agreement, he alone had the means of entry. He hadn’t taken it for granted that the agreement would be kept. His responsibilities were far too great to permit himself the weakness of trust. Supposedly the two men and the woman in the control compartment were the only Federation humans on the ship. Yet in this vast vessel one couldn’t be certain of it; so, in the section which was his greatest concern, he had set up many concealed traps and warnings. If anyone entered there, he surely must leave some indication for Azard to read. So far there had been no indications.
He opened a massive compartment lock, went through and sealed it behind him. He checked the hidden warning devices meticulously. They had registered no intrusion. He went down another level, opened a second lock.
This one he left open. In the room beyond were the culture cases. Eight of them. Two contained, between them, in the energies flowing through their microscopically honeycombed linings, over half a billion elds—over half a billion personalities, identities, selves. Azard was not trained in the eld sciences, and had been given no information about the forces which maintained and restricted the elds in the cases. But he knew they were there.
He stood, head half turned sideways, eyes partly closed, in an attitude of listening. Nothing detectable, he thought. Nothing that possibly could be detected here while the cases remained shut, by instruments of any kind, or even by sensitivities such as his own. He bent forward, went through the complicated series of manipulations which alone could open a culture case. The thick lid of the one he was handling presently lifted back, revealing the instruments on its underside. Azard didn’t touch those. He waited. A moment passed; then, gradually, he grew aware of the confined personalities.
It was like the rising hum of an agitated cloud of tiny swarming creatures. His ears didn’t hear it, but his mind did. They were awake, conscious, greedy—terribly greedy, terribly driven to move, sense, live again. He wondered whether Federation humans would be able to hear them as he did, and, if they could, whether they would understand what they heard.
Not long, he told the elds. Not long! But the hum of their urge to regain the trappings of life didn’t abate.
He closed the case, then checked the security devices on all eight. There were no signs of attempted tampering. The last six cases did not contain elds but something almost as valuable. The Federation humans didn’t know about that. At least, Azard could be nearly certain they didn’t know.
He left the sealed ship compartment. It no longer mattered, he told himself, whether or not he had avoided suspicion entirely. The gamble had succeeded this far, was close to complete success. His three ship companions in the control room soon would be dead. Then the ship and everything on it would be in his hands.
He went off to complete his arrangements.
Sashien, the engineer, had brought the ship down on the planet’s nightside, to the area suggested by Hub colonization specialists as being one where all conditions favored Malatlo’s new beginning. The giant vehicle settled so smoothly that Azard didn’t realize the landing had been completed until Sashien began shutting down the engines.
“And now,” Odun said presently to Azard, “let’s go out and have a firsthand look at your world.”
Azard hesitated. He didn’t want to be away from the ship, even for a few of their hours, while one of the Federation humans stayed on it. But it turned out then that they were all going . . . Odun, Sashien and the woman Griliom Tantrey who represented the project which had mass-produced and mass-conditioned the stored zombie bodies for Malatlo. A small atmosphere cruiser lifted from the cargo ship’s flank. Thirty minutes later they were floating in sunshine.
It was a world of pleasing appearance, verdant and varied, with drifting clouds and rolling oceans. They flew over great animal herds in the plains, skimmed the edges of towering mountains. Finally they turned back into the night.
“What’s that?” Azard asked, indicating a great glowing yellow patch on the dark ocean surface below and to their left.
Sashien turned the cruiser in that direction.
“A sea creature which eventually should become a valuable source of food and chemicals,” said Odun. He’d been involved in the study of the records of this world and its recommendation for the Malatlo revival. “Individually it’s tiny. But at various seasons it gathers in masses to spawn.”
Sashien checked a reading on the screen, said, “That patch covers more than forty square miles. That’s quite a mass!”
They flew across the blanket of living fire on the sea surface. Azard said, “This is a rich planet. The Federation is being very generous . . . ”
“Not too generous, really,” said Odun. “This is a world which was surveyed and earmarked for possible settlement a long while ago. But it’s so very far from the Hub that it’s quite possible it never would have been put to any use. There’s no shortage of habitable planets much closer to us.” He added, “Its remoteness from the Federation and from any civilization of which we know is, of course, one of the reasons this world was chosen for Malatlo.”
“It is still an act of great generosity,” said Azard.
“Well, you see,” Odun explained, “there are many more of us in the Federation than Malatlo believed who cared for it and its ideals.”
Griliom Tantrey nodded. “We loved Malatlo,” she said. “That’s why we three are here. . . . ”
Malatlo. The Malatlo Attitude.
Turn back something like two centuries from the night the giant cargo carrier came down to an untouched world.
The Federation of the Hub had been forged at last. It was forged in blood and fire and fury, but that was over now. For the first time in many human generations no Cluster Wars were being fought. And a great many people everywhere had begun to look back with shock and something like growing incredulity on the destruction and violence and cruelties of the immediate past. They wanted no more of that. None whatever.
But, of course, the forming of the Federation did not end violence and cruelties. It did establish a working society and one with a good deal of promise in it, but it was not a perfect society and probably never would be perfect. And when these people realized they couldn’t change that, they simply wanted no more to do with the Federation either.