Hestia

Chapter 1

The shuttle was visible through the rain-spattered glass, an alien shape in New Hope, towering sleek and silver among brown, unpainted buildings. It rested here only briefly: Adam Jones was in orbit about the world, a few days' interlude in her star-to-star voyaging, and the shuttle belonged to her, and to another existence, an alien dream in Hestia's sole brown-hued city.

Rain was the prime reality on Hestia: mist hazed distances and blurred the edges of middle-ground objects; rain pooled in the muddy streets and dripped and sweated from decaying buildings; gray monotones of cloud and brown of earth and flood persisted, while the colony died.

In the streets a thin shout went up. A group of revelers snaked by, arms linked, weaving and slipping in the mud, ignoring the drizzle. It was festival; a ship was in port. They paused, lifted a bottle in drunken salute, shouted something and wove away, linked, drab brown-clad folk quickly lost in the rain-haze and the maze of their ramshackle buildings.

Sam Merritt let the homespun curtain fall across the depressing sight and paced back to his chair, where papers were scattered on the scarred table. This unpainted room with the creaking wooden flooring was all that Hestia afforded of governmental splendor, New Hope's official residence, its best hospitality; and Merritt cast a regretful glance at his baggage still sitting unpacked, a forlorn cluster of black cases in the center of the floor.

A door opened and banged shut downstairs; footsteps creaked heavily up the treads. Merritt let himself down onto the hard chair by the table and leaned against the edge, gave a casual glance as the door opened and Don Hathaway slouched in, rain-damp and grim. Hathaway brushed droplets from his jacket and wiped his hair back, sank down on a corner of the nearer bed, shoulders sagging. He was older than Merritt's twenty-eight years, gray-templed. His face was growing heavy and habitually sullen, and the lines had deepened since their landing.

"Been out in the town," Hathaway said.

Merritt nodded. That bleak look did not invite comment.

"Sam," Hathaway said, "when we touched down and had a look about, I kept telling myself it had to be better somewhere… in town, out-country, somewhere. But the governor's briefing this morning—" He gestured loosely at the table, the scattered papers. "It's finished, Sam."

"What do you mean?"

"I talked to Al a few minutes ago, out in the town. And when that shuttle lifts, we're going to be on her."

Merritt looked at him, swallowed, shook his head: no refusal, but an echo of Hathaway's despair. His heart was beating hard. "Seven years of traveling to get here, Don—for turning around again—"

"And maybe we'll live to see home again." Hathaway wiped at his graying hair and rose, walked to the bedside table where a bottle sat, gathered up the dirty glasses with it and brought them to the big table, set them down and poured. He sat down then and pushed one across to Merritt. "Been out in the town. Seen it. Seen enough, Sam. Mud and farmers and things falling apart. And the mentality of these people—look at this place. Falling down, and not a hand turned to clean it, let alone fix it. Saw a man sitting out there in the rain, just sitting, drunk and staring at the water. Saw machinery patched with wooden parts, to work by hand. Windows patched with wood and paper. A boy tried to knife one of the crew last night, did you hear that?"

"Drunk, probably."

"Tried to rob him."

"These people begged for help fifty years ago, Don. They're destitute. Is it their fault?"

"Well, it's no fault of ours, either. We don't have to spend a year of our lives paying for it."

"The government is paying us plenty. Think of that. Add that up, what it'll mean to us."

"The agreement said—" Hathaway jabbed a finger at his palm "—that we were to come out here and look over the situation first-hand, to see if we could work out a system to control the floods… or to see if the world has the resources left to handle the problem at all. If it has the resources left. I've made my determination on that score. If you agree and go along—"

"Pull out without even looking at the upper valley? Don, we owe them at least that much."

"The ship's calling the shuttle up and she won't wait. You know what's involved, to throw a starship off-schedule."

"So for the sake of a year's wait on the next ship, you're going to throw this colony and a good slice of our own lives—"

"Sam, Sam, if I thought it would do any possible good. I'd go up there and look at that valley til the sun froze. But listen: listen to me. Even the original survey said this valley wasn't right for permanent settlement. And what did these people do? They ignored that instruction and built homes here. It's their own stupid choice. Another point: equipment. It's beyond recovery, flooded out, lost, cannibalized, broken, whatever. Our contract runs five years on-world at most. What could we do here in that time? Nothing. Nothing that could make any difference. They'd be needing other engineers to replace us and that could take decades, while all we've done goes sliding into the mud and bureaucrats dawdle. Hestia isn't going to live through another long wait. No. Someone's got to make the decision and get these people off this world or out of that valley, and that's not our field. I say we recommend removal, emergency basis, and leave nothing in the hands of the bureaucrats. So we take our million for riding out here to look; and we split it and go to the next prosperous world and retire. It's best, even for the Hestians. No need to be ashamed of that. It's crueler the other way."

Merritt shook his head, looked at the room, at Hathaway. "They'll not go easy. A year, one year… just the effort, even a useless one… don't you think they'd accept the decision to abandon the colony a lot more readily if they knew we'd seen the situation ourselves, if they knew we'd tried?"

"Sam, I'm forty years old. By the time I get somewhere else I'll be closer to fifty. I came out here maybe to settle down and practice my profession; but it's hopeless. There's nothing here. I'm getting out of this now, while it's quiet, before these drunken farmers have the chance to realize what the score is. Selfish—maybe. But so far as I'm concerned I've fulfilled that contract and I've nothing to be ashamed of. I came, where most wouldn't; and I took the chance and I've seen what I want to see, and all I want to see, ever. I'm not going to waste the rest of my life on this."

"Does Al…" Merritt asked finally, "does Al feel the same way?"

"Yes. Look, you'll get somewhere worth living for when you're thirty-six, thirty-seven, something like that. You'll have time to start over and enjoy that half million. Right now maybe you've got leisure for mistakes, or think you have. Don't think I don't understand how you feel. I was seven years younger when I started out on this crazy project—but seven years more will change your perspective plenty. You owe yourself better than Hestia has to give."

"Give it a year."

Hathaway frowned and looked at the floor and up again. "I've been too long on Adam Jones to want to change ships for so little advantage to anyone. All right, I'll admit it: I want the comfort of people I know around me. I want my friends. I want the place I'm used to. I gave Hestia most of my young life. I'm not going to throw the rest of it away on a lost cause. I'm going out on the ship that brought us."

"Isn't it maybe something you decided… even before you saw the world?"

"Sam—I resent that."

"Isn't it the truth, after all? Now you've talked Al into agreeing with you. You'll get him to sign that removal, and all you need is me."

"Look, every year we put these people off with false hopes more of them are going to die in the long run. That's no kindness. You know if we don't stay, if we've left a marker aloft with that order, these folk will be taken out with the next ship; and that's the best thing we could do for them."

"The colonists won't go. They'll fight at having it done this way. They've proven that. Adam Jones tried to take them off once before; other ships have likely tried. They won't. You and Al and I, we could prove to them it's best."

"We can prove it by leaving. They'll fold, when they're facing reality, when they have to realize there's going to be no help from Earth. And so what if they're willing to fight over the question? Does that give us equipment or help us stop the rain?"

"It's not right."

"It's not as if the whole colonial program depended on Hestia any longer. They—"

"Aren't important."

"Sam, they were supposed to have gone from phase one to industry fifty years ago, but they're going steadily downhill. They're without machines or power. Most of the last generation hasn't learned to read."

"So we take them off Hestia and drop them into a culture they can't hope to understand."

"Or let them starve here. Sam, they knew, they knew this was coming. They knew from the start the valley would flood whenever the weather rolled around to one of its long wet cycles; they were to use the valley and then move out of it; but no, they didn't believe geosurvey; they've been sitting here a hundred years absorbing what they were given in the way of aid; and now they want us to build them their dams so they can go on sitting and vegetating."

"The floods got them before they had a chance. What could they do once they'd lost their machines and their momentum? They've survived. They've done that for themselves."

"Don't tell me they've tried. Look at New Hope. This rotting mansion is the only building in all the town that was really built as a residence, and it was the old colony dormitory. The rest of the buildings were all warehouses—or are to this day; and not a building in the whole town is younger than a hundred years. They haven't touched this place, they haven't done anything or built anything together since the day they were founded. They chose their little plots of land upriver, gave up any concern for government or for the colony's future. They just let all cooperative projects go until it was just too late.

They don't even have electricity, for pity's sake. Now the farmland's gone, silted into the bay so they can't use that either; and they're breeding insects and disease out there in the summers in that lagoon. They die of diseases nowhere else has heard of. Adam Jones will put us all through decontamination or risk carrying plague from here to Pele."

"With drainage, dams, power production—"

"Ah, Sam, they'll do that when they fly unaided. No. I've ordered my baggage back to the ship and so has Al. Want yours moved with it—or do you want to go it alone?"

Merritt stared elsewhere, at the windows, at the steady drip of rain. Thin shouts drifted up from outside.

"That's how it is," said Hathaway. "If you won't sign the removal, it won't go through; we'll lose the money. Al—gets his. His contract is prepaid. All you can do is hold me from mine. From any future. From all I have left. You want to do that?"

Merritt shook his head. "If you and Al are going, there's no arguing, is there? If you'll go without the money—there's no way. All right. I'll sign your paper."

"Crew's going to assist. They'll carry in some meaningless crates, get our luggage out again. When people here find out—"

The downstairs door opened and closed. Hathaway put himself on his feet. Merritt did likewise, went to the window and looked out anxiously; there was no one. Single footsteps sounded on the board stairs, light and quick, and reached the door.

It opened. Lilith Courtenay slipped inside with a lithe move and shut it quickly—silver-suited and glistening with rain, a glimpse of elsewhere in the drab room. She shook back her hood, looked about with a grimace and a look of disbelief. Adam Jones was stitched on her sleeve, and the emblems of worlds and stars years removed from Hestia: crew, and disdainful of the worlds the patches signified, a breed apart from groundlings.

"I wouldn't have expected you," Merritt said. His pulse was still racing from a moment's guilty fright. And suddenly he was embarrassed, ashamed to be found here, by her, in this shabbiness. She shrugged her silver shoulders.

"Why, could we stay apart from carnival, love? All the drunken farmers? Don't you hear them in the streets? All New Hope's at the port celebrating, and so are we." Her face went sober. "Al told me the news. You're recovering your sense."

"News travels too fast. Who else knows?"

"I had it from Al. He's aboard."

"I'd better stray out in that direction too," said Hathaway. "Sam you wait a bit and then you take a casual walk and head for the field too. No baggage. We'll get it if we can. If they get onto us—it could be ugly."

"I'd think so," Merritt agreed, and watched sourly as Hathaway left.

Lilith Courtenay shrugged, hands on hips, walked round the table to put her hand on Merrill's arm. She looked up, pressed his elbow. "Sam, I'm glad, I'm glad you've come to your senses, even if it took you seven long years to do it Didn't we always tell you what you'd find on Hestia? We tried to warn you."

"Don's found the excuse he was looking for, at least."

Her dark eyes went troubled. "But you agree with him. You understand how it is here. You are going to leave."

"I suppose I am."

"You don't understand these people. They wouldn't be grateful if you tried and failed. They'd likely turn on you and kill you. They're like that. And some of us would miss you if you stayed behind. I would. I would. We've been together for seven years."

"No ties, Lil, you always said it."

"It'll be fourteen years before I see Hestia again. If you'd stayed out that five-year contract and gone elsewhere, I'd miss you that round and we'd be near fifty before we had a chance of meeting again. You were a transient. I'm crew. We stay to our own. But that could change. If you were family—"

"That's all right for you, Lil, but I'm not sure it's right for me. You were born to the ship, four or five generations of that kind of life. I'm different. I'm Earthborn."

She laughed soundlessly, a crinkling of the eyes. "Well, part of me is Adam; but my mother scattered her affections from Sol to Centauri and back again, and I've never been curious enough to backcount and know. So maybe we have Earth in common, who knows? Would you trade your life for Hestia?"

"I can't think of it clearly. I'm being pushed. I can't make you any promises."

"Can't you? But I don't think I ever asked for any." She gestured toward the windows. "It's a celebration tonight, the end of festival. Adam's people are out there, performing another of our many services—seeing that gene pools don't go inbred, you know. And nine months from now there'll be new Hestians, cruel as it is. Carnival is every year for a colonist, years between for us; but this time I've no interest in it. I want you back. You know I wanted your children before we had to split up. I really did. I couldn't imagine letting my first be someone else's. You wouldn't have it. Now—it's different, it's going to be different."

"You could always have chosen to stay with me on Hestia. I waited for that."

She gave a palpable shudder, shook her head. "Some things are too much to ask."

"Poor gypsy. You don't know what it is to call any place home."

"Adam is home. Come back to it. We don't love groundlings and we don't love passengers. Come back. Stay. It can be different now."

He nodded slowly. "All right. All right, Lil. You've won. I'm coming. Get out of here, get yourself back to the port. I think it's better you go first and get aboard. It'll be dark in a while. I'll take a walk in that direction toward dusk."

"No. Come now."

"We'd attract attention. Better separately."

"I'm afraid, Sam. I'm afraid of these people."

"Then be careful; and I'll be." He touched her face, kissed her with the casual affection of long acquaintance— it was different; the touch lingered; and guilt and wanting were mixed in him, a knot in his stomach. He took her by the arm and turned her for the door. "Go on. Go on, get out of here. The longer you stay, the longer it takes us both getting to the ship. I'll be after you when I know you've had time to get there."

It was raining again, pelting down in torrents as Hestia's sun slipped from gray day to murky evening. Merritt drew back the curtain and checked the street, found it vacant, nothing but trampled clay and rain-pocked puddles. There was no sound but the fall of water.

He put on his jacket and zipped it up to the chin, stuffed the pockets with personal articles he most treasured, checked the luggage for any item he would miss, and closed it, hoping that the crew would manage to get it aboard all the same, and in a different mind, inclined to beg them not to try, not to risk any hurt to local folk or crew in an argument. He had enough weight on him without that.

The downstairs door slammed open. Steps thundered up, in multitude. Crew, he thought, anxious for having delayed too long; and then the door opened, and he knew otherwise.

Hestians. Half a dozen of them, brown-clad and bearing the armband of the local police.

"Were you going somewhere, Mr. Merrill?"

Merritt stood still, remembered his hand in his pocket and took it out very slowly. He had no weapon. They had sidearms, and truncheons.

"Something I can do for you?" he asked them, hoping that they would still have some reluctance to offend life-giving Mother Earth.

"Governor wants you," said the officer in charge. "Now."

Merritt considered the proposition, the lot of them, the scant chance of dashing through armed police and through a hostile town. There would be crew still outside, the chance of a riot. He reckoned Lilith Courtenay at the ship, waiting; and that waiting would grow impatient, would produce inquiries and action. He trusted so, desperately.

He shrugged, showed empty hands, and went with them.

Governor Lee was a stout, balding man of gentle manner; a man perpetually worried, seeming distracted… no figure to inspire fear. Merritt had met with him, reckoned him and catalogued him; and those calculations were in shambles. Lee stared him up and down with that same worried air while the police lined the room and guarded the door and Merritt felt very much alone in that moment.

Lee had no reputation, no authority. The briefing Adam had given indicated twenty years of idleness, twenty years of starship contacts, meetings with disdain on the part of crew and abject anxiety on the part of Lee. There were, in fact, few people accessible for Lee to govern, and he relied desperately on the starship supplies and Earth's charity. But of a sudden the man moved, when all had assured him otherwise, and that fact alone removed any certainty from the situation. Merritt folded his hands in front of him and made no protests; none seemed profitable. "Sit down, sit down," Lee said.

Merritt did so, stared at Lee across the width of the desk, met those wrinkle-shrouded eyes and tried not to break that contact.

"You were running, Mr. Merritt." Merritt said nothing.

"Well," said Lee, "I saw it in your faces the day you landed; and this afternoon—I knew I hadn't won them, but I'd hoped I'd won you, Mr. Merritt."

"I was going out to see the town. That's all. Your police—"

"Please, Mr. Merritt. You were leaving. We know where the others are. A man is dead, finding that out. It's much easier if we're honest with each other."

"We thought—" The words came out with difficulty. "We thought if we drew back we could talk with you, that you'd believe us then and move out. Governor, you admitted yourself that there's no equipment. Nothing. What do you expect of us?"

"Advice, Mr. Merritt. Professional skill. You tell us how and we do the work."

"A colony of five thousand, with no machinery and no manpower to spare. And if you make a mistake, Governor, you'll not get anything. Take my professional advice. Get out of the valley. Better yet, get off Hestia while you can."

"We've asked for weapons, for metal for machinery, and fuel to run it; we've asked for sensors like the equipment you have so we can protect ourselves in the highlands. But we don't get these things. We can't handle them; that's the word we get. It would take the diversion of a starship for several years to support that kind of expedition, and five thousand human lives aren't worth that kind of money, are they? We've never had a chance, and they won't jeopardize the finances of the bureau to save Hestia. No, it all comes down to budget. It always does. You prolong your agony, Mr. Merritt. That's all your help does."

"Sir—"

The governor's tired eyes focused on his, held. "You three cared enough to come. What happened? Wasn't the money enough to buy you out?"

"Why won't you give up this colony? Why won't you listen?"

"Can't another groundling understand, Mr. Merritt? This is home. It's that simple. And someday the rains will stop again. But it's precious little we have to hold to, with our fields underwater during both growing seasons and no water in winters and fevers in summer."

"You don't have to leave Hestia. The highlands hold what you need. If you'd listened to survey—"

"The highlands also have other inhabitants, Mr. Merritt."

Merritt folded his arms and stared at the floor and elsewhere.

"You don't believe."

Merritt shrugged, met Lee's eyes coldly. "Men have always seen ghosts. Maybe they follow us. No, sir. I've heard about them. But survey turned up nothing."

"They're real, Mr. Merritt. And there are more of them than of us. They leave their tracks around our farms, they kill our livestock, sometimes break fences or set fires. Sometimes they kill, when we're careless. They're real; and you won't give us weapons and you won't give us sensors. So we stay in the valley. They've given that over to us, and we'll go on holding it while the human race lasts on Hestia. You three were our last real hope; and since you've decided as you have—what do we have left?"

"I'm sorry, sir. But I don't see there's a choice."

"I don't see I have one either. No. No, Mr. Merritt. For once the opportunity belongs to us. I have you here in the town, and I don't think Adam Jones is going to do anything about it. If they won't throw a starship off schedule to save five thousand lives, I don't think they'll do it for one man, do you? You're a victim of the same kind of logic as we are, Mr. Merritt. I'm very sorry. I certainly don't want to do you any harm, but consider my motives. Five thousand lives against the comfort of one: again the logic of numbers."

"Adam Jones will leave a marker, and then where will you be? No starship will touch here."

"But we'll have our engineer."

"I can't work alone, sir."

"I wish they hadn't deserted you; I wish they'd been willing to stay; I wish this weren't necessary at all. But that marker beacon might be left whether or not we let you go, mightn't it? And we'd have nothing. We'd die here. We're sorry, Mr. Merritt. The move is made. There's no going back from it."

Merritt let go a long breath, leaned back in the chair, considering Lee, the men about him. "I don't like being pushed. Whatever your feelings, I don't like being pushed. I recognize my choices are limited… but I still have them."

"Yes."

"I'll make a deal with you then, and keep it."

"What sort of deal, Mr. Merritt?"

"You need my cooperation and I want off Hestia. So in work at this project for a year, and work at it with the best of my ability, so long as you provide me help. But when that next ship comes, I'll leave on it unless I've been able to find some solution to your problem."

"Your contract specified five years."

"One."

"After the ship leaves, there's really very little reason to have a bargain, is there? If we don't allow it, there's no way you can get near that next ship. You'll live here, with us, as we live. If we don't get that dam built, Mr. Merritt, you stay. That's the last and only threat I'll make to you."

"What am I supposed to use for equipment? What I have is on the shuttle."

"Then send for it"

"It won't be enough, even that. You understand that."

Lee made a small and inconsequential gesture. "That's between you and your friends. Ask them. We'll arrange the contact."

"We have alternatives," Don Hathaway's voice said. "Put us through to the governor. We'll make them clear."

"I think they already are," Merritt answered. Static spat. The mansion's communications center, solar-powered, was a patchwork collection of outmoded equipment that must be dusted off once yearly to use with the starships and the shuttles. "Listen to me. We're going to have people dead if you make a move in this direction, and I don't want that. Besides, it's trouble for Adam. The Colonial Bureau wouldn't understand a firefight between a starship and her colony. These people are desperate and they'll fight. So just set the gear and the supplies outside the ship. No argument. Please."

"Don't be a martyr, Sam. Give me a sign if you're not talking with a gun to your head."

The guard officer moved, interposed his hand; Merritt held his free of the equipment, made a slight gesture and received permission.

"It's free will, Don. Believe it, sure as we met on station shuttle."

"That's a true sign. All right."

"Wish you were here with me. I could use the help. But that's asking too much, isn't it?"

A silence. "Yes," Hathaway said finally.

"Thought so," Merritt said. His voice felt hollow; the heart of him did. He held a curious lack of bitterness. "Is Lil there?"

"I'm here, Sam."

"Same invitation, Lil. I could use the company."

There was a long pause. "I can't," she said finally, miserably.

"I figured that too. No hard feelings."

"I'm sorry, Sam."

It was incredible; it sounded as if she were crying, and that was not at all her habit.

"Goodbye," she said.

The contact went dead.