Engine City (7 page)

—And she thought for a moment of Lydia de Tenebre, still young in the momentary eternity of her century-long journey to Nova Terra, and she blinked that thought away—

It had seemed their task was done. It was no longer necessary for Gregor, the First Navigator, to go on each newly charted course; or for Elizabeth, the Senior Science Officer, to accompany him. They had been able to get away, to leave the pioneering to others, and to return to exploring their own underpopulated and diverse world. And even, for once, to leave the children at home. Weeks, then months, of wandering the planet’s oceans and islands in the skiff had not tired them, nor ceased to bring them new discoveries each day. This day’s discoveries would end all that.

RTFM

M
AT
C
AIRNS, OUTWARD
bound from Rawliston on Croatan to Kyohvic on Mingulay, mooches about among a few hundred other milling passengers. There’s not much to do. The ship is just a more or less airtight box with an interstellar drive, inadequate seating, and a few refreshment stalls. There isn’t even a window. After the lightspeed jump, Matt has become so bored that he finds himself reading the orientation leaflet for newbie passengers. It’s available in various languages and in a variety of formats, including one entirely in pictures. The one he selects has a little boxed note at the foot in tiny print:

Literate, largely prescientific (suitable for sailors, traders, shamans, etc. Not recommended for clergy of desert monotheisms.)

Long ago, he had written the first draft of it himself. His private title for it was: ‘
GREETINGS, IGNORANT SAVAGES
’:

Welcome to the Bright Star Cultures

This may be your first journey in a starship navigated by human beings. Please take a few moments to read this document, which should help you to understand your journey, and your destination. It explains how we on the English-speaking planets of Croatan and Mingulay explain the worlds in which we live. Your own explanation may well differ from the one given here. We respect your opinion as much as you respect ours.

When you look up at the sky at night, you see a broad, bright band of stars overhead, which is sometimes called the Milky Way or the Foamy Wake. What you are looking at is the edge of an immense disk of stars—a galaxy. There are many galaxies in the universe, the nearest of which you may know as the Little Cloud or That Fuzzy Dot There.

The Foamy Wake galaxy contains a hundred thousand thousand thousand stars. The stars are suns like the one you know, but very far away. The worlds on which we live travel around these suns. (See “Copernican Hypothesis, Evidence in Favor of.”) They are so far away that the distances between them are measured in light-years. This refers to the distance that light travels in one year. Light travels three hundred thousand thousand thousand strides in one heartbeat. We are at present traveling at the speed of light between two stars—when we arrive, very soon, the sun will be different from the one which shone above us when we left. There is no need to be alarmed by this.

We live in a very small region of the galaxy, which we call the Second Sphere. It is a spherical volume of space that contains several hundred stars. Many of them are the suns of worlds like the one on which you were born. The Second Sphere is about two hundred light-years across. We call it the Second Sphere because it is not the place where human beings first came from. Human beings came from a world which we call Earth, a hundred thousand light-years away, on the other side of the Foamy Wake. So do all the other people, animals, and plants that you will find on the worlds of the Second Sphere. (See “Evolution, Theory of.”) When you go from one world to another, you may find that the animals and plants are different from those on your own world. There is no need to be alarmed by this. In your pack you will find a separate leaflet that will tell you which animals and plants at your destination are dangerous.

As well as human beings and the kinds of people who resemble human beings—the tall hairy people and the small hairy people—there are two other kinds of people in the Second Sphere. These are the small grey people, whom we call the saurs, and the very large people with tentacles, whom we call the krakens. You may know the saurs mainly as the pilots of the small round aircraft we see in our skies, and the krakens as the navigators of the great starships that you have seen in the sky or on the sea. The trade routes followed by their starships are what define the limits of the Second Sphere, at about one hundred light-years in all directions from Nova Babylonia, its oldest human civilization, though not its oldest settlement. The krakens and the saurs have lived in the Second Sphere for much longer than human beings.

You will have been told that there are much greater minds in the spaces between the worlds—the minds that some people call the gods, and others call the powers above. This is true. The gods live in very small worlds, like the ones which we sometimes see in the sky as comets. There are many, many such gods around all the suns that we know about, including the sun of Earth. The gods are minds whose bodies are made up from many very small animals that can endure severe cold and heat. They are similar in some ways to the many small animals which we cannot see but which exist all around us. There is no need to be alarmed by this. (See “Disease, Germ Theory of” elsewhere in this information pack. If you already understand this, see “Extremophile Nanobacteria” and “Emergent Phenomena.”)

There is much we do not understand about the gods. One thing we do know is that for a very long time they have arranged for saurs who live near Earth to transport people, animals, and plants to the worlds of the Second Sphere. These have always arrived in starships with saurs from the Solar System on board, and have been met by saurs from the Second Sphere, who in turn transported them to the nearest world. This is how the worlds of the Second Sphere came to be populated. The saurs, of course, came from Earth a very long time ago.

The planet we call Croatan was settled in this way more than seven hundred years ago, in the Seasonally Adjusted Year of Our Lord (SAYOL) 1600 (see “Calendar, Croatan”) by people from North America. Its daughter colony, Mingulay, was established two hundred and fifty years later by the followers of a heretical prophetess (see “Taine, Joanna”).

Almost three hundred years ago, in SAYOL 2051, a starship from Earth arrived near Mingulay. It was a starship built by human beings, and it was called the
Bright Star.
It was left to travel in the sky around Mingulay when the several hundred people on board were met by saurs and taken to the main city of Mingulay, Kyohvic, where they settled. They were different in three important ways from other people who had arrived from Earth.

First, they had traveled into the space outside their world by themselves. These Cosmonauts, as they were called, had encountered a god in one of the very small worlds we have mentioned earlier, and it had communicated with them. It gave them copies of instructions on how to build the engines which enable us to travel at the speed of light, and the other engines to fly in the air like the saurs do. Unfortunately, it had not told them how to navigate, and when they used the engine they found themselves in the Second Sphere, with no idea of how they had got there or where it was. Their descendants, over several generations, had to work out how to navigate for themselves, and succeeded about ninety years ago. The Cosmonaut families went on to build ships such as the one you are now traveling in. The
Bright Star
also contained much new knowledge, discovered on Earth, which we are still learning. That is why we call ourselves the Bright Star Cultures.

This brings us to the second important way in which the Cosmonauts differ from most human beings. Many of them had taken medicines that enabled them to live for many hundreds of years, just like the saurs do. Unfortunately, neither they nor the saurs understood how this had happened, and we are still trying to find out. Many of the original Cosmonauts from the
Bright Star
are still alive today, and some of them are trying to help. They would be very happy if everyone could live as long as they do.

Thirdly, the Cosmonauts were the last people to arrive here from Earth. As of this date (SAYOL 2338) we know of no other arrivals from outside the Second Sphere. It is very possible that people on Earth, or the saurs near Earth, have come into conflict with another star-traveling species, which we call the aliens. It is possible that Earth has been destroyed. There is no need to be alarmed by this. If you have, now or in the future, any knowledge of creatures resembling furry spiders and about the size of a large dog, please inform the nearest militia officer or starship crew member as soon as possible.

And now, a word about the militia. We in the Bright Star Cultures believe that, in general, people should be free to do whatever is compatible with the freedom of others. Here and below, “person,” “people,” and “human” refer to members of all intelligent species. Some religious, sexual, and other practices of which you disapprove may be permitted by law. Some of your own practices, which you believe to be righteous, may be prohibited by law. For your comfort and safety, it is important that you do not make mistakes in this area. Please study the following carefully:

Permitted practices of which you may disapprove:

All forms of sexual relations between people over the age of puberty.

All forms of attire (other than uniforms worn for purposes of deception) or lack of attire in all public places except places of worship or public ceremony.

All modes of address to people of any rank. All modes of worship not involving prohibited practices.

All forms of artistic expression, including descriptions and depictions (but not commission or incitement) of prohibited practices.

Self-medication, including for ennui.

Suicide.

Reading books in public.

Writing in the margins of books.

Abortion.

Keeping and carrying weapons.

Prohibited practices (with or without consent) of which you may approve:

Human sacrifice.

Entertainments of lethal combat.

Sexual relations with people below the age of puberty.

Sexual relations with beasts.

Slavery.