Ian didn't bother to follow up on that either but decided to wait for an answer. He could see that Smith was en joying himself. In a strange way Ian was a contemporary of the near-mythical man, perhaps one of the few people alive who could understand the ramifications and intri cacies of Smith's time and place.
"Yes, the Psi Council, as we called it," Smith contin ued. "I think, Ian, you understand the time and its events. My grandsires had made the Great Leap forward into space-that realm with all its promise and dreams. Then there was my generation, a generation taught to believe that we were the ones who would unbind ourselves for ever from the confines of Earth.
"I was born in space, Unit 333, my mother a Nigerian linguist, my father an American mission coordinator for a Powersat unit."
Ian was having a hard time understanding some of Smith's monolog but he didn't interrupt. Smith was warm ing to his subject, his full voice rising and falling as if he were telling a story to a group of young children who were fascinated by every word he said. Ian had his first suspicions that Smith was slightly mad.
"I was sent Earthside and, of all things, it was philosophy that took me. And with it came an Earthside position teaching. Those were hard times, Ian, ripe with a promise. Man could have gone far. But the darkness was already overwhelming us in a world of haves and have-nots. The great rivals of the previous century banded together out of fear of those whom they now had to suppress. The world was carrying a burden of twelve billion souls, Ian. Twelve billion. Once we had dreamed that space could take them. But faster than we could take them off-planet, more were born-and so the mad ness came.
"I was banished from Earth in seventy-eight, after the Second Arizonan Incident. I had become a leader in a disarmament drive; I and a hundred thousand others, mostly from the southwestern part of our country, were banished to a penal colony. This place here-" He shouted out the words and slammed the arm of the chair that he was sitting in. "One hundred thousand in a unit that could not sustain more than twenty-five thousand in closed-system regime."
He stopped, then smiled softly, like an old man who is concerned that he has just frightened the child he was talking to. Ian smiled back wanly and Smith continued.
"I could see what was coming. The darkness descend ing. All the nations of Earth would call upon their colonies to join in the nationalistic madness of their mother coun tries. And such madness! We had been living in space for nearly a century. We of space, from a dozen different nations, had far more in common with each other than with those mad fools below. It had been the same with America when at last her people had realized they were no longer Europeans. And so it was with us. Why should we slaughter each other for the sake of those madmen who were of a dying breed-the last generations of Homo sapiens?"
He said " Homo sapiens " with a disdain that was fright ening.
"We were of the next generation of man!" Smith shouted. "And I knew that in the end it would come down not to a confrontation between the petty nationalistic states but a confrontation between those below and those of us above.
"But we were too weak yet. It would be a hundred years, perhaps a millennium before we would be ready.
"Security at the penal colony was lax, especially for one such as myself who already had a name and was widely known on Earth. A few well-placed bribes and I was allowed a class-one visa for space-to-space flight. Just as long as I did not return below. It was thus that I started to meet with those from the other units and formed the network you call Alpha Psi. It was an open secret-the governments of Earth knew what we were planning from the start. But they needed us, our products, the energy we beamed down, so they did not attempt to stop us from planning and stockpiling the necessary systems that would get us out of there. No one on Earth wanted to force the confrontation. And they assumed, as well, that no unit was one hundred percent self-contained. To the second decimal of the ninety-ninth percentile, yes-but there were still some few items that we needed from Earth on a regular basis. And as you know, a unit is only self-contained to the degree of its first perishable life-sustaining substance.
"But we labored on that, as well. That was our true secret, while we openly prepared in other ways. That is where we pushed our research, and soon we could im prove self-sufficiency by a factor of ten. Then the Exodus began. One unit left, and then another, finally it was in the dozens, and then the hundreds. The men of Earth couldn't stop us without forcing a major confrontation. Finally when they worked up the nerve to do it, the end was already upon them."
He smiled sadly and looked off into the distance, as if recalling a half-forgotten dream.
"The Soviet-Pakistani Incident precipitated the first exchange. Even from fifty thousand miles out, we could see the flashes and firestorms. We made our moves as planned-before we ourselves would be dragged into the conflagration-and abandoned Earth to the fate created by those who were too inferior to understand.
"Yes, Ian, I was an Alpha Psi leader. I was the phi losopher who motivated the others. We evacuated, Ian Lacklin, but it came far too soon for our unit. I want you to contemplate this, Ian Lacklin. We had one hundred thousand aboard, of which we calculated only twenty- five thousand could be supported by the ecosystem. Con template what that meant to us, contemplate what that did to a philosophy professor who was now the appointed leader of a colony doomed to die from overpopulation. I cursed them all. I cursed those who destroyed what might have been, and set me upon this Hegira."
"I'm not sure I understand. What is a hegira?"
"Ah, yes, but of course you wouldn't understand. I am weary, Ian, and shall soon leave you. But don't — worry. This conversation shall continue, for I do find it amusing. Yes, the Hegira. When Muhammad the Prophet was not recognized by the fools and unbelievers of Mecca, he and his followers were driven out of the city into exile. That is the time that the True Believers date their calendar from, the Hegira or exile of the Prophet. And so we were driven out, as well, Ian Lacklin — a hegira that has lasted eleven centuries."
Franklin Smith stood up, stretched slowly, and walked past Ian and out toward the far door, his silken robes rustling lightly with his passage.
"My Hegira-which I as the Father have lived through from the beginning. And which now, thanks to you and the present you bring, will soon end with fire and sword."
Ian was alone for three days, as near as he could es timate, before he was allowed to rejoin the others.
Surprisingly their captors had allowed some of their familiar items to be brought back from the Discovery, and Richard greeted Ian with a tumbler and a sad lament.
"I had two cases left, two cases, and the bastards only let me take this one bottle off." And he held up the last precious container, now three-quarters of the way to empty.
"Take it as a great honor and sign of my friendship," Richard said melodramatically, "that I saved this final drink for you." He poured the rest of the contents into the tumbler and offered it to Ian.
"What did they do to the ship?" Ian asked.
Stasz drew closer. "It seems our messiah friend is a little nervous about his catch," he whispered softly. "We were allowed to take off some personal items, but then the ship was sealed."
"Any cargo removed?"
"Nothing that I could see, " Stasz replied. "They did detect the radiation in that old thermomine in the aft stor age compartment. That really set them off, and they put a secure lock on the door and left it there."
Ian smiled at this information and reached into his pocket to hold the alien cylinder, as if it were a talisman to ward off evil.
Shelley came to lan's's side and wrapped her arms around him. For a second he regretted his earlier confession, but he went ahead anyhow and kissed her lightly on the forehead.