Eesyan had a sudden, jolting premonition of where this might be going. He licked his lips and glanced at Showm again. She nodded as if reading his thoughts. "And it was the lead we got from Terrans that put us on the right track, even now," she reminded him.
Calazar became expansive. "I'm not talking about sending probes and prying eyes, and sitting back here like gawkers at some awful Terran movie, passively watching the Lunarians marching toward their fate. I'm talking about going there, to the time before the war ever happened, and doing something to change it!"
Eesyan reached for one of the kessaya and unwrapped it shakily. Just for the moment, his mental faculties seemed to have seized up.
"Think of it, Porthik!" Showm urged. "The full, true potential of humans and Thuriens in combination, that should have been realized-just as the potential for Minerva should have been realized. A whole new reality that was meant to exist. It still can. We can create it!"
For a brief moment the sweet, smooth taste of the candy distracted Eesyan from the turmoil of his thoughts. Minutes ago, Calazar and Showm had agreed that the current program had gone beyond the bounds set by prudence and needed tighter control. Yet what they were proposing instead exceeded it in boldness and audacity on a scale that took his breath away. Objections poured into his mind reflexively.
They wouldn't be "creating" anything; the physics of quantum reality said that everything that could possibly exist did exist… But no. He checked himself. That was according to the old way of assuming things, arrived at from a literal interpretation of the mathematical formalism. Danchekker had produced some good reasons for supposing that the intervention of consciousness was able to change that, making some futures by no means automatic. Rebellious Terran thinking again. It had started a furious debate among the Thurien philosophers. Perhaps it was possible to bring about whole new futures through an effort of volition, that otherwise wouldn't have existed. At their present stage of knowledge, there were no grounds to exclude it.
"It's… it's…" Eesyan gestured weakly and looked from one to another. "Do you realize the immensity of what you're saying?… We've just agreed that even the present project is in drastic need of complete overhaul. What we're talking about here is on a totally different scale of-"
"We've agreed that we need to stop what we're doing and get back to a program of sound, professionally managed research and solid engineering," Calazar cut in. "Perfect. That means we can begin from the basics, observing all the right principles."
Eesyan extended his hands pleadingly. "It's not just a question of technicalities. You're talking about sending people… Thuriens, Terrans, both; I don't know… not just robots. The whole underlying philosophy changes. They'd need autonomy to be able to adapt to whatever local conditions they encounter-to provide for their own safety, or even survival. So they'd have to go in some kind of ship. But they wouldn't even be able to move around. Ships draw on the h-grid for power. There was no h-grid at Minerva fifty thousand years ago."
Showm seemed to have been expecting it. "You're forgetting one ship that doesn't need the h-grid," she said. Eesyan looked at her blankly, his mind in too much of a whirl to make the connection. "The Shapieron. Right now, at Jevlen. An old Ganymean starship with independent onboard drives, everything self-contained."
"But even if we did what you say… the totality of the Multiverse is so vast. They would be so few. Could it make any difference that matters?"
"What are you saying, Eesyan?" Showm chided. "That sounds like some kind of petty profit-and-loss accounting that you would expect from Earth. Do you not feed a hungry child because you cannot feed all of them? Do you let a sick person die because there are other sick people in the world that you can't help? Our very concept of civilization lies the principle of caring, compassion, and love being extended outward from the primitive family to embrace a progressively wider community: town and village, then nation, planet, until today we feel kinship across many worlds. Isn't this the next step that whatever power brought all this into being is calling us to? Imagine, a community of universes that were isolated, just as the stars were once isolated. Where it will lead, or what will one day come out of it, nobody can say. We will be true pioneers and discoverers again. That is why we have no choice."
Objections started welling up inside Eesyan again, but then he met Frenua's eyes. They were bright, inspired, shining with a light that he hadn't seen anywhere for a long time. He could sense the same intensity of feeling radiating from Calazar. Something inside Eesyan the scientist was responding to it. And as it grew and swelled deep down inside his being, the negative fixations that had gripped him seemed to shrink to dimensions fitting to the business of a jobbing-shop clerk.
Visions were stirring in his own mind now, of the Ganymeans long ago who had cast out from the havens of their warm, familiar-sun systems into the daunting voids between, who had dared to dream of constructions the size of moons and taming the power of exploding stars. Were the unknowns and the challenges that they had faced any less than of the prospect that was beckoning now? Could the things they stood to gain and to learn have been any greater?
"Yes!" he heard himself whisper. It was involuntary-not he speaking, but the spirit that was motivating him inside; yet even as he the word, he knew that it was right. Calazar turned away, fidgeting with his hands, seemingly having difficulty keeping his feelings under control. Showm was on her feet, looking as if she were fighting back an impulse to throw her arms around Eesyan and hug him. "Yes!" Eesyan said again, louder this time. "We will do it! Our race has lived in security and complacency for long enough. It is time for us to rekindle the flame and know again the adventure of true discovery. You are right, Frenua. Minerva will live again, and become what it should have been-maybe even in a new reality that we will create! This was surely meant to be."
PART TWO: Mission to Minerva
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
"Kles! Look! Bears!" Laisha shouted excitedly above the noise of the engine and the rotors. They were riding with the supply flight that went up to Ezangen two or three times a month. Klesimur turned his attention away from the mountains ahead above the pilot's shoulder, crowning the skyline like white fangs, and looked below where she was pointing. Disturbed by the sound and seemingly being pursued by the spinwing's shadow, two adult bears were herding four cubs away from the river bank and up a slope showing streaks of snow toward the cover of some rocks and fallen trees, probably where their lair was.
"Brown tundras," Kles confirmed. "You'll see plenty more when we get to the camp. Don't try getting too near them, even if they do look cute. They can be nasty. But they stay away from people in groups. So no straying off on your own up there." He looked up at her. At twelve, only two years younger than himself, she still had many of what seemed the ways of a child. But her family had moved to the town when she was at an early age, and she still spent most of her time there. And she learned fast. Her face was bright and eager, a little pink in the cabin's heat with her heavy hooded jacket, happy at the thought of being away and free for a couple of weeks. Kles grinned reassuringly. "But we'll take good care of you. Haven't I always?"
The crackle of a radio coming to life came from somewhere forward, followed by, "Ezangen camp calling. You reading, Jud?"
The pilot acknowledged. "Hi, Urg. This is Jud."
"How's it going up there? We may have some weather coming in."
"We're just approaching the bottom end of the lake now. Should be, aw… another ten, fifteen minutes."