James P. Hogan Read online

  MIGRATION

  James P. Hogan

  The world of the past eventually died in the conflagration toward which it had been doggedly heading. A more fragmented and diversified order has emerged from the ruins and. technology has reappeared to a greater or lesser degree in some places and not at all in others.

  Unique among them is the nation-state of Sofi, with an exceptional population that has rediscovered advanced science. However, as the old patterns that led to ruin before begin to reassert themselves across the rest of the world, a scientific-political movement within Sofi embarks on a years-long project to build a generation starship that will enable them to create their own world elsewhere.

  The circumstances and thinking of future generations growing up in the totally unknown situation of a space environment cannot be known. Accordingly, the mission will include different groups of idealists, reformers, misfits, and dissidents who are not satisfied with the world-in-miniature that constitutes the original mother ship, to go out and build whatever they want. Hence, what arrives at the distant star generations hence will be a flotilla of variously run city states, frontier towns, religious monasteries, pleasure resorts, urban crushes, rural spreads, academic retreats, and who-knows what else.

  The trouble began, of course, when all the old patterns that they thought they were getting away from started reappearing…

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by James P. Hogan

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN 10: 1-4391-3352-2

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4391-3352-1

  Cover art by Alan Pollack

  First printing, May 2010

  These ePub and Mobi editions v1.0 by Dead^Man November 2011

  dmebooks at live dot ca

  Retail edition, reformatted.

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hogan, James P.

  Migration/James P. Hogan.

  p. cm.

  “A Baen Books original” – T. p. verso.

  ISBN 978-1-4391-3352-1 (hc) 1. Interplanetary voyages – Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6058. O348M54 2010

  823’. 914 – dc22

  2010005096

  Printed in the United States of America

  Also by James P. Hogan

  Migration

  Moon Flower

  The Giants Series

  The Two Moons

  The Two Worlds

  Mission to Minerva

  Code of the Lifemaker The Immortality Option

  The Cradle of Saturn The Anguished Dawn

  Bug Park

  Echoes of an Alien Sky Endgame Enigma

  The Genesis Machine

  Inherit the Stars

  The Legend That Was Earth The Multiplex Man

  Paths to Otherwhere

  The Proteus Operation Realtime Interrupt

  Thrice Upon a Time

  The Two Faces of Tomorrow Voyage from Yesteryear

  Collections

  Catastrophes, Chaos and Convolutions

  Kicking the Sacred Cow Martian Knightlife

  Minds Machines and Evolution Rockets Redheads & Revolution

  PART ONE:

  Breaking Ties

  ONE

  Nobody that Korshak had met in his thirty-one years of mostly traveling, nor any of the preserved writings that he knew of, had been able to tell him precisely how long ago the old world had destroyed itself in the Great Conflagration. Some put it at two or three generations; others said centuries; a few thought as much as a thousand years. Different schools of history had different ways of estimating, and no two seemed able to produce the same result. The ruins of cities that had once extended for miles decayed away under weather, weeds, and encroaching sands, and the machines that had animated them corroded back into the earth without divulging their secrets.

  He stood looking down over the site of one of those old cities now, from a stance among the rocks on the hill where they had camped the night before. It was called Escalos, in the land known as Arigane. Little appeared to have changed significantly since the last time they were here. The outer parts of what had been the original city had long turned into mounds of overgrown rubble rising above jumbled streets of clay-brick and wooden hovels, although in places the lines could still be discerned of broad avenues made to carry thousands of vehicles that now existed only as rare, faded pictures or piles of unearthed rust. Farther in toward the center, thrusting here and there above the roofs of the state offices and court building, and the domes of Shandrahl’s palace, the skeletal remnants of towering structures stood in mute testament to arts that existed here no more. But elsewhere they had been revived. And one day Korshak would learn them.

  “The cabinet is ready.” Ronti’s voice came from below.

  Korshak turned. “How about the stew?” he called back.

  “That’s ready, too. And we still have half a bottle of wine.”

  “Ah, right! First things first, eh?” Korshak picked his way back down to where the wagon stood in a glade among the trees, by a pool formed from a widening of the stream. Sprung high on its axles, it was enclosed under a barrel roof and painted bright red with elaborate designs and mystical symbols along the sides, and a driver’s bench up front, behind which a flap door opened from the interior. The two horses were tethered a short distance away, where there was water and plenty of grass. The descent down into Escalos would be an easy haul for them.

  Ronti was behind the wagon, squatting on a box by the fire as he ladled from the hanging pot into a couple of earthenware bowls. He was slight and wiry in build, with a mat of black hair, pointed mustachios adorning a mobile, sun-darkened countenance, and dark, beady eyes that never seemed quite able to take the world seriously, but saw more than they pretended to. Korshak had first encountered him five years previously in the seaport town of Belamon, working as a street acrobat and contortionist. Such talents were exactly the kind of thing needed for an assistant in a new routine that Korshak had devised, and he offered the position on the spot. Ronti turned out to be the most capable partner that Korshak had ever worked with, and they had remained together ever since.

  Korshak sat down on a folded blanket placed over one of the rocks, took the bowl that Ronti proffered, and broke some bread off the loaf lying on a board by the fire. On the far side, Sultan gnawed at a bone of mutton chop nestled protectively between his paws. Ronti poured wine into a couple of earthenware mugs. “Anything of note?” he inquired as he handed one to Korshak.

  “They’ve been rebuilding where they had that fire near the market. Otherwise, everything looks much the same. There are what look like gibbets outside the main gate. Shandrahl must be having another of his purges.”

  Ronti made a face. “Let’s hope there aren’t any hitches with the act tomorrow, then,” he said.

  “I’d be more concerned about anything going wrong with what happens afterward,” Korshak replied.

  “Thanks, but I’d prefer not to think about that.”

  “Then think about longer after still – what it will all be for,” Korshak suggested. “Do you know what Masumichi told me one time when I talked to him in the window that sees across vast distances? The stars, where we will be going, are all suns, but just farther away. Do you know how far, Ronti?”

  Ronti
stirred the food together in his bowl for a few seconds and shrugged. “If the world were the size of my hand, then, say, the distance to the middle of Escalos?” he guessed. He thought while he continued chewing, and then added, “But since I don’t really know how big the world is, I suppose that doesn’t mean very much.”

  “I’m not sure I do, either,” Korshak confessed. “But Masumichi gave me a different example that I did understand, which will amaze you.”

  “Go on, amaze me,” Ronti invited.

  Korshak looked around, then touched the end of a finger on a sliver of charred wood that had fallen outside the hearthstones. “The whole world would fit inside the Sun thousands of times,” he said. “Now imagine the Sun reduced to the size of one of those specks of black there on my finger. Well, have you any idea what the distance would be to the nearest other star? About four miles!”

  Ronti stopped chewing and stared. “I’m amazed.”

  “And where we’re going is thousands of times farther even than that.”

  It took Ronti a while longer, of breaking and oiling bread, more munching in silence, and then a draft from his wine mug, to absorb the information. “And did Masumichi tell you how this is possible?” he asked at last. “Since I, for one, cannot conceive it. To fly through the sky and talk over huge distances – that I can grasp, even if I don’t understand how it’s done. But what kind of old-world magic is this?”

  “Real magic!” Korshak answered. “Except that it isn’t magic. Magic without tricks. We’ll know wonders that we never dreamed of, and that’s what makes the risks worthwhile. Without some risks, life is not a life at all – no more than eating and sleeping and existing from one day to the next, all of them the same, until you live out your spell. Is that how you want it to be? That’s what you should be thinking about, Ronti.”

  Ronti mopped his bowl with the last of his bread, and finished his wine. “Well, I say life is to be dealt with a day at a time,” he said. “And right now that means making sure that our own, this-worldly kind of magic, modest as it may be, will work. Otherwise we’ll never get to what you’re talking about anyway. Do you want to check the cabinet?”

  Korshak tossed a remnant of meat to Sultan and stood up. “Yes, let’s see it.”

  Ronti had assembled the cabinet on the lowered tailboard of the wagon beneath the rear shutter, which hinged upward to form an overhead shade. It was as high as a man, wide enough to accommodate two standing side by side, and the same in depth. Its front consisted of a pair of doors ornamented with designs that were echoed on the sides. The doors were open, revealing a pole with a lamp at the top standing in the center, but the details beyond were in shadow. Ronti sprung up the step onto the tailboard and produced a matchbook from a pocket of his jacket. He leaned into the cabinet to light the lamp, and then stepped aside. The light showed the two sides and rear of the interior lined uniformly in quilted maroon silk, and a dark, matted floor. Korshak ran his eye over it critically. There were no telltale stains, blotches, or other irregularities whose reflection would give the secret away. The hidden edges blended into the pattern of the lining invisibly.

  “Fine,” he pronounced. Then, letting his voice rise to a showman’s tone, he went on, “As you can see, a perfectly ordinary box in every way, as deep as it is wide,” which Ronti demonstrated by turning the cabinet around on casters fitted beneath its corners. He opened the rear wall, which could now be seen as also comprising two doors, enabling a view right through, while Korshak continued, directing his words and gestures at Sultan since there was nobody else. “No false back or hidden compartments. Would anyone care to inspect the inside and satisfy themselves before we proceed further?” Sultan was following alertly but remained with his bone.

  Up on the wagon, Ronti turned the cabinet to face forward again, still with both sets of doors open, and stepped into it through the front and then out through the back. Closing the rear doors behind him, he then walked back around to the front.

  “Good,” Korshak told him. “Carry on. I want to see the effect from here.”

  Ronti stepped into the front of the cabinet once more, but this time he turned and closed the doors. Korshak listened for any giveaway squeaks or clicks, but detected nothing. Inside the cabinet, Ronti would be opening the two top-to-floor panels that hinged out at the rear corners from shallow recesses in the side walls to meet at the central pole. Thus, they partitioned off a triangular space at the back of the cabinet, between the pole and the two rear corners, large enough to hold a man standing, or with a squeeze, two. Normally, Korshak would open the front doors at this point, but since he was down on the ground, playing the part of a spectator, Ronti let himself out the back of the cabinet, came around again, and did it for him.

  The reverse surfaces of the two hinged panels – the surfaces that faced inward when the panels were in their recesses – consisted of high-quality mirrors. In the opened position, each mirror reflected an image of a silk-lined side wall, which to an observer looking in the front appeared to be the rear wall. Korshak checked carefully for correct alignments and continuity of hue. The illusion of the cabinet’s being empty was perfect. It could be used to make a person vanish, or if the preliminary see-through demonstration were omitted, to have one person walk in and a different one step out. As was his custom with all his creations, Korshak had inscribed his name cryptically into the ornamental patterning.

  Mechanical illusions were Korshak’s specialty. The disappearing cabinet was his latest invention, into which he had invested his greatest skill and care. The performance would need to be his most compelling ever. He intended to steal a princess from under the eyes of her tyrannical father and a man she despised, to whom she had been promised as a bride, before an audience of courtiers and officers in the center of the royal palace. One of the problems with life tended to be that it didn’t permit any rehearsal.

  Later, when they were preparing to depart, Korshak dismantled the cabinet and stowed the parts away, while Ronti attended to packing the cooking ware and harnessing the horses. By the time Korshak climbed down to close up the rear, Ronti was already up on the driver’s bench, waiting with the reins. As Korshak bolted the tailboard, a light low in the sky to the east caught his eye. It moved discernibly even as he watched, and he smiled. Aurora was passing over. Before very much longer now, they would be up there, too. Then he would learn real magic.

  TWO

  In the female quarters facing the inner court and garden of Shandrahl’s palace in the center of Escalos, Vaydien arched her back defiantly against the wall of her private chambers. “Never! My father can force me to marry you, yes – through fear for my life, in the same way that he threatens all who would defy him. But don’t expect me to declare subservience to the House of Erendred. Let nobody believe that this was by my choice.”

  Zileg, crown prince and heir to lordship over the neighboring land of Urst, regarded her in the amused way that one might have shown to a hissing kitten. He was tall and powerful in build, and with his dark eyes, rich mane of black hair, and tapered mustache, handsome too in terms of looks; but his vanity and arrogance repelled her, and in cruelty he could equal either of the two rulers.

  “A spirited child. I like that. But do you seriously believe that anyone is interested in your preferences? Your place is to serve a purpose in a greater scheme of things than your understanding of the world could grasp. Don’t ever forget it.”

  Vaydien shook her head despairingly. “My role is to create an illusion of trust between your people and mine until Shandrahl has prepared his ground, and it suits him to betray you. Just as it suited him to get rid of my mother when she had served her purpose. Are you really too blind to see it?”

  Anger flashed in Zileg’s eyes. He moved a step forward, his hand rising reflexively. “Be careful how you speak to your future sovereign. I see that a proper sense of respect and decorum is also something that you need to learn.”

  Vaydien presented her cheek. “Go on! Today I am
still Shandrahl’s daughter. Strike her if you dare.”

  Zileg hesitated, then drew back with a snort. “A week from now you will be mine. Then we’ll see. I shall take pleasure in breaking that insolence of yours.”

  “Is that your idea of sport? Abusing women. A man worthy of the name would find greater contest.”

  Zileg’s face whitened, and for a moment Vaydien thought he would be unable to restrain himself further. Then he turned away abruptly, and seeing the vase of flowers that she had been working on when he entered, crushed several of the heads savagely in his hand. “There will be no time for such idle distractions when you become part of Erendred’s household,” he told her. “You will be at my side at the banquet tonight. I would advise you to use the time until then profitably by reflecting on the wisdom of your ways.” With that, he strode darkly from the room.

  Vaydien waited until she heard the outer door to her chambers close, and only then closed her eyes and allowed herself to exhale shakily. While the pounding in her chest gradually abated, she removed the mangled blooms and leaves from the vase and did her best to repair the arrangement.

  Zileg had arrived from Urst three days previously with a cavalry troop from the regiment that he commanded, to take his bride-to-be back for the wedding. His intention was to be seen bringing her back to his future realm in a style befitting their rank, riding to drums and trumpets in a carriage provided by the ruler of Arigane, led and flanked by a picked escort bearing his own colors. As custom dictated, Shandrahl would not be present to contest Erendred’s status at the ceremony, but would arrive to join in the celebrations in the days following. In the meantime, he would be hosting a banquet and entertainments in Zileg’s honor that evening, before sending the couple on their way tomorrow. He had no compunction about using his daughter as a bargaining chip to buy stability in the shorter term where politically expedient. Vaydien shuddered at the images that ran through her mind of the kind of life which that would portend. But there could be no escape from it now.