The Final Planet Read online

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  For three friends, both old and new, out of the mists—

  Roger, Rita, Marilyn

  SONG OF THE WILD GEESE*

  My Maire bhan! My Maire bhan,

  —I’ve come to say good-bye, love;

  To France I sail away at dawn—

  —My fortune for to try, love.

  The cause is lost a stoir mo chroi,

  —All hope has now departed;

  And Ireland’s gallant chivalry,

  —Is scatter’d broken-hearted.

  Ah! pleasant are our Munster vales,

  —Encrowned in summer sheen, love,

  But now no more the autumn gales

  —Unfold our flag of green, love;

  And say, could we remain and see

  —In ruin and dishonor

  Far o’er those valleys waving free

  —The foeman’s blood-red banner!

  No, sweeter in far lands to roam

  —From Lee’s green banks and thee, love,

  Than live a coward-slave at home

  —To plighted vows untrue, love,

  And better ne’er to grasp thy hand

  —Or view those tresses shining,

  Than ‘mong the cravens of the land

  —Crouch down in fetters pining!

  Mo bhron! ‘tis hard to part from thee,

  —My heart’s bright pearl, my own love,

  And wandering in a far country,

  —To leave you sad and lone, love!

  But spring’s young flowers will crown the glen,

  —And wreath the fairy wildwood,

  And Druith’s feet will pace again

  —The mountains of my childhood.

  Farewell, farewell, mo mhuirnin bhan

  —Time flies, I must away, love;

  ‘Twill soon be dawn, ‘twill soon be dawn,

  —My steed begins to neigh, love;

  Farewell, preserve thine heart as true,

  —As changeless as yon river,

  And Druith’s will be true to you,

  —Anear, afar—forever!

  TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS: TIPV/IONA

  The Taran Intergalactic Pilgrim Vessel Iona is an ion-hyperspace exploration vessel suitable for both in-flight and landing configurations. The basic propulsion system is ion-hyperspace drive powered by matter/antimatter conversion generators. Energy is created during the matter/ antimatter conversion cycle and is utilized for propulsion, life-support, and defense systems. The mass created on the energy conversion cycle is used by the gravity-pods located on each deck, and the excess goes back into a breeder reactor, which holds it for emergency use in the conversion engines.

  The life-support system maintains a total internal environment, and basic protein is produced in the hydroponic farm. The communication system consists of multiple banks of telepathic neuron transmitters that amplify and modulate the total telepathic capacity of the members of the crew. Weaponry consists of CDLs of varying sizes, located at strategic points. These Capacitor/Discharge/ Lasers are fed energy from the basic power generators.

  PART ONE

  THE CITY

  1

  Seamus O’Neill moved his finger to the button to fire the last retrorocket, glanced quickly behind at the inky blackness where the TPS Iona continued its silent orbit. A twinge of sentimentality, not totally uncharacteristic, jabbed at his soul. The Iona wasn’t much to look at, you understand—an old battered titanium hulk fixed up to look like a monastery, yet it had been home for the quarter century of his life, the symbol of the Spirit of Exploration for which the Holy Order of Saint Brigid and Saint Brendan stood. Like all the second-generation Wild Geese, he had railed against its confining walls.

  Still, he reflected with a sigh of self-pity that came as natural to Tarans as breathing, at least up there you were with your own kind, not set down alone on a heathen planet.

  Sure they call it loneliness, he told himself ruefully. Would you believe it, Commandant Seamus O’Neill, lonely, and on the first day too. Ah, ‘tis going to be a grand adventure, isn’t it? Just grand.

  Irony was as natural among the Tarans as self-pity.

  He scanned the countdown readout … five seconds to fire. He thought of Tessie’s blond hair and white limbs. You win some, you lose some. ’Course, so far you’ve lost them all. Seamus was good at the first stages of courtship, something less than sensational at all later stages. He sighed again, a sigh which other earth-descended folk they met on their pilgrimage thought indistinguishable from an acute asthma attack.

  He softly pushed the firing button; the shuttle-craft Eamon De Valera jumped in faint protest, then slowed its descent toward the jungle clearing. Seamus O’Neill, not a paragon of religious devotion by a long shot, but not exactly an agnostic either, breathed a short prayer.

  “If it’s all the same to Yourself, I’d like it to be a safe landing; well, one I can walk away from anyway.

  “And while I have your attention, I’d certainly not be rejecting any help and protection you be after willing to provide for this little jaunt of mine, begging your pardon for seeming forward.”

  Seamus assumed that Himself (or Herself, as you pleased) was fully aware of the situation. Still, it didn’t hurt to bring matters up occasionally—with proper respect, of course.

  The old shuttlecraft settled onto the firm red soil of the clearing with as much dignity as its weary hull could manage. There was little dust, just as Podraig the foulmouthed computer had predicted. “Touchdown,” Seamus informed the stars, in case they were listening.

  And then he sighed for a third time, this one intended for Himself, the stars, the Lady Deirdre, and anyone else in the cosmos who might be listening—the immemorial protest of the Celt against his unfair destiny.

  It was a historic moment about which no one cared, the landing on a new planet. Even a thousand years after the Second Great Exploration, landing on a new planet should be a major event, shouldn’t it? he asked the Deity.

  The latter Worthy did not deign to answer.

  Well, admittedly, the dominant species here is supposed to have come about the same time the Proto-Celts came to Tara. We became pilgrims because we wanted to keep alive our culture; they because they wanted to build a perfect society. So my belated arrival here is something of an anticlimax.

  But still …

  But still, what?

  Repressing an urge for yet a fourth—and even louder—sigh and removing his crash helmet, Seamus gazed out the shamrock-shaped observation window above the Dev’s console. A terrible, unfriendly, lonely heathen planet it was—as well as the final chance for the end of the Iona’s pilgrimage. Still, Zylong was indeed th
e most beautiful planet he had ever seen—perhaps, as Commodore Fitzgerald had said, one of the most beautiful in the galaxy. During the decades of the Iona’s erratic and dubious pilgrimage in search of a world that wanted its scholarship and service, O’Neill had set foot on many life-supporting planets. Sometimes he had landed in peace, sometimes armed to the teeth in the company of his fellow soldiers of fortune, the Wild Geese—mind you, only in self-defense, for the Tarans were basically a peace-loving and noncombative people.

  Why fight with others when you can fight much more constructively and with no bloodshed among yourselves?

  Anyway, the Rule of the Holy Order was strict: their mission was to keep alive the Spirit of Exploration during the long interludes between the Great Explorations and to land and establish a permanent monastery on only the planets that needed and wanted them.

  God knows, if herself’s analysis is to be believed, they need us. Ah, but do they want us? That’s the issue, my boy, isn’t it?

  The Holy Order no more made converts than did St. Columcile in Switzerland or St. Donatus in Italy or St. Killian in Bavaria long ago during the First Exploration. Peregrinationes pro Christo. If the natives were so impressed by the scholarship and service of the monks that they became interested in the Faith, that was another matter.

  Would they be interested here in this great, terrible heathen place?

  Seamus doubted it. Moreover, he doubted that they would want anything to do with the Iona or anything it stood for. Of course, there were ways of interpreting the regulations.

  Heathen place it was, but luxuriant too. A wonderful place to bed a “proper woman,” always supposing that you could find one such to begin with.

  None of the planets he had visited compared with the pictures of the Iona’s home planet, Tara, to say nothing of that misty island on Earth from which his remote ancestors had come, but Zylong in its lushness approximated the beauties of those homes more closely than anything he had seen. The painter who had created the scene in his window had laid on all the colors with a wild and heavy hand. It looked like a slick picture taken from one of the tattered old books in the monastery library, too rich, too lush to be real. The greens were too thick, the blues too deep, the reds and purples too rich.

  And best of all, it was not rushing through hyperspace at a rate several times the speed of light.

  “Ah,” Seamus O’Neill murmured to himself, ’tis the perfect planet for us to settle, save that the locals might not exactly want us, worse luck for them. Give us the slightest hint that we’re welcome, and sure we’ll be here, bag and baggage, to stay. We’ll not interfere with them at all, but give us a few years and they’ll be after sighing just like us.”

  O’Neill disliked this mission. If he had come on the Napper Tandy with his lead platoon of Wild Geese, he would not have to wait for the initiative of the other side. He did not think of himself mainly as a soldier; it was something he did because on a pilgrimage you had to have soldiers. Mind you, he was not altogether incompetent as an officer. Weren’t there those on the Iona who, bad luck to them, argued vigorously that he was better at being an officer than he was at his other profession of bard. Spying, however, was not his line of work.

  Not at all, at all.

  He was prepared for death, if needs be. If it were all the same to Himself, he’d postpone death for a few years. A few decades, even. There were a number of tasks he’d just as soon finish before the account books were closed. Like persuading a proper woman to share his proper bed for the rest of his life.

  That thought caused him to sigh again and indulge in a number of harmless if very distracting fantasies about amusements one might enjoy with such a proper woman. First of all, you kiss her very gently and then … Well, if it’s all right with You, he interrupted whatever the Deity was about with another request, I’d like a few years of someone like that next to me at night.

  However, mortality rates on pilgrimages were high among both monks and Wild Geese. If his life were to be as short as his parents’ lives had been, well, there was no good purpose served by complaining about it. Spying was different; whatever fancy names the Commodore gave to his mission, he was still a spy. He came along on the tiny Dev, armed not with a laser pistol but with a small harp, dressed not in the proud uniform of a commandant but in the dull gray of a wandering minstrel. There would be no electronic communication with the Iona; the Zylongi were not to be aware of her existence until a final decision to land was made. Only his own telepathic powers would be in use—weak and skittish as they were.

  I’m to charm them with my wit and song—and Himself knows I’m a great bard no matter what those blatherskites on the Iona say about me. But while I’m awing them with my songs and stories, I’m supposed to be finding out what makes this heathen place tick.

  A hazy sun, turned rose by the thick upper atmosphere, was beginning to decline from its zenith. Its light softened the edges of the surrounding thick green foliage and deep crimson flowers, and the golden stream flowing nearby. A nice place, O’Neill thought. I wouldn’t mind raising wee ones here at all, at all.

  It was in the nature of things that the proper woman in your proper bed, properly disrobed and loved, was a requisite for having wee ones to raise. So far, Seamus had not done all that well, despite his brilliant fantasies, in dealing with that requisite. I’ll probably end up a crusty, lonely old bachelor, if I live long enough to become crusty.

  Then, having enjoyed his self-pity almost as much as he enjoyed his imagining about the proper woman, he got reluctantly from the pilot’s couch. It was time for work.

  He had been briefed to expect a hot humid atmosphere, but the wall of moisture he met leaving the Dev startled him. The fragrance of the flowers was as strong as their color, an overwhelming sweet scent, like the monastery greenhouse at Easter. Or a wake. O’Neill’s poet’s gown began to stick to his body. He unzipped the front of it, thinking again about the proper woman and about the possibilities of zipping and unzipping her garments.

  Steady, now, Seamus O’Neill, Commandant in the Wild Geese, you have better things to think about than undressing a woman.

  Have I now? Like what, for instance?

  Well, like the fact that the Lady Deirdre is monitoring all your thoughts.

  Ah, sure she’s a woman of taste and discretion. She wouldn’t be after monitoring my harmless little fantasies, would she?

  You’d better not be taking a chance.

  Ah, ‘tis yourself, Seamus O’Neill, who has a good point there.

  Virtuously, he raised the zipper on his poet’s gown.

  “Peace to this planet.” He repeated the usual Taran greeting and knelt on one knee, making a perfunctory sign of the cross. “’Tis neither ours nor theirs,” he added a prayer of his own, “but Yours. Protect it and us and them from all evil. Grant that I may bring to the good that is here something that is better, and to the bad, healing to make it good.”

  He paused to consider the elegance of his prayer, simple, heartfelt, appropriate. Not all that bad for a spur-of-the-moment effort.

  Pleased with his creativity as a man of prayer—and resolving that he would jot it down as part of the record for future historians just in case the Lady Deirdre missed it—Seamus O’Neill walked around the perimeter of the small landing site. The jungle looked impenetrable. Even so, the briefing officer chose it over the desert, which was supposedly dominated by aborigines; as interesting as those original Zylongi might be, they were not the primary object of his mission.

  Podraig, Iona’s foul-tongued computer, had refused to advise about the landing. To set down on the plain outside what seemed to be their capital might be seen as a warlike invasion; the Dev might be blasted out of the air before it touched ground, and Seamus with it, worse luck for him.

  “Do they have the weapons to blast anything out of the air?” Seamus had asked the computer.

  “No frigging data,” snarled Podraig.

  On the other hand, if he landed in t
he desert or the jungle at some distance from the capital, they might not even notice him. Or if they did, they might not think it worth the effort to rescue him. Maybe they were a race of mystics, like some of the solitary monks on Iona, heaven save and protect us all.

  So with the computer refusing to make estimates, the decision was to drop him in the jungle. Better to be marooned in the jungle with plenty of water and food—all of which might be poison—than to be blasted out of the air or die of thirst on the desert.

  “Why not put me down on one of the mountains?” Seamus had demanded ironically. “They say freezing to death is a pleasant way to die once you get used to it.”

  No one had bothered to laugh.

  Anyway, here he was in the jungle. Did the locals know he was here? Did they care? Did they have any intention of rescuing him from this fragrant, hellishly hot landing site? He had nothing but a harp to ward off any animals that might lurk there. In the briefing the monk Kiernan—Kiernan Pat, the one with the Ph.D. in biology, as distinct from Kiernan Tim, the subnavigator—had said, “Sorry, we have little information about nonhuman fauna. There are herds of cattle, which the dominant race—vegetarians, you see—keep for their milk and fur.…”

  “Fur … cattle with fur?” Seamus protested.

  “Heathenish, isn’t it? The subordinate race are omnivorous and consume small animals, so there’s probably a predatory food chain. There is no reason, of course, to assume that there is an absence of large predators. I’d be interested,” he smiled faintly, “to learn that any of them were hominivorous.”

  “You mean man-eating?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll try to let you know, Kiernan, me boy.”

  “You do that, Seamus.”

  Seamus sat down in the shadow of the Dev and peeled back the top of his poet’s gown. Strumming his harp, he crooned an ancient and mournful Celtic melody, adapted to fit his situation. It went on—interminably, he himself was willing to admit—about a woman mourning for her sweet lover who had gone off to a strange world to spy on the enemy.