The Final Planet Read online

  “’Tis,” he said curtly.

  “I will,” she shuffled through the papers, “have some comments of my own after I summarize the data. All right?”

  “Sure you don’t often sound like a social scientist.”

  “I use the jargon whenever it seems appropriate,” she colored slightly, indicating that in the endless sparring that was essential to Taran culture, he had scored a point, but had hardly won the battle, much less the war.

  “It is, in all likelihood, an old utopian culture entering its last phases before disintegration. The communitarian zeal that once animated it is long since spent. The pretense of unanimous shared decision-making will have long since turned into an empty ritual. It will be very civilized, very sophisticated, very gentle and polite as long as no one challenges the basic assumptions or the real power structure—and make no mistake about it, Seamus Finnbar O’Neill, these utopian communities have a very strong if unacknowledged power structure from the very beginning.”

  “’Course we don’t know what happens to one after a thousand years, now do we?”

  “An intelligent observation—” she raised a thin eyebrow “—as welcome as it is rare. In any case, they will be very supportive of one another, but that very support will be a form of social control. There will be little personal freedom as we know it and very little creative vitality.”

  “Not exactly like us,” Seamus said with a grin.

  The Abbess did not find it amusing. “There could hardly be greater differences between them and the band of half-mad, individualistic anarchists over which I seem to be destined to be responsible.” Her slender fingers drummed thoughtfully on the desk. “We are contentious, troublesome, independent, given to decisions by a handful of votes.…”

  “Except for reelecting yourself every year.”

  “… That does not alter the point,” she went on, the drumbeat of her fingers increasing its pace, “that we are neither polite, nor cultivated, nor civilized and that we not only permit individual creativity to the point of eccentricity—as you yourself exemplify—” she smiled, rather like an amused parent with an indulged child, “—we actively encourage it. We are, in fact, rather proud of our oddities and our eccentricities.

  “Ah, sure we’re at least alive.”

  “We are that, Seamus Finnbar O’Neill. Our manners and our morals may not have improved much since the days of the proto-Celts on Tara. We drink too much, we argue too much, we talk too much, we fight too much.…”

  “On occasion, begging Your Ladyship’s pardon, we wench too much.”

  The Cardinal frowned. “That is neither here nor there. Our men are often rather timid in these matters; they talk a much better game than they actually play, or do I cut too close to the bone, Seamus Finnbar O’Neill?”

  Seamus had nothing at all to say to that. So the Cardinal, pleased that she had scored a point, continued. “Our relations between the sexes are usually marked by interminable verbal sparring.”

  “’Tis not true at all, at all.” Seamus grinned genially at her. “Pure calumny.”

  “We daydream too much and justify it in the name of mysticism. We pray a lot but mostly because we think God is a Gael like we are. We take interminable showers and baths—in the water all the time—and make a fetish out of personal hygiene and at the same time are incorrigibly sloppy in our domestic hygiene. Have you ever seen anything in all the galaxy as sloppy as this vessel? And despite my endless efforts to keep it neat and clean?”

  “It works.” Seamus raised his hands in excuse.

  “Well, perhaps not much longer. Now where was I? Oh yes, we are very good at hating and not very good at loving. We sing when we’re unhappy and cry when we’re happy. We laugh and drink and make love at wakes and cry and drink and often don’t make love at weddings.…”

  “A terrible lot altogether.…”

  “Well—” she straightened her alloy-stiff back a little more “—until you consider the alternatives. In any case the culture contact between deteriorating utopian communalism…” She shuffled through her papers. “I believe that is what our scholars call it, yes. Impressive words, aren’t they, Seamus Finnbar O’Neill? … between, as I say, deteriorating communalism, and incorrigible—let me see, yes—anarchic individualism can be fraught with problems.”

  “Anarchic individualists? Is that what we are? Well, it seems reasonable enough. Sure I like us better.”

  “Precisely. But our friends down there might be forgiven for reacting as our ancestors did to the arrival of the Vikings. In almost any scenario, there could be serious trouble.”

  “We’re not going to do them any harm.” Seamus twisted uneasily in his foam chair. “Sure won’t we leave them alone?”

  “Not going to do them any harm?” She fingered her ivory pectoral cross nervously. “That’s what the early missionaries on Tara said when unwittingly they brought contagious diseases that killed most of the locals off. We can cope with the medical problems well enough now. But our approach to life could be as deadly to them. Could you imagine, to cite a minor point, a Zylongi woman trying to deal with the endless stream of blarney that pours from the mouth of a Taran male?”

  “Or a Zylongi male trying to sort out which of the thousand ways a Taran female says ‘no’ actually mean ‘yes’?”

  “That is neither here nor there.” Her tough jaw set in its usual hard line, an indication that someone had scored a point against her. Turnabout was never fair play with Cardinal Fitzgerald. Sauce for the goose, never sauce for the gander, even though her tone indicated that she did not totally reject the truth of Seamus’s observation. “To take a much more serious matter, what might happen in a culture in which political democracy—as we know it, anyway—has not existed for centuries when it faces a culture in which politics is the favorite form of daytime entertainment?—”

  “And often nighttime too.”

  She ignored him completely. “—A culture in which discontent is almost never expressed when it encounters one in which it is celebrated almost daily, as routinely as we monks chant the divine office?”

  “I begin to see the problem.” Seamus leaned forward on his chair. “And the difficulty from their point of view is that, if our estimates are right, their culture has lost its drive. And ours, as far as we can tell anyway, has as much drive as it ever had.”

  “There are disadvantages in anarchy, as I of all people on this untidy, disorderly, contentious ship have reason to know, but it rarely runs down. On the other hand, their culture seems to be in acute trouble. Either it will be running down like a clock that cannot be rewound or it will have built up enormous energies of frustration that are ready to explode. Podraig thinks there is a fifty–fifty chance of violent disintegration within the year. Arguably both processes will be occurring.”

  “Will any of them know it?”

  “Most will deny it—” she glanced at the blank screen “—but some of the more intelligent or the more lunatic will know it, of course. That will make the situation there very volatile, however serene and untroubled the veneer may appear.”

  “So with that kind of error margin, you need a human spy to second-guess that cheap thief of a computer?” he asked, sitting himself across from her without waiting to be asked.

  The Lady Deirdre Fitzgerald sighed. “You know well, Seamus O’Neill, that you are under no obligation to go on this mission.” She pointed a delicate finger at the map of Zylong that she had caused, by a mental wish, to appear on the small viewing screen. “Seamus, that may be the end of our pilgrimage. God knows, it is time to end it. You and I know more than most the costs that have been paid for it. We cannot afford another disaster.”

  There was silence in the heavily draped room. The Captain Abbess rearranged her plain brown robe, not the elaborate Celtic dress blue used on solemn high occasions, with its thin red fringe and the blue Brigid’s cross. She was thinking of her husband and children, O’Neill knew. And he thought of his parents, slain ten ye
ars ago in the disastrous landing on Rigoon. None of the other pilgrimages, not even the fateful trip of the Clonmacnoise, had been so long or so tragic. He didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Moreover, as you are well aware, there is a faction within the monastery which thinks that it is time to change the Rules.”

  “Idjits.” Seamus leaped from his chair, ready to battle with anyone who challenged Her Ladyship’s wisdom and leadership.

  “You’re the idjit too.” She pointed at the chair. “Restrain your temper and sit down. This matter is too serious for a display of your masculine pride.” She readjusted her ivory cross and tucked a few strands of errant hair back under her veil. “Their dissatisfaction is understandable. We are, after all, in serious trouble. Yet if we become colonists instead of missionaries, convert makers instead of respectful visitors who come peacefully in response to invitation, then there will be violence and death. We may win at first, but in the long run we will lose just as surely and far more dreadfully than we will if we let this monastery become a lifeless space derelict.”

  “And you’ll have no part of leading an invasion.”

  “I will not.” She rested her hand gently on the desk in front of her, as determined as gravity.

  “Nor will a lot of the rest of us. If it comes to that, they’ll invade by themselves.”

  “Shush, Seamus.” She sighed wearily. “It has not come to that yet. Mostly now it is talk. Yet I cannot be wholly displeased with mothers and fathers who do not want to see their children die slowly and painfully as we run out of food and air and water. The talk of mutiny is not dangerous, not yet.”

  “So I am to pop in and find out if the Zylongi would allow a monastery of the Order of Saints Brendan and Brigid to land and on an island in their great big river.” He hoped his light tone would dispel the unhappy memories that haunted both of them.

  The Captain Abbess played with the ruby on her finger. “As you know, Seamus, ours is not a missionary order. The Peregrinatio is an act of devotion and service in itself, needing no other justification. We convert no one to our Holy Faith by force. Ever since the great Columcile on the original Iona, our monasteries have been devoted to scholarship and prayer. If the example of our lives of joy, learning, and service attract people to the Holy Faith, then well and good. We are not out to make converts.”

  It was the official party line. Deirdre repeated it as though reciting a lesson. Seamus knew she believed it; he believed it himself, more or less, and certainly his parents before him had believed it. Why else would a young couple have embarked on this crazy pilgrimage?

  “But,” Seamus added, with a faint touch of sarcasm, fleshing out the official version, “since there is a little bit of the gombeen man in all of us, we have the custom of ending our pilgrimages only when we find a planet where there is a good chance the natives will be attracted by something more than the quality of our poteen. If Podraig is right, the Zylongi are going to need someone to pick up the pieces for them in the very near future.” He was backing her into a corner where she would have to trot out the whole truth.

  Deirdre ignored his sarcasm. Fingering the sheaf of papers on her desk, she spoke: “You will remember that my sainted predecessor thought we would be received with open arms on Rigoon. It was only Carmody and the last company of Wild Geese that saved us all from extinction.”

  O’Neill remembered all right. A fourteen-year-old boy with a bloody pike in his hand, looking down at the mutilated bodies of his family, would not ever forget Rigoon or the sainted fool who led them into the trap. “So I am to observe how far along the line toward collapse the Zylongi are?”

  “Something like that, Seamus O’Neill.” She sighed again and found on one of her summary papers something to hold her eyes.

  She won’t look at me, damn her.

  It was time for Seamus to raise his real objection. “Why not just leave them alone? If the Zylongi have a happy culture, why take the risk of disturbing it? Do they care that they’re not free?”

  Rising from her throne, the Captain walked over to the viewer. “You’ve only known freedom, Seamus O’Neill. You cannot imagine life without it.” She wasn’t letting him look at her melancholy eyes. “We will not harm the Zylongi. You know me well enough to know that I will not take away anyone’s happiness or contentment. I trust you on this mission; you must trust whatever decisions I have to make.”

  Whatever was on Deirdre’s mind, it was making her sad and weary. Still, O’Neill knew it would come to that. The whole crew of the Iona worshiped the woman. Each year when she came up for reelection the vote was overwhelming. Even those who were muttering about a vote to change the Rules assumed—irrationally, it seemed to Seamus—that she would accept such a change. If the ill-starred pilgrimage of the Iona was ever to end happily, the Lady Deirdre was the one who could do it. Of course, the fact that she read the whole monastery, perceiving problems even before they arose, didn’t hurt. He had seen Deirdre turn aside a large meteor when the safety shields were not functioning. “There is,” Liam Carmody said once, “just a little bit of the witch about Her Ladyship.”

  It was not unusual for a woman to captain a spacecraft. Holy Brigid herself had presided over a monastery of monks and virgins long ago. Of course, the Captain Abbess was not a virgin; she had been married with three children before the disaster at Rigoon. If rumors were to be believed, she was not exactly pious in her youthful days on Tara before the pilgrimage. After Rigoon and the loss of her family, she chose to leave the Wild Geese and to join the monastic community in order to erase the great wound in her heart. She grew in wisdom and political skill, as well as piety, without losing the strength of her youth. So the slender figure of the Captain Abbess took command of the Abbot’s throne on the bridge of Iona. She was neither young nor old but timeless beneath her veil, her long black hair covered now; the delicate face looking out clear-eyed and farseeing over a world she was already beyond. Trust Deirdre? The monks and the Wild Geese might complain mightily—that was part of being a Taran—but the pale, melancholy Abbess had absolute command of their fidelity.

  One did not, of course, imagine the Abbess without her monastic robes. But she did swim in the Iona’s pool like everyone else—in a brown swimsuit with a crimson fringe—and one could hardly help notice that her figure was still, to put it mildly, presentable. That, however, was never discussed and certainly was far from anyone’s mind when they were in her throne room.

  Well, reasonably far.

  Her sigh captured O’Neill’s straying attention. He stood up and drew himself to his full height. “Woman,” he said, “there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “There is, of course, the matter of the aborigines,” she said, gazing thoughtfully at the map, “creatures who were there before the Zylongi migrated to the planet. There are hints in the few reports we have from travelers that there is something unusual either about the aborigines themselves or with the Zylongi’s relations with them.”

  “So that’s another one of my jobs. I’m to keep an eye out for the aborigines. But rumors from space tramps are not enough to make you frown that way, Lady Deirdre.” Get to it, woman, stop beating around the bush. You’ll drive me daft.

  “How perceptive of you to notice.” She sighed wearily, rose gracefully from her throne, and wandered over to the observation port. “Some of the early travelers made crude drawings of the aborigines. There’s one on the desk, as Podraig has reproduced it from his memory banks. Take a look at it, Seamus O’Neill.”

  He leaned forward, searched through the papers, and found a drawing of a creature that looked almost human.

  “Sure, ‘tis like one of them cute little creatures in the biology textbooks.” He hesitated as he searched his memory for the right word. “Prehominid? What are they doing here?”

  “Precisely, Seamus Finnbar O’Neill. I don’t know the answer and I may never know it. Removed from Earth aeons ago by a Great Exploration from elsewhere of which we know not
hing? Perhaps. Evolving at a slower rate here because of a different set of environmental challenges? Maybe.”

  “Brigid, Patrick, and Columcile!”

  “Precisely.” She touched a button on the wall, and the thick damask curtains soundlessly closed over the observation port, much to Seamus’s relief. “And all the other holy saints. Therefore, there is a reasonable possibility that the so-called dominant race has interfered with the evolutionary process of this species, which is in all likelihood conspecific with us and them.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’ll tell you my gut instinct, Seamus.” She placed a hand briefly on an admirably flat belly. “Where you find domination of conspecifics, you encounter sexual exploitation. A shortage of women, powerful men displaying their might with harems, organized prostitution. The races mix. Then the superior race, horrified at what it has done, denies the past, which means they deny the conspecific nature of the subordinate race. The result is even more cruel violation, exploitation, degradation—if necessary, of millions of creatures. Do you understand?”

  “As yourself has said, even the Tarans are bigots.”

  “Even.” She smiled wryly. “At least we know it.”

  She walked back to her throne and sat down in it, as elegantly as she had risen.

  “You even say that the bigot distorts himself more than he does the target of his bigotry.”

  She smiled indulgently. “You do have a brain, don’t you, Seamus Finnbar O’Neill? Leaving aside all social science predictions—” she brushed her report away impatiently “—I would bet, if it were permitted an Abbess to gamble the few jewels left on this ship, that the dominant race has done terrible things to itself and to the other race in the name of its supposed superiority.”

  “Whose side are we on? The poor little creatures’, I hope.”

  “Everyone’s!” she snapped impatiently. “We try to make peace, not choose sides in conflict. You know that.”