James P. Hogan (41 page)

It was Real Magic.

He felt fulfilled.

“T-minus-three. Primary holding,” Heshtar anounced.

The launch director came in from an adjacent station. “Release inhibitor shield interlocks. Confirm annihilator alignments.”

“Interlocks released. Annihilator alignments confirmed at zero-zero, zero-point-one, and zero-zero,” another voice replied.

“I remember watching
Aurora
as a light crossing the sky back on Earth,” Vaydien said. “The light became a world that my children will live in. And now we have another light that will go ahead of us to another world that their children will live in.
Aurora
was the bringer of a new kind of life.”

“More than just that,” Lois Iles said. She was standing with Lubanov, Vogol, and a few more from Lubanov’s office, in front of a screen showing Ormont, who was following from the Directorate on
Aurora
. “It symbolizes a new way of life.”

“The potential that was always there but not free to express itself.” Marney Clure, who was standing with her, spoke without turning his head. He had matured into a deep thinker and influential political figure since the day Lois brought him from Tranth. Opinions were that he would lead a powerful movement one day, if not the entire mission. “What
Aurora
symbolizes is the triumph of the human mind and spirit over the unreason and passions that destroyed the first attempt. Hera will become that way of life.”

“Is that why
Aurora
was conceived?” Lois asked him.

“
Aurora
wasn’t conceived. It was an imperative that had to express itself.” News from Earth had come through intermittently. In recent years it had told of a deteriorating situation in Sofi, faced by rising opposition and threats from without, and deepening political divisions at home over how to respond to them. Yes, in the shorter term it possessed the ability to maintain its superiority by imposing a worldwide tyranny of force, which would be a betrayal of all the principles that it professed to believe in. But even then, how could it hope to prevail indefinitely against the universal hostility that such a course would engender from numbers that an entire planet would eventually command? Most of those who had debated the issue felt that there was no ready answer, and eventually the same forces that had consumed Earth before would do so again.

“Into the last minute.” A glowing numeric display of the countdown appeared across the bottoms of the screens. Views from
Aurora
showed crowds out in the urban plazas and smaller numbers in places like Evergreen and Plantation, staring up at the sky windows. Even on Istella, the gaudy lights and signs had been turned down, and the squares between the darkened arcades and show palaces filled with hushed, upturned faces.

“Disengage primary hold. Enable igniter trigger.”

“Primary hold is off. Trigger enabled. We have go on all.”

The launch director addressed a screen on his panel. “Over to you on zero?” Ormont nodded on the screen showing him. It had been agreed at Cereta’s suggestion that Ormont should have the privilege of issuing the final command.

At Korshak’s side, Vaydien pressed closer. He slipped a reassuring arm around her. Lois smiled encouragingly.

“It would be ironic if the alarmists’ fears come true after everything we’ve put into this,” Lubanov commented. Only he could have thought of it.

Three… two… one…

“Launch,” Ormont commanded.

Even through the electronically attenuated wall of the dome, the whole of the control floor lit up like day as, fifty miles away, a jet of blue-white plasma lanced across space, its length such that through some peculiar trick of optics it appeared to be curved.
Envoy
itself was invisible, but already the source of the jet was moving visibly, extending a line in the opposite direction that was already beginning to take on a curvature of its own. Korshak thought of the replays he’d seen of the
Aurora
’s departure as captured from Earth and sent on after the ship. Like the protestors against
Envoy
who had relented as the magnificence of the achievement of the species they belonged to at last burst upon them, many who had opposed
Aurora
had subsequently beamed well-wishes for its future, as if Earth were sending its farewell.

Earth was a living organism, Korshak realized as he stared at the screens and thought of the images he had seen of it progressively receding. It had struggled and grown to bloom to the limits that its potential was capable of. When the final convulsions set in that would lead to decline and decay, it had mustered its dying strength to hurl a seed of itself out to take root among fresh, uncontaminated beginnings. And then it would die, as every organism had to. The older Mirsto had understood that within the first year out, before he died. Korshak was beginning to grasp it only now.

The line of radiance burning across the sky pointed in two directions. Behind lay the world that once was and could never be again. Ahead was the world that would be, that could become all that it was capable of.

And in the vastness of the empty void between the two, the tiny fleet of miniature artificial worlds hurtled onward to whatever its destiny would be.