Supermen: Tales of the Posthuman Future (2 page)

Of course, today's authors can't
really
give us the view from a posthuman intelligence, any more than an Australopithecus could have written a story seen through the eyes of a contemporary twenty-first-century human. The stories, after all, are being written by people on
this
side of the posthuman gulf— and no matter how ingenious the speculations they contain, no matter how lavish and radical the imaginations of the authors, they remain of necessity limited by being the
human
perspective of what posthumanity might be like. To those individuals who actually
live
through the Vingean Singularity and on into the world of posthumanity, let alone to those produced in generations to come, it may all seem quite different. Already there are stories by writers such as Stableford, Sterling, Ryman, Marusek, and others that hint that the Posthuman Future won't be such a bad place after all— or won't
seem
so to us after we get there, anyway… which may not be nearly as far away as you think.

Maybe someday, in the unknown and unknowable future, a
real
Posthuman Entity will come across this book, and riffle through it, and laugh, or at least smile with wistful nostalgia, at how naive and limited and constrained our ideas were of what posthumanity would be like, all of us stuck back here in the murk of the benighted and backward twenty-first century, of how far off the mark our speculations were, muse about how we could never have come even
close
to predicting what
really
happened.…

And, with luck, and if things move fast enough, maybe that Posthuman Entity will even be
you
, transformed past all recognition.

POUL ANDERSON

One of the best-known writers in science fiction, Poul Anderson made his first sale in 1947, while he was still in college, and in the course of his subsequent career has published almost a hundred books (in several different fields: as Anderson has written historical novels, fantasies, and mysteries, in addition to SF), sold hundreds of short pieces to every conceivable market, and won seven Hugo Awards, three Nebula Awards, and the Tolkein Memorial Award for Life Achievement.

Anderson had trained to be a scientist, taking a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota, but the writing life proved to be more seductive, and he never did get around to working in his original field of choice. Instead, the sales mounted steadily, until by the late fifties and early sixties, he may have been one of the most prolific writers in the genre.

In spite of his high output of fiction, he somehow managed to maintain an amazingly high standard of literary quality as well, and by the early mid-sixties was also on his way to becoming one of the most honored and respected writers in the SF genre. At one point during this period— in addition to nonrelated work and lesser series such as the "Hoka" stories he was writing in collaboration with Gordon R. Dickson— Anderson was running three of the most popular and prestigious series in science fiction all at the same time: the "Technic History" series detailing the exploits of the wily trader Nicholas Van Rijn (which includes novels such as
The Man Who Counts, The Trouble Twisters, Satan's World, Mirkheim, The People of the Wind,
and collections such as
Trader to the Stars
and
The Earth Book of Storm-gate);
the extremely popular series relating the adventures of interstellar secret agent Dominic Flandry, probably the most successful attempt to cross SF with the spy thriller, next to Jack Vance's "Demon Princes" novels (the Flandry series includes novels such as
A Circus of Hells, The Rebel Worlds, The Day of Their Return, Flandry of Terra, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, A Stone in Heaven,
and
The Game of Empire,
and collections such as
Agent of the Terran Empire);
and, my own personal favorite, a series that took us along on assignment with the agents of the Time Patrol (including the collections
The Guardians of Time, Time Patrolman, The Shield of Time,
and
The Time Patrol).

When you add to this amazing collection of memorable titles the impact of the best of Anderson's non-series novels— works such as
Brain Wave, Three Hearts and Three lions, The Night Face, The Enemy Stars,
and
The High Crusade,
all of which were being published in addition to the series books— it becomes clear that Anderson dominated the late fifties and the pre-New Wave sixties in a way that only Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke could rival. And, like them, he remained an active and dominant figure right through the seventies, eighties, and nineties.

Here's a compelling look into the far future, at a moment when the race is
beginning to split into human and posthuman camps. Even in this early story— published in 1953— it's clear that the gulf can only
widen… often with tragic results.

Anderson's other books (among many others) include:
The Broken Sword, Tau Zero, A Midsummer Tempest, Orion Shall Rise, The Boat of a Million Years, Harvest of Stars, The Fleet of Stars, Starfarers,
and
Operation Luna.
His short work has been collected in
The Queen of Air and Darkness and Other Stories, Fantasy, The Unicorn Trade
(with Karen Anderson),
Past Times, The Best of Poul Anderson, Explorations,
and, most recently, the retrospective collection
All One Universe.
His most recent book is a new novel,
Genesis— on bestseller lists at the beginning of the oughts as well.
Until his death on July 31, 2001, Anderson lived in Orinda, California, with his wife (and fellow writer), Karen.

I

"No," said the old man.

"But you don't realize what it means," said Jorun. "You don't know what you're saying."

The old man, Kormt of Huerdar, Gerlaug's son, and Speaker for Soils Township, shook his head till the long, grizzled locks swirled around his wide shoulders. "I have thought it through," he said. His voice was deep and slow and implacable. "You gave me five years to think about it. And my answer is no."

Jorun felt a weariness rise within him. It had been like this for days now, weeks, and it was like trying to knock down a mountain. You beat on its rocky flanks till your hands were bloody, and still the mountain stood there, sunlight on its high snow fields and in the forests that rustled up its slopes, and it did not really notice you. You were a brief thin buzz between two long nights, but the mountain was forever.

"You haven't thought at all," he said with a rudeness born of exhaustion. "You've only reacted unthinkingly to a dead symbol. It's not a human reaction, even, it's a verbal reflex."

Kormt's eyes, meshed in crow's-feet, were serene and steady under the thick gray brows. He smiled a little in his long beard, but made no other reply. Had he simply let the insult glide off him, or had he not understood it at all? There was no real talking to these peasants; too many millennia lay between, and you couldn't shout across that gulf.

"Well," said Jorun, "the ships will be here tomorrow or the next day, and it'll take another day or so to get all your people aboard. You have that long to decide, but after that it'll be too late. Think about it, I beg of you. As for me, I'll be too busy to argue further."

"You are a good man," said Kormt, "and a wise one in your fashion. But you are blind. There is something dead inside you."

He waved one huge gnarled hand. "Look around you, Jorun of Fulkhis. This is
Earth
. This is the old home of all humankind. You cannot go off and forget it. Man cannot do so. It is in him, in his blood and bones and soul; he will carry Earth within him forever."

Jorun's eyes traveled along the arc of the hand. He stood on the edge of
the town. Behind him were its houses— low, white, half-timbered, roofed with thatch or red tile, smoke rising from the chimneys; carved galleries overhung the narrow, cobbled, crazily twisting streets; he heard the noise of wheels and wooden clogs, the shouts of children at play. Beyond that were trees and the incredible ruined walls of Sol City. In front of him, the wooded hills were cleared and a gentle landscape of neat fields and orchards rolled down toward the distant glitter of the sea; scattered farm buildings, drowsy cattle, winding gravel roads, fence walls of ancient marble and granite, all dreaming under the sun.

He drew a deep breath. It was pungent in his nostrils. It smelled of leaf mold, plowed earth baking in the warmth, summery trees and gardens, a remote ocean odor of salt and kelp and fish. He thought that no two planets ever had quite the same smell, and that none was as rich as Terra's.

"This is a fair world," he said slowly.

"It is the only one," said Kormt. "Man came from here; and to this, in the end, he must return."

"I wonder—" Jorun sighed. "Take me; not one atom of my body was from this soil before I landed. My people lived on Fulkhis for ages, and changed to meet its conditions. They would not be happy on Terra."

"The atoms are nothing," said Kormt. "It is the form which matters, and that was given to you by Earth."

Jorun studied him for a moment. Kormt was like most of this planet's ten million or so people— a dark, stocky folk, though there were more blond and red-haired throwbacks here than in the rest of the Galaxy. He was old for a primitive untreated by medical science— he must be almost two hundred years old— but his back was straight, and his stride firm. The coarse, jutnosed face held an odd strength. Jorun was nearing his thousandth birthday, but couldn't help feeling like a child in Kormt's presence.

That didn't make sense. These few dwellers on Terra were a backward and impoverished race of peasants and handicraftsmen; they were ignorant and unadventurous; they had been static for more thousands of years than anyone knew. What could they have to say to the ancient and mighty civilization which had almost forgotten their little planet?

Kormt looked at the declining sun. "I must go now," he said. "There are the evening chores to do. I will be in town tonight if you should wish to see me."

"I probably will," said Jorun. "There's a lot to do, readying the evacuation, and you're a big help."

*

The old man bowed with grave courtesy, turned, and walked off down the road. He wore the common costume of Terran men, as archaic in style as in its woven-fabric material: hat, jacket, loose trousers, a long staff in his hand. Contrasting the drab blue of Kormt's dress, Jorun's vivid tunic of shifting rainbow hues was like a flame.

The psychotechnician sighed again, watching him go. He liked the old fellow. It would be criminal to leave him here alone, but the law forbade force— physical or mental— and the Integrator on Corazuno wasn't going to
care whether or not one aged man stayed behind. The job was to get the
race
off Terra.

A lovely world
. Jorun's thin mobile features, pale-skinned and large-eyed, turned around the horizon.
A fair world we came from
.

There were more beautiful planets in the Galaxy's swarming myriads— the indigo world-ocean of Loa, jeweled with islands; the heaven-defying mountains of Sharang; the sky of Jareb, that seemed to drip light— oh, many and many, but there was only one Earth.

Jorun remembered his first sight of this world, hanging free in space to watch it after the grueling ten-day run, thirty thousand light-years, from Corazuno. It was blue as it turned before his eyes, a burnished turquoise shield blazoned with the living green and brown of its lands, and the poles were crowned with a glimmering haze of aurora. The belts that streaked its face and blurred the continents were cloud, wind and water and the gray rush of rain, like a benediction from heaven. Beyond the planet hung its moon, a scarred golden crescent, and he had wondered how many generations of men had looked up to it, or watched its light like a broken bridge across moving waters. Against the enormous cold of the sky— utter black out to the distant coils of the nebulae, thronging with a million frosty points of diamond-hard blaze that were the stars— Earth had stood as a sign of haven. To Jorun, who came from Galactic center and its uncountable hosts of suns, heaven was bare, this was the outer fringe where the stars thinned away toward hideous immensity. He had shivered a little, drawn the envelope of air and warmth closer about him, with a convulsive movement. The silence drummed in his head. Then he streaked for the north-pole rendezvous of his group.

Well
, he thought now,
we have a pretty routine job. The
fi
rst expedition here,
fi
ve years ago, prepared the natives for the fact they'd have to go. Our party simply has to organize these docile peasants in time for the ships.
But it had meant a lot of hard work, and he was tired. It would be good to finish the job and get back home.

Or would it?

He thought of flying with Zarek, his teammate, from the rendezvous to this area assigned as theirs. Plains like oceans of grass, wind-rippled, darkened with the herds of wild cattle whose hoofbeats were a thunder in the earth; forests, hundreds of kilometers of old and mighty trees, rivers piercing them in a long steel gleam; Jakes where fish leaped; spilling sunshine like warm rain, radiance so bright it hurt his eyes, cloud-shadows swift across the land. It had all been empty of man, but still there was a vitality here which was almost frightening to Jorun. His own grim world of moors and crags and spindrift seas was a niggard beside this; here life covered the earth, filled the oceans, and made the heavens clangorous around him. He wondered if the driving energy within man, the force which had raised him to the stars, made him half-god and half-demon, if that was a legacy of Terra.

Well— man had changed; over the thousands of years, natural and controlled adaptation had fitted him to the worlds he had colonized, and most of his many races could not now feel at home here. Jorun thought of his own party: round, amber-skinned Chuli from a tropic world, complaining bitterly
about the cold and dryness; gay young Cluthe, gangling and bulge-chested; sophisticated Taliuvenna of the flowing dark hair and the lustrous eyes— no, to them Earth was only one more planet, out of thousands they had seen in their long lives.