Birthright: The Book of Man Read online

  “You look dubious,” said Landon dryly.

  “Stunned is more the word for it,” said Nelson. “If what you say is true, it’s a pretty big revelation. If not, then they’ve got a totally unbalanced egomaniac in charge of a pretty important governmental department. Either way, it’s not something I was prepared for."

  Landon laughed for the first time. “That’s what I like about you Pioneers. Who else would tell the Director of Cartography that he’s off his rocker? Tell you what. Why not come and take a little tour with me? It might help you make up your mind. And always remember: Mad or not, government checks don’t bounce."

  “That’s what’s kept me here so far,” said Nelson frankly.

  “Good for you. I don’t trust a man who doesn’t watch out for his own interests. Come along.” With that, he rose and walked out the door into his outer office, followed by Nelson. As he left the larger enclosure, a quartet of security officers joined him. He walked over to a small battery-powered cart, motioned Nelson to sit beside him, waited for the officers to grab handholds, and began driving rapidly down a long corridor. Nelson tried to follow the various changes of direction Landon took, but soon became confused and settled back with a sigh. At no time did the cart move farther than fifty yards from one of the huge outside walls, and it seemed to Nelson that they were continuously ascending, although at a very slight angle.

  At last the cart screeched to a halt, and Landon and Nelson got out. The security officers dismounted, but made no effort to follow them. The Director led the Pioneer to a small doorway.

  “Not prone to vertigo, are you?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” said Nelson.

  “Good. When we walk through this door we’ll be on a balcony. It’s quite long and of more than ample width, but every now and then somebody starts getting dizzy on me; sometimes it’s vertigo, sometimes it’s just the map."

  Landon walked through the door, and Nelson fell into step behind him.

  And stopped.

  And stared.

  And almost fell off the balcony.

  Below him stretched the galaxy. Not a map, not a bunch of dots on a wall chart, but the galaxy.

  As far as the eye could see and farther, as deep as the eye could see and deeper, it spread out before him in all its gargantuan vastness, all its delicate beauty. Millions upon millions of stars, worlds without end, natural and artificial, satellites spinning crazily in their orbits, here an interstellar comet, there a meteor storm, way over there huge clouds of opaque gaseous matter.

  “What do you think of it?” asked Landon with the air of a proud father.

  “I never imagined . . .” muttered Nelson, unable to tear his eyes away. “I never guessed . . ."

  Landon chuckled. “Quite a piece of work, isn’t it? It’s 57.8 miles long, 6.2 miles deep, 38.1 miles wide. It contains every star in the galaxy, bar none, as well as every other body we’ve charted. For example, there are well over two million asteroids between Sirius XI and XII, though we’d have to magnify the field to show even the bigger ones."

  “It’s awesome,” said Nelson fervently.

  “And accurate,” said Landon. “It’s moving far too slowly for you to perceive, but the entire galaxy is rotating at its natural speed. So are the planets, and all the other bodies. All solar storms, ionic and otherwise, are charted. We’ve even got a fix on every ship the Republic owns, plus a number of alien vessels as well."

  Nelson only half-heard the Director. He was lost in the majesty and grandeur of the map . . . though map was such an inadequate word for it. As he looked more closely, he saw that the colors of the various stars had been maintained: There were red stars, yellow ones, white dwarfs, blue giants, binaries, even long-dead black stars. Though he couldn’t see any of them clearly, he’d have bet his last dollar that the topography of the myriads of planets was painstakingly accurate.

  “This, of course, is just a beginning,” Landon’s voice came through to him. The Director pressed a small button on the railing of the balcony and spoke into a microphone.

  “Control Booth, this is Landon here. Let’s see Earth, and put it on high magnification."

  Immediately a light flashed far out on one of the spiral arms of the simulated galaxy. It was a good five miles from where Nelson stood, but so bright that it immediately drew his attention.

  “Earth,” explained Landon, “And now, if you’ll be so good as to look above you . . ."

  Nelson’s eyes followed Landon’s extended finger. Somewhere above his head, though he couldn’t say how close it really was, floated Earth, spinning serenely beneath its swirling cloud layers.

  “Bad weather today,” apologized Landon, “or you’d be able to see something more than Australia and Antarctica. I could have them remove the clouds, but I’m sure you know what the rest of it looks like. And here,” he added, pulling a number of cards out of a slot next to the button he had previously pressed, “is a complete hard copy readout on Earth: land area, sea area, gravity, average temperature of all major land masses, dominant forms of life, population, political systems now in power, major religions, economy, military potential, stellar alliances, technology, languages, varieties of the major races, aquatic life, age of planet, life expectancy of planet, rare elements, atmospheric breakdown, and just about anything else you need to know."

  “And you can do this with every planet in the galaxy?” asked Nelson.

  “To greater or lesser extents, yes,” said the Director. “It all depends on how much information we have about the stellar body in question. If paper's not to your liking, you can get the information on tapes, microfilm or voiceprints."

  “It’s fantastic!” said Nelson.

  “It has its uses,” agreed Landon, placing the paper back into the same slot. “I’m about to show you its major purpose.” He pressed the button once more. “Landon again,” he announced.

  “Put the whole map on dim."

  The galaxy dimmed until the nearer and larger stars were barely visible, and the planets and more distant stars were not to be seen at all. It looked, thought Nelson, like the death throes of the universe.

  “Okay,” said Landon. “Give me Earth again, on bright.” Five miles away a tiny light flashed on, brighter than the brightest sun.

  “Fine. Now, starting with Sirius V, flash every planet we control, put them on bright yellow, and leave them on. Give me a rate of five a second."

  Nelson watched for almost seven minutes as a cascade of brilliant yellow dots rippled forth from Earth to Deluros VIII, then spread radially throughout the main body of the galaxy. And all had originated from Earth. A thrill of pride ran through him as he watched a two-millennium history of human endeavor take place before his eyes.

  “Very good,” said Landon. “Now pinpoint every Republic ship that bears arms, put them in green, and keep them flashing at half-second intervals."

  Suddenly the pseudo-galaxy was alive with green. More than twenty million lights blinked on and off hypnotically, most of them within the periphery of yellow lights, but some—a million or so—well in advance of Man’s frontiers.

  “Fine,” announced Landon. “Now, in blue, give me every planet capable of supporting human life, but not yet colonized by Man.” He paused a second, then added: “Flash all those that are currently inhabited by intelligent alien races on a quarter-second blink."

  In total silence, another forty thousand lights flashed on brightly, and now the hue of the galactic scheme took on a bluish tint. Nelson was overwhelmed by the scope of the blue worlds, and hazarded a guess that about a tenth of them were blinking on and off, while the rest remained constant.

  “One last request,” said Landon. “In very bright red, let me see every world possessed of sentient nonhumans that might have the potential to resist us militarily."

  Another plethora of lights went on, well over three thousand of them, red and blinding.

  Individually, except for the initial steps of Man’s expansion into the galaxy
, there was no pattern. But now, as Nelson stood back and let his eyes pour over the brilliant-hued panorama before him, he began to see channels of force and expansion, paths of greater and lesser resistance through which Man could thread his way.

  “Do you begin to understand the significance of the Department of Cartography?” asked Landon.

  “I think so,” replied Nelson.

  “We are, in a very real sense, the expansionist movement of the Republic. With our facilities here at Caliban, we and we alone are in possession of enough data to know which planets are of value, which are not, which may cause problems of an environmental or military nature, which aliens may behave in which ways. We carry the analysis of history one step further; we also see and study the ebb and flow of the future. We can, in much the same way I showed you our current position, literally fight wars on the map, safely predicting almost every logical outcome of every conceivable confrontation. We are not an arm of the Navy; the Navy is a physical extension of Cartography."

  “If you can accurately predict every military outcome, why don’t we embark on a full-scale war of conquest?” asked Nelson.

  "We don't know what a totally alien intelligence will do, or even what it’s capable of. Don’t forget: Of the thousand or so species we’ve already made physical contact with, we’ve been completely unable to communicate with ninety percent of them. They’re that different. And since the big map was the product of human intelligence and endeavor, it projects outcomes based on strictly human logic and experience. We simply have no other type of philosophical system to program into it."

  “I see,” nodded Nelson. “For a while there, I was beginning to think the map had absolutely no limitations. It’s still the most impressive piece of equipment I’ve ever seen or heard of . . . and I am now willing to admit that you probably aren’t talking through your hat when you claim to be the most powerful man in history. I imagine no planet is explored or taken without your approval?"

  “Right,” said Landon.

  “Very impressive,” said Nelson. “I see where there have been half a dozen assassination attempts on the Secretary in the last year or two. Too bad they didn’t know where the real power lay."

  “Wouldn’t do ’em any good,” grunted Landon. “Most of our defenses aren’t too obvious, but no place in the universe is better able to protect itself. Don’t forget: No ship can get within a half a hundred light-years without our having it on the map and knowing every single thing there is to know about it. I won’t say we’re impregnable, but no one is ever going to sneak in here and assassinate anyone."

  “How do you get all your information?” asked Nelson.

  “The map building itself is just a tiny part of the Cartographic complex,” said Landon. “We employ more than four hundred thousand people whose sole duty is to collect and correlate information that pours in from all across the galaxy every day. Beneath the surface, we have a computer complex that positively dwarfs the map building. Someone once told me that there are more than eight hundred million miles of circuitry involved, though I don’t know who’d bother to count it all. Results are the only things that matter, and we get them.

  “The data is relayed to the map control room, also beneath the surface and adjacent to this building, which measures some two cubic miles. The information goes directly into the memory banks, and can be instantaneously translated into cartographic terms.

  “When I spoke to the Control Booth a while back, the man at the other end merely punched some standard buttons that had been programmed into the Cartographic computer complex. What you saw seemed solid and three-dimensional, but was actually a hologram simulated by a few hundred thousand modified lasers. Anyway, the facets I showed you are static, or at least as static as the galaxy ever gets. Projecting our expansion takes a little more effort, and a hell of a lot of intuitive interpretation. As I said, you can’t expect a five-hundred-year-old denizen of the Delphini system, a creature that is composed of silicon, breathes ammonia, excretes an oxygen compound, and has a metabolism that we can’t even begin to analyze, to react to a situation quite the same way you or I would. And, that,” the Director concluded, “is what makes it interesting."

  “I could spend a lifetime here,” said Nelson.

  “The hell you could,” said Landon. “I didn’t bring you here to join my staff. You’re here for an assignment, nothing more."

  “Then why did you show me all this?” asked Nelson.

  “So what I ask you to do won’t seem quite so unpalatable to you," Landon replied. “At least you’ll know that when Cartography makes an assignment, we’ve got a pretty dammed good reason."

  “Well, let’s have it,” said Nelson. “How many deities do I have to slaughter?"

  Landon responded by pressing the button on the railing, picking up the microphone, and saying: “Landon here. Spin the whole damned thing around so the Gamma Leporis system is right in front of me."

  The pseudo-galaxy tilted on its axis and began spinning so quickly that Nelson felt himself being drawn hypnotically into the vortex. Millions of stars swung by almost too fast for his eyes to follow them; and then, as suddenly as it began, the movement stopped.

  “Very good,” said Landon. “Now put its planets on flashing blue.” A medium-sized binary just in front of the balcony was suddenly alight, surrounded by sixteen tiny flashing blue dots.

  “Fine,” said Landon. “Let me have every aquatic world within ten parsecs, and also the home world of the Lemm.” More tiny blue lights flashed on, blinking wildly, and Nelson saw a pattern developing. There was a ten-parsec line of worlds, a dozen in all—not counting the Gamma Leporis system—plus another that lay still five more parsecs distant. “Good,” said Landon. “Now change the home world of the Lemm to green, and let me see every aquatic world they possess.” The farthest planet became a tiny dot of unbelievably bright green, and the other twelve worlds, plus three more worlds in the Gamma Leporis system, turned red. “One last thing,” said Landon. “Show me the five closest worlds under our control.” Five white lights flashed on, all of them more than a dozen parsecs distant.

  “Well, Pioneer,” said Landon. “That’s our problem."

  “Your problem,” said Nelson. “It doesn’t become mine until I know what you’re talking about."

  “It’s very simple,” said the Director. “The fourth, fifth, and sixth planets in the Gamma Leporis system are entirely aquatic. Which is to say that they consist of nothing but ocean. No continents, not even an island. Same with the other twelve worlds that are flashing red."

  “So?"

  “The ninth and tenth planets of Gamma Leporis are quite rich in numerous natural elements that the Republic needs: iron, lead, gold, even a little uranium."

  “What has one got to do with the other?” asked Nelson.

  “Not much, except for the Lemm,” answered Landon. “We don’t know much about them, except that they’re quite similar to us in one respect at least."

  “And what is that?"

  “They seek after Empire,” said Landon. “They’ve established bases, artificial islands, on the fifteen aquatic worlds in question."

  “Why should that bother us, if we’re after the material from the waterless worlds?"

  “Good question,” said the Director. “Let me put it this way: How would you feel about an alien power’s establishing itself on Deluros V?"

  “I wouldn’t like it much,” said Nelson.

  “Why?"

  “It’s a big galaxy. Let them look elsewhere for what they want. The Deluros system belongs to us."

  “They might be peaceful,” said Landon.

  “Then why are they expansionist?” said Nelson. “And why didn’t they ask our permission?"

  “Precisely,” said Landon. “Well, it just so happens that we asked permission of the inhabitants of Gamma Leporis system."

  “What does that have to do with the Lemm?"

  “Lots,” said Landon. “You see, the ichthyoid populati
on of Gamma Leporis IV is an ancient race, some four billion years old. Their intellects have reached a point to which Man can never aspire, even in the distant future. But nature played a dirty trick on them: She made them totally aquatic. No race advances without technology, and ninety-nine percent of all technology is based on fire. Can’t have fire on a water world."

  “So the Lemm moved in and conquered them?” asked Nelson.

  “Conquer isn’t the word,” said Landon. “The Lemm simply set up floating islands, dropped a few depth bombs that the ichthyoids couldn’t cope with or respond to, and demanded that they begin mining their world and turning the various materials over to the Lemm."

  “Sounds kind of like us,” said Nelson, not without a touch of approval.

  “To continue,” said Landon. “It took us the better part of a year to communicate on even a basic level with the ichthyoids. They wanted nothing to do with us or the Lemm. The Lemm are a bit more technological; I imagine we could communicate with them in a matter of a couple of days."

  “Why don’t we?"

  “No need to,” said the Director. “We’ve got a pretty good idea about their potentialities, their science, and their feeling toward outsiders."

  “For instance?” asked Nelson.

  “There are no domes on the water worlds. That implies the Lemm are carbon-based oxygen-breathers. Their science is obviously based on somewhat different principles than ours, or else they’d be more interested in Gamma Leporis IX and X, instead of water worlds. And we know they’re an aggressive race that has nothing against an occasional conquest."

  “Why not send the Navy against them?” asked Nelson.

  “Two reasons. First, since their science is different from ours, we don’t know what kind of fight they’re capable of putting up. We’re spread too thin throughout the galaxy to get involved in a major war just yet."

  “And the other reason?"

  “Simple. We’re outnumbered a million to one in this galaxy. We’ll win it, in time, every last piece of it. But if we make too loud a noise too early in our career, our opposition—both real and potential—may coalesce before we’re ready for them. So the Navy says hands off."