Tales of the Flying Mountains by Poul Anderson

Author:Poul Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781497694286
Publisher: Open Road Media

Interlude 4

“Well well” says Lindgren. “I always suspected collusion between our government and the top Odysseans, but this is the first I’ve heard that anybody ever admitted it.”

“Why shouldn’t they have?” I wonder. “At least, after they were safely citizens of the Republic.”

“Might make it a touch difficult for them to visit North American territories, or even do business at long range,” McVeagh points out.

“Besides,” Dworczyk adds, “regimes never admit to rascality. A revolutionary government might, perhaps, accuse the one it overthrew of terrible things. But one which has legitimately succeeded, as by election, can’t do the same. If it did, it’d either have to confess it was enjoying the fruits of misconduct, or else give up those fruits.”

“Not that I know of any revolutionaries who voluntarily disgorged anything,” McVeagh responds. “In fact, they’re apt to grab fresh chunks of other people’s property.”

“Would you say that of the Asteroid Republic?” Conchita disputes.

“Why, certainly, at least in its young and bumptious days. As witness the case of Odysseus.”

Conchita has no reply except a slightly indignant sniff. Echevaray speaks aside to Missy. “Will you permit me to inquire who has told you this story?”

“Oh, Avis Bell,” she answers. At his look of surprise, she laughs. “We met again soon afterward, when the Sword expanded its operations to her world. It didn’t take our two families long to become the best of friends.” For a moment she goes away from us, elsewhere into time. Because I have keen ears, I hear her whisper: “She was a dear … like our men, Avis …” and wish I hadn’t.

It is a relief when Amspaugh clears his throat and says, “We’d better get back once more to business. I don’t think we should put your account into our official histories, Missy.”

She returns. “No, no.”

“Why not?” McVeagh gibes. “Afraid it’d corrupt the morals of the young?”

“Yes, but not in the way you’re imagining, Colin,” Lindgren tells him. “It’s hearsay. No documentation. We’ve got to uphold standards of scholarship, if only because it’s a foundation stone of science and technology.”

I venture to interject, “A foundation stone with standards—banners—flying?” The chuckles tickle me.

“We seem to be converging on some areas of agreement,” Orloff says. “No hypocrisy in our textbooks; only the plain truth, insofar as we can ascertain and describe it. We are still wondering how much of the whole truth should be included.”

“Excuse me,” Conchita breaks in. “I don’t hold with pious frauds, of course. However, the truth is more than covetousness and bungling and the law of least effort. It’s also hopes, dreams, aspirations, adventures.” She waves her hand in an arc that encompasses the constellations toward which we drive. Her eyes match the starshine. “It’s us, here, now, alive—eventually, it’s the human race—headed into the universe!”

“If any of us denied that,” Orloff replies calmly, “he would not have signed on. But it isn’t what I am talking about. I am talking about the essential preliminaries to a new stage of evolution, and the requirement of recognizing what they were and how they continue to affect later events.

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