Fellow voyagers. Companions on the long solitary journey into exile that he knew that he might someday have to take. Great thinkers. Heroes and villains. He flattered himself that he was worthy of their company. He had picked a mix of personality types, to keep him from losing his mind on his trip. There wasn’t another habitable planet within a light-year of Bradley’s World. If he ever had to flee, he would have to flee far.
He walked from the viewing salon to the sleeping cabin, and from there to the galley, and on into the control room. The voices of his companions followed him from room to room. He paid little attention to what they were saying, but they didn’t seem to mind. They were talking to each other. Lydia and Shakespeare, Ovid and Plato, Juan and Attila, like old friends at a cosmic cocktail party.
“—not for its own sake, no but I’d say it’s necessary to encourage mass killing and looting in order to keep your people from losing momentum, I guess, when—”
“—such a sad moment, when Prince Hal says he doesn’t know Falstaff. I cry every time—”
“—when I said what I did about poets and musicians in an ideal Republic, it was not, I assure you, with the intent that I should have to live in such a Republic myself—”
“—the short sword, such as the Romans use, that’s best, but—”
“—a throng of men and women in the brain, and one must let them find their freedom on the page—”
“—a slender young lad is fine, but yet I always had a leaning toward the ladies, you understand—”
“—massacre as a technique of political manipulation—”
“—Tom and I read your plays aloud to one another—”
“—good thick red wine, hardly watered—”
“—I loved Hamlet the dearest, my true son he was—”
“—the axe, ah, the axe!—”
Voigtland closed his throbbing eyes. He realized that it was soon in his voyage for company, too soon, too soon. Only the first day of his escape, it was. He had lost his world in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye. He needed time to come to terms with that, time and solitude, while he examined his soul. Later he could talk to his fellow voyagers. Later he could play with his cubed playmates.
He began pulling the cubes from the slots, Attila first, then Plato, Ovid, Shakespeare. One by one the screens went dark. Juan winked at him as he vanished, Lydia dabbed at her eyes. Voigtland pulled her cube too.
When they were all gone, he felt as if he had killed them.
For three days he roamed the ship in silence. There was nothing for him to do except read, think, watch, eat, sleep, and try to relax. The ship was self-programmed and entirely homeostatic; it ran without need of him, and indeed he had no notion of how to operate it. He knew how to program a takeoff, a landing, and a change of course, and the ship did all the rest. Sometimes he spent hours in front of his viewing port, watching Bradley’s World disappear into the maze of the heavens. Sometimes he took his cubes out and arranged them in little stacks, four stacks of three, then three stacks of four, then six of two. But he did not play any of them. Goethe and Plato and Lydia and Lynx and Mark remained silent. They were his opiates against loneliness; very well, he would wait until the loneliness became intolerable.
He considered starting to write his memoirs. He decided to let them wait a while, too, until time had given him a clearer perspective on his downfall.
He thought a great deal about what might be taking place on Bradley’s World just now. The jailings, the kangaroo trials, the purges. Lydia in prison? His son and daughter? Juan? Were those whom he had left behind cursing him for a coward, running off to Rigel this way in his plush little escape vessel? Did you desert your planet, Voigtland. Did you run out?
No. No. No. No.
Better to live in exile than to join the glorious company of martyrs. This way you can send inspiring messages to the underground, you can serve as a symbol of resistance, you can go back someday and guide the oppressed fatherland toward freedom, you can lead the counterrevolution and return to the capital with everybody cheering…Can a martyr do any of that?
So he had saved himself. So he had stayed alive to fight another day.
It sounded good. He was almost convinced.
He wanted desperately to know what was going on back there on Bradley’s World, though.
The trouble with fleeing to another star system was that it wasn’t the same thing as fleeing to a mountain-top hideout or some remote island on your own world. It would take so long to get to the other system, so long to make the triumphant return. His ship was a pleasure cruiser, not really meant for big interstellar hops. It wasn’t capable of heavy acceleration, and its top velocity, which it reached only after a buildup of many weeks, was less than .50 lights. If he went all the way to the Rigel system and headed right back home, six years would have elapsed on Bradley’s World between his departure and his return. What would happen in those six years?
What was happening there now?
His ship had a tachyon-beam ultrawave communicator. He could reach with it any world within a sphere ten light-years in radius, in a matter of minutes. If he chose, he could call clear across the galaxy, right to the limits of man’s expansion, and get an answer in less than an hour.
He could call Bradley’s World and find out how all those he loved had fared in the first hours of the dictatorship.
If he did, though, he’d paint a tachyon trail like a blazing line across the cosmos. And they could track him and come after him in their ramjet fighters at .75 lights, and there was about one chance in three that they could locate him with only a single point-source coordinate, and overtake him, and pick him up. He didn’t want to risk it, not yet, not while he was still this close to home.
But what if the junta had been crushed at the outset? What if the coup had failed? What if he spent the next three years foolishly fleeing toward Rigel, when all was well at home, and a single call could tell him that?
He stared at the ultrawave set. He nearly turned it on.
A thousand times during those three days he reached toward it, hesitated, halted.
Don’t. Don’t. They’ll detect you and come after you.
But what if I don’t need to keep running?
It was Contingency C. The cause was lost.
That’s what our integrator net said. But machines can be wrong. Suppose our side managed to stay on top? I want to talk to Juan. I want to talk to Mark. I want to talk to Lydia.
That’s why you brought the cubes along. Keep away from the ultrawave.
On the fourth day, he picked out six cubes and put them in the receptor slots.
Screens glowed. He saw his father, his son, his oldest friend. He also saw Hemingway, Goethe, Alexander the Great.
“I have to know what’s happening at home,” Voigtland said. “I want to call them.”
“I’ll tell you.” It was Juan who spoke, the man who was closer to him than any brother. The old revolutionary, the student of conspiracies. “The junta is rounding up everyone who might have dangerous ideas and locking them away. It’s telling everybody else not to worry, stability is here at last. McAllister is in full control; calling himself provisional president or something similar.”