Short Fiction by Poul Anderson (free ebook novel .txt) 📕

“So instead, we simply accept colonists who agree to stay here for life⁠—and then once they get here they’re told how long that life will be.”

“Yes. Actually, the miracle is that the first colonists stayed at all, after most had fled or gone insane. After all, it was ten or twenty years before we even suspected the truth. A world as alien as this was settled only because planets habitable to man and without aborigines are hard to find. Since then, many more such worlds⁠—normal ones⁠—have been discovered, and few people care to risk madness by coming here. Tanith is an obscure dominion of the Galactic Union, having a certain scientific interest because of its unique natural laws⁠—but not too great even there, when science has so many other things to investigate just now. And we’re quite content to remain in the shadow.”

“Of course.” Langdon looked up to the swarming stars. A sheet of blue auroral flame covered them for a moment.

He asked presently: “How much further have our scientists gotten in explaining the phenomenon?”

“We’ve come quite a ways, but progress has been mostly in highly technical fields of mathematical physics. You’ll have to take a decade or two off soon, Joseph, and learn that subject. Briefly, we do know that this is a region of warped space, similar to those in the neighborhood of massive bodies but of a different character. As you know, natural constants are different in such regions from free space, phenomena such as gravitation and the bending of light appear. This is another sort of geometric distortion, but basically the same. It produces differences in⁠—well, in optics, in thermodynamics, in psi functions, in almost everything. The very laws of probabilities are different here. As a result, the curious phenomena we know appear. Many of them, of course, are simply illusions produced by complex refractions of light and sound waves: others are very real. The time axis itself is subject to certain transformations which produce the temporal mirages. And so it goes.”

“Yes, yes, I know all that. But what causes the warp itself?”

“We’re not sure yet, but we think it’s an effect of our being near the Galactic center of mass, together with⁠—no, it would take me a week to write out the equations, let alone explain them.”

There was a comfort in impersonal discourse, but it was a retreat from more immediate problems. Langdon fairly rapped out the question: “How close are you to understanding why we are immortal?”

“Not at all close in detail,” said Chang. “We think that it’s due to the difference in thermodynamic properties of matter I mentioned just now, producing a balance of colloidal entropy. Well, elsewhere life is metastable and can only endure so long. Here it is the natural tendency of things, so much so indeed that life is generated spontaneously from the proper chemical mixtures such as occur in many of the lakes and pools hereabouts. In our own bodies, there is none of that tendency toward chemical and colloidal degradation which I think lies at the root of aging and death.

“But that’s just my guess, you know, and biological phenomena are so extraordinarily complex that it will probably take us centuries to work it out. After all, we haven’t even settled all the laws of Tanith’s physics yet!”

“Several centuries.⁠ ⁠… And there is no other planet where this might also happen?”

“None have been found, and on the basis of our theory I’m inclined to believe that Tanith is unique in the Galaxy⁠—perhaps in the universe.” Langdon was aware of Chang’s speculative gaze on him. “And if there were others, they’d be just as foreign to Terra.”

“I see⁠—” Langdon looked away, down to the streaming silver gleam of the river. There was a ring of little lights dancing on the lawn; he could hear the tinkle of elfland bells and he thought he could see glowing wings and lithe light forms that were not human⁠—but very lovely.

“You were thinking of moving away?” asked the synthesist at last.

“Yes. I hated the thought, but Eileen⁠—well⁠—you saw her. And you remember those first colonists.”

“I do. She is exhibiting all their symptoms. She can’t stand the unpredictability of her environment, and she can’t adjust her scale of values enough to see the beauty in what to her is wrong and horrible.” In the vague golden light, Langdon thought he glimpsed a grim smile on the other man’s face. “Perhaps she is right, Joseph. Perhaps it takes someone not quite sane by the rest of the Galaxy’s standards to adjust to Tanith.”

“But⁠—can’t she see⁠—I’ve told her⁠—”

“Intellectual understanding of a problem never solves it, though it may help. Eileen takes your word for these being purely natural phenomena. She’s not superstitious. It might help if she were! Because explaining the horror doesn’t lessen it to her. Man is not a rational animal, Joseph, though he likes to pretend he is.”

“Can’t she be helped? Psychology?”

“No.” The old voice held pity, but it did not waver. “I’ve studied such cases. If you keep her here much longer, she’ll have a miscarriage and go insane. The insanity might be curable, back at Sol, or it might not, but as soon as she returned it would come again. Not that she could ever stand to come back.

“She is inherently unable to adapt herself to an utterly foreign environment. You’ll have to send her home, Joseph. Soon.”

“But⁠—she’s my wife.⁠ ⁠…”

Chang said nothing. A shining golden head swooped past in the darkness, laughing at them, and the laughter was visible as red pulses in the night.

There came a step on the veranda. Langdon turned and saw Chang’s wife coming out with Eileen. The girl walked more steadily now. In the dim radiance from the window, her face was calmer than it had been for some time, and for an instant there was a flood of love and joy and relief within Langdon.

Chang was wrong. Eileen would learn. She was already starting to