There Is No Darkness
Joe Haldeman &
Jack C. Haldeman II
(copyright 1983)
Malvolio: … I say to you, this house is dark.
Clown: Madman, thou errest: I say there is no darkness but ignorance …
— Twelfth Night
PROLOGUE
There was a time when the dominant language on old Earth was English, a complex language directly related to Spanish but with only oblique ties to Pan-swahili.
Throughout most of the Confederación, English is the concern only of scholars, but there are still a few places where it is taught as a mother tongue: an island and part of one continent on Earth, and the sparsely populated planet Springworld.
To admit ignorance of Springworld is not particularly damning, since the young planet has almost nothing of interest beyond the fact of its archaic native language. Its name is a sarcasm: the environment is about as hostile to human life as can be found on any inhabited world. The population must be genetically engineered for giantism and strength, not only to have a fighting chance against the aggressive fauna, but simply to remain standing in the fierce winds that characterize its everyday weather.
The only nearby planet of any importance is Selva, which gives Springworld its sole economic contact with the rest of the Confederación. Some of the pharmaceuticals that Selva manufactures depend (for a growth medium) on Springworld’s native lichen volmer. Since Springworld is fanatically self-sufficient, its trade with Selva has always been done on a strictly cash basis, resulting after several generations in a cash surplus of several million pesetas. With a culture that scorns luxury and prides itself on its independence, Springworld has had difficulty spending this surplus.
In A.C. 354, it did spend some, by sending a boy off to a strange school, and in return got more than it bargained for.
Prospectus and Admission Requirements:
The Second Voyage of Starschool
Starschool offers a unique educational experience for young people destined to become their worlds’ leaders, especially in fields associated with interplanetary commercial and political relations. During the five-year term, Starschool will visit sixteen Confederación planets, selected either for cultural and historical interests (such as M’walimu and Earth) or on the pragmatic basis of political importance.
The first tour of Starschool (A.C. 348-352) was so successful that the Regents have been able to significantly broaden the program without greatly increasing tuition costs (though these are admittedly quite high). Two new worlds have been added, Mundovidrio and Hell, giving students exposure to two extremes of scholarly activity. As most of our clients know, Mundovidrio is the home of Instituto del Yo Esencial, where students will spend a month in the systematic exploration of states of awareness. Hell, on the other hand, has no commerce other than the hiring out of mercenaries and training other planets’ military leaders. Students who are not philosophically opposed to it will be given the opportunity of taking a short (and arduous) course in military leadership.
Entrance requirements for Starschool are necessarily flexible, with applicants coming from dozens of disparate cultures, but those whose formal education does not approximate the level of an urban bachillerato degree must expect to do extra academic work between planets. The Starschool certificate is the equivalent of an advanced degree in interplanetary affairs …
EARTH
Curriculum Notes — Earth
Most of what people think they know about Earth is wrong. It is quite an advanced planet technologically, not a primitive backwater. Although currently in a period of economic decline, Earth still has abundant resources, both material and human, and though it may never regain the primacy it had in the early years of the Confederación, it is no sense a dead-end street. Aside from its obvious value to historians, archeologists and linguists, Earth maintains a lively commerce in the exchange of medical techniques, and its entertainment industry is second only to that of Nairobi’pya.
Since all of the Confederación’s first-order cultures are directly descended from Terran subgroups — geographical, ethnic or political — every traveler can find some part of Earth that holds particular historical interest. Communication difficulties have been very much exaggerated in the past. It is true that Earth hosts more than two hundred languages, and thousands of dialects, but even the smallest village will have people who understand Spanish or Pan-swahili.
You must bring to Earth an open mind and a spirit of adventure …
I
I was obviously supposed to be impressed: loincloth, beads, two meters of hard black Maasai’pyan. Mr. B’oosa walked up to me with two quarterstaffs over his shoulder: hollow shafts of aluminum not quite as long as he was tall. He was a lot shorter than me.
“Mr. Bok,” he said. “A friendly challenge?” The expression on his face was not friendly.
“Busy. Sir.” I was trying to get some useful exercise out of a machine built for people half my size.
“The challenge doesn’t interest you?”
I sighed and let the weights rattle back to home position. “I can’t fight you, Mr. B’oosa. I outweigh you by fifty kilos … and besides —“
“Besides, you’re a hardy Springworld pioneer? And I’m just a rich man’s son?”
“And a head shorter than me and five or six years older. Homicide doesn’t attract me, thank you sir.”
“Oh, but that’s exactly the point.” He tapped the floor with the two quarterstaffs. “With these, the match will be more than fair.”
It would be fun to take him down. But when you’re a giant among pygmies, you learn to hold your temper or be branded a bully.
A small crowd was gathering around us. It was between classes and Starschool’s high-gravity gym was packed with students getting in shape for planetfall.
“Come on, Carl: never the wrong time to teach a ricon a lesson.” That was Garcia Odoñez, another scholarship student. I think he was studying to be a bad example. “You aren’t afraid, are you?”
I just looked at him; what I hoped was a withering glance.
“Have you ever used one?” B’oosa held a staff out to me. I tested it. It twisted easily and I smoothed it back into shape, more or less.
“No sir.” I could tie the damn thing around his neck. “A Springer fights fairly or not at all.” I tried to hand it back to him but he wouldn’t take it.
“An impressive display of brute strength, Carl.” He flipped his staff easily from hand to hand. “But strength counts for nothing with the quarterstaff. The request stands.”
“Perhaps you should tell me why — why you’re challenging me out of nowhere — and I might go along with it. I can’t see that I have any quarrel with you.” No real quarrel with him personally. But he was a ricon and the ricones had not made life pleasant the past year.
“You misunderstand. This is not a personal thing … I just want to settle a wager. One of my colleagues” — colleagues! — “Mr. Mengistu believes I can beat him at the quarterstaff mainly because of longer reach and greater strength. I contend that skill alone determines the winner. If I can beat you, he agrees, size and strength mean little.”
“How much are you betting on this little contest?”
He shrugged. “Five thousand.”
My father once made P4000 on a crop several years ago. Bad weather had driven the price up. The harvest cost him two fingers and almost killed him.
“All right. But be ready to lose more than a few pesas. Teeth, for instance.”
“I doubt it. Where would you like to have the match?”
“Anywhere it’ll be easy to clean up the blood. Right here, if these people will clear away.”
The crowd shuffled back, making
a rough circle four or five meters in diameter. Didn’t look like much room to me, but B’oosa nodded and stepped to the other side of the circle.
I’d never used a quarterstaff — Springers don’t have time to learn how to beat on each other with sticks — but I had seen a few matches at the public combats on Selva, during the month while I was waiting for Starschool to pick me up. It didn’t look all that difficult. You use the staff for both offense and defense, trying to block and attack at the same time.
I swung the staff in a fast arc, getting the feel of it. It made a sound like a spear whipping through the air. The circle widened a bit. “If this were more solid you’d be a dead man. Sir.”
“It isn’t and, no, I wouldn’t be. Take your guard.”
“My ‘guard’?”
“Take your guard. Prepare to defend yourself. Like this.” He spread his feet and held the staff at a slight angle, protecting his body. I did recognize the position and copied it. I had more body to protect, though.
“Are there any rules?” I asked.
“It’s ungentlemanly to aim for the eyes. If you knock out a person’s eye you must be careful not to step on it.”
His own eyes looked calm and suddenly very old. His whole manner changed as he began to advance crabwise toward me, somehow gracefully. Relaxed yet tense, like an animal stalking.
My reflexes had to be better than his; he was a city man and I grew up on a planet full of fast hungry predators. His confidence got to me, though. I decided it would be safest not to play around. Get in there fast and first.
I tried to copy his slow shuffle. Go for the groin? Hell, I didn’t want to kill him. Solar plexus; that would put him down. I stood my ground and waited for him to come into range.
It seemed to all happen in a fraction of a second. He suddenly danced in and rapped the knuckles of both my hands, so hard I dropped the pole. Reached down to pick it up and he banged me a good backhand to the top of my skull. I shook my head to clear the dizziness, scooped up the staff and drove straight for his solar plexus. He tapped it aside easily with one end of his staff and the other end whistled around to the side of my head —
I woke up lying in my bunk with a coldpack strapped over my left temple. I sat up and, man, fireballs started to tear my head apart.
“Are you all right, Carl?” It was Alegria, a pretty little girl from Selva.
“Sure, just fine. Great. Nothing like a little workout.” I swung my feet down to the floor and blocked out the lights with one hand. “How long have I been out?”
“All night and half the morning. You came out of it before we got you to the infirmary” — yeah, I could remember that, barely — “but the medic gave you a pill and you were out again, so we carted you back down here. You weigh a ton.”
“One hundred-sixty-two kilograms, anyhow.” It’s not true that I’m sensitive about my weight. People are always exaggerating.
“In case you’re interested, you don’t have a concussion or anything.”
“Feels like I’ve got concussions to spare. Be glad to share ‘em with that little son —“
“Hush, Carl. The Dean thinks it was an accident.”
“Accident? Why should I cover for that ricon —“
“Think straight, you big farmer. We aren’t covering for him!”
Of course … giant Springer bully picking on … oh, Christ. I leaned back on the pillow. Gently.
“You missed three classes, last night and today. I put your assignments on the table there.”
“Thanks, Alegria, you’re sweet.” A pity she wasn’t a meter taller. I felt her hand on my forehead and opened my eyes again, just a squint.
“Want me to get you some wake-up pills? You’ve got to get your classwork done before we get to Earth.” Otherwise they keep you in quarantine until you catch up academically. “You don’t want to miss part of the tour.”
Far as I was concerned, Earth could go to Hell. “How long before we get there?”
“Less than three days and you’ve got four days’ work. Pills?”
“Just some analgesics.”
“On the table, next to your books.” The bed creaked a little when she got up and I heard the door slide open. “Study hard, Carl.” Then she was gone. I took the headache pills, then lay on the bunk another ten minutes, feeling miserable, before I got up and looked at the books. All of them Earth history, geophysics, customs and so on — not exactly a joy to read even if they’d been in English. But of course, most of them were in Spanish and Pan-swahili, both of which I should know better than I do.
My head was still aching when they parked Starschool in orbit next to Earth’s Customs Satellite. All spindly and spiderlike, the starship-university is great for punching holes through space, but isn’t equipped for landing on planets at all. The lightest gravity would cause crushing torques, tear it apart. We always orbit planets and shuttle down. But first we have to go through the cinta roja. “Red tape,” you figure it out.
First a team of Earthie doctors came aboard Starschool and poked and prodded us to make sure we weren’t bringing any nasty alien bugs down to their precious planet. Then we had to fill out a lot of forms. I got writer’s cramp from signing my name so many times. Finally we transferred over to the Customs Satellite and stood for a long time in two lines. The line I was in was for everybody who weighed over seventy-five kilograms. It was a short line.
The Dean, Dr. M’bisa, walked over. He was arguing with a little Earthie in a light blue uniform.
“We signed a contract, Mr. Pope-Smythe, a legal contract that said nothing about this idiotic tax. It guaranteed all of our expenses while —“
“Please, Professor. I didn’t say there was anything wrong with your contract. But that’s strictly between you and Earth Tours, Limited. None of our business at all. Perhaps you can get them to reimburse you … but there’s no way any of your students can be allowed to make planetfall until every overweight person has paid the Extraweight Alien Tax.”
“You know as well as I do that Earth Tours will never —“
“Again, Professor, that’s your problem. My problem is that all of these people have to pay the Extraweight before I can go to lunch. The tax probably isn’t covered in your contract because it wasn’t in effect until last Avril — but you still have to pay it; the Alianza’s laws don’t make exceptions for agreements between private, profit-making organizations. Besides, the tax isn’t that much — only ten or twenty pesas for all but a couple of these people.”
“And for them?”
“Well, it goes up quite a bit for those over ninety kilos. How much do you weigh, son?” He was talking to me.
“One hundred-sixty-two kilograms.” All of it muscle, too, goddammit.
“That much? Oh, dear. Let me see.” He riffled through the tables in the back of a pamphlet. “That would come to P16,800.”
The Dean exploded. “That’s outrageous!”
“It’s the law.” Mr. Pope-Smythe shrugged and held the pamphlet out for him to see.
“Oh, I believe you.” He waved the book away. Then he snatched it back and checked the figures.
“Dr. M’bisa,” I said, “I don’t want to go to Earth that badly. Not P17,000 worth.” P17,000! A small fortune on Springworld. My father’s biggest crop had brought P4000. “Besides, I don’t have a tenth that much.”
“It’s not your decision, Carl.” He looked sour. “Nor your money. That’s what the General Fund is for, unforeseen emergencies.”
“But it’s more than half my tuition!”
“I well know that. Your planet is getting a real bargain.”
People weren’t going to like this. The General Fund was also used to add unplanned side trips, and to make certain purchases for scholarship students. Without it, only ricónes could afford souvenirs from places like Nuovo Columbia. “It’s too big a bite. It’s not worth it.”
“Perhaps not,” he snapped, then continued, more mildly. “You have no choice in the matter, and
neither have I. The Hartford Corporation signed an agreement with your government detailing the benefits you would receive from Starschool. You may elect not to land on Hell or Thelugi. You will at least set foot on every other planet. If you don’t, your government could sue Hartford for breach of contract.”
“I’m willing to take the responsibility.”
“How good of you. Unfortunately you cannot. The Regents of Starschool stand in loco parentis to you until your twenty-first birthday. Until then, you have only limited legal responsibility for your own actions.”
He put his hand on my arm. “As you say, it is a big bite. But we do have to make allowances for foreign customs, foreign laws, even when they’re unreasonable. People will understand.”
Somehow it sounded all right when the Dean said it. But after everybody got weighed, all but one of the others was under ninety kilos. Their total tax was P1130, not even a tenth of mine. The only other one over ninety was Mr. B’oosa, who had to pay P1900. He just whipped out his checkbook and paid it himself. Hell, why not? He had five thousand extra for knocking me flat the other day.
The total tax took over half of what was left in the student expense fund. That made me one real popular fellow, having accounted for more than nine-tenths of it.
Piling insult on insult, they organized us alphabetically for the Tour, in groups of three. I had to share rooms with good old Mr. B’oosa and another ricón by name of Francisco Bolivar. I could tell it was going to be a long Tour.
But even before we go on the shuttle down to Earth’s only spaceport, Chimbarazo Interplanetario, I had figured out a plan. A simple plan.
I hoped.
By the same genetic engineering that made me a giant, all Earthies were midgets — nobody weighed more than forty kilograms.
Somewhere on this beat-up planet there had to be a job — a high-paying job — that called for a man, a boy if you want to get technical about it, who weighed more than four Earthies and stood two and a half meters tall. I swore I would earn back that P16,800, every pesa of it. And get off everybody’s list.