Read Polaris for Free Online

power, of course, hence no gravity. And no light. But that was okay. We had made a serious strike, and Alex, usually staid, complacent, one might even say dull, became a child in a toy store as we toured the place, dragging spare air tanks with us.
    But the toys turned out to be pretty well smashed. Personal items left behind by the inhabitants were afloat everywhere, going round and round with the station. Chairs and tables, stiffened fabrics, knives and forks, notebooks and shoes, lamps and cushions. And a lot of stuff that was beyond recognition, bits and pieces of everything, whatever might have broken off over the years. The place was turning on its axis every seven and a half minutes, an action that sent clouds of loose objects bumping around the bulkheads. “The thing’s a giant blender,” said Alex, trying to swallow his disappointment.
    Shenji culture is best remembered today for its flared towers (which look like rockets waiting to roar into the sky), their asymmetric architectural designs, their affinity for showy tombs, the dramas of Andru Barkat (which are still periodically revived on some of the snobbier stages around town), and their descent into the series of religious wars that eventually destroyed them. And maybe their drive to find nonhuman civilizations, which went on almost without pause, and without noticeable result, for two millennia. The Shenji were not people who gave up easily. But during their golden age, before the prophet Jayla-Sun showed up, they were convinced there were others out there and that the human race wouldn’t fulfill its destiny until it could sit down with them and talk philosophy. Even that effort was largely a religious thing, but if it cost a lot of resources, it caused no damage. The common wisdom now is that there is nobody elseanywhere in the Milky Way, except us, and the Ashiyyur. The Mutes. (All this with the Shenji, of course, happened before Gonzalez discovered the Mutes. Or, if you want to be factual, before they discovered him. ) And I don’t mind telling you that it wouldn’t be a bad thing if they would pack up and move on. Andromeda would be a good place for them.
    There are still a few people walking around who claim to be pure-blooded Shenji. I don’t know why they would. Their history is a mixed bag at best. When they weren’t exploring, they were running pogroms and inquisitions; but they’ve been dead and gone a long time, and that fact alone seems to make them intriguing to some folks. Alex has commented that being dead for a sufficiently long time guarantees your reputation. It won’t matter that you never did anything while you were alive; but if you can arrange things so your name shows up, say, on a broken wall in a desert, or on a slab recounting delivery of a shipment of camels, you are guaranteed instant celebrity. Scholars will talk about you in hushed tones. You will become a byword, and an entire age might even be named for you. History used to be simpler back when there wasn’t so much of it.
    Historians are forever announcing how they’d like to sit down with someone who’d actually hung out at the Parthenon during the years of Athenian hegemony, or had attended a Shenji parade. A survivor, if one could be found, would be hustled around town in the most luxurious skimmers, treated to the best meals, and taken to see the Council. He would show up as a guest on The Daylight Show.
    Go to Morningside today, the Shenji home world, and you’ll find a modern, skeptical, democratic society populated by waves of outsiders, people from all over the Confederacy. The tribes of true believers are gone, everybody’s a skeptic, watch your purse, and if you really think there are more aliens out there, I have a bridge I’d like you to look at.
    Alex had the kind of looks that could get lost easily in a crowd. His face was sort of bureaucratic, and you knew immediately that he liked working in an