Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (28 page)

Kimberly, a petite brunette linguist-semioticist from Bloomington, Indiana, age 22, the youngest but also the best and the brightest in her field, who, if anyone could, could decipher the code from the ETI on Barnard P1. She liked, besides semiotics: walking in the autumn woods, reading the Vedas in the original Sanskrit, gazing into firelight with a kindred spirit.

The third crew member was the medical officer, Dr. Jane Smith of Nashville, age 23. The oddity about her was that she had been married, listed no hobbies, and put herself down as a Methodist. Hers was old Tennessee Scotch-Irish stock. “You must be the last Methodist in Tennessee,” said the Captain, thinking to make a pleasantry. Her smile was thin. The rumor was that, competent though she was, and brilliant though her contributions to hypothermic hibernation were, her “religious preference” had not hurt her with NASA. The Christian minority was as loud as it was small, as shrill as it was shrinking. Affirmative action for minorities in the space program had been sustained by the Supreme Court. The last mission to Pluto had been manned by a black and Hispanic crew who had not been heard from. Some bad jokes were told. So the present mission was manned by three women and one WASPP (White Anglo-Saxon Post-Protestant) male. Jane Smith had graduated from Vanderbilt, taken her residency in aerospace medicine, and contributed valuable papers on hypothermic hibernation techniques. Her discovery was that both the tissue damage and the discomfort (excruciating pain, if the truth be known) of the hibernation cycle could be minimized by the injection of an endomorph (already known as the Smith-Bowers endomorph). Indeed, the usual cramps and bends of the thaw were replaced by a mild euphoria, as if one had been awakened from a pleasant dream. (“You look just like Scarlett O’Hara waking up,” said the Captain, a student of old twentieth-century culture, to Kimberly the first time she came out of the deep freeze.)

In a word, the Captain suspected Jane might have exaggerated her Methodism in her application, for had she not also signed the “sexual access” form?—that is, the consent agreement by which she contracted to make herself, “her person,” available for “the biological and social objectives” of the mission, which objectives also included “the emotional needs” of her fellow crew members. (Let it be added quickly that the Captain had to sign the same contract. This was no seraglio.)

The shifts were arranged so that the Captain took his watches with successive partners or second officers. The shifts were of six months’ duration: two astronauts in hibernation, the other two “awake,” that is, alternating eight-hour watches, with an hour or so overlap to allow for scientific experiments and whatever social interaction or “stroke field” might seem appropriate. Thus, in a three-year period, each crew member would have spent six months “awake” with each other crew member.

Then there were the “simul-dehibes”—that is, periods of simultaneous dehibernation when all four crew members were “awake” for a period of one month annually, at which time the progress of the mission could be assessed, scientific and group-interaction experiments performed, and just plain socializing could take place, e.g., bridge, Scrabble, Monopoly, books read aloud, playlets performed, video-stereo-hologram tapes played, dancing in place. For a while, earth TV could be watched, for about a month into the mission—but as the ramjet accelerated, the TV action slowed in a Doppler effect, so that in old reruns of
M*A*S*H,
a favorite, Hawkeye and the nurses spoke in ever lower and more sepulchral tones and moved like dream figures walking in glue.

An open and free sexuality was programmed, based on Prescott’s statistical analysis of pre-industrial societies and his conclusion that, in those societies in which sexual activity and the pleasures of the body are not repressed, theft, violence, war, and religion are minimal. Whereas, in those societies in which infants are disciplined and adults are inhibited, there tends to be a high incidence of murder, war, and belief in a supernatural being. Hugging and touch were encouraged even during routine scientific experiments.

The starship was therefore equipped with a nursery. The project planners had two goals in mind: one, to devise a mini-society in which affection was lavished freely between adults and upon children; and two: just in case
Homo sapiens sapiens
had been destroyed on earth, then at least a tiny remnant would have survived, either as refugees on Barnard P1 or as colonists elsewhere, or perhaps even to return to earth.

The worst case: the earth five hundred years later, blasted and depopulated but perhaps habitable, and Copernicus 4 returning, limping home with four middle-aged astronauts and x number of children ranging from one to seventeen years old.

Even in the worst case, life might not only survive but prevail and multiply and once again fill the earth, with a new variety of
Homo sapiens sapiens,
an affectionate, hugging, promiscuous, peaceful breed. (Genetic inbreeding was something to worry about, but the most exhaustive genetic studies of the four ruled out all known pathogenic genes.)

S
CENE:
Three days after launch from orbital platform and one week before the first hibernation.

The crew: taking their ease for the first time since the rigors of launch, instrument check, adjusting the hydrogen scoop, counting hydrogen atoms, calibrating the engine. The steady Bussard acceleration is mild, scarcely more noticeable than the slight heavy-footedness one feels in a swift elevator.

It was like moving into a new house. Furniture is placed, beds are made, the kitchen stocked, and the folks sit down in the living room, exhausted but relaxed, to have a look around, to savor their new dwelling.

The four are sitting at their consoles in the command module. It is hardly larger than a big bathroom. From the command module a good-sized tube, not unlike the tunnel in the old B-52, leads aft to rec-room-gym, to hibe units (which look like Sears’ Best freezers) and bedrooms (smaller than an Amtrak roomette: here intimacy need not be encouraged, it is obligatory), nursery and supply rooms, and finally the engine.

The four chairs in command are comfortable, can tilt, vibrate, or swivel to face each other or the computer displays.

For some reason, no one looks directly at anyone else—except Jane Smith, who—perhaps because she is flight surgeon—gazes curiously from one to the other:

Tiffany: sprawled, long-legged and handsome in her jumpsuit, yawns and stretches more perhaps than she needs to.

Kimberly: frowning, preoccupied, a book open in her lap (volume 15 of
The Complete Works of B. F. Skinner),
chewing on a fingernail for all the world as if she were sitting in the library of the Indiana University.

Jane Smith: watching them, taking note of the angle at which the chairs are swiveled and toward whom, which leg is crossed, etc. She is smiling slightly. She and the Captain have the first six-month watch—that is, they will alternate eight-hour watches for six months while the other two hibernate.

Notice the Captain.

He is every inch the professional, lounging at his ease the way a professional does after doing his thing and doing it well, a bit weary after the hundreds of items on the checklist, after cranking up the ramjet, a bit red-eyed and unshaven, eyes half-closed, rocking just enough in his chair to flex his neck while he massages it gently. But wait. Is he as simple as that? You would perhaps notice, as Jane Smith does (that is why she is smiling) that he is complex and somewhat folded upon himself. Which is to say not only that he is lounging at his ease, which is what one would expect, but that he is quite conscious of doing so and of how he does it. Would he be lounging in quite the same way, massaging his neck in quite the same way, if the women were not present? Indeed, he is first-rate at his job, but he is also something like jetliner Captain Dean Martin in an
Airport
movie who has just made a successful landing of a disabled 747—while three stewardesses watch. That, too, is a pleasure for Deano the actor sitting in his mockup jet. But Captain Schuyler has the best of both worlds: he is a real pilot but he is also a good actor, which is to say he knows how to do what he does and also how to do it with an actor’s calculated effect. He is aware of his effect on the women.

Accelerating toward the speed of light as he exits his world, he was never more successfully and triumphantly in his world.

The eyes are important. The women make a point of watching him while not appearing to, except Jane Smith. He makes a point of not watching them, while appearing watchable.

Can it be said of him what the Apostle John wrote in his first letter, that he had the best of this world even as he left it, the pride of life and the lust of the eyes?

Hardly, not lust exactly, in the current meaning, but lust rather in the Old English sense of
lysten,
to please or take delight. Because lust is a craving and
lysten
is a taking and giving of delight. Delight in the three women. He wished to delight them in return. A twofold delight in playing out the role of Captain, doing his job, and lounging at his ease, and the added aesthetic delight of consciously doing so in the way the women would expect, and so as a preliminary stratagem, a male display, in what would surely be a complex courtship.

The stratagem is partially successful. It “works” with Tiffany and Kimberly in the way it is calculated to, just as the sight of weary Deano, collar unbuttoned, tie loosened, massaging his neck in the 747, worked with the stewardesses. In this case, “working” means that they are attracted to him for reasons which he knows about but they don’t. But it doesn’t work with Jane Smith because she knows what he is doing: hence the ironic smile through her eyes. But wait. Does it not work for this very reason? That he knows that his little ruse will not succeed with her and that she will know that he knows that it won’t. At any rate, the encounter between the Captain and Dr. Jane Smith is of a different order of complexity.

Years pass. Kimberly and Tiffany were impregnated three times outward bound. Dr. Jane Smith refused sex on the first watch with the Captain. Her excuse: Somebody has to run the nursery. Her second excuse: We’re not married. Her third excuse: I’m married to someone else.

T
HE
C
APTAIN:
But we’re a year into the flight. Your husband is 123 years old, or dead.

D
R.
J
ANE
S
MITH:
We can’t be sure.

T
HE
C
APTAIN:
But you signed the sexual access form.

D
R.
J
ANE
S
MITH:
I lied.

T
HE
C
APTAIN:
Don’t you like me?

D
R.
J
ANE
S
MITH:
Very much.

T
HE
C
APTAIN:
I like you very much. More than the others.

D
R.
J
ANE
S
MITH:
I know—though you seem to like them well enough.

T
HE
C
APTAIN:
Good God. You’re jealous.

D
R.
J
ANE
S
MITH:
Yes.

T
HE
C
APTAIN:
This is the first day of our second six-month watch together. Are we going to do crosswords and Great Books again? I love you.

D
R.
J
ANE
S
MITH:
I know. Marry me.

T
HE
C
APTAIN:
Marry you! Why? How?

D
R.
J
ANE
S
MITH:
You’re the captain. The captain of a ship can—

T
HE
C
APTAIN:
The captain of a ship cannot marry himself.

D
R.
J
ANE
S
MITH:
Who says? You stand there, say the words, then move over here, give the response.

T
HE
C
APTAIN:
What words? I don’t have the book.

D
R.
J
ANE
S
MITH:
I do.

T
HE
C
APTAIN:
Good Lord. What about the others?

D
R.
J
ANE
S
MITH:
Don’t tell them.

So they were married. Dr. Jane Smith conceived and delivered herself of a son. She baptized him, not by pouring, sprinkling, or immersion—what with zero gravity—but with a squirt from the drinking tube.

The names of the first seven children were Krishna, Vishnu, Indira (out of Kimberly), Anna Freud, Oppie, Irene-Curie (out of Tiffany) and John (out of Dr. Jane Smith).

The “message” from Barnard’s Star turned out to be a false alarm, a non-message. It was no more than an interference effect from the powerful magnetic fields of the two Barnard planets, producing a complex pulsar transmission in the radio frequencies—much like two metronomes set at different speeds. Thus, where a single pulsar would go tick-tick-tick, this “message” went something like tock-tick-tock-tick-tick-tick-tock, a non-message fiendishly close to a message.

Barnard’s two planets were dead. They were also without oxygen and water and hence not colonizable.

More ominous than the bad news from Barnard was the bad news from home. Even as the ramjet approached the speed of light, it should have been overtaken by a few messages from earth. But after five years starship time—ninety years earth time—the messages ceased altogether.

Nevertheless, the crew took comfort. Any number of technical things could have gone wrong. After the disappointment at Barnard, everyone secretly looked forward to the return voyage after the great swing around the star when they should be running into a regular blizzard of outgoing messages from earth.

But earth was silent. Even after repeated queries:
JPL, do you read? Do you read? Respond on any or all of designated frequencies
—and even after five years of allowing for responses: silence.