Starfarers (20 page)

“We promised. We’re committed to go on.”
Jean is.

Brent nodded. “So far. Maybe I’m too gloomy. Maybe things will improve. We’ll see. Whatever happens, we’ll give the ship our loyal service, you and me. But that doesn’t mean blind obedience. Keep alert, Tim. Keep thinking.”

The meeting
had been little more than a formality. All knew beforehand:
Envoy
had passed the last wavefront of light, there was no more spoor of the Yonderfolk ahead, a decision was necessary. Nor was it a surprise when two brought up the idea of turning back—Yu as a suggestion that should be discussed, Ruszek as a profane statement that it was plain common sense. Cleland opened his mouth, glanced at Kilbirnie, and said nothing; he sat hunched. Brent did not bother to speak. Arguments and speculations through the past weeks had eroded any real dispute away. Response was likewise mainly for the record.

Zeyd: “We have a faith to keep.”

Dayan: “We need to learn what went wrong. It could be a warning to our kind.”

Kilbirnie: “Maybe nothing did. Maybe they’ve gone on to what’s better than aught we know of.”

Nansen did not call for a vote. Some things are best left unsaid, however well understood. The gathering dispersed.

Mokoena and Sundaram lingered. The common room felt empty, its color and ornament meaningless, the breeze cold. They stood for a while, side by side, looking into a viewscreen crowded with stars.

“Something better,” she said at length. He heard the scorn. “In God’s name, what?”

“Perhaps, indeed, in God’s name,” he answered softly.

She gave him a startled glance. “I beg pardon?”

He smiled the least bit. “Well, it isn’t likely a scientific or technological advance, is it? Such as the legendary faster-than-light hyperspatial drive.”

She nodded. “I know. I’ve heard Hanny on the physics of that.”

“I should think if it were possible, someone in this vast galaxy would have done it long ago, and we would know.”

“They wouldn’t necessarily have come to us. Or they might have paid Earth a visit in our prehistory, or be leaving us alone to find our own way, or—Oh, all the old scenarios. Dreams that our race once had. We’re awake now. Dreams are brain garbage, best dumped out of memory.”

“I don’t entirely agree. Never mind. I have proposed another logical point against the idea. You didn’t happen to be in that conversation. If faster-than-light travel were developed where zero-zero craft operated, they would immediately be obsolete, and their traces would terminate within a few years. Instead, we have observed a slow dying out.”

“Ahead of us. And elsewhere, too, those other far, far scattered regions—as nearly as Wenji and Hanny can tell—” Mokoena took her gaze from the terrible stars. “What do you mean, ‘God’s name’?”

“Perhaps the Yonderfolk have put their faring behind them, having outgrown it. Perhaps they seek the things of the spirit.”

Mokoena shook her head. “I can’t believe that, either. I’m sorry, Ajit, but I can’t.”

“I don’t insist on it. Simply a thought.”

“Spacefaring
is
a spiritual experience. Selim’s right about that. Whatever God there is, if any, we come to know Him best through His works. The grandeur, the wonder—” She shivered. “The hugeness, the inhumanness.”

He regarded her soberly. “You are troubled, Mamphela.”

“No. Disappointed, but I’ll be fine.” He saw her head lift athwart the sky. “I came to do science and I will do science.”

“Of course. However, what you feel is not disappointment. We have all had time to accept that and carry on. You—I shall not pry.”

Now she studied him. The air rustled about them. Reflections off the jewels on the spintree flickered in scraps of color across the bulkheads, tiny, defiant banners.

“You notice more than you let on, don’t you?” she said. “More than anyone else, maybe. Do you think I would like to talk? Is that why you stayed behind?”

“I think you deserve the opportunity,” he replied. “The choice is yours.”

Impulse exploded. “All right. I would. I know you’ll respect a confidence. Not that this isn’t obvious, probably. It’s Lajos. You saw how he stalked out, stiff-legged, his face
locked, his fists knotted. He’s bound off to get drunk. Not for the first time. Oh, no, not for the first time.”

“Is that his way when he is angry or in pain?”

“Yes. Stupid, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t quite say that. He is intelligent, but a very physical man. Among us, he has taken the news the hardest. And he has no one, nothing to lash out at but himself.”

“And me. You’ve only seen him brooding, sulking, foul-tempered. When we’re alone in one of our cabins—No, no, never any threat or violence. To me. He hits the metal. He breaks what’s breakable, flings it down or crushes it under his heel. He raves and curses till he falls into a snoring sleep. Or he goes slobbery and wants to make love—” Mokoena caught her breath.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice had gone harsh. “I shouldn’t be angry like this. I should try harder to help him.” A plea: “I don’t know how. I’m supposed to be the physician, and I can’t make him accept any calming medicine. Nor, somehow, can I make myself do it and turn the anger off. It would feel too much like a surrender. So I flare up, and we fight; fight with bitter words and next day watch with still bitterer silence.”

“I daresay his behavior accords ill with your standards.”

“Yes.” She was objective again. “My upbringing. Not that I’ve lived by it especially well. In my parents’ eyes I was a sinner. That they could forgive me, over and over, made me love them even more. But some of their teaching stayed. Drunkenness has always disgusted me.”

“You are not compelled to put up with it.”

“No.” Her mood went over to sadness. “He is a good man, basically. We used to be happy together, most of the time. Not in love, but we enjoyed each other’s company. I shouldn’t abandon him. I keep hoping he’ll … recover. Meanwhile, though, I feel overborne, confined, in a rage.”

“Work is often a blessing. How goes your research?”

“Poorly. I can’t concentrate. Not that it’s anything important. Marking time, maintaining the skills, till we get to where the real work is.” A hint of fear: “Will I be fit to do it?”

“I think so. We have months of travel yet. Time for coming to terms with reality, time for healing. You are a good person yourself, Mamphela, and a strong person, and you are able to see things clearly. That is not as common a gift as one would wish. It bears hope with it.”

As the slow words flowed, her muscles began to loosen. When Sundaram had finished, Mokoena stood for a minute or two, breathing. Then she said low, with a catch in her tone, “Thank you, Ajit. Already that helps. Thank you.”

He smiled. “No thanks are due me. I merely listened.”

“You listened in the right way. And—Could we sit down and talk some more? I don’t want to impose, but—”

“I shall be honored,” he said. His touch on her hand guided her to a chair.

Envoy
fared
onward, each hour of her nightwatch seven months among the stars.

A park occupied three hundred meters of outer deck circumference. Terraces rose at one end to a flower-surrounded well in the inner deck, on which people lived. Planning, planting, and tending had been the particular, though not exclusive, pleasure of Yu, Mokoena, and Zeyd. To all, the park became a sanctuary.

Fragrance breathed from the well, out into the dim lighting and cool air of a deserted corridor. On the path to it Yu brushed against hollyhocks and lilies gone slumberous. The way down the terraces was broader, moss moist and resilient underfoot. A streamlet wound through rosemary, clover, and pampas grass. It sparkled and trilled where it fell over an edge. Here the overhead illumination was a little more bright than on the upper deck, but still meant for darktime, about like a full Moon above Earth. Glowbulbs set widely apart along the footways gave guidance, muted ruby, emerald, topaz.

The gardens were various, intricately laid out, mostly screened by hedges or vines, so that it was as if a visitor
passed from one miniature world to another. Yu chose a track that took her between tall ranks of bamboo to the place she sought: a circle of turf, fringed by the bamboo and by privet and camellias, open to the overhead. At its center lay a pool in which played a fountain.

Yu stopped. A man slumped on a bench. In spite of the dimness she recognized Ruszek’s bald head and arrogant mustache—not that she could ever fail to tell her nine shipmates apart. He gripped a bottle.

“Oh,” Yu murmured, surprised.

“You, too?” Ruszek called hoarsely. He pondered. “No. You wouldn’t come here to get drunk.”

“Pardon me.” She started to go.

“No, wait,” he said. “Please. Don’t let me drive you away. I’m harmless.”

She couldn’t avoid smiling a trifle. “I think I can take your word for that, Lajos.”

“I’d like some company. Yours would be very nice. If you can stand it. Though I sus-sus-suppose you came looking for peace and quiet.”

“And beauty and memories,” she admitted. Compassion mingled with courtesy. “If you wish to talk, by all means let us.”

“You are a sweet lady.” He beckoned.

She joined him on the bench, keeping well aside. For a span the fountain alone had voice, rushing and splashing, white beneath the gray-indigo false sky. Ruszek held the bottle out to her. She made a fending motion and shook her head. He tilted it and swallowed.

“Forgive me,” she ventured, “but is this wise?”

“Who cares?” he growled.

“We do. Your comrades.”

“After they’ve made us gone on to nowhere? And on and on.”

“That isn’t fair. The nature of our mission may have changed, but they feel it is still our mission.”

“Yes, yes. Everybody honest, everybody honorable.
Except me. The captain doesn’t approve of getting drunk. Mam doesn’t. You don’t. I’ve been smuggling flasks out of stores. Bad. Wicked.” He glugged.

“Does the new knowledge really make such a difference?”

“You’ve heard me on the subject. We thought we were bound for another race of starfarers. Now—It’ll get skull-crack boring, relics, ruins, tombs, bones. Archeology. Why? We’ll never learn anything, not in five years, not in a hundred. And I didn’t sign on for archeology.”

“It need not be like that at all.”

He ignored her rejoinder. “Meanwhile, Earth—Earth may not be completely alien yet. If we went straight home. We might still find taverns and wenches and … and bands playing in the street, picnics in the countryside, life not too much changed—if we don’t come back too God damn late. But we will. And for what?”

“I am afraid we are already too late.”

He squinted at her. “Eh? You’ve raised the same argument. I heard. I remember how we both tried to convince Hanny Dayan.”

Yu shook her head. “You misremember, Lajos. I simply felt that someone should point out the possibility. I know well how faint the hope—even if we started back at once—how faint the hope would be that anything is left of what we knew.”

“Your government?” he gibed.

She forgave the cruelty, dismissed it. “Certainly not. It must be extinct, forgotten, like all the troubles that drove some of us to enlist. But so, too, almost certainly, are the things we … loved.” Staring at the fountain, she folded her hands. The fingers strained against each other. “The land, mountains, rivers, grass, trees, the sea, Earth, maybe they survive. Then they can for another few thousand years. No, we do best to continue.”

He rasped forth a sigh. She caught a whiff of gin breath. “The best of a bad bargain. Maybe. At best.”

She turned her head to regard him through the deep twilight.
“I can imagine why Timothy Cleland and Alvin Brent are less than happy. But you? Frankly, your attitude has astonished me.”

“Why? Earth might still be where I could feel—argh, not at home—feel free, able to find my way around and roam and cope, with my enemies gone.”

“Was that your reason? Enemies? I thought—you gave us to understand—you joined for the sheer adventure of it, like Jean Kilbirnie.”

“Plenty of adventure closer to home. Closer in space and time. Except home got too hot for me.”

“You have never said—”

Ruszek drank again. “Nansen knows. I had to explain to him and the board. He was glad to get me. Anyway, he said he was. At least I had space experience, piloting, commanding men, navy and civilian—the Space War—That’s why I am the mate, you know. If something happens to him, I won’t be the same fine, correct, spit-and-polish kind of gentleman, but I can lead us home. So he used his influence with the directors, and got them to put pressure where it counted, and the authorities didn’t bring charges. They stayed quiet. After all, they’d soon be rid of me. Yes, I’m grateful to Ricardo Nansen. In spite of everything, I’ll serve him the best way I can.” Ruszek brooded. “Shouldn’t feel sorry for myself. I’ll probably enjoy part of what happens. Maybe most of it. But tonight I want to forget, and Mam will be furious with me and I want to forget that, too.”

“You are giving her cause,” said Yu sharply.

“I know. And she’s giving me cause. She told me, our last fight, if I keep this up, there are other men aboard. For all I know, she’s with one of them tonight.” Ruszek drank.

“She is a free person. If she does … give others some kindness … it will somewhat relieve a difficult situation.”

Ruszek leered, though he kept his free hand at his side. “You could, too, Wenji.”

“We should have been pairs to begin with. But the Foundation had to take whatever qualified persons were available.
And it was not a libertine, sex-obsessed era, like some in the past. We ought to be sensible and self-controlled.”

Blood had mounted hot into Yu’s face. She turned it back to the coolness of the water.

“Later?” Ruszek asked.

Yu hesitated. He had not done or said anything actually offensive, and she didn’t want to hurt him. However, this line of thought must stop. She mustered will and sprang to another, stronger question.

“Were you in conflict with the law, then, Lajos? Do you care to discuss it?”

“Nothing crooked!” he barked. “Nothing I’m ashamed of or sorry for.”