Starfarers (21 page)

She recalled her accusers in China. “The self-righteous never regret what they did. I do not say this is true of you. But I do say no man can judge his own case.”

“Can a woman?” he retorted. “All right, if you insist. I didn’t want to d’sturb anybody. But if you insist.”

“I don’t—”

His words rushed on, slurred, yet sufficiently organized to show they had long been gestating and now the shell was broken.

“You know my career. Tramped ’round Earth, got into Space Command of th’ Western Alliance, got commission, got in trouble, a brawl, broken in rank, got it back, lost it again for in—in-sub-or-dination, didn’t re-enlist when my term was up but went to piloting for the Solmetals Consortium.

“Space War broke out, Chinese ship missiled an asteroid base of ours. China not offish’ly
in
war, but I was there, I saw what I saw. Yes, we were shipping out str’tegic materials, but it was lawful. Good friends of mine killed. Couple of them died pretty horribly. Then some of us borrowed an engineering rig and put a big rock on a new orbit. It hit an Asian naval base a year afterward. Demolished it.

“By then Europe had pulled completely out o’ the war. The Asians could tell the strike was engineered and’d used European gear. Military denied having anything to do with it. Asians demanded investigation. Europe obliged. Soon
whole bloody FN did. My comrades and me, we’d covered our tracks best’s we could, but evench’ly we knew they were on our trail. And, yes, we were civilians when we launched that rock.

“We scattered. I got to Nansen and he saved me like I told you. If most of the blame could get shifted onto me, it wouldn’t matter, and my friends sh’d get off lightly.

“I am not ashamed!” Ruszek shouted.

Yu shrank from him. “You killed men you never knew,” she whispered, “for revenge?”

“It was war. I felt cheerful enough. Even looked forward to this voyage.” He sagged. “Shouldn’t ’a’ said anything, sh’d I? To you espesh’ly. But it happened three thousand years ago, Wenji. Nobody remembers.”

“
We
shall.”

He nodded, a heavy movement, and spoke more clearly, quietly. “Yes. The news from ahead got me thinking too much, remembering too much. We are all damned to remember, aren’t we? They believed in damnation where I am from.”

Yu sat silent. The fountain leaped and sang.

“We must forgive,” she said at last. “All of us must forgive. We are so alone out here.” She rose. “Good night, Lajos.” Her tone was gentle. She stroked a hand across the bare head and down a cheek before she left him.

And again
two people were in the common room, with another smuggled bottle, this one of champagne and in a refrigerator jacket. Here, too, lay dusk, though lighter, making stars in the viewscreens doubly radiant. Music lilted. Zeyd and Dayan had moved furniture aside to clear a broad space for themselves. They danced over it, an archaic dance that was revived during a wave of historical nostalgia on the Earth of their day, a waltz. As “The Blue Danube” flowed to a close, they laughed aloud.

Disengaging, they looked into one another’s eyes. A hint of perspiration shimmered on skin and gave a slight, human
pungency. Dayan’s hair had become tousled. Half breathless, she said. “We should not be this happy.”

“Why not? We celebrate a victory. Foreordained, symbolic, nonetheless a victory.”

Her smile sank. “Was it? Not for some of us. And we may be on our way to discovering a cosmic tragedy.”

“Maybe we are not,” he answered easily. “Who knows? The point is, we will
discover
.”

“Yes. That makes up for much.”

He bowed. “Not to mention the pleasure en route. The delightful company.”

Unable to stay serious, she smiled anew, lowered her head, and gazed up at him through her lashes. “Likewise, kind sir.”

Hand in hand they went to the table and refilled their goblets from the bottle, which was already half empty. He raised his. “To us,” he proposed.
“Saha wa ’afiah.”

“Mazel tov.”
Rims clinked.

Sipping, she teased: “You really should not be doing this, should you?”

“You have seen me at dinner. I am not a very good Muslim, I fear.”

“But an excellent dancer.”

“Thank you, Hanny, dear.” He leaned closer. “Dear indeed.”

Color came and went and came again across her face. “This nightwatch—oh, it’s a night to forget everything else … even those stars—”

His months-long siege of her ended as she moved into the circle of his arms.

The clocks
in
Envoy
had counted one year and thirty-seven days. By computation she had been under way, including time spent in the normal state, four millennia, nine centuries, fifty-six years, and eight days. Somewhere near the middle of the region she had been seeking,
Envoy
once more halted her zero-zero engine, lowered her defenses, and peered about with every relevant instrument at her command.

Naked vision would have availed little. Stars teemed through crystalline dark. They were no longer in their familiar constellations, though you might have recognized pieces of a few, partial and distorted, in the direction of vanished Sol; but it was hard to pick any array out of such a multitude. The Milky Way still girdled heaven, bayed with the same nebular blacknesses; you had to look closely and remember well if you would find the changes brought by this perspective. Neighbor galaxies glimmered as remote as ever.

Devices capable of registering single photons were soon overflowing with news. When it seemed enough, the ship made a leap of some two hundred astronomical units and repeated the observations. Automated and computer-evaluated, they went quickly. Again she jumped, again, again. Interferometry thus evoked further data. After less than a week, during which some aboard went short on sleep and excitement mounted in everyone, the picture was complete.

Not surprisingly, the region resembled that around Sol. A thirty-parsec radius, the approximate practical limit for the equipment available, defined a sphere containing perhaps ten thousand stars. A thousand or so rated as “Sol-like”—single, main sequence, spectral class from middle F to late
K—and therefore prime candidates for closer examination. Fifty-three proved each to have a planet at a distance where it would be reasonable to expect liquid water. Some of those planets were probably giants or otherwise unsuitable. Dayan’s team did not spend time on that. Instead, spectroscopy searched out indications of atmospheres in chemical disequilibrium, which ought to betoken life. Identifications were uncertain at greater distances, but within forty light-years it found three.

And this was well out in a spiral arm, where the stars thinned away toward emptiness. Most were crowded close to the galactic nucleus, with a radiation background that made organic evolution unlikely almost to the point of unthinkability. Life must be rare in the universe, hardly ever burgeoning into sentience, and the chance of a high technology vanishingly small.

Notwithstanding, when
Envoy
left Sol humans had found spoor of four spacefaring civilizations, widely separated. More must exist, their traces hidden by the dust clouds around the nucleus—unless all had perished by now. So enormous is the number of the stars.

When knowledge is slight, making every action a gamble, you play the odds, as nearly as you can judge them. One sun with a presumably life-bearing planet was a middle-aged G8 dwarf, less bright than Sol but virtually a twin of Tau Ceti, twenty-seven light-years from
Envoy
’s last stop. With a short burst of plasma drive, she aimed her velocity at it. The interstellar crossing took two of her days.

It ended at a distance of nine astronomical units. She could have come somewhat closer before getting so far down in the sun’s gravity well that zero-zero was forbidden. The maneuvers would have been trickier than they were worth. She simply trudged ahead on jets, correcting her vectors as she accelerated toward rendezvous, reversing herself at midpoint and braking. At one-half
g
, a compromise between impatience and reaction-mass economy, the passage took a pair of weeks. Nobody commented on the irony.
Well before
Envoy
left home, starfarers had grumbled it threadbare.

Dayan returned
from the reserve saloon-galley bearing a tray with a teapot, two cups, and a few cookies. She set it down on a tiny table unfolded at the middle of the cabin and herself on her bunk alongside. Yu already sat on the one opposite. Dayan poured. “Here,” she said, “To steal a phrase from an old book I once read, the cup that cheers but does not inebriate. Unfortunately.”

“Thank you.” The engineer sipped. “It’s good.”

“Anything would be, wouldn’t it, at this stage of things?”

Dayan gestured about her. The low, cramped space held the table, a cabinet, and two curtained bunks tiered on either side. Doors at the foot ends gave on a corridor, barely wide enough for one person to squeeze past another, and on the bath cubicle shared with the men, whose dormitory lay beyond. Except for the captain, the men were worse off than the women, since an extra bunk had had to be fitted in. Again the crew perforce spent most of their waking hours in the saloon-galley, which offered screens, games, and a few hobby materials, or in the exercise chamber, where workouts were possible if they didn’t require much room. Such were conditions on the gimballed decks.

“I’m not complaining,” Dayan added quickly. “But I am glad we could get together for a while by ourselves, Wenji, and speak our minds without worrying what someone will think.” They had done that off and on since Jerusalem.

“I imagine Selim feels restricted, too,” Yu remarked, slyly demure.

Dayan laughed. “Yes, poor man. Jean says she’s seen him paw the deck and puff steam when I pass by.”

“Jean has a lively imagination.”

“She calls it second sight. Looking through that suave mask of his.”

“I daresay you have grown a little frustrated yourself.”

“More than a little, sometimes.”

Yu turned serious. “You two do seem happy together.”

Dayan glanced away. “Well, he is a—a charming and interesting fellow, as we know. His travels on Earth, his culture and—A first-class lover.” Her fair skin pinkened.

“Do you think the relationship will become permanent?”

“I don’t know,” Dayan answered slowly. “Neither does he. Who can tell—out here? For now, we feel lucky.”

“May you always be, Hanny.”

The hazel eyes swung back to meet the brown. “And you, Wenji, dear. May you be lucky again.”

“I am. I have memories.”

Dayan hesitated before plunging ahead. “Will you be content with that, for the rest of your life?”

Yu cradled her teacup as if to draw warmth from it and breath from the rising fragrance. “I may have to be.”

“You’re over your grief, that mourning you tried to keep hidden. Surely you are. You’re a healthy young human being.”

Yu spoke mildly, almost matter-of-factly. “But who else is there? With due respect, also for your Selim, Hanny, who among them could I compare to my Xi?”

Again Dayan paused. “Ricardo Nansen?” She sounded half reluctant.

Yu nodded. Light from overhead rippled over her midnight hair. “He is a remarkable person, yes. But he is … distant. When he smiles, how often does it come from within?”

“He’s the captain. He thinks—I believe he thinks he has to be our impersonal father figure.”

“He may well be right.”

A rueful smile flitted over Dayan’s lips. “Pity. I confess to occasional thoughts of my own.”

“Jean has them, too, I suspect.”

“I know she does.”

“Poor Tim.”

“Not inevitably. He’s too shy and socially inept, but he may learn better.”

“Devotion like his should count for something.”

“M-m, that’s a handicap, I think. For Jean, it must be like having a large, clumsy puppy always bumbling after her and staring with wetly reverent eyes. He actually has a wide range of interests, you know. I wish they hadn’t come to include Al Brent’s theories, but that’s probably
faute de mieux
,” Dayan observed parenthetically. “Tim is quite attractive when he relaxes and is himself. The problem is, he can’t in Jean’s presence, at least when he’s sober. But do you remember our Apollo Day party, when he’d had an extra drink or two, and the songs he got to singing?”

Yu giggled. “How could I forget? I still blush. But they
were
comical.”

“If someone seduced him, it might work wonders,” Dayan speculated. “It might also make Jean take a new look at him.”

The blunt pragmatism embarrassed Yu. She retreated to her cup before she replied, “Who should that be? I like him, but no.”

“I, too, of course. Neither of us is the sort who can handle something like that well, especially so as not to leave wounds. Mam?”

“I—I don’t believe she would, either, even as a kindness. Lajos—”

“They don’t sleep together any longer. No, I have not snooped. That would be practically criminal, here aboard ship, wouldn’t it? But I am not blind, either. Nor are you.”

“He has stopped drinking heavily.”

“Was he? I thought so, but couldn’t be sure. That would explain the estrangement. Did Mam tell you?”

“No.” Yu did not elaborate. “He is a—a warrior without a battle.”

“What Al Brent imagines he himself is,” Dayan said tartly.

Yu’s tone was more sympathetic. “It may be true. Lajos, however—a man of action, condemned to what he feared would be inaction. And with memories harder to bear than he knew, than he admitted to himself until lately.” Dayan
refrained from asking for details. “Now, when he may soon have a challenge, a use for his strength, he stays fit to meet it.”

“And she may take him back?”

“Who knows? Does she? At any rate, I do not imagine she will choose to do anything soon that would make the situation more tangled.”

Yu drained her cup and set it down hard; the tray rattled. “Isn’t this ridiculous?” she exclaimed. “Here we are, crossing the cosmos, bound into mystery, and we sit and gossip like village wives about petty sexual problems, things we already know and things we should not pry into. Are we really so shallow?”