The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel (23 page)

The girl was, of course, a very young Ophelia and I had been Hamlet. It was then I decided it hadn’t been a dream at all but the first faint trickle of returning memory.

The invitation to another dinner with the Captain came sooner than I had expected and I wasn’t prepared, though there was probably no way I could have been. If I had discovered nothing at all about Sparrow’s previous lives, how would I act? How young, how immature, how innocent? Would I give myself away by trying too hard, would I trap myself with a word that was out of character or a passing thought that never would have occurred to a seventeen-year-old tech assistant?

Thrush had not been invited, it was only the Captain andmyself , and I thought immediately that I was lost. I was sweaty, nervous, and tongue-tied by the time I drifted into his cabin. When he turned away from the huge viewing port, I could see his eyes narrow with speculation.

“There’s no more punishment, Sparrow. You were excused fromCoventry early because we’re going to need you below and I didn’t want you harboring any grudges.”

He clapped me on the back and guided me over to the port, where for a long moment we both stared silently at Outside. His hand still rested on my shoulder but it was no obvious attempt to gauge my reactions. Once again, we were to be friends, he and I, and this was to be a pleasant hour spent in casual conversation over a light meal.

My heart had thumped once when I saw his eyes narrow and I had consigned my fate to the gods, promptly forgetting every artifice I had practiced in preparation for the meeting. I doubt that there was a time when I was more “Sparrow” than in that particular hour with the Captain. I was lucky because he misread my anxiety as fear of punishment and immediately tried to put me at ease. And having misread me at the start, he misread everything that followed.

Nevertheless, the conversation was anything but casual. The one thing I knew that he knew was that I had yet to join any mutiny, real or imagined. I was sure his eyes among the crew had told him that. The meal itself was casual but bland, without Pipit’s usual added tang. Escalus served it in silence,then settled in a corner, ostensibly ignoring me though I knew he watched every movement I made. Along with the meal, he had served drink bulbs filled with a reddish liquid. It had a slightly sour taste and I made a face when I sipped.

The Captain noted my expression and said, “Wine—it’s usually served with a meal on Earth. You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to.”

But after the first sip, I decided I liked it and drank it as if it were water. The Captain smiled slightly but said nothing. Afterward, I wondered if his serving of the wine had been intended to loosen my tongue. But it turned out to be more of a help for me than a hindrance: For the rest of the hour I was very much Sparrow, without a thought for Hamlet or Aaron or any of the hundred others hiding in the recesses of my mind.

When we were through eating, he drifted back to the port and I joined him to gaze at the field of colorful jewels just beyond.It was a view I never saw when I winked off the shadow screen on the hangar deck and stared at the scattering of hard and unyielding crystal overhead. But rank had its privileges, as the Captain said, and he was entitled to look at whatever view he wanted. I couldn’t deny its beauty. He made no comment at first and I was aware once again of the weight of his hand on my shoulder and the emotional impact of touch, the real glue in any human relationship. Right then, it was my choice whether the captain was father, friend, or older brother.

“You use the computer a great deal, Sparrow,” he finally said. I was too light-headed from the wine to react with any alarm. If he knew of my personal research, then he knew, I thought fatalistically. But his next comment was: “Have you ever studied Earth?”

I hadn’t, and it struck me that perhaps I should have.

“Your friends gaze at the galaxy and see it as dead,” he mused. “I look at it and see it as teeming with life.”

He glanced at me and smiled and once again I was flooded with warmth, ashamed of myself for those few times when I’d had dark thoughts about him.

“I’ll admit my prejudice—I believe the galaxy is filled with life because we come from a planet that is. There’s no part of Earth that’s not a home for life, Sparrow. I think we forget that life itself is so adaptable. On board the
Astron
we live at a constant temperature and humidity and pressure and we tend to think that life can only exist under the same kind of stringent conditions. But in actuality, it can exist almost anyplace—and does.”

This was going to be a lecture, I thought, and I’d had enough of lectures. Then I realized this was the chance I had always wanted. Why did the Captain think the way he did, when every exploration attempt had come up empty-handed? I couldn’t believe it was purely because of conditioning. There had to be logical thought and theory behind his beliefs.

“Life is everywhere on Earth, Sparrow. Some fish exist in complete darkness, without ever seeing a ray of light. Others swim more than seven miles deep, where the pressure is a thousand times that at the surface. Some microbes exist in the middle of dry, cold rocks and some bacteria live in liquid that’s boiling hot and as corrosive as sulfuric acid.”

He was looking down at me now but I didn’t meet his gaze, concentrating on the stars just beyond the port. I knew he wanted no interruptions until he had made his point.

“The Earth teems with life,” he continued, “from the cold deserts of the Antarctic to the ocean depths. Scientists have found tiny animals that can be dehydrated until their moisture content is as low as two percent. They can even survive temperatures from thirty-three to three hundred and seventy-six Kelvin. They’re dormant then but once you add water, they come back to life with no difficulty at all.”

He left the port and drifted back to the table for another bulb of wine. I didn’t refuse when he offered one to me, though I knew my tongue was getting thick and my movements uncoordinated.

“It seems impossible,” I mumbled.

He shrugged. “The fact is that life as we know it is infinitely adaptable.And life as we don’t know it? I can’t imagine there being a limit. Somebody once suggested that life could evolve in lakes of ammonia or oceans ofmethane, that on some distant planet silicon creatures may be swimming in seas of molten rock…”

He fell silent and I assumed it was my turn to say something. Of all the questions that I had once wanted to ask, cleverly phrased to hide my lack of conviction and my growing doubts, I couldn’t think of one now.

“Life,” I muttered, “how it begins…”

I thought of Thrush and couldn’t continue, suddenly aware that the difference between the start of human life and the development of life itself were separated in complexity by millennia.

“The building blocks of life are all around us,” the Captain continued gently. “They cluster on the surfaces of meteorites, they hide in the nuclei of comets,they float in the clouds of gas that obscure distant stars. Biology begins with chemistry, Sparrow, and there’s no lack of chemistry out there. That’s one thing your friends can’t deny.”

He turned away from the port and floated over to a hammock to settle in the netting and rub the stubble of his beard with the back of his free hand while staring at me over his drink bulb.

“We’ve seen our share of planets. Some are bubbles of gas, others solid rock. Some are covered with deserts, others have oceans of water. Some lack anatmosphere, others are blanketed with clouds and flooded with heavy rains of organic compounds. There’s heat, there’s lightning, there’s billions of years of time, and yet your friends would have us believe the galaxy is lifeless except for one chance occurrence on a small planet orbiting a minor sun.”

He cocked his head and squinted at me and I wondered if he felt the wine as much as I.

“Do you really believe them, Sparrow?”

I wasn’t sure whether he expected me to answer or not. I wondered what Noah would say in rebuttal when I told him. And then I wondered if I should tell Noah anything at all. I was undoubtedly being watched and I realized I had played a fool’s game up to now. I was important to the mutineers but for some reason I was equally important to the Captain. My memories, Noah had said, were vital to both sides.

The Captain was staring at me, his eyes large and intense, and I dared not blink or look away.

“Organic molecules are scattered all through space, Sparrow. Ultraviolet light can even produce them from mixtures of ethane, ammonia, water, andhydrogen, and the worlds that have those are legion. All you need then is energy and a liquid. It can be water or hydrocarbon solutions or perhaps solvents we don’t even know exist. It’s only a step to nucleic acids and proteins and after that life is inevitable. It took billions of years on Earth; on another planet it may only have taken a few million. Who knows?”

His voice dwindled off and he squeezed out the last of the wine from the bulb he held in his hand.

“But that’s too simple, isn’t it?” he asked bitterly. Then, to himself: “My God, the Ptolemaics are still with us. The sun and the stars no longer revolve around Earth but they cling to the hope that at least
we
are still unique…” He said nothing for long minutes and I glanced over at Escalus , wondering if the Captain’s silence worried him as well. He gave no indication of alarm and I tried to smother my own uneasiness.

The Captain’s next statement shocked me because it echoed one that Ophelia had made.

“The belief in the utter uniqueness of life is a religious one, Sparrow; it has nothing to do with science.”

He crumpled the now empty drink bulb and swam over to the port, turning back to me just before he touched the glass.

“You know how to use the computer better than anybody else. Study the data and make up your own mind.” Then the slight smile slid away and I caught a glimpse of a face that was both sad and terrifying at the same time.

“I can’t go back, Sparrow,” he said in a low voice. “Too many crewmen have died for the mission and I won’t make a mockery of their sacrifice.”

I left then, half drunk from the wine and frightened by the implications of the conversation. He had told me to study and make up my own mind. I knew that the next time I saw him he would ask questions and expect me to have answers. But there were answers he wanted to hear and answers he didn’t want to hear.

He was still trying to convince me and I was puzzled why it was so important to him. After all, I had been “Sparrow” for less than a year, and if he wanted it, I would cease being Sparrow tomorrow. But Noah was wrong in one respect. My memories could hardly matter to the Captain; he already knew everything that lay buried in them.

I wondered if he had tried to convince Hamlet or Aaron or any of the other crewmen I had once been. I was convinced that he had—and also that he had failed.

****

My next meeting with the Captain was unexpected and hardly by invitation. There was an enclosed weightless handball court in the center of the gymnasium where I sometimes played with Hawk or Loon and where tournaments with crewmembers from Maintenance were occasionally held. I wasgood, the best player in Exploration, though playing under conditions of no gravity was hard, sweaty work. It requireda knowledge of where the ball would be at any given moment and the ability of a contortionist, so I struck the bulkheads with the softer parts of my anatomy when I misjudged my direction or speed, as I frequently did.

Half a dozen time periods after the meal with the Captain, I was alone in the court, batting the plastic ball against the front bulkhead and waiting for Hawk to show up, when the Captain slipped in through the hatch.

“I asked your friend if I could take his turn.”

I knew it was a game stolen from a busy schedule and I guessed he considered our discussion over dinner unfinished—and important. Within the confines of the court we would be alone for the first time, without Escalus to mount guard or carry tales back to his crew mates. We threw fingers to see who would serve first. I won the serve and scored a fast two points; then the game seesawed back and forth. He won, 21 to 16. I noticed his hands weren’t red or puffed even though we played bare-handed. At one time leather gloves or paddles were used, but that had been generations ago, and part of the masochistic thrill of the game was bare palm against hard ball. Apparently the Captain played often. He was fast and adept at picking off balls in flight just before they hit the bulkheads. I consistently scored with corner serves where the ball rebounded parallel to, and scant centimeters away from, the metal walls. The Captain was very good—but then, I reminded myself, he’d had two millennia in which to improve his game.

So, I suspected, had I, which diminished some of my pride in beating my fellow crew members. I wondered if the Captain and I had ever played before in one of my other lifetimes and guessed that we had.

After the game I doubled over, my hands clasping my knees, trying to catch my breath. The Captain pushed over to one of the bulkheads and tapped on a palm terminal. The glow tubes darkened and the bulkheads faded away, to be replaced by projections ofOutside— the Outside I was familiar with, suffocatingly black except for the brilliant, lifeless sparkles of the stars. Only the outline of the Captain against the crystal-strewn sky reminded me of where I really was.

“How many stars in our galaxy, Sparrow?”

It took a moment for me to find my voice.

“Billions,” I chattered.“A hundred billion, maybe two.”

“Subtract the numbers of red giants and super-giants,they exist too short a time for life to develop on any possible planets. Then take away the binaries and any three-star systems. The likelihood of planets circling them would be small to begin with and even if there were, their orbits would create conditions too erratic to support life. Forget the dwarf stars; if a star is too small it has no continuously habitable zone at all—chances are its planets would be perpetually frozen.”

He had drifted close enough to me in the darkness so I could feel his body warmth. His voice was an insidious whisper in my ear, nibbling away at Noah’s arguments.