Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel (85 page)

Now I made my way along the shuttle concourse, and passed through unlocked doors into the midsection of the ship—the holds. A major subsection of this zone was for samples that were to be brought back to Earth, but that was farther toward the rear of the vessel, beyond food storage, where I now stood. It had freezer storage as well, but I thought that the voyageurs would not have spent much time there.

Where to look?

I guessed that there would be three main avenues and a dozen or more cross streets. They would not have as many rooms as on the residential concourses but enough to consume my time until departure, if I had to look into every one. Though the storage rooms were much larger than rooms on the floors above, most of those I looked into had four to eight levels for the sake of maximum efficiency in the use of space.

I now made a trek through the food holds area in order to orient myself regarding its layout. A rectangle, its dimensions were roughly two hundred meters (the width of the ship, less the width of the shuttle concourse) by three hundred meters (beginning at the maintenance bulkhead and ending at the bulkhead of the samples hold). As it turned out, there were ten cross streets and three main avenues. Each of the latter had five sets of elevators evenly spaced along the entire food holds section. It struck me that the voyageurs would probably have selected a room close to an elevator.

I found what I was looking for on a cross street ending at a set of elevators on the middle avenue. I cannot attribute my success to clever deduction, but rather to the fact that there was a wheeled trolley rolled haphazardly against a wall beside a closed doorway. There were no nearby doors, which indicated that the chamber within was a very large one. Its outer wall was shining steel, as was its door. The handle turned with only a little resistance; the door opened outward with a whisper and a breath of frosted air.

Inside, I beheld a scene I did not at first understand. Here, there were four levels surrounding a central atrium, the levels connected by ramps, staircases, and the room’s internal elevator. The three upper levels were empty. The bottom level had the distinguishing feature of a knee-high shelf, about eight feet deep, running continuously around the room’s four walls, interrupted only by the doorway. On it were stored semi-transparent containers, as long and wide as coffins, and it took no guesswork to realize that these were the burial containers of the dead. I turned to my right and inspected the first one. There were markings on its surface indicating that it had once contained food of some kind. It was covered with a hinged lid. The container’s material, I suspected, was the substance referred to in
Kosmos
accounts as “polyplast”, which had served a variety of purposes. It was sometimes described as white or off-white or transparent, and it was adaptable to transformation into many forms.

Upon closer inspection, I noted that there was a slot at the head of each container, with a paper card inserted into it. I now read the one closest at hand. It gave a name I did not recognize from my readings, a date of birth, and a date of death (these were in E-y). I lifted the lid and found within it a human body sealed in a transparent bag. The face was that of a very old woman, wrinkled and serene. On her breast, folded between her fingers, was a wooden crucifix and a small cloth flower. I closed the lid.

The next body was also that of an old woman, her cheeks sunken, perhaps wasted by disease. Here too there was a little crucifix and a flower.

The body after that was an old man, again peaceful, again a crucifix and flower.

Stopping to survey the room, I realized that more than ninety bodies were interred here. I bowed my head and prayed for their souls. Then I slowly walked around the length of the shelves, reading names and dates. It seemed that each of these bodies had been placed according to the date of death. When I noticed the pattern, I continued reading the death dates only.

Arriving at the end of this chronology—in fact, a fastidious track of the community’s long decline into silence—I noted the date on the final coffin in the row. It was a day in September of the year 2108 (E-y). I knew that the
Kosmos
had departed on its return voyage to Earth in early 2108. This, then, was the first person to die among those who had remained on board.

Reading the card more closely, I saw that here were the remains of Fr. Ibrahimi Mirza. I dropped to my knees, blessed the body, and prayed for his soul, even as a flood of confused thoughts raced through my mind. His early death meant that the voyageurs had been without the sacraments for their entire remaining lifetimes, unless there had been another priest on board. The memoirs of Bishop Paul Miki Nagakawa stated that only one priest had stayed with the ship. If this was correct, then what I had found in the chapel revealed an extraordinary history of faith in Christ, a community of lay believers who had not ceased to love God and grow in sanctity.

My heart beating hard, I stood and lifted the coffin’s lid, desiring to see the face of the priest whom my ancestor had so revered, the friend of many who became pioneers, the close friend of Dr. Hoyos. His face looked as if he were asleep. He was elderly, but by his appearance I saw that he must still have been a vital man at the time of his death. His hands were crossed on his chest, the fingers enfolding yet another carved wooden crucifix and surrounded by an abundance of Marie’s little flowers. A piece of paper inserted beneath the frozen hand was covered in her now-familiar script.

I unzipped the bag covering the body and picked up the note. It read in French:

Pray for me, Father, you who were so kind to me when I was young. Pray for your brother who suffers much. He is in agony and despair
.

As I shook my head, wondering about her meaning, I noticed that the priest’s shirtfront was stained dark red. At first, it had seemed to be no more than shadows, but now as I brushed aside the flowers I saw a great hole in the chest, above the heart.

Gasping, I took a step back. What had happened here! Had Fr. Ibrahimi died by accident? Or had he been a victim of violence? What, or who, had killed him? I stood for a few moments pondering what I remembered about the return voyage. The pioneers had received communications from the
Kosmos
, and in their memoirs, they referred to news about incidents of violence and death. They had recorded no details. Perhaps they had not known any details. On the other hand, they may have learned what happened, but, for reasons known only to themselves, they decided to refrain from passing the truth down to the coming generations.

I kissed the cross in the priest’s hands, closed the bag over his body, then lowered the lid, thinking there were many unexplained mysteries here. I glanced at the coffin on my right, and again I was startled. Its label informed me that it contained the remains of Dr. Neil de Hoyos. He had died in the year 2122 (E-y). Unlike all the others, his body had been stored out of chronological sequence. To confirm this, I looked closely at the next coffin in the line. It contained the remains of a man named Manuel de los Santos, who had died in the year 2117. This too seemed oddly out of place. Inspecting the next coffin and all those that followed, I learned that only these two broke the pattern.

I opened Hoyos’ coffin. For the first time in my life, I looked upon the face of the man I had so admired when I was young—a legendary person, a figure of gigantic proportions for me, before I began to mature and better understand his inner struggles and his compromises. Even so, I had never lost my respect for him. And now I saw, with a rush of emotion, that clasped in his hands was a simple cross, two rods of white ivory with fine markings on them.

The features were those of extreme old age. He had been ninety-three E-years old when he died. I gazed long at his face, wondering over the brilliance that had once resided in his mind, his long journey through life, his honors and his failures. Here was the man without whom the
Kosmos
would not have been built. Nor, without him, would any of our civilization on Regnum Pacis have become reality. Nor would our people, these millions of God’s children, ever have come into existence.

On his chest, there were many flowers. Tucked beneath his frozen hands were two pieces of paper. I opened the bag and picked them up, expecting a little memorial from Marie. Instead I found two writings by Hoyos himself.

One was a passage from scripture, the Book of Job, written with a pen in a handsome script, and initialed
NRdeH
.

The other was in the same script. It read:

My brothers and sisters,

Please permit me to rest beside the bodies of my two friends, the sacrificers. That they might pray for Divine Mercy to be glorified through this poor sinner, and that we three might rise together on the Last Day.

Neil

I closed the lid and left the room, shutting the door firmly behind me.

Later that evening, when the team gathered after supper to report the day’s findings, I told them I had located the bodies. When I described the condition of Fr. Mirza’s remains, there was some discussion over the possibility he might have been killed. We knew from our older books that the agency called DSI had exercised control in extreme situations by using weapons that could stun or maim. Indeed, they had badly wounded one of my ancestors, Paul Yusupov. But would they have killed people? The memoir written by Neil de Hoyos accused them of doing just that. This was confirmed in the writings of Paul and Pia Yusupov and Dr. Arthur, who believed that DSI agents were quite willing to commit murder—or strategic execution, as the killers would have viewed it. Yet the evidence had been inconclusive.

I encouraged the other team members to assist me in a more concentrated search through the residential rooms on KC, where it seemed the voyageurs had lived in close proximity during their long return to Regnum Pacis. The ship had missed impact with Earth in the year 2117 E-y and appeared again in orbit above our planet in 2160 E-y, after more than forty years in transit. About that voyage we knew absolutely nothing. We thought it likely, however, that people had left behind personal reflections, messages, and memories in the hope that these would some day be read by others.

The team members were reluctant to spend their dwindling time in pursuits that were not likely to produce technological information or artifacts. But the two other historians were willing to assist me, and the biologist joined us from time to time. We opened and searched every residential room on KC. All manner of fascinating things were found, but I must not let myself be distracted by describing these. The most significant items, in my opinion, were personal memoirs, simple autobiographies, letters to people on Earth, and letters to pioneers—none of which were ever delivered, though they must have given some consolation to their authors. We did not have time to read much of this material, but a few samplings showed us that religious faith had begun to spread among the voyageurs very early on. One moving testimony, written by a man who had been an agent of DSI, was a classic account of spiritual conversion and repentance. Another author described what could be called his intellectual conversion to Christ. Another spoke of dreams and visions in prayer. In these and other manuscripts, there were often references to “Manuel”. In one document, for example, there would be a line about “Manuel’s sacrifice”. In another, “Without Manuel, where would we be?” In yet another: “Manuel, who was small in our eyes, was the greatest.” The mystery grew.

We now had less than a week before departure back to our home base. We forced ourselves to stop reading during the daylight hours, and focused on carrying the manuscript material down to PHM and the shuttle’s hold. The historians begged off after a while and threw themselves into transporting library books. They were physically fit, middle-aged men, but the labor of climbing and descending stairs all day long, bearing the weight of those volumes, took its toll. They ate rather more than was their custom and fell into deep sleep early each night.

For my part, I continued to transport the many and various personal writings and the few books that I came across in private rooms. Even as I persevered with this task, I sensed that there was something of vital importance still to be found—something essential to our understanding of the past, and hence our understanding of the present—that is, ourselves. Every now and then, I would take a break and wander the residential concourses, drifting without purpose into side streets, poking into rooms haphazardly, fascinated by the evidence of complex living habits and social customs. There were intriguing objects of invention to be picked up nearly everywhere, left behind on the day of disaster, unused by the survivors. Nevertheless, my backpack remained nearly empty as I disciplined myself to resist a sort of disguised avarice that had begun to afflict me.

The sense that something crucial to our understanding was still eluding us grew in urgency but had no apparent means of resolution. Praying as I meandered through the streets and avenues, I did not expect a revelation on the matter and certainly invested little confidence in my deductive faculties. I merely roamed at large, soaking up the ethos of the great ship, which we were soon to leave and would never again visit.

One day while strolling along Concourse B without any object in mind, I vaguely recalled that Dr. de Hoyos had lived somewhere on this level. He had referred to his room number a few times in his book, but I had paid no attention to this minor detail. Now as I continued to walk, I glanced at the passing doorways, many of them open, a few closed. It is a marvel of the human brain that once something is imprinted in it, it never thereafter disappears. It may fade, it may even recede from the conscious mind beyond the reach of willed retrieval, but in odd moments, a prompt or some other providential stroke from the rich mysteries of life may suddenly evoke the specific memory without warning. As I passed a room with an open door, I happened to glance inside and noticed absentmindedly that the ancient mattress on its bed had a gaping cut in its side. For no reason that I could offer to myself, I stopped and went in.