Passage

by Thorby Rudbek

  “Of course, when they discovered that Citadel was built by a technology far in advance of any on Earth, people like Ed Baynes must have concluded that we, the holders of this great power, would use some super weapon to destroy everyone and everything, as he and countless others had feared Russia would do, in the dark days of the Cold War.” And I managed to restrict myself to one tank, beyond what was necessary to ensure our survival, he mused soberly.

  “But surely any civilization which had progressed enough to develop space travel would also have matured enough not to have any desire to destroy those lower or lesser-developed civilizations they might discover?” Karen suggested questioningly, leaving his thoughts about his embarrassing and ill-conceived showmanship well alone.

  “That’s what a lot of philosophers said on Earth a few years ago,” Richard responded as he came out of his reverie. “But the U.S. has already sent unmanned probes out of the solar system, and is well on the way to figuring out how to send men to Mars. Despite that, there are still wars raging down on that peaceful-looking planet. Who’s to say that mankind will be any more civilized by the time some Earth scientist develops the Star Drive?”

  Karen considered this for some time, before continuing his thought-process:

  “I guess the people from Arshonna would have felt far superior to the inhabitants of Earth at the time of Scout Craft Seven’s arrival, but look how badly Vochan abused his Scouts! He was certainly no better than the ‘primitives’ who had lived there for so many years, or the so-called civilized people who came and exploited them. If my forebears could do it, who’s to say what other kind of beings may be out here.” She waved her hands around vaguely. “And what they might do, given the opportunity.”

  “Don’t!” Richard murmured, only half joking. “You’ll get me really scared! Here we are, completely alone, light years from the nearest civilized planet, and you bring up the possibility of aliens who might regard us much as we regard insects.”

  “Sorry!” Karen smiled at his vaguely melodramatic response. “Anyway, we’re hardly light years from civilization; aren’t you forgetting about Outpost Twenty-Seven?”

  Richard grinned back.

  “I just wanted to see how well you have recovered from losing Tutor. You seem to have the same high level of confidence as you had before the accident.”

  Karen considered this, her head tilted to one side and her eyes taking on a dreamy appearance.

  “All the years that Tutor was with me, I felt like he was almost an extension of my father, like he was still with me in a way, I…” Her voice faltered.

  “In a way he was. Your father programmed Tutor from his own memories and taught him how he wanted you brought up. So Tutor was a part of your father, preserved to guide and protect you.”

  Karen’s eyes were moist, and she had to swallow to regain control of her voice. She smiled to let Richard know that his continuation of her semi-stalled opinion was appreciated.

  “Now Tutor is gone; my father still feels near. I feel like he is guiding me still.”

  Richard caught a fraction of her thoughts that related to her feelings for him, and wisely backed off mentally, not wanting to pursue that subject too deeply. He stared at the view of Earth once more. After a few minutes, once Karen’s thoughts no longer boiled at the edge of his consciousness, he found himself starting to contemplate his own feelings about his family.

  “You know, sometimes I can’t believe that they are really dead,” he said, aware that Karen would follow his train of thought without difficulty. “Even though I saw the graves and read the inscriptions on the headstones, I feel like I could walk into Dad’s work and see him busy on his terminal, setting up some tour of Europe for a new client. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t get to see the bodies.” He turned back to Karen and took her hands in his. “I even went back to the house we used to live in, the day before I took the bus to Redcliff. It was only when one of the new owners came out and started watering some strange purple flowers that I had never seen before in the yard that I finally convinced myself not to go in and ask Mom what she had made for supper.”

  Karen’s eyes seemed to blur before him, and Richard felt his mind and hers overlapping, as they had done before. Some time later, neither of them could say how long, he became aware of the room around him once more.

  “If the Drive had exploded, would we have found ourselves in a different place, with our families around us?” he wondered aloud.

  “I like to think so.” Karen nodded. “I can’t believe that death is the end of everything. There has to be some purpose to life, else how would we have come to be here?”

  “Or how could we be capable of thinking such thoughts, if the universe were an accident?” Richard extended her argument effortlessly. Suddenly he realized that Karen had struggled to stay faithful to her promise to her deceased father while he had lain sleeping the previous night. Such a startling discovery made him pause, and helped him come to some important conclusions. “There’s an old custom on the planet we were both born on, that a symbol be used to represent the promise made by two people in love.”

  Karen let him help her to her feet, then she kissed him so thoroughly that his heart started to pound. She stepped back reluctantly after some time had elapsed.

  “Old customs are good!” Karen smiled at him dreamily. “Let’s make that promise official on our own little piece of Arshonna.”

  Richard nodded and turned away to summon up his symbol of eternity. As he hunched over his keyboard, he became aware that the mossy walls and brilliant stars were replaced by the Arshonnan hillside with which they both had fallen in love. Several minutes later he stretched himself upright, satisfied at last with his creation. He turned and took a step towards Karen, then stopped as he saw her standing with her hands clasped behind her, dressed in a silky, full-length dress of deep purple, close fitting around the body and flaring out at the waist. The wide neck was rounded at the front and came down to about three inches below her collarbones, far enough to allow some evidence of her curves to be established.

  His attention was drawn to a fine silver necklace that lay in a ‘vee’ around her neck. There had to be something attached at the bottom, he was sure, to cause it to hang so, but whatever it was, was hidden below the fabric at the front, nestled in the softness there. He made himself study the rest of the outfit after this discovery, and found that it was finished off with close fitting sleeves that flared out and stopped half-way down her forearms. As she shifted her feet slightly, a hint of a sparkle flickered from the dark folds of her gown.

  “Do you like it?” she asked playfully, well-aware of the impression which she had made on him.

  Richard studied the way her hair spread out onto her shoulders, and Karen, catching his unspoken thought, turned around slowly. He watched the swirling skirt swing around further, after she had completed her turn, and then back until it came to rest with a rustle of material. Her hair was partly braided at the back, keeping it away from her face but allowing for the rest of the gentle waves of silver to drop to the waistband of the stunning creation. He walked slowly forwards and stopped a couple of feet in front of her.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t dress up,” he said softly, his eyes wide open with admiration.

  “Richard, it isn’t important; to me you look fabulous, just in that outfit,” she gestured to his jeans and chequered shirt. “I just wanted to try out some of the things you had seen, and I had never experienced.”

  “Like junior-high graduation!” he concluded in a rush of memory. “The other girls would have been deadly jealous. You would have been declared grad queen!” He held out his hand, unopened before him. “I can’t ask your father for permission first–”

  “Tutor gave it already, and he was acting on my father’s behalf,” Karen declared with a smile of anticipation.

  “Then I would like to ask you to marry me, just as soon as we can find an Arshonnan to perform the ceremony. Will you?”r />
  “Richard, will I ever!” Karen stepped forward to hug him, but he signalled her to wait a moment longer as he opened his hand to reveal the ring he had created.

  “I don’t know what value a jeweller would put on this–”

  “What’s important is how I value it,” Karen interrupted once more. She studied the sparkling, clear stone mounted in the centre of a cluster of grey-blue stones that seemed to glow slightly with a light of their own, the whole grouping being attached to a slight prominence on a silver ring which had etched circles and cylinders faintly scored into its burnished surface.

  Richard slid it onto her finger.

  “It is far beyond any value a jeweller could place on it,” she said quietly. “As it was created out of your love for me. There’s never been a ring quite like this before!” She studied it for a long moment, then she reached up to her neck and pulled on the ultra-fine silvery chain that lay there, lifting a long silver something out of its hiding place. “I don’t know why, perhaps there is a custom on Arshonna that I somehow heard about from my father, so long ago, but I felt that you should have this as my token of faithfulness.” She removed the necklace and placed it over his head.

  Richard saw the small pendant again for a moment as she slipped it inside his shirt, and realized somehow that he was not supposed to look at it until later.

  “Thank you,” he murmured, stepping forward until the dress stated to rustle again.

  Karen pulled him closer and raised her lips to meet his. This kiss, they both knew, was to seal their pact, so it was a long time until they broke apart, a little breathless, with a feeling that they were finally betrothed and fully committed to their promises, by virtue of their own shared sense of honour.

  ***

  Later, as Karen sat down and relaxed in her little hollow, ready for sleep at the end of another long day, she held up her hand and looked at the engagement ring Richard had made and given to her. The stones captured the variable colouring of her eyes. She thought about the unique ring and the symbolism that he had been musing about as he had created it. It never ends… She laid down in a state of dreamy satisfaction and sank into a peaceful sleep in moments.

  Richard flopped onto his simulated waterbed towards the other end of the Moss Room and contemplated the day as he rested his head on his hands and stared up at the swarming stars. We’ll get there, soon now, I know it.

  He remembered the pendant that Karen had given him once again, after so many other thoughts of it had come to him since their betrothal. He reached down, the time right at last, finding the fine chain on his chest, and held it up to the bright starlight to examine it carefully. On it was a tiny silver figurine, dressed in a long, flowing gown.

  Richard studied the miniature face, entranced at the detail and the marvellous accuracy. Although the entire figure was only an inch long, Richard could see that Karen had given him a stunning representation of herself that would stay next to his skin until they were married, when such a substitute would no longer be necessary.

  Chapter Eight

  Unidirectional downward swimming is not swimming at all – Anon.

  “There it is!” Ruth called out excitedly as Latt finished nudging the ‘Railcar’ into the appropriate position for viewing along their line of travel.

  Latt and Isaac stared ahead and saw the bright, blue-tinged spot at about the same time. Latt swallowed before he could speak, strangely affected by the sight. “Why is it sso bright?”

  “Mostly water,” Isaac responded briefly, keenly aware of his new friend’s emotional response to the view, as it was strangely similar to his own. “So it reflects.”

  “Water?” Latt looked puzzled, aware that his friends were not any more suited than he was to living a totally aquatic life. “Where do you live, then?”

  “I love swimming, and canoeing!” Ruth smiled as she got up; she had been intending to go back to her seat next to the fast-fading Terry. “Seriously though, about two thirds of the planet is under water, but there is still enough land to hold a few thousand million people, and places where you could go for miles without seeing a soul.” She patted Latt on the shoulder and was rewarded with another of his newly discovered smiles.

  “We must resume our deceleration and watch the video camera view from now on,” Isaac declared. “I don’t know if we are going to overshoot or what, but I sure don’t want to collide!”

  Latt nodded. He checked that Ruth had buckled herself in again, then adjusted the Gravity Inducers to rotate the craft back into its bottom-first position. The others felt the uncomfortable sensations of variable gravity, like tumbling in slow motion, then the deceleration resumed, restoring the feeling of being in a descending elevator as it nears the ground floor after a long drop.

  It was not long before the image of Earth on the monitor mounted in front of Latt’s central seat filled most of the screen; Ruth left Terry’s side once more, sat down beside Latt and tried to figure out which continents she could see. She pointed out some features as she managed to find them. Latt shook his head, astounded at the vast quantities of water below them.

  Isaac punched in another series of numbers and sat back. “There’s a problem,” he announced quietly, his calculations complete.

  “Are we off course?” Ruth asked anxiously from the other end of the row of seats.

  “No, we’re going directly towards Earth, we’ll hit it dead centre; that’s the problem – we’re going too fast,” Isaac explained. “‘Hit’ is the operative word.”

  “I can give you point oh one ‘gee’ laterally in addition to the one point oh nine we are now using,” Latt offered. “Any more than that and we may have problems; sseveral of the Inducers are starting to show ssigns of excessive power consumption.”

  Isaac looked up from the keyboard. “Are we near the capacity of the reactor, then?”

  “No, that’s not the problem; we have lots of sspare power,” Latt assured him. “It’s jusst that an Inducer with increasing power drain is an indication that the device may fail. That isn’t very ssignificant when they are only being used to maintain a gravity field for convenience, but in this case…”

  Isaac’s eyes opened wider as he caught the implications of Latt’s statement. “Give us that point oh one, take us left, that way we’ll be dropping in behind the planet as it passes by; the relative velocities will help a bit.”

  Latt adjusted the controls; the two on either side of him also felt the effect of the changes, which was as if their craft had been tilted slightly to one side.

  “Watch the screen, Ruth,” Isaac asked. “I want to know if the Earth appears to move off-centre, no matter how little.”

  Ruth nodded. Several minutes passed. She monitored the screen faithfully while Isaac and Latt performed calculations and checked to ensure that the Inducers were not overloading. The planet grew even bigger. Latt reached out absently to turn off the magnification, only to find that he had previously done so.

  “I am using all Inducers at about the maximum emergency level now,” Latt confirmed. “I think I can give you a little more deceleration, probably to one point one five for just a few minutes, without any adverse effects.”

  ““It’ll take more than a few minutes,” Isaac muttered. “But do it anyway.”

  Ruth felt the slight change in perceived gravity and wriggled with discomfort. “I guess I got used to the reduced gravity on Mars;” she remarked. “I feel like I’m on Jupiter!” She leaned further forward, double-checking her observation. “Hey! We’re moving! Earth is a little off centre now; it’s not much, but…”

  Latt left his power monitors and looked at the screen. The strangely beautiful blue planet almost completely covered the screen; the curve of the atmosphere above the blue was visible only on the left side. His introspective moment was shattered by a loud bang, as if a large firecracker had gone off behind him. He noticed Ruth jump several inches vertically, colliding with her loosely arranged seat belt, as the noise exploded in their
ears. The front end of the Railcar seemed to rise immediately; Latt knew it would soon do so in reality. He leaned forward over his monitors once again.

  “I’m cutting power to the forward Inducers slightly,” he announced. “We lost one of the rear ones just then. I have to cut power or we’ll go into a spin.”

  Isaac nodded. “What chance is there of repairing it?” he asked anxiously as he watched the increasingly huge bulk of Earth draw nearer. “We need that deceleration!”

  “Watch the power monitors,” Latt said. “I’ll check for spares; if we have what I need, I’ll have it back on line in five minutes,” he promised.

  Isaac moved into the central seat as Latt got up and climbed back over it to the storage area. As Latt walked past Terry, he heard him moaning.

  “Ruth!” Latt spoke with a despairing intensity. “Terry looks much worse!”

  “I’m not surprised; he hasn’t had any antibiotics for over twelve hours now.” Ruth responded grimly. She got up and walked back to see if she could do anything to make him more comfortable.

  Isaac leaned over the power display; he felt so helpless. The world was coming into view through the forward Transplyous, the part showing was in twilight; night approached with great rapidity.