by Jerry
“Soon,” he said, but it wasn’t to me. The bloody sun regarded him in his final moment, bathing him in crimson light, but I knew what he saw as his eyes froze. Not the giant, her. I like to imagine his smile, a look of peace finally crossing his gaunt face.
Then he was out the hatch and gone.
The small golden companion burst into view, like a crown upon the red queen’s brow.
“Jump,” I said.
Well, of course we made it, or I wouldn’t be here mooching booze off of you. It was touch or go for a while. We damn near lost our N-space drives completely, and it took us close to a year our time, two and a half years real time, to make it home.
During that journey, I spent a lot of time with the ghosts in Stapleton’s room. I watched all the variations, all the versions of the last testament of Lise Stapleton. The one the logics determined was the most statistically accurate, had been one he had stumbled upon early in the endeavor, less than a year out. It went like this:
“I’d . . . like to tell my husband . . . something . . . He needs to please . . . forgive himself. To live. Please don’t destroy the man I know, that I love. Please don’t live in just your machines, my darling. This is the most important, the only immortal, thing I can leave you. my love. Don’t kill the man I love. Even though we are a million, billion lifetimes apart, please hear me, be with me. Please, my love, my star. Be happy, move on. Live. I love you.”
Stapleton had viewed it a handful of times and dismissed it, like all the others. Except the one that sent him down the black road to murder and madness. That one he had watched thousands of times. And sitting on the edge of my bunk one night, decades later, crying like a baby over my beautiful, blackened Layman, I finally understood.
It was the only one that didn’t say goodbye.
I sold the Annabelle Lee not too long after we made it back. It was a ghost ship, so full of pain and loss, there was no room for a living crew anymore. I pissed away the money, trying to remind myself I was alive, and half-wishin’ I wasn’t.
Without Layman, I kept at the life longer than I should have, crewed a few too many hothouse runs. It caught up to me. Now, I’m a ghost too, hovering between life and oblivion. People look the other way when they see me walking. No one wants to be reminded of death.
So there it is. I’m obliged for the drinks, and the company. Most ghost stories don’t have a moral, ’cept maybe the dead envy the living, and the living should let the dead be. But maybe there is one here. Y’see, if you travel in the Black long enough, you begin to understand what loneliness is, how we are all so alone, even in our own skin. Especially in our own skin. Deep space is nothing compared to the isolation between each of us. The silence between words, between livin’ and just breathin’, can’t be measured in parsecs.
So drink up while this old shade fades away—the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come. Hopefully, the shit I’m saying, you won’t ever need to sweat, but just in case, boy, remember. We’re all looking for someone’s orbit to fall into, someone to shield us from the cold and the night, someone to be the ghost haunting our house.
COLD SLEEP
C.J. Cherryh
I wake.
I remember.
I remember the transport offices. I remember, on the wall, a picture of Mars, and another of Earth. I remember a medical office.
I do not remember falling asleep.
Muscles are very weak. I am cold, but warmth moves through me, not like a wind, but like a strange, sluggish tide flowing toward my core.
290Am1e, the computer says, in the screen above me. Respond.
I try to speak. Yes. It requires breath. Instead I move my hand. I blink.
Are we there? I try to say. Are we at Proxima?
I shape the words. I cannot make the sound.
But the screen shows me things. It tells me procedures. And my muscles, one by one, twitch, beginning with my face, proceeding to my left arm.
Waking process engaged, the screen says.
It goes on. The warmth spreads.
I remember.
I sleep.
I fell asleep before launch. I have a strong memory of Mars colony. I was born there. I was twenty-two when I fell asleep, one of ten thousand Martian-born and five thousand from Earth and Luna, young and old, children and seniors, chosen, in a terrible period of the Sun’s instability. I remember. I had a family. A seal failed. I was twenty-one. Melly was my sister. Jolu was my mother. San was my father. They were there. They stop, there. That entire memory stops there. I put my handprint on a screen. I agree to be here. I am a single. I know no one here. I know names: Rai, and Pru, and Doctor Sam.
Are they waking?
Are we all waking?
I become aware of breathing. The twitches have begun in my right leg, now. I decide to move my fingers. And they answer. I decide to swallow. And I do. I am aware of blinking but I did not decide that. My mouth is dry. I hate the twitches, and I move my left leg, my right hand, my right foot, to get ahead of them.
The suit moves.
Should it?
290Am1e, the readout says. Confirm that you are a single.
“Yes,” I say. My voice creaks. I hardly recognize it. “Are we there?”
I want to sit up. The twitches have stopped.
I want to stand. I want to see. I move an arm, the opposite leg.
I lie in a long narrow space, like a tunnel. I do not remember this. I do not remember the rows of other suits that lie double-stacked in racks, on and on, little flickers of telltales in the dim light, like a sheet of stars… so many bodies.
I am one of them.
But I move.
I lift my arm and see my hand, gloved. I move the fingers. I try to touch my face. The faceplate prevents it.
I fell asleep on a bed.
Now I am here. Encased in a suit. With tubes in my body.
Can I get out of this?
Dare I get out of this?
Is there air? Are we in vacuum?
There is up and down. There is at least gravity.
“Is something wrong?” I ask aloud, a hoarse croak. “Are we coming into Proxima?”
“You are a single.” The voice is generated. “Yes-no. Confirm.”
“Yes. Are the others waking?”
“No. You are a single. Article 13 states: ‘There must be one individual awake on each unit of the ship. An Awakened Individual will see to the safety and welfare of the passengers and machinery of the unit. Priority in awakening will be assigned to singles. Not until the list of singles has been exhausted will non-singles be awakened.’”
Words. They make no sense. Tubes retract from my body. It hurts.
It hurts, and leaves me with a taste that fills my mouth and my nose and makes my bones ache. “Hurts,” I say. Stupid to say to a robot. My eyes are watering. I lift my arm, but I cannot reach my face.
“Bodily functions will return,” the voice says. “Independent movement is now possible.”
Are we arriving?
I can move both my arms. I sit, with the resistance of magnetic connections.
Maybe I should not have done that.
But the bot does not protest.
I stand, breaking lower connections.
Suited bodies lie in both directions, into the dim distance. Colonists. Like me.
And nobody moves. No one else is waking.
Crazy numbers dance in my head. Information. Procedures of the machinery.
Organization of the ship. Things I do not remember learning.
I ask, “Are we at Proxima?” “We are one hundred thirty-nine years from Proxima system.” Numbers focus down. A chart, a direction, a position. A hundred thirty-nine years from arrival at Proxima B—a planet they promise can sustain us. But I will not live that long.
I will not make it to Proxima. I am twenty-one.
No. If the voyage went as scheduled, I am no longer twenty-one. I am three hundred fifty-eight.
And panic rides an adrenaline su
rge. The suit itself red-lights, a telltale in the helmet, on my chest. Not all the tubes have withdrawn.
The ship is evidently in trouble. If they are waking some random passenger, the ship is in trouble.
I do not know what to do about that.
But the numbers dance. I try to be calm. And I try to make sense of what I know.
An Awakened Individual.
A single person. No relatives. No pair-bonds. No connections. Of course we signed the agreement. They promised us a world. A future.
And all, all these sleeping people, connected by tubes to machinery keeping them alive.
For an arrival all those years from now.
My gut hurts. My brain is stuffed full of numbers. Diagrams. Data. Things I never knew when I lay down to sleep.
I stand because the suit will not let me fall. I shiver and go on shivering.
If we are most of the way to our target, we have made turnover. We are in decel.
All the world is double rows of suited bodies, going on into the dark in both directions.
And we are Unit 1 of five units, independent but joined with a common engine, which should be in front of us now. A connected pattern of units. With invisible fire driving it.
I am the Awakened in this unit. My first job should be to survey the sleeping, looking for anomalies. That is what I should do. I do not remember being told.
Their data begins to flood past the helmet screen, momentarily obscuring everything. It takes a few seconds, and my eyes are watering the while, so it makes no sense.
“Unit 1 occupants are optimum,” the robot says.
“Good,” I say, numb, with tears running down my face. I cannot wipe them. They have to dry there. However long it takes.
Unfair. Unfair that I should have to wake, now, a hundred thirty-nine years short of arriving.
I will be old. I will die still in space, and someone else will see Arrival. I will not.
Not fair to be brought so close. But it has happened. I am called on and I have waked.
Other data streams past.
“Stop screen,” I say.
It freezes. I view the place through a frozen veil of numbers.
“Cancel screen.”
The veil vanishes. Nothing moves. Nothing in all the universe moves. My feet are on the deck, which means, I suppose, the engine is all right. It must be.
“Robot, what do I call you?”
“Robot,” it says.
“Where is the crew?”
“Crew ceased life.”
“All crew?”
“Article 13…”
“Stop. Where are you?”
“Crew compartment. Unit 0.”
I turn. A light shines in the far distance.
I walk. Or the suit does, with me connected.
And it hurts. Something, in my gut, hurts with a dull, cutting pain at every step, every breath. I walk between the aisles. All around is dark. External temperature reads near zero.
There is no sound, except those the suit makes, and that I make.
I come to an airlock.
I enter. It cycles.
“Can I take off the suit here?” I ask.
“No. Do not remove the suit without medical assistance.”
“Can you provide medical assistance?”
“No. I cannot.”
“Damn,” I say. Robot says nothing.
The inner door opens on a narrow corridor.
Light comes on.
I walk. I walk a great distance, but I can see an end, a doorway.
I reach it. I touch the control plate.
That door opens.
The place is a human place, pressurized, table and chairs, dishes on the table. A round room with arches on all sides. Beyond one arch I see flashing lights, readouts of some sort.
Beyond other arches I see doors.
On the floor, in an archway, lies a suit like mine. It lies still. One red light flashes lazily above the faceplate.
I stand there a moment. I want to look inside.
And I don’t want to.
“Robot,” I say. My voice shakes. “Robot?”
“Yes.”
“Who was this?”
“129Aj2b.”
An Awakened.
Before me. Older than me.
“He died,” I say calmly. “He ceased. So you waked me.”
My eyes water. I cannot call it grief. Terror, perhaps.
This is the heart of the ship. Or its brain. This is where I am. A diagram I never saw flashes into my head, the shape of the ship, a ring of five units, connected to a heart, which is where I stand. And a long stem that keeps the engine far from us.
Us.
The living things.
The room has a table. Chairs. Things for ordinary people. A stuffed toy lies abandoned in a corner.
“What happened to the crew?”
“Crew has ceased.”
“The children…”
“All crew has ceased.”
That takes a moment to process. A long, difficult-to-breathe moment.
“Where are they, then?”
“Recycled.”
“Except this one.”
“Not understood.”
“Why is this person not recycled?”
“Crew authorizes all human recycling.”
“Was this crew?”
“Yes.”
“Am I crew?”
“No.”
“Then what am I?”
“You are an Awakened Individual.”
I know things I ought not to know. When I wonder, I know them. Too many things. Too fast. Systems at risk. Systems not to touch. The suit light reddens. I find it hard to breathe. “Are you well?” Robot asks, and the question is off in the distance: my hearing has gone, I am so angry. So scared. So distressed.
I am shut in with myself. I think. I desperately think. I think.
“Robot.”
“I hear you.”
“Wake another individual. I need advice.”
“I can advise.”
“I need a human being. Wake another human being.”
“I cannot wake another until you cease.”
“I’m telling you wake another person!”
“Are you about to cease?”
Stupid robot. Stupid damn robot.
“No,” I say. “No, I am not about to cease.”
I want to sit down. I want to sit in a chair at a table and drink something and think. And this damned shell around me will not let me do any of that.
I can never do that.
Ever.
Probably there were suicides en route. I can see where there might be suicides.
“Robot, how many crew were there?”
“One hundred fifteen.”
“Was there an accident?”
“Sometimes.”
God.
There were children. There were supposed to be children. A succession. It was a generation ship—for them. For the rest of us—cold storage. Deep sleep until arrival.
Or should have been.
There is a room beyond this, through an arch. Flashing lights. Perhaps Robot’s heart. At least the ship’s.
I don’t recognize this, I have never seen it. But I know what it is. I know what the ship should look like.
I walk into that area. I see the schematic, and recognize it. All Units connect here. To this center. Five doors, one of which I came through. This is the heart of Unit 0.
The Engine is in front of us now. The Units redirect once braking begins, and braking will have gone on for as many years as we were accelerating. But the engine is not accessible. We do not control it. All this is just—life support. Support for the suits. Supply. And computers. Robot lives in this panel. And maybe he wanders the circuits and keeps things going. The doors beyond the arches say 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Those are accesses. They must be physical accesses. The cold-sleep Units are separate, in case of calamity to one.
But they are not
sealed.
They are not sealed, or I could not get here.
“Robot, are Units 2 through 5 all right? Are they safe?”
“Units 2, 3, 4, and 5 are operating.”
Thank God. Thank God for that.
“Can you contact Unit 2?”
“Yes. I am always in contact with Unit 2.”
“Another robot?”
“Robot 2 is a partition. I am a partition.”
“Are there Awakened in charge there?”
“An Awakened Individual is in each Unit.”
If I could fall down on my knees, I would. The reality is, I stand. And speak to a voice.
“Then put me in contact with Unit 2.”
“Contacting Unit 2. The Awakened Individual in Unit 1 is seeking to contact Unit 2. Please respond.”
A pause. A pause that takes forever.
Then a human voice, however altered by machinery. “Robot?”
“This is Unit 1,” I say. I am so relieved at a human voice I am trembling, and the suit protests with a flurry of lights. “This is Unit 1.”
“The Awakened.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
Shock is profound. “I am new. I am just Awakened. I need advice.”
“I don’t.”
“Are your people all right? All the sleepers?”
Silence.
“Repeating, are your people all right? Are you all right over there?”
Robot says, “Unit 2 has broken contact.”
“Get it back.”
“Attempting,” Robot says, and then after a moment, “Unit 2 is directing Robot to end communication.”
Something is wrong over there. Something is seriously wrong.
“Contact Unit 3. Contact their Awakened.”
“I am contacting Unit 3. Stand by.”
Very little pause.
“This is Unit 3.”
“This is Unit 1. I have just been waked. I am scared. I am lost, here. I have just contacted Unit 2 and they broke the connection when I asked about their people.”
“Unit 2 is like that.”
That is unexpected.
“Like what, Unit 3?”
“They don’t want to talk to us.”
“Why not?”
A silence. “They just don’t.”
“Then talk to me.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”