Vale of Stars

by Sean O'Brien

  A muted chime sounded in the apartment. Jene blinked and had to focus her mind to identify the sound as her door announcer. Jene gently eased out of the bed, watching Kuarta carefully as she did so. The girl stirred slightly but otherwise did not wake.

  Jene found a robe and, pulling it on, strode to the door announcer.

  “Who is it?”

  “Doctor Halfner? It’s Wynd Perralt.”

  Jene knew the name. She was a Gen Four journalist who lived in New Omaha. Jene had a vague memory of Perralt’s column in one of the newses; she was at least as much a left-wing radical as Jene.

  “What do you want?” Jene found herself in no mood for ordinary pleasantries.

  “Please, Doctor. I need to talk to you. I’m alone.”

  Jene sighed. Her impulse was to send the woman away. But her sense of dread for the future when the emotional reality of Renold’s death would hit her overrode her impulse. If talking to Perralt would push that future farther away, she would speak to her.

  Jene opened the door and let the woman in. Perralt was older than Jene, and considerably shorter. Her eyes were strikingly blue-gray, and she carried herself with the unmistakable air of competent authority natural leaders have about them.

  “Thank you. I know you don’t want to talk or listen to anyone right now, so I’ll leave if you ask me to.”

  Jene nodded, then motioned to a chair in the living room. When the two were seated, Jene noticed Perralt looking her over.

  “What are you looking for, Ms. Perralt?”

  Perralt started guiltily. “Oh. I’m afraid that’s an old habit from my reporter days. I always size people up when I’m about to interview them.”

  “I’m not in the mood for interviews.”

  “Oh, no, Doctor. That’s not why I’m here. I’m not a reporter anymore.” She snorted quietly and looked away. “I’m not sure what I am now.” She looked back at Jene quickly. “Sorry, Doctor. I’m wasting your time. I’ll get right to it.”

  “You can call me Jene.” Despite the situation, Jene found herself liking Perralt’s frank manner.

  Perrault nodded. “We’ve got to set up some kind of government. We can’t go on in anarchy for four months.”

  “Don’t ask me to be the new Czar, or whatever you are planning. I tell you now, I will refuse.”

  Perralt nodded. “I thought you would say that. Truthfully, I am a little glad to hear it.”

  In spite of her earlier refusal to take the mantle, Jene was affronted. “Why?”

  Perralt shifted in her seat and said, “I mean no disrespect, but how much experience do you have governing people? You galvanized all of Ship to overthrow the Council, but can you preside over them now? I am a little bit of a student of history, Jene. Revolutionaries make poor statesmen.”

  “Then who is to lead us?”

  Perralt sighed. “For the moment, there are about thirty of us who are looking past the immediate effects of the revolution. I won’t say we are calling ourselves governors, but we will have some policy proposals to give Ship in a few hours. There may be more groups around Ship, but I don’t see how any of them can be any more organized or well-versed in governance as we are. We did not mean to intentionally leave you out, Jene,” Perralt added hastily, “but we did think you would not want to be bothered right now. You’ve done a great deal for all of us.”

  “But my work is done?”

  Perralt looked away. “Not quite. That’s what I’m really here for.” She got up in a display of nervous energy she had hitherto kept hidden. “The group of people working on the problems of government has been…contacted.”

  “By whom?”

  “The Flight Crew. They want to speak to you.”

  “Me?”

  “They asked for you by name. The governing group feels it would be unwise to go any further until we hear what it is they want to tell you.”

  “Why do they want me? And why now?” Jene realized the question was rhetorical only after she had voiced it.

  Perralt tried to answer it. “I think they want you now because of the upheaval. And why they want you….”

  Jene got up from her chair and stared at Perralt. “Why?”

  “They said they would have spoken to only one other person in Ship.”

  “Really? Then get that person. Because I have a daughter to care for.”

  “It was Renold.”

  Jene stepped back, as if the force of the revelation had tangible effects on her. Renold had been one of the only people to make even sporadic contact with the Flight Crew. Jene had asked him about them in the early years of their marriage, but Renold had made it plain, politely but with resolute firmness, that he could not speak of his dealings with them. Eventually, Jene had stopped asking and had even stopped wondering.

  And now the Flight Crew needed to talk to him. Could they be having some kind of crisis only a trained psychiatrist could defuse? No, for if that were so, they would not call for Jene.

  Jene wanted nothing more than to stay with Kuarta and help her live through the loss of a father. She wanted to hold her for four months until the Ship arrived at Epsilon Eridani and the two could pretend to start anew on the surface. But she knew she could not begin the process of healing, for herself, until she completed this last task. She felt she owed it to Renold, if not to her entire world. By taking on a task that would have been his, Jene knew she would be stepping closer to the moment when his death would fall heavily upon her. Perralt’s visit had not postponed that moment after all.

  “I’ll go,” Jene said.

  Jene and Kuarta were alone in the shuttle as it climbed back up towards the foremost section of the Panoptikon structure where the seldom-visited Crew quarters were. The eighteen members of the Flight Crew had, for all intents and purposes, become a cabal that few outsiders ever saw. For the majority of the voyage, virtually no one on Ship had even thought about them. What little speculation there was regarding the crew involved their backgrounds—it was generally assumed that most of the eighteen current crewmembers were directly related to those who had been aboard when Ship had been launched, either through inbreeding or forced-growth cloning. There was always speculation that a colonist could join the Flight Crew, though no one knew of anyone who had done so. Jene had lived with those casual assumptions for too long to easily question them now. If there was a holy pantheon in Ship, then it was populated by the Flight Crew.

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes?”

  “What do the Flight Crew people look like?”

  “Well, I suppose they look like us,” Jene said, smiling as best she could at Kuarta. Renold had been killed a scant eighteen hours ago—Kuarta was still unreadable. Her question about the Flight Crew had been asked in a monotone, without any real regard for the answer. Jene had insisted upon taking her along, and Perralt had offered only halfhearted resistance to the idea. Jene had wanted to keep her daughter with her. Now Jene wondered if her instinct had been correct. Kuarta’s question was more chilling than she could have realized, for she did not know what she would find when she met the Flight Crew. Was it a good idea to subject Kuarta to another possible shock? Jene shook her head slightly and tried to concentrate on the looming image of the Panoptikon in the shuttle’s forward window.

  The shuttle stopped a few meters from the control room hatch, hovering in the microgravity that existed that close to Ship’s axis. Jene took Kuarta by the hand and the two floated slowly towards the hatch. The hatch was as clean and well-maintained as any other part of Ship—the automated maintenance robots did not discriminate or feel the fear of myth—but Jene still sensed an intangible air of disuse around the hatch. There was a small intercom grille next to the controls, and Jene had just reached out a hand to activate the communicator when the hatch opened of its own accord.

  Jene stopped herself at the jamb, peering into the dimly-lit flight deck corridor. No one was in sight. The flight crew, Jene surmised, had been monitoring her approach and had evidently de
cided to admit her. She had no particular reason to fear these eighteen people—certainly, Renold had never given her cause to fear them—but she was apprehensive just the same.

  She pulled herself and Kuarta into the corridor and heard the hatch close behind her. When it did, the lights in the corridor brightened significantly and a lone figure floated effortlessly towards her from the far end. Jene resisted a sudden impulse to gasp. The figure wasn’t an angel or a demon, but just a human like herself. He came closer, and one of the corridor sconces bathed him in cool light.

  He was an old man, probably a Gen Three, who wore an old-style steel-gray uniform that Jene had seen in some of the history vids of Ship’s original launch. The uniform was odd in ways Jene could not immediately place—a hint of epaulets at the shoulders, a bit of gold braid here, an unidentified bird design on the shoulder. The man was unusually tall—perhaps over two meters—and remarkably spindly. He had a kindly face that broke into a smile as he said, “Doctor Halfner. I am glad to meet you.” His voice was a pleasant, if somewhat scratchy, baritone. “Welcome to the flight deck. My name is Eduard Costellan, and I am what you might call the Captain of Ship.” He thrust out a hand in greeting. Every action he had made betrayed his familiarity with his surroundings: he had none of the characteristic clumsiness or uncertainty Jene knew she displayed in microgravity. It also, no doubt, accounted for his height and relative lack of musculature. Jene had never heard of a medical tech coming up to the flight deck, and now that she thought about it, she wondered if indeed anyone here required medical attention at all.

  The man’s name was vaguely familiar for some reason. Jene tried to place it but could not. She filed the mystery away for later and took his proffered hand. “I suppose you know what has been happening…outside,” she said.

  Costellan’s smile vanished and his face suddenly looked much older than it had a moment before. Could he actually be a Gen Two? There were some hundreds of them left alive in Ship, but their average age was approaching eighty. Jene knew that even with intensive brain rewiring, such individuals had lost a significant portion of their mental clarity. She was uncomfortable with the notion that such a man was guiding Ship to its final destination.

  “Yes, we are. We are always watching Ship.” He looked down at Kuarta and smiled widely. “Hello, Kuarta.”

  “How do you know my name?” Kuarta asked, a hint of interest in her voice.

  “I have watched you for a long time.” Costellan straightened and looked at Jene. “Both of you.” He paused a beat, then made a quick gesture with two of his fingers. Another crewmember appeared from behind him. “Kuarta, this is one of my friends. She will take you to a place where you can see all of Ship. Would you like that?”

  Jene answered for her. “No. She stays with me.”

  Costellan hesitated a fraction of a second, then said, “All right.” He dismissed the crewmember with a wave of his hand and turned back to Jene. “Come into the control room, Doctor. I think you’ll like it.” He gestured with a bony hand to the room at the far end of the corridor and launched himself expertly towards it. Jene followed, awkwardly, noting that she had been staring at his hands—Costellan’s hands were always in motion.

  The control room, a smallish sphere at the end of the corridor, was frighteningly devoid of machinery. There were four computing stations ranged around the room, staffed by two men and two women. They wheeled in mid-air to face Jene when she and Costellan entered. All four of them were as tall and as underdeveloped as he was, although they were somewhat younger in appearance.

  Jene stared at the arrangement wordlessly. Kuarta squirmed out of Jene’s grasp and tried to swim towards the nearest workstation. Costellan smiled slightly, then gently pushed her towards her goal. The crewmember on duty at the station smiled indulgently and let the little girl see what he was doing.

  Costellan said softly, “We watch you all the time, Doctor. Not just you, of course, but all of Ship. Sometimes we laugh with you, sometimes we cry when we realize we cannot ever join you. But we are content to guide you. It is what we have been bred for.”

  The man’s naked emotion came so suddenly that Jene was not certain how to react. She glanced at the four technicians. Each one had Kuarta’s dead-eyed stare. In an instant, she understood what Costellan was saying. None of the flight crew could possibly leave the flight deck and survive the angular acceleration that served as gravity for the eight thousand shipmates below. Worse, the flight crew could never leave Ship when it arrived at EE3 without constant intensive care. Of all the colonists who required medical care, the Flight Crew would be the most demanding.

  Jene turned to Costellan. “You say you have seen what has happened below. Why have you asked to see me?”

  “We would have preferred your husband…forgive me. I do not mean to bring up painful memories. He had visited us many times to talk. Now, though, Ship does not have any government, but the few who do see the need for some kind of organized system look to you to lead them. It is therefore to you that we must report.”

  “I’ve already told Perralt I’m not their leader. You don’t need to report to me. I don’t want you to report to me.”

  Costellan looked at the technicians. “They’ve been here their whole lives. Their sole duty is to monitor and guide Ship to its destination. All of us—we know that in four months, our usefulness to the mission will be at its final end. Renold helped us to overcome feelings of…hopelessness. Despair. Ennui. Call it what you want. Many of our number would have killed themselves, or have been killed by other Crew, if Renold had not intervened. More than you or anyone else realizes, Ship owes Renold a great deal.”

  “But I don’t see why you need me.”

  “Everyone in Ship has tasks to perform. We have ours. Renold performed his, although it made him a quasi-outcast himself. And now you have one. But you refuse to take it. Ship still needs you.”

  “Perralt says otherwise.”

  “Wynd Perralt is a good woman,” Costellan said, “but you will note that she did not spark this revolution. You did. You must lead Ship.”

  Jene slumped her shoulders slightly, as if even in microgravity a weight had suddenly dropped upon her. “I’m not a leader. I’m just…a cranky woman who wanted things her way.”

  “What else is a leader?”

  Jene looked at him for a long moment. “You are the Captain of Ship. Why don’t you lead?”

  “Flight Crew turns its eyes outward. I have been Captain for a long time, and in all that time, we have not intervened in internal affairs.”

  Jene had never considered there could be any other kind of ‘affairs’ with regard to Ship. But his statement reminded her of the question of his age. She looked at Costellan quizzically. “How old are you? Are you a Gen Two?”

  Costellan smiled again. “No, Jene. I am much older than that. I thank you, however, for the compliment.”

  Jene reeled. He was a Gen One? To her knowledge, he was the only one left alive—Old Deborah Waugh had died seven years ago at the age of ninety-six, having been born in year five of the voyage. This man could be the oldest man in the entire mission! Jene was suddenly flooded with questions about the history of the mission—here was a man who had been alive for the vast majority of the voyage.

  “You’re a Gen One? Sir, I—”

  “No, Doctor. I said I was much older than that. I am what you call Gen Zero. I am one of the original launch crew.”

  Jene did not have any more mental room for amazement. One question, though, was answered: the mysterious familiarity of his name. She suddenly remembered a holograph of the launch crew from her history lessons. Eduard Costellan had been a junior officer then.

  “Are you the only one left, sir?” She asked, automatically adding the honorific.

  “I am. The workers you see about me are all Gen One.” Jene glanced at the hovering technicians. “I suppose as a medical doctor you’d be interested in our antiagathic process?” He chuckled. “Nine-tenths of the proce
ss is simple—live your entire life in free-fall. My descendants will live even longer than I, though such a long life, under these conditions, is not the blessing it would at first glance seem.”

  “How have you kept yourselves from disease? Do you have a doctor?”

  “We have a Flight Surgeon, but her talents have not been necessary for many years. We sometimes succumb to degenerative diseases—I myself am in the beginning stages of osteoporosis.”

  “Microgravity.”

  “Exactly. But our doctor tells me that if I continue to exercise and take the calcium treatments, I should live another twenty years.”

  Jene did not answer. She was beyond answering.

  “But I did not call you here for that, Doctor. There is a more pressing matter to discuss. As per flight doctrine, we launched a telemetry probe some time ago to begin collecting data on Epsilon Eridani 3. I released our findings weeks ago to Councilman Arnson as the civil authority in Ship. I wish to give them to you now.”

  Jene found that she did not want to object. She nodded slightly.

  Costellan collected himself and said, in a tone that reminded Jene of a resident at the hospital giving a formal report, “Eighty-six days ago, we launched one of our six planetary probes towards EE3 to begin surveying conditions there. We have since discovered far more than I believe Arnson has made public.”

  “He told me departments would get the data soon,” Jene said, anger rising in her. Medical needed that data to prepare for landing. If Arnson had withheld vital data, the medical teams would have to work overtime to provide the necessary panimmunity vaccines. The anger was almost instantly replaced with shame—shame that she could feel more anger towards Arnson for withholding data when the man had killed her husband.