by Far Freedom
She looked down into the pool beyond the window, brought the illumination up slowly, until she could see the swimmer. The swimmer stopped and floated, naked, hairless, eyes open but not seeing, not conscious yet anticipating something. She touched a control and the swimmer convulsed slightly, the eyes went shut, the arms and legs folded into a fetal position.
She removed her hair and connected a signal transducer cap on her bare scalp. She closed her eyes and let the memories flow. The swimmer clutched at its umbilical cord and bent its head farther forward, a grimace on its mouth. Centuries passed between their brains. She touched another control and the pool began to drain. The swimmer followed the liquid level down with its mouth until it had no more liquid to breath. It coughed several times, discharging fluid from its lungs, taking in air for the first time in ages.
She leaned on the sill of the window as she removed the cap from her scalp. She rested her chin on her hands, her elbows on the sill, and waited for the swimmer to awaken. Presently groans and more coughing came from the swimmer in the empty pool. Finally, after a long clearing of the throat, the swimmer spoke. “So soon?”
“A couple of centuries.”
“Too long, then.”
“Not necessarily. Let your chemistry stabilize and you’ll think more clearly.”
“The signal came! How long do we have?”
“Not very long.”
“How long exactly?”
“I don’t know. Curiously, there’s no exact departure date for the Galactic Hub Mission. It could be in a week or in a month. Probably not sooner or later than that.”
“The signal came from Earth. Why Earth, I wonder?”
“At least it’s convenient. Has the umbilical released you?”
“Yes. I’m bleeding. I’m old-fashioned in how I want my body to look. How do you look? Do you still look human after all this time?”
“Don’t I ever look in the mirror? Come up and see.”
The swimmer struggled upward, grasped handholds made for its use, and its head appeared above the sill of the window.
“Are bald women back in fashion?” the swimmer asked.
“Welcome back to life, Aylis Mnro,” Aylis Mnro said to the swimmer.
Section 012 The Singer Awakes
She followed and watched. The stars drifted by. Instruments measured and recorded. Solitude enveloped her. The starship Titanic sailed ahead of her, sailing to the inward galactic frontier. Her little ship, the Demba, made the trip many times but this time she flew with an improved starlight drive, its cleaner envelope making her invisible to all but the most sensitive detectors. He requested it. She didn’t hesitate to oblige, even though the delay meant smaller profit and a postponed freight load. The broker threatened to drop her.
His wife and child sailed aboard the Titanic, the first time in a decade a large ship dared to take such a route. She didn’t understand what she could do if anything happened. She didn’t know what he suspected might happen. She didn’t understand why he would let his family travel on a ship that might encounter trouble. She could have transported them aboard her own ship. She suggested that. She thought he agreed to it but by the time she reached their port of departure, the Titanic had sailed with his wife and child aboard.
She regretted not having the companionship on this trip. She hated the loneliness. She couldn’t even sing now, for fear of missing some audible warning from the instruments. Three women on the Demba would have required more maintenance for life support in the tiny crew quarters but they would have had fun together. She liked Susan and Fidelity. Apparently Fidelity did not like her.
She never saw the first few anomalies. Only when the Titanic lost its starlight drive did she discover their existence. Spherical objects blinked in and out of space, appearing to jump out of sight and into sight, so great was their acceleration. She lowered her velocity, closing the gap to the big starship. Now she could see the jumping globes against the scale of the starliner. They measured no larger than her own ship but they numbered over a hundred. Seconds later another thousand joined the hundred, forming a cloud of dark spheres that all but occluded the Titanic.
She reversed course to reduce the risk of collision and discovery. Even as she slowed to a stop, another ten thousand spheres jumped into the cluster and completely enveloped the starship. She could do nothing but watch and record. Interstellar space provided very little illumination for the scene before her.
Nothing seemed to happen for a long time. She missed it when they disappeared. She had to play back the enhanced images of her passive sensors. In less than a heartbeat the storm of small spheres vanished, not all at once but nearly so. So, too, did the Titanic disappear - that is, it didn’t reappear when the cloud of spheres departed. Nothing remained but empty space. Forty-three thousand passengers, one hundred million tons of ship and cargo - and Susan and Fidelity - were gone without a trace.
“What are you thinking about?” Samson inquired.
She had to call on the steel person within her to disengage from the vision. Hopefully Samson couldn’t see the reaction on her face, the astonishment, the tears, the terror. This was a most powerful - memory? - image, vividly detailed, implicitly vital, both personally and in some greater context. Impossible enemy ships, discontinuous in flight, as deadly to a starship as a school of piranhas to a cow fording their river. She heard names, already trying to evaporate from her memory: Demba, Fidelity, Susan. The first two were her names, that of a ship and that of a person she must have known. Who was Susan? She could no longer set these mental events apart from the current outer reality of her life. These powerful internal cinemas must converge on who she was and what she must do.
” Something that happened a long time ago,” she finally answered Samson’s question. She shook herself, both mentally and physically, to cast off the paralysis of powerful emotion. Just by being there, Samson brought her back to here-and-now, eased her suffering. The dream continued to evaporate, but the disappearance of the Titanic was an event known to her from history, and she would not lose that connection to the escaping images. “I’m also thinking you need a bath.” She willed herself to be what she was not - a mother. “You smell like Gator.”
“I’ll just stand out in the rain.”
” That will be a good start. Then I’ll put you in the bath.”
“Do I have to?”
“If you want to sleep in my bed. What’s wrong with taking a bath?”
” I just had one yesterday.”
” You used up that bath before breakfast.”
“I never used to take a bath.”
“How proud you are of that fact!”
She studied Rafael’s painting of her. He hopped over to her side and grabbed her arm to maintain his balance. Fidelity put the arm around Samson’s shoulders and pulled him against her hip. His hair was still wet from his bath. They stood there in silence for several minutes. The last of the rain dripped off the roof and rattled on the palm fronds outside the screened porch. Sweet green humidity thickened the evening air. The sketches Rafael made of her and Samson impressed her, making her understand the power of his talent. In so few strokes of a pencil Rafael could evoke deep meaning and strong emotion. She thought he over-dramatized reality, yet she conceded certain elements of truth. She was learning to care for Samson, even as a mother cares for her child: that was in the sketches. She guessed Rafael found something potent for himself in the image she presented to him. He gave her the yellow dress, in which he painted many portraits of his wife - his most famous series of paintings. She reminded him of his wife, perhaps. But even Samson seemed to have a special meaning for Rafael. She began to understand Pan’s reason for sending her and Samson to the old artist. It was not a correct reason but it was a powerful reason. As evocative as the sketches were, they did not prepare her for the portrait that now transfixed her.
“I like it,” Samson said of the portrait. “That’s what you look like. Those are your eyes.”
&
nbsp; The oil painting was not yet finished but it sent chills down her body, all the way to her knees. Was that really her? Was she smiling or not? It was not a Mona Lisa expression, just… undecided, unfinished, awaiting judgment, hopeless and hopeful, and how many other potential human conditions of feeling and of being and of becoming?
“I don’t know!” She sought some release from the unbearable flattery of the beautiful image. “It’s his idea of me. He must think I’m much more than I am. But it’s a fascinating portrait - of someone. Did you wash everywhere?”
Samson snored lightly, finally asleep after a long battle against the dark forces of fatigue. She rose quietly from the bed, trying to shush Gator, whose tail gave a loud thump before he arose to lie down again closer to the bed. She went outside and walked through the wet grass, back to another building where she saw light through north-facing windows on the roof. She entered and found Rafael sitting on a stool, looking through a stack of oil canvases. He looked up and smiled, and shoved the paintings aside.
She caught the paintings before they could crash to the floor. Why was he so careless with his work? She looked at each picture, placing it carefully on a shelf with other paintings. Paintings filled many shelves. Sculpture occupied most of the remaining storage space. She looked at as much as she could, pausing often to show a work to Rafael. She could put a title to almost every painting.
“How do you know the titles of all those?” Rafael asked. “Even I don’t remember them all!”
“I don’t know. I’m no longer connected to the Navy data network. This is in my personal data augment.”
“And yet there are so many things you can’t remember.”
“You assume I have many things I might remember. This is just data, not memory. All I need is a key to unlock a piece of data. I see a painting and suddenly the title is there. In many cases the record has more facts about each piece of art. I was always interested in your work. I own at least three replicas.”
“These are all originals. You can have whatever you would like of my art, Fidelity.”
“You can’t mean that, Rafael! You know it’s illegal to own originals.”
“And you know how collectors ignore the law. They are idiots. There is no significant difference between the original and the replicas nowadays, so I don’t worry about it. But with a fresh signature on them, that might make them more valuable to you, personally. No one would ever know. Please, take your pick. But there is a small price.”
“What - “
“Two small prices. One - don’t let them revive me, should I die in your presence.”
“I’m sorry I’ve brought danger to you, but that’s a very large price, Rafael.”
“I’m not concerned about danger. One never knows how many more seconds remain in his life. All I ask is for you to do what you can. If I’m rejuvenated, I’ll be someone else. Maybe that person won’t regret losing the gift of art, or perhaps he’ll learn a different thing to do with his life. It won’t be a real tragedy but we all have to die the final death sometime.”
“I’ll respect your wishes, Rafael, but I probably won’t be with you much longer.”
“You will be with me forever. Number two - sing for me.”
She made the smallest gesture with her hands, the steel in her failing to stop an emotion, a rise in anxiety. She didn’t want to know she could sing. She couldn’t afford to be Ruby Reed, not now. “Rafael. Did Pan ask you to do this?”
“I’ve known Pan most of my life, Fidelity. He’s my best friend. I want to do this for him. I want you to sing.”
“It was another lifetime I might have been this singer. I don’t remember her. I
shouldn’t remember her. How could I retain any trace of her talent?”
“Before he departed today Pan found recordings of performances of Ruby Reed. Let me play some of them for you.”
“You have them here? That should be… interesting.”
“He gave them to me to enjoy while I painted. He forgot them, forgot Ruby Reed. I know I’ve listened to them hundreds of times. I can probably hum most of them. In a way, you helped me paint many of my best pieces. I can remember most of those I painted to your music, and I can assure you they would have been very different - and not as good - without hearing your voice as I painted.”
“Rafael… this is… difficult to… Is that true? I helped you paint?”
“You admit you were Ruby Reed?”
It seemed possible. She was already too many people - why not another? But it frightened her, further diverted her, further diluted her. “I’m confused, Rafael. I don’t know who I am! This is a dangerous condition in which to be. But I may not be able to avoid it. Perhaps I should try to determine if I was her, now, while it’s safer.”
“Let me sing a song, Fidelity. Perhaps you’ll remember it.”
Rafael cleared his throat a couple of times. He smiled and stroked his white beard, then broke into song with a strong voice. He stopped after a few bars.
“That’s the refrain. I can’t remember any more of the words. I used to know at least a dozen of the songs, and I would sing along.”
“Do it again,” she asked. She dared, only because she had the steel person inside her to fall back on.
Rafael sang again, then as the lyrics escaped him he hummed. She knew the lyrics, plucked from her data augment, and she began to sing, very softly at first, half speaking the words, half singing, ever more rapidly, running through the entire song. Excitement and dread dueled in her chest, her heart racing. She stopped and looked at Rafael who seemed terribly expectant of her. She closed her eyes. She went back to the beginning of the song, started softly, picked her way carefully, listening to the words and understanding their meaning. She willed herself to relax into the job. When she finished, she shook her head, dissatisfied, embarrassed.
“Bravo! You’re amazing! Another song!”
“That wasn’t good! There’s an art to singing. I can output the correct words and notes but I don’t know the art. Even art isn’t enough. There’s something else one needs and I don’t know what it is.”
“That isn’t important right now. You sound like Ruby Reed! I kept waiting for you to do the little things with your voice that she did. You’re correct - there’s something missing - and you knew that without hearing the recordings. I don’t know if you can sing like she did, but I think you have the potential.”
“You believe I was Ruby Reed, Rafael?”
“I do! But why would you forget who you were? Don’t those who have full rejuvenation still remember who they were, even though so many memories are lost from both the brain and the body?”
“I died in the war, Rafael. I believed I lost all memories. I can’t explain what’s happening. Do you have another song I can try?”
“Let me play what was Pan’s favorite song.” Rafael produced an audio playback device and made his selection.
The admiral took a step backward involuntarily when she heard the first few bars of the instrumental accompaniment. Her hand went to the back of her neck. A feeling of momentary panic solidified into near paralysis. She closed her eyes. She turned around several times. She put her face in her hands. Then came the voice of Ruby Reed and the admiral threw open her arms, and mouthed the lyrics with her eyes still closed, forced to do it, not wanting to do it. Echoes of a hundred times she might have sung the song reverberated through her mind and body, growing flesh and spirit into a person who loved to sing.
As she began to sing, Rafael reduced the volume of the recording so that Fidelity’s voice could not be mistaken. She sang with the recording, her voice alive and rich with timbre and meaning, gliding effortlessly through melody. Something pushed it out of her with a quiet fury and a need for release. She understood the heart of the song and what it meant to convey. She sang without any conscious effort to perform the mechanics of the art. She sang only for herself and for the song. When she finished she wiped her eyes and smiled.
She ope
ned her eyes and saw the big Rhyan standing behind Rafael.
Section 013 Dinner with Etrhnk
“It’s over. The shadow government has accepted our terms.” He stood at a glass window that gave a view of an arid plain sloping upward to a far spine of sharp peaks. He didn’t respond. He didn’t want to look at her. He didn’t want her to see his face. “Where is your mother?” He handed her a plastic card without turning to look at her. It was the same window his gentle mother used to wave at him for the last time. It was always the “farewell” window. “This is her transponder. She isn’t here? She left her transponder here and went somewhere?” He nodded. He still couldn’t turn to look at her and he still knew her voice, her wonderful voice. So wrong! She was not who she should be, and that was also tearing him apart. “When? Not before the procedure, I hope.”
The procedure: what profanity to call it that! He tried to clear his throat but couldn’t. He spoke anyway, knowing what that would reveal to her. “I told her what I thought would happen, the last time I saw her. She was appalled. Even though she felt the need of it, I don’t think she could justify any loss of life. We discussed the ethics of it for a long time. Finally I told her the mismanagement of the Rhyan Empire wasn’t the most important threat to the Union. We were, in effect, unwilling instruments of that threat. And we would proceed at any cost and at any risk.”
“What greater threat? I’ve never understood your reference. She left the transponder here, so that you would think her safe at home?”
Tears filled his eyes, so that when he finally forced himself to look at her, he couldn’t see her clearly. Emotion overwhelmed him. He hated that she, of all people, should see it. “I suspect she was with the largest group of nobility. My mother probably tried to arrange the meeting in that isolated estate in order to minimize the loss of life. She intended to die with them, rather than live with the guilt of killing anyone.” She seemed to ignore his emotion and discount his words, hard as it was to utter them.