If she meant to sober me, she succeeded.
“Why did they do it?”
“They knew the voyage would last a long time. They didn’t want the crew to forget.”
“Forget what?”
“What it’s like to be human.” She corrected herself. “What it was like to be human at the time of Launch. You haven’t changed since then.”
Another tumbler fell into place.
“The crew studies me, don’t they? You study how I react, how I think, how I talk, the importance I give to the things I do. Or you do. You watch me watching you. I’m a living mirror in which you can check your own image—that’s it, isn’t it?”
Huldah had told me that nothing ever really changed on board. She hadn’t told me that I was the reason why.
“I wouldn’t make that comparison. You’re more like a Rosetta Stone, a link between what we are now and what we were when we left the Earth. That’s very important to us, Sparrow.”
“You could have studied the Captain,” I said.
“Kusaka’s many things, but one of the things he isn’t is the same man who left the Earth two thousand years ago. He’s not at all like you, Sparrow. He remembers everything, he forgets nothing. He can’t.”
Then all the tumblers fell into place—or I thought they did.
“I’m only good for one generation, right, Ophelia? After fifteen or twenty years I’ve adapted to the ship, I react to situations just like any other crew member. My reactions are no longer… fresh… so I have to start all over again. I’m the phoenix that rises from its own ashes, the firebird. How do you do it, Ophelia? Drugs? So I can’t tell the real from the unreal? And then when I’m out of my mind and my memory is hazy, I find myself on Seti IV climbing a cliff that exists only for me.”
She was still staring at the scene in the Lander; I wasn’t even sure she had heard me.
“What happens then, Ophelia?”
I could sense her shiver in the darkness.
“Your memory’s flatlined; you remember nothing before the accident.”
I recalled my nightmares and the host of faces that had surrounded me, the faces of all the crew members I must have known through the generations. And then Ophelia’s own face and that of the man in black. The Captain. I suddenly felt as helpless as I had in sick bay.
“Why?”
“Because it was your assignment!” she burst out. “Centuries ago, you must have volunteered tor it! You knew what it was all about back then—you’re the feedback loop that keeps all of us human! My God, how else would we even know, what ‘human’ is?”
“I’m a living relic,” I said bitterly. “You compare yourselves to me to see how far you’ve come from the ape. It must be amusing at times.”
She shook her head.
“You’re hardly an amusement, Sparrow. The Astron is a very tiny village, the only one in a country that stretches to infinity in whatever direction you care to look. There are only a few of us, and we get to know each other very well. Hardly anything ever changes on board and if it does, it changes so slowly we don’t realize it. Our lives are exactly like the lives of the generation before us. They’re very structured, limited lives. They can’t be anything else; they’re the result of two thousand years of ship culture. But you lived your life back on Earth. You’re very… unstructured. You’re very human. Watching you reminds us of what it’s like.”
I recalled being stranded Outside and was suddenly angry.
“If I’m so valuable why did you let me go on the walkabout? I could have died.”
She sighed.
“That’s right, you could have. I told you that. As it was, we did our best to protect you. But keeping you locked up in a compartment would have defeated your purpose.” With a touch of guilt, she added: “Telling you who you are would have done the same thing.”
Squatting next to her, I was very much aware of her warmth, a very familiar warmth. At one point, she put a hand tentatively to her hair, then abruptly placed it in her lap. It was a touching moment; she had accepted that I was more than Sparrow even though she knew I was much less than… Hamlet.
That was one question I suddenly wanted to ask her, but I asked another instead.
“What was I to Noah?”
I could sense her sudden discomfort.
“His best friend. Aaron and Noah ‘grew up’ together.”
“And Crow?”
“Hamlet took an interest. When Crow was very young;”
Crow had probably been K2’s age. As Hamlet, I had been a father to him. His reactions to me were a lot easier to understand now. He had initially deferred to me; it had taken him a while to accept himself as my equal and a friend. With luck, everybody’s father eventually becomes their friend, but it hadn’t been that simple for Crow or probably for Noah. Had I taken an interest in Noah when he was very young? Had he watched me go from father to friend to son?
“Laertes never existed,” I said. “What about Nerissa, my mother?”
Ophelia shrugged. “She did: But she wasn’t your mother.”
It would have been nice to have had one—one that I remembered.
“Who makes the decision to flatline?”
“The Captain. But the necessity is apparent to all of us.”
“When you take away a person’s memories, that person dies,” I said slowly. “The Captain murdered Hamlet. And you helped.”
Her voice cracked.
“You think it was easy? It wasn’t—but it was necessary!”
“If the Captain finds out I know who I am, he’ll have me flatlined again, won’t he?”
She nodded.
“And you’ll tell him, won’t you?”
She hadn’t looked away from the projection since the moment she had slipped through the hatch and I wondered what attraction it held for her.
“Do you remember anything about Hamlet?”
I shrugged. “I know my life as Sparrow. That’s all.”
“Then continue being Sparrow,” she said coldly.
I recalled Noah and Abel in sick bay and how anxious they were that I remember who I had been. I finally knew… but I did not remember. I was sure that the difference was crucial.
“For the first time in generations, something’s changed, hasn’t it?”
Once again, I could sense her shiver.
“In a few weeks, we’ll be entering the Dark. We’ll never survive. Once in it, most of us will choose to die like Judah.”
The Dark was the connection; it had always been the connection.
“Hamlet was part of your mutiny.” I grunted. “I’m not.”
I started for the hatch. It was close to shift time and we wouldn’t be alone much longer.
Behind me, she warned, “You can never admit that you know, Sparrow.”
“Neither can you,” I said. “Not to Noah, not to anybody.”
Just before pushing through the shadow screen, I glanced back. Ophelia had run the projection to where I lay naked on the acceleration couch, her own image bent over mine, her fingers probing for broken bones. The real Ophelia was crying.
I hadn’t asked what Hamlet had meant to her, but now I knew.
Part Two
For he who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die.
—from “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” Oscar Wilde
Chapter 16
It wasn’t long before I was excused from Coventry, though it might have been safer had I stayed in. For the first few time periods after learning about my history, I caught myself playing a game: Who had known me as “Hamlet” and who had known me as “Aaron” and how good were they at pretending ignorance?
After a week I noticed that some crew members frowned when they glanced at me and talked in low voices among themselves when I passed by. I was giving myself away with comments that had more than a trace of sarcasm and with knowing looks whenever they talked to me. They had accepted “Sparrow” while I was in the process of rejecting him.
I forced myself to forget that I had ever been anybody other than “Sparrow” and tried to project a mix of innocence and ignorance that I thought was appropriate. I spent more time with Tybalt and others outside the immediate ring of mutineers, glowered once or twice at Thrush to keep in character, and studiously ignored Heron. I was “myself” with Snipe more than with anybody else, probably because we spent most of our time wrapped around each other in her hammock rather than talking or working together.
The frowns gradually disappeared and I found it increasingly easy to become the “Sparrow” I had been before. Getting ready to explore a new planet helped, but even working with Ophelia I maintained the role. Once or twice she looked as if she were about to say something. I never gave her an opening.
I was always alert, watching for the sudden shift in attitude that would indicate that somebody knew I knew and my days as “Sparrow” were numbered.
It was easy to determine who had joined the mutiny and who hadn’t been approached. Those who had joined frowned too much and were too conscious of themselves and their new status. They congregated in small clumps during mealtimes or in the corridors to talk among themselves, not yet aware that the best way to keep a secret is to forget you know it. Most of them were in Exploration, a few in Communications. With the exception of myself, I doubted that anybody had refused. They wouldn’t have been approached in the first place unless the mutineers were absolutely sure of the response.
It was difficult to tell who had joined among the crew members in Maintenance since, without exception, all of them wore worried looks anyway. They knew better than anybody else the Astron’s chances of survival in the Dark. Tern, a thin, gawky engineering assistant, once tried to discuss the mutiny with me in the gymnasium. I discouraged him from talking about it, saying it was too public and too risky. I wasn’t thinking of Tern so much as I was thinking of myself.
Then there were those on the sidelines. Myself, of course, though I wasn’t the only one. There was Thrush, who observed his fellow crew members with quiet amusement. He had become his old smirking self, but with a certain detachment and a harder edge. And there were Banquo and Abel, both of whom worked too hard at maintaining poker faces and pretending they were unaware that anything at all was happening.
The crew was tense, excited and anxious about the upcoming exploration of Aquinas II. If any form of life were discovered, the mutiny would evaporate for lack of need—the Astron would finally be free to return home. But if the planet were as sterile as all the others, then the mutiny might spread like wildfire.
What should I do? I wondered. Join it? I was already inclined to. Or side with the Captain, realizing that if he ever found out I had joined the mutiny, “Sparrow” would be flatlined like Hamlet and Aaron had been? It was a decision I didn’t have the courage to make.
The Captain had his eyes and ears among the crew, and I was convinced he knew every muscle twitch and stray thought of every crew member on board. He would have his arguments, his counterplots, and in the last analysis, he would have his powers as captain.
When it came to using them, I suspected he would be ferocious.
****
The one group on board not concerned with either Aquinas II or the mutiny was the very young. I found myself spending more and more time in the nursery, playing with the children and talking to Pipit. Ever since her decision to share Crow’s compartment after the rape, she had become increasingly more mellow and content. As always, she seemed wise beyond her years, and I guessed that when Huldah went to Reduction Pipit would take her place.
One time period when I was in the nursery, another mystery presented itself, though I was unaware of it for a while, as I was of most mysteries on board the Astron.
Pipit had just finished leading the begats and drifted over to where I floated by the hatchway.
“Loon has moved in with Ibis,” she said.
Loon, so good at spreading stories about the love affairs of others, had kept his own a secret. Ibis was his opposite: a quiet, thoughtful young woman, not particularly attractive. I didn’t know her very well; she was a radio tech in Communications and most of my friends and acquaintances were in Exploration.
“That seems sudden,” I said, surprised.
Pipit shook her head. “Not really. Ibis and I have always been good friends. She’s spent a lot of time with us and Loon got to know her.”
Pipit had probably engineered the romance, and I made a mental note to ask Snipe about it later. Snipe’s flair for gossip had diminished, but I was sure she had some insight into Ibis and Loon that I didn’t.
“He said he would give his life for her.” Pipit laughed. “I think he was serious.”
Loon was always willing to give his life for somebody, but if he ever had to, I suspected he would give it a little sooner for Crow than for anyone else. I suddenly wasn’t sure of the right thing to say.
“I imagine you and Crow are glad to be alone,” I fumbled.
Her smile faded and she gave me a troubled look. “I love Loon,” she said slowly. “But he and I compete. And sometimes I lose. Too often.” And then, hastily: “I’m very happy for him.”
But she was obviously happier for herself.
“Sparrow?”
Somebody was tugging at my leg and I glanced down to see K2 wrapped around my calf.
“Come pray with me?”
K2 had grown a lot in the past few months but his diction hadn’t caught up with the rest of him. He constantly surprised and delighted me, not the least with his ability to read me as easily as did the Captain. Right then, I decided I needed to play more than anything else.
I grabbed him around the waist and we went rolling through the compartment, the other children scattering to give us room. We bumped softly against the opposite bulkhead and I held him against the deck, tickling him under the arms. He squealed with delight and burst into a fit of giggling, joined by most of the others in the compartment.
Another roll around the compartment, only this time when we caught up against a bulkhead we hit it a shade too hard; K2 took the brunt. His mouth turned down and he started to cry. I held him in my arms and said the usual words of comfort, then turned to stare in amazement at a compartment full of sobbing children.
“Are they always like this?” I asked Pipit.
She looked surprised.
“Of course. You hurt one, you hurt them all. And if you make one laugh, the others always feel it.” She hesitated. “Most of them.”
I settled in a corner and studied the children the rest of that time period. A number of mothers came to visit but there were many “fathers” as well. I found it fascinating to watch who had “taken an interest” in whom. Wren and Grebe were vastly proud of thin little Cuzco while Duncan, an engineer in Communications, played quietly with pudgy Denali. In general, the gentler members of the crew and the quieter Children seemed to have an affinity for each other. In some cases, I was struck by the resemblance and guessed that natural father had taken an interest in natural son or daughter. But those cases were few.
I had frequently thought about the differences between the rest of the crew and myself; now it seemed as if they might be more subtle than I had imagined. There had always been a lot of hostility toward Thrush, and that had masked the lack of hostility between most members of the crew, the lack of any real malice. Even Loon’s gossip and satires were meant to cause laughter, not hurt. Nor was there much competition among members of the crew, especially on station—they cooperated naturally when they worked together. They were also at ease with affection at almost any time and any place, something that had scandalized me at first and now made me envious.
Well, what should I have expected? It was a well-trained crew that had been working and living together for generations. But the crew’s rapport with each other went deeper than that. Even their nonrefusal the first time when it came to sex hinted at something more complicated.
Maybe it was philosophical, I thoug
ht. If you knew that you and your fellow crew members were the only life in the entire universe, with what concern and respect would you treat each other?
The thought gave me great pause and I watched the children more closely. Right now they were too young for their character to have been shaped by philosophy. More important, there were a few who didn’t join in the giggling or the infrequent crying but watched and frowned, obviously feeling left out.
The crew in microcosm. There was the bulk of the crew members, and then there were the Captain’s men. If we found nothing on Aquinas II, the mutiny would spread very quickly, with the majority of the crew pitted against the Captain and a few followers. But unlike most of the rest of the crew, the Captain and his men were capable of violence.
****
A few time periods after that, I was once again approached to join the mutiny—and told I was indispensable. I had gone to the hangar deck to meet Snipe and playact with her in one of the historicals. They were heavily romantic and later we would go to her compartment and make love by the stream just outside her tent. It was exciting for both of us. I guessed that Loon would soon find out and spread the story around the ship; I didn’t mind—if anything it would make more real the character of Sparrow, somebody my fellow crew members knew better than I did.
I had turned off the shadow screen and, was floating to one side of the vast deck, staring at the stars overhead. I wondered how I could be so depressed when I had everything I wanted in life or even thought I wanted—a love affair with Snipe, a purpose in life, and, most of all, a knowledge of my background and who I had been.
But still, I was a chip floating on a sea of dissatisfaction. I knew who I was, but I did not remember who I was. It struck me as unfair to have lived so long yet recall only a small fraction of my life. I had my friends and lovers but there was no lifetime of shared experiences, no years of love and affection and growing up together…
I was drifting, hoping solitude would jog me out of my black mood, when I felt the slight movement of air currents at my back.
“Snipe said to tell you she’d be late—a last-minute assignment from Ophelia.”
The Dark Beyond the Stars Page 17