The Dark Beyond the Stars

by Frank M. Robinson

  Huldah hesitated. “Depending on the person… perhaps. But there’s more involved than you think.”

  I thought of the children in the nursery and I thought of Pipit and Crow and Loon and Noah and Huldah and I was suddenly afraid for myself—and envious. Human relationships are based on a lifetime of trying to understand someone else’s agonies and misunderstandings while they try to understand yours. Like the children in the nursery, we learn to empathize through pain as well as through laughter. The new crew would experience very little of that. There would be few misunderstandings and little alienation and what agonies there were would be shared by all, diminishing them for the individual. There would be little spiritual suffering—and the thought occurred to me that there would be little art produced because of it. If the crew ever found a planet on which to thrive, there would be few Beethovens or Van Goghs. But on balance, I wasn’t sure they would be the losers.

  As for myself and Snipe, once initial lust had been spent, I usually felt a stranger to her. There was a barrier I could not sweep aside. Too often we were no more than two people who liked each other and found casual release together. Now I knew we would never experience that blend of trust and desire that I had always hoped for. She would reach those heights of passion with someone else, but she never would with me. The new crew was capable of singing songs that I could never hear.

  “You have more than most people ever have,” Huldah said quietly.

  I promptly accused her as I had Snipe.

  “You can read minds? Is that part of the difference?”

  “We sense what you feel and consequently what you must be thinking.”

  “No,” I denied angrily, “you don’t just read emotions, you read minds.” I was both right and wrong, but at the moment it didn’t matter. “What does Snipe think of me?” I asked.

  “In what way?”

  I shrugged. “A Neanderthal must have been pleasantly surprised when it mated with a creature that possessed a superior nervous system. But I imagine it was pretty dull for a Cro-Magnon.”

  She looked away. “Neanderthal had a lot to offer. He was less gracile but he was stronger and a natural hunter. Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal interbred. Quite successfully.”

  “Neanderthal disappeared,” I said.

  “Perhaps. I prefer to think he bred up—or down, depending on how you look at it.”

  “I’m not talking about breeding,” I said. “I’ll live forever and because of that I’ll have no children.” I was hoping she would deny this, but Huldah said nothing. Then I had another thought. “You haven’t explained Thrush,” I said slowly. “Ophelia said the Captain was sterile.”

  “Ophelia doesn’t know. Nobody knows.” The ends of her mouth turned down. “The bastard child… We thought it was impossible, but the Captain had time and he was persistent. You don’t have to have many viable sperm if you have two thousand years in which to separate them and save them in a generation chamber. But I doubt that even he will live long enough to have another.”

  I looked at her, unconvinced.

  “And nobody knew? What about Thrush’s mother? She knew.”

  “Thrush is one of the Uncounted. Phebe never told, and she went to Reduction shortly after delivery.”

  I was ready to curse the Captain, but Huldah shook her head.

  “Voluntarily. Births are tightly controlled on board; one dies and statistically slightly less than one is born. To have a child outside of Ritual is to cheat someone else. Phebe went to Reduction out of guilt—and to make room for her son. In a sense, she committed suicide.” She passed judgment then, which surprised me. “Mating with the Captain wasn’t worth it. In a lot of ways.”

  Huldah and I were edging back into a wary friendship. I didn’t think things would ever be the same between Snipe and me, but all of us were allied against the Captain.

  “Why does Thrush want me dead?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “If I had to guess, I would say envy was part of it. But I doubt he has reason to envy your immortality.”

  “The Captain passed it on.” I felt no surprise.

  “Perhaps. If he has, it complicates the future.”

  “You can read the future?” I asked, bemused.

  “That gift I don’t have,” she said wryly.

  “I’ll ask anyway. When will I be flatlined again?”

  She turned somber.

  “I don’t think you will be. But I don’t think you’ll be ‘Sparrow’ for very much longer, either.”

  I thanked her and backed out through the hatchway, waiting until the corridor was as empty as before. I didn’t know what would happen when I went back to Snipe. I was no trained bear; I could not perform on command and I was afraid I would always be inhibited with her.

  But Huldah had been right, there was more involved. If Snipe ever found pleasure elsewhere, I never knew it. She seemed content with me, though it took her a while to soothe my worries over an inferiority I could not even describe. Then it occurred to me I had my own barrier, one she could never breach. I would live a thousand years or more while she was condemned to an ordinary lifetime. She would flutter briefly around the candle but would be gone generations before the flame guttered out.

  But she never complained, and because she didn’t, I loved her all the more.

  ****

  A few sleep periods after I had talked to Huldah, Snipe woke me gently and murmured, “You were having a nightmare.”

  I lay there in the hammock, sweating and trying to put together the pieces of a dream, knowing they really hadn’t been parts of a dream at all, they had been more shreds of returning memory.

  It wasn’t of the ship this time, nor of shipmates generations in the past. It was of ancient Earth, and just remembering what I had seen in my distorted slumber made my eyes tear.

  There had been huge cities clogged with throngs of people and there were ribbons of stone with small vehicles traveling on them. There were parks and oceans, lakes and streams and mountains and I remembered wishing that somehow Crow was with me so he could see it all firsthand. I was both a participant in the “dream” and an observer of it though, strangely, this time I could not remember my name. In fact, I could remember nothing of myself beyond—

  I was in a Rover traveling on one of the ribbons of stone through a countryside so beautiful it made me want to cry. It was a late summer day, the drought-stricken hills like loaves of light-brown toast on either side. I could feel the wind against my face because the vehicle had no top, and there was a girl beside me whom I glanced at from time to time but who resembled nobody I was to meet later on the Astron. She was very pretty and very young.

  The ribbon of stone curved over a hill and then straightened out as it approached a bay, alive with the white sails of distant boats and, closer by the shore, floating houses tied to piers that jutted out into the water. Crow would love this, I thought, once again in my role as observer. It far outdid the ancient city of Venice that he had programmed for his compartment.

  There was a thin veil of sound in the dream—the wail of the wind itself, the noise of other vehicles as they warned one another of passing, a murmur from the distant, floating houses. I remembered wondering who I was and what I was doing there but my mind was blank.

  It happened very suddenly. The girl beside me said something; I turned to look at her and almost missed seeing the small animal that scampered in front of the vehicle. I pressed my foot on the brake, we skidded, the Rover canted and rose above us and both I and the girl were catapulted through the air and onto the ground a few meters away.

  I lay there, feeling the broken bones in my rib cage when I tried to breathe, embarrassed because I had soiled my clothing. My face hurt; I reached up to touch it and felt my broken nose. My hands were bloody when I took them away. I twisted slightly so I could see the girl, then looked away, regretting that I hadn’t died as quickly.

  It was another artificial reality, I thought in my dream, then realized with horror that
it wasn’t, that it had all happened in real time and a very real place. It was half an hour before I heard the wail of sirens and another dozen before I came out of the anesthetic and a doctor asked me who I was.

  I could not remember and then he told me that I was seventeen years old and a student at a college whose name meant nothing to me and that my own name was—

  But then the “dream” was jumbled and gone and I was in my hammock on board the Astron, holding onto Snipe while she stroked my head and my heartbeat gradually slowed.

  I remembered nothing more but I knew without checking that that was the first time I had been flatlined, that it had happened naturally, that nobody had caused it.

  And that some months later, in my lifetime in the “dream,” I would regain all my memories and live my life as before.

  Chapter 25

  The mutineers met again a few time periods later in the cave overlooking the forest. This time I felt like one of them, a plotter against the Captain, a man with a price on his head. I had begun to dream of ancient Earth and wondered how many shared the same dream and what I could say to persuade them if they didn’t. Crow, Loon, Ophelia, Snipe, and I were in the mutiny together and I felt a warmth and bonding with them I had never felt before. I loved them all and would have given my life for any of them.

  I had yet to learn that, at their highest levels, revolutions and mutinies inspire noble sentiments while at their lowest, they merely act as aphrodisiacs.

  But that, I would find out in the weeks to come. What I realized at the second meeting was that instead of losing my purpose in life, I had found one that was both immediate and tangible: to seize the ship from the Captain and return to the planet from which we had come.

  The only thing I didn’t know was how it was all supposed to happen. To my amazement, the others didn’t seem to know, either.

  “I’ve been talking to Grebe,” I said. “And Ibis.”

  “I’ve already talked to Ibis,” Loon interrupted importantly. “She’s one of us.”

  Ophelia and Crow stared at us and I shut up, feeling my enthusiasm suddenly drain away. Loon and I had sounded very young, very amateurish, and I remembered before they told me that this wasn’t a game, that it was deadly serious and lives could be lost, had been lost.

  Ophelia nodded at Loon. “I can probably trust you about Ibis.” Then to me: “What did you tell Grebe?” She was deceptively casual.

  “Not much… really,” I said, chastened.

  “What did you—sense—about him that made you approach him in the first place?”

  But, of course, I had “sensed” nothing about him. He had simply struck me as one who might be interested, so I had checked on him for the group.

  “It won’t be just your life, Sparrow,” Crow said quietly. “It would be ours as well.”

  “You need as many of the crew on your side as you can get,” I said, angry. “That means you’re going to have to take chances.” And then: “You wanted me to join you—what do you want me to do? Sit in a corner and try and remember something that happened two thousand years ago?”

  “What we want you to do is to be friends with the Captain,” Ophelia said carefully.

  I stared. I had been friendly with the Captain in the past—as much as anybody in the crew aside from Abel and other informers—and the mutineers had done everything they possibly could to destroy that friendship.

  Snipe touched my hand. “But you didn’t know what was at stake then.”

  “You’re reading me,” I accused once again.

  “It was your expression, Sparrow.”

  “We need somebody who’s close to the Captain,” Crow cut in.

  Getting close to the Captain would be walking into the lion’s den. I had avoided him as much as possible during the past few weeks, afraid he could tell by what I said or how I looked that I had joined the revolt against him.

  I must have gone pale, because all of them tried to reassure me. Ophelia waited until they were quiet, then presented her own arguments.

  “The Captain knows you’ve been approached before by us—and that you turned us down. And he likes you, he’s interested in you.”

  “Of course he’s interested in me. He makes the decision when it’s time to flatline me.”

  “You can forestall that,” Snipe said. “You know the signs that he’ll be looking for.”

  I shivered. “He knows me, he’s known me for thousands of years longer than he’s known any of you. He can read me easier than you can.”

  Ophelia frowned, disappointed that I wasn’t more enthusiastic. But she had been used to Hamlet and whatever I was in this lifetime, I wasn’t Hamlet.

  “You know him as well.”

  “I don’t remember anything from one personality to another,” I objected. “When I first met him, as ‘Sparrow,’ it really was for the first time.”

  “Are you so sure you remember nothing of him from before?”

  I started to answer, then the words dried in my throat. To be truthful, the Captain had never seemed a complete stranger to me.

  “It will be risky,” I said lamely.

  Ophelia shrugged. “It’s even riskier to continue avoiding him.”

  I sat there in a sweaty silence, weighing all the alternatives, until Snipe said, “You’re the logical choice, Sparrow. If you stay away, he’ll suspect that something is wrong. Then it will be even more dangerous for you.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I murmured.

  Ophelia looked thoughtful. “Just listen to whatever he says.”

  “I wouldn’t dare ask him any leading questions.”

  “Nobody asked you to. But he’ll say more than he thinks he’s saying.”

  True enough, I thought. And so would I.

  ****

  For a while, life went on as usual, though I could feel an increased tension in the crew. It wasn’t so much what crew members talked about as what they didn’t. Nobody complained openly about the Astron’s course change into the Dark or offered any bitter comments about the Captain. We were all acting as if we were in one of Snipe’s plays, though our only audience was each other. Thrush, who had apparently guessed what was happening, enjoyed it immensely.

  There were unanswered questions about Thrush and I promised myself that sometime I would answer them. Did he know he might live forever? Did he know he was the Captain’s son? And what had been the Captain’s purpose in fathering him? It couldn’t have been the desire for immortality that most people seek when they have children: He already had that. For a while I spent as much time watching Thrush as he did watching me, but his occasional dinner with the Captain seemed a formality and I saw few other signs of familial friendliness. The Captain knew but apparently Thrush did not.

  He and I took pains to avoid each other, with one exception: Thrush was now a frequent fixture in Exploration, practicing at the terminal pad. There were even times when I admitted he was as proficient a fingerman as I. But to what purpose, I had no idea.

  I had been only casually friendly with other members of the crew, but now spent more time with Jay and Finch from Communications and Grebe from Maintenance. Jay and Finch were my age—“Sparrow’s” age—and boasted a lot, telling me more about attitudes in Communications than I could ever have discovered by direct questioning. I was also becoming more adept at recognizing members of the “new” crew, not so much by how they related to me but by how they related to each other. Jay and Finch roughhoused quite a bit and got into more than one argument with each other, a dead giveaway that they were of older stock. I felt more comfortable with them than with many members of the new crew and we got along fine.

  Grebe was a huge hulk of a man, as careful with his strength as Crow was with his. Along with Wren, he spent much of his time playing with Cuzco in the nursery; at least, they were there every time I dropped by to see K2. New crew, I thought, not only because of their gentleness but because they could sense Cuzco’s moods and needs. In any squalling pile-up in
a corner, they knew exactly where Cuzco was and whether or not she needed rescuing. And Cuzco knew when they were coming to visit while they were still floating through the outside corridor.

  I liked Grebe and Wren a lot.

  Corin had taken over Tybalt’s role in Exploration, though I thought he catered too much to Thrush. Then it occurred to me that perhaps I was jealous. Apparently that occurred to Corin as well. I was soon invited into the small office for a little conversation and smoke. Corin had taken on many of Tybalt’s personality quirks, though he never went so far as to adopt a belief in Tybalt’s aliens.

  “You miss Tybalt a lot, don’t you?” he once asked.

  I had just taken a puff and was holding in my breath, so I merely nodded.

  “He was the best team leader we ever had,” Corin said. There was a touch of sadness in his voice that I noted with approval.

  He went on to praise Tybalt’s good points and comment with humor on his failings.

  “When you come down to it,” I said, “he really only had one fault: He believed in monsters.”

  “He didn’t believe in them enough,” Corin said darkly.

  I was becoming fond of Corin, though nobody would ever completely replace Tybalt in my affections. Then a sixth sense warned me and I put my emotions in check. There had been a time when I was fond of Thrush, too.

  Within a month the lines were drawn and I guessed the choosing of sides was almost complete. The tension was palpable. What would happen now, nobody seemed quite sure. Refuse to go on shift? Somehow that didn’t seem to be what was needed. Or what would work.

  ****

  I finally reestablished contact with the Captain when I reported to him on inventories of life-support supplies on board. The report wasn’t complete but I knew I didn’t dare wait any longer or there would be questions as to why I had stayed away and whether I was still upset about Tybalt and Noah. I was—I always would be—but I couldn’t afford to show it.

  As always, he was standing in front of the enormous port, looking at a view of the galaxy that was overwhelming in its beauty. It was his standard view of Outside, a view the rest of us seldom saw: a computer-enhanced portrait alive with reds and greens and purples with vast streams of gas arcing through the middle, obscuring even greater wonders.