He turned and nodded when Banquo announced me. Noting the slates in my hand, he said, “Escalus, get Sparrow half a dozen blanks.” I handed over the computations, then paused to admire the view. It was one I had never seen before and the Captain motioned for me to come closer.
“It’s a computer simulation of the Great Wall, Sparrow.”
Aside from the beauty of color and composition, I could make no sense of it at all.
“The great what, sir?”
“It’s a wall of galaxies—half a billion light-years long, a quarter billion light-years wide, and fifteen million light-years thick.” He floated closer to the port and pointed out three largely empty areas. “Did you know there were holes in the universe, Sparrow?”
How many times had he looked at Outside? I wondered. Yet he still took the same pleasure in it.
He drifted back to his desk and touched its terminal pad.
The scene faded, to be replaced by an angry splotch of color against a field of stars, with filaments of green and yellow gases splashing out from a small spot of white at the center.
“That’s the remnants of the Bevis supernova, a star that exploded a thousand years ago.”
It was beautiful; but for me, at least, it was an empty beauty. I didn’t know what to say. His hand touched the pad again and probably the most spectacular view of all appeared.
“That’s M20,” the Captain said with a touch of awe, “the Triffid nebula—as seen from Earth. If God’s anyplace, I think He’s there.”
I stared at the swirl of colorful gases and tried to match it up with the view from the hangar deck. The most we ever saw were fields of crystal with very little color or dimension. They had their own beauty, but it was a quiet, cold, and distant beauty—the beauty of reality. I wondered if the Captain ever looked at the stars like that, but I knew he didn’t. Nor did he see the Dark as we saw it, an area of emptiness as treacherous as any sea of quicksand on ancient Earth. He saw only the fire and the color and the possibilities in the star systems on the other side.
Something about the Captain’s fascination struck me as odd and later, when I was alone with the computer, I researched it. The closest I could come to a name for it was “rapture of the deep,” which deep-sea divers occasionally suffered from on Earth—the desire to go on and on, ever deeper into the sea. It was a hallucinogenic effect caused by the nitrogen in the bloodstream under conditions of high pressure.
I had no idea what caused its equivalent in the Captain, and more important, I knew of no way to cure it.
Another view suddenly appeared beyond the port and then another and still another.
“You don’t see their beauty, do you Sparrow?” the Captain asked.
“Yes,” I said simply, “I do.”
There was a thin disappointment in his voice.
“But there are things more beautiful to you.”
It was my turn to pause, wondering just how important my answer might be.
“There are views I value as much, sir.”
He laughed. “The compartment falsies? I understand the one Thrush programmed is quite remarkable.”
He lightly stroked the terminal pad again. This time I gasped.
The star-filled landscapes of Outside vanished completely. What was just beyond the port now was a carefully tended garden. There was a large pine tree in the foreground, with a limb heavy with needles coming into the scene from below, then a sweep of raked white gravel that curved from the base of the port around to the right, vanishing behind a nearby hill. The hill itself was covered with green shrubs and dark bushes with deep-red flowers. Several large rocks had been carefully placed in the middle of the wide stream of pebbles to deliberately break up the expanse of white.
“It exists in reality?” I asked, wonderstruck.
“It’s a replica of the garden scene just outside a window of the Adachi museum in western Honshu. Look them up, Sparrow.” He leaned forward to touch something I hadn’t noticed at first—two flower petals lying on the field of gravel—then swept his hand upward. “The petals establish a line that pulls your eye to the rocks here and then up the hill.”
“It’s beautiful,” I murmured. “And… different.”
He smiled slightly. “From the stars? Not really. They both represent purity in nature.”
He talked to me then, not as if I were a seventeen-year-old technician, but as if I were a true peer. And for the first time, I realized that I was. Of all the people he had ever talked to on the Astron, he must have talked to me the most often. Me, and all the crewmen I had once been.
It was the only glimpse I ever had of Michael Kusaka the man, rather than “The Captain.” He talked of a culture I knew little about, of his home in ancient Japan, of the growing of bonsai and the elaborate nature of rock gardens and even the writing of haiku, something I grew to love myself.
Constellations change
But the shining stars still dance
My heart is peaceful
I wondered why he was allowing me this glimpse of himself and decided he was still trying to persuade me of… what? And was it only “Sparrow” he was trying to persuade?
We ate and sipped some wine and then it was time to go. I picked up the blank slates from Escalus and thanked the Captain, wavering once again between seeing him as personal friend and seeing him as the man who had condemned Noah and Tybalt. But my heart had hardened, and no overtures of friendship could change the fact that the Captain had lied, murdered, and was leading the Astron to disaster.
He stopped me at the hatchway and smiled. “There’ll be no mutiny, Sparrow.” I immediately thought of Ophelia and Snipe and the others and felt my face go white. He read my expression, as I suspected he would, and added, “Don’t worry about any of your friends.”
Mass, he had called Noah and Tybalt.
I was halfway through the shadow screen when he suddenly said: “Do you believe in free will, Sparrow?”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“I don’t know, sir. Do you?”
He shook his head sadly and said, “No, I don’t. I can’t.”
When I finally left, I caught a last glimpse of the view just outside the port. It was the one of the Triffld nebula.
Later, I searched the computer for the simulation of the garden but never found it. I think after the Captain had shown it to me, he erased it from the computer’s memory matrix.
****
The next time period the new birth allotments were announced and the mutiny collapsed. Twelve births were to be allowed, far more than any of us had expected. I had thought the allotment would be three, to make up for Heron, Noah, and Tybalt. I hadn’t anticipated a replacement for Judah, thinking his death would compensate for the natural attrition of ship’s resources.
The tension vanished overnight, replaced by excitement and a wave of gossip about who the birth mothers and potential fathers might be. There would be a dozen mothers and almost a hundred would-be fathers, almost two-thirds of the male members of the crew. The odds were the best they had been for generations.
On a personal basis, the birth allotments meant nothing to me. It would be a charade if I were on the list of those eligible and the Captain knew it. For the others, it would be their chance to play God. Few things mattered more—the chance to create life, to watch via ’scope as it grew from a tiny cluster of cells to a fetus and then a living creature with the capacity to talk and think and wriggle its fingers and toes, a sponge for love that would return as much as it was given…
The crew had searched for life for two thousand years, but the only place they had ever found it was on the Astron. To have a part in its creation was of vastly more importance—at least for the moment—than a mutiny or even the ship’s venture into the Dark.
The creation of life would happen in the next year. The death of the Astron and everybody on it was generations away. Then I realized I was whistling in the dark. Judah’s death could mean that extinction woul
d happen this generation.
It was Ophelia who reminded me of the inevitable. She came to see me in the Exploration office. Corin had left to read the list of nominations posted outside the Captain’s compartment, and for a few moments we were alone.
“You realize the rate of attrition won’t support the allotments.”
“I know,” I said, “I took the figures to the Captain.”
“Did he even look at them?”
I shrugged. “Who knows?”
She was driving at something but as usual wanted me to come to the same conclusions myself.
“What’s the alternative, if the ship can’t support them?”
I ran the figures over in my mind.
“If the ship can’t support them, then future allotments will have to be cut drastically.”
She shook her head.
“It’s too good a weapon, Sparrow. He may need it again.”
I frowned, wondering what she had in mind, then went cold when I realized what it was.
“Involuntary shortening of the lifespan,” I said slowly. “Or possibly more trials.”
“Given a choice, Kusaka would prefer more trials,” she said bitterly. “They’d serve a dual purpose—eliminate malcontents and bring the size of the crew down to attrition levels.”
She was about to say more but Corin had come back with a broad grin painted on his face. He slapped me on the back.
“We’re both on the lists,” he said. I faked a smile and congratulated him. When I turned back to Ophelia, she had disappeared.
Four time periods later, it was my turn with one of the birth mothers. The corridor was decorated with colored scrim and models of a cross inside an ovoid—the Great Egg. Other crew members were waiting outside the compartments, their expressions a combination of solemnity and joy. I felt uneasy and nervous. It was a rite of passage for them. It was also barbaric and I wondered what I could compare it to. Maybe to the erotic duties of priestesses in some ancient temples, except that most of those priestesses were prostitutes and the worshipers knew it, paying for their favors with temple offerings.
This was as close as the Astron came to having a religion, and coupling with the birth mothers would probably be as close as any of the crew members came to religious ecstasy.
The smell of rut was heavy in the passageway, the crew members obviously ready for what awaited them within. I nodded to Tern, first in line outside Swift’s compartment, and mumbled a few words of encouragement to Loon, who looked vaguely uncertain about it all.
Huldah pushed her way through the crowd, handing out small bulbs of wine and wafers, blessing both the crew members and the forthcoming happy events. I watched her intently, trying to decide if there was a difference among the bulbs of wine she passed out. But however she did it, she was more clever than that. The contraceptive drugs in the food had been eliminated during the ritual period and I guessed the bulbs of wine Huldah gave some would-be fathers were laced with fast-acting versions of the drugs. Huldah would control who was fertile and who wasn’t. But she never told me and I never knew for sure until much later.
She made no sign she knew me. I swallowed the wine and chewed the wafer, then slipped through the shadow screen after Hawk slipped out. He looked as if he had just seen God.
Pipit was inside, lying naked on a hammock draped with various colored waistcloths. I had been used to seeing her with natural eyebrows and lips and with her hair in plaits. Now her eyebrows had been plucked and her lips smeared with red. Her hair lay loose about her shoulders; her olive skin gleamed with scented oil. She was too young, I thought. No amount of rouge and oil could make her look like a temple priestess, only a caricature of one.
I didn’t know whether she had seen me or not. She had closed her eyes and lay back in the hammock, waiting.
“Pipit,” I said softly.
Her eyes jerked open and I managed a smile, which quickly faded. Her pupils were small dots in her brown eyes. Before the ceremony had begun, she had been drugged. I wasn’t sure she even knew me.
“I’m not here to ‘create life,’ Pipit,” I said quietly.
“Sparrow…”
I caught the expression on her face and took her in my arms to calm her trembling.
“I’m all right,” she whispered. “I knew it would be like this. Huldah told me. It’s… the way it has to be done.” She hesitated. “I feel honored,” she lied.
“Huldah will make sure the father is Crow,” I said to reassure her. His name had been on the list and I knew that Huldah would match him with her.
She shook her head.
“Thrush was the first to see me.”
The Captain’s gift to his son, I thought, my mind flooding with anger. And Thrush would hardly have accepted Huldah’s bulb of wine.
“I’m sure Huldah can take care of it,” I muttered.
She stiffened in my arms and moved away, deliberately brushing the hair away from her face so I could see her expression. Her voice was cold and remote.
“It has its own life, Sparrow.”
I had been foolish to suggest abortion and suddenly wished I had slit Thrush’s throat when I had the chance.
“What about Crow?”
“He’ll take an interest.”
He would have no matter who the father was.
“Is there anything you want?” I asked.
“For you to stay a little longer,” she said in a suddenly seductive voice, opening her arms to me. I lightly stroked her shoulder, then shoved out through the shadow screen. “ That sleep period, I couldn’t bring myself to touch Snipe, not because she was new crew and I was old but because I couldn’t stand the thought of coupling.
Chapter 26
The ceremony lasted for two weeks. During the final period I went back to see Pipit again, forcing myself to float down the corridor with its red and green banners and the ubiquitous cross-and-ovoid. Crow had visited her several times, once in the role of potential birth father, but I had the nagging feeling she might need to talk to somebody not caught up in ritual.
The corridor was crowded as usual, but few even noticed me, their eyes viewing glories to come that I had no desire to see. I was three shadow screens away when I suddenly flattened against the bulkhead. Abel had slipped out of Pipit’s compartment. Fortunately, he turned down the far end of the corridor and never saw me.
Then my suspicions began to grow; I wondered if he had ingratiated himself with the Captain once again and had been spying on Pipit. She had helped Huldah out in previous ceremonies and now she was an actress in this one, heavily drugged and probably willing to say anything…
I suddenly felt chilled. Snipe had said that Abel was aware I knew my past. If he were back in the service of the Captain, this time period might be my last as “Sparrow.”…
I slipped down the corridor after him, catching a glimpse of his fat figure as he floated around a distant corner. Half a dozen turns later, I frowned, confused as to where he was going. He wasn’t on his way to the bridge or to the Captain’s quarters. He seemed to be drifting aimlessly through the corridors, stopping briefly in the engine compartment to talk to a few crew members there, then pausing equally briefly in the gymnasium, where he nodded at some of those exercising. Each time he stopped, he was another level lower in the Astron. But I never guessed his destination until he got there.
Reduction.
He slipped in through the shadow screen and I hesitated for only a moment before following. He hadn’t been spying on Pipit, he hadn’t dropped by her compartment to pry for information he could carry back to the Captain. He had gone to say good-bye.
“Abel.”
He had taken off his cling-tites and was seated on the ledge, gently massaging his feet. It would have been a homey scene if it weren’t for the equipment, the smells, and most of all, the open storage chamber against the rear bulkhead, its interior choked with a rust-colored mist.
“Close the hatch, Sparrow, it turns off the peep screen.” Whe
n I had dogged it down, he said, “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
His voice was friendly, almost avuncular, with none of the harshness and arrogance of the Abel I had known. Even the planes of his chubby face had softened. For the first time in perhaps years, he probably felt safe. Once inside Reduction, you were beyond anybody’s authority, even the Captain’s. Your future then was between you and the Great Egg.
I waved my hand around the compartment.
“Why?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Your life’s been too short this time for you to know the customs—at least to know them from the inside, where it counts. When your life is over, you go to Reduction. It’s that simple.”
“When your life is over,” I repeated stupidly.
“When that work of art you call your life is complete, when one more brush stroke won’t make a bit of difference.” He looked somber. “When there’s nothing to look forward to, when you can no longer help the ship or its crew, when your friends and your lovers are gone…”
He shook his head as I started to object.
“No false emotions, Sparrow. You’ve never liked me, you weren’t supposed to. If you had, I wouldn’t have been nearly as effective. As it is, there’s only one last thing I can do.” He suddenly smiled and winked and with that there was nothing left to remind me of the old Abel. “Cheat the Captain.”
“I don’t—”
He stripped off his halter and threw it in a waste chute. He was now naked, a fat old man who somehow hadn’t shed his dignity with his clothing.
“I’m surprised you haven’t guessed—or that Ophelia hasn’t told you.”
“Trials,” I said.
He nodded. “There’ll be much less resistance to them, at least for right now. And I was never… popular.”
“On what charges?” I wanted to dissuade him from using the chamber, though I knew that if Abel went to trial, the Captain would be merciless.
The Dark Beyond the Stars Page 29