by neetha Napew
“I’m sorry,” she said and meant it. That genuine distaste for hurting others got through to Tailler. “I
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think they should have studied me for the effects of prolonged coldsleep, instead of stuffing me full of current trends in medicine and shipping me out here. But they said they were desperate, that no one else had my background. Perhaps my reaction to Zebara is partly that, although I think no one who hasn’t been through it can understand what it’s like to wake up and find that thirty or forty years have gone by. Did you know I have a great-great-great-granddaughter who’s older than I am in elapsed time? That makes us both feel strange. Zebara knew me then. Though to me that’s the self I am now. Yet he’s dying of old age. I know that personal feelings aren’t supposed to intrude on the mission, but these are, in a sense, relevant to the work I’m doing. My normal lifespan, without coldsleep, would be twelve to fourteen decades, right?”
“Yes. Perhaps even longer, these days. I think the rates for women with your genetic background are up around fifteen or sixteen decades.”
Lunzie shrugged. “See? Even the lifespans have changed since I was last awake. But my point is that each time I’ve come out of a prolonged coldsleep, I’ve battled severe depression over the relationships I’ve lost. The kind of depression which we know impairs the immune system, makes people more susceptible to premature aging and disease. This depression, this despair and chaos, will affect the heavyworlders even more, because their lifespan is naturally shorter, especially on high-G worlds. My feelings —my personal experiences— are what got me scheduled for this mission. While I can’t claim that I consciously chose to consider Zebara as part of a research topic, his reaction to my lack of aging and my reaction to his physical decay, are not matters I can ignore.”
Tailler stood, stretched, and leaned against the bench behind him. “I see your point. Emotions and intellect are both engaged and so tangled that you can’t decide which part of this is most important. Would you say, on the whole, that you are an intuitive or a patterned thinker?”
“Intuitive, according to my efcrly psych profiles, but with strong logical skills as well.””
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“You must have or I’d have said intuitive without asking. It sounds as if your mind is trying to put something together which you can’t yet articulate. On that basis, meeting Zebara, spending a day with him, might give you enough data to come to some conclusions. But the rest of us are going to have a terrible time with Bias.”
“I know. I’m sorry, truly I am.”
“If I didn’t believe you were, I’d be strongly tempted to play heavyhanded leader and forbid your going. I presume that if your mind finds its gestalt solution in the middle of the night, you will stay with us instead?”
“Yes—but I don’t think it will.”
Tailler sighed. “Probably not. Some rest-day this is going to be. At least stay out of Bias’s way today and let me tell him tomorrow. Otherwise, we’ll get nothing done.”
When she answered the summons early the next morning, Zebara’s escort hardly reassured her. Uniformed, armed—at least she assumed the bulging black leather at his hip meant a weapon—stern-faced, he checked her identity cards before leading her to a chunky conveyance almost as large as the medical center’s utility van. Inside, it was upholstered in a fabric Lunzie had never seen, something smooth and tan. She ran her fingers over it, unable to decide what it was, and wishing that the broad seat were not quite so large. Across from her, the escort managed to suggest decadent lounging while sitting upright. The driver in the front compartment was only a dark blur through tinted plex.
“It’s leather,” he said, when she continued to stroke the seat.
“Leather?” She should know the word, but it escaped her. She saw by the smirk on the man’s face that he expected to shock her.
“Muskie hide,” he said. “Tans well. Strong and smooth. We use a lot of it.”
Lunzie had her face well under control. She was not about to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was disgusted.
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“I thought they were hairy,” she said. “More like fur.”
His face changed slightly; a glimmer of respect came into the cold blue eyes.
“The underfiir’s sometimes used, but it’s not considered high quality. The tanning process removes the hair.”
“Mmm.’ Lunzie made herself touch the seat again, though she wished she didn’t have to sit on it. “Is it all this color? Can it be dyed?”
Contempt had given way now to real respect. His voice relaxed as he became informative.
“Most of it’s easily tanned this color; some is naturally black. It’s commonly dyed for clothing. But if you dye upholstery, it’s likely to come off on the person sitting on it.”
“Clothing? I’d think it would be uncomfortable, compared to cloth.” Lunzie gave herself points for the unconcerned tone of voice, the casual glance out the tinted window.
“No, ma’am. As boots, now,” and he indicated his own shining boots. “They’re hard to keep polished, but they don’t make your feet sweat as bad.’
Lunzie thought of the way her feet felt in the special padded boots she wore most of the day. By evening, it was as if she stood in a puddle. Of course it was barbaric, wearing the skins of dead sentient creatures. But if you were going to eat them, you might as well use tfie rest of them, she supposed.
“Less frostbite,” the man was saying now, still extolling the virtues of “leather” over the usual synthetic materials.
Outside the vehicle, an icy wind buffeted them with chunks of ice. Lunzie could see little through the windows; the dim shapes of unfamiliar buildings, none very tall. Little vehicular traffic: in feet, little sign of anyone ebe on the streets. Lunzie presumed that most people used the underground walkways and slideways she and Zebara had used their two previous meetings.
“The ride takes more than an hour,” the escort said. “You might as well relax.” He was smirking again, though not quite so offensively as before.
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Lun/.ie wracked her brain to think of some harmless topic of conversation. Nothing was harmless with a heavyworlder. But surely it couldn’t hurt to ask his name.
“I’m sorry,” she began politely, “but I don’t know what your insignia means, nor what your name is.”
The smirk turned wolfish. “I doubt you’d really want to know. But my rank would translate in your Fleet to major. I’m not at liberty to disclose my name.”
So much for that. Lunzie did not miss the significance of “your Fleet.” She did not want to think what “not at liberty to disclose my name” might mean.
Did Zebara not trust her, after all? Or was he planning to turn her over to another branch of his organization and wanted to keep himself in the clear?
Time passed, marked off only by the slithering and crunching of the vehicle’s wheels on icy roadway.
“The Director said he knew you many years ago. Is that true?” There could be no harm in answering a question to which so many knew the answer.
“Yes, over forty years ago.”
“A long time. Many things have changed here in forty years.”
“I’m sure of it,” Lunzie said.
“I was not yet born when the Director knew you.” The escort said that as if his own birth had been the most significant change in those decades. Lunzie stifled a snort of amusement. If he still thought he was that important, he wouldn’t have much humor. “I have been in his department for only eight years.” Pride showed there, too, and a touch of something that might have been affection. “He is a remarkable man, the Director. Worthy of great loyalty.”
Lunzie said nothing; it didn’t seem needed.
“We need men like him at the top. It saddens me that he has lost strength this past year. He will not say, but I have heard that the doctors are telling him the snow is falling.” The man stared at her, obviously hoping she knew more, and would tell it. She fixed on t
he figure of speech.
“Snow is falling? Is this how you say sickness?”
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“It is how we say death is coming. You should know that. You saw Bitter Destiny.”
Now she remembered. The phrase had been repeated in more than one aria, but with the same melodic line. So it had come to be a cultural standard, had it?
“You are doing medical research on the physiological response of our people to longterm coldsleep, I understand. Hasn’t someone told you what our people call coldsleep, how they think of it?”
This was professional ground, on which she could stand firmly and calmly.
“No, and I’ve asked. They avoid it. After the opera, I wondered if they associated coldsleep with that tragedy. It’s one of the things I wanted to ask Zebara. He said we would talk about it today.”
“Ah. Well, perhaps I should let him tell you. But as you might expect, death by cold is both the most degrading and the most honorable of deaths we know: degrading because our people were forced into it. It is die symbol of our political weakness. And honorable because so many chose it to save others. To compel another to die of cold or starvation is the worst of crimes, worse than any torture. But to voluntarily take the White Way, the walk into snow, is the best of deaths, an affirmation of the values that enabled us to survive.” The man paused, ran a finger around his collar as if to loosen it, and went on. “Thus coldsleep is for us a peculiar parody of our fears and hopes. It is the little cold death. If prolonged, as I understand you have endured, it is the death of the past, the loss of friends and family as if in actual death—except that you are ahVe to know it. But it also cheats the long death of winter. It is like being the seed of a chranghal—one of our plants that springs first from the ground after a Long Winter. Asleep, not dreaming, almost dead! And then awake again, fresh and green.
“When our people travel, and know they will be placed in coldsleep, they undergo the rituals for the dying and carry with them the three fruits we all eat to celebrate spring and rebirth.”
“But your death rate in coldsleep, for anything beyond
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a couple of months, is much higher than normal,” said Lunzie. “And the lifespan after tends to be shorter.”
“True. Perhaps you are finding out why, in physical terms. I think myself that those who consent to prolonged coldsleep have consented to death itself. They are reliving that first sacrifice and, even if they live, are less committed to life. After all, with our generally shorter lifespans, we would outlive our friends sooner than you. And you, the Director has told me, did not find it easy to pick up your life decades later.”
“No.”
Lunzie looked down, then out the blurred windows, thinking of that first black despair when she realized that Fiona was grown and gone, that she would never see her child as a child again. And each time it had been a shock, to find people aged whom she’d known in their youth. To find a great-great-great-granddaughter older than she herself.
He was silent after that. They rode the rest of the way without speaking, but without hostility. Zebara’s place, when they finally arrived and drove into the sheltered entrance, was a low mound of heavy dark granite, like a cross between a fortress and a lair.
Zebara met her as she stepped out, said a cool “Thank you, Major,” to the escort, and led her through a double-glass door into a circular hall beneath a low dome. Its floor was of some amber-colored stone, veined with browns and reds; the dome gleamed, dull bronze, from lights recessed around the rim. All around, between the four arching doorways, were stone benches against the curving walls. In the center two steps led down to a firepit in which flames flickered, burning cleanly with little smoke.
She fallowed Zebara down the steps, and at his gesture sat on the lowest padded seat; she could feel the heat of that small fire. He reached under the seat on his side, and brought out a translucent bead.
“Incense,” he said, before he put it on the fire. “Be welcome to our hall, Lunzie. Peace, health, prosperity to you, and to the children of your children.”
It was so formal, so strange, that she had no idea
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what to say, and instead bowed her head a moment. When she looked up, a circle of heavyworlders enclosed her, on the floor of the hall above. Zebara raised his voice.
“My children and their children. You are known to them, Lunzie, and they are known to you.”
They were a stolid, lumpish group to look at, Zebara’s sons and their wives, the grandchildren, even the youngest, broad as wrestlers. She wondered which was the little boy who had interrupted his meeting. How long ago had that been? But she could not guess.
He was introducing them now. Each bowed from the waist, without speaking, and Lunzie nodded, murmuring a greeting. Then Zebara waved them away and they trooped off through one of the arched doorways.
“Family quarters that way,” he said. “Sleeping rooms, nurseries, schoolrooms for the children.”
“Schoolrooms? You don’t have public schooling?”
“We do, but not for those this far out. And anyone with enough children in the household can hire a tutor and have them schooled. It saves tax money for those who can’t afford private tutors. You met only the older children. There are fifty here altogether.”
Lunzie found the thought disturbing, another proof that the heavyworlder culture diverged from FSP pol-icy. She had known there was overcrowding and uncontrolled breeding. But Zebara had always seemed so civilized.
Now, as he took her arm to guide her up the steps from the firepit and across the echoing hall to a door, she felt she did not know him at all. He was wearing neither the ominous black uniform nor the workaday coverall she had seen on most of the citizens. A long loose robe, so dark she could not tell its color in the dimly lit passage, low boots embroidered with bright patterns along the sides. He looked as massive as ever, but also comfortable, completely at ease.
“In here,” he said at last, and ushered her into another, smaller, circular room. “This is my private study.”
Lunzie took the low, thickly cushioned seat he of-fared, and looked around. Curved shelving lined the
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walls; cube files, film files, old-fashioned books, stacks of paper. There were a few ornaments: a graceful swirl of what looked like blue-green glass, stiff human figures in brown pottery, an amateurish but very bright painting, a lopsided lump that could only be a favorite child’s or grandchild’s first attempt at a craft. A large flatscreen monitor, control panels. Above was another of the shallow domes, this one lined with what looked like one sheet of white ceramic. The low couch she sat on was upholstered with a nubbly cloth. She was absurdly glad to be sure it was not leather. Fluffy pillows had been piled, making it comfortable for her shorter legs.
Zebara had seated himself across from her, behind a broad curving desk. He touched some control on it and the desk sank down to knee height, becoming less a barrier and more a convenience. Another touch, and the room lights brightened, their reflection from the dome a clear unshadowed radiance like daylight.
“It’s . . . lovely,” said Lunzie.
She could not think of anything else. Zebara gave her a surprisingly sweet smile, touched with sadness.
“Did your team give you trouble about visiting me?”
“Yes.” She told him about Bias and found herself almost resenting Zebara’s obvious amusement. “He’s just trying to be conscientious,” she finished up. She felt she had to make Bias sound reasonable, although she didn’t think he was.
“He’s being an idiot,” Zebara said. “You are not a silly adolescent with a crush on some muscular stud. You’re a grown woman.”
“Yes, but, in a way, he’s right, you know. I’m not sure myself that my encounters with coldsleep have left me completely . . . rational.” She wondered whether to use any of what the young officer had told her, and decided to venture it. “It’s like dying, and being born, only not a real start—everything over b
irth. Leftovers from the past life keep showing up. Like missing my daughter ... I told you about that, before. Like discovering Sassinak. People say ‘Get on with your life, just put it behind you.’ And it is behind me, impossibly past. But it’s also right there with me. Consequences
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that most people don’t live to see, don’t have to worry about.”
“Ah. Just what I wanted to talk to you about. For I will take the long walk soon, die the death that has no waking, and it occurs to me that for you my younger self—the self you knew—is still alive. Still young. That self no one here remembers as clearly as you do. Tell me, Lunzie, will this self,” and he thumped himself on the chest, “destroy in your memory the self I was? The self you knew?”
She shook her head. “If I only squint a little, I can see you as you were. It’s hard to believe, even now, that you . . . I’m sorry ...”
“No. That’s all right. I understand, and this is what I wanted.” He was breathing a little faster, as if he’d been working hard, but he didn’t look distressed, only excited. “Lunzie, it is a sentimental thing, a foolish wish, and I do not like myself for revealing it. For having it. But I know how fast memories fade. I had thought, all these years, that I remembered you perfectly. The reality of you showed me I had not. I had forgotten that fleck of gold in your right eye, and the way you crook that finger.” He pointed, and Lunzie looked down, surprised to see a gesture she had never noticed. “So I know I will be forgotten—myself, my present self—as my younger self has already been forgotten. This happens to all, I know. But . . . but you, you hold my younger self in your mind, and you will live . . . what? Another century, perhaps? Then I will be only a name to my great-grandchildren, and all the stories will be gone. Except with you.”