Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “I see. And did you pray together during the voyage?”

  “Yes, this was not very difficult for us. However, for the holy Mass it was necessary that we came together in small numbers, four at a time, changing the room each Sunday. We offered the sacrament with silence, speaking the words soundlessly with our lips and our hearts.”

  “Even Pia?”

  “Especially Pia. Her parents were martyred because of the Faith.”

  I was roundly taken aback by this. She had told me they were killed, but I had presumed it had happened in a race riot of some kind. What else didn’t I know?

  “Maria Kempton too?”

  “She is Evangelical—secretly, you understand.”

  “And those boys in the flight crew, the Nigerian, the Pole, and the Russian?”

  “Yes, very fine young men, risking everything. If it is ever discovered. . .”

  “And Paul?”

  “He remains Russian Orthodox, and he too is a believer in Christ.”

  “Are there others?”

  “Yes, there are others.” He paused. “I trust your good intentions, Neil. You are my friend. You would not betray us. Yet in these times, the less that is known. . .”

  “What I don’t know can’t hurt you?”

  He nodded. “I may tell you this at least, that among those of our close associates who resisted the surveillance, all are approaching the Lord, searching and thinking. All are praying.”

  “Even Xue Ao-li? I find that hard to believe.”

  He smiled sympathetically at me. I shook my head in amazement, unable to say any more.

  My friendship with Dariush is one of the enigmas of the voyage. In the ordinary course of events back on Earth, I wouldn’t have given him a second glance—an overly serious linguistic scholar is hardly the type of person one invites to go hunting rabbits, nor with whom, in inebriated moments, one indulges in the murkier waters of dark humor. So, who is he, really? And more to the point, why am I drawn to him?

  Well, I suppose it’s because he is honest, sympathetic, short on ego, long on interest in other people. He is in turn an inquisitive mind equipped with an astonishing memory, a lover of the basic human things (stories, boats, Persian delicacies, poems, spicy food), a kindly observer of the diversity in human temperaments, a delighter in the surprises of ethnic cultures, and an amateur, though somewhat naive, sleuth. There is nothing duplicitous in him. At his worst, he is tediously didactic—intrusively so, in rare moments—but I can live with that.

  It’s probably a good thing that I came to like the dusty old relic before I found out he’s an agent of a disreputable cult. (Yup, even me ain’t immune to stereotypes).

  Day 117:

  Sunny and clear. I resumed touring in mountain valleys via the library computer. When I came to the beautiful valley I zoomed and spotted two small forms in the water near the waterfall. Pia and Paul swimming. I smiled and moved quickly on.

  Day 118:

  The newlyweds are home!

  Did I just write home?

  We tossed caution to the winds and hosted a supper in the Indian restaurant for the returning lovers. Dariush and I invited Xue and Étienne to dine with us, and they accepted. Conspicuously moping over our drinks in the restaurant, we looked pretty much like a reunion of defeated conspirators. The walls, I noticed, were decorated with brilliantly colored paintings on silk, portraits of Hindu deities for the most part. Many of the images illustrated the spurious activities of a sensual, blue-skinned god, whom Dariush explained was Krishna—their version of the supreme being.

  Pia and Paul arrived ten minutes later and took a table near ours, pretending to ignore us. Maria was eating alone at a table next to them, and leaned over to chat with Pia. Not long after, the three intrepid pilots just happened to pass by and were invited to sit down with them. Innocuous banter between tables developed casually until Xue in a jocular, recordable voice invited everyone to join us. It all looked so coincidental. We pushed the tables together, rearranged seats, and commenced our celebration proper.

  They had had the most splendid week of their lives. They looked supremely happy together. Their love overflowed, infecting us all. They told us many details about their time in the valley. The close-cropped grass, for example, was grazed by the “deer” that range widely over the whole continent. The mountain subspecies has a hide that’s closer to white than magenta. The creatures were shy but never frightened, and Pia fed grass to some of them from her hand. They liked syntho biscuits too, but spat out protein bars after a few bites. The furry, mice-like creatures were also much in evidence, not shy, very curious. There was a water bird that came only at night and kept them awake longer than they would have wished, though they didn’t mind it. Its calls were haunting, like that of our loons. There were no snakes.

  One day they had climbed to the height of a lesser peak overlooking the north-south valley dividing the ranges. Below them they saw rivers and wild meadows in the thickly forested bottomland and lower flanks of the mountains. Though they knew there had never been an indigenous civilization on Nova, they enjoyed themselves imagining that there had once been farms and cities in that valley. Pia pointed out a line, or a narrow depression, that ran across the valley from the central massif to the next range. There were trees in the gap all the way, but they were less dense than in the surrounding forest.

  “A natural formation”, she said. “An old river bed, I think. I pretended it was an ancient road. And Paul saw castles.”

  “Castle in cloud”, Paul laughed. “This road go into a pass through the far range. Above it on both sides I see kremlins.”

  “What do you mean?” Dariush asked, with sober attention. “Did they look like fortresses?”

  “Just rocks sticking up”, he shrugged.

  “Did you hike down to the valley bottom?” I asked.

  “No, we just look from high. Is too nice where we are.”

  “Could you see where the road began?”

  “No, nothing. It look like maybe five, maybe eight, kilometer north of us, but I cannot see it hit our mountains.”

  The subject was changed, and the party continued. Maria, bless her, took a little bottle from her purse and handed it to the newlyweds.

  “I saved this for your return, dears”, she informed them. “It’s a wine that someone—I won’t say who—has made from the nova-berries that were found on the day we arrived. Everyone’s gathering them and bringing loads of them up to the ship.” She smiled. “Against regulations, of course. Take it home with you for your first night back on board.”

  “Oh, that is so kind. Thank you”, said Pia, kissing Maria’s cheek. We all grew quiet, and in our thoughts was the question: Home? Where would this new family find a home?

  “But where will you live?” Maria asked.

  “We’ve been working on that”, Pia replied. “This is absolutely confidential, but I know I can tell you.” She lowered her voice to a whisper: “Paul informed the Captain that we’re married. He was delighted for us, but worried about the illegality because if DSI ever found out, we’d be in serious trouble. I couldn’t just move upstairs and live with Paul in his room on KC deck. And it’s ridiculous for him to come sneaking down to my room whenever he’s off shift. So the Captain hatched a plot.”

  We all leaned forward intently.

  Pia raised her voice to normal. “I’ve been transferred to the medical clinic on KC deck, and their resident has been transferred down to my clinic on B. You see, there’s been another incident of snake bite. This time, it was a man in Navigation, a friend of Paul’s who was on leave at Base-main. He went hiking in the forest near the perimeter fence. He was alone at the time, and without warning, he was struck in the ankle by one of the nova-vipers. It was a male, which can be deadly enough, though its venom is more slow-acting than the female’s. He had a pocket communicator with him and called for help. While he waited, he injected himself with antidote. He was up in my clinic within the hour. They brought him to me
because I’m a specialist in tropical medicine and spent a few years in Indonesia dealing with this sort of thing.”

  “And he survived?” asked Xue.

  “He’s recovering. For a while, I thought we were going to lose him. It was a close call. The DM has mapped out lectures for me to give to all medical staff. I begin the series tomorrow.”

  “But how does this solve the problem of your living arrangement?” Maria asked, soto voce.

  Pia returned to a whisper. “The Captain had a meeting with the DDM and the DDSI, and argued quite forcefully that flight staff are of utmost importance, and if any of them die, it could jeopardize the return flight, which would mean we all become victims.”

  “Victims?” Paul grinned. “I like this planet so much, maybe we stay, yes?”

  “In the interim,” Pia continued with a flash of eyes at her husband, “I’ll be living and working on KC deck as part of their crew.”

  “And we live in our own house”, Paul declared, beaming.

  “The situation is somewhat different on KC than on the other levels”, Pia explained. “For one thing, the flight staff’s personal rooms are larger, maybe 50 percent longer and wider. Also, they can be expanded by connecting two rooms, which isn’t the case with the room structures on A to D. So you see, as of tonight, we’ll have a very nice little apartment.”

  We all burst into applause.

  I leaned over and kissed the bride on the forehead. “Smart lady”, I whispered.

  “Thanks, pardner”, she shot back. “Smart husband, actually.” Paul and I shook hands.

  “Well done, Paul.”

  “You come swimming soon, Dr. Hoyos. Thank you each for this good supper and pleasant discussions. Pia and me, now we go upstairs. Very tired. Goodbye to you all, most excellent friends.”

  Followed by an outbreak of grinning, back-thumping, and bear hugs. To hell with surveillance! All in all, this has been a thoroughly satisfying day.

  Day 120:

  A rap at my door this afternoon, interrupting my nap. There stood Dariush.

  “Let us go for a walk, Neil. I am having the most interesting thoughts, based upon minor discoveries, though speculative in nature.”

  We ended up in an alcove on level C, beneath a painting by someone named Pietr Breugel the Elder. It was a work of hideous genius. I checked the title: The Fall of the Rebel Angels.

  “Right up your line”, I said to Dariush.

  “I do not understand, Neil. Please, no idiomatic conversation today. There are new facts I have discovered, which I wish to relate to you.”

  “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “First, I must explain that I was most intrigued by what Pia and Paul told us regarding the road and the castle.”

  “Dariush, I know you’re disappointed there’s no civilization on Nova, but I hope you haven’t started seeing things that aren’t there.”

  He held up his hand to silence me. Patiently, he continued: “I guard myself against this fault with great diligence. However, to satisfy my curiosity, I visited a library computer and accessed the vids for Nova’s surface. Just as described, there is a line in the terrain—a very straight line.”

  “Nature can create such lines.”

  “Yes, this is true. Nevertheless, there are other unusual features.”

  “Such as?”

  “The ‘kremlins’ Paul described are there. From the satellite, one sees what he could not have seen with his eyes. Towers of rock viewed horizontally and at an angle from another range—a line of site approximately twenty-two kilometers in length—appear to be nothing other than natural formations. Seen from above, it is revealed that each tower is hollow, with much rubble all around it and within it. These structures are above the tree line, high enough that no forest and little vegetation has encroached.”

  “Even so, nature is capable of making all sorts of mysterious formations. The eye interprets—”

  “Yes, the eye interprets, which is always a danger in terms of accurate analysis. However, when I switched to topographical maps, I learned that the road bisects exactly the distance between the two castles or towers.”

  “Are you serious? Exactly?”

  “To within a meter. This is mathematical precision, which indicates intelligence.”

  “Not necessarily, Dariush. As a physicist and mathematician, I can assure you that the universe is based upon mathematical precision, and it does not indicate intelligence.”

  “On this, we are disagreed.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “There is more. The road, for example, cuts directly across the valley that separates the ranges in a line that is also mathematically precise. That is most unlike the form of any known ancient river bed.”

  “If so, why haven’t analysts spotted it as potential evidence of intelligent life and flagged it for investigation?”

  “The planet is immense, and every one of its hundreds of millions of square kilometers is rich in new discoveries. Presently, all human minds are focusing their attention on the natural and geological sciences.”

  “All right, but surely computer analysis would flag it.”

  “Possibly it has already done so. It could be years before anyone reads the flag, perhaps only on future expeditions. We would not hear of it, and as I say, human attention is now elsewhere. A computer note about a topographical anomaly is of little consequence compared to the overwhelming amount of astounding new discoveries in the other sciences.”

  “True, but . . .”

  “As far as I can tell from above, we have an inexplicable trough in the valley bottom, beginning at the base of the central mountain range, and extending at roughly a ninety-degree angle. The road’s angle of trajectory crosses the valley without deviation from its course, entering the pass that cleaves the western range. At the entrance to the pass, above and equidistant to it, are the two towers.”

  “What’s on the far western side of the pass?”

  “It is difficult to know at this point. You see, the route descends into the west, and where it leaves the mountains, it is at a lower altitude where forest covers everything. There are hills, mounds, creek beds, but no trough. There may be ruins of towers there, buried by ages upon ages of forest and consequent soil deposits.”

  “Conjecture. Pure guesswork.”

  “Yes, but archaeological finds on Earth have often been a combination of analysis and guesswork.”

  “This line or trough, which you call a road—if it’s so old, why hasn’t it been filled in by soil deposits?”

  “It may have been. Again, it is a hypothesis, but let us say that a people who once dwelled here, very remote from us in ages past, dug a deep defile in the earth as a kind of royal road leading to a significant site in the central range. If it was paved with stones or some other form of biological-resistant material, such as the case of the Via Appia in Italy, it might delay the encroachment and infilling for millennia. The Appian, after all, is more than two thousand years old and is still used.”

  “Yes, but it’s kept exposed by feet and wheels.”

  “Indeed. Yet if all transportation and commerce were to have ceased on it two millennia ago, would we today know of its existence?”

  “You have a point, Dariush, but really we don’t know a thing about what’s down there. And this unknowing leaves too much room for wild imaginings. Maybe the trough is a fissure in the earth, a fault line that happens to be straight. In a universe as big and complex as ours, it’s not beyond statistical probability.”

  “You may be right, Neil. But there is another detail I should point out. I made certain calculations and discovered additional mathematical data. I accessed a map of the continent on my personal max and printed it. On it, I ruled a line from the northernmost tip of the continent to the southernmost. Then I made a lateral line from the most western point to the most eastern. I checked the degree coordinates for the intersection, cross-checking it on topographical and visual print-outs. The lines intersect at the b
ase of the mountain precisely where the road ends.”

  “That might be coincidence. Maybe you drew your lines impelled by an a priori assumption.”

  “An eager prejudice? Or was I testing a theory? Would you care to come with me and look at the pictures?”

  We went to his room to have a look. His desk was covered with topographical maps, satellite photos, and copious notes. I sat down on his chair and looked carefully through the material. In the end, I had to admit that he was right.

  Because his max was omnipresent in the room, to preserve privacy he keyed a music program that launched a loud and frantic Persian piece. We put our heads close and spoke in Kashmiri, just above a whisper.

  “It’s a coincidence”, I murmured.

  “Another unusual coincidence”, he replied, with a certain dry tone.

  “But look at this, Dariush”, I said, pointing to the visual map. “The road, as you call it, ends abruptly against the mountain face. There’s nothing there, no ruins, no artificial topography patterns, just a scary amount of vertical rock.”

  “Yes, which may indicate a cave, a mine, or perhaps a cliff mural. It might have other purposes that we cannot see via satellite.”

  “But definitely no city.”

  “No city”, he shook his head “Not even a town, I would think.”

  “Well, it doesn’t make sense why smart creatures would build such a thing—a road to nowhere. And here’s another thought: Pia and Paul’s wedding valley is less than ten kilometers from the exact center of the continent. They just chose the spot because it looked lovely, and it was in a remote area. A pleasant happenstance, not a mathematical mystery.”

  “Think further, my friend. Pia and Paul are humans. They were exercising intelligence. If a significant event or monumental construction also appears in that very place, might this not indicate another intelligence at work?”

  I frowned. “Maybe. But you’d have to find out if it is, or isn’t, a purely natural event.”

  “And that is what we surely must do”, he said, with an inquiring look. “Are you willing to embark upon another adventure?”