Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel

by Michael D. O'Brien

  And we drank of the water that falls into the lake.

  And the man of light said unto us:

  “Now you must take your rest.

  This place is hidden from the eyes of the Lord of the Night-gods.

  I will keep watch over you.”

  As we fell asleep in the shade of the music trees,

  He kept watch, standing tall above us.

  And when we awoke there was a fire burning,

  In a circle of stones, with baked bread and fish.

  We ate it and it was good.

  We walked with him in the valley, and he told us many things.

  “Soon you will go unto the Sky-father,” he said.

  “You will not fall into the mouth of the Lord of the Night-gods who is evil.

  For the Father sees you and loves you.”

  “What is this word, love?” I asked.

  He answered, “This word is the spirit of the Father,

  The Father who desires only to give you life.

  The Father who would feed you and take away your hunger.

  The Father who desires not to take your life.

  The Father who put into you the little heart-fire that makes Pho-rion dear to you,

  And into Pho-rion the little fire that makes you dear to him.”

  I said unto the man of light, “Fire burns the flesh. It is pain.”

  “There is another fire”, answered the man of light.

  “This fire gives happiness. It is warm and gives light. It does no harm unto you.

  This fire is within you when you cry out unto the listener

  Whom you cannot see with your eyes,

  When music comes forth from your mouth,

  And when you make your body move as the birds of the sky.”

  “These are things which I desire”, I said. “I do not like screams and blood.”

  The man of light said, “Such are not praise unto the Sky-father.”

  “Then the Sky-father is not evil”, I said.

  “The Sky-father is love. He is not shamed. He is not broken.

  On this day, in a far world, he passed through shame and pain and death,

  And this he took upon himself for your sake.”

  “Where is he that we may see him?” Pho-rion asked.

  This was the first-speaking of Pho-rion.

  “You will see him”, said the man of light unto Pho-rion.

  And Pho-rion was no longer afraid.

  I Kitha-ré was no longer afraid.

  “When will we see him?” I asked.

  “In forty days, he will go up into the heaven beyond all heavens.

  “In forty days, you will grow ill, Kitha-ré, for there is even now a sickness in your flesh.

  In your flesh, Pho-rion, this sickness has only begun,

  And thus you will live a time longer than

  She who is dear to you.”

  Pho-rion took my hand.

  “We will die?” he said to the man of light, and the fear returned to his eyes.

  “Your bodies will pass away into the earth for a time”, said the man of light,

  “Yet no evil will touch you,

  For I will stand guard over you, though no longer will you see me with the eyes.

  Then you two will go up unto the heaven above all heavens.

  You will see the One who has died in your stead. You will see him,

  And music will come from your mouths on that day,

  And your arms will rise unto him, and he will embrace you,

  For he is love.

  Then will you understand what I tell you now,

  And there will be no more fear.”

  Yet I wept because I did not desire to die.

  I did not desire Pho-rion to die.

  “You will have sorrow but a little while”, said the man of light.

  “And after it, you will have joy without end.”

  “What is this word, joy?” I asked.

  Now for the first time did a smile appear upon the face of the man of light.

  “Joy is soon to be yours. Until then, you must wait to learn of it.”

  “Forty risings and settings of the sun?” I asked.

  “Yes, for you. For Pho-rion, fifty risings and settings.”

  “That is long”, said Pho-rion.

  “When it is completed, you will know it is short.

  Even so, I set a task for you.”

  “What task is this?” I asked.

  “You must make music come from your mouths.

  You must make the words of this music,

  Which shall tell the story of our meeting.

  You shall write the words upon a stone, and another stone.

  There will be many stones.”

  “What stones are these?” I asked.

  “They are in the place I will show you”, he answered.

  Then did he bid us rise and walk with him.

  He led us unto a cave in the rocks upon the breast of the mountain.

  We went inside it and sat down. It was warm and dry.

  “Here you will live for forty days”, he said unto me.

  And unto Pho-rion he said:

  “Here you will live for fifty days. And ten days you will sorrow,

  Until you too sleep in the earth.”

  “I will be alone”, said Pho-rion.

  “You will feel alone, but you will not be alone,

  For I am with you.

  And after this time you will see Kitha-ré once more;

  Never more shall you be parted.”

  The man of light poured water over our heads from a bowl,

  And he spoke names.

  “These are the three names of Love”, he said,

  “And they claim you for themselves.

  The three eyes of the Lord of the Night-gods are in mockery of these names,

  For the serpent desires to be as them, but he never can be.

  So too the heavens-ship in the temple is in mockery of the Sky-father,

  To escape his will.

  Yet it will be broken.

  The mouth of the one that drinks blood will be broken And rendered unto dust and be no more.”

  “When will this be?” I asked.

  “It will be after an age of years”, he answered. “After a time, and yet another time.”

  This we did not understand, Pho-rion and me.

  He said, “I bid you write it as a sign for those who will be in this place

  In an age that is yet to come.”

  “We will write it,” we said, “though we know not many words.”

  “You know enough”, said the man of light.

  He placed his hand upon our heads.

  We closed our eyes, and when we opened them,

  He was no longer there.

  We have written our story in music that comes from the mouth.

  The man of light has gone from our eyes.

  Yet we feel him close.

  We are not afraid.

  I am ill, and I lie down on the soft soil of the cave. I do not rise up.

  Pho-rion holds my hand.

  Who are you who reads this?

  Do you hold it in your hands after a time and another time?

  Do you see my face?

  Can you hear my voice?

  Do you listen to the music that comes from my mouth?

  I Kitha-ré write this.

  Dariush pointed to a few lines in a cruder script at the end, reading:

  I Pho-rion help Kitha-ré write this.

  I lie down.

  I sleep.

  Day 387:

  I couldn’t write any more last night. I am not a sentimentalist. I do not enjoy tragedies. They make me fall into a rage that has no outlet. No outlet at all.

  Even so, the story of Kitha-ré and Pho-rion seizes me with awe. Sorrow too, and love for them (these strangers I do not know, these poor children who died two millennia ago).

  Let me finish the account of that day. Dariush spe
nt a long time praying over the bodies. He blessed them with the sign of the cross. He knelt and for a few moments put the palm of his hand on the foreheads of their skulls. To other eyes, it might have seemed grotesque, macabre, but I didn’t feel that way, not at that moment. Dariush quietly wept, but he smiled as he wept. I hung my head, grieved and confused.

  We covered Kitha-ré’s remains with stones. We built a cairn around Pho-rion’s.

  After that, we began the labor of removing the slates from the cave. Back and forth, we crawled until we had made a stack outside the tunnel entrance. There we heard Vladimir calling our names from below, and spotted him standing by the lake, looking all around at the mountains. We shouted and waved, and he climbed up to the cave and helped us with the removal of the slates. We loaded them onto the AEC and flew back to the geology base. An hour later, the shuttle entered the Kosmos. I have no memory of us saying anything during the return journey.

  How strange my room seemed to me when I entered it—sterile, a void filled with a man with a void inside him. I understood nothing about my feelings. I only felt them. Long past midnight, Dariush knocked on my door and entered with papers in his hand. He had scanned the slates, which he called “Kitha-ré’s Song”, and he gave me the auto-translation, annotated with his minor corrections. I’ve copied his polished version into yesterday’s journal entry. It was very close to his recital in the cave.

  I thanked him, still so choked that I couldn’t say much.

  “Do you know what their names meant?” I asked.

  “Kitha is the word for the water bird that warbles like a loon, and re means ‘the heart of’. Rion means deer, and pho means ‘force of’ or ‘strength of’.”

  Then he left me to ponder the meaning of it all.

  Day 388:

  Last night, another strange dream: I am standing on the shore of a lake filled with floating water lilies. There are snow-covered mountain peaks in the distance. It is twilight, the sky striped with hues of red and violet. I am watching a brown-skinned, teenage boy who is seated on a chair by the lapping water, concentrating on sheets of paper on a music stand. A large cello leans on his shoulder, and in his right hand, he holds a bow. Lifting the bow, the boy is about to begin playing.

  “What is your name?” I ask him.

  He looks up at me, smiles, and says, “You know my name, pitaji.”

  A light flashes from horizon to horizon.

  “We have to get out of here!” I yell.

  “Why?” the boy asks, gazing at me curiously.

  The lake bursts into flames.

  I wake up gasping for breath, my heart pounding.

  Is he my son, the one who I might have fathered if I had chosen another path? Is he the past that could have been? Is he the future? Is he a translation of Kitha-ré and Pho-rion into a single symbol? Or is he just more flotsam from my disordered mind?

  Day 390:

  A momentous day in terms of the expedition. The rear third of the temple ship has been entered. Radioactivity was within acceptable limits. Inside were found all manner of machines for water and oxygen regeneration, very unlike ours but identifiable by their ventilation and water pipes, which once fed the rest of the ship. A good deal of the upper space in the chamber is filled by spars that support the retractable wings. These are two immense isosceles triangles sitting on their cradles, once manipulated by gears and hydraulics that long ago seized shut. Between them hangs a giant gyroscope, connected by circuitry to the wall and to the wing gears. This construction is in fact three gyroscopes one inside the other.

  Dominating the whole chamber is a nuclear reactor, caked in the black alloy that greatly reduces radioactive bleed. The fuel inside, though thousands of years old, undoubtedly has lost only a portion of its strength. It provided the thrust through the four main propulsion tubes at the base of the ship, and also fed a wheel of smaller cylinders connected to vents encircling the body of the ship, clearly designed for maneuvering in zero gravity.

  There was a three-hour presentation on the panorama screens this evening. Xue was one of several scientists interviewed, but he was not given pride of place, since primary interest is focused on the ship’s aerodynamics and nuclear physics. He had only a sixty-second sound bite, in which he pointed out that there were a number of odd features in the tail section that suggested major changes had been made to the ship after its landing on the planet. He drew attention to three small holes halfway up the bulkhead wall (with a three-second still photo of them). They were first noticed when the black alloy veneer was removed from the bulkhead on the mid-ship side. Xue said that it was initially believed these were for nonmechanical circulation of air within the ship. Alternatively, there may once have been pipes passing through the holes, funneling heat from the reactor into the forward sections during space flight. In his opinion, he thought these explanations were superficial, since the ship has other more efficient circulation apparatus.

  He concluded by pointing out that there is a pattern of triune holes in the temple complex and emphasized that the presence of these newly discovered holes should not be overlooked or hastily dismissed as insignificant. The next visual / sound bite displayed manipulation of the giant gyroscopes, which, despite their age, still spin nicely. This was followed by other fascinating presentations.

  Day 391:

  Two minor developments, just for the record:

  The Captain sent down to me the elevator codes for KC deck, couriered by hand. In the accompanying note, he renewed his invitation to move my personal quarters upstairs. Of course, I will not do so. Despite his concern, for which I am grateful, I feel this would only add to the siege mentality.

  The Captain also said that if I wish to remain on deck B for the time being, I may have some degree of immunity, since he has warned DSI to keep their hands off me, and off anyone else in the ship, for that matter. He cautioned me against using normal e-communications, since max messages in and out of my room are probably monitored around the clock, and thus I should not rely on making a call for help that would only be blocked by DSI before it reached KC. He suggested that if I am ever in need of emergency sanctuary, I should get myself to the nearest KC elevator as quickly as possible.

  After reading the note, I went for a stroll and located the one closest to me, a fifteen-minute walk forward on deck B, on cross street 22, between the portside and central avenues.

  Second development: A note from Dariush, slipped under my door while I was napping, tells me that he will be at his office in Tower Valley for the next three days, assisting with decryption of hieroglyphics on mechanisms in the rear section of the temple ship.

  He concludes by assuring me that the slates bearing “Kitha-ré’s Song” are safely archived with Paul. He is concerned about the way every translated document is expropriated by DSI. He worries, I think, that the song might disappear due to its religious implications.

  Day 392:

  One never knows what will happen in this universe. As a precaution, I made a trial run, escape mode. It took me 12.5 minutes to reach the KC elevator, and another fifteen seconds to access it with the code. In total, the time between leaving my room and stepping out into the lobby of KC was 13 minutes. Not bad, but if something should happen unexpectedly, would I have that much time?

  Arriving at the lobby, I asked a staff member if I could speak with Paul Yusupov. When he joined me a few minutes later, we had a pleasant chat. Mother and babe in the womb are doing well, he says. Pia is “bolshoi—very, very big.” She sleeps a lot, or reads, putters around the apartment, makes flower arrangements from a variety of Nova blossoms brought by their friends the pilots.

  I gave him my most recent entries in the journal. We also discussed the ancient song Dariush and I had discovered. He said he had read the translation and had been moved by it. He was glad that in some way the boy and girl had been present at the wedding. I told him how pleased I was to leave the turquoise cube by the falls, as a memorial of their marriage. He thanked me, and
then apologized that he had to get back to his crew. They were beginning the remote warm-up practice of navigational protocols—test runs for departure, six weeks from now. The ship’s computer will do the real work, he explained, but it was important to have human back-up and oversight. The procedure was all very familiar to his men, but it was best to keep it fresh in the mind. I said something about how easily we forget important things. He replied that we are always making trivia into crises and crises into trivia. Once again, I saw depths in the man that would not be immediately obvious to acquaintances. A boy with a sword, yes, but he also has a reflective mind.

  Day 401:

  The baby is born! A girl!

  She’s a week early, and it was a long, hard labor, but mother and child are doing just fine. I haven’t seen them yet. The news came via my favorite Igbo-Brit, who tapped on my door, grinning from ear to ear and blurting the news in a loud voice. Doubtless DSI also learned about the birth at that instant, via my max. Well, so what! Let them try something. They’d regret it.

  “Paul says Pia needs a few days’ rest and then people can visit”, said Loka. “You can pop up anytime on Day 404 or after. Just use the code.”

  “Give them my love.”

  I am eager, I can’t wait. But yikes! Loka gave away a whole lot of information in two short breaths. The Elf and his sylvan band now know I have a code, and thus if they wish to take me into custody, they will do it by surprise. Following on that, the gamut of disinformation ploys will be ever at their disposal. They could make me into a serial killer for the records, a madman who had to be incarcerated in their prison. Or shot while resisting arrest.

  Maybe I should move upstairs. No, that would be capitulation.

  Day 403:

  Dariush was aboard for a few hours today, ostensibly to do research in the main computer, and more importantly to visit the newborn baby. He stopped by my room for a few moments. We went for a walk.

  “I bear some messages for you, Neil. Pia and Paul are looking forward to you meeting their child tomorrow, if you can come.”

  “Whaaaat! If I can come! I’ll be at their door before sunrise.”

  “I have just come from her baptism. Her name is Katherine Teresa. She is very healthy. She is brown-skinned and has her mother’s eyes. There is plenty of Paul in her as well. She is very beautiful.”