To Save the Sun

by Ben Bova

  She smiled up into his eyes. "Am, he's eighteen. Where do you think he'd be about now?"

  "The Anderston girl again?"

  "Not 'again,' Am; still. You refuse to see him growing up, don't you?" As before, her words were light and airy.

  Amasee ran a hand through his wife's long brown hair, stroking idly down the length of it as it fell over her shoulders and down her back, unintentionally dislodging the lilacs she'd tucked behind one ear. The huge orange ball that was Dannen's Star hung low on the horizon, and the oblique rays of the evening light glinted hazily through her sweet-smelling hair.

  "Can't blame me there, can you?" He shrugged, reaching for the fallen lilacs. "I'm in no hurry to admit my advancing age. Any more than you're ready to admit that you're about to lose your eldest son… old woman." He brought the flowers to his nose, pretending to hide the mischievous grin spreading across his face.

  "Who are you calling an old woman!" She pulled back in mock protest and jabbed him playfully in the ribs. They both laughed and held each other briefly before he turned to lean on the fence and stare out again over the darkening landscape. Already the first stars were beginning to appear and it was getting more difficult to distinguish the green grass from the angry gray rocks in the distance. Marabell embraced him from behind, and he reveled at how good her arms felt around him.

  "I wish I was just a farmer again," he said finally. "I wish I didn't have to leave you."

  "Then don't," she replied simply. "Stay home and take care of us." Her arms tightened around his waist and for a moment he considered giving in to what they both wanted: for him to quit, and devote himself to his family.

  "No." He sighed heavily in resignation. "I can't." He shifted his gaze skyward, searching for the right grouping among the early stars, then extended an arm to a point just above the eastern horizon. "The Westland Congress has only four weeks of Joint Dominion with Eastland left before that starship will be here, in orbit around Pallatin. Oh, did I tell you we can see the Levant now? They're in full deceleration and we've been able to spot the flare."

  She moved to his side, her right arm still around his waist, and followed his gaze into the night sky. "I hate them." Marabell's voice was a whisper.

  He smiled. "You don't even know them."

  They walked silently, hand in hand, back to the house where Amasee picked up Thad, tossing him gleefully into the air several times before giving him a hug and good-bye kiss.

  "When you coming home, Daddy?" he asked.

  "I'll be back next week, but only for a few days before I have to go again."

  The boy considered the information, accepted it and turned back to the play set. "I'll wave from the top!" he called over his shoulder, then proceeded to scramble up the narrow bars of the play set until reaching a small, enclosed platform above the swings. "All right! I'm ready, Daddy!"

  "Just a minute," Amasee called out, then turned back to his wife. They embraced a last time and kissed softly before walking together to the car. He lifted the door, glancing at the suitcase he'd tossed into the backseat earlier, and got in. There was a catch-all on the console between the seats and he carefully set the lilacs in it. "I'll call when I get to the capital."

  She nodded and stood back from the car as he swung the door down and started the engine, the soft whine of the electric motor fading in intensity as the flywheel came up to speed. Amasee pulled the car slowly down the gravel drive that led to the main road to the city, careful to remember to wave to Thad, and flashed his lights in a silent good-bye to Marabell.

  The main road was hardtop, and he accelerated rapidly on the smooth pavement. Darkness was closing in quickly now, and he dialed the car's headlights to their highest setting until he reached the connecting ramp to the intercity highway. Built shortly after the Quake, the new road was a straight throughway to the shuttle station on the south side of Dannen.

  As he pulled the car into the leftmost lane, a chime sounded and an accompanying light blinked on the dashboard indicating that the magnetic guidance strips embedded in the road had linked to the car's system. "Dannen Station," he said aloud, "northbound terminal." He squeezed the steering wheel twice, locking the car into road guidance, and leaned back into the seat. The car accelerated smoothly.

  It would take nearly an hour to get to the station and he thought about napping, realizing that he'd get little rest once he arrived at the capital, but instead watched the cars in the noncontrol section of roadway at his right as they sped past the windows. When the glow of Dannen Station appeared through the windshield, still two kilometers distant, he idly watched the red and white lights of aircraft coming and going from the facility. Most were simple air traffic, but at one point he recognized the lights and exhaust signature of a spaceplane. Even at this distance the white-hot exhaust almost hurt to look at. As the spaceplane's trajectory became more vertical, the windshield vibrated and he felt the rolling thunder of the rocket motors kick in as the air-breathing jet engines shut down. It receded rapidly into the sky, but the night was cloudless and he was able to follow the pinpoints of its exhaust as they dwindled on its way into orbit.

  He glanced at the clock on the dash. Right on time, he thought. The plane was the daily shuttle ferrying personnel and supplies to a starship in orbit, a very special ship. The Thunder Child was among the fastest class of starships Pallatin constructed, but its mission would be diplomatic, not exploratory. The diplomacy carried aboard her was backed with more than diplomats, however: Instead of the latest scientific equipment Pallatin's researchers could devise, the ship fairly bristled with weaponry. In less than three weeks it would leave orbit to meet the Imperial starship that even now was decelerating toward Pallatin.

  Amasee Niles, as Speaker of the Westland Congress—together with his Eastland counterpart—would be aboard the Thunder Child when it left.

  He followed the lights until they grew too dim to see, then, squeezing the steering wheel twice to disengage the road link, pulled the car back into the manual lane. The automatic system would have taken him directly into the terminal, but he felt the sudden need to do something, anything, to keep his hands—and his mind—occupied. Despite his best efforts, however, one thought forced itself upon him, against his will, just as it had time and again in the last months of final preparation for the starship's coming:

  Yes, I hate them, too.

  Javas' message string was different from the many thousands that awaited Adela when, still a month away from Pallatin, she awoke from nearly twenty years of cryosleep. She had put through a worm program, of course, to sort and categorize each of the strings according to importance, subject matter, timeliness and any of dozens of other criteria that would allow her to better handle the sheer mass of information demanding her attention. Many didn't need to be addressed for some time, and could wait in a holding file until later. Messages that did not require her personal attention at all, according to the explicit criteria she'd encoded into the worm, were rerouted automatically to other members of her project team. It was their job—indeed, their whole reason for accompanying her on this trip—to handle the items related to her work while she was involved in the diplomacy of the mission or while she was in cryosleep. Still other messages had been outdated years ago and were simply purged from the waiting queue entirely.

  It was the queue coded as "personal" that concerned her now, and even among them the worm program had arranged all the strings in order of importance. Except one. The worm had kicked the string to the top of the queue against the criteria that she'd carefully emplaced: her own programming superseded by Imperial code.

  Adela de Montgarde stirred uneasily in her chair, experiencing both anxious anticipation to view the holo from Javas, and dread as to its contents. Why had he separated this string from the others? There were several other personal message strings from him; why had this one been given imperative-to-read-first status?

  "System." Her voice was soft in the confines of her private suite aboard the hug
e ship, and it carried with it a tone she didn't much care for, a tone that told more about her feelings just now than she wanted to admit to herself.

  "Ma'am?" the room system responded. The nondescript efficiency of the voice, different from the softly feminine voice of the system back on Luna, was at once annoying and reassuring.

  "Please put a code one interrupt on all incoming messages until further notice." There was a confirming chirp from the system, indicating that she wouldn't be disturbed for anything short of a shipwide emergency. "Display personal string one-A, message one." The corner of the room brightened, changing into what she recognized as Javas' study at the family estate on Earth. He sat in one of the leather chairs before his old wooden desk. The large double doors behind him had been opened, and she could see the rolling Kentucky hillside spreading majestically into the distance. He looked worn, older, and she found it necessary to remind herself that this recording had been made only a few years after her departure from Sol system. How much older must he look now? she wondered as the sixteen-year-old recording coalesced before her. She wished, not for the first time, that she could have stayed behind at his side.

  Her attention had been immediately, emotionally, drawn to his face when the image appeared, and it wasn't until he shifted slightly in the chair before speaking that she became aware of the compact, blanket-wrapped bundle in his arms. One corner of the receiving blanket had been pulled aside, revealing a tiny, peaceful face. The infant was asleep, its fresh, pink features appearing incongruously small in the man's strong arms. A thick mass of dark hair, in a shade that closely matched her own, stood out in marked contrast to Javas' blond hair.

  But Adela could see—perhaps in the man's eyes or in the way his arms seemed to naturally enfold the baby in his arms—that the two were connected, bonded in a way that she was not. Bonded in a way she could only long to experience.

  "Adela, my love, we have a son. His name is Eric, after your father. I regret that I was not able to discuss this with you and hope you will understand my reasons. If not, then perhaps it is your forgiveness that I…"

  "Pause." Adela stared in fascination at the frozen image before her, unable even to determine exactly what she was feeling at this moment. She hadn't known what to expect of this string, but was this news more, or less, disturbing; more, or less, surprising than anything she could have anticipated? Was she angry with him for having done this, or joyful for the miracle that had produced this small part of herself, this proof of the love she felt for a man more than sixteen years distant in space, and forty years distant in time itself? Adela shook her head in frustrated confusion, pushing any decision she might make concerning her feelings away for now—much in the same way the worm had pushed the non-immediate messages further and further down the queue for later consideration. There was one thing, however, of which she was certain: The child was beautiful.

  She opened her mouth to speak, to restart the playback, and was shocked at the croaked whisper that came out. The room system itself had not been able to pick up the word, and beeped in confusion. Adela cleared her throat.

  "Resume playback, please."

  "… should hope for," he said, finishing the sentence begun earlier. He stirred again in the chair, distracted from the recorder lens as a tiny arm came up from the blanket. The infant had been awakened by his father's voice, she saw, and the little eyes blinked at the bright light streaming through the double doors into the Emperor's study. The baby didn't seem pleased, and wrinkled his brow in dislike at the intrusion into whatever thoughts had been going through its dreams, but did not cry. Javas stood, cradling the bundle protectively in his strong arms as he almost imperceptibly rocked the infant. "I won't go into my reasons just now; I'll save the lengthy explanation for the following recording in this string. But I wanted… to share this with you first." He stood there for several moments, trying to think of something else to add and, although he looked as though he were about to say something, stopped when a tiny hand reached out and grazed his cheek. Whatever he was going to say was instantly lost as he smiled and lowered his eyes to the infant before silently commanding the recording to end. The image dimmed, then faded from view.

  "Shall I display the next message, ma'am?"

  Adela didn't answer at first, and sat staring quietly at the now-dark corner of the room. She had discussed this possibility with Javas before leaving for Pallatin and had accepted, at the time, the implications. So why can't I tell what I'm feeling right now? she wondered, and fell heavily back into the cushioning firmness of the chair. The gravity in her quarters—as in the quarters of nearly everyone on the ship who'd be visiting the planet—had been set to Pallatin-normal, allowing her an opportunity to adjust to the 1.2 g environment below. Her day was only half begun, and already she felt exhausted.

  "Shall I display the next message, ma'am?" the system repeated.

  "Uh, no," she replied. "Replay previous recording."

  The corner glowed again as the message began once more. She let it play through till the end, waiting for the moment when Javas had stood just before ending the recording. "Pause, and mark." The image froze. "Resume." The playback restarted, and continued through his silent command to end the recording. "Pause, and mark," she repeated just before the image began to fade. "System. Edit, please."

  "Ready."

  "Loop and smooth the marked segment, please."

  "Ready."

  "Playback."

  The computer had edited the recording, smoothly blending Javas' movements from the moment where he smiled and turned his eyes to the infant and the end of the recording itself, looping the segment into one continuous image.

  She rose then and approached the holographic projection before her, stopping mere centimeters from the lifelike image as she looked into the infant's face. She wanted more than anything to hold, to touch her son and would have gladly given up the entire project and her role in it for just a moment alone with Javas and their child. She reached out, her fingers passing through the image, and noticed something she hadn't seen from her previous vantage point when she'd first viewed the recording: A happy, toothless smile had spread over the baby's face as it stared up into Javas' eyes. Adela stepped through the image itself and looked down into the baby's face from almost the same angle Javas had when he'd made the recording sixteen years earlier.

  Although she knew better, she tried to force from her mind the fact that the baby seemingly looking up at her was now, at this exact moment back on Earth, a young adult.

  "Eric," she whispered, and felt the corners of her mouth turn up in the beginnings of a smile that quickly broadened of its own accord into a joyous grin.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Commander Montero, captain of the Imperial starship Levant, droned on, giving his delivery of the required precontact briefing as much excitement as he did most of his lectures. Which was to say that a schoolboy's recitation of a memorized spelling list would contain more spark. Even the constantly changing images on the holoscreen behind him failed to enliven the briefing. The boredom hanging like a dark cloud over the room was compounded by the fact that virtually everything Montero said came from the mission data stick that everyone attending the briefing had already been required to review anyway. With only a week to go before the rendezvous with the Pallatin ship, even the busiest member of the mission would have had time to read the file. Twice.

  Only a few of those in the room were actually part of the ship's crew; most of the members of the diplomatic contact team were nonmilitary personnel, like Adela, and had little experience with the details and rigors of a military briefing. Although a few questions were asked and some clarifications were made to the contents of the data stick, most of the information was being given only because protocol required that a formal briefing be held.

  There were more than fifty seats in the briefing room, nearly all of them filled, making it somewhat easier for those who had only recently come out of cryosleep to take the opportunity t
o nod off if they slouched in their seats just right and hid behind those in front of them. Adela scanned the rows around her, easily picking out several people who couldn't have been out of the tank more than a few days, and wondered idly if she looked that bad when she came out of cryo. May as well get used to it, she thought, nudging the person next to her with an elbow to quiet his snoring. When this project is finally over, I'll have logged more years of cryosleep than everyone in this room—maybe even the ship-combined. It wasn't a pleasant thought, realizing that she would outlive most of the people in the briefing room. But with only a few exceptions, these people here were strangers and meant little to her, but for the important role they might play in the mission to Pallatin. And that realization disturbed her even more. Just when did I stop caring about other people? She lowered her head and sighed loudly enough that those around her might have heard if the crewman next to her hadn't started snoring again.

  The real reason for her feelings was clear, she knew, and had been for some time. It wasn't that she cared less for others, it was that she cared more for something else: the project itself. It wasn't more important than her life; it was her life. After all, isn't that why Rihana Valtane's words still echoed in her mind as clearly as they had that day in her office back on Luna some twenty-odd years earlier? "You will lose him, you know," Rihana had said, "just as I did."

  Even now, Adela saw the woman's wicked smile, heard the amused satisfaction that laughed silently at her from behind the truth in Rihana's words: When the Pallatin problem was resolved and she returned to Earth, Javas would be more than forty years older than when she left. Eric would be a grown man. And after the next period of cryosleep? And the next? Damn you, she cried out silently. God damn you for being right. Adela felt her lips tighten and noticed that her hands had balled into fists in her lap.