Beyond the Sun

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  How could she answer that? She was being held under duress. “They want to negotiate.”

  “Yes, I know, Esmé,” he said. “But you see, we don’t.”

  She wasn’t sure she understood him. This had to be a bluff. “Of course you do,” she said. “What will it cost you?”

  “Time,” he said too quickly for her satisfaction. “Resources. Money. All of which are in short supply.”

  Her breath caught. She’d heard those words before. She didn’t like them. Or the reasonable tone he was using.

  Or what he was implying.

  “Do you value my life so cheaply?” she asked.

  “Esmé.” Now he sounded patronizing. “This isn’t cheap. Every scenario will cost more than . . . ahem . . . um . . . well, you’ve made this very calculation yourself.”

  She froze.

  Bastard. He was using her own words against her.

  What is one life? She would say. Especially one that had cost so many others? We could imprison that life, spend precious resources on it, feed it, sustain it, and get nothing for it. Or we could make sure it doesn’t cost us any more than it already has.

  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” she said, then wished she could take the words back. They sounded defensive.

  “I know,” the Chief said. “You’re collateral damage. These people who believe that crime solves everything—well, you have to understand. We must deal with them in the most efficient way possible.”

  “I don’t have to understand anything,” she snapped.

  “Oh, Esmé,” he said. “I know you understand. This is your policy, after all.”

  And then the signal cut out. She looked at the hostage taker. He looked at her.

  This was a joke, something done to teach her a lesson, something that would end right now.

  “What do you plan to do?” she asked him.

  He shook his head, sighed. “They’ve barred us from Pavonne, and we can’t go to Latica now. There’s nowhere really close, and you don’t keep this ship stocked.”

  She didn’t. It was for short journeys only.

  And executions, of course.

  “So,” he said, sounding defeated already. “I guess we’re going to have to figure out what we have, figure out how long it’ll take to get outside the colonies, figure out what it’ll take to get there.”

  More fuel than they had. More food than they had. She knew that, but she wasn’t going to tell him.

  His gaze met hers. She sensed panic, and the beginnings of conviction.

  “I guess,” he said, “it’s like the Chief said. It’s a matter of resources—and in that instance, some lives are worth more than others.”

  And some were worth nothing at all.

  She sat back in the execution cell and closed her eyes.

  It’s math, really, she used to say when someone confronted her about her reputation as a brutal hanging judge. When you do the math, you always make the best decision.

  Always.

  Except when you’re not the one making the decision.

  Like right now.

  No journey to the stars could begin without a starship, and so we continue our journey with a tale about one of those without whom colonization of the stars will never happen: a colonial ship pilot, called upon to take an adventure and sacrifice life at home, until he begins realizing the cost. Did he make the right decision? Would you choose the same? What would you do if you had the option to flip the switch? Jamie Todd Rubin’s story touched my heart. I hope it moves you as well.

  FLIPPING THE SWITCH

  JAMIE TODD RUBIN

  The switch in my head is broken. Try as I might, I can’t switch the emotions off.

  In all my years of ferrying colonists to the stars, I’d never spent much time wondering if they ever missed Earth. I could turn off my emotions like flipping a switch on the instrument panel. Flip the switch again and my emotions are back. Psychologists called it a disorder, but it’s a prerequisite for any starship pilot, and it virtually guarantees you a job in the space corp. Without worry or care, you can focus fully on the critical tasks at hand.

  So I never gave a second thought to the colonists I carried to the stars. Just as it never occurred to me that switch in my head could fail. But try as I might I can no longer switch it off.

  *

  Nighttime was better in our tiny studio apartment. Darkness concealed the grimy alley beyond the two barred windows. The stench that rose from pools of murky water below those windows seemed less oppressive when the sun was down. And with the lights out, you couldn’t see the cracking apartment walls closing in on you. Despite the comforting darkness, I couldn’t sleep. I curled up to Selena, resting my hand on her round belly, her skin stretched tight and smooth.

  The job had finally come through. In less than a year, I’d be leaving Earth as a full-fledged starship pilot. I’d be doing my part to ferry those who could afford a ticket away from the depressed planet to any one of a dozen brighter futures on colonies amongst the stars. It wasn’t ideal, of course. Selena and the baby would stay behind. But the pay was good, and it would afford them a better lifestyle. For the first time in our lives, we might do more than just scrape by. We wanted to believe this. We were young and in love and we thought that would be enough to carry us through anything—and it was a job, one to which I was particularly well-suited. I don’t think either of us really understood the time-altering implications of the job.

  I felt a thump inside Selena’s belly, as if the baby was showing her approval. It touched my heart as surely as I’d felt it with my hand. As a starship pilot, I knew that in a race against anything else, light was the inevitable winner. As a soon-to-be father, I wondered if this was really the case. Didn’t love travel faster than light?

  For as long as I could remember, darkness had ruled our lives. I would never have guessed that beginning on that day, light would take over, shaping our lives, defining the relationship between Selena and I; between me and my daughter. Little did I imagine that I would increasingly become an intrusion in her life even as she remained an oasis in mine.

  At six weeks old, Gillian looked so different from when she was born that she might well have been another baby. It was hard to imagine that another six weeks would pass before I’d see her again.

  Selena was understandably distant the day I left on the first trip. “She’ll be grown up when you get back,” she said, her features hardened into indifference.

  “She’ll be eight,” I said and immediately realized it was the wrong reply.

  Selena pulled Gillian closer, swaddling her tightly within the sling that hung across her breasts.

  I kissed the soft spot on top of Gillian’s head, intoxicated by her fresh smells, creating a memory garden of her scents. During the loneliest times en route, when I lay in my bunk trying to sleep, I intended to wander though that garden, picturing what Gillian might look like, what she was doing, what she had become. I wasn’t sure I could bear to be away from her for a day, let alone six weeks.

  I took one more look around the tiny apartment, drab and dreary in the light of day. “You should start receiving my pay as soon as I’m gone. You know what to do with it, right?”

  “I know what to do. Safe flight, okay?” She leaned in and kissed me passionately for the first time in weeks.

  “Wilco,” I said smiling. I turned to little Gillian. “I’ll bring you back a souvenir, honey,” I said. She cracked a little smile at me.

  Then I flipped the switch.

  *

  For the next forty-five days, I piloted the Dertorous II, a near-light passenger vessel powered by a subatomic black hole. The ship served as transport for several hundred colonists on their way to the Alpha Centauri system. Most of these stars had no habitable planets. Instead, colonies had been carved into massive asteroids, which provided just as much protection from the star’s radiation as an atmosphere could.

  Upon our arrival, we were granted twenty hours of shore le
ave. I found a gift shop and picked out a burping bib for Gillian. But before I paid for it, I realized that Gillian would no longer be an adorable infant when I returned. I left the shop empty-handed.

  The outbound trip might have been exciting for me but for flipping the switch. I was emotionally idle. I didn’t fret or worry over Selena and Gillian. Yet neither could I savor the full emotional impact of the journey itself. I kept myself busy chatting with my crewmates, occasionally making conversation with a colonist, but mostly throwing myself into learning the ropes from the Captain.

  Our commander, Captain Tanner, was a good mentor. It was her third trip to the Alpha Centauri system, and she talked as if it might be her last.

  “After just three trips?” I asked.

  “All you rooks think that way. Six weeks round trip. After a while, you stop thinking in terms of the time that passes out here and start thinking in terms of the time that passes back home. Three trips amounts to less than half a year. But we’re talking about eight-and-a-half light years round trip, three round trips, and all of them at 99.99% C. That’s more than a quarter of a century back home.”

  “Not me,” I said, scanning the engine instruments. “I want to see what’s out there.”

  “At the price of giving up everyone you love?”

  “Pulling them up, that’s what I’m doing. My wife will live better than she’s ever lived before. My daughter won’t know the squalor that I’ve had to live in.” The truth was I didn’t think about them. Out of sight, out of mind.

  “Maybe,” the captain said, “but it will cost your wife her husband, and your daughter her father.” I can’t imagine that I smirked, but something in my expression caused the captain to frown and say, “You don’t believe me?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Did you ever ask yourself why none of the passengers come back?”

  “They’re out looking for a better life.”

  “We’re all looking for a better life. Relativity: that’s the reason they don’t come back. We are time travelers, all of us, skipping years in weeks. What we go home to . . . it’s too painful.”

  I did a quick scan of the instruments and then glanced out the viewport. The distorted light was hard to look at, dizzying but not painful.

  The glow of the instruments threw dark shadows across the Captain’s face. “Well,” she said softly, “maybe you’re different.”

  We didn’t talk much about it after that. I realized that while everyone in the space corps could flip the switch, some chose not to. The captain was clearly someone who didn’t. I missed Selena and Gillian when I thought about them, but I just didn’t think of them much. I enjoyed piloting the starship, but, even there, it was hard to say it was exciting. In flipping the switch, I couldn’t pick and choose what I felt. It was all or nothing. The voyage out was mildly exciting. Returning home was a little less exciting. It wasn’t that I didn’t look forward to going home. I just didn’t look forward to flipping the switch.

  We began picking up broadcasts from Earth, and once we’d slowed enough to lower the shields that protected the ship, I was briefed on what had happened on Earth in the eight years I was gone. None of it seemed surprising. Some things were better, some were worse. I’d never been on a vacation before, but I was feeling what I imagined I would if I had been away on holiday.

  Included in the briefing was a note that Selena would be waiting for me at the spaceport when I arrived.

  *

  I flipped the switch at the last possible moment. When all of the passengers had debarked, all of the checklists complete, I left the Dertorous II behind and dashed into the spaceport. There, at the end of the gangway Selena waited, a soft smile on her face.

  Beside her, half hidden in Selena’s skirts, stood a shorter, more childish version of Selena. Same high cheekbones. Same brown eyes. Same dark hair, done up in ponytails tied with wine-colored ribbon. “Hi, Daddy,” she said, wrapping her arms around my waist.

  At that moment, I felt my heart melt right into her eight-year-old hands. Overwhelmed, my chest grew tight and I found it difficult to breathe. I picked up Gillian, squeezing her so hard she squealed. “Did you bring me a present?”

  Then I realized I’d made a mistake. I’d run out of time to find another gift and hadn’t thought about it since. Now I had to face an expectant eight-year-old with empty hands. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Selena said nothing, her eyes filled with tears—not of joy, but of anger. If Gillian was upset, she didn’t show it. But I was crushed. How could I have been so selfishly forgetful?

  On our way home, Gillian told me all about her school and her friends and the house and her bike. I drank it in. But the smells, those wonderful baby scents were no longer there, and some kind of spell had been broken by my wretchedness. What kind of man abandons his family the way I did? Sure, it afforded them a better life, but at what cost? Selena’s silence magnified my distress.

  Home, as it turned out, was in a suburb, across the river from the city--and it was an actual house, albeit a small one. Despite Selena’s anger, this did my heart good. The money I earned had gotten Selena and Gillian into substantially better surroundings, despite the fact that the worldwide depression continued to deepen.

  I tried to put it out of my mind, but did not flip the switch. I needed to feel these things. This was my penance. And besides, Gillian was eight years old. I had two years before I returned to space. I planned to use them to feel the world around me, to fill the emotional void of the last six weeks, to get to know my daughter.

  *

  They say time flies when you become a parent, so imagine being a parent and a starship pilot traveling at relativistic speeds. When I left on a trip, time melted away and Gillian grew up before my eyes in a way that only other pilots understand.

  My second trip took me to an ancient M-class fireball orbited by a fledgling science outpost. We ferried a set of scout colonists who would share the potato-shaped asteroid with the scientists. All were eager to get away from Earth and seek out a new life. I wondered, fleetingly, if they realized what they were leaving behind.

  We traveled further than my first flight, seventy days round-trip. I thought about home more on this trip than the first one, but that’s because I decided to experiment and flip the switch once we reached our halfway mark. After that I thought about Gillian all the time. By the time we got back home, I felt like I was suffering from a kind of addiction withdrawal—until I saw Selena waiting for me.

  Sudden relief overwhelmed me, the kind you experience tumbling into bed after a long day’s work, knowing there are hours and hours of sleep laid out in front of you. She wore an elegant one-piece, the kind we used to see the rich folks wear on their way to the theaters. But something was off. Selena had aged and it was beginning to show. In the two months I’d been gone, she’d gained twelve years of lines in her face, twelve years of sag and decay. My god, she’d turned fifty earlier in the year! I was still in my late thirties.

  I looked around.

  “Where’s Gillian?” I asked with a kind of overeager desperation.

  “At school,” Selena said. Our arms entwined and her head rested against my shoulder as we walked.

  “What time does she get home?”

  Selena stopped walking and gave me a look. “School, Zach. University. She’s on the other side of the country.”

  My heart sank. A wave of nausea pummeled me. I was desperate to see my daughter and she was thousands of kilometers away. It was then that I realized what Captain Tanner had tried to explain to me on that first trip. Flipping the switch built a dam, blocking off a sea of emotion. The problem was the basic tool: a switch, not a valve. There was no flow control. Flipping my emotions back on converted that potential emotional energy into kinetic energy all at once.

  The emotions prevented me from masking my disappointment, and I could see how that hurt Selena, but she said nothing more about it.

  Selena was in a new house—new to me
anyway. It was farther north than the old house and substantially larger than the first one. Its furnishings were elegant, clearly the result of professional decoration. I hesitated to walk on the imported tile floors that led from the foyer through a sunken living room and into the bright kitchen that overlooked a wooded backyard. I brushed my finger across the surface of a bookshelf and it came up dust-free. Nanites, Selena explained. They came out at night and carried away all of the dust.

  “How do you do it?” Selena asked, kicking off her shoes and curling up into an egg-shaped chair.

  “Do what?”

  “Turn off your emotions, flip the switch.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “it’s just something that I’ve always been able to do.”

  “But is it really like flipping a switch? Is there some mental trick you perform and—click!—no emotion?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “How do you move your finger?” I asked.

  Selena tilted her head, her eyes studying me with an unnerving, quizzical stare. “I guess I just will it to move.”

  “That’s how I flip the switch. It’s like willing your finger to move.”

  “Are you doing it now?”

  “Of course not.”

  She stared through me, past me. “I wish I could flip the switch . . .”

  *

  Later that night, I called Gillian. “She goes by Jill now,” Selena warned me.

  Seeing her on the screen was like looking back in time. At twenty-two, she was only slightly younger than her mother was when we first met. I saw in my daughter an image of the woman with whom I’d fallen in love some fifteen years ago. Fifteen years relative to me, anyway.

  “Hey, Dad, how was the trip?” Her unintentional impersonation of Selena’s voice was perfect. I wanted to reach out through the screen and hold her, tell her how much I missed her. She was growing up—had grown up—without me.