Going Interstellar

by Les Johnson

  Ennio wrinkled his nose at me, his mop of reddish-brown hair standing up from being cut so short. There was a fad onboard for longish hair, so of course Ennio wore his almost too short. “This is hardly repair,” he said. “Just clean up.”

  The terminal powered up when he tried it and he said, “Right. Now to reprogram it with all the nursery rhymes again.”

  Ciar sat up, curious. “Nursery rhymes? You teach them those?”

  “At this age it’s the best way to get them to read. I just need to make sure they come up and match the sound,” he said, picking things on the screen, till the screen displayed a series of lines, which were sounded out, aloud, in a babyish voice.

  The big ship sails on the vacuum oh,

  the vacuum oh, the vacuum oh,

  Oh the big ship sails on the vacuum oh,

  It will not sail on forever.

  The captain said it will reach Alpha Centauri oh

  When ten generations are over.

  The big ship will reach Alpha Centauri

  Where our new home will be.

  It will reach Alpha Centauri when

  ten generations are over.

  We will all live in Alpha Centauri

  In the world most like Earth.

  We will all live in Alpha Centauri

  After the eleventh generation’s birth.

  He pushed a few buttons and went on to another screen, where a comical owl hooted, flew away, and then the rhyme flashed:

  A wise old owl lived down on area C.

  The more he saw the less he spoke,

  The less he spoke the more he heard.

  Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?

  Find him and ask politely,

  He’ll tell you the way to Alpha Centauri.

  When we’ve all forgotten,

  He will still be

  Keeping the time and path to Alpha Centauri.

  Ennio pushed the screen again, but Ciar was sitting up and staring at it. He spoke over the next rhyme, “Those aren’t right.”

  I looked at him. “Of course they are. Don’t you remember?” We’d all learned the rhymes at our mothers’ knees—well, except Ciar, who presumably had learned them at the creche-teacher’s knees. And then we’d learned to read them in school.

  “I remember,” he said, frowning quickly at me. He pulled at the collar of his grey tunic. “Look, I know those are the rhymes we learned, but they aren’t the right rhymes.”

  Ennio turned around. “What do you mean?”

  As often happened, Ciar was struggling to form words. It was funny that the one of us who specialized in linguistics was the one who would often find himself struggling for explanations when talking to us. Perhaps because he was the only one of us with a truly intellectual profession?

  “I was looking at nursery rhymes today. One of the books was stored on board from early on. It’s part of the historical collection and I don’t think many people looked at it since it came in.” He frowned. “They had those rhymes, but they’re completely different. Nothing about Alpha Centauri or generations or . . . division C.”

  “Maybe they adapted the rhymes for life on board,” Ennio said.

  But Ciar was still frowning.

  “They might have, Ciar,” I said. “To make it relevant.”

  “Why would they?” he said. “They haven’t removed ‘owl’ from there, and the only things we know of owls are in books from Earth. I presume there are owl embryos frozen somewhere in the ship, but . . .”

  “But the decision of whether to ever grow them depends on the level of life development we find in the destiny world,” I said. We’d all learned, from very young, that the world we were headed towards was, so far as they could tell from old Earth, the twin of the home world. It was supposed to have water, and atmosphere and probably be much like Earth. But the question was, did it have the same level of biodevelopment? We’d brought a sample of every bird and animal and plant, or at least all the ones anyone could think of. If we found a very primitive world, or one where life hadn’t yet taken hold beyond single cell organisms, then we would set about reconstructing the ecology of Earth. But if we found that it had the same chain of life, and that we were compatible with it and could use it for sustenance, then we would not bring back the animals of Earth, except perhaps as curiosities in well-guarded zoos.

  “Yeah, but we still learn about them,” Ciar said. “And cows that go moo. You know, until I caught a reference in an ancient manuscript, I thought cows were about the size of a chicken.”

  Chickens and fish being the only animal life aboard, I’d thought so too until this moment. “You mean they’re not?”

  He shook his head, and his hands sketched improbable dimensions. Now Ennio was frowning. “So . . . The rhymes were altered. I wonder why?”

  “I think . . .” Ciar was frowning. “Well . . . I’ve read a lot of things from when the ship was first launched. Part of the reason they established the captain with absolute power and the administrators reporting only to him is that they were very afraid there would be a mutiny and we would either destroy our knowledge base, or that we would overrun the resources of the ship.”

  I shrugged. I’d got up and was looking over Ennio’s shoulder at the screen changing in multicolored patterns of lights as syllables appeared. There was, for instance, the bells song. “Find me if you can, toll the bells of C and N. . . .” I remembered singing it with my class in my first year in school. “So, we didn’t mutiny and we didn’t overrun the resources of the ship,” I said.

  “Yes, but I think they changed the nursery rhymes, so that we would have something to remind us if we forgot.”

  “To remind us of what?” Ennio asked. “That the wise old owl keeps his mouth shut? Or that we’re going to Alpha Centauri? Honestly, Ciar.” He turned to me, “There’s a dance tonight at the bachelor’s dorm, and I was wondering if you—”

  “You don’t understand,” Ciar said, his voice in the slow pedantic tone he used when he thought he was schooling us. “The thing is that nursery rhymes are the most linguistically conservative bit of language. Not just in terms of how exactly they get passed on, but they retain fossilized references and pronunciations for centuries after they’ve died out of any normal use. They would be a . . . they are a superb medium for encoding instructions. But instructions for what?”

  “For people who’ve forgotten that we’re on our way to Alpha Centauri and who, probably, think that this is the only world that exists.” He shook his head. “Now, Nia,” he said, looking at me. “Will you go with me to the dance?”

  I said yes, mostly, I think, to try to get Ciar to let go of the crazy subject of nursery rhymes. When he got an idea in his head, he tended to hold onto it like a well-placed rivet. And this one was truly one of the strangest ones he’d come up with.

  But when I looked up to see if he was upset or interested, I met with a frown, and his eyes half-closed, but he was staring into something we couldn’t see. “Oh, the dance,” he said, slowly. “Yes. I’ll see you two there.”

  He walked out through the terminals, towards the door and Ennio and I met each other’s eyes and laughed. “Now, do you suppose he thinks I invited him to the dance?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He seems to think both of us did.”

  Ennio shook his head. “Ciar has a bug in his processor again!”

  I confess I completely forgot about Ciar and the nursery rhymes. Unlike the men, I still lived with my parents. It wasn’t that I wasn’t getting enough ration coupons to live alone, but I disliked the single women dormitory. Too much cackle and giggling, too much scent and makeup. My mom shook her head when I complained and said women had always been like that, and always would be, but frankly, I owned a mirror and could see my face as well as the next person. My face was not as soft and round as I’d have liked. I had a broad forehead, and dark blond hair. The best that could be said about me was that I didn’t cause men to run screaming into the nig
ht, and that I had two guys who wished to court me—even if they were not exactly potential heartthrobs. But makeup didn’t improve my looks and frankly I didn’t think either of my two very odd suitors would notice, unless I put blue circles on my cheeks and dyed my hair purple. They seemed to enjoy my company and talking to me, more than actually looking at me.

  Besides, I was mom and dad’s only daughter. Mom had got into some trouble when she was young. I’d never found out exactly what it had been, but whatever it was meant she was only licensed for one child, so here I was. And it didn’t seem fair to move out before I absolutely needed to.

  Mom insisted on fussing over my going to the dance with Ennio, and finding me one of the dresses she’d worn when she was young and which she hadn’t traded in for material credits. It looked very odd on me, because though our bodies are about the same size, mom is a beautiful woman, delicate and blond. I’m . . . not. But she said I looked beautiful in the pink, ruffled top and skirt, and she found me the shoes that went with them. Though she told me I could do better than Ennio, she approved of my playing the field.

  But she didn’t mention Ciar and I didn’t think of him, until I got to the dance. Both Ennio and Ciar were standing at the entrance, looking out with anxious expressions.

  The way their faces cleared when they saw me approaching did my heart good, but I soon saw that they were relieved for completely different reasons, as Ennio looked towards Ciar and said, “See, I told you she was fine. You and your paranoia.”

  “I’m not paranoid,” Ciar said, in an urgent whisper. “And don’t talk about it here. And I have to show you something.”

  Ennio lowered his eyebrows, as his features shaped into a frown. “You are insane. This is a dance. Nia came here to dance.”

  I could see, past his shoulders, the dimmed lights, and couples gyrating to the convoluted strains of something that—from my classical music history—I knew should be a waltz, but wasn’t. Not quite. They called it the Cuddle Bug, but really, like the waltz in its time it was an excuse for young people to hold each other and spend time together in a form the population planners might otherwise find inappropriate in unmarried couples.

  Ennio put his hand on my forearm to guide me inside, but Ciar was shaking his head, making his hair flop in front of his eyes. “Come. Forget the dance. This is more important.” His voice got louder, as he got more agitated, and I could see Ennio thought that if he were to refuse to listen to whatever Ciar had to say, Ciar was quite likely to cause a scene and then we’d all be investigated for—at the very least—antisocial activities.

  “You just want to undercut my one chance to dance with Nia,” Ennio said, in the tone of someone trying desperately to turn the whole thing into a joke.

  “No,” Ciar said. “No, this is important.”

  And it was clear that to him it was. Not just a joke, not just a side pursuit, not just a way to take the shine off his rival. At any rate, I told myself, it was impossible that either of them was that serious about their rivalry. First, they were as good friends as two young men of their solitary temperaments could be. And second, suppose one of them won my hand. The other one could find a woman just as good looking and with as good prospects on any given evening, at the single women’s dormitory. Frankly, I thought the only reason they both courted me was because it allowed all three of us to spend time together, as we had since we’d started instruction.

  I could see Ennio weigh all this too, and judge the anxiety in Ciar’s eyes, and the way he kept looking around wildly, as though sure he was being followed. And then a hint of resignation appeared in his eyes, as it had in our childhood, when we finally gave in to one of Ciar’s crazy schemes and investigated his mad suspicions—like the time Ciar had decided that the food in the cafeteria was made from the bodies of people who died and the entire thing with the recycler and converter was a cover up. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. Let’s dispose of your insanity, shall we? What did you discover this time? Are they using school children for propulsion?”

  But Ciar didn’t laugh or argue, he just shook his head, and his voice changed to a whisper. “I’ll go ahead. You don’t want to be seen with me. Or at least, we shouldn’t leave together,” he said. “I’ll go ahead, and then in ten minutes or so, meet me at the archive.”

  “At the—” Ennio said.

  “Where I work. You know very well where it is. I’ll leave it open for you.”

  His being in his place of work after hours seemed strange enough. If he didn’t have a work order from his supervisor, he could get into serious trouble over it. His letting us in after hours was even more dangerous.

  “He’s riding for a fall,” Ennio said, as he watched Ciar leave. “I wonder what’s got into him?”

  “Isn’t it strange,” I said, “how we use expressions for things long vanished, things neither we nor anyone on board the ship could know about personally?”

  Ennio gave me an odd look. “What are you talking about now?” he asked.

  “Riding for a fall. None of us has ever ridden anything.”

  He rolled his eyes. “We’ve ridden the ship our whole lives,” he said. “But that’s not the point. Don’t you go talking of old language now, or I’ll think both of you have gone completely insane. I wonder what he’s chasing?”

  “Something related to those nursery rhymes, I think.”

  Ennio made a sound that, without being a profanity, consigned the nursery rhymes and everyone who wrought them to the hells of the ancients. “You’re not going to marry him, are you, Nia?” he asked me, with a pleading look. “The man is my best friend, but sometimes I think he’s a half-wit. He does more thought transgression in ten minutes than other people do in their entire lives.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not going to marry anyone,” I said. “At least not just yet. I have enough to support myself, and I enjoy living at my parents’ lodging. Why bother merging, when I can fly solo just as well?”

  He gave me a wolfish smile that told me he wasn’t buying my answer, not for a second, then tugged on my arm again, gently this time. “But you do dance, don’t you, Nia? Come and dance with me.”

  We did dance, in the dark, confined warmth of the great room of the bachelor’s quarters. I knew from visiting Ennio there—usually under close supervision—that this room was normally used for terminals for learning or gaming or any other leisure activities, but someone had cleared them all away, and dimmed the lights to the lowest setting and the large, well-lit room looked like a cavern, confined and close. The semi-darkness made the whole space more intimate, more . . . isolating, so that while you spun with your partner to the winding strains of the Cuddle Bug the two of you might well have been in the middle of nowhere, gloriously alone.

  And the music was sensuous, I’ll give you that. The warm firmness of Ennio’s chest against mine was reassuring, his arms around my body were comforting. But as one set ended and another began, I pulled away, regretfully, and whispered to him, “Come on, we’d better meet him.”

  “Nia,” Ennio whispered back, looking betrayed.

  “Do you want to risk what he might do if we don’t meet him?”

  “No . . . no. I guess not. I . . . oh, but he’s a pain.”

  I smiled up at his annoyed expression. Perhaps he was courting me in earnest after all. Oh, sure, he could find a better bride around any corner and down any section corridor, but maybe he didn’t know that.

  I’m a woman of machines and solid objects. I understand malfunctions based on some defective component, and I understand the logic of mechanics. I also understand humans aren’t always logical, which is why they are such bewildering creatures. And why I normally do my best not to get that involved with them. But sometimes I still have trouble with the idea that humans aren’t logical in their choice of a mate.

  I’ve read the classic romances just as well as everyone else has, but the one thing no one ever explained to me was exactly why people did any of these things. And perhaps that was wher
e I failed to understand Ennio. Maybe he was in the grip of one of those illogical convictions that only one woman would do for him, and that I had to be that woman. I don’t pretend to understand, but I was gratified by it anyway.

  I gave him my arm, and we walked, in an ambling sort of way, as if we had nothing much to do, out of the room, out of the center, down a corridor, then down another, on a seemingly random path.

  “People will think we are bundling,” I told Ennio. “But I get a feeling it’s better than their thinking that we’re meeting Ciar. I don’t think this time if we’re caught we’ll escape with just a severe reprimand, like the time we got into the kitchens to find out where meat came from.”

  Ennio nodded. “Oh, yeah. He’s always getting us into crazy adventures. And would it be so bad if we were?”

  “If we were what?” I asked. “Trying to figure out where the meat comes from?” I was counting back the years since the last crazy adventure and figuring out that even Ciar might be allowed a moment of insanity every ten years or so.

  “If we were going to bundle,” he said.

  “Unauthorized contact before marriage?” I asked. “Do you want your coupons docked and your child allowance lowered?”

  He looked at me for a moment, then shrugged, and this time I wondered which of us had lost his mind.

  So we didn’t talk about it anymore. Instead, we walked down the corridors, more or less aimlessly, until we were far enough away that we could head back in the direction we were supposed to be going, to meet Ciar.

  This circuitous route took us through narrow little tunnels, the ceramic material that curved overhead patched in a hundred places. Then we emerged onto a larger path amid fields, which were planted with some form of wheat that gave off a rich and earthy smell.

  And then we curved back toward lodgings and the administrative buildings, and fetched up at the door to the archives. Which was closed, the lights off on either side, of course. For a moment I wondered if Ciar was in there, or if he had decided to skip this anyway, or even if this was some sort of elaborate prank. But Ciar didn’t play pranks, and even Ennio knew that.