Without being specific about dates, Hiroshi implied that the first suspicions of anomalies in the ship’s rate of acceleration had arisen less than a year ago. The magnitude of the computer error and its implications had been only gradually revealed. He sketched a scenario of incredulous but intrepid humans wresting their secrets from computers whose programming forced them to resist any override of their response to the original misreading, of navigators forced to try to outwit their instruments, trick them into re-compensating for their immense overcompensation, slowing the ship down from the incredible speed it had achieved.
Until this moment, he said, that struggle had been so chancy, they had been so unsure of what had happened and was happening, that they had felt it unwise to make any announcement. “To avoid causing panic by a premature or incorrect disclosure was our chief concern. We know now that there is no cause for alarm. None. Our operations were entirely successful. Just as the acceleration exceeded all speculative limits, we have been able to decelerate very much more quickly than had been thought possible. We are on course and in control. The only change is that we are well ahead of schedule.”
He looked up, as if looking out of the screen, his black eyes unreadable. He was speaking slowly, carefully, a little monotonously, letting each sentence stand by itself. “We are continuing to decelerate, and will do so for the next 3.2 years.
“Late in the year 164, we will enter orbit around the planet of destination, Hsin Ti Chiu or New Earth.
“That event, as we all know, was scheduled to occur in the year 201. Our voyage of discovery has been shortened by nearly forty years.
“Ours is a fortunate generation. We will see the end of our long voyage. We will reach its goal.
“We have much work to do in these two years. We must prepare our minds and bodies to leave our little world and walk upon a wide new earth. We must prepare our eyes and souls for the light of a new sun.”
The True Way
“IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE, LUIS,” Rosa said. “It doesn’t mean anything. The Zeroes just didn’t understand. How could they? They thought we were too sinful to be able to live in heaven forever. They were earthen, they couldn’t help it, so they thought we’d have to be earthen too. But we aren’t—how could we be, born here, on the way? Why would we want to live any life other than this one? They made it perfect. They sent us to heaven. They made the world for us so we could learn the way to everlasting life in bliss by living in mortal bliss. How could we learn it on some kind of earthen black world? Outside, unprotected, unguided? How can we keep going on the True Way if we leave the True Way? How can we reach heaven by stopping on an earth?”
“Well, maybe we can’t, but we do have a job to do,” Luis said. “They sent us to learn about that earth. And to tell them what we learn. Learning was important to them. Discovery. They named our ship Discovery.”
“Exactly! The discovery of bliss! Learning the True Way! The archangels are sending back what we’ve learned all the time, you know, Luis. We’re teaching them the way—just as they hoped we would. The goal is a spiritual goal. Don’t you see, we’ve attained the Destination? Why do we have to stop our beautiful voyage at some evil, terrible, earthen place and do eva?”
An Election, Year 162, Day 112
5-NOVA LUIS WAS ELECTED CHAIR of the Plenary Council. The general trust he had earned as a conciliator, negotiator, and peacemaker during the troubles of the past half-year made his election inevitable, and popular even among the angels. His year in office was indeed one of reconciliation and healing.
A Death, Year 162, Day 205
AT THE AGE OF EIGHTY-SEVEN, 4-Patel Inbliss suffered a massive stroke and began to die, amid a continuous frenzy of tearful prayer, song, and rejoicing. For thirteen days the celebrants occupied all the corridors surrounding the Kim homespace in Quadrant One, where Inbliss was born and had lived all his life. As his dying went on and on, weariness and tension grew among the mourner-rejoicers. People feared an outbreak of hysteria and violence like that which had followed the announcement of Arrival. Many non-angel occupants of the quadrant went to stay with friends or relatives in other quads.
When at last an archangel announced that the Father had passed to Eternal Bliss, there was much weeping in the corridors, but no violence, except for a man in Quad Four named 5-Garr Joyful who beat his wife and her daughter to death “so that they could enter Eternal Bliss with the Father,” he said; he omitted, however, to kill himself.
The Temenos was filled solid for the funeral of Patel Inbliss. There were many speeches, but their tone was subdued. He had no child to deliver the final speech. The archangel Van Wing sang the dark devotional, “Eye, what do you see?” to end the ceremony. The crowd dispersed in the silence of exhaustion. The corridors that night were empty.
A Birth, Year 162, Day 223
5-CANAVAL HIROSHI’S CHILD WAS BORN to his wife 5-Liu Hsing, and was given the name 6-Canaval Alejo by his father.
Though Nova Luis was not practicing medicine during his term as council chair, Hsing had asked him to attend the birth, and he did so. It was an entirely uneventful delivery.
When he came the next day to see his patients, he sat for a while with them. Hiroshi was on the Bridge. Hsing’s milk had not come in yet, but the baby was rooting diligently at her breast or anything else that offered itself. “What did you want me for?” Luis said. “You obviously know how to have a baby a lot better than I do.”
“I guess I found out,” she said. “Learn by doing!—remember Teacher Mimi in third grade?” She was sitting up in bed, still looking tired, triumphant, flushed, and soft. She looked down at the small head covered with very fine black hair. “It’s so tiny, I can’t believe it’s the same species,” she said. “What do you call this stuff I’m leaking?”
“Colostrum. It’s the only thing his species eats.”
“Amazing,” she said, very softly touching the black fuzz with the back of a finger.
“Amazing,” Luis agreed soberly.
“Oh Luis, it was so—To have you here. I did need you.”
“It was my pleasure,” he said, still soberly.
The baby went through some spasms, and was discovered to have had a miniature bowel movement. “Well done, well done. He’ll be a member of the Turd Group yet,” Luis said. “Give him here, I’ll clean him up. Well, will you look at that? A bobwob! A veritable bobwob! A fine specimen, too.”
“It’s a gowbondo,” Hsing whispered. He looked up at her and saw she was in tears.
He laid the baby, swallowed up by its clean diaper, in her arms; she went on crying. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“New mothers cry, flatface.”
She wept very bitterly for a moment, gasping, then got control.
“Luis, what is—have you noticed anything about Hiroshi—”
“As a doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
He said nothing for a while, then, “He won’t go to a physician, so you’re asking me for a spot diagnosis—is that it?”
“I guess so. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. Has he been particularly tired?”
She nodded. “He fainted twice last week,” she said in a whisper.
“Well, my guess would be congestive heart failure. I know a good deal about it because as an asthmatic I’m liable to it myself, though I haven’t managed to achieve it yet. You can live with it for a long time. There are medicines he can take, various treatments and regimes. Send him to Regis Chandra at the Hospital.”
“I’ll try,” she whispered.
“Do it.” Luis spoke sternly. “Tell him that he owes his son a father.”
He stood up to leave. Hsing said, “Luis—”
“Take it easy, don’t worry. It’ll be all right. This fellow will see to it.” He touched the baby’s ear.
“Luis, when we land, will you go outside?”
“Of course I will, if we can. Wh
at do you think I’m insisting on all this education and training for? To watch a bunch of evajocks running around in space suits on a vidscreen?”
“It seems like so many people want to stay here.”
“Well, we’ll find out when we get there. It’s going to be interesting. It already is interesting. We found out what a whole section in Storage D is. We thought it was very heavy protective clothing, but the pieces were too large. It’s temporary livingspaces. You prop them up somehow and live inside them. And there are inflatable toruses which Bose thinks are meant to float on water. Ships. Imagine enough water to float a ship on! No. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. . . . I’ll look in tomorrow.”
The Registry of Intent Upon Arrival
IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF Year 163, all people over sixteen were required to declare Intent Upon Arrival in an open registry on the innet. They could change their declaration any time, and it would not be binding upon them until a moment of ultimate decision, to be announced after investigations of the habitability of the planet were complete and had been fully tested.
They were asked:
If the planet proved habitable, would you be willing to be part of a team visiting the surface to gather information?
Would you be willing to live on the planet while the ship remained in orbit?
If the ship left, would you be willing to stay on the planet as colonists?
They were asked to state their opinion:
How long should the ship stay in orbit as a support to the people on the planet?
And finally, if the planet was not accessible or not habitable, or if you chose to stay on the ship and not visit or colonise the planet:
If and when the ship left, should it return to the planet of origin, or continue on into space?
A return journey to Earth, according to Canaval and others, might take as little as seventy-five years if the whiplash effect of the gravity sink could be repeated. Some engineers were skeptical, but the navigators were confident that Discovery could return to Earth within a lifetime or two. This assertion met with little enthusiasm except among the navigators.
The open registry of Intent Upon Arrival, accessible on the innet at all times, went through interesting fluctuations. At first the number of people willing to visit the planet or live on it while the ship stayed in orbit—Visitors, they were dubbed—was pretty large. Very few, however, said they would be willing to stay there when the ship left. These diehards got tagged Outsiders, and accepted the name.
The largest figure by far was those who wished not to land on the planet at all, and to continue the voyage out as soon as possible. Over two thousand people registered immediately as Voyagers.
This angelic vote was so strong that there was no real question of what the final decision would be. Discovery would not stay in orbit around its Destination, would not turn back to its Origin, but would go on to Eternity.
Urgent arguments about exhaustibility of supplies, about wear and tear, about accident and entropy, swayed some Voyagers; but the majority continued steadfast in their intention to live in bliss and die to Bliss.
As this became clear, the number of people who registered as willing to stay permanently on the planet began to grow, and kept growing. It was clear that the angelic majority, eager to continue its sacred journey, could not be kept tethered to the planet for very long. Few of the angels opted even to make an exploratory visit to the planet’s surface. Many, following the teachings of the archangels, tried to persuade their friends that leaving the ship was unthinkably dangerous—not a bodily risk, but a sin, a temptation to seek unneeded knowledge at the cost of the immortal soul.
Gradually the choices narrowed, became absolute. Go out into the dark and be left there, or continue on the bright and endless voyage. The unknown, or the known. Risk, or safety. Exile, or home.
Throughout the year, the number of those who shifted their registry from Visitor to Outsider grew to over a thousand.
In the latter half of Year 163, the yellow star that was the primary of Shindychew’s system appeared to the eye at magnitude -2. Schoolchildren were taken onto the Bridge to see it in the “window.”
The education curriculum had been radically revised. Though teachers who were angels were unenthusiastic or hostile to the new material, they were required to allow “lay teachers” to present information about what the Destination might be like. The VRs of Old Earth—Jungle, Inner City, and so on—had allegedly deteriorated, and had been destroyed; but many educational films were salvaged, and others were found in Storage awaiting use by potential settlers.
Those who registered as Visitors or Outsiders formed learning groups, in which they studied and discussed these films and instructional books. Dictionaries were much called upon to settle misunderstandings and arguments over terms, though sometimes the arguments went on and on. Was a ravine a need for food, or a place where the floor went down into a hole? The dictionary offered gorge, gully, gulch, canyon, chasm, rift, abyss . . . . A low place in the floor, then. When you need food badly, that’s ravenous. But why would you need food badly?
A Pragmatist
“NO. I DON’T INTEND TO leave the ship.”
Luis stared at the Registry, where he had just discovered Tan Bingdi’s name on the list of Voyagers. He looked around at his friend, and at the screen again.
“You don’t?”
“I never did. Why?”
“You aren’t an angel,” Luis said at last, stupidly.
“Of course not. I’m a pragmatist.”
“But you’ve worked so hard to keep the . . . the way out open . . .”
“Of course.” After a minute he explained: “I don’t like quarrels, divisions, enforced choices. They spoil the quality of life.”
“You aren’t curious?”
“No. If I want to know what living on a planet surface is like, I can watch the training videos and holos. And read all the books in the Library about Old Earth. But why do I want to know what living on a planet is like? I live here. And I like it. I like what I know and I know what I like.”
Luis continued to look appalled.
“You have a sense of duty,” Bingdi told him affectionately. “Ancestral duty—go find a new world . . . Scientific duty—go find new knowledge. . . . If a door opens, you feel it’s your duty to go through it. If a door opens, I unquestioningly close it. If life is good, I don’t seek to change it. Life is good, Luis.” He spoke, as always, with little rests between the sentences. “I will miss you and a lot of other people. I’ll get bored with the angels. You won’t be bored, down on that dirtball. But I have no sense of duty and I rather enjoy being bored. I want to live my life in peace, doing no harm and receiving no harm. And, judging by the films and books, I think this may be the best place, in all the universe, to live such a life.”
“It’s a matter of control, finally, isn’t it,” Luis said.
Bingdi nodded. “We need to be in control. The angels and I. You don’t.”
“We aren’t in control. None of us. Ever.”
“I know. But we’ve got a good imitation of it, here. VR’s enough for me.”
A Death, Year 163, Day 202
AFTER RECURRENT EPISODES OF ILLNESS, Navigator Canaval Hiroshi died of heart failure. His wife Liu Hsing with their infant son, and many friends, all the staff of Navigation, and most of the Plenary Council, attended the funeral service. His colleague 4-Patel Ramdas spoke of his brilliance in his profession, and wept as he finished speaking. 5-Chatterji Uma spoke of how he laughed at silly jokes, and told one he had laughed at; she said how happy he had been to have a son, though he had known him so briefly. One of his students spoke last, in the place of the child, calling him a hard master but a great man. Hsing then went with the technicians, accompanying his body to the Life Center for recycling. She had not spoken at the service. The technicians left her alone for a moment, and she laid her hand very gently on Hiroshi’s cheek, feeling the death-cold. She whispered only, “Goodbye.”<
br />
Destination
IN THE YEAR 164, DAY 82, Discovery entered orbit around the planet Shindychew, Hsin Ti Chiu, or New Earth.
As the ship made its first forty orbits, probes sent down to the surface of the planet provided vast amounts of information, much of which was unintelligible or barely intelligible to those receiving it on the ship.
They were soon able to state with certainty, however, that people would be able to do eva on the surface without respirators or suits. There was a growing body of evidence that the planet might be accessible to long-range inhabitation. That people could live there.
In the year 164, Day 93, the first ship-to-ground vehicle made a successful landing in the area designated Subquadrant Eight of the planetary surface.
After This There Are No More Headings, for the World Is Changed, Names Change, Time Is Not Measured as It Was, and the Wind Blows Everything Away.
TO LEAVE THE SHIP: TO go through the airlock into the lander, that was a comprehensible thing—terrifying, fiercely exciting, absolute, an act of transgression, of defiance, of affirmation. The last act.
To leave the lander: to go down those five steps onto the surface of the planet, that was to leave comprehension behind, to lose understanding: to go mad. To be translated into a language where no word—ground, air—transgress, affirm—act, do—made sense. A world without words. Without meaning. A universe undefined.
Immediately perceiving the wall, the blessed needed only wall, the side of the lander, she backed up against it and at once turned to hide her face against it so that she could see it, the wall, curving metal, firm, limiting, see it and not see the other, the no walls, the vast.
The Found and the Lost Page 79