Stars That Sing the Requiem
Page 6
“You’ve managed to find the spacer bar,” the man told her. The intent way he studied her was starting to make her uneasy. “Only the hard-core spacers come here. Oh, not the Corp, or the Service, it’s too…” he waved his hand around meaningfully, “unstructured for their tastes. And it’s not on the maps or in the guides. And the tourists don’t know it’s here.”
“I found it,” she said quietly. “And I’m not a spacer.”
“You’re also not a tourist. What are you doing here?”
Diana stared off toward the window again. Earth was upside-down now, North America at the bottom. The North Pole as “up” was an arbitrary bias, she knew intellectually. It still looked wrong this way. She thought about what lay beneath that frosting of swirling clouds, of who and what she’d left behind.
In a whisper, she answered, “Suddenly I was suffocating down there.”
The man nodded. “I know what you mean. I think that’s why we all keep coming out here, even if it’s not why we went out in the first place.”
The table presented Diana with a fresh drink. She sipped, thinking they could say what they liked but vacuum distilled rum from hydroponically grown cane just didn’t taste like the real thing.
As if reading her mind again, the man smiled at her. “Different isn’t necessarily worse,” he commented, raising his own drink in salute.
Diana set the glass down on the table. “It is in this case,” she said with a wry grin. She sighed and looked around again, avoiding the view of Earth. After a long time she again turned to the man seated opposite her. “You haven’t asked my name.”
“Nor you mine.” He paused. “Does it matter?”
The glistening planet beckoned her, a siren’s song sounding in her mind despite the silent gulf of night. Earth had slid fractionally off to the side of window. The Escher was in a slowly rotating part of the station that further out provided centrifugal gravitation.
She shrugged. “I guess not.”
“I haven’t been down there for ten years,” he said. “Longer in Earth years.” She glanced sharply at him. “The relativistic thing, you know.”
“Oh. You’ve made Long Jumps.” She wondered how old he really was, what year he’d been born, that is. To all appearances he was in his early forties. What would it be like to stay young while one’s brothers, sisters and friends grew older? Perhaps she’d feel grand, as smug as if she’d won a prize, a very real fountain of youth, while they deteriorated and turned to aged dust. Perhaps not. Maybe she’d feel even more out of sync than she already did, an anachronism returning to a world that had gone on without her.
“One short jump, maybe two,” the man said in a quiet, distant voice, “don’t really matter. Then they start to add up and pretty soon you can’t go back there at all.” He focused on her, staring harshly into her eyes. “If you’re going back, go now.”
Diana dropped her eyes and swallowed hard. “My return is today.” Out the window the planet had moved half out of view.
He nodded slowly. “The Service and the Corp turned you down, huh?”
She swallowed the bitter taste of his scorn. Her mouth twitched in a slight smile. It didn’t taste quite right. “I turned them down.”
“Hmph. What about the Scouters?”
Diana snorted, shook her head, then forced down a gulp of the pseudo-rum. “Not for me.”
“Why not? Because they’re not ‘official’. You that much of a government lover?” Now he snorted. “Most spacers I know are closet anarchists.” He scrutinized her. “Or is it because they’re the misfits? The ones who can’t take orders, won’t wear uniforms, never get the glory or recognition no matter how much they deserve it?”
Glancing toward the human bat cluster, Diana swallowed hard. He was describing her. She’d never fit in, no matter how her family tried to squeeze and nudge her into that round hole. Be something nice, something normal, get these foolish notions out of your head, Diana, they’d always said. You’ll never be anything special, never be anything extraordinary. Her mother just sighed in disgust when she said she was going out to space. Mother didn’t try to talk her out of it. She knew Diana would be back, tail tucked between her legs.
Diana had been excited when she took the Corp and the Colonial Service exams. The recruiters had smiled so encouragingly when they told her the results, and offered her positions as dull and un-extraordinary as any she could get on Earth. In fact there was a good chance she’d end up posted on Earth, the bland, smiling faces said as if offering her a prize. She just wasn’t suited to their space-faring positions, they told her.
Tears wanted to squeeze out of her eyes but she wasn’t the crying type. Sometimes she wished she could cry. Maybe it was because she just couldn’t tell them exactly what it was that she did want. She had stumbled over the words trying to tell them she just wanted out. She wanted to get away, to be different from the dull herd down below. She wanted to leave behind the sheep contented to plod along and soar higher up, above the atmosphere…
“Most of these folks are Scouters,” the man said quietly. His eyes were still fixed on her, measuring her in a different way. It wasn’t just a tumble in freefall he was after, she realized. She looked around at the people scattered through the Escher again. There was a quality about them that she couldn’t define, a brazen sense of defiance, a freedom, certainly a looseness the Corp and Service lacked. But there was also an edge to them, an urgency, perhaps, a wish that they weren’t the misfits of space. A lot who went out never came back. They never earned medals or parades. None of their mothers bragged about what they did.
“When a Scouter goes out, he never knows how long it will be. They hunt for worlds that may not be there, hope for the day they hit the glory find — a prime world — or hit the Big One, first contact with an alien civilization. They leave behind their families until they lose them entirely to time. They leave behind the world they knew, until they’re strangers everywhere except among other Scouters.”
Diana glared at him. “Why are you telling me this? I’m going back there,” she gestured to the remaining sliver of Earth, “today.”
“Just thought you ought to hear it.”
“You’re a Scouter recruiter, aren’t you? You followed me here.”
He smiled. “I didn’t follow you. I didn’t have to. I suspected you’d find your way here.” He stood. “Well, I’ll be going. I know you’ve got to be going too.” He walked up a ramp that curved up and over her head until he walked away on her ‘ceiling’. Diana stared morosely out the window. She could be home by tomorrow, in her mother’s kitchen, accepting the jobs offered her, perhaps finding a husband, having children… adding to the complacent herd content to suffocate below the atmosphere.
“Wait,” Diana called, craning her neck to look up at him. Diana pointed to the window where now showed only stars sprinkled throughout the black depths of space. “That’s where I want to go.”
The End
Afterword
Visit the author’s web page at debrule.com
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Stars That Sing the Requiem is often taken to be an autobiographical story. It certainly has many personal elements, but is not truly autobiographical. Stars That Sing the Requiem actually began in 1982 as a concept for a screenplay, a college film school project that had to percolate some time before it came together into this short story. This is more of a tale of feelings than events, and has always struck a stronger chord with female editors and readers than male–it’s October Sky for those of us who had for most of our lives been pushed away from the quest for space yet yearned for it as strongly as any of the men. Stars That Sing the Requiem was first published in Galactic Citizen, accepted as a reprint to regrettably defunct Keen SF (and spoken of highly by the editor in an interview), published in Millennium, both the webzine and a later ‘best of’ print issue. The editors of Millennium nominated it for a ‘Best of the Web’ anthology, to which it was also accept
ed.
Flowers on the Moon is about a terraforming project of a type we seldom hear about–terraforming our own moon. I worked quite a bit on the idea that the moon could be made to hold a thin atmosphere if an artificial cap could be put on it–part of Heinlein’s ongoing idea that wherever there is mass and energy people can create a livable environment. The true theme of the story, however, is that the efforts and sacrifices of individuals can summon and change the future. Originally published in Private Galaxy.
Silver Lady is a short-short, or prose poem, about Earth’s moon. Originally published in Wellspring literary magazine, reprinted in Jackhammer.
Terra Formation is one of those stories based on an interesting notion that occurred to me–what if you needed to terraform a planet fast, in a catastrophic way, much as Earth was changed in the past at the time of major extinctions, but by intent. The main character’s name, “Jurnee Ha’Dastra,” if pronounced with the H silent is “Journey to the Stars.”
Those We Left Behind is a prequel to a series of stories which take place in the Scouter ‘verse. These stories will soon be available beginning with a short story and novella collection titled, Call of the Stars. Those We Left Behind was originally published in Millennium Science Fiction and Fantasy, September 1998. Reprinted in The Best of Millennium Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine, Vol. 1 Issue 3, Winter 1998, republished in Private Galaxy.
Look for Deb Houdek Rule’s full-length novel, Of All the Western Stars, now available on Amazon.com Kindle, ASIN: B006V07H6S. Of All the Western Stars is a science fiction / time travel / historical romance novel set in Tudor England. Ashur comes to the past accidentally from the distant future, bearing a heavy burden of guilt. Lost in 1518, he meets Lisette, a young woman who years for more than her time can give her.
Call of the Stars, by Deb Houdek Rule, a science fiction short story and novella series will be coming soon to Amazon.com.
Table of Contents
Stars That Sing the Requiem
Flowers on the Moon
Silver Lady
Silence At the Fall of Night
Terra Formation
Those We Left Behind
Afterword