The Final Frontier

by Neil Clarke

  Why does one venture out so far from home? Generations ago, our planet Dhara took my ancestors in from the cold night and gave them warmth. Its living beings adjusted and made room, and in turn we changed ourselves to accommodate them. So it was shown to us that a planet far from humanity’s original home is kin to us, a brother, a sister, a mother. To seek kinship with all is an ancient maxim of my people, and ever since my ancestors came to this planet we have sought to do that with the smallest, tenderest thing that leaps, swoops or grows on this verdant world. Some of us have looked up at the night sky and wondered about other worlds that might be kin to us, other hearths and homes that might welcome us, through which we would experience a different becoming. Some of us yearn for those connections waiting for us on other shores. We seek to feed within us the god of wonder, to open within ourselves dusty rooms we didn’t know existed and let in the air and light of other worlds. And the discovery of the Antarsa, that most subtle of seas, has made it possible to venture far into that night, following the wide, deep current that flows by our planet during its northern winter. The current only flows one way. Away.

  So I am here.

  I look at the miniature biosphere tethered to my bunk. One of my first acts upon waking was to make sure that it was intact—and it was. Parin’s gift to me is a transparent dome of glass within which a tiny landscape grows. There are mosses in shades of green, and clumps of sugarworts, with delicate, brittle leaves colored coral and blue, and a waterbagman, with its translucent stalk and bulbous, water-filled chambers within which tiny worms lead entire lives. Worlds within worlds. She had designed the system to be self-contained so that one species’ waste was another species’ sustenance. It is a piece of Dhara, and it has helped sustain me during each of the times I have been awake, these years.

  It helps to remember who I am. This time when I woke up, I had a long and terrifying moment of panic, because I couldn’t remember who I was, or where I was. All I knew was that it was very cold, and a soft, level voice was talking to me (the ship). I cannot begin to describe how horrific a sense of loss this was—that my self had somehow slipped its moorings and was adrift on a dark sea, and I couldn’t find it. Slowly, as memory and warmth returned, I found myself, anchored myself to the rock of remembrance, of shared love under a kind sun. So as I ponder the situation I’m in, the mystery of why the ship woke me—I will speak my own story, which is also many stories. Like my mothers who first told me of the world, I will tell it aloud, tethering myself through the umbilical cords of kinship, feeding the gods within.

  I have been traveling for nearly eight years. Yet I seem to have left only yesterday, my memories of the parting are so clear. I remember when my craft launched from the Lunar Kinship’s base, how I slowly shut down conventional fusion power and edged us into the Antarsa current. How it seemed hours before I could maneuver the little craft into the superfast central channel, manipulating the altmatter wings so that my spaceship wouldn’t fall apart. But at last we were at a comfortable acceleration, going swifter than any human on my world—and I looked back.

  The moon, Roshna, was slipping away beneath me with vertiginous speed. The lights of the Lunar Kinship were blinking in farewell, the radio crackling with familiar voices that already seemed distant, shouting their relief and congratulations. At that moment I was assailed with an unfamiliar feeling, which I recognized after a while as my first experience of loneliness. It was unbearable—a nightmare of childhood from which there is no escape.

  Looking at the screen, with my kin’s images flickering, hearing their voices, I was severely tempted to turn around. I was close enough to still do this—to arc my trajectory, turn from the Antarsa current into a high moon orbit and then use conventional fusion power to land. But I had pledged I would embark on this journey, had planned for it, dreamed of it—and there had been so much hard work on the part of several Kinships, so much debating in the Council—that I clenched my fists against temptation and let the moment go. I feasted my eyes on the thick forests, the purple scrublands of the moon, and the shining blue-green curve of Dhara below, the planet we had called home for five generations, memorizing the trails of white clouds, the jagged silver edge of the Mahapara continent, the Tura-Tura archipelago like a trail of tears, as a lover memorizes the body of her beloved.

  This was the moment for which my friends from Ship University and I had planned and prepared for nearly ten years, soon after the discovery of the Antarsa. We had placed a proposal before the World Council, which debated for eight years. There were representatives from all the Kinships (except the People of the Ice, of course—they have not attended Council in two generations): the People of the Himdhara mountains, the People of the Western Sea, the Roshnans from the Lunar Kinship, and of course my own People of the Devtaru, among a number of smaller Kinships. There was endless discussion, much concern, but they let us design and send the first few probes into the Antarsa current. Interpreting the signals from the probes, the University experts determined that the current appeared to run in a more-or-less straight line toward the Ashtan star system five light-years away. The last signal from the last probe had arrived seven years after its launch, when the probe was as yet some distance short of the Ashtan system. There was something ominous about the probe’s subsequent silence—what had befallen it?—although the explanation could have been as simple as malfunctioning equipment or a chance hit by a space rock.

  Some argued that an expedition was justified, because we hadn’t heard from the Ashtan system since my ancestors had arrived on Dhara. Two generation ships had left the old world, one bound for Dhara, the other for Ashta, and they had been one people before that. So our people had always wondered what befell our kin around the brightest star in our sky. Others in the Council argued that this was the very reason we should not venture out, because the silence of the Ashtans—and the probe—pointed to some unknown danger. And what if the current took us somewhere else entirely? What guarantee that we would wash up on a world as kind as our own? To go out into the void was to seek kinship with death before our time. And so on.

  But at last the Council gave its reluctant blessing, and here I was, on a ship bound for the stars. I am a woman past my youth, although not yet of middle age, and I have strived always to take responsibility for my actions. So I watched the moon and the great curve of the planet that was my home fall away into the night, and I wept. But I did not turn around.

  I float within my ship like a fishling in a swamp. I have swum through the inertial webbing (softer and more coarse at the moment, since we are at low acceleration) from chamber to chamber, checking that all is well. No more strange images on the radar. All systems working in concert. The bioskin that lines each chamber, produces the air I breathe, recycles waste, and spins the inertial web looks a healthy gold-green. We are now moving at half the speed of light, absurdly fast. From the porthole, the distant stars are like the eyes of the night. I sip a tangy, familiar tea from a tube (I have a little cold) and breathe slowly, remembering what my friend Raim told me.

  Raim taught me to sail on the Western sea. His people designed the altmatter wings that spread within the navigation chamber (surely the only ship ever built whose sails are on the inside). When I woke from cold sleep there was a message from him. He said: Mayha, farsister, when you are lonely, make a friend of loneliness.

  So I make kinship with the dark. I whisper to it, I tell it stories. Perhaps the dark will have something to say to me in turn.

  At first our plan was to make the inside of the ship a biosphere, rich with life, choosing the most appropriate and hardy species, so that I would feel more we than I. But after debating on it the Council decided that unless I wished it very strongly, this would not be right. To subject other lifeforms to human whim, to put them in danger without compelling reason was not our way. Besides, we ran the risk of upsetting the balance of life on other worlds in case our containment protocols failed. When I heard the reasoning, I too fell in with this. We
compromised thus: the inner surface of the ship would be a bioskin, but that was all. To save energy and to enable the long years to pass without pathological loneliness, we would install a cryochamber. My apprehensions at the length and solitude of the journey were nothing to that old desire within me since childhood: to soar skyward in search of our kin, new and old.

  But as I was leaving, saying my forever goodbyes amidst tears and jokes and good wishes, Parin came up to me, indignant. She was worked up about the Council decision to not install a biosphere within the ship. She thrust something at me: a transparent dome of glass within which a tiny landscape grew.

  “Mayha, take this!” she said fiercely. “I can’t believe they’re going to condemn you to such a long journey alone!”

  I tried to argue that the Council’s position was an attempt to be just to all lifeforms, and that I didn’t know how her sealed-in, miniature biosphere would adapt to zero gravity—but I’ve lost most arguments with Parin. And the little biosphere was beautiful. Besides, I did not want our parting to be acrimonious. Parin and I had grown up with the rest of the horde of children under the same kinhouse roof. Through much of my childhood I had been part of her schemes and adventures. I remembered the time we had rescued a nest of firebirds from some imagined danger, and how we’d wept copiously when they died. Most of Parin’s schemes had involved guilt and good intentions in about equal measure.

  I took the little biosphere, as she’d known I would. She scowled at me, then started to cry. We hugged and wept. Then the others had their turn at goodbye. Goodbyes at the kinhouse always take a long time; there are so many of us. And this time, for this historic one-way journey, there were people from nearly all the hundred and twenty-three kinhouses of the Kinship of the Devtaru, waiting to see me off on the shuttle that would take me to the moon, where I was to board my craft. There were also representatives from the People of the Western Sea, my friend Raim, tall and grey-skinned, stared at by the children, waving at me with one webbed hand. The Ship University folk had adapted the spacecraft from one of the shuttles aboard the old generation ship and tested it. A knot of them was present, waiting at the edge of the crowd for their turn. Closest to me stood my mothers, each displaying grief and pride consistent with her nature: Kusum yelling about the dangers of the journey and how I should be careful about this or that, as though I was three again, Brihat simply holding my arm and staring into my face, with tears streaming down her broad cheeks, and Simara being sensible and controlled although her smile wavered. My birth-mother Vishwana was behind them, regal as always, our representative to the Council. She nodded and smiled at me. Although I had never known her well, I had always been in awe of her. My kin-sisters and brothers were there, alternately cheering and weeping, and Sarang, grown so tall since I’d last seen her, tossed me a braided ribbon over the heads of the crowd.

  My father was not there. I saw him rarely, since he was a traveler and a trader, and when I did we always took pleasure in sharing stories with each other. He had sent me a message by radio wishing me luck, but he was halfway across the world, too far to come in time.

  Then near the back with the guests I saw Vik. He had partnered with me for fourteen years, and we had gone our separate ways, in friendship, until my decision to go on this journey became public. He had become a bitter opponent in the Council discussions, and would no longer speak to me. He looked at me from the back of the crowd and looked away again.

  I have partnered for long and short periods with both men and women, but Vik was the one with whom I spent the longest time. There were times I thought we would always be together, as some partnerships are, but we sought joy in different things that took us on diverging paths. He was a historian at Ship University, content to stay in one place and let his mind go into the deep past. Like my father, I needed to wander. It was as simple as that.

  I wanted very badly to end things well with Vik. I took a pendant off the string around my neck and flung it over the heads of the crowd toward him. It hit him on the cheek—he caught it, looked irritable, put it in his pocket. I smiled at him. He rubbed his cheek, looked at me and away again.

  The shuttle finally took off. I scarcely remember my time at Roshna, at the Lunar Kinship, where my spacecraft was waiting. They took care of me, asked me again the ritual question before one goes on a long journey: Is your heart in it, kinswoman? Do you really want to go on this quest? And I said yes, yes, and there were more goodbyes. At last I was in the craft, up and away. As I manipulated the sails in the navigation chamber, as I’d done so many times on my way to the moon—except that this time I would be going beyond it—as I felt the familiar tug of the Antarsa current, the old excitement rose in me again. It was too soon to feel lonely, or so I thought, because the love of my people was an almost tangible presence.

  As I float by the porthole, I can see them all so clearly. Their faces tender and animated, as I turn from the raised platform into the doorway of the shuttle, turn once more to look for the last time at my people and my world, to breathe the forest-scented air. There is the wide, woven roof of the kinhouse, and the vines running up the brown walls, the gourds ripening green to gold. Here I had played and climbed, looked at the stars, dreamed and wept. There is the gleam of the river, the pier, the boats waiting on the water. Dwarfing them all, the great, shaggy forest, trees like spires, trees like umbrellas, reaching leafy arms into the sky, taller than the tallest kinhouse. I think: when I rise up, I will see again the Devtaru, the one closest to us anyhow, greater than any tree that exists or can be dreamed. The Devtaru has shared its secret with us, and because of that I will fly beyond the moon. As I rise I will speak my gratitude to it, to all the world for having formed me, made me into myself. And so I did.

  The devtaru is not a tree. It is perhaps what a tree would dream of, if a tree could dream.

  The first one I ever saw lies two days away from my kinhouse. In my thirteenth year, some of us trekked through the forest with Visith, one of my aunts, who has been a sister of the forest most of her life. On the way we learned plant lore, and we practiced the art of offering kinship to the beings of the forest.

  “Kinship isn’t friendship,” my aunt said. “Don’t go doing stupid things like putting your hand into a tree-bear’s nest, or poking around inside an occupied bee-apple. Learn to sit still in a clear space, and let the creatures observe you, as you observe them.”

  We did a lot of sitting still. It was difficult at first but I got the idea of it quicker than the others. The forest whispered around me—sunlight dappled the ground. A wind-around approached me, its tendrils aquiver, looking for something to climb. I nudged it away with my toe—it was kin, but I didn’t want it taking advantage of my stillness. I sensed that I was being watched: a moon-eye monkey, which meant we were close to the devtaru. It was up in a tree, the white rings around its eyes giving it an expression of permanent astonishment. My heart thundered with excitement as the little creature peered out from its leafy shelter. But it was only after two days of seeing and being seen that the moon-eye came out into plain sight. A day later it took an apple-rind from me. After that the moon-eyes were everywhere, moving above me over the trees, chattering to each other and glancing at me from time to time. Then I could walk about without them hiding. I had made kinship!

  Parin was in trouble for being too impatient, trying to climb up to a moon-eye’s nest before it was appropriate to do so. The other two hadn’t yet obtained the knack of it and needed to practice stillness without fidgeting or falling asleep. We lingered in that place until their impatience gave way to resignation, and they broke through. We got a congratulatory lecture from Visith.

  “A kinship is a relationship that is based on the assumption that each person, human or otherwise, has a right to exist, and a right to agency,” she intoned. “This means that to live truly in the world we must constantly adjust to other beings, as they adjust to us. We must minimize and repair any harm that we do. Kinship goes all the way from friendship to e
nmity—and if a particular being does not desire it, why, we must leave it alone, leave the area. Thus through constant practice throughout our lives we begin to be ready with the final kinship—the one we make with death.”

  We looked at each other and shivered.

  “You are a long way from that,” Visith said sardonically, then smiled a rare smile. “But you’ve taken the first step. Come, let us keep going.”

  So the journey to the devtaru took several days, and when we were standing at its edge we didn’t even know it.

  The ground changing should have been our first clue. The forest floor was dotted with undergrowth, but here we found that great roots as thick as a person reared out of the ground and back again, forming a fascinating tangle of steps and crevices that invited climbing. The trees had changed too—the canopy above seemed to be knit together, and trunks dropped down and joined the roots, making a three-dimensional maze.

  Visith didn’t let us go into the tangle. Instead we made camp and practiced stillness between meals and washing, and took walks along the perimeter of the maze. After two days of this, during which our impatience gave way to resignation, and then, finally, the open, accepting, alertness of mind that births the possibility of kinship—Parin pointed at the tangle.

  “It’s a devtaru! And we didn’t even know it!”

  It was indeed. The enormous central trunk was deep inside the forest of secondary trunks, likely several hours journey. The roots went deeper down than any other organism on the planet. To see a devtaru in its entirety, one has to be airborne, or on a far away hill.

  Under the canopy, the moon-eyes led us over the maze of roots and trunks. We found shelter in the crook of a giant root, underneath which flowed a clear stream of water. The bark against which I laid my head was a thin skin that glowed faintly in the darkness, pulsing in response to my presence. To make kinship with a devtaru is extraordinarily difficult—Visith is one of the few who has succeeded, and it took her nearly twenty years.