The Final Frontier

by Neil Clarke

  She glared at the wall. “Only that we have wasted a century and a half in this desolate corner of the galaxy.”

  “We, Kamilah?” The Godspeed gave her an amused smile. “How long have you been with me?”

  “Not quite a year.” She folded her arms.

  “Ah, the impatience of flesh.” The Godspeed turned to the stars behind her. “You have traveled not quite a third of a light-year since your arrival. Consider that I’ve traveled 50.12 light-years since my departure from Nuevo Sueño. Now see what that looks like to me.” She thrust her hands above her head and suddenly the points of light on the wall streamed into ribbons and the center of the screen jerked up-right-left-down-left with each course correction and then the ribbons became stars again. She faced the library again, her face glowing. “You have just come 15.33 parsecs in ten seconds. If I follow my instructions to reach my journey’s end at the center of our galaxy I will have traveled 8.5 kiloparsecs.”

  —if?—buzzed minus.

  “Believe me, Kamilah, I can imagine your experience of spacetime more easily than you can imagine mine.” She tugged her sash into place and then pointed at Kamilah. “You’re going to mope now.”

  Kamilah shook her head. Her medallion had gone completely black.

  “A hundred and thirty-three people have jumped to me since Nuevo Sueño. How many times do you think I’ve had this conversation, Kamilah?”

  Kamilah bit her lip.

  “Ah, if only these walls could talk.” The Godspeed’s laugh sounded like someone dropping silver spoons. “The things they have seen.”

  —is she all right?—buzzed plus.

  “Here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know,” said the Godspeed. “A fun fact. Now that Adel has replaced Upwood among our little company, everyone on board is under thirty.”

  The four of them digested this information in astonished silence.

  “Wait a minute,” said Meri. “What about Jonman?”

  “He would like you to believe he’s older but he’s the same age as Kamilah.” She reached into the pocket of her greatcoat and pulled out a scrap of digitex. A new window opened on the wall; it contained the birth certificate of Jon Haught Shillaber. “Twenty-eight standard.”

  “All of us?” said Jarek. “That’s an pretty amazing coincidence.”

  “A coincidence?” She waved the birth certificate away. “You don’t know how hard I schemed to arrange it.” She chuckled. “I was practically diabolical.”

  “Speedy,” said Meri carefully, “you’re starting to worry us.”

  “Worry?”

  “Worry,” said Jarek.

  “Why, because I make jokes? Because I have a flare for the dramatic?” She bowed low and gave them an elaborate hand flourish. “I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

  minus buzzed—time to be afraid—

  “So,” said the Godspeed, “we seem to be having a morale problem. I know my feelings have been hurt. I think we need to come together, work on some common project. Build ourselves back into a team.” She directed her gaze at Adel. “What do you say?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then I suggest that we put on a play.”

  Meri moaned.

  “Yes, that will do nicely.” The Godspeed clapped her hands, clearly pleased at the prospect. “We’ll need to a pick a script. Adel, I understand you’ve had some acting experience so I’m going to appoint you and Lihong to serve on the selection committee with me. I think poor Sister needs to get out and about more.”

  “Don’t let Lihong pick,” said Meri glumly. “How many plays are there about praying?”

  “Come now, Meri,” said the Godspeed. “Give her a chance. I think you’ll be surprised.”

  DAY FIVE

  There are two kinds of pilgrimage, as commonly defined. One is a journey to a specific, usually sacred place; it takes place and then ends. The other is less about a destination and more about a spiritual quest. When we decide to jump to a threshold, we most often begin our pilgrimages intending to get to the Godspeed or the Big D or the Bisous Bisous, stay for some length of time and then return to our ordinary lives. However, as time passes on board we inevitably come to realize—sometimes to our chagrin—that we have been infected with an irrepressible yearning to seek out the numinous, wherever and however it might be found.

  Materialists don’t have much use for the notion of a soul. They prefer to locate individuality in the mind, which emerges from the brain but cannot exist separately from it. They maintain that information must be communicated to the brain through the senses, and only through the senses. But materialists have yet to offer a rigorous explanation of what happens during those few seconds of a jump when the original has ceased to exist and the scan from it has yet to be reassembled. Because during the brief interval when there are neither senses nor brain nor mind, we all seem to receive some subtle clue about our place in the universe.

  This is why there are so few materialists.

  Adel had been having dreams. They were not bad dreams, merely disturbing. In one, he was lost in a forest where people grew instead of trees. He stumbled past shrubby little kids he’d gone to school with and great towering grownups like his parents and Uncle Durwin and President Adriana. He knew he had to keep walking because if he stopped he would grow roots and raise his arms up to the sun like all the other tree people, but he was tired, so very tired.

  In another, he was standing backstage watching a play he’d never heard of before and Sister Lihong tapped him on the shoulder and told him that Gavrila had called in sick and that he would have to take her part and then she pushed him out of the wings and he was onstage in front of a sellout audience, every one of which was Speedy, and he stumbled across the stage to the bed where Jarek waited for him, naked Jarek, and then Adel realized that he was naked too, and he climbed under the covers because he was cold and embarrassed, and Jarek kept staring at him because he, Adel, was supposed to say his line but he didn’t know the next line or any line and so he did the one thing he could think to do, which was to kiss Jarek, on the mouth, and then his tongue brushed the ridges of Jarek’s teeth and all the Speedys in the audience gave him a standing ovation . . .

  . . . which woke him up.

  Adel blinked. He lay in bed between Meri and Jarek; both were still asleep. They were under a yellow sheet that had pink kites and blue clouds on it. Jarek’s arm had dropped loosely across Adel’s waist. In the dim light he could see that Meri’s lips were parted and for a while he listened to the seashore whisper of her breathing. He remembered that something had changed last night between the three of them.

  Something, but what?

  Obviously his two lovers weren’t losing any sleep over it. Speedy had begun to bring the lights up in Meri’s room so it had to be close to morning chime. Adel lifted his head but couldn’t see the clock without disturbing his bedmates, so he tried to guess the time. If the ceiling was set to gain twenty lumens a minute and Speedy started at 0600, then it was . . . he couldn’t do the math. After six in the morning, anyway.

  The something was Jarek—yes. Adel realized that he’d enjoyed having sex with Jarek just a bit more than with Meri. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed her too. There had been plenty of enjoying going on, that was for sure. A thrilling night all around. But Adel could be rougher with Jarek than he was with Meri. He didn’t have to hold anything back. Sex with Jarek was a little like wrestling, only with orgasms.

  Adel had been extremely doubtful about sleeping with both Meri and Jarek, until Meri had made it plain that was the only way he was ever going to get into her bed. The normal buzz of his opposites had risen to a scream; their deliberations had gotten so shrill that he’d been forced to mute their input. Not that he didn’t know what they were thinking, of course; they were him.

  Jarek had been the perfect gentleman at first; they had taken turns pleasuring Meri until the day before yesterday when she had guided Adel’s hand to
Jarek’s erect cock. An awkward moment, but then Adel still felt like he was all thumbs and elbows when it came to sex anyway. Jarek talked continually while he made love, so Adel was never in doubt as to what Jarek wanted him to do. And because he trusted Jarek, Adel began to talk too. And then to moan, whimper, screech, and laugh out loud.

  Adel felt extraordinarily adult, fucking both a man and a woman. He tried the word out in the gloom, mouthing it silently. I fuck, you fuck, he, she, or it fucks, we fuck, you all fuck, they fuck. The only thing that confused him about losing his virginity was not that his sexual identity was now slightly blurry; it was his raging appetite. Now that he knew what he had been missing, he wanted to have sex with everyone here on the Godspeed and then go back to Harvest and fuck his way through Great Randall Science and Agricultural College and up and down Crown Edge. Well, that wasn’t quite true. He didn’t particularly want to see the Manmans naked and the thought of sleeping with his parents made him queasy and now that he was an experienced lover, he couldn’t see himself on top, underneath or sideways with his ex, Gavrila. But still. He’d been horny back on Harvest but now he felt like he might spin out of control. Was it perverted to want so much sex?

  Adel was wondering what color Sister Lihong Rain’s hair was and how it would look spread across his pillow when Kamilah spoke through the closed door.

  “Send Adel out,” she said, “but put some clothes on him first.”

  Adel’s head jerked up. “How does she know I’m here?”

  “Time is it?” said Meri.

  “Don’t know.” Jarek moaned and gave him a knee in the small of the back. “But it’s for you, brother, so you’d better get it.”

  He clambered over Meri and tumbled out of bed onto her loafers. Their clothes were strewn around the room. Adel pulled on his saniwear, the taut silver warm-ups that Meri had created for him and his black softwalks. The black floss cape had been his own idea—a signature, like Kamilah’s medallion or Sister’s veil. The cape was modest, only the size of a face towel, and was attached to his shoulders by the two merit pins he’d recycled from his Host uniforms.

  He paused in front of a wall, waved it to mirror mode, combed fingers through his hair and then stepped through the door. Kamilah leaned against the wall with her medallion in hand. She gazed into it thoughtfully.

  “How did you find me?” said Adel.

  “I asked Speedy.” She let it fall to her chest and Adel saw the eating man again. Adel had noticed that her eating man had reappeared again and again, always at the same table. “You want breakfast?”

  He was annoyed with her for rousting him out of bed before morning chime. “When I wake up.” Who knew what erotic treats he might miss?

  “Your eyes look open to me.” She gave him a knowing smile. “Busy night?”

  He considered telling her that it was none of her business, but decided to flirt instead. Maybe he’d get lucky. “Busy enough.” He gave his shoulders a twitch, which made his cape flutter. “You?”

  “I slept.”

  “I slept too.” Adel waited a beat. “Eventually.”

  “Gods, Adel!” Kamilah laughed out loud. “You’re a handful, you know that?” She put an arm around his shoulders and started walking him back up Dream Street. “Meri and Jarek had better watch out.”

  Adel wasn’t quite sure what she meant but he decided to let it drop for now. “So what’s this about?”

  “A field trip.” They started down the Tulip Stairway. “What do you know about physics?”

  Adel had studied comparative entertainment at Great Randall S&A, although he’d left school in his third year to train for the Harvest Olympics and to find himself. Unfortunately, he’d finished only sixth in the 200 meters and Adel was still pretty much missing. Science in general and physics in particular had never been a strength. “I know some. Sort of.”

  “What’s the first law of thermodynamics?”

  “The first law of thermodynamics.” He closed his eyes and tried to picture the screen. “Something like . . . um . . . a body stays in motion . . . ah . . . as long as it’s in motion?”

  “Oh great,” she said wearily. “Have you ever been in space?”

  For the first time in days he missed the familiar buzz of his opposites. He lifted their mute.

  —she thinks we’re a moron—buzzed minus.

  —we are a moron—plus buzzed.

  “Everybody’s in space,” he said defensively. “That’s where all the planets are. We’re traveling through space this very moment.”

  “This wasn’t meant to be a trick question,” she said gently. “I mean have you ever been in a hardsuit out in the vacuum?”

  “Oh,” he said. “No.”

  “You want to?”

  —wow—

  —yes—

  He had to restrain himself from hugging her. “Absolutely.”

  “Okay then.” She gestured at the entrance to the Chillingsworth Breakfasting Room. “Let’s grab something to take away and head down to the locker room. We need to oxygenate for about half an hour.”

  —but why is she doing this?—buzzed plus.

  There were two ways to the surface of the Godspeed: through the great bay doors of the Well Met Arena or out the Clarke Airlock. Adel straddled a bench in the pre-breathing locker room and wolfed down a sausage and honeynut torte while Kamilah explained what was about to happen.

  “We have to spend another twenty-minutes here breathing a hundred percent oxygen to scrub nitrogen out of our bodies. Then just before we climb into the hardsuits, we put on isotherms.” She opened a locker and removed two silky black garments. “You want to wait until the last minute; isotherms take some getting used to. But they keep the hardsuit from overheating.” She tossed one to Adel.

  “But how can that happen?” He held the isotherm up; it had a hood and opened with a slide down the torso. The sleeves ended at the elbow and the pants at the knee. “Isn’t space just about as cold as anything gets?”

  “Yes, but the hardsuit is airtight, which makes it hard to dissipate all the heat that you’re going to be generating. Even though you get some servo-assist, it’s a big rig, Adel. You’ve got to work to get anywhere.” She raised her steaming mug of kappa and winked at him. “Think you’re man enough for the job?”

  —let that pass—buzzed plus.

  “I suppose we’ll know soon enough.” Adel rubbed the fabric of the isotherm between his thumb and forefinger. It was cool to the touch.

  Kamilah sipped from the mug. “Once we’re out on the surface,” she said, “Speedy will be running all your systems. All you have to do is follow me.”

  The Godspeed displayed on a section of wall. She was wearing an isotherm with the hood down; it clung to her like a second skin. Adel could see the outline of her nipples and the subtle wrinkles her pubic hair made in the fabric.

  —but they’re not real—minus buzzed.

  “What are you doing, Kamilah?” said the Godspeed. “You were out just last week.”

  “Adel hasn’t seen the view.”

  “I can show him any view he wants. I can fill the Welcome Arena with stars. He can see in ultraviolet. Infrared.”

  “Yes, but it wouldn’t be quite real, would it?”

  “Reality is over-rated.” The Godspeed waggled a finger at Kamilah. “You’re taking an unusual interest in young Adel. I’m watching, perfect one. “

  “You’re watching everyone, Speedy. That’s how you get your cookies.” With that she pulled the top of her scrubs off. “Time to get naked, Adel. Walk our hardsuits out and start the checklist, would you, Speedy?”

  —those are real—buzzed minus.

  —Meri and Jarek remember—

  —we can look—

  And Adel did look as he slithered out of his own clothes. Although he was discreet about it, he managed to burn indelible images into his memory of Kamilah undressing, the curve of her magnificent hip, the lush pendency of her breasts, the breathtaking expanse of her back as
her tawny skin stretched tight over nubs of her spine. She was a woman a man might drown in. Abruptly, he realized that he was becoming aroused. He turned away from her, tossed his clothes into a locker, snatched at the isotherm and pulled it on.

  And bit back a scream.

  Although it was as silken as when Kamilah had pulled it out of the drawer, his isotherm felt like it had spent the last ten years in cryogenic storage. Adel’s skin crawled beneath it and his hands curled into fists. As a swimmer, Adel had experienced some precipitous temperature changes, but he’d never dived into a pool filled with liquid hydrogen.

  —trying to kill us—screeched minus.

  “Are you all right?” said Kamilah. “Your eyes look like eggs.”

  “Ah,” said Adel. “Ah.”

  —we can do this—buzzed plus.

  “Hang on,” said Kamilah. “It passes.”

  As the hardsuits clumped around the corner of the locker room, their servos singing, Adel shivered and caught his breath. He thought he could hear every joint crack as he unclenched his fists and spread his fingers. When he pulled the isotherm hood over his head, he got the worst ice cream headache he’d ever had.

  “This is going to be fun,” he said through clenched teeth.

  The hardsuits were gleaming white eggs with four arms, two legs and a tail. The arms on either side were flexrobotic and built for heavy lifting. Beside them were fabric sleeves into which a spacewalker could insert his arms for delicate work. The legs ended in ribbed plates, as did the snaking tail, which Kamilah explained could be used as a stabilizer or an anchor. A silver ball the size of coconut perched at the top of the suit.

  “Just think of them as spaceships that walk,” said Kamilah. “Okay, Speedy. Pop the tops.”

  The top, translucent third of each egg swung back. Kamilah muscled a stairway up to the closest hardsuit. “This one’s yours. Settle in but don’t try moving just yet.”

  Adel slid his legs into the suit’s legs and cool gel flowed around them, locking him into place. He ducked instinctively as the top came down, but he had plenty of room. Seals fasten with a scritch and the heads up display on the inside of the top began to glow with controls and diagnostics. Beneath the translucent top were fingerpads for controlling the robotic lifter arms; near them were the holes of the hardsuit’s sleeves. Adel stuck his arms through, flexed his fingers in the gloves then turned his attention back to the HUD. He saw that he had forty hours of oxygen reserve and his batteries were at 98% of capacity. The temperature in the airlock was 15.52°C and the air pressure was 689 millibars. Then the readouts faded and the Godspeed was studying him intently. She looked worried.