by Ashanti Luke
Dr. Winberg looked legitimately confused, and yet still managed to look smug, “I fail to see your point.”
Cyrus swallowed quickly and lowered his cup to retort, as the rest of the table looked back to him as if it were a miniaturized Kantistyka match, “Allow me to clarify;” he took a long drink from his pint, let it settle in his mouth, and then slowly swallowed. An involuntary gasp escaped his lungs as he set down the cup, “in world where we do not elbow-guard knowledge, where information and knowledge are disseminated to the masses, the man who stands on the hill at dawn and commands the sun to rise is no longer a conjuror. And yet, even when we understand the elliptical motion of a heliocentric Earth, and the rotation and precession along the Earth’s axis, the sunrise, however predictable, is no less wondrous to those with eyes enough to see.” Cyrus could see solemn nods of approval here and there at the table. “My point, Dr. Winberg, is this: God is not dead, he is merely bound and gagged in the morbid cave of our arrogance. Perhaps, when the swelling of our own heads has subsided enough, we will hear his muffled pleas and be humble enough to answer them.”
There was mild chatter all around the table as Cyrus finished off his drink, but Winberg was still not finished, “So you’re a zealot now as well?”
Cyrus chuckled legitimately at the notion, “Me? No. Blasphemy is braided too well into my thought patterns for me to champion any one ideal.” Cyrus paused and held his chest as a quiet but dense burp arose from his insides. “But I still have a certain amount of wonder in my heart. That’s why I became a scientist in the first place.” He tapped his chest lightly to loosen any other bubbles that may have lurked in his bowels. “And every time there is a new obstacle to tackle, a new theory to test, I am comfortable—even pleased—knowing there are forces in this universe bigger and stronger than me, regardless of the names we give them.”
There were more nods and chatter as Cyrus weakly lifted himself from the table. Dr. Winberg’s retort seemed less slow and deliberate than his other statements, as if he were trying to stick them to Cyrus before he left, “See that is where I must disagree. I believe the human intellect is the greatest thing in the universe. Man eventually conquered flight. He went from stubborn geocentricity to the development of space travel. Gravity remained a mystery for thousands of years and we conquered that as well. The light-speed barrier has long been a stopping block of the universe, and yet, as you should well know, we could conquer even that in our lifetimes—our original lifetimes.”
There were more nods and murmurs. Expectant eyes fell on Cyrus as he slid in his chair. Cyrus steadied himself against the wall and then moved toward the entrance to the room, “I hate to excuse myself from this challenge of intellects, but I have dire business to attend to. We will have to conclude this discussion at a later date.”
Dr. Villichez wiped his mouth with his napkin and clasped his hands together, “As our time on this vessel is far from brief, I’m sure there will be ample opportunity to add to this discussion.”
Dr. Tanner looked at everyone else in the room as individual conversations sprouted like a Hydroponic Table Garden. He watched Dr. Winberg turn and engage in another rather weighty discussion with Dr. Gerhard Torvald, preeminent microbiologist who was much more open to Dr. Winberg’s distaste for religion. Dr. Winberg seemed to be lapping up the attention like a dehydrated stray at a lav pool. Tanner could see why those who spread religion like imperialists spread culture could create distaste among the less pious. However, he himself never evangelized anyone who did not specifically request it, and that ministry always came with a fair warning. Besides, what had been so crudely referred to as zealotry was so obviously curbed by Dr. Tanner’s own profession. No, he himself would define it as devotion, and for better or worse, for the purposes of this journey, it was his and his alone unless someone else actively chose to join him. Again, he could understand the reluctance to accept grand ideas of the intangible and untestable, but what he could not understand, even at the time when he himself did not believe, is what made those who did not believe attack the idea of religion with the extreme prejudice of a seasoned, unified infantry.
When Cyrus emerged from the lav, Dr. Villichez was there to meet him. He smiled and clasped his hands together, but the smile soon dwindled to concern. “As I am in charge of both the physical and psychological health of all on this vessel, I feel it is my duty to help keep the peace. So please forgive me if I am somewhat out of place in being a little unnerved at what happened at dinner tonight. These meetings are designed for us to commingle, to fraternize, so that we can exist as a cohesive unit on the planet while we await our families and colleagues.”
Cyrus himself was a bit unnerved on being approached immediately after exiting the lav, but he could see the corners of Villichez’s eyes quivering, and could tell the concern, and in turn the urgency, in his voice was sincere. Cyrus adjusted his jumpsuit slightly, “I am sorry if I had a part in making the dinner unnerving, but I must say, as your family includes more than one eminent primate zoologist, you had to have seen what was going on in there.”
Dr. Villichez nodded then focused on Cyrus’s eyes again, resting a hand kindly on his left shoulder. “I could see, yes, but what I couldn’t see was why you felt the need to engage him on his terms.”
This line split through Cyrus’s head as if he had expected him to say something else, anything else. It wasn’t so much that Cyrus and Dr. Winberg had butt heads because Cyrus slapped Dr. Winberg’s hand away from the prize, but rather because Cyrus too had been reaching for it. “Dr. Villichez, I will make an effort to keep my end of our dinner table conversations copasetic, but we’re all equals here. We all have our roles. And from now until we settle Asha and leave it to our descendants, whenever Dr. Winberg flexes his academic muscle to berate someone, he and I will have a disagreement.”
“Well, son,” Dr. Villichez said, smiling slightly and lightly rubbing Cyrus’s arm, “I’m sorry you feel that way. Perhaps Dr. Winberg’s hubris is not so… ominous.”
Dr. Villichez turned and left in the direction of the infirmary, using the wall to walk. Cyrus steadied himself and tried to walk back to his own room, with greater difficulty than on his way to dinner, but without using the wall.
• • • • •
At almost two meters tall, and only eighty-five kilograms, Dr. Torvald was tall but scrawny even before entering the Hyposoma. His flaxen hair, alabaster skin, and angular features had done nothing to make him look less gangly. Despite a stature that should have been awkward, Dr. Torvald possessed a walking grace and a quiet, inviting demeanor that gave him a presence his initial impression did not always indicate. But now, to Dr. Tanner, as he attempted to complete a push-up, Dr. Torvald’s emaciated limbs and arched back made him look like a frightened stray cat. Then finally, halfway through only his third push-up Dr. Torvald lurched impossibly backward and a vile mixture of dietary supplements, liquefied nutrients, and stomach acid erupted from his open mouth. The vomit splattered in a fan on the floor and settled in thick globs where he had previously been kneeling. Instantly the stench of barely processed foodstuffs and hydrochloric acid fumes spread across the fitness chamber like a fog.
Almost on cue, the other scientists moved out of their callisthenic positions and began to reel, wretch, or recoil from Dr. Torvald’s general vicinity. Dr. Tanner had turned to face Dr. Torvald as soon as the gagging had begun. “I believe that is a good indication that we are done here,” Dr. Tanner said clapping his hands together once.
Someone giggled lightly as Dr. Torvald collected himself, apologized, and then shuffled out with the other scientists. Only Cyrus remained, arms locked, elbows wobbling erratically as he struggled through another push-up. His face distended with effort and exaggerated breathing. He lowered himself with alarming focus and determination given his proximity to the vomit. As Cyrus forcefully exhaled, Dr. Tanner moved around the repugnant Rorschach diagram on the floor. As Cyrus pushed himself to the apex of his push-up, Dr. Tanner
knelt and put his hand on Cyrus’s shoulder.
“The fitness chamber will still be on the ship tomorrow morning; and by then the Shipmate will have cleaned it,” Dr. Tanner smiled.
Cyrus only grumbled and moved to lower himself yet another excruciating time. As he lowered, his right elbow twitched violently and gave. Cyrus’s body shimmied in a pathetic effort to maintain balance and then rolled, sending his overworked legs flailing as he flopped to the floor. Cyrus came to a rest on his back, left arm outstretched, right arm limp on his chest. Exertion, concentration, or the fall had blurred his vision, but his senses returned as he felt oily warmth beneath his shoulder blade. The pungent odor inspired awareness like smelling salts. As his pupils dilated his vision returned revealing Dr. Tanner’s outstretched hand. “You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep this up.”
Even with the leverage afforded by Dr. Tanner’s helping hand, it took a Sisyphean effort to rise to his rubbery legs. “I know,” Cyrus let escape with an exhalation. “I know.” Cyrus tried to ignore the reek from the muck that was now settling into the mesh of his jumpsuit, but his breaths were too deliberate. The fetor of his own sweat and of Dr. Torvald’s bodily fluids and breakfast assaulted his nose like a siege engine. As another gasp filled his lungs, Cyrus stumbled against Tanner, spreading some of the filth. Dr. Tanner stood stalwart, unflagging, helping support Cyrus’s weight.
“You know, our brains need exercise too. I have just the thing. Meet me in my quarters after you get washed up.”
“Okay,” Cyrus coughed, moving away from Dr. Tanner to seek support from the wall, “As soon as my body stops revolting against me.”
Tanner smiled. “You know, I read somewhere once that the best way to avoid revolutions is to take care of those subject to your control.”
“You know I read that too. I also believe the guy after the guy who said that said something like ‘No man, no problem.’”
Cyrus began to shift along the wall, too tired and out of breath to smile at his own joke. It was hard to tell if Dr. Tanner had perceived it as such, “Well, we’re going to need that man on this journey or we’re all going to have problems.” It sounded like the beginnings of a lecture, until Dr. Tanner smiled it off, “So just make sure you can extend that focus beyond push-ups that weren’t authorized in the first right.”
“Okay mother,” Cyrus huffed as he shimmied toward his room. Dr. Tanner laughed and retreated. He should have been concerned about Cyrus’s mental state, should have reported the incident to Dr. Fordham and Dr. Villichez. But even collapsed in a pool of someone else’s vomit, his eyes rolled back in his head from exhaustion, something about Cyrus gave Tanner a sense that he had everything under control.
• • • • •
“I haven’t seen one of these since I was a Novitiate,” Cyrus looked on the corporeal chessboard as if he were a life-weary archaeologist looking on some elusive piece of arcana. “Isn’t this an antique?”
“Oddly enough, most people see owning these as a sign of lower status. Even some of the most basic broadcast decks and ephemera have pretty fancy chess holoprograms. Most of the people who own corporeal chessboards can’t wait to get rid of them, but wouldn’t be seen selling them,” Dr. Tanner said, returning to his chair.
“So why do you have one?”
“Maybe as an anthropologist I have a particular affinity for the rustic. I brought it hoping we could leave some of the prejudices of our past behind.”
“Well I think it’s plenty stellar.” Cyrus admired the workmanship and detail on the king. Minor nuances, beautiful in their subtle imprecision, made it clear that these pieces had not been carved by machine. Few short of ulti-classicist sculptors, or artisans on the Fringes of the Unified Territories who still took pride in working with their own hands would have focused so much effort on such a small thing.
And that is what made its worth incalculable.
As Cyrus admired the workmanship of the board, Dr. Tanner picked up his ephemeris from his bed and began scrawling on it with his stylus. Cyrus set the chessboard on his desk and turned to him. “What do you write so diligently into that thing?”
“Just my thoughts and observations,” Dr. Tanner didn’t look up from the digital pad. “Helps keep me focused. It gives me perspective when I look back at the entries.”
“I don’t think I ever had the patience to write any kind of journal.”
Dr. Tanner looked up for a moment and reflected, “I don’t really think of it as a journal. More like a daily vigil. It’s like I’m respecting myself enough to take my own thoughts seriously and I write them down so they don’t get lost in the machinations and pretense of everyday life.”
“Well, I’d like to think we left a lot of those machinations and pretenses behind,” Cyrus fumbled with a pawn in his hand. Even that most disposable piece had been treated with the same care and precision as the king he had admired, giving it an odd dignity that none of the other, less ubiquitous pieces could share.
“Yeah, except the machinations and pretenses we create for ourselves,” Dr. Tanner was focused on his own writing, “Those are the most inexorable of all.”
Cyrus internalized this for a moment then set the pawn back on the board, “Point taken. I still couldn’t see myself writing my thoughts down on the daily. I spend so much time stuck in my own head and not in the real world. I find my thoughts have often escaped my lips and become real just as soon as they are complete. And people like my wife and Villichez are constantly reminding me of that when they don’t like the form the words have taken. Being reminded again, and by myself no less, seems like a unique blend of self-hate and masochism. The world and my mind would have to be on equal terms for that to change, and I don’t think any of us want to see that.” Cyrus laughed a little, but either Dr. Tanner missed the joke or didn’t see the humor in it.
“Sometimes I find myself drawn to problems that look like they have solutions. Maybe that’s what drew me to the call for participants in this mission. All we have to do is set up camp and prepare the way for other settlers and scientists—hard, but not complicated. Sometimes everyday life is easier than we think, but it’s always more complicated than we want it to be. Like that first day at the dinner gathering. I just couldn’t sit there and watch Winberg throw his weight around at your expense, but I feel like everyone faulted me for the tension at the table.”
Dr. Tanner set his stylus on his ephemeris, and then looked up smiling a bit, “I don’t think people feel too much about it one way or the other—well, no one other than Dr. Villichez—but you were a little impetuous.”
Cyrus smiled a bit, but then the smile ebbed away slowly, “I dunno, I just don’t like ‘screwed up’ when I see it and feel like it has a solution.”
“True, but you do,” Tanner formed a hint of a smile at one corner of his mouth, “and correct me if I am wrong. But in the short time I have known you, you do seem like the type to walk against the wind just because everyone else is getting blown over.”
Cyrus smiled a little, but his thoughts quickly moved his lips into a more serious look. “Sometimes, even though I don’t feel ashamed or guilty, I do feel like I might be the problem. I always convince myself otherwise, but you know, sometimes, like the other day, the question is still there. But I do feel like Winberg was out of line, and I hate seeing people step across the line like there are no consequences.”
“Well that’s noble,” there didn’t seem to be sarcasm in Dr. Tanner’s voice, but Cyrus wasn’t sure.
“Not really. I mean, I’d rather spend my nervous energy going head-up with a problem than being mad at it. It’s what makes me, or anyone else on this ship for that matter, a good scientist.”
Dr. Tanner seemed to be thinking about something for a moment because his eyes seemed to be looking somewhere other than the room. He inhaled softly and then sighed, “You know, it’s funny, throughout the whole history of man, we remember the rabble-rousers, the revolutionaries. But as time passes, peop
le tend to forget how uncomfortable it is sitting in the room with someone who is just a bit too intense about something everyone else is willing to let pass.”
Dr. Tanner paused to take a breath, but continued, his eyes clearly focused on Cyrus’s now, “Moses was a fugitive for murder. He had a temper so bad he needed Aaron as a nabi to keep him in check. Gandhi didn’t believe in violence, but he damn sure believed in irritating the folk who were ruining India. Buddha renounced his princedom for his beliefs—if that’s not anti-establishment, nothing is. Jesus put every governing Judaic council he came across in a Fringe-fit because his ideas were so avant-garde.”
He took another breath and began tapping his stylus lightly against the ephemeris, “Einstein, Faraday, Bohr. Hell, look at Villichez’s work on human behavior, Davidson’s work on botany and hydroponic mixtures—Milliken damn near lost his Arcology commission before he proved his theories on rock dating, which then turned geology, paleontology, and archaeology on their necks in one big ground sweep. Even Winberg’s work on Penrosian brain function horrified the old hat neurologists.”
Dr. Tanner laughed to himself a bit. Cyrus was not sure where he was going, but his insights were interesting nonetheless. Dr. Tanner’s smile remained as he continued, “You know what everyone I just mentioned, and everyone like them, has in common?”
“They were all innovators,” it sounded like less like a question than Cyrus had meant it to be.
Dr. Tanner, laughed to himself, smiling fully now, “Maybe. But that’s not the most important thing about them.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Everyone in that long list, before anyone paid attention to who they were, or lauded their ideas for their brilliance—every last one of them at some point sat at a table with people who wished they would just shut the hell up and eat.”