Seed of Stars

by Dan Morgan;John Kippax

  Lindstrom picked up and read aloud from Magnus' impeccable script "White to mate in five, I think— and have you been teaching your bishops to waltz? C.M." She showed it to Maseba.

  "Damn him," muttered the senior medical officer. "That's the second game he's screwed up for us." He sat down.

  Lindstrom followed suit "Shall we do as he says?" she asked.

  Maseba nodded. "I guess I'm just about up to it" He put his chin on his hand and stared hard at the board. "He won't find Kepler III any chess game, I think."

  "How's that?"

  "Just that I've been doing a bit of homework," Maseba said. "Did you know that the population of Kepler is approximately seventy-five percent Japanese?"

  Lindstrom frowned. "So?"

  "Just a hunch, but there seems to be a tendency on colonial planets for racial and cultural characteristics to become more pronounced, a kind of defense mechanism, a clinging to the known patterns."

  uFm still not quite with you," admitted Lindstrom.

  "No? Well, just take a look in the historical section of the library next time you've an hour or two to spare. You might start with the landing of Commodore Perry in Japan, back in the nineteenth century."

  "Over three hundred years ago... but surely..."

  "I'm only speculating on the lines of a general tendency," Maseba said. "But look at it this way. Kepler ID has been pretty well isolated, with a majority population of Japanese for almost a hundred years, and it seems reasonable to suppose that during the time the 'Japaneseness' of the colony's culture will have become more and more pronounced."

  "All right, supposing that is the case, surely it can't be a bad thing," said Lindstrom. "After all, the Japanese are a very civilized race."

  "Yes, indeed, to the extent of looking upon Westerners as barbarians; an outlook with which I, as an African, must have some sympathy," Maseba replied.

  "Then how will this make Magnus' task more difficult?"

  "Because our friend Magnus, as we both know, is a man completely devoted to Western pragmatism, an apostle of the God of Logic," said Maseba. "The Japanese, on the other hand, despise logjc and logical thinking; they prefer to rely on the intuitions of what has been called the 'Kimono Mind.'"

  Lindstrom smiled. "You're exaggerating, George— you must be."

  Maseba shrugged. "Maybe ... we shall see. Now— do we play chess?"

  She slipped in from the dimly lit corridor and thrust herself into his arms, kissing and receiving kisses, change and exchange until they were both slightly - breathless.

  At last, pulling her face away from his, she looked up at him, smiling. "Piet, love, you look cleaner than when I last saw you."

  "Last? Oh, the butcher's shop. Yes." He ran a hand down the front of her zipsuit. He needed the comfort of her body much more than any talk.

  She stayed his hand with gentle firmness, and stepped back from him.

  "What . . . ?" He stared his bewilderment, painfully aware of his throbbing need, as she unrolled the left sleeve of her suit, right up to and past the elbow joint.

  "First—this," she said, placing a finger on the slight bulge beneath the skin that indicated the presence of the contracapsule.

  "Now?"

  "But of course, now," she said calmly. "You have your instruments?"

  "Well, yes . . ." he replied awkwardly. Desire drained out of him like air out of a pricked balloon.

  "Piet, you're not having doubts at this stage, are you?" she regarded him with a sudden keenness.

  He wanted to turn away, but her eyes held him. He felt as though a scalpel were being screwed into his stomach.

  "Piet, love, what is it? Piet!" She moved towards him.

  He looked down at her, doubt and anguish grinding in his mind, even as they had when, as a boy of eleven, he had listened in trembling alarm to the acidulous, refined arguments that took place between his mother and father when they thought he was asleep. He said: "Nobody has ever done this before, you know."

  "But it has to go, Piet. You must see that. How do we get our baby, unless you remove it?"

  He felt anger rise within him, and he strove to contain it. The whole thing seemed to be so easy for her, but for him it was just not that simple. "Look, this is ... it's against all regulations, you understand?"

  But she didn't She looked at him wonderingly. "We've been over all that We're checking out at Kepler III, aren't we? I thought it was all settled."

  "Now listen, Mia..."

  "No, you listen to me! I'm no pleasure girl, Piet. I'm not from the Ginza. I'm a worker from Haneda. I'm old enough to have had two children at least already, and another coming soon. But I didn't have them, because I hadn't met my children's father. Now I have. Isn't that right?"

  He sighed, exasperated. "Oh, stop talking like an ingenuous kid! As a doctor . . . I've made certain promises..."

  "When you didn't know the value of those promises. We said all that And as for your doctor's promises, once upon a time they'd have said that in taking this capsule out you were doing the right thing."

  "Shut up for God's sake!" he cried. "There's so much to this—the Corps point of view, the medical point of view... and you go on chattering as though we were the only two human beings in the entire universe, as though..."

  "As though you loved me in the way I love you?" There were tears in her eyes, but a sudden bitter sharpness in her voice. "Love sees its own reflection, but maybe you just broke the mirror for me. Perhaps all you needed was a new bedmate with just that hint of extra piquancy because of the danger of crossing ranks, Officer Pig! In the past month I could have comforted a dozen good Eastern-born crewmen, and have been glad to do it, but no—I was a fool I fell in love with the cold European, so much in love that I thought I could teach him what he lacked in feeling. Now I see that I can't! Well, go to your big lanky European women, then! Go and mount one or two of them— they look like horses, anyway!"

  He grabbed her before she got to the door, and held her by the wrists as she struggled, avoiding an upthrust knee which would have put him out in a flash. He had never imagined her capable of such burning anger, and yet he knew that surely he himself was to blame, because he was such a stranger in the country of love.

  He wanted to tell her so much, to explain, but instead he remained mute, holding onto her, keeping his eyes closed for some reason he barely understood. And soon she stopped struggling, and she spoke to him as she used to speak. "Piet... Piet, love.... Open your eyes."

  He obeyed.

  "Oh, Piet—you're crying. Oh love, love, were you crying because I hurt you?" Her deep affection welled up again in a warm flood, drowning anger. She made him sit down, and held him like a child, stroking his hair, letting him sob until he had no more tears.

  Then she said: "Forgive me—I said such bitter things. I know you love me."

  "There's nothing to forgive. I deserved it, Mia. I'm a coward; I've always been a coward. . . ." He watched as she rose, took his instrument case, and sat down beside him again. She unzipped the case, and gazed with childish wonder at the array of gleaming equipment. Then she clapped her hands.

  "I know! Let's do it together. You said it was easy. What's first?"

  The warmth of her love melted his fear, and he realized that he could not do less than measure up to her determination. He took up the instrument. "The freezer," he explained. "It cleans and anesthetizes, so that you won't feel the electric cutter. Are you sure you want to watch?"

  And she laughed at the first touch of the freezer, and said that it tickled.

  Soon the capsule was out, emptied of its estrogen solution and put back in place. When the neat incision was covered by a fast-drying plastiflesh spray he put away his instruments, and washed his hands again from habit.

  Turning back to Mia he saw that she had removed her zipsuit and was lying on the bed, her exquisite, golden body completely naked.

  "Now, Piet, love!" she whispered. "This time for real, with no barrier between your seed and mine." />
  It was not true, of course. The estrogens would remain in her bloodstream for several days until eliminated by the natural processes. But symbolically, at least, it was true.

  Eager, thrilling to the promise of new-found experience, he removed his own clothes and slid into her waiting arms. Arriving there, he lay quite still, momentarily frozen by the shock of something that had never happened to him in his life before. He was utterly and completely impotent.

  Although her need must have been great, Mia made absolutely nothing of his failure. She was gentle with him, holding him close, suckling him at her breast, soothing him until he slept.

  And when he awoke he was a man again, and she received him with joy.

  In the sickbay, Piet Huygens had just finished sterilizing the raw and bleeding arm of a huge brown crewman from Fiji who had been involved in a minor accident in number six storage hold. The crewman sat there, blinking with mild brown eyes and not feeling a thing, his mind more occupied with his inevitable pending appearance before Commander Bruce, and the tongue-lashing he would get for carelessness, than with his wound. Piet picked up the stitcher, set it for stroke, tension and width, and ran it up the numbed gash. Then, after the stitcher had tied itself off, he sealed the wound with a spray of plastiflesh.

  Caiola came in with a small phone and plugged it in near Piet. "Message for you, sir—from bridge control."

  Piet dismissed the crewman and moved to the phone, speaking his name.

  "Huygens? This is Lieutenant Commander Lindstrom. Lieutenant Hoffman has cut the palm of her hand. I sent her off to her cabin. Could you attend, please?"

  With a tight feeling in his stomach, Piet answered courteously. "Yes, ma'am."

  Lindstrom had broken contact before he realized that he hadn't had the sense to ask .which cabin. So Lindstrom must know that he knew which cabin. So...

  Grabbing his kit from a rack, he called to tell Caiola where he was going, and went out to the elevator. Arriving at the cabin door he hesitated for a moment before tapping on it. This was a place he had not been for almost two months, and inside ...

  He knocked on the door, and heard her call him to come in.

  She was seated on her bed, smoking one of the thin cigars she used in imitation of Lieutenant Commander Lindstrom. She wore an off-duty zipsuit and there was a clumsy plastiflesh patch on the palm of her right hand.

  "Hello, Piet." Her voice was level and controlled, and he found himself thinking that she was good-look-ing, that she had a body which was both enjoyable and capable of enjoyment, and that life had been simpler when...

  "Hello," he said. "Sorry to hear you hurt yourself." He sat down with his kit on his knee. "Let's have a look at it."

  A spray of solvent removed the plastiflesh quickly. He probed gently at the open wound, and found that it was more of a scratch than a cut. "You must have told the commander that this was deep," he said, looking at her curiously.

  "Yes." She spoke softly. "I did tell her that."

  "Why? To waste the firm's time? No need to have come off duty . . ." He glanced at her zip suit. "And certainly no need to have got undressed."

  "Yes! There was a need." she said sharply. She put her free hand on his shoulder, and what he had half-suspected was now confirmed. "Piet—haven't you any feeling for me now?"

  He rose, awkwardly. "Look, Lieutenant Hoffman, I am on duty, you know. I'll just see to the cut and—"

  "Piet!" Her voice was harsh and urgent now. "Don't you understand what you've done to me? We had a good relationship, the best. And then, suddenly, it

  stopped, because you didn't come to me any more. And now I find that I can't do without you. There's nobody who gives it to me the way you did . . . no one who anticipates, understands, waits and hurries, takes time and lingers, changes and repeats the way you did. Don't you understand? I feel awful—but awful!" A note of hysteria had crept into her voice, her pale-blue eyes were staring widely. "Piet, for God's sake! Give me fifteen minutes of your time, now, now!"

  Her hand wrenched at the fastenings and her zipsuit fell to the floor.

  He regarded her nakedness calmly. "Well, if you've been round all the male officers and there's no phallus to suit you, you'd better start on the crew."

  For a moment her pale body seemed frozen with the cold shock of his words, then, with a choking noise wrenching at her throat, she lunged forward, slapping his face with the full force of her rage. "You bastard, you supercilious bastard! You—you do as I say— now, or I'll let Bruce know that you've been crossing ranks and taking that damned little Japanese monkey into your bunk. Now—now, damn you! Do as I say!"

  The blow he gave her in return sent her spinning. He dropped his kit to give her another one, and she staggered in the opposite direction with the force of it. Moaning, she collapsed on the bed, the cold light of the fluorotubes glinting on her broad, mare's buttocks.

  He said: "You open your trap, Hoffman, and I'll fix " you. I'll put in a malingering report on you, and back it up with a charge of attempted sexual assault on a medical officer in the performance of his duty. That will get you a course of anaphrodisiac pills that'll fix the bite in your crotch for the rest of the voyage. You maladjusted cow! You don't just need a man; you need what you're never going to get, what you could never appreciate, even if you had it—love!"

  He left, slamming the door behind him.

  Back in sickbay, Caiola said: "Was it serious, sir?"

  "No," he said, tightly. "Not at all."

  Caiola regarded him curiously. "Still, best to be safe."

  "Yes—safe. . . ." He turned away deliberately, to examine some plates of intestines of a GD crewman. "Looks like a minor replacement job here ..."

  But he was looking past and through the prints, back into his own mind. Despite his successful bravado of a few moments before, he could see that in the triangle of Trudi, Mia and himself, it was he and Trudi who were really alike. Trudi is me, he thought, we are male/ female, two of a kind, manufactured like plug and socket, nut and bolt. But there's one difference. She is content to be that way. Me, I want to be really alive, like Mia. But can I make it?

  The thought was depressing, only to be assuaged, if not cured, by Mia herself, and turns off-duty would not coincide for another sixty ship hours. Until then, there was only work.

  "Get this man up here," he said harshly, to Caiola. "We'll begin the op in half an hour..."

  "But..."

  "What the hell, man! Let's do it—now!" he snarled.

  Venturer Twelve sped on towards Kepler III at a speed which would have rendered her invisible to human eyes, had there been anyone to observe. Lights were brightened for "day" and dimmed for "night." Water and waste were recycled, and recycled again. Men and women worked and watched, and cleaned and controlled. They slept and pretended, as Dockridge said, that the big dark was outside, while in reality it ate a little into the normality of everyone. And Maseba, De Witt and Huygens watched this corrosion, dispens

  ing antidotes for fear, depression and hysteria, so that all crew members remained well-adjusted and cooperative ...

  And some remembered the words of Kavanin, poet of man's impudent, star-flung adventure:

  Here we work close together, or perish

  On new lands a lifetime from home;

  All other men's skills we must cherish,

  All other men's hearts are our own.

  Fresh vegetables from the Hydroponics section became more precious, each leaf a reminder that Earth still existed, beyond the unimaginable gulfs of space, each mouthful a blessed sacrament, a renewal of faith in the reality of home.

  Lindstrom and Maseba had played fourteen games of chess, not counting three which spectacularly aborted because of Magnus' ability to see twelve moves ahead, and his insistence on telling them, while steadfastly refusing to participate directly in the game.

  There had been one "full alarm stations," plus sealing drill, while engines took in new reactor material.

  Magnus conf
erred with his assistant Ichiwara, and they planned the routine of the coming investigation, with special reference to Ichiwara's personal assessment of certain cultural aspects of Kepler in. Magnus, in his off-duty periods, achieved much satisfaction from his recreative activities, and gave some in return.

  Medic Lieutenant Piet Huygens struck up something of a friendship with Ichiwara, and showed a considerable interest in the work of the latter, who willingly provided him with what amounted to a crash-course in Japanese philosophy and culture.

  The op theater did three appendectomies, one leg fracture, replaced a crushed hand, had three agonizing shots at an optic nerve before they got it right; the Chinese crewwoman from the Wangituru was given a new intestine, and was tearfully overjoyed to find that with a slight skin colorant her damaged half-face could now match the other. Astonishingly, Warrant Officer Panos had to be circumcised, and he begged the medic staff to let no hint of it come to the ears of the crew. Bull that he was, he could not have stood the laughter, though he could not subdue a smile himself when Maseba said, drily: "Somebody's sure to notice, aren't they?"

  Lieutenant Wiltrud Hoffman performed her duties silently and efficiently, with darkness creeping behind her eyes.

  Lee Ching put an armaments storeman on a charge for losing a forty mil shell warhead, producing a wrangle with Lieutenant Quat, who claimed that this was his department, and Bruce cursed them both for pettiness, while docking the storeman a week's pay.

  Far, still far ahead, lay Kepler III, where people waited in happiness, in hope, in apprehension—and some in sadness and fear—for the arrival of the ship that would decide their destiny.

  And within her womb, Mia Mizuno's child grew, filling the girl with throbbing happiness—the living proof of her and Piet Huygen's love.

  Give me my eyes and ears;

  Let me probe deeply, let me see

  The shape of passing worlds,

  The smell of danger.