The Sunspacers Trilogy

by George Zebrowski

  “What is it, beautiful?” he asked.

  She bit her lower lip, enjoying the sound of his voice as he touched her. Her eyes closed, and she was grateful that for tonight, at least, she would not have to think of anything. She would listen to Alek, to the sound of his breathing as he lay beside her, to his happiness at having found her. They belonged together. It was as simple as that.

  A week later, as she was studying a cybernetics problem on her screen, Lissa realized Alek was no trouble at all. It was pleasant to know that he was down the hall and studying as she was. What had she been afraid of? Another person had felt those fears. Now she was able to breeze through her day’s reading and problem solving. She still felt a bit guilty about not telling Alek where she was going next term, but that was still too far away to worry about. There would be plenty of time to work out something.

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  9

  “So you’re going to leave us dummies behind,” Alek said. “Well, I knew you were smart.” They were walking down the trail to the village, stopping occasionally to enjoy the clear view of the valley. Alek seemed very sad as he looked at her. “Who else is going?”

  “Just Susan Falleta, I think,” Lissa said.

  He sat down on a rock and sighed. “Well, I guess I’ll just get my degree and go home to Australia.” He seemed so ready to give up that she wondered if he’d had any ambitions at all.

  “What will you do?” she asked.

  He looked at her, half smiling. “Well, I can’t bloody well come with you!”

  “Why not?” Lissa demanded, startled by his outburst.

  “What would I do, Lis?” he asked more softly.

  “You could try to find out.”

  He shook his head and pretended to check his left boot. “It’s a special place you’re going to. No one really knows what they’re doing there or what kind of people they need. You have to be asked.”

  “I could ask Dr. Shastri, she said, sitting down next to him.

  “No, don’t! It’s bad enough that I wasn’t asked.”

  “Well, they didn’t ask most of the others, either,” she said.

  “They’re upset, too, especially Louis.” He got up, picked up a small stone, and threw it out into the valley. “No one ever told us they’d be making selections before the three years were up. I thought we’d be together for at least that long.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lissa said.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “It is, partly. I should have left you alone. I stole your independence.”

  He sat down again and put his arm around her. “No, Lis, I wouldn’t have missed you for anything. Just bad luck.”

  She looked at him. “Do you really mean that?”

  He smiled, trying not to look sad. “You know I do.”

  She was silent. “So what are we going to do?” she asked finally.

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

  Lissa came into the dining room on the afternoon of the next day, hoping to get a strong cup of tea from the cook. Louis Tyrmand was sitting alone at the table, looking very glum.

  “Is that tea you’re drinking?” Lissa asked, sitting down in an empty chair.

  He looked up at her and nodded. She smiled.

  “So you’re going,” he said bitterly, avoiding her eyes.

  Lissa felt puzzled. “What’s wrong with that?”

  Louis looked directly at her. “You’re the success here, you and Susan. Why should any of the rest of us bother? We’re not going to get anywhere. I’m leaving as soon as possible.”

  “What?” she said with surprise. “But you’ve still got two years left!”

  “No—I won’t get anywhere here. Might as well go where I can succeed.”

  Lissa swallowed nervously. She’d had no idea it was this bad. “I think you’re interpreting this all wrong. Susan and I will still have to finish our three-year studies, the same as if we were here. Neither of us knows what Dr. Shastri expects from us, but whatever it is, we may fail at it.”

  Louis shook his head in denial. “No, no, Shastri knows what he’s doing. It’s over for those who stay behind. We’ll be the second-raters.” He sipped his tea and stared down into his mug.

  “Look, if you think I’m so smart,” Lissa said, trying to jar him out of his mood, “then you should believe me when I say you’re wrong. You just can’t give up now.

  “You’re just saying that to be nice.”

  “I’m not, Louis, really I’m not.” He was much worse than Alek had conveyed. “You can’t let feeling sorry for yourself get in the way. My going is no judgment on the rest of you.”

  “Please leave me alone.”

  Lissa felt angry. “Louis, you’ll be a real second-rater if you do this.”

  “Thanks, but I can tell which way the wind is blowing around here. The rest of us feel the same way.”

  Suddenly she wondered what Dr. Shastri was doing. There would be no class left, except for Susan and herself. It seemed cruel.

  “He’ll get new students, eventually,” Louis continued, “and he’ll thin them out also. Maybe it’s even the right thing to do.”

  “But you can still get an education.”

  “That’s not all we came here for. If we can’t get close to the cutting edge of this project’s work, then it’s time to do something else. Don’t you see? I think Shastri’s judgment may be right.”

  Lissa got up slowly. Coming here must not have meant that much to Louis to begin with, she thought as she left the dining room.

  Dr. Shastri gave Lissa a glowing evaluation report at the end of the first term, but this was overshadowed by her preparations to leave for the Institute’s field station in the asteroids.

  “I’ll write a lot,” she promised, trying to dispel the farewells in Alek’s eyes.

  “So will I,” he said, touching her cheek.

  She had asked Dr. Shastri about him in private, but he had told her there could be no personal visits to the asteroid. The workers and students there were a devoted group.

  “You could refuse to go,” Dr. Shastri had offered, “for personal reasons. We would hate to lose you.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. I’m definitely going.”

  “You will forgive me,” Dr. Shastri had said, “but I would rather not know more about your dilemma. My concern is to get the best minds I can find, and if I know too much about their personal difficulties, I become distrustful. I’ve grown old enough to know that some things get done only because of sacrifice and dedication, and I accept that as surely as I do the gift of life.”

  “What will I be given to do?” Lissa had asked.

  “You will be apprenticed to the team working on the tachyon receiver-transmitter, and you will continue your schooling. In time, we hope, you will take over one of the positions of the scientific workers who have to leave or who can’t carry on for one reason or another. And it’s hoped that you will develop your own lines of inquiry.” He had looked at her carefully, as if searching for signs of weakness. “And how do your parents view this new road for you?”

  “They think it’s fine, if that’s what I want.”

  “And you’re sure that you do?”

  “Yes, I am,” Lissa had said with all the sincerity she could muster.

  Dr. Shastri had smiled. “I see that you are. I’ve also spoken with your mother and father, and they tell me it’s the kind of thing you dreamed about.”

  “Yes.”

  “But your young man—will there be time for him?”

  The question had embarrassed her. “I don’t know. What can I do? I don’t know when I’ll be coming back.”

  “You can come back whenever possible, but we choose people for their commitment. It may be a few years. We don’t know where our new research may lead.”

  “I don’t think I’d want to leave,” Lissa had said, feeling guilty.

  She touched Alek’s cheek with her palm. He got up and pace
d his room. She sat back on his bunk and rested against the wall.

  He said, “I’ll survive. We haven’t known each other that long.”

  It hurt her to see him trying to break away.

  “Go and don’t worry about me,” he said. He stopped and looked at her carefully. “You’d better, because I won’t let you stay. I mean it, I won’t let you.”

  A part of her was glad that he was helping her make the decision; alone, she might have decided to stay and been regretful for the rest of her life.

  “Right?” Alek demanded through a lump in his throat.

  She nodded. “But I love you anyway.”

  He sat down next to her. “I know, but we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens.”

  Her phone was ringing when she got back to her room. She sat down at the desk and opened the channel.

  Her father smiled at her. “Hello, Lissa.”

  “Hi, Dad, she said listlessly. One, two, three.

  “Why so glum? Dr. Shastri told me about your being selected for the remote station. Congratulations. You do want to go, don’t you?”

  She wasn’t going to talk about Alek. It would be too embarrassing to admit that she had fallen in love after years of claiming that she was immune. Strange, Alek wasn’t just a boy, she thought. He was Alek, a person inside a male body. Alek.

  “Lissa, are you there?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I’ll be going.” One, two, three.

  “I’ve never seen you so subdued.”

  “I’m just disoriented a bit by the idea that I’ll be leaving this place. It was a surprise.”

  “I understand,” Morey said after the pause, but he sounded a bit wary. “How will you be going?”

  “A ship will be leaving from High Earth Orbit at the end of the term. Only personal baggage allowed. They’ll supply all I need there. We’ll stop around Mars, then make the final short run to the remote station. It’s a small asteroid hollow.” She waited, smiling at him.

  “Are you excited?”

  “Sure am.” One, two, three.

  “You still don’t sound like you want to go.”

  “I do,” she insisted. And I don’t, she thought. “I do,” she repeated, wishing again that Alek could go.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll call again before you leave. Got to make a meeting. ‘Bye!”

  As the screen faded, she realized that if she refused to go, her life up to now would be over, her dreams destroyed. For a moment she resented Alek’s existence, but then she softened. It wasn’t his fault; just bad luck. At least they would have a few more weeks together.

  During Lissa’s last dinner at the Institute, Louis got up suddenly and proposed a toast. Everyone was there, including Dr. Shastri and the two tutors, Melvin Rood and Stewart Cheney.

  “This is for Lissa and Susan,” Louis said. “We’re happy for you and wish you luck.”

  Lissa saw that Alek was smiling at her as they all sipped their wine. There seemed to be no trace of sadness left in his face.

  “And we want you to know,” Louis continued as he sat down, “that we’ll all be staying here to finish our degrees.”

  Lissa glanced at Dr. Shastri, but there was no clue in his expression that he had intervened. Clearly, Louis and the others now understood Dr. Shastri’s decision to send Susan and herself to the remote station. The decision was not a judgment on those who would stay behind. Lissa knew that she was going as a student, not as a major player in the project.

  The waiter brought out another bottle, and even the chef came out to have a glass.

  Louis cleared up the mystery about his change of heart. “In case you’re wondering, this kind of panic apparently strikes every class,” he said, “when students are sent off to one of the branches. Melvin and Stewart told us about it and I felt silly. We might be going elsewhere also, one day, and we’ll be in touch with whatever Lissa and Susan will be doing through the screen room. Big things may be happening, and we’ll all be needed.”

  “Quite correct,” Dr. Shastri said from the head of the table. “None of you were accepted here lightly, simply to be thrown away in a few months.”

  “I guess we’re all touchy types,” Emily said.

  Louis was enjoying his second glass of wine. Cyril and Maxwell seemed dubious of what he had said, but they both smiled when Lissa caught their attention.

  “Thank you all,” she said.

  Alek still had a faint smile on his lips. Lissa couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he seemed confident.

  |Go to Table of Contents |

  10

  Lissa flew to meet her parents in New York City for the Christmas holidays, which came during the same week as the Institute’s endterm break. The suborbital ascent and glide path took her over the Pacific and the southern United States. She spent the seventy minutes thinking about Alek.

  He had grown quieter as the time for her departure had drawn closer.

  “It’s as if someone were dying,” he had said, “and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  She had felt the same, especially when the copter had come to pick her up, but she had tried not to let Alek see it.

  “You have to go,” he had said. “A part of you is happy, at least.” “Try to be happy with me, Alek, please!” she had shouted over the sound of the blades.

  They had kissed, but the tension tore them apart. “I’m so sorry,” she had whispered, and he had hugged her tighter.This can’t be happening, she had thought as she was lifted and carried away from the old monastery, out over the early morning mists of the valley. She had not looked back, because she didn’t want to see Alek waving good-bye.

  She closed her eyes now, and it seemed that he was about to kiss her, to hold her, and that they would swim gently in each other’s arms …

  She opened her eyes. The New York International runway was rushing past her window. The steward, she noticed, had locked her seat belt for her. The city stood with its glittering towers, many of them more than a century old, defying the night. Two levels stood above the old street level of the twentieth century, and twenty more levels were cut in the bedrock of Manhattan Island.

  The plane slowed and taxied in the brightly lit evening, and finally slipped into the terminal.

  As she came out into the waiting area, saw her parents standing together. A nice couple, she thought as they spotted her and waved. She hurried toward them, adjusting her shoulder bag and trying to took cheerful.

  “Lissa!” her father exclaimed as he hugged her to him.

  Her mother kissed her on the cheek.

  “We’ve got a cab outside,” Morey said, leading the way.

  “Glad to be here, dear?” Sharon asked.

  Lissa smiled at her and nodded.

  “We thought we might not get to see you for the holidays,” her father said.

  They came out of the terminal and got into an automatic cab. It started slowly, then shot away, its hydrogen-powered engine grumbling softly.

  “We’ve got theater tickets,” her father said, “dinner tickets, and fireworks in Central Park.” He sounded very excited. “I haven’t been back here in nearly a decade.” He became silent, staring out at the lights. Lissa could almost hear him thinking about how he had grown up here, gone to high school, and made friends with Joe Sorby, and how the two of them had gone out to Bernal One to attend college.

  “I wonder how Joe and Rosalie are doing,” he said, looking up at the hazy, star-filled sky through the cab’s sunroof. The starship on which they had shipped out was not due back for still another decade. Most of the communications from the vessel were old by the time they reached Earth. Lissa felt that Morey missed his old friend more than he cared to admit. Twenty years or more would separate them by the time Earth’s first starship came home, but in that time the people on board would have aged more slowly than those at home, since bioclocks ran slower as they approached light speed. “Well, Merry Christmas to them,” Morey said, “wherever they are.”

>   The cab bulleted toward the million lights of the city, penetrated to the street level at 53rd Street, and pulled into the Hilton receiving area. Morey put his thumb to the fare credit plate and the doors opened.

  “Here we are,” he said, “and we’re going to have a great time!”

  A letter was waiting for Lissa when she came into her room just across the hall from where her parents were staying. She sat down at the screen and touched her palm to the code-credit plate, wondering why Alek had not simply called as his note came up on the display:

  DEAR LISSA,

  I WANTED YOU TO HAVE THIS NOTE BY THE TIME YOU GOT TO THE HOTEL, SO YOU WOULDN’T WORRY. IF THIS IS ALL WE’RE EVER GOING TO HAVE, I WOULDN’T HAVE MISSED IT FOR THE WORLD. BUT IF WE KEEP IN TOUCH AFTER SOME TIME, AND STILL WANT EACH OTHER, THEN THERE WILL JUST HAVE TO BE A WAY. IN ANY CASE, WE’LL HAVE TIME TO THINK (AN ACTIVITY I KNOW IS VERY IMPORTANT TO YOU!). WHENEVER I THINK ABOUT YOU, IT ALWAYS COMES UPI LOVE YOU .

  —ALEK

  The screen flashed some authorization numbers and the time when the letter had gone out and from where, then winked off.

  Lissa smiled, feeling a warm glow, as if some distant song were playing deep inside her. She would do what Alek wanted her to do—study and grow into her work. He knew what she had always wanted, and that made him special, no matter how far away he would be from her.

  The giant 3-D figure of Julius Caesar stood above Central Park, waiting for the knives of the Roman senators to pierce him. Lissa closed her eyes as the holo of the titanic figure was struck down. Caesar cried out, reproached Brutus, then finally accepted his fate.

  “A bit bloody,” Lissa’s mother said next to her.

  Lissa opened her eyes. Caesar lay like a white whale among the trees. Behind him, New York towered into the sky, slender pyramids and 200-story columns thrusting up beyond the horizontal levels. Stars twinkled, but she had to look directly upward to see them. Soon, she thought, I’ll be out there, on my way to Mars.

  She watched the rest of the play in a kind of dream. Shakespeare often had that effect on her. The fireworks came on at the end, but she was too preoccupied to ooh and aah with the crowd. She wanted to run her life in fast forward, to find out how it would all turn out.