The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel (15 page)

“Not everybody still believes in the mission, Sparrow, I know that.” I tensed,then cursed to myself, knowing he was reading my reactions with his hand as easily as I could read a palm terminal.

“Relax, Sparrow, I already know their names.”

He said it with just the right note of hurt in his voice that not everybody shared his faith. I didn’t say anything and realized too late my silence told him what he wanted to know. I, too, no longer quite believed.

“We haven’t found life yet, though Tybalt’s reports have been encouraging. I know some members of the crew have told you differently, Sparrow. I’m curious about what they said.”

I searched his face but saw only honest curiosity. I didn’t want to say anything at all but it was his opening gambit and I couldn’t stand there mute.

“That it’s been a hundred generations and fifteen hundred planets and we haven’t found anything,” I said in a shaky voice.

“Fifteen hundred planets…” He smiled.“That many.” He stared through the port a long moment, then said, “And how many planets do you think are out there, Sparrow? Care to guess?”

“Millions,” I said faintly.

“More like tens of millions, I should think.And the chances of life, Sparrow? What did your friends say about that?”

I tried desperately to keep my voice from fading away entirely.

“That it wasn’t very likely.”

He smiled again but with no trace of humor. “I didn’t know we had so many scientists on board.”

He waved his hand at Outside and I remembered how on the bridge he had made me feel important and filled me with a sense of purpose. I suspected he knew I didn’t feel quite the same way now. But he couldn’t know how much I regretted it.

“I’ve lived too long, Sparrow. I’ve seen stars explode and fill the void with light so bright it blinded all our view screens and I’ve watched them shrink to blackened cinders—stars whose moment of dying was just as brief as that of anybody on board. I’ve explored planets where red suns filled a third of the sky at dawning, I’ve seen worlds where the tides were made of molten rock, I’ve stood in rain that had been falling for a hundred million years, and I’ve heard the crash of thunder under a sky so covered with clouds no living creature would ever see the heavens.”

I knew he could feel my trembling but it didn’t matter. I would change my mind later—I knew that, too—but once again I would have died for him. He turned me around and held my shoulders with both hands while he stared into my eyes, reading what was passing through my mind as easily as he read a book.

“The galaxy is huge beyond conception, Sparrow. We come from an infinitesimal portion of it and we don’t even know all of the laws that govern that. Knowing so little about our own small corner of it, does it make sense to propose theories about what’s possible in the rest of it? Does it make sense to you, Sparrow?”

“No, sir,” I squeaked.

He let me go and looked at Thrush.

“What about you, Thrush? Does it make sense to you?”

Thrush shook his head. “No, it doesn’t, Captain.” He managed to say it without sounding obsequious and I wondered if he truly believed or was just a better actor than I.

“What else did they tell you, Sparrow?” His mood had turned dark and I felt a pinch of fear.

“That you want to take the
Astron
into the Dark.”

“And?”

“That we couldn’t possibly make it.”

“What do you think, Sparrow?”

For just a moment, I had the feeling he wasn’t asking the question of me, that he was asking it of somebody else. And that he had asked it many times before.

“I’m not the one to judge, sir.”

He frowned. “I’m not asking you for anybody else’s opinion, Sparrow. I’m asking you for yours.”

I took a breath. “The
Astron
is falling apart. I don’t think the ship could make it.”

I waited for the overhead to fall and the bulkheads to collapse, but instead the Captain turned back to the port and once again put his arm around my shoulders.

“Are you familiar with Magellan, Sparrow? He sailed from a country calledSpain back on Earth, centuries ago, hoping to circumnavigate the world. He had five leaky ships and a few hundred men. Some of his ships were wrecked and most of his men died, but three years later one of his vessels returned toSpain . He had accomplished hismission, he had proved the earth was round.”

I fidgeted during the silence that followed while he stared, bemused, at Outside. Finally: “Do you know what was really important in all of that, Sparrow?”

I shook my head.

“All anybody cared about was that he had done it. Nobody asked if his ships leaked. Nobody asked if his crews endured hardships. In the end, the only thing that mattered was whether or not he possessed the will.”

He turned away from me and looked back atOutside . I hadn’t finished eating but I no longer had an appetite. Thrush mentioned that it was time for shift, and the Captain nodded absently. Just before we floated out the hatch, he said, “What mattered was the will of one man, Sparrow.Only one.”

The Captain had come close to persuading me once again. He had almost recreated the brief moment of hero-worship that existed for me the first time I met him.Almost, but not quite. The change was not in him so much as it was in me. I was perceptibly older and more aware of the ease with which he changed roles. He could inspire, he could lead, he could debate, he could instruct, he could be persuasive. And he could, I suspected, be cruel.

Later, I looked up Magellan in the computer files. What the Captain had failed to tell me was that Magellan had died on the trip and never made it back to his ancient country ofSpain . Once in the passageway, Thrush asked casually, “Interested in the creation of life, Sparrow?”

I was still thinking about the Captain and said offhand, “Sure.”

He drifted down the corridor. “Follow me. I’ll show you how it all begins.”

It didn’t strike me until later how confident he seemed, how very sure of himself he was. We ended up once again in Reduction, but this time the chambers were empty; there were no black sheets over any of them. Still, my heart was beating faster than usual and I wanted to leave. Thrush was in no hurry. He explained all the equipment in the compartment and how it worked while I dutifully drifted after him and tried to learn as much as I could.

When the short tour was at an end, he reached inside his waistcloth and pulled out a pipe similar to Tybalt’s and Crow’s. “Want some smoke, Sparrow?”

I glanced around to make sure the exhaust vents were on and he said, “I turned them on when we came in,” and I said, “Why not?”

We sat there for a while trading the pipe back and forth while I thought of what the Captain had said and realized he hadn’t told me much of anything at all. My fault, I supposed, because I had never asked him the same questions that Noah had asked me. But I would the next time. By the time I remembered why we had come to Reduction, my head was swimming and I had a case of the giggles.

“Life,” I said to Thrush, reminding him.

“Life,” he agreed. He put the pipe away and set up the microscope, then picked up a thin glass slide.

“Human life,” he said. “This is how it all begins, Sparrow.”

He unknotted his waistcloth. I watched, disbelieving. A few sweaty minutes later he pushed the slide under some holders on the viewing stage and adjusted the focus controls as he looked through the eyepiece. When he had the proper focus, he stepped away. “Take a look, Sparrow.The little fish with tails on them. They fertilize the woman’s egg and we grow from that.”

I leaned over the eyepiece and watched the wriggling sperm with fascination. This was the Beginning, from which would grow creatures with fingers and toes, hearts and brains. Creatures that could walk and run, eat and think and feel—the only creatureswho could do that in the entire universe. The wriggling things were what made Thrush and me and everybody else on board… gods. I didn’t learn until much later that what Thrush had done was something every male medical student on Earth tried at one time or another—and for the same reason.

When I finally looked up, Thrush handed me a slide, grinning. “Those were mine, Sparrow. Let’s see yours.”

I was lightheaded from the smoke and felt oddly disoriented and free. I hesitated only for a moment. I was vastly curious and besides, it was for science. I was shyer than Thrush and it took longer but soon I was looking at my own sperm through the lens, thinking that on the slide below were hundreds of embryonic replicas of myself.

I was still studying them through the lens when I felt Thrush’s hand touch my shoulder. I was suddenly acutely aware of his closeness, of his nakedness, of the smoothness of his skin, of the smell of his body, of the times I had admired his grace in the gymnasium, of his kindness in explaining the operations of the ship, of how long it had been since I’d had sex with Snipe, and of how many times I had slept alone since. I was dizzy and disoriented from the smoke, but very much aware of the warmth and privacy of Reduction. I was totally relaxed and passive, limp in Thrush’s arms holding me from behind. My feelings were those of a gratitude and admiration that verged on love.

Afterward, when I was readjusting my waistcloth in the corridor outside, Thrush laughed and said,

“You’re easy, Sparrow.” I watched him as he kicked down the corridor, feeling a slow flush build until it seemed like my skin was burning.

My mind was blank until I got back to my own compartment, then I was knotted with rage. I hit the side of the bulkhead with my fist, once, twice, then huddled in the sling and held my head in my hands. Thrush would not, of course, keep it to himself.

“Something wrong, Sparrow?”

Crow had stuck his head through the shadow screen.

“Go away,” I grunted.

He looked at me in astonishment. “What happened to you?”

“You’ll laugh,” I said.“You and everybody else.”

Something in my voice kept him from retreating.

“You know I won’t,” he assured me.

I wouldn’t look at him for fear he would see my tears of anger. He saw them anyway.

“Thrush,” he said.

I nodded. It would have been easy for anybody to guess the outcome of my brief friendship with Thrush.

“What happened, Sparrow?”

My mind was a confused mix of injured pride, impotent anger, and most of all a desperate need for reassurance of personal worth. I tried to explain it all to Crow but what I said didn’t make much sense even to me. The heart, I learned then, is a poor thing to think with. When I was finally through, Crow looked puzzled.

“Thrush has been with almost everybody on board. Nobody’s going to think the less of you for it.”

I stared at him. “Were you ever with him?”

He shrugged. “Nobody refuses anybody the first time, Sparrow. Ship’s custom. It’s not that important.”

I tried to tell him that it wasn’t just what other crew members might think of me but what I thought of myself. For the rest of my life I would hear Thrush’s laughter and know that he had played a game and I had let him win.

“So you lost your pride. That’s not much of a commodity on board.”

“I want it back,” I gritted.

“It’s foolish to let somebody have power over you because of that,” Crow said gently. “That’s why Thrush did it, you know.”

What he was saying would make sense to me the next time period or the one after that. But right then I was too fragile to be able to think about it logically.

I rocked in the sling and Crow said, “Do you want me to leave, Sparrow?” I tried to answer but couldn’t. Crow frowned,then said, “Do you want me to stay?” I sat there, mute, and he stroked my chest and said again, “It’s not that important, Sparrow,” and spent the rest of the sleep period with me. When I woke later, alone in the compartment, I realized wryly that I had gone through essentially the same experience twice in the same time period. But despite the similarities, Thrush had become more of an enemy and Crow had become more of a friend.

The difference was that one had taken away my pride and the other had given it back. Nobody but Crow ever understood that.

Ididn’t know what to expect at breakfast; I was prepared for any comments. My fellow crewmen watched as covertly and as intently as they had when I first got out of sick bay, but nobody said anything. A few speculative looks made me flush but there were no jokes, no laughter. Apparently nobody considered what had happened important, though my reaction to it was of great interest to them. I was relieved; I couldn’t tell whether Thrush was disappointed or not. I glared at him and felt my anger surge when he stared blandly back. We were two apes, he and I, and I had presented—Thrush had proved to himself that he was the alpha primate.

I choked down my meal and when Noah got out the chess pieces, I tried to forget Thrush and concentrate on the board opposite me. I played very badly!

There would be other games with Thrush, I thought, and next time the outcome would be different. But for now, Crow was right—there were more important things to worry about. During the next dozen shifts, when I was alone at the terminal pad, I checked through the ship’s inventory of EVA suits, helmets, sets of inner-weave, life-support packs and exploration supplies. According to the figures, we had suffered only normal attrition from the thousands we had started with, considering the centuries that had passed. There shouldn’t be any problem for the exploration parties. I didn’t believe it.

I told Crow my worries and one time period, between shifts, we went to Exploration to inspect the suits racked along the bulkhead.

“Look at this.” Crow held one out to me by the sleeve and I floated over. “Would you be willing to wear this?”

He tugged gently where the cloth met the metal disconnect at the wrist. It stretched slightly,then parted evenly at the metal. Anyone wearing the suit and putting pressure onthe disconnect would have lost his air supply in an instant.

The suit was
old
, as old as the Captain himself.

“They’ll check them before they’re actually used,” I said, not completely convinced. But I didn’t leave it to anybody else; I still had vivid memories of the rotten length of rope on Seti IV. I checked the suits, and I checked the helmets as well to make sure they were fully transparent, that the plastic hadn’t fogged over with age so you couldn’t see the faces of those wearing them. Finally, I inspected the life-support packs and the transceivers; there would be no communications failure this time. As we got closer to the Aquinas system, the rest of the teams checked everything once again and both Crow and I felt foolish. I was assured the teams always took great care in inspecting the equipment. But nobody yet had come up with a credible explanation for what had happened to me on Seti IV. Even though we were still months away from Aquinas II, the lectures by Ophelia and other Seniors in Exploration grew more frequent and intense, the audience more alert. There were few sleepers now. For those members who had never been through a landing, their first planet would be a rite of passage entitling them to full membership in the crew.