The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel (22 page)

One time period when I was in the nursery, another mystery presented itself, though I was unaware of it for a while, as I was of most mysteries on board the
Astron.

Pipit had just finished leading the
begats
and drifted over to where I floated by the hatchway.

“Loon has moved in with Ibis,” she said.

Loon, so good at spreading stories about the love affairs of others, had kepthis own a secret. Ibis was his opposite: a quiet, thoughtful young woman, not particularly attractive. I didn’t know her very well; she was a radio tech in Communications and most of my friends and acquaintances were in Exploration.

“That seems sudden,” I said, surprised.

Pipit shook her head. “Not really. Ibis and I have always been good friends. She’s spent a lot of time with us and Loon got to know her.”

Pipit had probably engineered the romance, and I made a mental note to ask Snipe about it later. Snipe’s flair for gossip had diminished, but I was sure she had some insight into Ibis and Loon that I didn’t.

“He said he would give his life for her.” Pipit laughed. “I think he was serious.”

Loon was always willing to give his life for somebody, but if he ever had to, I suspected he would give it a little sooner for Crow than for anyone else. I suddenly wasn’t sure of the right thing to say.

“I imagine you and Crow are glad to be alone,” I fumbled.

Her smile faded and she gave me a troubled look. “I love Loon,” she said slowly. “But he and I compete. And sometimes I lose.Too often.” And then, hastily: “I’m very happy for him.”

But she was obviously happier for herself.

“Sparrow?”

Somebody was tugging at my leg and I glanced down to seeK2 wrapped around my calf.

“Come pray with me?”

K2had grown a lot in the past few months but his diction hadn’t caught up with the rest of him. He constantly surprised and delighted me, not the least with his ability to read me as easily as did the Captain. Right then, I decided I needed to play more than anything else. I grabbed him around the waist and we went rolling through the compartment, the other children scattering to give us room. We bumped softly against the opposite bulkhead and I held him against the deck, tickling him under the arms. He squealed with delight and burst into a fit of giggling, joined by most of the others in the compartment.

Another roll around the compartment, only this time when we caught up against a bulkhead we hit it a shade too hard;K2 took the brunt. His mouth turned down and he started to cry. I held him in my arms and said the usual words of comfort, then turned to stare in amazement at a compartment full of sobbing children.

“Are they always like this?” I asked Pipit.

She looked surprised.

“Of course.You hurt one, you hurt them all. And if you make one laugh, the others always feel it.” She hesitated.“Most of them.”

I settled in a corner and studied the children the rest of that time period. A number of mothers came to visit but there were many “fathers” as well. I found it fascinating to watch who had “taken an interest” in whom. Wren and Grebe were vastly proud of thin little Cuzco while Duncan, an engineer in Communications, played quietly with pudgyDenali . In general, the gentler members of the crew and the quieter Children seemed to have an affinity for each other. In some cases, I was struck by the resemblance and guessed that natural father had taken an interest in natural son or daughter. But those cases were few.

I had frequently thought about the differences between the rest of the crew and myself; now it seemed as if they might be more subtle than I had imagined. There had always been a lot of hostility toward Thrush, and that had masked the lack of hostility between most members of the crew, the lack of any real malice. Even Loon’s gossip and satires were meant to cause laughter, not hurt. Nor was there much competition among members of the crew, especially on station—they cooperated naturally when they worked together. They were also at ease with affection at almost any time and any place, something that had scandalized me at first and now made me envious.

Well, what should I have expected? It was a well-trained crew that had been working and living together for generations. But the crew’s rapport with each other went deeper than that. Even their nonrefusal the first time when it came to sex hinted at something more complicated. Maybe it was philosophical, I thought. If you knew that you and your fellow crew members were the only life in the entire universe, with what concern and respect would you treat each other?

The thought gave me great pause and I watched the children more closely. Right now they were too young for their character to have been shaped by philosophy. More important, there were a few who didn’t join in the giggling or the infrequent crying but watched and frowned, obviously feeling left out. The crew in microcosm.Therewas the bulk of the crew members, and then there were the Captain’s men. If we found nothing on Aquinas II, the mutiny would spread very quickly, with the majority of the crew pitted against the Captain and a few followers. But unlike most of the rest of the crew, the Captain and his men were capable of violence.

****

A few time periods after that, I was once again approached to join the mutiny—and told I was indispensable. I had gone to the hangar deck to meet Snipe and playact with her in one of the historicals . They were heavily romantic and later we would go to her compartment and make love by the stream just outside her tent. It was exciting for both of us. I guessed that Loon would soon find out and spread the story around the ship; I didn’t mind—if anything it would make more real the character of Sparrow, somebody my fellow crew members knew better than I did.

I had turned off the shadow screen and, was floating to one side of the vast deck, staring at the stars overhead. I wondered how I could be so depressed when I had everything I wanted in life or even thought I wanted—a love affair with Snipe, a purpose in life, and, most of all,a knowledge of my background and who I had been.

But still, I was a chip floating on a sea of dissatisfaction. I
knew
who I was, but I did not
remember
who I was. It struck me as unfair to have lived so long yet recall only a small fraction of my life. I had my friends and lovers but there was no lifetime of shared experiences, no years of love and affection and growing up together…

I wasdrifting, hoping solitude would jog me out of my black mood, when I felt the slight movement of air currents at my back.

“Snipe said to tell you she’d be late—a last-minute assignment from Ophelia.”

The shadowy figure of Noah had materialized behind me. I had been staring up at the stars, absorbed in the view of Outside, and the ten percent of me constantly on the alert had let down its guard. I winked the overhead shadow screen back on, let the glow tubes come up, and floated toward the hatch. “I’ll meet her in her compartment.”

“Sparrow.”

I turned around, noting the worried look on Noah’s face and his hands nervously twisting together behind his back.

“I’ve nothing I want to talk about, Noah.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes blinking furiously behind his thick lenses, “but I do.”

I shrugged. “You’re here.”

He lowered his voice, worried that the Captain or some of his spies might overhear.

“I can’t pretend with you, Sparrow. And you shouldn’t have to pretend with me.”

“Ophelia told you,” I said coldly.

“She didn’t have to. You gave yourself away.”

“To everybody?”

He shook his head. “Not to everybody. But I know you better than most—and I’ve known you longer.”

“You knew Aaron and Hamlet, you don’t know me.”

“Aaron was my best friend,” he said with dignity. “I took an interest in Hamlet. I took an interest in you.”

“There’s a difference between us, Noah. I don’t think anybody ever tried to murder Aaron or Hamlet.”

“If they did, I never knew about it.”

“Well, somebody tried to murder me,” I said bitterly. “But nobody believes it.”

His face glistened with sweat.

“I do.” He hesitated. “For the first time, your life—your real life—is in danger.”

It was one thing to know it myself, it was another to have it confirmed, and it was still another to wonder what he hoped to gain by telling me.

“Why?”

“Your memories.”

“My memories?”I laughed. “I have no memories. It was you and Ophelia and the Captain and the crew—all of you— who agreed to flatline me.”

“Neither Ophelia nor I could stop it. And at one time it was necessary.”

Ophelia had told me that and I believed her. But Noah had plans in which I was the linchpin, and he had yet to tell me why.

“You wanted me to recall my memories when you and Abel came to sick bay,” I said, suspicious. “Or were you just trying to make sure I had forgotten?”

He shook his head, the sweat flying off his nose and chin.

“I wanted you to remember. There’s a window of opportunity when it comes to regaining your memories after a trauma… or flatlining . It closes a little with each time period that passes. In another year or so, you’ll have no chance of regaining your memories at all.”

“And Abel wanted me to remember as well?” I asked in mock surprise. Abel was the Captain’s man, Noah must know that.

Noah read the insinuation in my voice and stiffened. “I would trust Abel with my life.”

“Then you’re more a fool than I.” I wanted to remember my life as Hamlet, perhaps even as Aaron. They were closer to me, more immediate. Before that, I wasn’t sure I cared. But Noah already
knew
my life as Aaron and Hamlet and I had the feeling he was after something more.

“What do you really want of me?” I asked, frowning. “It’s not the same thing for both of us, I know that.”

“I want you to remember,” he said quietly.“All the way back.”

I was incredulous. A hundred different lifetimes… “Why is that so important to you?”

“Not just to me, to all of us.”

I stared at him, a thin, aging little man who had taken on the impossible role of opposing the Captain. I couldn’t believe he had gotten this far, then guessed the only way he could have was if the Captain had let him. I suspected a trap somewhere had opened wide and Noah had walked right in.

“We can’t win a mutiny, Sparrow. Not now. We know that. But there have been other mutinies before this. We don’t know if they go back to the beginning; the computer has no true records of the first five generations. But the crew who started the first one must have thought they could win. They must have known a way they could run the ship without the Captain.”

I was astonished. No true computer records for the first five generations! I struggled to hide my emotions.

“How does that involve me?”

His face became tight with tension.

“If you could remember—”

“Then you lose,” I interrupted. “My memories are gone. I’ve tried to recall them. I can’t.” Then, sullenly and very much aware that I was probably saving my own neck: “I’m not a part of your mutiny, Noah.”

His mouth straightened into a grim line. “You’re of immense value to the
Astron,
Sparrow. But to some of those on board, you’re more valuable dead than alive. The only possible reason is because they’re afraid of what’s buried in your memories.”

Every time I had been flatlined , there was the slight possibility my memories might return when I recovered. But if Noah was right, until now nobody had ever tried to kill me because of it.

“What’s so different this time?” I cried. “Why not before, when I was Hamlet or Aaron or a dozen others?”

“Because this time we’re going into the Dark,” he said bluntly, “and we’ll never survive.”

Once again Noah was forcing me to choose between him and the Captain and I couldn’t make the choice.

“The Captain has his views,” I said stiffly. “I’ve yet to hear them.”

“You think you owe him that?”

I nodded.

Softly: “Then you should pay your debt as soon as possible, Sparrow.For all our sakes.”

He touched the terminal pad. The glow tubes dimmed and the shadow screen disappeared, to be replaced by the canopy of glittering stars.

“Going into the Dark is death, Sparrow—inevitable death for everybody on board as life declines and gutters out a dozen generations from now.And probable death for everybody this generation. The more crewmen who decide to die likeJudah , the fewer who will choose to keep on living.”

He turned to face me in the gloom and for the first time, I saw faint tears in his eyes. When he spoke, it was more tohimself than to me.

“We never knew what we lost when we lost Hamlet,” he murmured.

I watched him go with a sudden surge of shame. Compared to the Captain, he was a nervous, unimpressive little man in a dirty, rumpled halter. I couldn’t imagine anybody following him or being inspired by him. His only qualification was courage and then it occurred to me that perhaps courage was all he needed.

I left shortly after Noah had gone, tohe nervous and impotent with Snipe, then return to my own compartment and try to sleep. Hours went by before I finally drifted off, willing myself to return to the time when I slept in sick bay surrounded by all the faces of crewmen whom I didn’t quite know but all of whom knew me.

I woke sweating and wet from a dream, swaying gently in my hammock and trying to recall exactly what it was I had dreamt. I had been me but I had also been someone other than me. Someone older andmore sure of himself, more willing to take risks, more willing to gamble. There had been a kaleidoscope of images of a planetary surface where I had been in charge of a landing party. A very young Tybalt with two good legs was my chief lieutenant and a slender black-haired girl was my tech assistant. We had slid, laughing, down slopes of methane ice,then stood on a cliff overlooking a frozen lake to gaze in awe at a bloated, reddish sun sinking below the horizon at sunset. Later, back on board, the girl and I had rolled together in my hammock and made slow but impassioned love. I was awake now but I could still taste her skin upon my lips. Our lovemaking had not been as exciting as mine was with Snipe but it had been… familiar… and its very familiarity had somehow made it more fulfilling.