The World at the End of Time (52 page)

But Balit didn’t laugh. He was sleeping. And as Viktor carried the boy to his bed, he wasn’t laughing, either.

Viktor sought out the one of Balit’s parents at home. He found Frit painting something on a large screen. “I’m sorry I kept him so late. We got to talking about why all these things had happened—”

“Where you go wrong, Viktor,” Frit told him serenely, “is in always asking why. There doesn’t have to be a why. You don’t have to understand things; it’s enough to
feel.”

Viktor looked uncomprehendingly at the designs Frit was painting on the screen. The screen, he saw, was flimsy, it would be transferred to the wall of the room that would some day be Ginga’s. It was a wall poem. He laughed. “So I shouldn’t try to understand why you’re doing that? When Ginga isn’t even born, and won’t be able to read for years yet?”

“No, Viktor, that is very easy to understand,” Frit said indulgently. “When Ginga learns to read I want her first words to come from her father. No,” he went on, brushing in another character in a chartreuse flourish and looking critically at the result, “it is this obsession of yours for understanding the sky that worries me. It upsets Balit, I’m afraid. What’s the use of it? The sky is the sky, Viktor. It has nothing to do with our lives.”

“But you’ve written poems about the sky!”

“Ah, but that is
art
. I write poems about what people
feel
about the sky. No one can experience the sky, Viktor; one can only look at it and see it as an object of art.” He shook his wooly head in reproof. “All these things you tell to Balit—hydrogen atoms fusing into helium, suns exploding and dying—there’s no
feeling
there. They’re just horrid mechanical things.”

In spite of himself, Viktor was amused. “Aren’t you even curious?”

“About stars? Not at all! About the human heart, of course.”

“But science—” Viktor stopped, shaking his head. “I don’t see how you can talk that way, Frit. Don’t you want to know things? Don’t you want to have Balit understand science?” He waved an arm around the future nursery. “If it weren’t for science, how could you and Forta have had a child?”

“Ah, but that’s
useful
science, Viktor! That’s worth knowing about—not like your worrying about whose lines are where in which spectra. It’s good because it makes our lives better. But I’m not at all curious about why stars shine and what makes them hot—and least of all about where they’ve all gone—because there’s nothing anyone can do about it anyway. Is there?”

By the time word came that Pelly was back in the habitats Viktor was beginning to feel as though he had seriously out-stayed his welcome on Moon Mary. Balit was still loyal. Frit was unfailingly polite. Forta, at least, had a use for their guest; he borrowed Viktor for an hour or so almost every day to dance with him. Forta appreciated it, and for Viktor it seemed good exercise for his nearly healed leg, though Frit did not seem to approve. Viktor heard them talking, not quite out of earshot, and Frit was being reasonable. “Folk dancing? Oh, yes, Forta dear, but what is folk dancing, after all? It’s simply what primitive people used to do when they didn’t have professionals to watch. But you are an artist!”

“And you,” Forta told him good-humoredly, “are a little jealous, aren’t you?”

“Of course not! On the other hand, dear . . .”

And the rest of the conversation Viktor could not hear, which was probably just as well.

Viktor was leading Forta through the familiar, sweet Misirlou when the package arrived from Pelly. Viktor opened it with excitement—something from Nebo for him to study, something more informative than the broken bits and pieces like Balit’s keepsake?

It was not from Nebo. It was human-made and very old. Pelly’s message said, “This appears to have come from one of your old ships, Viktor. I thought you’d like to listen to it.”

The last time Viktor had seen that object was on old
Ark,
just before the fatal attempt at landing a team of investigators. It was, in fact,
Ark’s
own black-box recording log.

It even still worked—more or less; someone had been repairing it, somewhere along the line, and much of the material was erased, much more so deteriorated in sound quality that Viktor could hardly make it out. But there was one tiny section that was loud and clear—and the voice that was speaking on the log was one Viktor knew well.

Jake Lundy. It was the voice of Viktor’s rival speaking from the grave.

When Balit came in, an hour later, he found Viktor sitting over the log, listening once again to the voice of his long-dead rival. “. . . have now been in this ship for fifty-seven days,” it was saying, the voice weak and cracking. “I can’t hold out much longer. The others are dead, and I guess—”

That was all that was still intelligible.

Balit put his arm around Viktor in compassion. He listened to the tape with Viktor, then listened again. “I know how you feel, Viktor,” he declared. “It must be awful, hearing your friend’s voice when he’s been dead for thousands of years.”

Viktor looked at him without expression.

“Jake Lundy wasn’t a friend,” he said.

“Then why—”

But Viktor could not answer, because he couldn’t find words to tell the boy how the voice of Reesa’s long-dead lover had suddenly started a hopeless longing for the long-dead Reesa herself.

That night, dancing Misirlou again with Forta, Viktor found himself near to weeping.

“Is something wrong?” Forta asked worriedly. Viktor just shook his head and went on with the dance. When Frit came in, looking faintly jealous at the sight of Viktor holding Forta, he said, “Listen, something’s come up. I’ve been talking to Nrina. She thinks we should come to visit her—look at the sketches and talk to her about Ginga.”

The principal thought in Viktor’s mind was that he was not, just then, ready to resume his affair with the woman who had brought him back to life.

When they reached Nrina’s habitat she was there to greet them, proudly exclaiming over Balit’s now blemishless forehead. “No brand! Oh, and you’ll be making love first chance you get now, won’t you?”

“Of course,” Balit said sedately. Then Nrina whisked them off to her laboratory—all but Viktor. Viktor was not involved in the planning of the new baby. He was given the freedom of her quarters to wait for her pleasure instead.

It was a long wait. Then, when she did arrive, her words were not of love. For the first time in Viktor’s experience of her, Nrina looked angry. “Do you know how much it
cost
Frit and Forta to dig up all those old records for you?”

He was taken aback. “They didn’t say anything about the cost,” he protested.

“Of course not. You were their guest.”

Viktor said doggedly, “I’m really sorry, Nrina, but how was I to know it cost so much money? Nobody ever said anything to me.”

“Said
what it
cost?
Oh, Viktor! Did you really think that two sensitive, artistic, decent people like Frit and Forta would say anything so
vulgar?”

“I’m sorry,” he grumbled. And then, defensively, he said, “What does it matter? You people are closing your eyes to what’s really important—what’s happening to the universe.”

He stopped, surrendering because he could see that she was looking at him with resigned incomprehension. She said, obviously trying to be reasonable, “But Viktor, you said yourself all these things were zillions of miles away and they took millions of years to happen. How can you call them ‘important’?”

He ground his teeth. “Knowledge is important!” he barked. It was an article of faith.

Unfortunately, Nrina was not of his religion. She took a turn or two around the room, looking at him in bafflement.

Viktor did not like the feeling that he had committed a terrible social blunder. “I could get a job and pay them back,” he offered.

“The kind of job you could get, Viktor,” she said with a sigh, “would not pay them back in twenty years. What can you do?” She hesitated, then plunged in. “Viktor? Who are Marie, Claude, Reesa, and Mom?”

“What?”

“They are names you used to say. When you were feverish from freezer burn,” she explained. “Sometimes you called me Marie and Claude, sometimes Reesa. And just at the beginning I think you said ‘Mom.’ Were these women you loved?”

He was flushing. “One was my mother,” he said gruffly. “Marie-Claude and Reesa—yes.”

“I believed it was that.” She sighed, twirling a lock of his hair in her slim fingers. Then she looked at him seriously. “Viktor,” she said, “I could design a woman like you if you wished. I could make one from your own genes, as I did with Balit for Forta and Frit. Or, if you can describe this Reesa and this Marie-Claude, I could make one like them. Or with the best qualities of both; if you wish. She would be physically of your kind, not as tall and slim as we are. Of course,” she added compassionately, “it would take time. The embryo must gestate, the child grow—twenty years, perhaps, before she would be of mating age . . .”

He looked at her with a sudden shock. “What are you telling me?” he demanded. “Do you want to stop our, uh, our—”

She let him flounder without an ending to the sentence. When it was clear he couldn’t find one, she shook her head affectionately. “Come to bed,” she ordered. “It’s late.”

He obeyed, of course. And when they had made love, and Viktor rolled over to get some sleep, it seemed that it was only minutes before Nrina was poking at him.

It must have been later than he thought, because she was fully dressed, gauzy work robe over her cache-sex, hair pinned up out of the way. “Get up, Viktor,” she ordered.

He craned his neck to blink at her. “What? Why?” It wasn’t uncommon for Nrina to have to get up early to work, but she didn’t usually insist on his own rising.

She looked serious. “I want you to go to Newmanhome with Pelly,” she told him.

He gaped at her. “Newmanhome?”

“He is leaving tomorrow,” she said.

Viktor rubbed his eyes. He was having trouble taking in what she had said. “Are you angry because of the money?” he asked plaintively.

“No. Yes, but that isn’t why. It is simply time for it to be over, that’s all.”

“But—but—”

“Oh, Viktor,” she sighed. “Why are you being so difficult? You didn’t think I would pair with you
permanently,
did you?”

Pelly’s ship was as impressive inside as out—only a chemical rocket, to be sure, but a huge one. Viktor was impressed all over again at the richness of a society that could afford to build such vast, sophisticated machines for so little purpose.

To Viktor’s surprise, Frit, Forta, and Balit turned up at the launching, Forta and Frit almost weeping as they kissed their son. It looked exactly like a farewell. “Balit!” Viktor cried. “What is this?”

“I’m coming with you,” the boy said simply. Incredulous, Viktor turned toward the parents—and recoiled from the anger in their eyes.

“Yes, he is going to join you, Viktor,” Frit said bitterly. “We have discussed it all night, but Balit insists. He is freed now; how can we stop him? But I cannot forgive you, Viktor, for putting these ideas in his head.”

CHAPTER 27

In the middle of that feebly expiring universe, Wan-To suddenly felt almost young again. There was still nuclear fusion going on somewhere!

Then the last of the ancient memories fell into place, and his next thought was to curse himself.

He had been such a
fool.
Why hadn’t he thought ahead? Why hadn’t he planned for this? It would have been so
easy
for him to do this same trick on any scale he liked, to send whole galaxies of stars off in the long-term storage of fast-as-light travel, so that he would have billions upon billions of them ready for his use in this time of his need!

For that matter, why hadn’t he built some sort of homing impulse into the matter-doppel’s instructions, so that they could have returned to normal space nearby?

The list of charges Wan-To could make against himself had suddenly become almost endless, but he gave up on them as common sense reasserted itself. Self-recrimination wasn’t really Wan-To’s style. Anyway he had more exciting things to think about.

Yes, yes, the memories were clear. There were twelve stars, and they were still alive! Still even
young!
And all
his!

True, they had been somewhat depleted by the drain of energies that had been needed to send them hurtling across the universe, and certainly they were now a terribly long way away—but they were
his.
He searched eagerly through his specific memories of that offhand action. There was not much there, but he was certain that some of them had billions of years yet to go even on the main sequence—then they would be long-lived dwarfs for much longer than that.

Cheerful for the first time in many eons, Wan-To began the task of planning how to make use of this wholly unexpected new gift.