Bright Star (12 page)

He’s gone.

My Prince.

I hit the glass with my fists. I hate myself. I hate my task and my whole stupid life. I collapse upon the lid and cry, inside of me a pain so deep I could scream. I think I’m going to die. This is simply too much.

Then the words of my beloved Blasius make their way into my tortured soul. It’s the secret of people like us.

Blasius said that humans are greedy, and this is their condemnation—the reason why they destroy all that they have of beauty. But clones are different. Clones don’t spend their time regretting what they don’t have, but they can rejoice in the little that has been granted to them.

I was lucky to have my Prince with me, even for so little.

His memory will help me to survive.

A
NOISE
wakes me up with a start.

Coldness has seeped into my bones and my neck is painfully stiff. I fell asleep on the sarcophagus cover. An area of my cheek, the point resting against the glass, is completely numb.

I check the lights inside the lid. All green. The same for those on the console. And yet I have heard something.

Twenty-eight broad cycles, almost twenty-nine: after so much time on this piece of junk, I am able to sense the slightest variation.

“It’s too soon, Prince. Can’t be the senator’s vessel,” I murmur.

Prince just looks back at me. His open eyes are covered in frost, his white eyelashes garlanded with tiny crystals.

“But maybe they came faster….” I stay put, listening. Then I stand up. “Don’t worry, I won’t go away.”

Yes, I continued to talk to him. I know he can’t hear me, but it comforts me. It makes me feel closer to him. For nineteen years, Prince had been an abstract entity to me, but then we met and he became real, and he has remained real for these other eight and a half broad cycles.

Eight and a half years. Three thousand and one hundred cycles. They have been long, but somehow more bearable than the time before I met him. I had his memory to support me. I had hope.

For the first few years, I embarked on a long and extensive exploration of Ship in the hope of finding edible food, or a comfortable setting that would allow me to awaken Prince. For months I studied a way to open the sealed laboratories, those with the radioactive hazard symbol on the door, figuring a marvel of food and water and comfortable clothes for Prince might be hidden inside. Eventually I thought of a complicated way to steal a little fire from the depths of the incinerator, tying a piece of my uniform to the long wire of one of my treasures found in the dust of Ship, throwing it into the chute and withdrawing it smoking and charred. I tried to undermine the doors with fire. It didn’t help. But the smoke spread, and, at once, an automatic system began to whistle and blink and all the doors unlocked.

For a long time, I remained against the wall, trembling, waiting for the poisonous radioactive emissions to kill me. Then the smoke began to dissipate and I realized that nothing would happen, so I entered the laboratories.

A disappointment. The rooms were empty as the rest of Ship. I only found a few broken tools and an object no one had bothered to recover from a shelf. An object made of layers as thin as veils, filled with letters and colors, which I recognized as one of those legendary items Blasius called “Books.”

I had to give up. This is a completely emptied scrap. There’s no good food and there isn’t a place in which Prince could live safely. So I faced reality and began to look forward to the moment of our rescue, keeping my body in training, eating all the rations, although decomposed, running through the empty corridors until I was so tired I could sleep soundly and without dreams throughout my rest period.

At the end of my shift, or at the beginning, while still sleepy, as I crunched my disgusting ration, I sat on the edge of the sarcophagus and flipped through the pages of my last treasure: Book.

It was a book about Earth, full of mysterious pictures I have carefully studied one by one. I spent hours observing the fragile pages, comparing the tiny letters with those on the keyboard and trying to make sense of them. My knowledge of letters is limited to the sentence of the code. Bright Star. I became elated and used to scream if I could decipher a word as simple as “is” or “sat” or “right.” I have found many times the word “star,” and sometimes even “bright,” and I wondered if Book was talking about the two of us, me and Prince, as the last two remaining terrestrials.

Yeah, I didn’t really believe it. While Prince may be called without any doubt a terrestrial, I’m not sure the definition applies to me. However, I found it infinitely sad that Book contained so many heartbreakingly wonderful pictures of a world that no longer existed.

My favorite picture is one of those that occupies the entire page. It is a strange environment full of green plant forms. Blasius had spoken to me about Trees and Grass, but I wouldn’t have imagined these things could be so lush and enveloping. They fill the entire page. In the middle of a profusion of trees and grass, there is a small path that surely leads to a mysterious and beautiful invisible place.

I looked at the picture at each end of my cycle, before the lights went out. I looked at it so much that Book opened alone on that page, when I placed Him on my lap. Sometimes I dreamed of walking on that green path, holding Prince’s hand. We had a happy future, although invisible, at the end of that road.

I shake my head to clear it of memories. I walk toward the main elevator, but I feel a second bump. It’s not really a noise, it’s a kind of vibration. Ship is shaken to the core, but slightly. It’s something that only a clone born and living here for twenty-eight broad cycles could recognize.

I don’t need to go check. I return to Prince. “And so, the moment is arrived. Only eight and a half years. They came quickly, after all.”

Prince looks at me, eyes white with frost. My heart swells with emotion. It’s time for change, and this is good, even if I’m scared. I couldn’t have done it without having known Prince. I couldn’t have done it without his love, without his promise.

Sitting on the edge of Prince’s sarcophagus, I wait for the senator’s men.

A
BOUT
AN
hour later, the light of the main elevator turns on. I stand up and wait for the strangers to reach our level. I don’t know whom I have to face, and my stomach is shrunken in a knot. Purebreds? Clones? I think they will be clones, but I don’t know for sure.

“Don’t worry,” I whisper to Prince. “I’m just a clone. I’m an idiot and I can’t even read, but when it comes to taking care of you, no one is better than me, you have to admit it.”

My breath fails when the elevator doors slide open with a sigh.

Two clones are inside the elevator.

They have a healthy and robust appearance, and gaze at me with the same narrow and elongated eyes I noticed in the clone who answered Prince’s call for help eight and a half years ago. Their regular features, as if sculpted, make them somewhat similar to robots. Both are perfectly identical.

The two clones advance inside the cocoon. I don’t move, my heart hammering. They could be aliens to me.

Then one of them quirks his mouth in a smile.

I blink.

“Don’t worry,” the clone says. “We are here to rescue you. It’s over.”

I
NCREDIBLE
.

Of all the things I would have expected, what’s happening is not included.

The two clones are friendly.

I’d like to fill them with questions. I want to know if they have feelings, if they have been awake for nine years to get here, or if they have the privilege of their own sarcophagus, if they are annoyed to be so equal to each other, if they feel themselves as brothers, but I can’t talk. I simply watch them.

They exchange a few words. I realize they speak very quickly. I can pick up the words “old-class-clone” and “Earth,” but the rest is too fast for me to understand. The one who smiled approaches the console of Prince’s sarcophagus.

“Hey, don’t you dare!” I snap, surprising even myself.

The clone faces me and talks to me slowly and patiently. “Don’t worry. Our orders don’t interfere with your task. We must simply bring this sarcophagus aboard our spacecraft.”

“My task is to watch over him,” I make clear.

“We know,” the second clone says, rolling his eyes.

“You will remain his guardian all the time,” the first clone continues. “We don’t want to steal him or take ownership or something. I assure you I don’t want to consider a frozen human more important than my own life. I haven’t been genetically modified for this.”

“Give it a rest,” the second clone says. “He understood. He’s not completely crazy. Yet.”

“Are you gone crazy?” the first clone asks, peering in my eyes.

“I… I don’t know…. Maybe a little….”

“If he were totally mad he’d have already jumped on us,” the second clone notes.

“All right.” The first clone removes the strap of a sort of weapon from his shoulder. I jump, scared, shielding the sarcophagus with my body.

“Don’t worry, it’s only a propellant engine,” the clone says. He shows me the object, keeping it on the palms of his hands: it’s a kind of dark metal pipe as big as my arm. “We put it under the sarcophagus to raise it and move it. Your frozen human won’t notice it. Do you trust me?”

“I… I….”

“You have to trust me,” the clone insists. “My name is Solartrance.”

The other clone startles. “No need to use your secret name!”

“He’s a clone, not a human!” Solartrance replies. Then, turning to me, he adds, “Humans still believe we call each other using our code number! Foolish, is it not? What’s your secret name?”

“Phaedrus….”

“Nice to meet you, Phaedrus. His name,” Solartrance adds, pointing to the second clone, “is Spacefrost. Appropriate. Right?”

Slowly, my mouth stretches in a hint of a smile.

I can’t believe I’m still able to smile.

I’
D
HAVE
hardly allowed the two clones to do what they’re doing if I hadn’t known their secret names.

I stand and look while they attach the two dark metal cylinders under the edge of Prince’s sarcophagus. With astonishment, I see the tubes take life and emit a blue light. The coffin trembles and is lifted from the floor.

Spacefrost has a sort of remote control to direct the engines. The coffin moves in the air toward the elevator. The tubes emit only a low buzzing, and aside from the blue light, it seems the sarcophagus has begun to fly.

Solartrance smiles at me. “Come on. With all the transport systems turned off, we have to walk an hour to our rescue spacecraft.”

I follow them. We’re more than halfway when I realize I will probably leave Ship forever.

I wish I could have taken Book.

N
OW
I’
M
sitting here beside my Prince.

His new arrangement inside the little rescue spacecraft satisfies me. The ship is small, but some soft plastic dividers provide privacy. A thin layer of frost has formed on the outer surface of the lid, and I rub it with my fingertips to see Prince’s face.

“Don’t worry. It’ll be all right. This ship is smaller, but much more clean. No spiders.” I look around. “It’s so small, here. Obviously. The gravity is light and you have to be careful not to fly away, but in any case, the ceilings are so low there is no danger of getting hurt. They are also filled with a kind of foam. I haven’t seen everything yet, but the rest looks the same. The cot and sanitizer are just like mine. Here, of course, everything is new and working, but it’s more or less the same stuff I was used to. I don’t know what I expected, but I’m a little disappointed.”

I smile at him. “Do you know? I was scared like an idiot at the idea of leaving Ship. For all my life, Ship was my prison. But now I can’t help but think of Her, alone, empty, drifting in space….”

My eyes fill with tears.

“Crazy stuff, right?” I continue, my voice broken. “I know you’d laugh at this. I feel vulnerable and I suffer space sickness in this small spacecraft, and all I do is think about Outside pushing on this thin hull, but you’d laugh and say that mine is just a stupid reaction….”

Someone stands on the threshold of this small room. I fall silent.

It’s the clone named Solartrance. That is, I have no way of recognizing him, but he’s gentler than Spacefrost, so I think it’s him.

“Can I come in?” he asks.

I shrug. “Sure.”

He enters and looks at Prince for a while. “He’s beautiful.”

“Yes,” I say sorrowfully.

“You haven’t eaten your ration,” he says, pointing to the strange package they gave me. I simply placed it on the edge of the sarcophagus.

I shrug again. I don’t have the courage to tell him I didn’t know how to open the container.

Solartrance tilts his head and peers at me. “Can I sit down?”

“Yes,” I say, eyeing him. What does he want exactly? Why did he come? I’m not used to dealing with other people or other clones, apart from Blasius or Prince, and I don’t know how to behave.

He sits on the edge, beside me. “How many broad cycles have you been out there, Phaedrus?”

“Twenty-eight. All my life.”

“Without depressant rations?”

I frown. “What are they?”

Solartrance nods. “This is probably the reason why you suffer from space insanity, even if slightly.”

I blink.

“Listen, Phae,” the clone says, picking up my ration. “You have to open this container on top, tuck the straw inside, and drink it all. It contains everything your body needs: nutrients and vitamins and minerals. In addition, it also contains a drug that will make you sleep for a cycle of twenty-two hours.”

I gasp. “
Twenty-two
?”

“Yes,” he says, putting the ration in my hands. “During deep space travel, we sleep in cycles of twenty-two hours. The two remaining hours are more than enough to control all the systems, communicate our position, check that everything is working, use the sanitizer, and drink another ration.”