Dusk (18 page)

Uzziah focused on the back of Tanner’s head
and Cyrus tensed, gripping his staff more firmly and shifting his
weight back to his feet. When Tanner realized the Commander was not
moving toward the door, he turned sharply to face him. Before
Tanner completed his turn, Uzziah’s hands had already moved to his
side, his foot had already come down on the floor, and his head was
already bowing. This time he prostrated his gaze, for only a brief
moment, and then he raised his head, “I would like permission to
remain with the class, Sifu,” he barked in a militaristic, yet
respectful, tone.

Tanner knelt to retrieve the weapons he had
tossed to the floor. Tanner stood, both his sticks cupped into one
hand, the bokan in the other, and bowed his head to Uzziah, “If you
are going to stay, you will need to pick another weapon, because
this one belongs to Dr. Jang.” Tanner lifted the bokan and tossed
it to Jang who, not expecting it, barely caught it. Tanner then
moved to the Commander and offered him his hand again, this time in
friendship, “Welcome to the class,” he smiled, “it’s been a long
time coming.”

• • • • •

“Has anyone else noticed there are no
mathematicians or philosophers on this ship?” Dr. Milliken asked as
he spooned another bite of wheatgrass pilaf that tasted remarkably
like rice from his plate.

Dr. Winberg was quick to chime in with an
answer, “That’s because there is no room on a pioneering expedition
for pseudoscience and people who get paid to talk. Notice there are
no lawyers or politicians on this ship either.”

However hypocritical the bite behind
Winberg’s statement had been, Cyrus could see its validity.
Everyone had heard this complaint from Winberg before, but it had
never been more poignant. He was about to intone his agreement, but
Dr. Villichez was already speaking, “A scathing remark indeed, but
it is most certainly true. Division of labor is a luxury we can no
longer afford. That is, not until we have more fully colonized
Asha. So, gentlemen, enjoy your late-night gaming sessions and
beating yourselves into a battered stupor while we are festooned on
this vessel, for be assured that when we reach planet-side, the
renewed adolescence you have experienced on this ship will be
ripped from the futile grasps of the unprepared.”

An ominous quiet filled the room. Palpable,
it filled the lungs, made it hard to breathe, but uncharacteristic
of the unctuous fog it mimicked, vision became clearer, and the
solemn faces of each of the scientist became more distinct. Their
lives were no longer what they knew; their professions were behind
them. They were now men of means. Social standing, academic kudos,
and tenure now meant as little as a tick on the back of some
world-devouring Leviathan. Their old skills would amount to
precisely nil if they could not learn new ones. They would accept
this, or they would die.

The rest of the dinner was consumed in a
reverent silence. Every bite of creatively mingled soybeans,
grapes, and wheatgrass was chewed carefully, savored. As they ate,
morsel by ambrosial morsel, each man, from pious Christian to
blasphemous agnostic, uttered a silent prayer for his own sanity
and soul—each of the men genuflecting now under the weight of their
choice, in his own way.

• • • • •

When Cyrus entered his room, Dr. Villichez
was putting a music sphere on his personal datadeck. As the door
slid shut behind him, Cyrus noticed that even in this overly
sterile environment, the room had the aroma of aftershave, tweed,
and venerable wisdom—just as it should have.

“Isn’t the Shipmate programmed with just
about any music selection imaginable?” Cyrus asked as stood in
front of the now closed door.

Dr. Villichez didn’t look up, focusing a
surgical attentiveness on the placement of the crystal sphere. “I
prefer the sound of the music sphere actually. Seems more… tactile,
more sympathetic than the efficient stream of kilobits that pipes
in from the Shipmate’s central processor.” With the sphere in
place, warm, tenor notes of a saxophone streamed into the room as
smooth, lilting upright bass massaged the air.

Crossing his legs and cupping his hands
together over his knee, Villichez swiveled in his chair to face
Cyrus, “Please, have a seat,” he nodded toward the empty loveseat
in the corner that was the only furnishing that came with the room
that was unique to Villichez. “What brings you here?”

Cyrus sat, a little awkwardly. It wasn’t that
Villichez made him uncomfortable—it was exactly the contrary—but
there was something about him, like he knew more about you, the
room—about everything—than he put on. With Villichez sitting there,
Cyrus found it hard to sit upright. He was, for once, at a loss for
words—it was as if he expected Villichez to already know why he was
there.

And then, before he really knew he had opened
his mouth, it had just come out, “Actually, I just wanted to thank
you.”

“What on Earth for?” Villichez asked, a
little bewildered, but patient.

It took Cyrus a moment to fully gauge where
his mind was taking him, “Well, I know I haven’t been the most
manageable of colleagues since we all hatched, and I just want to
say I appreciate you taking it all with a grain of salt.”

Villichez let out a deep chuckle. Cyrus could
picture in his mind sweet scented tobacco smoke wafting from around
a carved wooden pipe with each guffaw. “Dr. Chamberlain, we all sit
before a proverbial round table on this ship. I don’t see any need
to have to manage you.”

As Villichez leaned back, Cyrus relaxed a
little into a more proper posture. “I see your point, and yet in a
way, you do manage all of us. I guess I just want to say, as much
as I rouse a rabble here and there, that I do appreciate it.”

“Well, in that case, I thank you,” Villichez
made a slight, but evident bowing motion, “but I must say, apart
from that business with leaving Dr. Tanner battered and trammeled
in the hallway, most of your tirades and endeavors I have found
rather amusing, albeit after the wind from your goose flapping has
died down.”

Cyrus smiled, “Goose flapping?”

“Evidently, in a less… automated day and age,
children would chase the rather largish birds around the farm. And
when caught, the geese were known to spread their wings and deliver
quite a buffeting.”

“That is a pretty accurate description of my
disposition,” Cyrus relaxed into the back of the chair, smiling
again. But almost as suddenly as he had loosened, his expression
waned, and he averted his eyes to the music sphere. The sphere
glimmered as notes of the whispering piano and coquettish bass
flirted and danced in the air with them. Cyrus caressed his chin
between his forefinger and his thumb as the delicate play of light
through the magnetically suspended sphere transfixed him.

“Something the matter?” Dr. Villichez asked,
his concern almost as tactile as the music drifting through the
speakers from the spinning translucent orb.

“I’m fine,” Cyrus said, not even convincing
himself. He pried his attention from the music sphere and turned to
face Villichez, who was now leaning forward, his chin cupped in his
hand, elbow resting on his knee. “Well, I feel fine as far as I can
tell, but my dreams seem to beg to differ.”

“Troubling dreams?”

“Not really. Most of the dreams are fairly
straightforward. Dreams of life back on Earth mixed in with some
odd bits and pieces of this place. You know, typical stuff, it’s
just that in these dreams… I dunno…” Cyrus turned back to the
sphere for a moment as the saxophone stepped between the piano and
the bass. It wasn’t aggressive, but it was enough to get their
attention and have them step aside while he did his own thing.
Cyrus replied quicker this time, “It’s like things are going fine,
but I keep tripping. Every dream things are fine. Finer than they
should be. And then I’m tripping again. Every time, tripping over
the same emotional thread.”

“And how would you describe this thread?”

“I can’t really describe it. It’s like trying
to catch the rain as it falls from the sky. All of it. You can’t.
And the harder you try, and the more impossible you realize it is,
the more frustrated you become.”

“I’m not sure I follow. Can you
elaborate?”

“I don’t know. It’s so hard to keep ahold
of,” Cyrus looked to the sphere again. Now the piano, saxophone,
and bass mingled together in a sensuous
ménage a trois
that
seemed to fill the room with sapphire and orange hues. Cyrus took
in the scent of it, let it fill his lungs, held it there for a
beat, and then exhaled it all. He paused under the sheer weight,
and then lifted his eyes to meet Villichez’s, “Once, my son asked
me to go to a Halloween party a friend from his school was having.
Everyone had to dress up. At first I was reluctant, but after I
decided to go as one of my son’s favorite cel-shade characters, it
wasn’t long before I really got into it. I recorded episodes of the
gram and watched it over and over again just to get the character
right. It was amazing how appealing it was to pretend to be someone
else for a day.” For a moment it seemed the weight would get the
best of him, but Cyrus exchanged another breath with the room and
was able to lift his head again. “When the call for volunteers for
the Ashan expedition came out, it was like being asked to go to
that Halloween party again. Only this time, it was an opportunity
to dress up as someone else for the rest of my life.”

The music sphere continued to spin as the
melodic tryst subsided. The instruments were spent, the air in the
room thinned in the afterglow, and again Cyrus absorbed as much of
it as he could before he was forced to let it go, “It was easier
than I expected to leave my daily clothes behind. I can do just
fine without the ties, the Laureate pins, the khakis, all of that
is flotsam in the bilge bay to me. Problem is, I don’t know if I
can bear the weight of the costume I chose. The beauty is that I
know one way or the other, it’s been chosen, and there is no way
back. But in the meantime, I feel like I’m standing here naked, in
between here and there, and it’s cold… it’s just… cold.”

The music sphere began to whisper another
tale in the air. This one began with the piano again, but this time
it was somber. It was begging for forgiveness for some unforgivable
affront. Villichez was nodding either in understanding of Cyrus, or
the piano, or maybe a little of both. “You know there’s not a man
on this ship who has not come to me expressing doubt—myself
included. Oddly, or maybe not so odd, you were the last. You know,
you were not the only one who came here to escape something, or in
search of something new, but it was clear—even from the start—that
you were here also in defiance.”

“But defiance of what?”

“I believe that is
your
question to
answer.”

The bass attempted to console the piano to
little avail. “Fair enough.”

“Besides, with all the work we have before us
planet-side, it won’t be long before the Damocles lands, and parts
of our old lives will return. Perhaps the ten relative years
between now and then will reveal some things that seemed timeworn
on Earth as welcoming as an old, familiar lullaby.”

“Well, I hope you are right,” Cyrus began to
get up from the chair. He was spent now himself, and the piano’s
lament was no longer comforting.

“Hope is what this trip is all about, is it
not?”

Cyrus was up now and moving to the door,
“Perhaps,” he paused and took one last look at the music sphere as
it spun and hovered above the datadeck, itself in defiance of the
gravity waves that kept the scientists’ feet anchored to the side
of the ship they called ground. “Well, thank you for your time. I
am heading to bed. Maybe sleep will help renew my faith in
humanity.”

“Maybe it’s not humanity you lost faith in.”
Villichez was up now as well, politely escorting Cyrus to the
door.

Cyrus paused, canting his head slightly
toward Villichez, “You know I’ve never in my life gone to see a
therapist.”

Villichez put his hand on Cyrus’s shoulder
and gripped firmly. The gesture was stronger than Cyrus expected,
but steadying. “And you still haven’t. This was just a candid
conversation between colleagues at a round table—between friends.”
Villichez nodded, and Cyrus nodded back with more of a smile than
he believed was possible as the door quietly slid shut between
them.

• • • • •

—
Anything interesting happen at school today,
Dari?

—
We talked about monkeys all day today. That was
interesting. But the most interesting part is why we talked about
monkeys all day.

—
Why was that?

—
Genivere had an apple, an actual real apple, not
dried or anything. She said it came off a tree that her grandfather
owned. Well, as she was parading it around the room, a monkey dove
through the window, jumped off a desk, and landed on her head. She
was screaming and swinging her arms everywhere and dropped the
apple. The monkey caught it before it hit the ground and ran into
the hallway. They cleared the grounds and searched for that stupid
monkey all day. Finally, they found it hiding in a closet eating
the apple, but it got away again and jumped out another window.
Genivere was taken to the hospital for tests they said. She was
still screaming when the medi-lev took her away.

—
Were you scared?

—
I was too busy laughing to be scared, but a lot
of people were freaked out. Afterward, people asked a lot of
questions so Miss Hasabe taught us about monkeys for the rest of
the day. About how they used to be only found in jungle areas a
long time ago, but as humans moved into those areas and tore down
the trees, they started to move around to other places like the
Fringe States where people can’t really stop them. She also said
that because people killed a lot of the other scary animals that
would eat or chase off monkeys, they were able to have a lot of
monkey babies. The part I didn’t understand was that if most
monkeys are from the former South America and from Africa, how they
got to Los Angeles. South America and Africa are a long ways away.
Even for people. She said she didn’t know.