Dusk (3 page)

Cyrus looked up at the browning film that
limited visibility even out this far from the growing sprawl of Los
Angeles. Most of the desert had been consumed by urban renewal and
the need to accommodate more and more people. “People just don’t
die like they used to,” David Chamberlain, his father, had once
said. It wasn’t until now, looking at the dinge-filled sky, Cyrus
really understood what he meant. The Silverlake Terraforming
Processor had been cleaning the noxious city air now for more than
half a century. Ironically, this technology, made obsolete by the
discovery of a planet that could sustain humanity without
terraforming, now served to make Earth itself more inhabitable—all
the while, forcing the filth out here to the desert.

People weren’t even born right any more.
Podcenters robbed the mothers who could afford it of the last
trimester of motherhood in order to eliminate birth defects and
disease. Human beings were surviving better than ever—and that
survival was killing them. No one had officially stated that this
mission was to ‘save humanity,’ but the shoulder pads in their
month-long briefing definitely acted as though this mission had
more riding on it than just human curiosity. Something was about to
break, and he and the nineteen other eggheads on this barge were
being lined up to put their fingers in the dam. No one said it. The
words probably didn’t exist to call out the problem by name. But
Cyrus could feel it. The thought alone was so ominous it seemed
like a promise. He could tell his son felt it too.

Cyrus ran his fingers through the curly
strands of hair that always seemed to collect on the front of the
boy’s head. The curls made his head look too big for his body,
which was smaller than it should have been. Cyrus took his wife’s
hand in his other. Her hand was warmer than he expected given the
chill he felt in his own. Her long black hair concealed her face,
but he caught a glimpse of her eye as she turned her head toward
him, and he saw a glimmer there. She squeezed his hand and held her
grip, and then turned slowly to meet his eyes. The glimmer had been
a tear that had formed on her tear duct, yet refused to run down
her face. Her porcelain skin was a strong contrast to his own, but
he had always liked that. She didn’t bother to wipe at her eyes,
but the tear moved down her cheek slightly as she turned. She
opened her mouth to speak, but then turned back to the window,
squeezing his hand even tighter.

Darius had been looking through the window of
the conveyance lev. “Dada,” he asked, continuing to look toward
their destination—it was endearing that his son, as eloquent as he
could be for an eight year-old, had never grown out of that
particular moniker.

“Yes Dari?” Cyrus continued to look out of
the window as well as the Land Dock grew in the distance. The
Mercury Six was moored to the massive platform. It would take them
to the Eros Slingshot where they would rendezvous with the larger
Paracelsus that would take them to Asha.

A tumbleweed rolled away from the lev as it
sped down the track. “Miss Hasabe says a long, long time ago they
used to land the first space ships here.”

“That’s right Dari. Five hundred years ago,
they would land a space ship they called the space shuttle here. It
was a military base then too, but not for the Uni.”

Darius looked up at his father, his eyes
wide. He began to say something, stopped, looked outside at the sky
for a moment, and finally turned back again. “Will they have the
Damocles next to the Paracelsus at the Eros station, Dada?”

“They haven’t built the Damocles yet,” Cyrus
said as Darius turned to face him. Something moved over the boy’s
face and it was as if those words alone carried the pain of how
long it would be before he would see his father again. He didn’t
cry, but the look of horror on his face was worse than tears. Cyrus
wanted to comfort him, but he could only find the words, “I’m
sorry, Darius.”

Dr. Kalem saw Cyrus and Darius and moved
closer to them. Cyrus shook his hand and then pulled him in,
hugging him brusquely, “Take care of my family, old friend.” The
lines on Kalem’s face deepened, and his lips parted as if to say
something, but he only smiled and gripped Cyrus’s shoulders
tightly. When Kalem released him, Feralynn stepped between them,
agape with tears. Cyrus pulled her close as she sobbed and suddenly
felt the heaviness between them lifted. In that moment, it was just
the two of them, as they had been during their years at the
Arcology. Someone more inclined to melodrama would have described
the feeling as warmth, but even in that moment where the entire
universe was a small space that included only them, Cyrus knew that
warmth was no longer a part of their equation. The raw emotion
between them had no name, and it was too humble to be overwhelming,
but it filled the expanse that had grown between them for the last
eight years. And for a moment that seemed longer than the trip
Cyrus would soon embark on, he coveted the feeling of every
sensation of every gram of flesh where their bodies touched.

As they embraced, the conveyance lev reached
the Dock. Feralynn pulled away from Cyrus, punched him rather
abruptly on his shoulder, and then turned away lowering her head.
Cyrus backed away slowly. He understood more of her mixed emotions
than maybe she did herself—enough to know nothing he could say in
the time they had left would change them. But he paused anyway,
almost apologized, but saved his words, turning to hug Darius one
more time. Cyrus almost convulsed as he felt the warm moisture
between their cheeks. Then he set his son down, turned as quickly
as he could, and walked down the jetway with some other scientists.
It felt as if he were walking through a swamp as he trudged toward
the airlock. He wanted to turn to get one more glance at his
family, but he pressed himself to keep moving toward the ship.

Suddenly, there was a commotion behind him.
He heard a shout and then a shuffling, and as he turned, he saw a
soldier trying to restrain Darius. Darius flailed his elbows to
squirm out of the soldier’s grasp. The soldier moved his hand to
get a better grip and Darius twisted. The man only managed to grab
the collar of his jacket, and Darius spun out of it, stumbled, and
then pedaled his feet beneath him to run outside the reach of the
soldier. The soldier cursed under his breath, but Kalem placed his
hand on him, spoke some words, and the soldier relaxed and did not
give chase. Darius barreled up the jetway, and if he had been six
or seven kilos heavier, would have tackled Cyrus. As Darius looked
up, he was gasping for air and his cheek was wet, but he did not
appear to be crying. Cyrus could not tell if the boy was gasping
from crying earlier, from his struggle with the soldier, or from
trying to get his words out too fast.

“Dada! Dada! Remember the other day when I
said I felt selfish?”

“Yes Dari.”

“I don’t feel so selfish anymore. I feel like
it’s gonna be impossible without you, but I don’t feel so sad
anymore.”

“I’m glad Dari, but what changed?”

“I figured out what the treasure in the Aryal
story was!” He paused to wipe something from his nose, sighed a
little, and then continued, “The treasure isn’t a thing, at least
not a grabby kinda thing. It’s a feeling. A feeling that someone
loves you enough to give up a part of themself because you need
it.” His words came in between sniffles, but he managed to hold
back any tears.

“That’s pretty deep Dari, but I’m not sure I
see what I’m giving up.”

“That’s because you aren’t. I think you need
something Dada. I’m too young to know what it is, but I’m Big Man
enough to let you go look for it, at least for a little while. But
you better find it before mommy and me get to Asha, because you
leaving is
almost
too much once. I know I couldn’t do it two
times.”

And then he couldn’t hold back the tears
anymore. His body began to shake with sobs and he turned, buried
his face in his hands, and stumbled back toward the soldier that
still held his jacket. Feralynn moved to the soldier and sidled
past him, pulling her son to her side with one arm. She looked up,
tears in her own eyes, and Kalem put his arm around her and Darius.
Kalem nodded to Cyrus before uttering some quiet consolation to
Darius and Feralynn. With her free hand Feralynn blew Cyrus a kiss,
her tears adding a melodramatic twinkle to her eyes. She had never
looked as beautiful as she had at that moment. It was as if the
pall that had hung over her for the last eight years was lifting,
slowly, but lifting nonetheless. And that was how Cyrus knew he
would never see her again. Darius would make it to the Damocles,
but she never would.

• • • • •

—
Dada, why are you leaving me and mama?

—
I’m not leaving you. You will be meeting me on
Asha with your mother once the Damocles is built.

—
That’s gonna take five years for them to build
it though.

—
But it will land a year after the Paracelsus,
because it will be a bigger and faster ship with a much more
efficient drive.

—
But I’ll be a grown up man like you before I see
you again.

—
I know Darius, but this trip may help us
understand things we couldn’t understand before. Things we would
never be able to see and study here on Earth.

—
What’s Asha like Dada? At school they say it’s
like a really big desert.

—
Well, there’s a huge ocean that runs under the
surface. But the surface is barren and dry as far as we can
tell.

—
Why is it like that?

—
Because it spins on its side. Like Uranus. We
think a large comet hit it when it was a young planet. The impact
created a giant crater we call the Bereshit Scar and knocked Asha
on its side. Because the comet was made mostly of ice, the ice
melted and filled the gaps under the surface. The comet created the
conditions that will allow humans to live on the planet. But
because the planet turns on its side like that, a day on Asha is
half a year, and it’s night for half a year. And a year on Asha is
twenty-five Earth years, so it’s good the ocean is underground,
because the water would evaporate and Asha would be covered in
clouds like Venus.

—
But I don’t get it, why is Asha so
important?

—
Because it’s like a young Earth. Studying the
planet up close might help us learn how life on Earth started.
Plus, pretty soon there will be too many people on Earth, we will
need a place to go, and that place will need to be
prepared.

—
Can’t you wait until I’m older to leave?

—
I wish I could, but we have to leave now because
it takes so long to get there. At the speed the Paracelsus goes, it
will take a hundred ninety-six years to get there. A machine called
the Hyposoma Apparatus will keep my body from aging until the ship
begins to slow down. It takes the ship five years to slow down
because it is going so fast, so we use the five years to make our
bodies healthy again, because the Hyposoma makes our bodies and
brains weak.

—
The Paracelsus will travel at ninety-Five point
oh five percent of the speed of light, two hundred, eighty-five
thousand, one hundred fifty kilometers per second, right Dada? Miss
Hasabe taught us about it.

—
That’s right. But because the ship goes so fast,
it takes a hundred ninety-six years on the ship, but it will be six
hundred thirty-one years for everyone else because traveling close
to the speed of light bends time.

—
So while you’re in bent time, me and momma and
everyone else will be in straight time, and we’ll get older. Then
me and momma will go on the Damocles, and we will go into even more
bent time, and everyone else will get old and die, but we’ll be
okay because of the Hyposoma At-her-at-us.

—
App-er-atus. And yes, your Uncle Xander already
made the arrangements for you and your mother to go on the Damocles
when they are done building it. If it didn’t have to slow down, it
would actually catch up to us before we got to Asha.

—
That’s because the Damocles travels at
ninety-eight point one three percent of the speed of light, two
hundred ninety-four thousand, three hundred ninety kilometers per
second.

—
Since when do you pay so much attention in
class?

—
Well, it’s not all the time the teacher talks
about my Dada in class. Are you sure I’m going on the Damocles. No
one at school believes me, and Terry Gallager says only important
people get to go.

—
You’re important to me, so the next time Terry
Gallager runs his mouth about something he knows nothing about,
tell him to stuff it in his undersuit.

—
Okay Dada. Is it gonna be fun on Asha?

—
There will be a lot of work for me to do. But
the settlement should be prepared by the time you and your mother
get there. And you should be traveling with other families as
well.

—
I don’t want you to go Dada. I think I’ll miss
you too much.

—
I will miss you too. Terribly. But this is work
I have to do. A chance to do something that could change everything
we know—everything we thought we knew. But you will be fine. Before
long, you won’t even notice I’m gone.

—
I don’t think so Dada. The launch is forty-seven
and a half days away, but I feel like I’m never gonna see you
again, and it hurts so much already. It feels like it’s never gonna
stop hurting.

—
Well, one way or the other, it will stop
eventually.

—
You’re real smart Dada, and you always seem to
know all the right answers, but I don’t think you got it right this
time.

—
For both our sakes, I hope you’re wrong.