IGMS Issue 17 (3 page)

As the initial effects of the drink wore off, I tried to think about my place in time. In the last subjective year I'd taken winks from Hullus, out near Hya, a few hundred light years further along the Sagittarius arm, and returned for a second and third trip, each time finding that the inhabitants of Hullus had grown ever stranger in appearance as they genetically adapted themselves to the planet's harsh environment.

After the third trip to Hullus, I carried a group of whatever-they'd-become to do research in the Omega nebula for a year or two, only to find their data obsolete when they returned.

That was when I started winking further along the frontier, winking my way to the planet where I sat today, sipping my fizzy cinnamon drink.

I noticed someone seated in the dark recesses of the place. Another pilot, I assumed.

"Share a drink?" I suggested. "I'm buying."

"You want me to share a
drink
?" a woman's voice answered. "Have you no shame?"

I wasn't sure how to respond. What the devil was shameful about sharing a drink?

"No, I'm bloody shameless," I answered. "Come on over."

I wouldn't have been surprised had one of the statuesque blondes of Rigel or the gilled littoral creatures of Faroff stepped out of the shadows; a lot of Renkinn pilots I ran into seemed to hail from those two worlds. Instead, a diminutive young girl with an olive complexion came out of the dark, bowed deeply, and perched herself on the edge of the facing stool. She had beautiful wide-set brown eyes, was hairless, insofar as I could tell, and wore a strangely cut coverall that failed to conceal her femininity.

"Tim, just Tim," I introduced myself and extended a hand.

"Timjus. A strange name," she answered with a clipped accent. She lifted a hand and pressed her heart. "My appellation and designator is Shuu Penpen. I am of the clade Domit in the habitat of Breezhe."

"I'm from old Earth, myself. Pleased to meet you," I answered as I lifted my glass.

"Would you
mind
not drinking while I am looking at you?" She turned her head away as I nearly choked with surprise. Apparently, drinking in front of someone was a cultural no-no where she came from.

"I left Earth in the twenty-second century," I said to start the conversation. "You?"

"I have but a few years of traveling behind me," she replied. "But they have been long winks, and far from my time and place, I'm afraid. I've never reached your 'Eart,' nor do I know when you might have left, but I think you are as lost in time as I am."

At that point I noticed that she was fiddling quite a bit with her hands. Guessing that she wanted to bring something up but didn't know where to begin, I said, "Something bothering you?"

"How long have you been winking?" she asked.

"Eight, maybe ten subjective years, I think. A lot of real time, anyhow."

"Are you finding that people are changing? The people at the places I've winked to lately are all so . . . so strange."

"That's the reason I keep traveling farther out," I admitted. "Out here, where the stars are so far apart, it only takes a few trips before the differences become noticeable. Especially when you wink to those planets where adaptations are required. A couple of years ago I had to wink a few littoral 'humans' to some watery planet in these great big,
sloshing
shuttles. Strange was the word for it all right."

"You've been taking passengers?"

That was a weird thing to say. Who didn't take passengers? "Occasionally, though it's been mainly cargo the last few winks." I'd not attached any particular importance to that until now. "Why?"

She chewed a lip. I liked that. Eleanor had had that habit as well. "I haven't seen a passenger shuttle for two years -- six trips across fourteen-thousand light-years. It is almost as if people suddenly stopped wanting to travel to the stars."

Fourteen
thousand years? Obvious hyperbole, I thought.

"A half dozen cargo trips may not mean anything, " I said. "I mean, people wouldn't all give up travelling in just a few thousand years."

"Is that all you've traveled -- a few thousand?" She stared across the table. "I've traveled nearly seven-hundred thousand light-years since I left home eighty subjective years ago. That puts me nearly a million real years from my own time. A
million
!"

Her casual statement shook me. She barely looked of legal age. A
million
years? She couldn't have started winking earlier than me; how had I managed to lose that much time?

My earlier concern over a couple of lost millennia had been less than comfortable, but to discover that I might have let a million years slip away was too much.

"Aren't you concerned about what's happening?" she added, obviously not noticing that I was barely listening. "Aren't you worried about what is happening to humanity?"

I tried to work through the implications of a million years. What forms had humanity molded itself into to accommodate natural environmental pressures, genetic tinkering, and the inevitable separation of genetic stock as they spread across the stars?

"The entire race couldn't have evolved uniformly," I said slowly, thinking out loud. "There's too much time and distance involved to allow for the consistent genetic changes. Groups that are clustered within a few light years of one another would tend to be similar, but differences would have to arise between locations separated by huge distances. I paused, then added, "Maybe there are places along the fringes of the galaxy where old-time humans remain."

"Unlike the inhabitants of this planet," Shuu whispered.

"Maybe they're just shy," I joked. But I couldn't help wondering how long I would be able to recognize my passengers as
human
if I continued winking forward in time?

Shuu and I became more relaxed as the evening wore on, comforting one another over what we'd left behind. We sipped a succession of interesting beverages while respectfully turning our backs to one another, growing more maudlin with each round as we described our time-spanning travels and named people and places we'd never see again.

We shared the traditional pilot's remorse at taking that first, second, or fifth flight -- the one that put all we knew so far into the past. We talked of what might have been, what could yet be, and what destiny held for us if we continued to wink away the centuries, travelling deeper and deeper into an increasingly post-human universe?

At times I grew optimistic as we discussed the wonders we'd seen; then I'd wax remorseful as I realized I had no real understanding of them.

I admitted my increasing alienation from society and humanity in general, while Shuu talked about clade disaffection, genetic anomalies, and some sort of political wrangling that left me confused and confounded. I only knew that her pain of time lost was as great as mine.

At last, the lights dimmed, the mood mellowed, and we went to bed.

Separately.

Shuu Penpen, for all her virginal mores, was affectionate in other ways in the days that followed. She sympathized with me when I was down, and allowed me to cheer her up when she grew depressed herself. We became close friends and, after that, more than friends: we were companions, driven by the loneliness of our chosen lives and the knowledge that we might never meet again.

I had learned my lesson earlier, so love was never a option, not when its promise could never be fulfilled.

We spent four weeks together while the inhabitants of the planet loaded our ships, prepared them for distant destinations, and informed us that we were to depart, emphasizing that last point by suddenly dropping the station's temperature to near freezing.

I donned my cape and enfolded Shuu Penpen in a warm embrace. We shared a final drink, watching each other closely as we drained the last drop from the glass. Then she was gone.

Hours later, I watched her ship twisting about, the shimmering rainbows coruscating down the sides as the Renkinns glowed ruddy at her tail. Somewhere, deep inside that amazing cluster of spheres and capsules, Shuu sat waiting for her view of the stars to change into a sky she'd never seen before, and probably would never see again.

"Remember me," she'd said before boarding her ship. She caressed my cheek with her fingers, a lingering touch that could have meant so much, or so little. "I'll see you at the end of time."

The Renkinns flashed and her ship vanished, launching itself into time's well as if she had never existed, or never would.

There was no ceremony attending my arrival; I simply exited the shuttle off the Renkinn and stepped into an unadorned gray corridor.

"Follow me," the shuttle driver said. "I'll take you down to the lounge."

The
lounge
turned out to be a utilitarian compartment with a few stools and tables and three inhabitants. The two scruffy looking inhabitants were clothed in the same gray-green workman's uniform as the shuttle driver, while the other wore an elegant outfit that shimmered rainbows when he moved.

"Wil Tibbits," I said after I'd seated myself.

"I am Penso deClave from the year of the Barking Wolf, third reign of the Illustrious Beneficence of the Ceta Collective." He inclined his head. "Are you, too, a Renkinn pilot?"

"Don't know what the Ceta Collective is, or where you're from, but wherever it is, they make some fine looking ships. Saw yours when I docked."

"It is an old design, but serviceable," he replied.

"Mine's from Earth's twenty-third century -- one of the early models. Been winking in it for twelve subjective years, watching as the winks eat up the real years."

Penso bowed his head deeply and crossed his palms. "I apologize profusely, but I know not of 'Earth' or where this twenty-third might be."

I took a sip of my drink. "Not surprised. Didn't imagine they'd count time the same way after this long." I took another sip.

"I am honored to meet you, venerated one. You have sacrificed much in the service of mankind."

I shrugged. "I just keep moving out to where the people look like those I'm familiar with. This is the first time I've winked back in this direction in a lot of years. I'm not comfortable getting this close, where they've . . . well . . . let's just say where things have changed so much. How far did you say you've come?"

The change of conversational direction startled Penso. "Twenty light-years to bring enlightenment to this world. This is my fourth and longest wink yet."

"So you'll be forty more years out of synch with your society. Penso, take it from me: when you get back home, settle down and try to fit in -- no matter how much it costs you. If you keep on winking, you'll eventually get so dissociated from everything you knew that your only choice will be to keep going. Quit while you can."

"Most wise and honored one, I must debase myself for not accepting your learned guidance, but I am honor-bound by the Ceta Collective to participate in ever longer voyages."

"You might find that there's no 'Collective' when you get back. History has a way of changing things. Forty years is a lot of time to lose."

"Winking away forty years is a trivial loss," he replied. "The Collective plan for the long term is untouched by mere decades or centuries. The Ceta's five-thousand year plan will not reach fruition for many millenia yet. Placing our missionaries on this world is merely one step in the greater plan."