Launch Pad (23 page)

O O O

May 19, 2194—E-LC transmission

16:58:54: Jim, it’s Mars. I’ve been waiting to hear from you before giving you the bad news. As you’ve noticed, the QE link has become unstable. We’re not sure if it’ll hold up. We’ve cut transmission down to the bare minimum in the hope that the entanglement will restore itself, but I have to be honest, buddy. It doesn’t look good. I don’t know how many more messages we have, but we will most likely lose our link soon.

17:07:32: James, it’s Kate. I haven’t heard from you in over 3 months, but I just want you to know I’m not worried. Smitty told me we’ve seen instability in the link before, so I’m sure everything is fine. So ignore that and just tell me how your Thanksgiving went. Yes, I remembered!

General Marsden tells me we only have this one transmission, so I’ll just say that even if you don’t hear from me every day (or 5 times a day!) I’ll be with you. Love you so much, ~Kate [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

O O O

December 1, 2193—LC-E transmission

13:03:54: I don’t know what to say, Kate. This is too much to think about. I don’t know if I can survive without hearing from you. As you said, they did have instabilities before. I have to be positive. Tell Mars that if he needs anything from me in the way of working on my half of the quantum pair, that I’ll do anything—anything—to get it stabilized.

I’m glad you remembered Thanksgiving. I haven’t been in space for a full year yet, and already it feels like ages. Hell, it’s been even longer for you. Okay, to be positive—tell Tony I’m proud of his promotion. He knows damn well that running the Mars line is the final step before getting a deep space mission, but tell him I mentioned it anyway. I hope to God he never gets a deep space mission, but don’t say that—he’ll never understand. Can anyone?

We’ll figure the com issue out, Kate. Just remember I love you. I’m the luckiest guy in the world. James [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

O O O

August 17, 2194—E-LC transmission

18:00:03: They are only giving me one message every month, James. I don’t know how often you’ll be getting them, but just know that as you wait for my next message I am still thinking of you. I know you’re figuring out what’s wrong. That’s what I love about you. I could always count on you. I’ll wait to hear what you have found out, but I have to tell you that General Marsden has told me that we have only a few messages left. He said that the quantum pair are spinning apart or the link is broken or something like that.

At home there isn’t much to report. Everyone is just a few months older and a few months wiser. The press are finally leaving me alone. I know I vent at you about them all the time, but they are vultures. Anyway, it’s better, thank God.

I don’t know what else to say, James. How sad is that? I have only one message a month for you, and I have nothing to say. I guess live goes on. Love you. ~Kate [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

O O O

December 31, 2193—LC-E transmission

11:44:34: Mars, you know what I’m going to say: This is total bullshit. How can you guys fuck up something as simple as the comlink while a sail the size of the moon is working like a charm? Skipping messaging today to do live diagnostics on my transmission quanta. [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

O O O

September 23, 2194—E-LC transmission

13:04:03: Jim, I understand your anger. I’m so sorry. I got the final report from Ollie. The QE link is slowly breaking apart. How long we have I don’t know. The brainiacs are shocked we’ve kept it up this long. Anyway, we’ve given up on maintaining our transmission link with the LEWIS & CLARK and are just now trying to give you guidance on keeping your link alive. We don’t know if it’s the volume of messages, the rate of messages, or time that is breaking the link. Hell, the CERN guys think that it’s the distance, our particles are simply moving to a new, stronger entanglement. Anyway, I’m sure you don’t give a shit about this.

We are going to keep the link alive until it breaks apart. It may take a long time if we only send one message every few months. No one knows for sure.

Kate is calm. I don’t know what you’ve been saying to her, but keep it up. Everything else is normal. You’ll be back on Earth in another 40 years or so. And although I’ll be over 100 then, trust me, I’ll still able to beat you into shape. Mars [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

O O O

January 30, 2194—LC-E transmission

12:04:04: Christ, the time difference is hard. Okay, I have some thoughts. I know the QE is untangling, but perhaps we can turn my transmission particle into a two way link? Hell, just make it transmit from your side. I don’t need to talk, I just need to hear from you guys. You don’t know how hard it is to wait even a few days for a message.

Can the physicists work on that? I know it’s too late for this calibration, but I could spend the next one doing anything they needed me to do.

Mars, I hate to say this, but if that doesn’t work, perhaps we could turn the sail around? You know there is an abort plan in place with catastrophic failure. Damn, I can’t believe I’m writing that, but we need to get this fixed.

I’m worried about my link, so I’ll just add my message to Kate here.

Kate, please don’t worry! You know we have two links. Even if the one breaks down, we’ll fix the other one. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll turn this damn ship around. I’m not sailing into fucking space with nothing but a bunch of holos for company. Anyway [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

O O O

February 19, 2196—E-LC transmission

14:09:11: Jim, it’s Mars. My God, it was great to hear from you a few days ago. I’m sorry you haven’t heard from us in a long time. I told everyone to hold off and make one last try to get a message to you when you finally contacted us, and it has taken monumental calculations to get this message through. Nothing you are suggesting will work. Once the particles are entangled, we can’t make the kind of changes you are suggesting. Just keep your link alive so we can make sure you are okay.

I’m sorry, but this is the last message you’ll hear from us until you get back. I never said this, Jim, but you were the son I never had. So just be safe. I don’t think anyone else could do what you’re doing. I’m incredibly proud of you.

James, it’s Kate. I talked to Ollie and he said he can’t guarantee that the link won’t ever be back for short periods of time. So I will be sending you a message every day. Every day, James. You may never see them, but know they’ll be there floating in space. Just my messages to you. I love you and miss [WARNING: CHARACTER LIMIT REACHED—MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

O O O

March 1, 2194—LC-E transmission

12:38:18: I will assume that my messages are going through, even though yours have stopped. So I am going to make this more like a monthly mission log than anything.

Sail calibration is normal. Acceleration is normal. Life support systems are normal. Everything is fucking normal.

I’ve watched about 40 holos this month. I liked BREAKDOWN. The woman in that reminded me of Kate. I’ve done some research on physics, but find it just as maddening as I did in college. I examined the abort system, even though Mars was kind enough to ignore my request to abort the mission, but I guess I’m too good a soldier to abort the mission without orders. So I sail on.

Kate, your final message inspired me, but it is so hard to sit here and just wait. And wait. And wait. I’ve kept the QE link from Earth open, even though nothing ever comes through. Still, I hope. And wait.

And wait.

O O O

Special thanks to Mike Brotherton, PhD, who provided invaluable assistance on the science in the story. Assistance can only go so far, however, and any errors are entirely due to the author.

***

Think Only This of Me

By Michael Kurland

I

I met her in Anno Domini and was charmed. The Seventeenth century it was. Two weeks and three centuries later we were in love.

Her name: Diana Seven; my name: Christopher Charles Mar d’Earth. Both of old stock, or so I thought; both certainly of Earth; both certainly human, for what that might mean in this galactic day. She was young, how young I did not know, and I was gracefully middle-yeared for an immortal. I would not see my first century again, but I would be a long time yet in my second. I looked to be somewhen around forty, normal span; she looked an unretouched twenty, except in motion when she looked barely teen and also ageless.

Anno Domini was my first pause in twenty years. I legislate in the Senior chamber of the Parliament of Stars. We tend to feel, we beings of the Senior Chamber, that our efforts bind the intelligences of the galaxy together, for all that races still aggress and habited planets are still fused in anger. We also feel that, despite all our posturing, blustering and rhetoric, we accomplish nothing save the passage of time, for all that beings have not starved, races have not been destroyed and planets have not turned to stars through our efforts. This dichotomy slowly erodes empathy, emotion and intellect.

So I paused. I returned to Sol to become again a man of Earth, an Earthman, and walk among trees and down narrow, twisting streets and wide boulevards, but mainly to walk among the men and women of Earth who are my constituency, my ancestry and my soul. The races of man are varied and the farther one gets from Sol the greater the variation, though all are men and can interbreed and trace their language back to a common source—if they still have language, if they still have sex. But I no more represent the Autocracy or the Diggers of Melvic than I speak for the Denzii Hive or the unfortunate Urechis of Mol.

I felt a need for history: to be one with Earth is to be a part of the sequence of man, a product of all that has come before and a precursor to all that will follow. To return to Sol, to Earth, to man, to our common history: that was my plan.

I spent the first month in the present, walking, looking, visiting, remembering, chronolizing myself to the fashions, mores, idiom and art of this most volatile of human cultures. Then I retreated to Earth itself, to the past, to Anno Domini, the religious years: twenty-four centuries called after the Son of the One God. The period right before the present era, when man no longer needs any god but himself.

Earth is now all past: the present comes no closer than Earth’s satellite, the moon; the future—I wonder at times what future a planet can have when it has renounced the present.

I picked Seventeen to start, and was garbed and armed and primed and screened and out before I could say, All the world’s a stage

And all the men and women merely players

They have their exits and their entrances.…

The town was London and the year was sixteen-whatever. In this re-created past the years sometimes slip and events anachron—a fact of interest but to scholars and piddlers. The costumes of this re-created century were exotic, but no more than the smell. Charles had been beheaded a few years before. The Roundheads had been in power for however long the Roundheads were in power, and now William the Orange was about to land at Plymouth Dock.

I was sitting in the Mermaid Tavern, at a small table at the rear. Next to me, over my left shoulder, was a large round table where Ben Jonson sat deep in conversation with Will Shakespere, John Milton, Edmond Waller and the Earl of Someplace. As writers will when alone together, they were discussing money and I quickly tired of their talk.

She walked in as I was preparing to leave. Walked? She danced with the unassuming grace of wind-blown leaves. She flowed across the walk and quickstepped through the door as though practiced by a master choreographer and rehearsed a dozen times before this take. These are the images that came to mind as she appeared in the doorway.

I sat back down and watched as she came in. She was aware of everything, and interested in all that she could see, and the very air around her was vibrant with the excitement of her life. And so I was attracted and excited and aware before a word had passed between us.

A man too doltish to see what she was stood by the door as she passed. He thought she was something other, and he spoke to her so: “Hey, girl; hey, wench, you should not be alone. P’raps I’ll keep you company if you ask me pretty.”

She did not reply. She did not seem to hear, but passed him by as if he were a wall.

He reached out to grasp her by the shoulder and I stood up, my hand falling to the handle of my walking stick.

She spun almost before his hand had touched. She reached out, her fingers

appearing to not quite reach his neck. He fell away and she continued the pirouette and entered without further pause.

I must have stood like a stone, frozen in my foolish heroic pose with half-raised stick. She smiled at me. “No need,” she said. “Thank you.”

I stammered at her some wish that she share my table and she nodded, sat and smiled again, introduced herself and looked about. She was also, I decided, a visitor to this re-created Seventeen. I pointed out to her the round table next to us and its famous occupants, indicating each with almost the pride of a creator, as though I had done something clever merely to have sat next to them and imposed myself on their conversation. They were reciting to each other now—each trying to impress the rest with the wit and feeling of his verse. Diana was interested, but not awed. She asked to be introduced, and so I complied.

“It is an honor to meet each of you,” she told the table. “And especially Mr. Shakespere, whom I have long admired.”

“Nay, not ‘Mr. Shakespere,’” Shakespere insisted firmly. “Will, if you will. Aye, an’ if you won’t ’tis still a simple ‘Will.’ ’Tis my will, so you must.”

Jonson glared across the table. “You are the most convoluted simple-minded man,” he said. “You will if you won’t, but you can’t so you must. Spare us!”

The sound of fifes came at us from a distance. A far rumble soon became the beat of many drums. The entourage of William approached and we all went outside the tavern to join the patient mob that awaited his passing.

First the soldiers, row on row, and for a long time nothing passed but soldiers. Then soldiers astride horses. Then soldiers astride horses pulling small cannon. Then a military band. Then more horses with soldiers astride, but now the uniform had changed. Then a coach and the crowd went wild—but it was the wrong coach. By now, unless he were twelve feet tall, the new king was an anticlimax. I looked over the crowd and tried to tell which were residents and which were guests of Anno Domini. I couldn’t.

If this were the real Seventeenth Century—that is, if it were historical past rather than Anno Dominical re-creation—there would be signs. The pox would have left its mark on most who lived. Rickets would be common. War cripples would be begging from every street corner. This Seventeenth century, the only one the residents knew, was being redone by a benevolent hand.

The new king passed. His coach was open and he smiled and nodded and waved and was cheered. A stout, red-faced little man—anticlimax. I laughed.

We left then, Diana and I, and I offered to walk her to her inn. She named it and I discovered it was my own.

“How do you like this time?” I asked her as we walked. “Have you been here long?”

“All day,” she said. “Then you’re a guest too? I wondered why you were the only one in the tavern I hadn’t heard of.”

“Thanks,” I said. “In realtime I am well known. My return to Earth was mentioned as primary news. I am a third of Earth’s voice in the Parliament of the Stars. I am known and welcome in half a thousand worlds throughout the galaxy. I number some fifty life forms among my friends. It is not necessary that you have heard of me.”

“You’re insulted!” she said, clapping her hands together. “How delightful! Now you make me feel important, that my words could insult one as essential as you. I thank you for feeling insulted. I am pleased.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, ever before. Somehow she made me glad that I had felt insulted. It was nice to be insulted for her: it made her happy. She reminded me of a beautiful half-grown kitten, newly exploring the world outside its kitten box.

O O O

The inn was a U-shaped structure around a central courtyard. The stables were to the right, the rooms to the left and the common room straight ahead. It had been called The Buckingham the last time I was there, some thirty years before. Now, after a decade of being the Pym & Thistle, it sported a new signboard over the door: The Two Roses. The device showed a red and white rose thoroughly entwined. The landlord I didn’t remember—a small, chubby man with a wide smile carved into his unhappy face. I asked him what the new name signified.

“It signifies I’m tired of changing the name of my inn,” he told me. “I’m becoming nonpolitical. York and Lancaster settled their differences quite a ways back.”

“Let us hope William doesn’t think it means you prefer the white and red to his orange,” I suggested. He looked after me strangely as I escorted Diana across to the common room and we sat at a table in the corner.

“Dinner?” I suggested.

Diana nodded enthusiastically, spilling her red hair around her face. “Meat!” she said. “Great gobs of rare roast—and maybe a potato.”

“I—uh—I think they boil their meat these days,” I told her in jest.

“No!” She was horrified. “Boil perfectly good, unresisting roasts and steaks? That’s barbaric.”

“O tempora, o mores!” I agreed, wondering what my accent would have sounded like to Marcus Tullius.

Diana looked puzzled. I tried again, slanting the accents in a different direction. She looked more puzzled.

“It means: ‘Oh, what times—oh, what customs!’ It’s Latin,” I told her.

“It’s what?”

“Latin. That’s a pre-language. Ancient and dead.” Now I was puzzled. Who was this girl of Earth who didn’t know of Latin? For the past four hundred years, since humanity had begun trying to re-create its cradle—or at least its nursery—all born of Earth, except those born on Earth, knew something of prehistory and the prelanguages: the times and the tongues of man before he met the stars.

“You know what tongue was spoken here?” I asked her.

“Common,” she said, looking at me as if I had just asked if she knew what those five slender tubes at the end of her hand were called. “The language of Earth. The one standard language of humans throughout the Galaxy.”

“I mean,” I explained, “what language was spoken in the real Seventeenth Century London? What language all that beautiful poetry we heard discussed in the tavern by those great names at the next table was translated from?”

She shook her head. “I hadn’t thought—”

“English,” I said.

“Oh. Of course. England—English. How silly!”

The servitor approached the table circumspectly, waiting until he was sure we had finished speaking before addressing us. “Evening m’lord, m’lady,” he mumbled. “Roseguddenit. Venice impizenizeto.”

Diana giggled. “English?” she asked. “Have we really receded in time?”

“In time for what?”

Diana giggled again. The thin lad in the servitor’s apron looked puzzled, unhappy, frightened and resigned.

“Would you go over that again?” I asked him.

“Parme?”

“What you said, lad. Go over it again for diction, please.”

Now he was also nervous and upset and clearly blamed me. “My lord?”

“Speak more slowly,” I told him, “and pronounce more carefully and those of us without your quick wit and ready mind will be able to comprehend. Yes?”

“Yes, my lord.” If he could have killed me.… “Sorry, my lord. The roast is good tonight, my lord. The venison pie is very nice, my lord. My lady. What may I serve you?”

“Roast!” Diana stated. “Thick slices of roast. You don’t boil your roast, do you? You wouldn’t do that?”

The boy nervously replied that he wouldn’t think of it, heard my order, then removed himself like a blown candle flame, leaving not even an after-image.

“You frighten people,” Diana told me.

“It’s my most valued ability,” I said. “I shall not frighten you.”

“You certainly shall not,” she agreed. “My teachers were all more menacing than you—and more unforgiving. And they didn’t notice my body.”

I ignored the last part of her remark and stared into her blue eyes. “You went to an unpermissive school,” I said, smiling.

“The universe is unpermissive,” she said seriously. It was a learned response and I wondered who had taught it and why.

The innkeeper approached us during dessert. “Good?” he asked. “You enjoyed?” “Indeed,” I assured him.

“My pleasure,” he nodded. “My guests. There will be no reckoning.”

“Gracious of you, sir,” Diana said.

“Why?” I asked, being wiser and therefore trustless of hostels.

“I am taking your suggestion,” he told me. “And I thank you by feeding you dinner.”

“Suggestion?”

“Yes. I am changing the name of the inn. Henceforth it shall be known as The Two Roses and the Tulip. I have sent a boy to notify the sign painter.”

II

We walked into the night, Diana and I. Hand in hand we walked, although it was conversation and not love that bound us then. We contrasted: she bright and quick, with an aim as true as a hawk’s; I ponderous and sure as a great bear (I metaphor our speech only). We learned from each other. I arrayed my vast store of facts before her in the patterns dictated by the logic of my decades. She swooped and plucked out one here, another there, and presented them as jewels to be examined for themselves, or changed their position to create the fabric of a new logic.

“These people,” she asked me, waving a hand to indicate the residents in the houses around us, “what do they feel? What do they think? They are human, yes? How can they just spend their lives pretending they’re Anno Domini?”

“They’re not pretending,” I told her.

“But this isn’t the Seventeenth century.”