Tau zero (21 page)

"Hm. Hm. So." Reymont drummed the bulkhead. "It isn't the worst thing for us, this," he said at length, thoughtfully. "There might even be some gains to make. If we can pass it off as an accident, an oversight, whatever, instead of a deliberate infraction. ... It was, at that, in a way. Margarita acted insanely; still, how sane are any of us by now? . . . Hm. Suppose we announce a consequent relaxation of the rules. A very limited number of births will be authorized. We'll compute how many the ecosystem can stand and let the women who want draw lots. I doubt that many will . . . under present circumstances. The rivalry shouldn't be great. Having infants to coo over and help take care of, that might well relieve certain tensions."

Briefly, his voice rose. "Also, by God, they're a pledge of confidence. And a fresh reason to survive. Yes!"

Jimenes tried to reach him and embrace him. He warded her off. Above her weeping and laughter, he ordered the engineer: "Get her calmed. I'll discuss this with the first officer. In due course, we'll all confer together. Meanwhile, no word or sign to anybody."

"You . . . take the affair . . . coolly," Fedoroff said.

"How else?" Reymont's answer was edged. "Been too bloody much emotion around." For another instant, the vizor lifted. This time a death's head looked out. "Too bloody clawing much!" he shouted. He flung the door wide and whipped into the corridor.

Boudreau peered through the viewscope. The galaxy toward which Leonora Christine rushed showed as a blue-white haze on a darkling visual field. When he had finished, a scowl bent his brow. He walked to the main console. His footfalls thudded in the restored weight of an intrafamilial passage. "It is not right," he said. "I have seen plenty of them; I know." "Do you mean the color?" Foxe-Jameson asked. The navigator had bidden the astrophysicist come to the bridge. "Frequency seem too low for our speed? That's mainly due to simple space expansion, Au-guste. The Hubble constant. We're overhauling galactic groups whose velocity gets higher and higher with respect to our starting point, the

farther we travel. Good thing too. Otherwise the Doppler effect might present us with more gamma radiation than our material shielding can handle. And, to be sure, as you very well know, we're counting heavily on the same space expansion to help us into a situation where we can stop. Eventually the velocity changes in themselves ought to overbalance their reduction of Bussard efficiency."

"That part is plain." Boudreau leaned on the desk, shoulders hunched, brooding over the notes he had made. "I tell you, however, I have watched each single galaxy we passed through, or in observation distance of, these months. I have grown familiar with their types. And gradually those types are changing." He jerked his head at the view-scope. "That up ahead, for instance, it is of the irregular sort, like the Magellanic Clouds at home—"

"I daresay, in these parts, the Magellanic Clouds count as home," Foxe-Jameson murmured.

Boudreau chose to ignore the aside. "It should have a high proportion of Population II stars," he went on. "From here we should be able to see many individual blue giants. Instead, we see none.

"All the spectra I take, to the extent I can interpret them, they are becoming different from what is normal for the types. No kind of galaxy looks right any more."

He raised his eyes. "Malcolm, what is happening?"

Foxe-Jameson appeared surprised. "Why'd you pick me to query?" he countered.

"I had only a vague impression at first," Boudreau said. "I am not a real astronomer. Besides, I could not get accurate navigational sights. To obtain a value of tau, for instance, requires such a cat's cradle of assumptions that— Bien, when I finally felt sure the nature of space was altering, I approached Charles Reymont. You know how he puts down panic-mongers, and he is correct in that. He told me to call in one of your team, quietly, and report the answer back to him."

Foxe-Jameson chortled. "Why, you two pathetic beggars! Haven't you anything else to stew about? Actually, I thought it'd be common knowledge. So common that none of us pros happened to mention it, starved though everyone is for fresh conversation. Makes a chap wonder what else he's overlooking, eh?"

"Qu'est-ce que c'est?"

"Consider," Foxe-Jameson said. He settled one thigh and buttock on the desk. "Stars evolve. They build heavier elements than hydrogen in thermonuclear reactions. If one is so big that it explodes, a supernova, at the end of its life, it scatters some of those atoms back into the interstellar medium. A more important process, though, if less

spectacular, is the shedding of mass by smaller stars, the majority, in their red-giant stage on the way to extinction. New generations of stars and planets condense out of this enriched medium and add to it in their turn. Over the ages you get a rising proportion of metal-rich suns. That affects the over-all spectrum. But of course no star gives back more than a percentage of the material which formed it. Most matter stays locked in dense bodies, cooling toward absolute zero. So the interstellar medium becomes depleted. Space within the galaxies grows more clear. The rate of star formation declines."

He gestured bow-ward. "Finally you reach a point where little or no further condensation is possible. The energetic, short-lived blue giants burn themselves out and have no successors. The galaxy's luminous members are entirely dwarfs—at last nothing except cool, red, miserly Type Ms. Those are good for almost a hundred gigayears.

"I'd judge this galaxy we're aimed for isn't that far along yet. But it's getting there. It's getting there."

Boudreau pondered. "Then we won't gain as much speed per galaxy as we did before," he said. "Not if the interstellar gas and dust are being used up."

"True," Foxe-Jameson said. "Don't fret. I'm sure ample will remain for our purposes. Every bit doesn't get collected in stars. Besides, we have the intergalactic medium, the intercluster, the interfamilial— thin, that, but usable at our present tau—and eventually we should be getting work out of the interclan gas itself."

He clapped the navigator's back in friendly wise. "We've come about three hundred megaparsecs now, remember," he said. "Which means about a thousand million years of time. You've got to expect some changes."

Boudreau was less accustomed to astronomical concepts. "You mean," he whispered, "the whole universe is growing enough older for us to notice?" It was the first time since his early youth that he had crossed himself.

The door to the interview room was shut. Chi-Yuen hesitated before pressing the chime button. When Lindgren let her in, she said timidly, "They told me you were here alone."

"Writing." The first officer stood somewhat slumped; nonetheless she topped the planetologist by a head. "A private place."

"I hate to disturb you."

"What I'm for, Ai-Ling. Sit down." Lindgren went back behind her desk, which was covered with scrawled-on papers. The cabin hummed and trembled to irregular acceleration. More than a day of weight

remained. Leonora Christine was bound through a clan of unprecedented size and opulence.

For a while, hope had lived that this might be the one where the ship could reach a halt within some member galaxy. Closer observation showed otherwise. Inverse tau had gotten too immense.

A faction had argued at general assembly that there ought to be limited deceleration anyhow, in order that requirements for stopping inside the next clan be less rigorous. One could not prove the contention wrong; not that much cosmography was known. One could only use statistics, as Nilsson and Chidambaran did, to prove that the likelihood of finding a resting place seemed greater if acceleration continued. The theorem was too involved for most persons to follow. The ship's officers elected to take it on faith and maintain full forward thrust. Reymont had had to quell some individuals whose objections approached mutiny.

Chi-Yuen perched herself on the edge of a visitors' chair. She was small and neat in high-collared red tunic, broad white slacks, hair brushed back with unwonted severity and held by an ivory comb. Lind-gren contrasted in more than size. Her shirt was open at the neck, rolled up at the sleeves, smudged here and there; her hair was tousled, her eyes haunted.

"What are you writing, if I may ask?" Chi-Yuen ventured.

"A sermon," Lindgren said. "Not easy. I'm no writer."

"You, a sermon?"

The left corner of Lindgren's mouth twitched slightly upward. "Actually the captain's address at our Midsummer Day festivities. He can still conduct divine service, after a fashion. But for this he requested me to, ah, inspirit the troops in his name."

"He is not a well man, is he?" Chi-Yuen inquired low.

The humor flickered out in Lindgren. "No. I assume I can trust you not to blab that around. Even if everybody does suspect it." She rested elbow on desk, forehead on hand. "His responsibility is destroying him."

"How can he blame himself? What choice has he except to let the robots move us onward?"

"He cares." Lindgren sighed. "Also, this latest dispute. In his condition, that was more than he could take. He's not nervously prostrated, understand. Not quite. But he's no longer able to buck people."

"Are we wise to hold a ceremony?" Chi-Yuen wondered.

"I don't know," Lindgren said in a worn-out voice. "I simply don't. Now when—we aren't announcing it, but we can't prevent computation and talk—when we're somewhere around the five- or six-billion-

year mark. . . ." Her head lifted, her hand fell. "To celebrate something as purely Earth as Midsummer Day, now when we have to start thinking of Earth as gone —"

She seized both arms of her chair. For a moment the blue eyes were wild and blind. Then the straining body eased, muscle by muscle; she leaned into the seat until its swivel joint tilted with a creak; she said flatly: "The constable persuaded me to go ahead with our rituals. Defiance. Reunification, after the past quarrel. Rededication, especially to that unborn baby. New Earth: We'll snatch it from God's grip yet. If God means anything, even emotionally, any more. Maybe I should lay off religion altogether. Carl didn't give me any details. Only the general idea. I'm supposed to be its best spokesman. Me. That tells you a good deal about our condition, doesn't it?"

She blinked, returning to herself. "Apologies," she said. "I oughtn't to have dropped my problems on you."

"They are everyone's problems, First Officer," Chi-Yuen replied.

"Please. My name is Ingrid. Thanks, though. If I haven't told you before, let me say now, in your quiet way you're one of the key people aboard. A garden of calm— Well." Lindgren bridged her fingers. "What can I do for you?"

Chi-Yuen's glance fluttered to the desk. "It's about Charles."

The ends of Lindgren's nails whitened.

"He needs help," Chi-Yuen said.

"He has his deputies," Lindgren answered tonelessly.

"Who keeps them going except him? Who keeps us all going? You too, Ingrid. You depend on him."

"Certainly." Lindgren intertwined her fingers and strained them. "You must realize—perhaps he never mentioned it to you in words, any more than to me or I to him; but it's obvious—there's no quarrel left between him and me. We eroded that away, working together. I wish him everything good."

"Can you give him some of it, then?"

Lindgren's gaze sharpened. "What do you mean?"

"He is tired. More tired than you imagine, Ingrid. And more alone."

"His nature."

"Maybe. Still, that was never any of the inhuman things he's had to be: a fire, a whip, a weapon, an engine. I've come to know him a little. I've watched him lately, how he sleeps, what few times he can. His defenses are used up. I hear him talk sometimes, in his dreams, when they aren't simply nightmares."

Lindgren closed her hands on emptiness. "What can we do for him?"

"Give him back a part of his strength. You can." Chi-Yuen raised her eyes. "You see, he loves you."

Lindgren got up, paced the narrow stretch behind her desk, struck fist into palm. "I've assumed obligations," she said. The words wrenched her gullet.

"I know—"

"Not to smash a man, especially one we need. And not to ... be promiscuous again. I have to be an officer, in everything I do. So does Carl." Raw-voiced: "He'd refuse!"

Chi-Yuen rose likewise. "Can you spare this night?" she asked.

"What? What? No. Impossible, I tell you. Oh, I've the time, but impossible all the same. You'd better go."

"Come with me." Chi-Yuen took Lindgren by the hand. "What scandal can there be if you visit the two of us in our cabin?"

The big woman stumbled after her. They went up the thrumming stairs to crew level. Chi-Yuen opened her door, led Lindgren through, closed it again. They stood alone amidst the ornaments and souvenirs of a country that died gigayears before, and regarded each other. Lindgren breathed in deep, quick draughts. Red pursued white across her face, down throat and bosom.

"He should be back soon," Chi-Yuen said. "He doesn't know. It is my gift to him. One night, at least: to tell him and show him how you never stopped feeling."

She had separated the beds. Now she lowered the dividing partition. She did not quite forestall her tears.

Lindgren held her close for a moment, kissed her, and finished sealing her off. Then Lindgren waited.

Chapter 19

"Please," Jane Sadler had implored. "Come help him."

"You can't?" Reymont asked.

She shook her head. "I've tried. And I think I make matters worse. In his present condition. I being a woman." She flushed. "You savvy?"

"Well, I'm no psychologist," Reymont said. "However, I'll see what I can do."

He left the bower where she had caught him at rest. The dwarfed trees, tumbling vines, moss and blossoms made it a place of healing for him. But he noticed that comparatively few others went into these rooms any longer. Did such things remind him of too much?

Certainly no plans were being made for celebration of the autumnal equinox which impended on the ship's calendar—or any other holidays, for that matter. The Midsummer festival had been dishearten-ingly hushed.

In the gymnasium, a zero-gee handball game bounced from corner to corner. They were spacemen who played, though, and doggedly rather than gleefully. Most of the passengers came here for little except their compulsory exercises. They weren't showing great interest in meals, either: not that Carducci was doing an inspired job nowadays. One or two passersby gave Reymont a listless hail.

Farther down the corridor, a door stood open on a hobby shop. A lathe hummed, a cutting torch glowed blue, in the hands of Kato M'Botu and Yeshu ben-Zvi. Apparently they were making something for the recently resumed Fedoroff-Pereira ecological project, and had been crowded out of the regular facilities on the lower decks.