The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel (48 page)

I could promise them nothing for twenty generations and I wasn’t sure I could promise them the Earth even then. And they sensed it.

“They would rather believe in fantasy?”

“There’s not much difference, Sparrow. What you promise, they’ll never see.”

She was right. I also knew I couldn’t live with a sullen crew. I called in Thrush and told him what I wanted,then guaranteed I would get it by suggesting he couldn’t do it. After that, I chose a time when almost everybody was asleep, stole up to the bridge and slipped into the captain’s chair. It took the entire period to identify all the compartment falsies as well as those for the various workplaces and assembly areas. I put each of them in a guardian shell, and when the crew woke they saw the
Astron
as it really was—small, dingy, with broken glow tubes and tiny compartments, ancient machinery and mossy bulkheads. Moments later they became aware of the sweat and the odor of human bodies that filled the air.

Ophelia was the first to push past Crow and ask for an explanation, her face white with anger.

“Why?” she demanded.

“They’ve grown too fond of shadows,” I said.

“You’ve seen the Earth,” she objected. “They haven’t.”

“They know where they’ve been but they don’t know where they’re going, is that it?”

I was the Captain, but she had known me too long as Sparrow and didn’t bother to hide her sarcasm.

“You put it well.”

“Then go to the hangar deck and take a look,” I said casually.

She turned suspicious. “It’s been off limits for the past half dozen time periods.”

I left the chair and drifted to the corridor outside.

“It isn’t now, Ophelia.”

She hesitated in mid-tirade,then followed me to the well that led to the hangar deck. The news had already spread and outside the hatchway, the corridor was jammed. Inside, the crew gaped in awe at the prairie spread out before them. The huge expanse was a sloping hill of grass and wildflowers, while at the bottom was a small brook whose surface was broken by the frequent splashes of fish. There were little eddies in the stream and along its banks weeds hung over the water, acting as cover for a dozen croaking frogs.

Overhead, the sky was a light blue mottled with wispy white clouds. The touch of genius was the occasional bird that Thrush had programmed winging its way toward a distant plot of plowed land. A farmhouse topped a nearby hill; off in the distance was the barely discernible smudge of a city. It was the third time I had seen it but it still took my breath away.

“I’ll turn all the falsies back on,” I assured Ophelia, “but I wanted the crew to know where we’re going.”

The sullen looks disappeared after that and there was more talk of when we would arrive at Earth orbit and what we might find. I gave Thrush full credit; he accepted the compliments grudgingly, but secretly, I think he was proud.

I was gambling that such a meadow still existed, consoling myself with the thought that those who admired the fantasy would never live long enough to be disappointed by the reality.

****

In one sense, birth is something that’s best appreciated by the parents and maybe the attending doctors. For an outsider, it’s a bloody, unpleasant, unaesthetic, barbaric business reminding us of the animals we are and the basic bodily functions we share with them.

But that was Raymond Stone’s view and certainly didn’t reflect that of the
Astron’s
crew. For two weeks the corridors were crowded with crew members watching the deliveries on peep screens and cheering wildly at the first cry of each baby. They gambled on the sex of each and the most beautiful was always the one that had just been born.

The women identified vicariously with the various mothers; none of the men openly claimed paternity but each secretly felt the baby of the birth mother he had been with was his. Thrush was efficient and stoic, sometimes tending the mothers around the clock. One period, I went with him to sick bay, filled with nursing mothers and their bawling, lusty flock and was deeply moved. Life, I thought, with all its unlimited possibilities…

I looked around. “Where’s Pipit?”

“In her compartment.She didn’t want me to attend her after delivery.”

His face showed no emotions, but his voice betrayed him.

“Healthy baby?”I asked inanely.

“A boy.You might recognize him.”

It was a strange remark. A few minutes later I asked and was granted permission to enter Pipit’s compartment. She was nursing the baby; Crow was beside her on the hammock, ooh-ingand aah-ing and going through the fatherly routine I had already seen a dozen times.

“Hold him a minute,” Pipit said proudly.

I did, and promptly regretted it. But that’s what waistcloths are for. His skin was as olive as Pipit’s and his eyes were almost black. I chucked him under the chin and he tolerated it a moment, his dark eyes staring somberly into mine, before crying for his mother.

I handed him back and congratulated Pipit profusely. I managed to control my shivering until I was out in the corridor,then let the goose bumps form. When young babies stare at you, they sometimes seem far older than their years, and very wise, as if they know something important that you don’t. Unfortunately, by the time they learn to speak, they’ve forgotten whatever it was they wanted to say shortly after they were born.

That’s more fantasy than theory, but when I looked into the dark eyes of Pipit’s baby, I imagined I saw Michael Kusaka staring back.

When the excitement of the births had died away and the
Astron
had settled once more into routine, I asked Crow and Thrush and Ophelia to meet me in the captain’s private compartment. It had been left exactly as it was when Mike had died. The nine hundred crypts sat silent, the figures within looking deceptively natural and lifelike, waiting patiently for the technicians to revive them. Ophelia and Crow inspected them uneasily, noting the names and the various professions. Thrush’s face was as blank of emotion as my own. I didn’t know whether he mourned Mike, but I mourned them all. I waited a moment, then cleared my throat and said, “The return crew was cheated—they never had the chance to see Outside as the first crew did and neither did they have the chance to return to Earth to live out their lives and die there as they thought they would. They were my crew and my friends…”

My voice trailed off but I had more control than to let myself weep.

“They never received much for participating in the voyage, but they’ve left us a legacy: themselves. Thanks to them, we’ll arrive back on Earth with the same crew complement that we have right now, perhaps a few more.”

They knew what I meant. The bodies of the return crew would go to Reduction and more than make up for the
Astron’s
losses during the next twenty generations.

“You’ll supervise, Thrush. Pick a team. But attend to the job during sleep periods and close off any corridors you’ll be using.”

He nodded, but Crow and Ophelia still looked mystified, wondering why I had asked them to attend. I cleared my throat again.

“I need witnesses to hear me read the service for the dead.”

I had found the small book in Mike’s library; now I opened it to the appropriate page and started reading in a low voice. ForSelma and Bobby and the hundreds of others, it was the most that I could do. When I was through I waved Crow and Ophelia away but asked Thrush to stay behind.

“Mike’s in the crypt with my name on it. If you want to be left alone…”

He shook his head and said firmly, “No, I don’t think so,” then glanced around at the crypts and murmured, “I’m surprised they’re still here.”

I didn’t say anything. Nobody would have helped Mike carry the bodies to Reduction and he would never have asked. The few words I had once overheard came back to me. He had lived for two millennia with nine hundred albatrosses hung around his neck. In imagination I could see him talking to them every sleep period, begging their forgiveness for the ten thousandth time. The next few time periods I spent in the captain’s chair in the outer compartment, staring at the simulations just outside the port. I refused to see anyone, even Snipe. The fourth sleep period bymyself , Crow and Loon pushed through the shadow screen without announcing themselves. With them were two young women, Starling and Gull, whom I had never gotten to know very well, even during the time when Crow and I had rutted our way through the ship.

I glanced at them and waved my hand at the port.

“That’s the solar system—Jupiter and its moons.”

The two women looked at the view beyond the port and then back at me. They giggled and it occurred to me they hadn’t come to look at simulations of Outside.

Oh, no, I thought, but Crow read me, nodded firmly, and said, “Oh, yes, Sparrow.”

My heart wasn’t in it, but they had brought some smoke and Loon played an old tune on his harmonica. Half an hour later our waistcloths were floating limply about the compartment and I discovered that despite everything that had happened, I was still very human and could smile and laugh after all. Sometime during that period Crow murmured in my ear, “It’slife, Sparrow.” Crow had made his point and it was one that I never forgot.

Life is for the living.

As the months rolled by, I found myself regretting more and more that I was no longer a seventeen-year-old tech assistant. The problems of the ship were relatively easy to handle. The personal problems were trying. When I talked to Huldah now, it was difficult to see her as the matriarch on board. In my mind’s eye I kept seeing her as she was when I was Aaron: She was very young and very pretty, with un-wrinkled skin and large dark eyes that always smiled when they saw me. As Aaron, I had been a friend of Noah’s and Abel’s and all three of us had competed for Huldah . I remembered my hurt when she had finally dropped me, and how sullen I had been around Noah and Abel after that. Strangely, I kept seeing the younger Huldah when we met and kept apologizing for it afterward until she finally stopped me.

“Sparrow, I don’t mind being mistaken for a younger and prettier self. It’s flattering—until you apologize for doing it.”

We laughed, and once again I saw in her everything that I had admired when she was younger. She was curious about the history of the ship and I filled her in from my own memories, surprised that her oral history was so accurate. For many months we met regularly every other time period and I would tell her about events in which I had played a part and remembered so well, but about which she had only heard at second or third or twentieth hand.

Then one period her interest seemed to flag. I noticed for the first time that she was becoming frail and her skin was turning translucent. She was failing and we both knew it. The last time I saw her, we didn’t talk about history but simply about Noah and Abel and us and the hurts and traumas of young love. I kissed her fondly when I left, knowing that we would never see each other again.

Her successor, as we all knew it would be,was Pipit, who now took Huldah’s compartment and assumed the role of matron.

Snipe aged well, though there came a time when she pushed me firmly away in the hammock and said she loved me very much but the role she was playing was making her increasingly uncomfortable. The next shift she showed up on the bridge with a young woman and announced that I needed an assistant recordkeeper and she had found one for me.

“You rememberDenali , Sparrow.”

Denalismiled and I smiled tentatively back. I had met her first in Pipit’s nursery and had watched her grow into a young and beautiful woman. I remembered that Ophelia had introduced me to Snipe, and guessed that Snipe was now passing on the favor.

“A moment,Denali .”I took Snipe by the hand and led her back to our living quarters.

“Why, Snipe?”

She stroked my cheek and said, “Look at me, Sparrow. See me as I am now, not as I was yesterday. Who will take care of you when I’m gone? I trustDenali .”

Snipe remained a part of my household for many time periods after that, though eventually she moved in with Loon and Crow. Once again she had become interested in the historicals and fantasy; she and Loon had much in common. When I visited them, I noted that the unicorn, which had vanished shortly after we first partnered, had returned to graze by the stream. In the distance, outside a camp of tents with flying pennons, knights were jousting.

Ophelia and Grebe partnered for the remainder of their lives; then, one time period, both vanished, apparently having agreed to go to Reduction together. I missed Ophelia more than she could have guessed.

We made one stop at a system where Communications reported a signal in the waterhole. There were seven planets, two of which had possibilities. We explored both. On the second, we lostK2 in a landslide. I grieved for months.

And then one sleep period, a bowed and hobbling Snipe slipped through the shadow screen and said simply, “Will you go with me, Sparrow?”

We went to Reduction together and sat on the ledge and I held her tight, my arms wrapped around her thin shoulders. She murmured something to herself and I leaned closer to listen.

“Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.

It was the nightingale, and not the lark,

That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear…”

“‘I have more care to stay than will to go,’” I said gently.

She laughed quietly and pushed me away.

“Is that the best you can do?” she said with mock scorn and I found myself looking at the Snipe of sixty years before. I started to weep and she put her fingers on my lips as Pipit once had and said, “Shush, Sparrow.” Then her voice thinned and she murmured, “Help me in, please.”

I led her over to the chamber, undid her halter and helped her slide into the swirling red mists until only her face was visible. She smiled at me and said, “Privacy, Sparrow,” then closed her eyes. I waited until she faded from view, then went back to my quarters and exiledDenali for six months. A year later, I had one last party with Crow and Loon and a youngster to whom Loon had taught his songs and his skill with the harmonica. There was smoke for all andDenali and I floated near the window that opened out on St. Mark’s Square, our arms entwined, and laughed as Loon and Samson and a young girl named Dido traded off playing duets.