The Star Diaries (41 page)

And now, as I move on up the genealogical tree and come to modern times, and to my own beginnings, my task as family chronicler grows more and more difficult. Not merely because those ancestors of long ago, who led relatively sedentary lives, are more easily portrayed than their interstellar heirs, but also because in space one has the as-yet-unexplained effects of physical phenomena on blood relations. I’ve tried putting these documents in the proper sequence—and have given it up as hopeless, so will simply present them in the way they come down to us. Here, then, are the speed-singed pages of the log kept by star captain Cosimo Tichy:

Entry 116,303.
So many years now without gravitation! The hourglasses don’t work, the balance clocks have stopped, in the wind-ups the mainsprings refuse to budge. For a while we tore pages off the calendar at random, but now that too is in the past. The last guidelines left to us are breakfast, lunch and dinner, but the first indigestion that comes along can scotch that reckoning of time as well. I have to stop here, someone’s just entered, it’s either the twins or light-wave interference.

Entry 116,304.
Off the port bow, a planet not indicated on the maps. A little later, around teatime, a meteor, small thank goodness, it broke through three of our compartments—the pressure chamber, the detention room, the sobering tank. I ordered them cemented. At dinner—Cousin Patrick absent. A conversation with Grandfather Arabeus about the uncertainty principle. And what, really, can we be certain of? That we set out from Earth as young people, that we called our ship “The Cosmocyst,” that Grandpa and Grandma took on board twelve other married couples, who today form a single family, joined by ties of blood. I’m worried about Patrick—and the cat, too, has disappeared. Weightlessness, by the way, appears to have a positive effect on flat feet.

Entry 116,305.
The first-born of Uncle Oliphant is so sharp-sighted and still so small, he can actually see neutrons with the naked eye. Conducted a search for Patrick: negative. We’re increasing speed. During the maneuver our stern cut across an isochronal. After dinner Oliphant’s brother-in-law, Amphotericus, came by and confided that he is now his own father, apparently his time line knotted up into a loop. He asked me not to tell anyone. I consulted our cousin physicists—they shrugged. Who knows what else is in store for us!

Entry 116,306.
I have noticed that the chins and foreheads of several older uncles, both on the maternal and paternal sides, are receding. What is this, the effect of a gyroscopic displacement, the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction perhaps, or the result of lost teeth and the frequent knocking of heads against the crossbeam when the dinner bell sounds? We are flying through a sizable nebula; Aunt Barabella divined our future trajectory in the old-fashioned way, from coffee grounds. I checked it out on the electrocalculator—quite close!

Entry 116,307.
A brief stopover on the planet of the Gallivants. Four persons didn’t return on board. At takeoff, blockage in the left jet. I ordered it blown out. Poor Patrick! In the column under “Cause of Death” I wrote: absent-mindedness. What else could it have been?

Entry 116,308.
Uncle Timothy dreamed we were being attacked by marauding mogs. Fortunately we got off without losses or serious casualties. It’s growing crowded on the ship. Three deliveries today and four moves, because of divorces. Oliphant’s child has eyes like stars. In order to renovate the living quarters I asked all the aunts to step into the hibernating freezers. The only argument that worked was that in a state of reversible death they wouldn’t age. Now it’s very quiet around here, very pleasant

Entry 116,309.
We are approaching the speed of light. Hundreds of unknown phenomena. A new kind of elementary particle has made its appearance—squarks. Not very large, but noisy. Something peculiar is happening to my head. I remember that my father was Barnaby, but I had another named Balaton. Unless that’s a lake in Albania. I must check in the encyclopedia. The aunts are buckling under, quantum by quantum, yet still gamely knitting away. Bad smell on the 3rd deck. Oliphant’s child doesn’t crawl now, it only flies, making use of the recoil from front and back discharges alternately. Amazing, the organism’s capacity for adaptation!

Entry 116,310.
I was at the laboratory of Cousin Josiah and his wife. The work there never stops. My cousin says that the highest stage of gastronautics will be furniture not only edible, but alive as well. That kind will not spoil, you won’t have to keep it—until using—in the icebox. Fine, but who is going to raise a hand to butcher a living armchair? They don’t exist yet, but Josiah claims it won’t be long before he’s treating us to jellied chair’s feet. On the way back to the control room I thought and thought, his worlds still in my ears. He had spoken of living rockets of the future. Will it be possible to have a child by such a rocket? What strange ideas I’m having lately!

Entry 116,311.
Grandfather Arabeus complains that his left leg is headed for the North Star, and his right—for the Southern Cross. Besides that I think he’s up to something, he goes around on all fours constantly. I’d better keep an eye on him. Balthazar, Josiah’s brother, disappeared. Particle dispersion? While looking for him I discovered that the atom room was full of dust. Hadn’t been swept in years! I removed Bartholomew, the room sweep, from his post and appointed his brother-in-law Titus, That evening, in the parlor, right in the middle of Aunt Melanie’s performance, Grandpa suddenly blew up. I ordered him cemented. That was pure reflex on my part. However I let the order stand, so as not to call into question the captain’s authority. I miss Grandpa. What was it, anger or energy conversion? He was always on edge. During my watch I got this craving for meat, ate a little veal from the freezer. Yesterday it turned out that the piece of paper with our destination on it is missing, a pity too, seeing as how we’ve been traveling now some 36 years. The veal, oddly enough, was full of buckshot—since when are calves gone after with shotguns? A meteor flying by, with someone sitting on it. Bartholomew was the first to notice. For the time being I pretend not to see this.

Entry 116,312.
Cousin Bruno says that that wasn’t the freezer, but the hibernator, he’d switched the signs as a joke, also it wasn’t buckshot, it was beads. I hit the ceiling; at zero gravity you have to watch your temper, no foot-stamping, no table-pounding. I’m sorry I ever took to the stars. I sent Bruno aft, gave him the worst detail: untangling the trawl.

Entry 116,313.
The Universe is picking us off one by one. Yesterday part of the poop deck went, and with it all the toilets. Uncle Ralph was back there at the time. Helplessly I looked on as he faded into the darkness, and the unwinding rolls of paper fluttered pathetically in space. A veritable Laocoon among the stars. What a misfortune! The one on the meteor, no relation to us; a total stranger. He flies, sitting straddled. Most unusual. Rumors have reached me that a number of people are sneaking off the ship. It does seem emptier somehow. Could this be true?

Entry 116,314.
Cousin Roland, who does our bookkeeping, certainly has his hands full. Yesterday he was in my cabin trying his best to add up our maiden tonnage, with an Einsteinian correction for deflowerment. While writing he suddenly raised his head, looked at me and said: “Human, the sound of it!” The idea floored me. Uncle Oliphant has finished his Robot Theology and now is working on a new system—it includes special fasts, “hunger strikes” (to indicate the hour). Grandfather Arabeus bothers me. He’s taken to punning. “One who steals other people’s puns at gunpoint,” he told me, “is a pundit, and a tadpole, that’s the male offspring of a magnet.” Little Shaver, the one who flits about by jet propulsion and says
f
instead of
p
(flanet instead of planet, but on the other hand—plannel underwear), threw the cat—only now does it come to light—into the tank of caustic soda which absorbs our carbon dioxide. Poor puss decomposed into sodium bikittenate.

Entry 116,315.
Today at my doorstep I find an infant, male, the following card pinned to its diaper: “This is yours.” Can’t figure it out, an accident perhaps? For its crib I’m using a desk drawer padded with old documents.

Entry 116,316.
By now countless socks and handkerchiefs lost in the Universe, and time is breaking down completely; at breakfast I noticed that both grandparents were a lot younger than myself. There have been instances, too, of avuncular cancellation. I ordered a family balance sheet drawn up—the hibernators were opened, I unfroze everyone. Many of the aunts had colds, coughs, blue noses and swollen red ears; a few threw convulsions. I stood by helplessly. Strangest of all, among the resuscitated was a calf. On the other hand, no sign of Aunt Mathilda—can it be that Bruno really wasn’t joking—I mean, when he said that he was?

Entry 116,317.
There’s a closet in the hallway to the atom room. As I was sitting there the amusing thought came to me that perhaps we never even blasted off and were still on Earth! But no—there’s no gravity, after all. That is reassuring. Still, I checked to see what I was holding in my hand—a hammer. It’s possible my name is really Jeremiah. I pounded away at some bar and felt awfully queer. One must accustom oneself, however. The Pauli exclusion principle, that any particular person can be occupied by only one personality at a time, is far behind us now. It might seem like a kind of family round robin, but out here in the Universe it’s not uncommon for several women to give birth, in turn, to the same child—that applies to the fathers too—due to the tremendous speed. Little Shaver, recently so tiny, yet today in the dining room, when we both reached for the marmalade and knocked our heads together, he threw me clear to the ceiling! Tangled, twisted and knotted though it be, yet how the time does fly!

Entry 116,318.
Today Arabeus told me he’d always secretly hoped the stars and rockets had one side only, the side facing us, their backs being nothing but dust-covered easels and ropes. This is the reason he flew to the stars! He also informed me that some of the women have been depositing in the laundry baskets not only laundry, but—according to him—their eggs. Presumably a sign of galloping regression, in the evolutionary sense. It must be uncomfortable for him, craning his neck up at me like that from his all fours. Particularly disturbing is his younger brother. Eight years now he’s been standing in my vestibule, holding out his index fingers. The beginnings of catatonia? First without thinking, then later out of habit I started hanging up my hat and coat on him. Well, at least he’s made something useful of himself.

Entry 116,319.
The place is thinning out. Diffraction, sublimation? Or is it simply that they’re all shifting, because of the Doppler effect, to the infra-red? Today I went hallooing up and down the main deck and no one showed himself, except for Aunt Clotilda, with her knitting needles and an unfinished mitten. I went down to the laboratory—Cousins Marmaduke and Alaric, in order to trace the paths of the squarks, were pulling the tails of mice and stepping on chickens. Alaric says that in our particular situation tea leaves are much more reliable than cloud chambers. Yet why, after making the necessary calculations, did he do that rain dance? I don’t understand, but am afraid to ask. Great-uncle Herman is gone.

Entry 116,320.
Great-uncle Herman has turned up. Every two minutes he appears, with a regularity worthy of a better cause, off the port side, through the skylight you can see him reach the zenith, whereupon he sinks to starboard. Hasn’t changed a bit, even in that orbit of eternal rest! But who pushed him out, and when? A terrible thought

Entry 116,321.
Uncle is so regular, you could set a stopwatch by his risings and his settings. Odder yet, he has begun to sound the hours. This is beyond me.

Entry 116,322.
It’s simple: his feet scrape the surface of the hull at the lowest point of orbit and the tips of his soles (or heels) skip along the heads of the rivets on the armor plating. Today after breakfast he chimed thirteen—accident or omen? The stranger on the meteor has moved off some. He continues to accompany us. I sat at my desk today, to write, and the chair said to me: “What a strange world this is!” I thought at first that Uncle Josiah had finally succeeded, but it was just Grandfather Arabeus. He told me that he’s an invariant, that is, one for whom nothing matters, so I can keep my seat. Hallooed today for an entire hour on the gangway and upper deck. Not a soul. A few balls of yarn and knitting needles floating through the air, a couple of packs of cards for solitaire.

Entry 116,323.
There exists a special method of preserving one’s mental balance—you invent various fictitious characters. Can it be that I have already been doing this for quite some time in a subconscious way? I sit on the stubbornly silent Arabeus, with a puling infant in my drawer, I’ve named him Ijon, and feed him from a bottle—wondering where in the world I’m going to find a wife for him; there’s time yet, I suppose, but under these circumstances you can never tell. I’m sitting here and flying…

Those are the last words of my father recorded in the diary—the rest of the pages, missing. And I too am sitting in the rocket and reading about how someone else—that is, he—was sitting in the rocket and flying. And so he sat and he flew, and I likewise sit and fly. Who then is the one really doing the sitting and the flying? Is it possible that I’m not even here? But a ship’s log can’t very well read itself. So I do exist, yes, because I read it. Yet perhaps the entire thing is made up, imaginary. Strange thoughts… Let’s suppose that he didn’t sit and didn’t fly, but I on the other hand am still sitting here as I fly, or rather still flying here as I sit. That’s fairly certain. Is it, though? What’s certain is that I’m reading about someone who flies and sits. As for my own flight and state of seatedness, how can I be sure? The room is small and furnished poorly, it’s more a closet than a room. And situated on the ’tween deck, so I think, but then our attic didn’t look that much different. Of course all one would have to do is step out the door, to see it wasn’t an illusion. But what if it were an illusion, and I were to see only the continuation of that illusion? Is nothing conclusive? No, this is impossible! For if it were the case that I was not flying and not sitting, but only reading that he was flying and sitting, and if at the same time he really wasn’t flying either, that would mean that I, in my illusion, was aware of his illusion, or in other words that it seemed to me that it seemed to him. Or could that which seems to me also be what, seemingly, was seeming to him? An illusion inside an illusion? Let’s assume that that is true—except he also wrote about the one sitting astride the meteor. Now that presents a problem. You see, it seems to me that it seemed to him that this other was astride a meteor, but if it only
seemed
to that other as well, then nothing can be said either way! My head has started throbbing and once again, like yesterday, like the day before, I find I have to think of bishops and blue noses, eyes like bachelor’s-buttons, the blue Danube and veal cordon bleu. Why? And I know that when, at midnight, I add acceleration, I’ll be thinking about scrambled eggs—no—fried, and with big yokes, also about carrots, honey and the feet of my Aunt Mary—exactly as in the middle of every night… Ah! But of course! This must be the effect of thought shifts, sometimes towards the ultraviolet, and sometimes—through the yellow bands—in the direction of the infra-red, in other words a psychological Doppler effect! Very important! For that would be proof that I was flying! Proof by motion,
demonstratio ex motu,
as the Schoolmen said! So then, I really am flying… Yes. But anyone can think of eggs, feet and bishops. It’s not a proof at all, it’s only an assumption. What then remains? Solipsism? I alone exist, and am flying nowhere… But that would mean that Anonymus Tichy didn’t exist, nor Jeremiah, nor Igor, Esteban nor Cosimo, that there had been no Barnaby, Euzebius, no “Cosmocyst,” that I never lay in the drawer of my father’s desk, and that he, seated upon Grandfather Arabeus, never flew—now
that
is impossible! What, I am supposed to have spun all those persons, all that family history, out of nothing? But surely
ex
nihilo
nihil
fit!
And therefore the family existed, and it is the family that returns to me a faith in the world and in this my flight, whose conclusion is unknown! Everything has been saved thanks to you, O ancestors of mine! In a little while I shall place these written pages in an empty oxygen cylinder and throw them into the deep, overboard, let them sail off into the distant darkness, for
navigare
necesse est,
and I have been flying and flying for years…