The Sunspacers Trilogy (10 page)

We sat down four rows from the pit. Van Cott turned around in front of me.

“Say, Morey, don’t you think we could get this stuff on our own?”

“Probably.”

So they had met, I thought as a smiling, middle-sized man with white hair walked into the pit. He wore an all-in-one black slacks/white shirt combo with green bow tie.

“A clown,” Morey whispered.

“Good afternoon. My name’s Christian Praeger. This is probably the only course you’ll take whose subject matter is beyond all of us. I’m not always sure myself what the subject matter is, but it has to do with making some sense of what humankind has done in its short history.”

Van Cott was shifting restlessly in his seat.

Praeger smiled. “Does human history make a pattern of some kind? Is there a vision which unifies human knowledge? Einstein once said that he wouldn’t try politics because it was much harder than physics—too many variables, and calling for decisions, not just understanding, where too little was known, at moments when decisions still had to be made, and where partial success was the best that could be expected.

“There will be a lot of necessary nonsense in this course, but we’ll try to remove it by developing some kind of crap detector. There’s no one way to make one, but it does demand the readiness to shift perspective while retaining a sense of values.”

“Whatever that means,” Van Cott whispered. I didn’t like admitting that he had a point.

“As scientists,” Praeger continued, “each of you must be able to share in the general culture, if for no other reason than that it is the culture that supports science. I know the dedication required to make a success of a career in science, to even get to the point where one has a chance at making a contribution, much less something major.”

“I wish he could talk,” Van Cott said.

“It’s still us against them,” Morey added.

“But the investment of time and patience also belongs to the burden of an artist or writer. I remember what it took for me to get degrees in physics and chemistry.”

“No kidding,” Van Cott whispered in surprise. “He has scientific degrees?”

“We’ll be reading the so-called great books. There are only a few hundred of these. Read casually this term, but you’ll find that your care will grow as our discussions become more pointed. Your interest will increase and you’ll be pleased to work harder. Many past students have told me that this work complemented their scientific careers, putting their later work in a much-needed human context. I hope that you will come to feel the same.”

“We’re in church,” Van Cott said softly.

“Quiet,” I said, nudging him.

“Human cultures have advanced on more than one front at a time. Science is one of the most successful, and the one that sets the most exacting models of honesty and attention to merit. But on other fronts—”

“Example!” Van Cott shouted.

“Well, the habit of complex observation in literature, for one. Human characters are
entered, social systems observed,
with a personal accuracy that cannot be accomplished in other ways. An analog of experience remains that is often truer than formal histories, of how people felt about themselves and the universe. Then there’s music, a realm of striving forms, pure feeling and beauty, atmosphere, rationally expressed, voicing the ineffable …”

I was moved by Praeger’s love of his subject.

“Sounds good,” Van Cott said loudly.

“How many of you have read Milton?” Praeger asked.

Van Cott laughed. “You mean that clumsy poem where all the science is wrong?”

“Can someone else answer?”

I raised my hand and stood up. “It seemed very real to me.”

“Exactly the point. The cosmology of
Paradise Lost,
or Dante’s
Inferno,
was the real stuff for many people, once.”

“Astrology!” Van Cott shouted.

“It was a way of dealing with human fears and hopes.”

“So is hiding under the bed,” Van Cott added.

“I see it’s going to be an interesting semester,” Praeger said, completely undisturbed.

Van Cott was a go-getter; that was why Morey liked him. Dedicated as Morey was, he needed to see others swimming in the same direction. I had nothing against dedication, but Van Cott was shouting his to the world. I didn’t like his style, even if he was brilliant; but that made me feel backward, even primitive, to notice his style and not his substance. I think Morey needed to see me swimming his way, but I felt that maybe I had nothing to crow about. If I did, then maybe I’d be snickering along with the two of them and having a fine time of it.

As the lecture hall began to empty, Van Cott turned to me and grinned. “That was pretty good, Sorby.” For a moment I thought he was making fun of me, but then I saw that he meant it. In his own way Van Cott was sincere.

And then I didn’t know what to think.

Sunlight from the rings was warm on my face as I lay in the grass on the hillside. I thought of all the course work, but I didn’t see myself doing it, even though the first day of classes had filled me with visions of new worlds to know.

I sat up and looked around. This bit of ground near Bernie’s lock would make a great reading spot. I lay back again and closed my eyes. The Sun was very special here, tamed and turned inward by the mirrors of human dreams made real. The past seemed like a bad dream, the future too far away to even think about.

I liked my teachers; they made me feel that I could accomplish everything. I felt happier, just lying there, than I had ever felt before in my life, even though part of me knew that I had to be kidding myself. I didn’t want to admit that what I could do fairly well was probably not what I wanted to do at all—but what was there for me to do? How can you be happy when you suspect that you no longer know what you want, and refuse to face up to the problem? I wanted to be here, to be part of the Sunspace way of life. School, I realized dimly, had only been my way of getting out here.

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Rosalie

I felt great for about six weeks.

Fantastic classes.

Discussions spilling over into the snack bar, to dinner and late into evenings. I felt I really belonged.

Individual arguments with professors and tutors.

Akhmatova, Azap, Praeger, and Vidich loaded us with ammunition, and we fired it at each other without mercy. They fought us tooth and brain, yet managed to stay on our side. I had no time to think about myself.

There weren’t the jokers and class clowns of high school, or the troublemakers who would get suspended.

Even obnoxious Van Cott seemed more human, and it didn’t seem to matter what I thought of him.

For a while Morey and I became friendly with two students down the hall, David Kihiyu and Marco Pellegrini. We often ate together, and sometimes studied with them and Marco’s girlfriend, Narita Sykes. But I soon noticed how much like Morey they were, and that reminded me that I was pretending to fit in, so I could get through school as I had decided. David and Marco wanted to know everything. David would sometimes wake us up in the middle of the night to tell us about an idea he’d dreamed, and Morey would listen while I drifted off. Narita was more like Van Cott. I was sure she and Marco talked physics in bed. I knew dedication when I saw it, and I felt bad that I didn’t have it; but it was easy, at first, to ignore my feelings.

The days were exciting, intense, and tiring, especially when you were forced to listen to technical talk in the showers. We took a field trip to the Research Shacks near the outer edge of L-5’s volume of space, where they did the dangerous work with dense states of matter, the control of inertia, and the further applications of negative-g, which still couldn’t do more than hurl a ship off-planet; but one day negative-g would push a ship directly, as part of its drive, and take us out to the stars. Doing that was a more exciting idea, for me, than understanding the physics that would make it possible.

The Shacks looked like a collection of giant tin cans as our shuttle pulled away. I felt a thrill at knowing what was being done there.

It was a short hop back to Bernal, but the Moon was as far away as Earth. As seniors we would visit the big labs on Lunar Farside; some of us would even work there one day, the recruiters had assured us.

As I gazed at Luna’s dry, silvery face, I felt the vast emptiness of space, the smallness of worlds where life had fought to establish itself, and I remembered that I was still a problem to myself.

“You’re not very serious about physics,” Morey said to me on the last evening in August. David and Marco had just left. We were at our desks, entering the day’s work. I stopped and stared at him.

“Come on, Joe, you just don’t have the way of talking. You don’t go after things.”

“You mean I’m not Van Cott,” I said nervously.

“I’m your friend and should tell you.”

“Well you’re wrong.”

“I hope.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re always running off somewhere.”

“So?”

“You’re not doing
enough
work.”

“My grades are as good as yours!”

He clenched his teeth and smiled. “You know that doesn’t mean much by itself.” He had lost some weight, making him look less bearlike, taller. “You’re knocking off the work quite well, even expertly, but you’re not digging into it, living it the way David does, or Narita. You’re not letting it take you over, the way it should if you’re going to do original work.”

“I keep it to myself,” I muttered, feeling a bit guilty.

He shook his head. “No, it would show. A whole new world should be growing inside you. Not just the thrills of it, but the hard, close thinking. It may sound pompous to you, but there’s no other way to say it.”

A part of me knew he was right, but I wasn’t going to admit it.

“And you’re always talking about engineering. More since we came back from the Shacks.”

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked, even though I knew what he would say. “Our technology doesn’t do half of what our science says is possible.”

“But I thought you wanted physics,” he said wearily, “to be at the frontiers of science doing basic work.”

“Maybe engineering is for me.”

He looked shocked. “That’s for second stringers, Joe.”

“And no friend of yours is that,” I said.

“Be serious.” The light from his screen flickered on his face. “You’re not being fair. I thought we could talk to each other.”

“Leave me alone, Morey, will you?”

“Can’t take it?”

I glared at him.

He grinned.

“You changing to psych?” I asked.

“Maybe—there’s a whole universe inside every skull. I didn’t realize how big medicine was out here. There’s bio-research going on they wouldn’t dare do on Earth.” He was trying to show me that his interests were wider than I thought.

“Well, I’m not going to be one of your cases,” I said, feeling panicky, as if I should run around and sound the alarm for a fire or flood; it
was
an emergency, but I just sat there, staring at the screen.

“I’m sorry,” he said, turning off his screen. “Maybe you’re paying too much attention to politics.”

I wasn’t, but the way he said it made me angry. “You don’t feel anything for the people of Mercury.”

“I do, but I can’t help.”

“You could sign a petition, go to a meeting with me.”

“Yeah, maybe, but my studies come first. Not a grade, my
studies
, if you know the difference.” He shook his head. “It’s what I came here for, Joe.” He looked straight at me. “Linda filled your head with Sunspacer politics.”

“I saw her only once.”

“Sure,” he said, leaning back. “She made you feel guilty.”

“There are issues!”

He was silent for a moment. “Okay, but you don’t have to throw away your career for something that’ll get settled anyway.”

“I’ll get through anyway.”

“Stubborn pride isn’t enough.”

I didn’t have to be his kind of physicist, I told myself, but the truth in what he was saying was getting to me more than I realized. “Sorry, Joe,” he said suddenly. “Maybe I’m wrong.”

I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. He was only trying to let me down easy. More than anything, just then, I wished to be without body or feelings—a pure mind knowing everything there was to know, drinking in all the light in the universe. Pure minds don’t have friends, I told myself as I looked at Morey’s sour expression.

“You’re late,” Morey whispered in Astronomies the next day. “What’s the matter with you?”

I stared ahead tensely, waiting for the hour to go by. Azap ran through the interstellar measurement wars at the turn of the century, when it had seemed that the universe was getting smaller as the yardsticks were revised under the pressure of some very clever criticisms. At the end of the ten-year fracas, the universe got larger again. As if the universe could care much, I thought.

I noticed Linda and Jake in the front row. They seemed to be together again. I had learned that she had gone out with me after their last quarrel. They never stayed apart for long, Narita Sykes had told me that morning in the snack bar. But that still didn’t seem like enough to explain why she had run off when my parents had called, I had thought as I listened to Narita impart her wisdom.

“Jake isn’t what you think he is,” she had said. “He’s a brilliant astrophysics student. A bit older than us, but he got a late start. He works to pay for school. His math has appeared in the journals.” I didn’t like the way she had rolled her eyes.

Morey was in a hurry to leave as the class ended. “Are you coming?”

I motioned for him to go without me. We were being polite to each other, but it wasn’t the same. I didn’t like the idea that anyone might know more about me than I did.

I saw Rosalie Allport coming up the aisle as the hall emptied. On impulse, I stood up and approached her.

“Hello, I’m Joe Sorby.”

She stopped and smiled. “Yes, I know, you’re in my other classes also.”

“Could we go out sometime? I’ve wanted to ask.”

She grimaced. “There’s just no time. I have to study and help out in my father’s bookstore in town. Sorry.”