Vectors (34 page)

After a month of preparation Par Leon and I were able to begin our work. I would keep my part of the bargain and give him six good, long years for his great lifetime project, the analysis of the musical trends of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. More important than any facts were the perspectives I could offer him. He found it hard to believe how much man-woman and man-man relationships had affected everything in my era. With modern methods of mating dictated by selection of desirable gene combinations, he found it almost unthinkable that people should have mated randomly, on impulse. He was fascinated by my comments. It was a little irritating to him that I had become a Cryo-corpse just before a couple of events that he was especially interested in had happened, but he accepted that philosophically and with good humor.

While we worked, I learned more about the times. The Solar System was explored, known like the back of a man's hand. Venus had been terra-formed, Mars colonized, and there were permanent manned stations—some 'manned' by organic computers—on all the major satellites of the outer planets and on Pluto. Space drives were available that would get as close to the speed of light as you wanted—but few people were interested. The stars were within easy reach, but no one seemed to be stretching out his hands. Civilization seemed changed, content with the limits of the Solar System. I took hypno-courses in astronautics and space systems and became expert in the practice of drive mechanisms. The theory, I suspected, was forever beyond me.

Work went on. I shouldn't give the impression that with Par Leon it was a one-way transfer of information. From his vantage point three hundred and sixty years away, he had developed insights into what was really happening in the musical world of my earlier life that left me gasping. So that was where those musical forms were leading, and that's where Krubak had been aiming in his much-ridiculed late works! Something—perhaps the glandular adjustments that the doctors had performed on me—made working with Par Leon a pleasant experience. Previously I had always been something of a loner. To say that I was perfectly content would of course be wrong, but given my preoccupations I was more content than I would have imagined.

The text we were producing steadily grew. By the beginning of the fourth year I knew we were writing a classic together. During the sixth year we were nearing completion and Par Leon was suggesting the possibility of other collaborations.

After the work was finally complete, Par Leon—a good man by any moral standards I would ever be able to comprehend—helped me to become established as a composer. It was easier than I expected. Knowledge of the centuries before Cryo-corpses was quite spotty, with some big gaps. I could steal tricks from the musical titans of my own past, use them in the modern style, and get away with it. After three years I had a growing reputation (which I secretly knew was undeserved), a group of imitators, and—most important—a substantial financial credit at my disposal.

At last I could wait no longer. I announced that it was time for me to take a long-overdue vacation and see a little more of the Solar System. The night before I left I took Par Leon out for dinner. We went to his favorite place, ate his favorite foods, and drank his favorite wines. Even though I suspected that if I told him the truth he would be my willing accomplice, I did not tell him what we were celebrating or why the occasion was so very special. My plans might involve danger and destruction and I did not want Par Leon to bear any blame when I was gone.

* * *

So there we were. Ana and I, together again. We were heading for Canopus in the space yacht that I had rented for a two-month tour of the inner Solar System. Murderer in one era, I was now thief and worse in another. Even with forged papers to help me, it had been a desperate and violent run through the Pluto wombs and the Solar security perimeter with Ana's Cryo-corpse. Twice I had been within seconds of collision and destruction, but my pursuers' fear of death had exceeded mine. They had changed course to avoid impact and I had fled through their net.

We were traveling at just one hundred and twenty-five meters a second below the speed of light and could get within a meter a second if I chose to. We were moving fast enough. Time dilatation made three years pass on Earth for every day of shipboard time. The trip to Canopus and back would be a little more than two months for us, and two hundred years back on Earth. I felt I could use the time to relax a little. The days before I collected Ana from the Pluto wombs, followed by our escape, had been more than hectic.

I never ceased to be amazed at the capacities of the ship—which, because of time dilation, mankind seemed to have found no real use for. The mass indicator showed more than one hundred and forty thousand tons, up from a rest mass of a hundred and thirty tons.

To an outside observer I would appear to mass about eighty-eight tons and be foreshortened to a length of less than two millimeters. Although it was hidden from me by the shields, I knew that ahead of us in the forward direction the three-degree background radiation left over from the Big Bang had been Dopplershifted up to visible wavelengths. Behind us, hard X-ray sources looked like pale red stars. And we were nowhere near the ship's limits.

I had started composing again—real music, not pot-boilers or derivative works. In the room aft, Ana lay peacefully in her Cryo-tank. I felt optimistic that two hundred years would be long enough for Earth to have developed a complete and certain cure. If not, we would head out again and repeat the cycle. There was plenty of time. If Earth could not at last provide our answer, we could go elsewhere, on to the stars to search for other solutions. The ship was completely self-sustaining and had ample power for many lifetimes. I hoped that the single trip would be enough, though; one of my ambitions on our return was to find the Cryo-corpse of my friend Par Leon, and return his favor to me.

As we swept up to the great flaring beacon of Canopus, I decelerated to gravitational swing-by speeds and let the ship fall through a tight hyperbolic orbit around the star. Canopus was a fearsome sight. More than a thousand times as luminous as the Sun, it was spouting green flares of gas hundreds of millions of kilometers long. I searched for planets and found only four gas-giants, each the size of Jupiter. There were no signs of an inner-planet system.

After two days of fascinated observation I turned the ship and headed back to Earth. Were mine the first human eyes to see the twisting striations—sun-scars, not sun-spots—that gouged the boiling surface of Canopus? Like a lost soul flying from Hell-gate, I ran for the shelter of our own Solar System. If another trip out were necessary, it would be to a smaller and less turbulent star.

That sight of Hell had affected me more than anything I could remember. It burned in my mind and I could not eat, drink or sleep. The urge to see Ana again, to seek peace in her face, grew on me and at last I went aft. She lay in her tank like a Snow-goddess, with pearly eyelids and skin of milky crystal. I took only one quick look, afraid to open the tank more in case it interfered with the cooling system. It was enough. I could control myself again and think of other things.

On the tranquil return trip, I wondered again at how easy everything had seemed. I had never thought of light-speed ships and time dilation when I was making my plans so long ago. At best, I had prepared for a chancy succession of freezings and thawings for me, further and further in time until at last there was a cure and Ana could safely be revived. As it was, Ana was with me; I could safeguard her myself and there was no risk at all.

In we came, past the barren outcroppings of Pluto and on to the inner planets. With no idea how Earth would have changed in two hundred years, I had no way to decide whether I should approach slowly and cautiously or rapidly and confidently. My decision was made for me. As we rode in above the ecliptic, avoiding the asteroid belt, we were locked by a navigation and guidance beam and steered to a landing on the Moon.

The spaceport was new, massive columns set in a regular triangular array. Spaceflight at least had changed since we left. The guidance system set us down gently. Prepared for anything—or so I thought—I stepped through the lock to meet a new generation.

One man greeted me in the lock corridor, a tall dignified figure with the distant eyes of a prophet. Somehow I had expected more, perhaps a show of weapons until my identity was known.

"Welcome again to Earth-space, Drake Merlin."

The language was still Universal. I said I was prepared for anything—but I was not prepared to be recognized and named. I was taken aback, then I realized that the ship's identification was given in the communication codes, and I would be shown as the last pilot. The data retrieval presumably still held those records. I wondered what else the system showed about my wild flight from Pluto.

"Since you know my identity, then perhaps you also know my history. I am seeking assistance."

The man nodded. "We know your history, and your quest. It has come down to us from ancient times. One version holds that you lost control of your ship and were carried off to the far depths of space. Another tells that your disappearance at light-speed was intentional. Come with me, we will find conversation easier inside the city."

There were small pauses in his words, almost as though he had need to stop and think about many phrases. I wondered if Universal was a learned language to him, as Old Anglic had been to Par Leon. We settled into a reception room, close by the inner lock, and I felt a rising tension. In a few moments I would know if my search was over.

"The Cryo-corpse that you have with you in the ship. What was the disease?"

"I think there is no word for it in Universal. It disappeared from the race and from the language. The full medical description was given with the womb records."

He nodded. "Do you have the womb catalog number?"

I gave it to him. He stood motionless, eyes distant, for almost five seconds. Then he nodded again. "It can be cured. I have summoned the necessary medical resources."

Two waves of emotion swept over me. Wild joy, and an almost superstitious fear. Telepathy seemed to have been added to the human senses.

"You can transmit your thoughts?" I asked.

He looked puzzled, and again there was a brief silence. Then he smiled.

"Not in the way that you are thinking. I can exchange thoughts with others, and with the data banks, but you will be able to do the same in a few days' time. You will also be able to compute faster and better than the computer of the ship that brought you here. Look."

He turned his head to me and raised the gray hair above his left temple. There was a faint, straight scar there.

"That is the place where the implant is made. There is no reason this could not have been done in the time in which you first lived. A small set of integrated circuits handles calculations—we think in the numbers, just as in your day you did it through finger-pressure on keys.

"The implant is fully programmable. It also contains a signal transmitter and receiver, so that we can enter data and programs directly from the central computers, or from another person. I am speaking to you now in Universal by using the translation programs on the Tycho computer system."

He caught my look of misgiving. "Do not worry about this. I assure you that in a few months you will find it hard to believe that you functioned without such a service. You will have total recall, be a calculator beyond the most skillful of your time, and you will have immediate access to all the data of the Solar System—though the transmission time is considerable for the data banks of other planets.

"Now, let me query the medical team. They should have made their first examination of the Cryo-corpse in your ship."

He was again silent for a few seconds. Then his eyes widened and he looked at me with a different expression. The silence continued. I felt again a knife of tension twisting inside me, a feeling that something was going wrong.

"What is it?" I said at last. "Have you been in communication with your medical team? What do they say?"

He nodded. His eyes now seemed different, gentler and closer. He appeared to be choosing his words with great care.

"The woman in the Cryo-tank. Anastasia. When you took her from the wombs of Pluto, was the Cryo-tank fully sealed?"

I could not speak and my mind was filled with foreboding. I inclined my head a fraction of an inch.

"But you opened the tank? After you had left Pluto?" he asked gently.

"Once. To see her, after we left Canopus. I looked for only a moment, and I sealed the tank again afterward."

I could not tell him that I had been unable to stop myself, I had been driven. Suddenly I was looking at him across a gulf of five hundred and seventy years. His sad face was Tom Lambert's, and Par Leon's also. His eyes were speaking the same message.

"Drake Merlin, the Cryo-tank was intended only for storage in the wombs. After it was opened, the seal was imperfect. You understand what I am saying? Without the correct seal, the temperature in the tank was too high."

He seemed unable to speak for a few moments, and I assume that he was calling for more data from his computer banks. Then he continued. "I have checked with the medical team and with the best data sources. The damage caused to the body when the tank was opened and the seal broken cannot be repaired. There can be no revival; now or ever.

"I am sorry, Drake Merlin. Anastasia is dead. Forever dead."

Forever dead. Forever dead. The words seemed to echo Tom Lambert, from long ago. This time there was the ring of complete certainty. For each man kills the thing he loves. I had taken the long chance, and now it was over.

There was a long period of introspection, twenty billion nano-seconds of communion with the data banks and the medical teams. As my world collapsed, the barriers came down inside my mind. I noticed for the first time the faint spicy sweetness of the air fresheners, the steady dry breeze blowing past us, and the faint concert pitch A-natural of vibrating metal far along the corridor. My senses were opening again, after long centuries of hibernation.