Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel (11 page)

My father was now working as a heavy-equipment operator, outside of Santa Fe, pulling in good money. He and my mother had agreed that any extra should be invested in saving to put a down payment on his own dump truck, which would enable him to operate independently of the big guys. But this meant delaying the purchase of a home of our own. He drove down to Las Cruces on weekends, hoping that our beat-up 2031 Hydra would make it there and back again. He’d bought the thing, used, for a thousand
Unis
and disconnected its solar power and hydrogen apparatus, re-rigging it for compost-biomethane fuel. I think he bought it mostly because the logo looked like a guy in a cowboy hat. I always wondered if the Malaysians designed the logo with full knowledge that they were making a great big Yankee joke. I rather doubt it.

(Note: Back home in my real cabin, I have five rusting Hydra logos nailed to the wall of my garage. Also some snakeskins. They will have disintegrated by the time I return—the skins, I mean, not the cowboys.)

So, this one Saturday afternoon, we were prowling along the arroyo bed, both of us with .22s in hand, earnestly looking for the snake that had messed up my life three years earlier. I think in retrospect that his earnestness was less than mine, but his intention was strong, a commitment to justice. Or maybe just showing me I wasn’t alone.

We had no luck, then or later, in finding any big rattler in the arroyo. Perhaps it died of old age, but I hope its life ended badly.

The day was hot, and we were sweating hard. We agreed to take a break and climbed up out of the arroyo, searching for something to sit on. Not far away, we found a fallen mesquite tree. It’s not common to find one of them down because it has a long taproot. But this particular tree had tried to grow out of a pile of stones, and at some time in the recent past, a high wind had done the job. The ground was littered all about with its dead leaves and screw-beans. We kicked the thorns off the trunk to make safe sitting places, and deposited ourselves accordingly. It was a nice moment.

“We need a fire”, said my father.

The weather was hot as blazes, but we both knew what he meant. I gathered mesquite twigs and made a heap of them, with dry bean pod as kindling, then fired it. I added larger branches as the flames caught hold. The smell of burning mesquite is the best perfume in the world. Smiling, we sat back down on the trunk, taking sips from our canteens.

I can’t recall how long we remained without speaking. I remember only that the silence was comfortable, though it seemed to stretch longer than usual.

At last, he said in a raspy whisper, “Benigno, I’d cut off both my legs if I thought it would help you walk straight.”

I froze, choked, sad, happy, unable to say anything because my father was not a man to express emotions.

I nodded and nodded, but he was looking somewhere else.

“I know, Papa”, I said, when I could find my voice.

Standing up, he whacked the dust off his jeans with his hat, squinted into the lowering sun, clicked his tongue, and said:

“Yup. We got maybe an hour before we should head for home. Let’s go get that rattler.”

We never did get the rattler, but it didn’t matter so much after that.

Day 867
:

I often overhear people in the cafeterias comparing notes on their DEC experiences, clearly a very popular recreational activity. Everyone on board has a right to a monthly free suspension of reality in these digital environmental chambers. I thought I should give it a try, reminding myself that I could always walk out if I didn’t like it. I signed onto a waiting list for the chamber on my floor, and after three weeks of waiting, it was my turn.

The DEC on deck B is situated on the central avenue, halfway between the ship’s bow and stern. In the “hospitality foyer”, I was greeted by a comely maiden, who offered me a mobile screen listing hundreds upon hundreds of “environments”. Friendly and helpful, she walked me through the index, suggesting things like “Be an Actor in a Hollywood Crime Drama” (extremely popular), “An Afternoon in the Louvre” (also a hot item), “Swimming with the Blue Whale”, “Lost in the California Redwoods”, and so on.

“Got any deserts?” I interjected at one point.

She frowned and continued to search the index. “We don’t get many requests for that”, she murmured, absorbed in her work. “Maybe you’re the first. Oh, yes, here we are—four entries. The Sahara, the Gobi, the Great Australian, and the American Southwest.”

“I’ll take the American.”

She smiled with pleased approval. Her accent was American, I think, or omni-continental, and I could tell she was professionally happy for me. In any case, she led me into a labyrinth of halls and adjoining rooms from which came the faint sounds of people at bliss in their environments of choice. As we entered my chamber, I saw that it was the interior of a white sphere with a flat base platform.

“I’ll need your identicard, Dr. Hoyos”, she said with a slightly more formal air. I fished it out of my back pocket and handed it to her.

“Now, for specifics”, she continued. “Do you prefer the total sensory or just the visual / audio package?”

I explained that I didn’t really know what either of the options entailed.

“Well, if I may suggest, I think you’ll want to try the total sensory. As you know, the DEC is free, but for an additional fee you can enjoy smells, touch, taste, and the psychological experience of total reality. It’s more than watching a movie. Far, far more, and you get it with just a teensy sip of a delicious enhancer beverage.”

“What’s the cost?”

“Five hundred
Uni
s for two hours, one hundred extra for each additional hour.”

“Thanks, I’ll just take my free hours.”

She nodded with a whiff of disappointment, told me to lay myself down on the centrally positioned anti-gravity foam pad floating above the horizontal base of the sphere.

“I’d prefer to sit on the floor”, I said. “Can we get rid of the flying carpet?”

She firmed her lips, nodded again, and tapped her remote, making the pad descend into a rectangular orifice that opened in the floor. A panel slid across it. Another tap, and the anti-gravity unit descended and was likewise capped. I sat down and crossed my legs, Indian style. She went out, closing the door quietly behind her. A minute later, a subtle musical theme swelled from invisible sources. The lights dimmed, and on the sphere all around me there materialized three-dimensional blue sky, desert vistas with horizon and mountains, a circle of sagebrush around me, a hawk soaring above, the sounds of wind and bird cries, a coyote yipping.

It was a fascinating display of technology, and half an hour of it was pleasant enough, though before long, it began to stir up too much longing. Beside me, a campfire crackled with a pot of coffee burbling on it. I was suddenly irritated by the lack of smells. I wished I’d taken the drug. Instinctively, I wanted more and more and more. I wanted it to be real. I wanted to go home! Of course, I knew I was being seduced, regardless of the illusion of choice, but more worrisome was the realization that I was on the verge of not caring about the cost, nor about the abandonment of my self to someone else’s manipulation of my subconscious.

I got up, pushed open the door, and left, never to return.

Day 985
:

Pia has been encouraging me (read, nagging me) to conquer the pull of lethargy by taking up swimming.

“Oh yeah”, I said with a laugh. “I heard there was a swimming pool onboard.”

“It’s on level D. I do laps there every morning”, she replied.

I begged off, pleading that I had once nearly drowned in the Rio Grande, my single attempt at swimming during my post-snakebite youth.

“It’s usually crowded”, she said, ignoring my excuse. “I suggest you go at odd hours. Are you a night owl?”

“Definitely. Is there a shallow end?”

“Definitely.”

She went on to tell me that regular swimming would exercise my whole body without jarring any joints. It could even improve my limp.

“Give it a try, Neil, maybe in the middle of the night, when it’s quieter.”

Thus, for the sake of undeclared Platonic love, I agreed to give it a try. I passed a few days of ambivalence, however, before making the final decision to locate the pool. I checked the index in the Manual, impressed yet again by how much the
Kosmos
contained. It struck me as sensible that the ship’s designers had placed the pool near the bottom. If there were leaks, neither Picasso nor Rothko nor Whistler would be soaked (the gravity generators are situated on PHM, in a ship-length component, which in an ocean-going vessel would have been called the “keel”).

I thought I might go between three and four in the morning when few if any passengers would be there to laugh at me nervously paddling about in the kid’s end of the pool with my rubber ducky.

Day 987
:

At three o’clock this morning, I got up, dressed myself in my khaki shorts and T-shirt, slung a white towel around my shoulders, and padded barefoot (illegally) down Concourse B to the staircase. The lights in the concourses are dimmed from midnight until six in the morning, but there’s plenty enough to see by.

Arriving at level D, I turned left and walked toward what I think is the rear end of the ship (its symmetry still disorients me) until I came upon a wall sign displaying a little manikin doing a crawl in waves, with illuminated arrows pointing to a cross-avenue. I followed directions and arrived, in due course, at a physical recreation complex somewhere midway between port and starboard. The pool area faced the corridor, with a wall of transparent floor-to-ceiling panels. Within, a glimmering blue sea, perfectly still, without a ripple or a shark fin, awaited me. I made a burbling noise like a man speaking under water—the word “Open”. An effeminate electronic voice oozed in reply, “Repeat, please.”

“Open”, I said in plain Spanish. The doors slid apart and I entered.

The ceramic tile borders were warm underfoot. There was no smell of chlorine, no sound of lapping, no lifeguard. The atmosphere was uterine, an audible hush. At the other end stood a high diving board. At the near end, steps led down into the pool. I descended and gingerly dipped a toe into the water, which to my pleasant surprise was body temperature, then waded out farther until I was submerged to the sternum of my chest. I laughed, and, using my good leg as a spring, I jumped upward and slapped my hands on the surface, sending tremors concentrically in all directions. The waves chattered at the edges of the pool.

I jumped up and down for a few minutes, gleefully making tsunamis until an old nonsense song awakened somewhere inside me, just notes of music without any lyrics. I threw my head back, warbling and hooting and laughing, submerging and spluttering, then rising and singing again. I felt so good, so free, so young.

For the sake of historical accuracy, I should mention that I do know how to swim. I just lost my taste for it when I nearly drowned all those years ago in the Rio Grande. Pausing in the
Kosmos
pool, I let the waves subside, seeing again that decisive event as if it had occurred this very morning:

I was fifteen years old. I limped badly in body and mind, morosely certain that I had recovered as much as I ever would from the damage done by my knife. I was angry as hell about it, brooding and keeping to myself. I shunned my old friends because their vitality was a constant reminder of my loss, and because we no longer could do anything interesting together.

Late one afternoon, I headed out toward the desert in the direction of the arroyo where the snake had got me. I had a .22 in hand, and I was bent on vengeance. At the edge of the trailer park, I happened upon an old buddy of mine, an Aztec named Alvaro. He and his pals (whose names I cannot now recall) were sitting on stones in a circle, playing cards and passing around a brown paper bag from which they sipped. I saw that they had only just opened the bottle since they were still pretty sober and their humor was congenial.

“Hoyos,” called Alvaro, “come and play with us.”

“Nah”, I growled. “I got something to do.”

“How come you give us the cold shoulder all the time?”

I grunted, shrugged, and limped onward into the chaparral.

Alvaro sprang to his feet and came running after me. He jumped in front to block my path and grabbed the strap of my gun, bringing me to a full stop. He was several inches shorter than me but tough as rawhide, brown-skinned, black-haired, not much Spanish in him. He had a reputation for being loyal to anyone he befriended, for drinking underage, for petty crime, and for ferocious courage.

“That’s no answer!” he barked.

“Only answer you’re going to get”, I snarled back.

I knew him well enough to see that he was about to fly into one of his enormous tempers and pop me on the face with his fist. Instead, with flaming eyes and flaring nostrils, he caught himself, and after looking my bad leg up and down, he met my eyes.

“Come on, Benigno, don’t be like that”, he said in a cajoling tone. “Me and the
muchachos
, we’re going swimming.”

“I don’t swim”, I replied in my most surly manner, trying to shake off his hand.

“You lie! You used to swim with us all the time.”

“What about the cops? They catch you swimming and drunk, you’re in big trouble.”

“Didn’t you hear? Big crash on the interstate, ten-car pile-up. Every cop in the region’s over there, so no one’s looking our way for once.”

Scowling, I considered his invitation. “Come on,
chico
, don’t act like a
gringo
.”

“It only takes one cop or a DSI to catch you”, I said. “Then you’re dead.”

Alvaro was an illegal, as were some of the other
muchachos
. “You want me to hide in the sand hole all my life?” he said. “I been fooling them ever since red flower days.”

“It only takes one mistake.”

“I don’t make mistakes. Besides, you’re legal, so nothing’s going to happen to
you
. Scared to get your feet wet?”

“I ain’t scared.”