* * * *
The three transports would already have left, riding their flames to better than a tenth of light speed before they darkened and flew free. They were large only by comparison with their pioneer—minimal, actually. Their payloads were Guthrie Two; some nine hundred cold-sleeping humans; whatever was necessary to keep that cargo intact and revive it at journey’s end; and what little more could be crammed in. Their voyage would take four decades.
By then, Demeter should be slightly less inhospitable. Machines, big, small, and molecular, ground rock into soil and sowed it with life that other machines had created from genome maps. Microbes, vegetation, simple animals spread across the land; an ecology coalesced. It went more slowly by far than had the industries. Fragile, chancy, it required constant overseeing and frequent intervention, lest it perish on this world which it had not had billions of years to grow with. If it survived, no computer existed that could foretell how it would evolve.
In truth, there were no certainties, no prophecies, whatsoever. Knowledge was lacking. Had information been total, and had the computers been able to cope with so much, surprises would have been inevitable just the same. The universe is chaotic, which is to say sovereign over itself.
Therefore minds, awarenesses, must be present at Demeter from the outset, to meet the unawaited as it struck, improvise, imagine, and strive onward. Guthrie, who had been the soul and Caesar of Fireball, did not believe he alone had the wisdom or the strength. He must recruit others to download and partner him, he who had always said it was better to be a mortal than a ghost.
The thought drew him back from a future that might well never come to pass. “That’s a bellyful of simulation for me,” he grumbled when his assistant had uncoupled him. “Christ, to work with my hands again!”
* * * *
45
T
he door with the lily on it opened, and Nero Valencia looked downward at Eiko Tamura. “Welcome,” she said softly. This was their first meeting, but they had talked for a few minutes over the phone yesterday, before he took the ferry to L-5.
“You are very kind to receive me, Señorita,” he said, unwontedly awkward. The jewel in his forehead, which in the screen had shown scarlet, flickered through pale shades of blue.
“My concern is natural, sir. Kyra Davis is my friend.”
“That’s why I wondered whether you would.”
“Do come in.” When the door had closed on the bustling passage, she added, “The situation is difficult for her too.” A bow and gesture invited him onward. He remembered to slip off his shoes in the tiny entry section. “May I offer refreshment?”
“Gracias.” He took a chair in the room beyond. With its mate and a high-legged table, it was alien here; he suspected they had been brought out for the occasion. Tatami mats and cushions seemed crowded by them. The walls were pastel, bare except for a scroll of an ancient landscape. Beneath it, a bowl on a low table held water and, in a pierced stone, a bouquet of violets. Their perfume faintly sweetened the air. “Uh, your father—”
“He is at work,” Eiko explained. “There is so much to do in this time of confusion.” She hesitated. “I ought to be at my own duties. But you gave me an impression of great need.”
Valencia made himself meet her regard. “You see many things, don’t you, Señorita? I thought you would. Pilot Davis told me something about you when we were together, and I’ve since heard more.”
“Excuse me a moment,” she said. “Make yourself comfortable.” If you can, she refrained from voicing, and disappeared into the kitchen.
She returned bearing a tea service, set the table, and sat down opposite him. “Let me make a little ceremony of this,” she proposed with a smile. “Don’t feel you must imitate me. Simply watch, relax, enjoy.”
He cleared his throat. “What I’ve come about—”
She raised a hand. “No, I beg you, no haste. We have ample time. This will speak for me.” She touched a control bracelet on her wrist. Recorded strings began to sing. She contemplated her cup, the purity of its curves and a bamboo stalk sketched in the porcelain, before she poured; then she observed the stray leaves as they swirled in the green. Perforce he did likewise. The music went movement by movement from reverie to joy.
It ended at last. He kept still a while longer, drew his gaze back to her, and murmured, “That was beautiful. Old?”
She nodded. “Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor. I thought it would help us. Now tell me, if you will, how you have fared lately.”
“Variably. Oh, I haven’t lacked for job offers. Took some, those that weren’t likely to turn violent. Earth is calming down.”
“Do you fear your trade will become obsolete?”
He grinned. “Not soon. Plenty of restlessness to go around.” His jewel darkened. The hand that lay by the cup doubled into a fist. He looked away from her. “But it’s obsolete in me.”
“And you cannot make Kyra understand that,” Eiko said low.
“She’s told you what I did, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
His tone roughened. “I won’t pretend I’m overwhelmed by remorse. You’d know me for a hypocrite. But I wish she could believe I don’t want to go on like that.”
“You should be clear that I am outside this. She has said almost nothing about you to me since the, the fight. Only that you kept the Packer family safe and free, at no small hazard to yourself.”
“My job.” He met her eyes. “When I got back in touch with her, she . . . thanked me.”
“And that was all.”
“She didn’t have to say outright she wants no more to do with me. She knew I knew that.”
“You would like me to speak to her on your behalf?”
Valencia offered a rueful smile. “Not exactly. That was two years ago, after all.”
“Then what do you ask for? Why have you come here?”
He sighed. “I don’t really know.” After several seconds, it broke from him: “But when I heard she—she—” He choked.
Eiko finished it. “She has agreed to send a download of herself with one of the Srs. Guthrie on the advance ship to Alpha Centauri.”
“I can’t imagine it!” he cried. “She’s so alive. Even a copy of her, in a horrible box— What could make her do it?”
“The news was a shock to you,” Eiko said sympathetically.
He nodded, his neck stiff as a puppet’s.
“You care, then,” she went on. “You care very much.”
“I’ve thought about her—every day—” He swallowed. “Don’t get me wrong. I took for granted she was happy enough. For the time being, anyhow. She even seemed to’ve settled down with a man. A good man, from what I could learn. Though when the humans go to Demeter— But that isn’t yet, and not like what she means to do first. . . . Her other self. How can she make another Kyra for hell? What’s wrong?”
“You exaggerate,” Eiko chided. “The situation is inhuman, but not inhumane.”
White light from his jewel sheened off a film of sweat. “I was hoping you could make me believe that. Reconcile me to it. I guess she’s told you her reasons. If they aren’t secret—”
Eiko shook her head. “No, she didn’t swear me to silence. She knew I wouldn’t gossip.” She considered him. “I think it will not be wrong to share a part, and trust in your discretion.”
Valencia’s jewel dimmed. “You are generous, my lady,” he said humbly.
Eiko drew breath. “She came to me. We were several daycycles together, here, in Trevorrow Preserve, high in the Tree, out in ambient space among the stars. She wanted my—not my poor counsel, but my companionship while we groped toward what was the right decision for her. That was a hard pilgrimage we made. I will not try to tell you about it. But you have seen the public announcement.”
“Yes,” he rasped. “Guthrie must have some like himself along, or the whole venture will fail. Kyra—Pilot Davis has joined the handful who’re willing to make the sacrific
e. I know about Fireball troth, Srta. Tamura. But this goes too damned far beyond it. Too God damned far.”
“She has her personal motivation, remember. She plans to go in her living body, come the second departure.”
“Why, why? Does she really feel that futile at home?”
“She feels things closing in on her. And then, the larger cause, humankind, life itself—” Eiko stopped. “But she was never one to speak in grandiose terms, nor shall I.”
She reached across the table and laid her fingers lightly over the knuckles of his fist. “Downloading is not, in fact, a dreadful fate,” she said. “Moreover, for such a mind, once its task is done, termination holds no terrors. The dear flesh is not there, clinging to existence.”
Bitterness responded. “Of course not. There’s nothing to lose.”
“You are mistaken. Would Guthrie-san have gone on, decade after decade, were the time wholly barren? I, who seek in my limited and half-hearted way for enlightenment, satori, I can vaguely imagine what Kyra’s disembodied self will have. Whole new perceptions of this infinitely wonderful universe. New powers, some superhuman, powers of thought and action, comprehension and accomplishment. Challenge. Service. Deeds done that will ring for centuries, or forever. Afterward, if she chooses, oblivion, which is peace.”
He sat mute, head lowered, until he looked up again and mumbled, “That’s how she feels? She isn’t doing this because she’s miserable, and she doesn’t expect it will be bad for the other one?”
“It was no easy choice,” Eiko granted, “but it is what she came to, and she is—more nearly content with it than she could be with anything less.”
“I see.” Valencia straightened. “Gracias, mil gracias. You’ve done a stranger a great mercy.”
“You deserved it, I think.”
“You do, knowing what you know about me?”
“Yes. Not that I dare sit in judgment on you or anyone else. But one can recognize love.”
Valencia’s jewel went ebony. “That’s too big a word,” he growled. “I admire her, yes, and—” He hesitated. “Srta. Tamura, I—” He gripped his hands together.
Eiko smiled. “You would request something further of me.”
“You’ve done so much already.”
“In these short minutes?”
“Yes. If, if you now say no, that’s the end of the business. I’ll go home, and always be grateful to you.”
“You wish me to put in a good word for you with Kyra.”
“Yes.” In haste: “Not that I intend to make a pest of myself. I’d just like her to think better of me. And ... a word to Sr. Guthrie, por favor. He’ll hear you.”
She studied him closer than before. “You have decided you hope to go with the human cargo to Alpha Centauri. With her.”
He forced a smile. “Not quite this instant, on impulse. I’d been weighing it. But, yes, today I’ve decided.”
“Why? It will be nothing romantic, you know. It will be an environment hard and harsh, toil, danger, privation, and a high likelihood of an early death.”
“Exactly.” He laughed, as if care had fallen from him. “No, I’m not a masochist. But I’d be helping make something.”
“Make what, do you believe?”
He shook his head and clicked his tongue. “You go straight to the core of matters, don’t you?”
“My guess is,” she stated, “that you are too intelligent to involve yourself in a mere make-work project, however large and risky. You are well aware that in a thousand years, Demeter will perish. What end do you see for this undertaking? What purpose?”
“I can’t answer that,” he replied. “Can anybody? They talk about building a civilization free and human, plus a capability of going on, somehow, after the planets crash. What does that really mean? Can you tell me?”
“Not in words,” she admitted. “Perhaps I could find the right music to play for you.”
“Just so. It’s all music, emotion, no logic outside of the need Guthrie and some Lunarians have to leave the Solar System.”
“On that account, you recall, volunteers for the colony are few. And most thus far have had to be rejected as incompetents or ramblewits.”
“I can handle a fair assortment of jobs, and learn more.”
Eiko thought for a bare minute. “Yes. I will give you my recommendation.”
“Again, mil gracias.”
“Your motive is that you seek meaning for your life, am I right?”
Valencia shrugged. “I suppose.” His tone quickened. “But you, Señorita, you’ve got meaning in yours, you’ve always had it, haven’t you?”
Startled, she retorted, “What do you imply, sir?”
“May I ask why you are going?”
“What makes you think I am?”
Valencia smiled. “I didn’t call you from a cold start, Señorita. First I found out what I could about you. And now we’ve met. It seems a reasonable guess. If I’m wrong, forgive me.”
“You are more than I expected, Mr. Valencia,” she said slowly.
“You honor me.” His jewel glowed amber.
“True, I am giving serious thought to going,” she confided. “As for why, it would take long to tell, if I can at all.”
“I’d listen as long as you wanted to talk.”
“There is no single, simple reason, actually. But it does appear to me—if I am not being pretentious—this that they aim to do, this rebellion against fate, it will need its singers.”
“A heroic age ahead,” he mused. “The kind of age where four stand at the corners of life, the worker, the warrior, the priest, and the poet.”
Eiko’s look dwelt upon him. “You have many surprises in you, sir. Clear to see, you have read books.”
“Less than I once meant to. It didn’t fit in well with what I became. Maybe my grandchildren on Demeter will.”
“Can you stay in Ragaranji-Go a while?”
“Certainly.”
“I would like to know you better,” she said, half diffident, half assured. “Find lodging and return at evenwatch for dinner, when my father will be home. Tomorrow—tomorrow let us go to the Tree. Perhaps there you will hear in the wind what we are both unable to speak, and by the light through the boughs we will see into ourselves.”
* * * *
46
I
n the opticals that would track her until she went beyond their seeing, Juliana Guthrie II was like a tower built to storm heaven. Stage after stage after stage gleamed within coils and webs of cryogenic circuitry, walls that narrowed upward until the final decelerator made a cupola upon which lifted the tiny, defiant weathercock that was the payload module. Stars frosted the night where she reared; her height clove the Milky Way.
But then the tugs took hold of her and drew her—slowly, slowly, as great as the mass was—spiraling outward. When they released her near Jupiter, she was the merest sliver against the belts and zones and monster hurricanes of the king planet. Its gravity twisted her from the ecliptic plane and aimed her at rendezvous. Her nethermost stage awoke, matter and antimatter blazed into energy, plasma torrented down a cliff of force-field surges. That river ran almost cold, almost invisible, for hundreds of kilometers before it lost coherence and hard radiation fountained from a wan, dissolving fireball.
At first even this mightiest set of torchcraft ever launched could barely lay any increment to her speed. Second by second, though, hour by hour, day by day, mass waned and acceleration waxed. When she reached her trajectory and went free, she would be flying at half the haste of light; her instruments would register skies gone strange, space shrunken and time quickened. Near journey’s end, she would back down on her goal in a few weeks. The minds aboard would know little of those years. Lest they lose themselves in the emptiness, they would rest safely unconscious.
Unexisting, said a thought among them.
No, it will be no different from the silence of cold sleep that’s to close on my other self. Will it? Not much. It’
s we who are different. She can’t lie centuries changeless like me; she can’t be stopped, only slowed, for she’s organic, vulnerable, mortal. She’s alive. I am a network and a program.
I am connected. I can use the ship’s systems. Look, yonder shines the sun, hardly more than a star. How I gloried, riding Kestrel through this range! Where’s Alpha Centauri? Why, right there. Instantly I knew. The computer figured it for me, as easily as my arm once told me where my hand was. Amplify. Diamond A, golden B, distant coal of Proxima. Often I looked through my own eyes and longed. Now, some years hence, I’ll be going. Except that I shall not. I am already on my way, and have neither mouth to laugh for joy nor flesh to feel it.
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