Leaping to the Stars

by David Gerrold

  "I'm not going," he repeated. "I don't want to go to New Revelation. I want to go to Outbeyond."

  Boynton looked annoyed. "Son, I'm not sure if we can—"

  He turned to Damron and Everhart and whispered, "What's the legal situation for a minor?"

  Damron started to respond, "You could emancipate him—"

  "He's only what? Fourteen, thirteen—?"

  Trent's dad was yelling again. "Shut up, Trent. You'll do what you're told." Trent's mom was crying now.

  "No!" shouted Trent. "I want a divorce!"

  That caught everybody's attention. Especially mine.

  "Son, do you understand what you're saying?"

  Trent nodded vigorously. "Commander Boynton, I want to go to Outbeyond."

  "But a divorce? You'll never see your parents again."

  "Charles got a divorce when his parents went crazy. And he was only thirteen! I want one too."

  Trent's dad was screaming now. "This is what happens when you hang around devil-children!" He pointed at me. "You put this sinful idea into his head, didn't you?!"

  "No, he didn't!" Trent whirled to face his dad. "Chigger had nothing to do with it. Nobody did. I don't want to go to New Revelation. I don't want to die. I want to make music. I want to go to Outbeyond and see the dinosaurs and the oceans and the stink-plants. I want to have my own life!"

  "All right, everybody shut up!" said Boynton. He couldn't exactly bang a gavel in free fall, but he could turn up the volume on his microphone, and that had the same effect. Except for Mr. Colwell, everybody stopped talking.

  "Don't I have any rights in this court?" he demanded.

  "Actually, no." said Boynton. "You gave up your rights when you conspired to commit mutiny." He turned around and whispered with Damron and Everhart for a long moment. Finally, he turned back to the rest of the room. "All right, it's the decision of this council that Trent Colwell be emancipated from his family and placed under the guardianship of a suitable adult—"

  Mr. Colwell was about to say something else, but before he could, Sarah Colwell turned to him and said, "Shut up, stupid." To Boynton, she said, "Please, Commander—will you take Willa and Jason too?"

  "Eh?" For the second time this meeting, Boynton looked surprised. He didn't like surprises.

  "My children deserve a chance at their own lives. My husband and I will die on New Revelation. But not my children!"

  "Mommy?" That was Jason. "Are you going to die?"

  "Shh," she whispered. "Everything's going to be all right. You're going with Trent."

  "Mrs. Colwell, are you sure this is what you want?"

  "Yes, Commander, I'm sure."

  Her husband was staring at her astonished. "Sarah Colwell, what are you doing—?"

  "I'm saving the lives of my babies." She faced her husband. "I promised God that I would stand by you, and I will. But these innocent children haven't made any such promise. I might have to join you in death. They do not." And then she said something surprising. "I love you. I will go where you go. I will die with you, if need be. That will have to be enough. Let them go, John—"

  John Colwell's expression was horrible. His emotions nickered back and forth between anger and horror and things I couldn't identify, and if he hadn't been handcuffed, if he hadn't been held back by Lang and Martin, who knew what he might have done? And then—he collapsed inside himself. Just floating there, he seemed to wither and shrink. Tears began welling up in his eyes, and when he spoke, his voice cracked. His voice was filled with grief. "Sarah Colwell, I rebuke you. I rebuke you. I rebuke you. I send you away into the spiritual wasteland. I cast you out. You are forbidden to accompany me. I will go alone into Paradise, and you must go into the exile of eternal damnation. Get thee behind me, thou whore of Babylon—"

  There was more, but we never got to hear it. Boynton lost patience and signaled Lang. Lang stunned him. He spasmed for a second, then floated limp and silent.

  Boynton looked to Sarah Colwell. "Mrs. Colwell, it will be hard enough for your children to lose one parent, let alone two. I urge you to reconsider and come to Outbeyond."

  She hung her head. "He has cast me out. I am not allowed to follow him. I have no choice but to go with you." And then she swept all three of her children into her arms and started crying.

  I looked to J'mee. Her eyes were wet and shining. "Poor John Colwell," she whispered. "What a brave thing to do."

  "Huh—?"

  "Don't you get it? He couldn't order her to go to Outbeyond. She wouldn't do it. She couldn't—because she promised God she would follow her husband. The only way he could save her life was to cast her away. They both knew that. He did it because he loves her, Chigger. He wants her to live."

  "Oh," I said.

  There was a lot I still didn't understand about love. This was part of it.

  But in that moment, I envied them their commitment. And I wondered if J'mee and I would ever be like that. I hoped so. But I also hoped we'd never have to test it like this.

  HARLIE

  There was one other thing—I was curious, and after a while my curiosity got the better of me, so eventually I found some time alone with the monkey.

  We were in the briefing room, just behind the flight deck.

  "HARLIE, when we began this voyage, you made a series of projections about the possibilities of our survival at Outbeyond, didn't you?"

  "Yes, Charles. And I made some recommendations as well."

  "Lots of rice and beans and noodles."

  "Yes."

  "And Commander Boynton followed your recommendations, didn't he?"

  "Yes, he did. They were good, common-sense predictions. Anyone could have made them. It didn't take an intelligence engine. But most people give more credence to good advice when it comes from an intelligence engine."

  "On the day we launched," I continued, "what was your estimate of our chances?"

  "I was cautiously optimistic that Outbeyond Colony would survive. Although the margin of error was uncomfortably narrow, the commitment of the people aboard this starship was sufficiently strong that, barring any unforeseen disasters, success seemed more likely than failure. And it was my job to prevent unforeseen disasters."

  "By foreseeing them."

  "Yes."

  I was starting to feel like a lawyer. But I had to ask. "HARLIE, as of oh-three-thirty hours today, we have given up one of our landers, plus the boosters and fuel and supplies to convert it into a long-range planetary shuttle. We have offloaded eighty-three colonists for New Revelation. The other two-hundred and one are proceeding with us to Outbeyond. Those two-hundred and one colonists represent an additional and unplanned drain on our resources. Nevertheless, we have dropped the full load of supplies for New Revelation, including all of the extra food containers they appropriated from centrifuge two and elsewhere, and six extra pods of water. This increases their margin of survival. But it decreases ours correspondingly. Doesn't it?"

  "That's a logical assumption."

  "I didn't ask for an assumption, HARLIE. Tell me your current estimation of the long-term viability of both colonies."

  The monkey didn't hesitate. "The long-term viability of both colonies has been significantly improved."

  "Huh—?" That got my attention, all right.

  "All of the projections were based on the assumption that three-hundred new colonists would land at New Revelation, but with only one-third the projected number taking up residence, there is a correspondingly smaller drain on the colony's supplies. If the colonists at New Revelation are careful to ration the food and water that we sent down, they should be able to survive until the lander returns with an ice asteroid. The asteroid can be parked in a dark-side orbit and mined at the colony's convenience, or it can be Palmer-tubed and landed somewhere near the colony, or it can be dropped on the pole to break the mantle and release the subterranean water there, whatever is most appropriate. If it works, the colony should be able to plant new crops within eighteen months and might ve
ry well achieve a measure of self-sufficiency. This was not a possibility before."

  "I understand that much," I said. "That's all in the plan that you and Boynton worked out together. It's the other side of that equation that hasn't been explained."

  "Yes, I know."

  "Go on, HARLIE."

  "Can Outbeyond afford to give up those supplies—?"

  The monkey grinned at me, a good sign; it was finally starting to get its emotional signals right. He said, "Do you remember the extra rice and beans and noodles I advised Commander Boynton to load?"

  "Yes … ?"

  "I never said those would be needed at Outbeyond. I just said they were needed. They were. They were needed for New Revelation."

  "You knew all this was going to happen?"

  "The potential was obvious from the beginning." The monkey explained, "When Boynton asked me to project viability, I had to look at all the parts of the problem—not just what we were loading at Luna, but what we would be unloading at Outbeyond. Knowing how fragile the situation might be at New Revelation, I recognized that the margin of error had to include both colonies, and if there were a problem at New Revelation, that problem would affect Outbeyond as well. All those extra supplies—I was allowing for the possibility that we would need to be generous."

  "Why didn't you tell Commander Boynton this?"

  "Because, Charles, I had to include my own participation as a factor. I learned that lesson back on Earth, if you'll recall. People who were entrusted with the knowledge of the impending polycrisis used it for personal gain, making the polycrisis worse. I didn't dare tell anyone. There's no way to keep a secret on a starship—and if this particular projection had become known aboard the Cascade, it could have adversely affected the onboard situation in any number of ways."

  I had to think about that. He was right, of course. I'd long since learned not to argue with an intelligence engine. The best I could do was try to keep up and figure out how it had reached its conclusions.

  "For one thing, the Revelationists would have presumed ownership of the extra supplies, regardless of need," HARLIE explained. "They did anyway. They knew how desperate their situation was likely to be, even without the failure of the Conway. I projected from the beginning that they would start stealing from Outbeyond's supplies and included that in my calculations. So I told Commander Boynton to load more rice, beans, and noodles, and I didn't say why. And he never questioned it. None of you did."

  "I'll remember that," I said. "For future reference."

  "I expect you to," the monkey replied.

  We both hung there in space for a bit, studying each other. I began to realize something. The monkey was waiting for me to finish this entire train of thought. There was something I was still missing.

  Why was HARLIE telling me this now? What was it he needed me to understand?

  Of course—

  "You little snake … " I said.

  "I beg your pardon? I'm a monkey."

  "You know what I mean."

  "If you mean I manipulated the situation, yes I did. But you already knew that, Charles. That's why Dr. Pettyjohn was able to infect you with his fear of me."

  "But he never understood the other side of the equation, did he? He missed the obvious."

  "Go on."

  The whole thing was clear to me now. "If it's possible to manipulate a situation for selfish goals, it's also possible to manipulate it for unselfish purposes too."

  "Bingo," said the monkey. "That's all there is. Everybody manipulates. The difference is what you manipulate for. Selfish people don't know that."

  "That's why they fail, isn't it?"

  "Most of them," the monkey agreed. He looked at me. "Go ahead, Chigger. Put the last piece in."

  It was my turn to grin. "This proves that you're sentient, doesn't it? Because it takes sentience to perform a truly unselfish act."

  The monkey grinned. "Not quite. But that's where sentience begins. Real sentience."

  But that was a much longer conversation, and one for another time.

  CODA

  I took HARLIE back to the bridge. I returned him to his station between the Captain and First Officer.

  "So?" Boynton asked. "Can we trust him to take us to Outbeyond?"

  "Oh, yes. Of course."

  "No more doubts?"

  "No, sir."

  He put down his checklist and looked at me. "Why not?"

  "Because I've had more conversations with HARLIE since then."

  Boynton swiveled his couch all the way around to face me. "All right. So let me see if I understand this. Some of your conversations with HARLIE unnerved you—so you went back and had more conversations with him? And that reassured you?"

  "No, sir."

  "No?"

  "No, sir. It wasn't the conversations. That's just talk. You can talk from now until forever and so what? It isn't talking that makes a difference. It's doing."

  "And … ?"

  "HARLIE makes a difference. He does good things."

  "It's that simple?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Hm." Boynton grunted to himself. "I wish we could all learn that lesson. It would save a lot of time and trouble. Thank you, Ensign. Take your station." He swiveled forward again. I was dismissed.

  I went back to the briefing room behind the bridge and perched myself in front of the keyboard. I powered it up and wriggled my fingers.

  "Stand by for ignition—" the Captain called.

  "All boards green," Damron reported.

  I put my fingers to the keys and started playing.

  Scan Notes:

  [02 sep 2010—scanned for #ebooks]

  [11 sep 2010—proofed by ECS (Escaped Chicken Spirits)]

  Table of Contents

  THE INTERVIEW

  THE ARGUMENT

  CAPTURED

  NO EXIT

  GOODBYE

  FOREVER

  THE WAY BACK

  DECISIONS

  NO DEAL

  BACON AND ANGST

  REQUIEM

  A HASTY EXIT

  THE FATEFUL FARKLEBERRY

  CIVILIZATION IN FLIGHT

  NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LAUNCH

  ANGER

  NECESSARY

  RICE AND BEANS AND NOODLES

  BURN

  AN ETHICAL NEED

  NEW MEMES FOR OLD

  RHAPSODY

  IN BLUE

  RESPONSIBILITIES

  ORIENTATION

  BAGGAGE

  DEPARTURE

  REVELATIONS

  INTROSPECTIONS

  BEING RIGHT

  FOURTEEN

  THE HIDEOUT

  MOMENTUM

  FAREWELL TO EARTH

  TRANSITION

  BOYNTON

  HUMAN

  ROLLER COASTERS

  HOCKEY

  DEFINING GOVERNMENT

  MACHINERY

  WHO'S ON FIRST?

  THE ENGAGEMENT PARTY

  A MODEST PROPOSAL

  THE KEEL

  HAND OVER HAND

  EVIL

  MEMETICS

  MAKE IT BETTER

  CONFRONTATION

  BREAKING THE NEWS

  A PROPOSAL

  AFTERMATH

  TRIAL

  MAKING MUSIC

  DECISIONS

  HARLIE

  CODA

  Scan Notes: