Analog Science Fiction and Fact 01/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  And . . .

  And the month passed, and the ship asked for an answer: Who wanted to stay on the planet and who wanted to continue the voyage? The intermediate option, with the colonists on the planet and the ship in orbit, was not even considered.

  Zebulon Levi and Ostende Malech had emerged as spokesmen for the two factions of the schism. The other colonists aligned themselves with them. Their number, after the ravages of the plague, even though the birthrate had increased without the strict demographic limits imposed during the voyage, was less than 25,000. Their views covered the whole spectrum, from those pathologically eager to return at any cost to the safe and comforting womb of Diaspora, to those who wanted to start a completely new life far from the ship’s influence and instruction; from those who prayed every day to the god of the Universe to free them from that intimidating planet, to those who gave thanks to the reborn Yahweh for letting them return to the old forgotten ways.

  But in general they all fell near one or the other of the two extremes: those who wanted to return to the ship and those who wanted to start a new life in the freedom of the planet.

  Diaspora accepted both decisions. In fact, they both fit in principle with the ship’s own decision, with the picture of the future it had developed for itself in the depths of its brain.

  “The colonists who want to stay on the planet will have it to themselves,” it said. “Those who want to return to Diaspora will have me. But I want to warn you of one thing. This will be a final separation. Once it’s done, there’ll be no turning back.”

  Everyone agreed.

  From that moment on, everything was logistics. Some families split up, others stayed together. Many still hesitated. But work had to begin, before the doubts got too intense. So Diasp ra pushed the enormous speed and capacity of its electronics almost to the limit to get things well settled. It portioned out resources. It divided its stores and warehouses, from tools and supplies of all types to cloning units, from medical and sanitary equipment to nurseries, allotting part to the ship and part to the surface, according to a realistic estimate of what each would need. It adapted one of its auxiliary brains as the planetary computer and filled its database with all the knowledge that might be useful on the planet. One of the principal topics was religion, with, in an exercise of pure ecumenicalism, copies of all the key sacred books: the Talmud and the Torah, of course, but also the ancient Christian Bible and the Muslim Koran, and an ample selection of the principal Asian sacred writings, and of course the ship’s Bible. It adapted one of the Caretakers (the other would stay on the ship) and a number of the servants as helpers, intermediaries, and extensions for the people of the planet, but without any connection to the planetary computer. And as things developed, new specialties arose among the colonists that from now on would be exclusively for humans, like those of physician and veterinarian, and above all one that had never existed at the human level on the ship: that of priest.

  Three months after the decision, the ship and the planet were ready for everyone to follow his or her chosen path.

  It was a gathering of multitudes, in which the ship remained in a sense on the side. There were farewells, tears, attempts to change minds. Some did change; others stuck firmly to their original decision. But all knew that, once made, their decisions were irrevocable.

  There was a great feast, not ritual, not kosher, but of pure camaraderie. Altogether, of the 24,770 colonists who were then the population of the planet, only 10,130 had decided to stay on Earth Two; the other 14,640 opted to return to Diaspora and continue its journey.

  Boarding began in mid afternoon and lasted all night. The streams of shuttles ascending and descending along the gravitational elevator constantly lit the sky, under the attentive gaze of the crowd of rollers who, standing like guards, watched the apparent chaos from a distance.

  Veronica Julia watched, too, muttering ceaselessly about what idiots they were, these people she called “defectors,” a word she had heard from Zebulon Levi without knowing exactly what it meant, but which she took to be a pejorative from the tone in which he said it. Surrounded by her ever-present rollers, with Pffft at their head, she imagined herself growing to adulthood on the planet and living a thousand and one extraordinary adventures at her father’s side, and making great discoveries, and . . . and . . . Despite her fertile imagination, she always reached a point beyond which she couldn’t go, but then she looked at the rollers, rebooted, and started over.

  Orson Leibovitz, the surface captain, now rechristened governor-general of the planet, kept going back and forth checking to make sure everything functioned smoothly, aided by a whole cohort of assistants with lists who maintained strict control of the people and constantly reminded them that they could repent and change their minds even at the last minute, but once they boarded a shuttle or the last of those had left, then it would be too late.

  There were more than a hundred of those last-minute changes, in both directions.

  Asbart Cohen, against all predictions, decided to remain on Earth Two. As a sociologist he felt a special interest in the future development of the planet, especially in regard to religion. The ship’s monotheistic religion didn’t interest him at all, since he had always considered it something artificial resulting from very special conditions. But he was quite interested in what might develop in its place, and in what would evidently influence it in greater and lesser ways: a return to its origins but with many new additions. He expected great things from that and hoped to enjoy them fully.

  So did Zebulon Levi, in spite (or perhaps because) of his 101 years of age. He knew that great changes were coming in everything, and he wanted to enjoy them to the fullest; he could never forgive himself if he didn’t.

  As Melo Spiegel could never forgive himself for not unraveling all the mysteries of the planet’s flora and fauna, from the slight development of seed-bearing plants and the virtual nonexistence of woody plants; to the absence of fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds; to the enigma of the rollers. The first cloned chicks had given their first tentative wing flaps, and while for the moment their trills celebrated only the pens and cages where they were kept for acclimation, soon they would be plying the skies and building their f irst nests. And he would be there to see it.

  Thor Ashner, who had been the first to descend to the planet with his shuttle, wanted to also pilot the last. He had decided to stay on Earth Two as captain of its first fleet of aircraft. After returning all the again-new pilgrims to Diaspora, he programmed the automatic descent of all the shuttles whose pilots had chosen the ship (only three), and after saying good-bye to the captain, made his last trip to the surface. He didn’t take his vehicle to the recently built hangars that now housed the ten shuttles of the planet’s f irst aerial fleet, but landed it on the platform of the pyramids. He disembarked and looked up at the ship, a great shining point straight overhead, waiting for captain Rhina Solomon to shut down the gravitational elevator. He realized he wasn’t alone; a crowd had gathered around him to witness the ship’s departure.

  Aboard Diaspora, captain Rhina Solomon contemplated the ochre orb that hung in the center of the great screen in the ship’s control room. At her side stood the Caretaker, still, cold, and silent as ever.

  “We’re ready,” said the ship.

  Lately the ship had more and more dispensed with speaking through the Caretaker; now it often spoke directly, its voice sounding less mechanical, more human, coming from nowhere in particular in the air of the cabin. Rhina Solomon nodded. She wondered whether the ship would notice her gesture. Probably it would, through the Caretaker’s eyes.

  “Let’s go,” said the ship, and Rhina Solomon could have sworn its voice broke a little.

  She began to operate the controls. In the rest of Diaspora all the again-new pilgrims, following the ship’s instructions, were sequestered in their cabins, reclining in their beds, for acceleration. There was a slight vibration, transmitted through the whole structure and penetrating to e
veryone’s bones. Rhina Solomon set up a vector for escape from orbit, checked all the numbers (even though she knew the ship was also doing so), and rested a hand on the ignition lever for the engines. She drew a deep breath. She waited for the ship to say something else, but it was she who gave the definitive order. Diaspora didn’t do it. It was good, she thought, that the machine was placing more and more trust in the humans.

  She pushed the lever.

  The vibration increased slightly, then disappeared, replaced by a soft hum. Rhina Solomon felt herself pressed against the back of her seat. On the screen, Earth Two seemed to recede into space, at first slowly, then faster, in a few minutes becoming just another dot, brighter than the ones around it, but still just another dot.

  Rhina Solomon couldn’t help getting a lump in her throat.

  On the planet’s surface, the colonists watching the departure saw the luminous point that until then had been their anchor to the past, a landmark in the sky, disappear in a few seconds. And so they knew that from then on they were totally, def initely, and irrevocably alone.

  “Set course out of the system,” said the ship to Rhina Solomon. Its voice had again taken on a cold, authoritative tone.

  She obeyed.

  Rhina Solomon sat in Diaspora’s control room, absorbed in thought. The Caretaker came up from behind and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. Rhina realized that his voice suddenly lacked its usual metallic tone, sounding surprisingly warm and human. But she didn’t say anything.

  The Caretaker stood silently at her side for a few moments, then began to speak. The captain thought she now recognized in his voice the same voice the ship had used when addressing the whole colony from its rotating hologram, and which had incorporeally filled the air in the cabin on giving the order for departure. His words confirmed that when he spoke in f irst person.

  “Just think, Rhina: In the last analysis Diaspora 32 is just another planet adrift in the Universe, a receptacle for life that moves among the stars like many other planets. We don’t need to look for another planet. The Diaspora Project went in search of other worlds to establish outposts of humanity. Its goal was futile from the start, though it took me more than seven hundred years and arriving at Earth Two to understand that. There is no world: I am the world. We don’t need to seek any destiny: I am destiny. You can live eternally in me. Everything is in me.”

  The Caretaker, who was definitively and forever the ship, made a long pause. He turned to face the captain and stared into her eyes. Rhina Solomon had never seen his eyes shine with such inner fire.

  “Our objective is finally achieved,” said the Caretaker, said the ship through the Caretaker. “The infinite lies open before us. We have just begun the ultimate voyage. Today is the first day of eternity.”

  Rhina Solomon studied the screen in which Earth Two was now just a luminous point indistinguishable from all the other luminous points that speckled the great blackness. Back there, forever, remained Earth Two and its colonists, and the more distant Earth where it had all begun. Infinity opened in her future.

  “Once more in search of the Promised Land,” she murmured.

  “No,” said the ship. “ I a m the Promised Land.”

  Copyright © 2010 Domingo Santos