Ron Collins
I met my d-dad at Rutan Center.
Being the primary transfer point in Earth orbit, Rutan is always busy. But that day the traffic was especially heavy, and its corridors were awash with luggage runners whistling this way and that, and travelers who spewed through arrival gates to clog the tram-ways. Fidelity units hovered overhead like manta rays, their multi-scan orbs constantly scanning the throng. Re-gen stores lined the hallways and blared their info feeds along each precisely regulated ten meters of hallway. Duty Free toiletries, best price in port, screamed one. Catch Frieda Gonzales and her award-winning performance in “Diablo, Remix 7,” said the next.
I would have filtered the info feed away, but I had arrived a few minutes later than planned, and I didn’t want to miss any announcements. As a result, I heard the entire range of sound that echoed through the Rutan transfer point, and I can report dutifully that the place sounded as huge as it is.
His ship, the Translux, was already docked at LaGrange Bay 12, its surface blazing cadmium white under the service lights. I kicked myself for missing the docking, but even that couldn’t dampen my excitement.
Aldous Yazgar Hakkinan.
The name flowed off my tongue as I waited. He was my grandparent, six times removed. Hakkinan is not my name—my name is Rogerson. Like almost everyone I know, my background is so mixed that I can claim only Terra as my heritage. But I had studied all his records with great intensity during the week since he agreed to meet to talk about my project, and I knew he was clearly Finnish with little bits of Spanish and Egyptian thrown in for good measure. I knew he was small, just over 182 centimeters tall and about 220 pounds in Earth gravity. He would be self-local fifty-six years of age.
All these things I knew, yet I was still stunned to see him step off the ship and make his way through the connector tube. He wore a red and yellow travel suit, probably thirty years out of date. The collar was curled up, and the sleeves were tight around his meaty forearms. The fabric of the suit was wrinkled in a way that seemed workmanlike. His lips were downturned as he exited the tube and glanced at the transfer gate to his left.
I waved and stepped forward a bit.
“Carlo!” he yelled across the gate.
He looked like a Norse god as he strode toward me. He was physically fit in a solid, blocky way that I hadn’t expected. His shoulders were wide and his long blond hair flowed around his head like a glowing helmet. He shook my hand, and despite the fact that mine is bigger his seemed to swallow it up. He turned the handshake into an embrace, pounding me on the back with an exquisite, space-borne gusto.
“Hello, Mr. Hakkinan,” I said, taken aback by his familiarity. My family is not so intense, and his closeness felt somehow threatening.
“Mr. Hakkinan?” he said, holding me by both shoulders. “That will never do. How about D-dad?”
“D-dad?”
“I figure it’s been 250 years since my hide last saw this rock, and at twenty-five years a generation, that makes me a deca-dad.”
“Two-hundred twenty-five,” I said. “It’s been 250 years since you were born, 225 since you left Earth Solar.”
He held his arms wide and smiled with teeth as white as the paint on the Translux. “What’s a quarter century between relatives, eh?”
“Not much,” I said, deciding not to tell him that, with life spans now at a hundred and fifty years, the span he was using as a generation was now underestimated. I could scarcely contain my own smile, though. He had already exceeded all my expectations. This was a man bigger than life, a man who breathed the moment and understood exactly how to live.
“Where would you like to go?” he said. “Captain needs us back at 1500 for some big-assed announcement, so I’ve only got two hours.”
“I’ll set a timer for us,” I said. “Can we get lunch?”
“That would be absolutely fantastic, Carlo. I’m starved.”
We walked along the corridor, passing Legarzi’s, an Italian stand, and Yessington Farms, a deli. I half listened to both their info feeds; mostly I watched D-dad. He had been flying for nearly eighteen Earth years in his last stint, though it took him just over two local to his own reference. His eyes played over everything as we walked down the hallway, his head twisting left and right. He hesitated at the sight of a transfer gate. The lines around his lips grew darker.
“My god,” he said. “Last time I was here this whole thing was just a string of space junk tied together with contact tape.”
“I imagine it’s quite a bit different now.”
“No, Carlo” he said. “I don’t think you can imagine it.” We walked several paces. “So, you’re doing a project?”
“Yes. Did you get a chance to experience the files I sent you?”
“I didn’t have much time.”
“Oh. All right. I study genetics, specializing in galactic evolution.”
He laughed, or maybe it was a grumble. “And you wanted to interview a dinosaur?”
“Yes,” I said with what I hoped was a light touch. “It’s not every day you get to meet Tyrannosaurus rex.”
He made another grunt that I again took to be a laugh.
We stepped through the doorway to the observation lookout.
It was a cavernous area the size of a football field, covered by a huge geodesic dome of radiation-hardened crystal that faced the out-rim so you could see stars and the distant space haze that marked history and seemed alive with possibility. Rows upon rows of nutrient stations were built into the rounded walls, and the odors of warm food and coffee extract created a sense of welcome that permeated the dome. The room’s geometry allowed you to hear conversations from across the room, but they were ghostlike sounds that seemed to echo off into deep space before they could take shape in your ears. It seemed to me to be the perfect place to listen to stories of adventure and daring.
“Where is the kitchen?” D-dad asked.
“Kitchen?”
“You know, the grub-hub. The cafeteria. Whatever. The place you get the food?”
I almost said Just listen to your i-feed, but I stopped myself. RF genetic engineering had been in existence for a local half-century, which had probably been only ten years for him. He could not have been born with an i-line, and he had clearly been too busy riding space to get hold of an aftermarket device.
“Do you have a radio?” I said.
He pulled a clip from his breast pocket. I gave him the frequency ranges and pointed him to the nutrient stations.
“That’s outstanding,” he said as the radio recited Yessington’s menu. “Where is your receiver?”
“My ears have been adjusted to be sensitive to whatever frequencies I want.”
He shook his head and started at me with a sense of wonder. “Christ,” he said. “I’m getting old. Anything else about you been adjusted I should know about? Sense of smell? X-ray vision?”
“Yes, I can adjust my eyes to see into the X-ray spectrum, and microwaves to a degree. I can assume control of many body functions that were once involuntary. My facial features were selected by my parents. Is that what you were looking for?”
He pressed his lips together. “Anything else?”
“I don’t need sleep.”
“That’s a danged shame.”
“Why?”
“Ain’t nothing more satisfying than taking a nap on the clock, Carlo.” He smiled and pounded me on the shoulder again, though this time it was more of a punch than a pound.
“What foods do you like, D-dad?” I said, hoping to change the topic.
“Haven’t had a real burger in forever. Any chance of getting one of those?”
“You mean beef and bread? Probably not.”
“Crap,” he grumbled.
We ordered at Hava’s station. He insisted on paying. I argued with him, but he would not relent. “Money is like rocket fuel,” he said. “You spend it to get somewhere, then you look for more. Besides, I know what it’s like to be a starving co
llege kid. This one’s on me.” His pay stick was old, though, and it took five minutes to update it so the proximity scanners could operate properly. Eventually we were seated with our wrapped sandwiches of protomeat and hard brazenbread, and our drinks that sweated condensation in the controlled climate of the observation center.
I craned my head and gazed into billions of years of space. I felt like I was floating. A thousand questions filled my thoughts. I wanted to know what it was like to ride across deep space. I knew he had visited places like Lalande and Epsilon Eridani. Had he met the Padabidan, or the Yenit? What did their language sound like to the flesh and blood of the ear? Were the Yenit’s triple eyes as vivid purple in person as they were in the images sent over light-years of space? What adventures could D-dad tell me, this man who had been merely in flight for more years than I, a student at Luna U, had even been in existence?
“What’s it like, D-dad?” I finally said. “What is it like to travel space?”
In the dome’s lighting, he looked older than his years. Lines across his skin deepened when he laughed or smiled. And that skin was rough, and I could see blemishes along his hairline. Star shine made his cheeks look almost chalky. But his eyes ... his eyes were vivid blue and they sparkled as he took a huge mouthful of his lunch and wiped the corner of his mouth on his sleeve, then set to answering my questions.
“It’s a tough life, but a glorious one.”
He talked about the early years of his life that he spent hopping lines around the three Centauris, then his mining trip to the Luyten system. He told me a story about ion pumps exploding on his craft when he thought the entire ship might vent into open space.
“Isn’t it lonely?” I asked.
“Hell, no. Why would you think that?”
“Everywhere you leave, everyone gets older. My, uh, d-mom, she’s dead. Don’t you miss her?”
“Time dilation is what it is, Carlo. Translux travels about two-nines the speed of light. That’s .99. Ninety-nine percent. And at that rate dilation is a bit more than seven Earth years for every one year I live. You just can’t avoid that. It could be worse, of course—I’ve met crews who travel four and five nines. But it’s hard to be lonely when you cabin up with thirty other people for three or four or five years at a pop, if you know what I mean. After a while you almost begin to wish for a little less company. Then you get where you’re going, do your work, and pick up with a whole new crew.”
“So there’s never been anyone special?”
“Oh, there’s always someone special.” He gave a wicked smile, then seemed to sense this might not be what I wanted to hear. “It’s like high school for adults, Carlo. You know there’s an endpoint, even on a long pull. So you grow close, but not too close. I had a serious girl on my eight-year job, but even though we talked about pairing we still broke up at the end. Neither us really wanted to be together, I guess. That’s how it is in this business.”
He ran his fingers over his eyes.
“You look tired,” I said.
“Yeah. I’m running on twenty hours without sleep, which may not be bad for you, but sucks vacuum for me.”
“How do they say it?” I said, smiling and feeling wise. “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage?”
“I guess that works,” he replied. “But really it’s all about velocity. I mean, Alpha Centauri is still pretty much 4.3 light-years from Earth, Barnie’s is still almost six out, and you’re not getting to Beta Hydri without giving up at least half your life. The only thing we can control is how fast we get from place to place, Carlo. Don’t let anyone tell you no different.”
“I see.”
Though I’m sure he didn’t mean it as such, I had taken his lecture as an attack, so I adjusted my adrenaline back down to norm before proceeding.
“I was hoping you could meet my mom and dad, but we didn’t have enough time for them to get off work and get here.”
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Maybe next time.”
“Yeah.”
He did not seem very sorry. Of course, neither Dad nor Mom had seemed particularly excited about such a meeting, either. My family enjoys nights at home with a holovid more than almost anything else. We are not adventurers by nature, despite the threads of this man’s DNA that we carry.
“Is any of this helping you on your project?” he said.
“Yes,” I replied, though in truth it wasn’t. That didn’t matter to me, though. This was never really about the project.
“So, what the hell are you planning on doing, Carlo? You’re still a kid, probably bursting to make your way in life. What’s the future gonna hold for young Carlo Rogerson? Do we have another pioneer in the family?”
I told him about my interest in evolution and what it means across galactic scales. I talked about life on alien worlds and how I thought it might give us new insights, I gushed on about studies Professor Sawchec was doing on star wombs and the signs he’d found of earliest life. I described the three latest theories of spontaneous origin.
“In a few years we might be able to actually understand the true beginning of life,” I said, out of breath.
“We’ll make a pirate of you, yet, me-hearty.” D-dad’s grin was the size of Luna U’s crater.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll be a star traveler.”
“I doubt it. Not like you, anyway.”
“You’re talking about them damned transfer gates, aren’t you?”
“Sure.”
He leaned forward, elbows on the table, his eyes suddenly sharp. “I heard about them as we came in. What are they?”
“They work just like doors, really. Once you’re scanned and prepped, you step from one side to the other and you’re there.”
“Unbelievable.”
I explained about quantum entanglement and matter linkage. “It’s how most travel is being done today. I came here from Luna just this morning.” The idea settled on him. Perhaps for the first time he realized that the majority of the clientele in the observatory were just normal people eating normal food and wearing normal business clothes.
“So it’s true?” he said. “Transfer tech?”
I nodded.
“No spaceships? No jumpers or miners or freight transports?”
I shook my head. “No need.”
I saw it on his face then. What does that mean for a man like him? Where does it leave those who have given their life to traveling in tin cans at near the speed of light?
He seemed crushed.
This, I realized, was why he had agreed to talk to me. He didn’t care for me any more than he had my d-mom, or any more than he had wanted to meet my parents. He had little interest in the chains of life he left behind, or in my case, that he had cast forward. D-dad had given his life to a different path, and now that path was closing. The first transfer point had been put in place just over ten years ago, and while news travels at the speed of light, he had probably only received the first inkling of it a self-local year ago at best.
My d-dad, I realized, was worried that he was out of a job.
And me? I was worried that perhaps there would be no such jobs ever again.
The timer rang.
“It’s been two hours,” I said. “I guess you need to get back.”
I engaged trash removal, and we returned through the complex until we came to the Translux.
D-dad turned toward me. “You’re a good boy, Carlo.”
“It’s been a real treat talking to you, D-dad. Maybe I’ll see you out in the field.”
“That would be absolutely fantastic,” he said.
We clasped hands, and he pulled me into another embrace.
I watched him as he walked back through the gate. His stride seemed to pick up speed as he progressed. Then he was gone, disappeared into the fuselage of a space craft that could travel at two-nines the speed of light.
I followed him for as long as I could.
Translux was given her decommission or
ders that day. They flew her to a decon station in Mars orbit, where they stripped her down for parts. He caught a job maintaining comm satellites for a bit, then did a stint with a refueling center. There was always going to be a need for short-stint space flight, though most repair functions were done more cheaply by bots and reprogramming actions than by true hands-on activity. Then, after eight months hopping around the Solar System, he joined the crew of Hubris, a Higgs-drive unit that could pull six-nines and was heading to the Cassiopeia binary—deeper space than any other crew had ever gone.
I looked up the crew roster, and smiled.
The record included the following entry:
Aldous Hakkinan—Transfer Gate Installation Technician.
I went to Rutan’s observation center the next day. I sat at the same table we had sat at and I gazed out into space, thinking about my deca-dad and feeling a sense of wanderlust that I could not adjust away.
Copyright © 2010 Ron Collins
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Short Stories
Happy Are the Bunyips
Zoos are, of course, research institutions ...
By Carl Frederick
At the boundary of the zoo, Roger Laczko, head zookeeper, picked up the first-class mail and then strolled leisurely back toward the administration building, stopping occasionally to chat with zoo visitors and let their kids pet his dog.
A wandering boy of about nine, untethered to a parent, came up to him. “Mister Zookeeper, is your dog friendly?” The boy gazed at the dog with awe, as if he were close up to a tiger.
“He loves kids.”
“He looks like a big white wolf. Can I pet him?”
“Sure.” Roger crouched to be at eye level with both dog and boy. “His name’s Sniffles.”
The boy laughed. “Sniffles?”
“Some people (the director, for example) are a little allergic to him. And they sniffle when they’re near him.”
“Oh.” The boy patted Sniffles on the head. Sniffles barked and the boy jumped back.
“It’s okay,” said Roger standing from his crouch. “It means he’s happy. He’s a very talkative dog.”
Analog Science Fiction and Fact 12/01/10 Page 17
