The Voyage of the White Cloud

by M. Darusha Wehm

  Karyl felt the Returner’s words as if they were a blow to his chin. The man was saying what Karyl had feared his whole life to be true, admitting it aloud for everyone in this room to hear. As if it were something to cherish. That no one is special, that the best we can hope for is to leave our remains to the soil, to feed the next generation. Karyl felt tears begin to prick his eyes, and he bit the inside of his cheek to make them stop.

  When the Returner had stopped speaking, Karyl felt rather than saw the rest of his group begin to move toward the sepulchre, guiding the body with them. His feet moved as if propelled by some other force, Karyl’s own mind unable to do any more than follow the rote instructions he’d been given before the ceremony. One hand on the body, one hand on the next person. Walk to the oven. Pause. Turn. Push. Wait.

  He thought he would feel something when he helped push the body into the receptacle, that a sense of horror would overcome him when he heard the whoosh of the fires. But he was numb, just as he had been at Great-Gran’s Witnessing.

  It was over surprisingly quickly. The dozen small urns of ash were given to the distributors, and each was tasked to return to their communities to share the remains of Su-Ann. So she would be a part of the legacy, the Returner said. As we all will be, he said.

  Karyl knew then, knew deep within himself, that he was already dust. Dust made flesh, animated only to work, to eat and sleep and talk, but ultimately nothing more than particles of matter.

  The same as everyone else.

  Chapter 6

  This Changes Everything

  Hanne walked into the lab with a pounding headache. She knew something was wrong, knew she should be able to see it, but everything was blocked by the throbbing. How did ancient people manage, she wondered. It was barbaric to have to suffer. She settled on to the couch and laid her head in her arms. Something was definitely wrong.

  She took a breath and tried to think. Obviously, she’d gotten contaminated by something. She’d have to get someone to do a complete workup on her—she was in no shape to do it herself. She opened her eyes and winced. Why did they have to keep the place so bright? It was obscene.

  She fumbled with her handheld and managed to get the room’s lights dimmed to a reasonable level. Then she slowly and methodically poked at the handheld until she found the list of her colleagues. Martine. She would be able to help. She kept similar hours and was familiar enough with Hanne’s work that the explanation time would be drastically reduced. She sent Martine a brief message, then gingerly lay down.

  “What a strange side effect,” Martine said, her bushy eyebrows nearly meeting as she looked at the list of data. She’d isolated the cause of Hanne’s pain and, more urgently from Hanne’s perspective, relieved it.

  “So, essentially this all happened because I don’t like the smell of the new compound?” As Hanne’s pain faded, her comprehension returned. “But I’m sure there was no odour at all.”

  Martine nodded. “It’s not smell in the sense of a fragrance, but rather the stimulation of the olfactory nerves that caused your headache.”

  “Hmm,” Hanne thought. “So, if I wear a mask I should be able to continue with the experiments.”

  “I’d think so,” Martine said. “Though if it were me, I’d isolate the whole lab. After all, it’s improbable that you’re the only one with this sensitivity.”

  “Right,” Hanne said, giving her head a shake. “Looks like it’s going to take a bit longer to get back to normal than I’d hoped.”

  Martine smiled and squeezed Hanne’s shoulder. “Give it a few hours. So, head exploding spores aside, how is it coming? I’m following your updates, but what’s the inside dirt?”

  “I think I’m on the verge of something remarkable,” Hanne said, unable to keep a grin off her face. “The models are showing that it could be a revolutionary propulsion system. But that’s not the really interesting part.” She pulled her chair closer to the table and leaned toward Martine. “We could be exploring now,” she said. She waited while Martine digested the information and watched her friend and colleague’s face change.

  “You mean retrofit the ship and make some kind of side trip?”

  Hanne shook her head. “No, I mean we can develop smaller ships, tenders I guess you could call them, that we could take out on other trajectories.”

  “You mean split off other missions.”

  “I suppose,” Hanne said. “I mean, these ships would be much faster than we are. I was assuming people would go out for a short time then rendezvous with White Cloud later on, but you’re right—there’s no reason why they couldn’t be one-way trips.”

  “Huh,” Martine said, her eyes narrowing. “This opens up a lot of possibilities.”

  “I know,” Hanne said, grinning. “You can see why I’m excited. This changes everything.”

  Hanne sat in her quarters, the lights low, a cup of apple tea at her side. It had been months since the headache, but now she felt something similar. It wasn’t a physical pain, but she was reminded of the splitting, nauseating, throbbing headache.

  The situation was maddening. She was a scientist, an explorer—she valued the truth above all else. At least, that was what she’d always believed. But now, in the face of these awkward facts, she found herself wishing that she did not know what she knew. She would rather be able to carry on as she always had—for them all to keep living the way they had since the ship launched. The setbacks her own work would have to take in order to address this situation were massive. She didn’t even really want to think about it.

  But she couldn’t condemn future generations to have to live with her refusal to adapt. If she had never done the analysis, never looked further… no, she couldn’t think that way. The reality was what it was, whether anyone knew about it or not. She knew they’d all been lucky that she learned the truth in time.

  “The calculations are clear,” Hanne explained, “we have been losing efficiency on the fuel burn ever since we started deceleration. Actually, it probably began sometime in the initial thrust phase, but it’s impossible to accurately extrapolate from that data. My guess is that some debris hit the burners while they were open during thrust and whatever it was put a ding in the jets. It would probably have been too small to register, but large enough to let out that small amount of additional fuel. It’s a negligible amount, but over hundreds of years, even a tiny discrepancy from the initial manifest has made a significant impact.” She consulted her tablet, even though she knew the numbers off by heart. “If we don’t make any changes, we will run out fuel before we arrive at new Earth. By about fifty years.”

  A hand went up in the small conference room and Hanne nodded at the representative of the Green Sector council. “What about coasting? Can’t we just cut the fuel now, then hit the brakes when we get close?”

  Hanne shook her head. “We are already decelerating—using the engines to slow us down. The problem with running out of fuel isn’t that we won’t reach our destination, it’s that we can’t slow down fast enough to stop once we get there. At the rate we’re going, we’re going to fly right past new Earth.”

  The sound of murmuring filled the small room and Hanne waited for the group to quiet down. “This doesn’t have to be a crisis,” she said when their attention had returned. “I’ve prepared an initial list of ways we can address this: a scheme to reduce the mass of the ship, a partial retrofit to more efficient engines. And these are just a few ideas I’ve had. Surely once we all start working on it, there will be even more options.” She looked around the table, making eye contact with everyone seated there. “We are going to be fine,” she said, “we just have to make it happen.”

  Hanne couldn’t understand it. Was this how decisions had been made back on old Earth? Was the inability to agree on simple solutions to significant problems what caused everything to fall apart? Assuming things had fallen apart—no one really knew why the ancestors had left Earth. Hanne had never understood why better records hadn’t been kept
; surely the impetus for such a tremendous journey would have been a historical record worth preserving. She’d always assumed that some failure had compromised the records, but now she was starting to understand that the answers to questions like “what happened” and “why did this occur” were not always straightforward.

  She was alone in her quarters, looking over a new set of proposals for ways to cut down fuel consumption, when a ping sounded from her console. She sighed. She had only just gotten back to work, after a long discussion with one of the heads of the Engineering school at the Academy—a supporter, thankfully, but the time these discussions took from the real work was maddening.

  She looked over at the display and saw an unfamiliar name. She debated with herself—it might be one of the cranks who’d contacted her just to vent about how inconvenient the proposed solutions would be, or it could be something important. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone, even if it had been someone she knew to be friendly. But it might be someone with something useful to offer and she couldn’t afford to turn any help away.

  “Hanne Pukka here,” she answered.

  “Um, hi,” the voice barely registered from the small speaker and Hanne increased the volume. “Ah, my name is Oliver, I’m a technician in the water reclamation plant, but that’s not important. Um, I have an idea that you might find useful. I was hoping we could meet?”

  “What kind of idea?” Hanne asked. She had heard more than her share of utterly unworkable and completely ridiculous concepts in the previous weeks. She’d become very leery of strangers bearing ‘useful suggestions.’

  “Well,” Oliver said, “aside from the water reclamation plant, I also run a little publication for my local sector. Art and entertainment mostly, a bit of fiction every once in a while, but we also do editorials and news when there’s something interesting going on. I don’t have anything to say about this fuel situation, but there are plenty of smart people who do. And this is an issue that will affect everyone—I feel like we all ought to to be talking about it.”

  Hanne frowned. He had a point—the one thing everyone agreed on was that this was a significant issue for the entire population. But so far her experience had been that the more people were involved in the discussion, the further from a resolution they’d gotten. Still…

  “I’d be happy to meet,” she said, “but I’m afraid that my time isn’t what it used to be. Would it be possible for you to come to my lab, in Orange Sector?”

  “Absolutely,” the voice sounded eager and more self-assured, maybe Hanne guessed, because he hadn’t been shot down. “Would tomorrow afternoon be acceptable?”

  “I’ll expect you,” Hanne said and ended the call. She stared at the console, then keyed in the code to mute all incoming transmissions. She leaned back in her chair. She had never wanted anything like this. Not the fuel problem—of course, no one wanted that. But she had never sought attention, never dreamed of being a name that history remembered. She wanted to do useful work, make all their lives better, maybe even create something revolutionary, but it was never about her. She found the attention extremely uncomfortable and somewhat unseemly.

  But, like the problem itself, pretending that things were different didn’t solve anything. She couldn’t avoid being the face of this issue, couldn’t stop championing for what she truly believed were necessary changes. Whether she liked it or not, this was going to be her life’s work. She picked up her handheld and began reading the new proposals.

  “I’d like to have someone write up a brief explanation of your top three solutions, in a format that anyone can understand.” Oliver was a slight man, a few decades Hanne’s junior. His obvious shyness dissipated quickly once they began to talk about the details of what they might be able to put together for the Green Scene, his public log.

  “You’re asking for a lot,” Hanne said. “This isn’t a simple problem and these aren’t simple solutions.”

  “I recognize that,” he said, “but there must be a way to make the main issues clear without bogging people down in technicalities. Really, most people just want to know how a particular scheme is going to affect them and whether the inconvenience is worth it. A cost to benefit breakdown.”

  Hanne frowned. “This isn’t exactly my area of expertise,” she said.

  Oliver smiled. “You don’t have to do everything yourself,” he said. “I have a friend, Isabel. She’s retired now, but she was an agricultural planner. She’s good at this kind of analysis and she’s interested in getting involved with the log. I think she’d be happy to work on this with you.”

  Hanne thought about it. “What kind of information would she want?”

  Oliver bit his lower lip. “If you get her an overview of each plan, I think she’d be willing to draft something for you to review. You might need to explain some of the more technical elements, unless it’s related to plants, in which case I’m sure she’ll have it covered.”

  “This sounds good,” Hanne said. “I’m glad you contacted me. I think getting this information out to people will help to create the support we need for these solutions.”

  Oliver nodded and stood. “I’m just glad that you recognize the value of sharing this information. It’s exactly this kind of story that I want in the Green Scene. I’ll get Isabel in touch with you right away.”

  “Great,” Hanne said. For the first time since she’d argued with Martine in the canteen, she felt like maybe she was getting somewhere.

  … and even the most innocuous of these plans would create significant upheaval for the majority of the population. A reduction in environmental fuel uses would limit the amount or quality of daylight, which research shows can lead to serious mental and emotional trauma. And decreasing agricultural use would result in lower crop yields—in short, much less food for our families.

  Hanne threw her handheld to the table, which made a satisfying crash but didn’t break. The sensible part of her brain was thankful that her moment of pique hadn’t just added to her problems, but the part of her that was just plain angry wanted to break something.

  “How could they do this?” she said aloud to her empty lab. “I thought they understood…”

  Sadness and betrayal washed over her, the new emotions flooding out her anger. She felt drained. She sank down into her seat and rubbed her temples. She had assumed that when Oliver approached her, it was because he believed in her assessment of the situation and wanted to help. The log was just the means at his disposal. She saw now that it was the other way around—the fuel situation was the story that he needed to make his log more popular, more important. And it had worked perfectly.

  The whole ship was glued to Oliver’s coverage of the situation. Hanne had to admit that Isabel had done an excellent job distilling her main solutions down to their essence. Unfortunately, he’d gotten another author to do the same with the counterpoint arguments. The special edition did nothing to make the decisions simpler, and everyone was reading it.

  The anger came back as quickly as it had gone, hot and rising from her belly. She picked up the discarded handheld and pulled up Oliver’s contact. She made the connection without even thinking, then briefly wondered if he’d even bother to answer her call.

  “Hanne,” he said, his voice light and cheerful, as if nothing had happened. “Wonderful response we’ve been getting to the piece. You must be thrilled.”

  “I am not,” she said, her hands trembling. “This was not what I understood from our discussions. I— I am having a hard time understanding what you’ve done here. This information you’ve provided isn’t helping to explain the situation at all. You’ve included ignorant opinions and fear-mongering alongside a series of facts as if they are the same. This is… this is criminal.”

  “Now, now,” he said, “I think you’re not seeing things very clearly. There are at least two sides to every story and I’m just making sure that everyone, every side, gets to be heard. It’s my responsibility to give equal time to all the positions he
re.”

  “But there aren’t two sides,” Hanne said, voicing the thought she’d been tamping down since the controversy began, “there’s the reality and then there’s wishful thinking. This is not the situation I wanted to find myself in, to find all of us in, but I can’t just pretend that things are different. Don’t you think I’d rather continue as if nothing were wrong? Do you know what I was doing when I discovered this problem? I was on the verge of changing the very foundation of our society. I’d created a way for people to get off this ship, to explore nearby space; in a generation or two we could have possibly sent an advance party to new Earth. It would have been among the most significant engineering achievements that has occurred since we’ve been aboard. And that’s all gone, now. All that work, all that potential. There isn’t enough power to finish my prototype, let alone build a fleet. But even if there were, it wouldn’t matter because there’s obviously no fuel to spare on scout ships and unnecessary explorations. I’d dearly love to go back to what I was doing before, but I can’t. I can’t pretend that I don’t know that there’s not enough fuel. I can’t pretend that some convenient solution will appear in the future, so I can just go back to living the life I wanted. It doesn’t work that way. Not for me, not for anyone. And I just don’t understand why everyone can’t see that.”

  She didn’t bother waiting for his response. She disconnected the call, turned out the lights in the lab, and went home.