The Wreck of the River of Stars

by Michael Flynn

  Gorgas glanced at the clock and then at his second officer and said, “There is plenty of time, doctor. Plenty of time. Nearly three hours yet.” Although he did wonder why Satterwaithe had lingered to help him with the calculations.

  Wong flushed, and felt as she had often felt standing hang-head before her father. What a foolish woman she was! “Silly ’Siska,” father had sometimes called her. Of course, there was no urgency. She had let that Lunatic infect her with his own panic. “I’m sorry,” she said, for it was her stock response to the universe. “I just thought we were all to stand by in the cutter, just in case.”

  Satterwaithe shook her head in annoyance. “Just in case? Just in case of what? The damage has been done. The ship is breached beyond recovery. What else can go wrong?”

  Wong shivered. “I wish you hadn’t said that.”

  Satterwaithe looked away into the shadows and murmured, “I wish I hadn’t, either.”

  “See to the others, doctor,” Gorgas said. It was a dismissal. He turned to huddle once more with Satterwaithe and the AI. Unnoticed by any of them, Twenty-four deCant had come on the bridgeway looking for Satterwaithe and, finding her there, set the bag down and waited for an opportunity to speak.

  “But, it’s Ratline, sir,” said Wong.

  “Eh? Ratline?” Gorgas raised his head in irritation. “What about him?”

  “He won’t come.”

  “Ah.” The captain turned to Satterwaithe, as he always did in matters affecting Ratline. “Number Two?”

  The second officer shrugged. “Leave him.”

  “You’ll bring him to the cutter, then?” the doctor pleaded. “He won’t listen to me.”

  Satterwaithe did not think that so amazing a thing. Ratline seldom listened to anyone, let along to Wong. “You don’t understand,” Satterwaithe said. “Moth came on board this ship when he was ten. He’s lived on her all his life. He’s never known anything else. He can’t leave. He means to die here.”

  “You’d leave him here to die alone?” the doctor asked, incredulous that anyone could contemplate to heartless an act.

  “He won’t be alone.”

  Gorgas, who had opened his mouth to speak, turned to his second officer in surprise. “How did you know that?”

  The question baffled Satterwaithe and bafflement always irritated her, for she was generally well-informed, and disliked discovering such lacunae. “How do I know what?”

  “That Bhatterji and I were staying.”

  “You!” Satterwaithe put a great deal of astonishment into that word, more than Gorgas had thought it could hold. She looked on him as if she had never seen him before.

  Gorgas was quick to grasp things and understood the nature of his second officer’s surprise before either the doctor or the watching wrangler. He nodded. “Ah. I understand.”

  “Do you?” said Satterwaithe, bitterly. “Then explain it to me, for I don’t understand at all.”

  “We only need three volunteers.” Gorgas’s voice was gentle, but Satterwaithe only shook her head. In truth, she resented Gorgas’s decision. Having decided for herself and for Ratline that they would stay, she had come to think of the ship as a sort of mausoleum, or as an altar of sacrifice. Gorgas, in her estimation, did not deserve to stay and die. And Bhatterji…It was as if a sanctum sanctorum were to be defiled.

  Understanding spread to the doctor and the wrangler. It astonished Wong into silence, and deCant into shouting.

  And that drew all other eyes to her where she stood on the bridgeway. Satterwaithe frowned. “That’s my kit bag you’ve got there. How did you get that?” And it was a mark of the woman that of all that there was to note and comment upon, it was this invasion of her privacy that caught her eye.

  “I went to see if’n you packed yet, ma, but I guess you were too busy, so I done it for you.”

  Satterwaithe was oddly touched by the deed, though not so much as to let it show. “Thank you,” she said, “but it was unnecessary. I will be staying with the ship.”

  “But…you can’t do that!”

  “Really? And how many stripes do you wear that you can order me about?”

  “Then, if…Then, if you’re staying…I’m staying.” She spoke with a sudden and firm conviction that appalled everyone on the deck, including herself.

  Gorgas muttered, “We don’t seem to have gotten this ‘abandon ship’ thing quite right.”

  It had not been a properly thought out decision on deCant’s part. Indeed, thought wasn’t in it. It leapt off her tongue without clearance, but once she had said it, she could not gainsay it. Martian youth may take on adult roles early, but there is a reason for the reckless and immature flavor of life there.

  Second thoughts arose and jostled for her attention, but despite the tutorials she had recently received, deCant did not truly understand death. What she did understand was loss and, having only lately found her mother (as she believed), she could not bear to lose her so soon after. (Or else it was the belief she could not bear to lose.) Nor could she show herself less brave. In her heart, she hoped her threat would be the one argument that would change her mother’s mind.

  Yet, Satterwaithe’s reasons were multiple and confused, even to herself, and were not to be deflected by the impact of the girl’s argument. Despite the velocity with which it had hit, it was too small a mass to mover her. But neither did she understand deCant’s reasons, ascribing it to bravado and the herd instinct. “Don’t be foolish,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Do any of you?” Wong cried. “Do any of you? Twenty-four! What about Ivar? Think about Ivar!”

  DeCant had thought about Ivar—he was one of those second thoughts—but she knew that he would some day leave her. He had been trapped too young, and the time would come when he would realize that; so it was really a kindness to both of them that she should cut him free now. “He’s young,” she told the doctor. “He’ll get over it.”

  The answer surprised the doctor. She had seen the devotion on the Callistan’s part and supposed that the Martian, who was not nearly so transparent in these regards as her mate, had reciprocated it. “It’s not just you,” she pleaded with the girl. “There’s the baby too.”

  Ivar, deCant knew, set great store by the baby, but he would get over that, too, once he had made another. “It’s just a mass of cells, ma’am. You told me that yourself.”

  The doctor pulled away from the girl and it came down hard on her just how unsentimental a Martian could be. Cold, she had said to Grubb one time, but she had never known just how cold, for it is indeed a frozen heart that could throw such words back in her face at such a time.

  What the doctor did not know, what even deCant did not know, was how false her words were, but her desperation not to lose her mother had overwhelmed all her other desires. It had been the spur of the moment, but that moment had its spurs deep in her hide and would not dismount.

  The doctor made a small cry, but whether of despair or distress not even she could say. She fled the bridge and flew like a lemur down the corridor. In the C-ring, she encountered Miko and grabbed the girl much as a mantis might seize a scuttling insect. “The cutter,” she told the engineer’s mate, “you must get to the cutter!”

  Miko did not know what she saw in the doctor’s eyes. She was not practiced at reading emotions. She knew haughtiness and fear, for she had seen both in the countenance of Clavis Burr and of his hired killer. And so she ascribed to panic what was really desperation. Calmly, Miko removed the doctor’s long fingers from her shoulder. “I know that, doc. It’s just shy of three hours to go yet, and I’ve a few errands to run. Don’t worry. Ship will warn us in plenty of time.”

  “But…Ivar, what about Ivar? Have you seen him?”

  “He’s went looking for the ship’s cats, down in the kitchen….”

  “The Lotus Jewel! She is such a flutter head! When she’s under the cap, she may forget—”

  Miko wondered if anything she could sa
y would calm this woman. “LJ’s transcribing the seed code so Ship can come with us. Don’t worry about her. Rivvy would never let her stay behind. Everything’s in hand, doc. It’s overloading the cutter that we got to worry about.”

  “Overloading…?”

  A shadow passed across Miko’s face. “Yah. Didn’t you hear? To rendezvous with Georgia Girl, the cutter can only take ten of us.” Then, almost as afterthought, she added, “Ram’s staying.” And then, before Wong could be certain of a glimmer in the girl’s eyes, she had passed on.

  Wong remained in the intersection, unable to move. Gorgas’s cryptic remarks on the bridge made sense now. Three volunteers. Not to guide the ship into a meaningless orbit, as she had thought—what a horrible and commercial reason for self-sacrifice!—but to stay behind so that others might live.

  They didn’t need her. They had never needed her. Far from getting everyone on board the escape craft, the problem lay in keeping some off, and that was a problem toward the solution of which the doctor could make no contribution. Disheartened, she made her way to the clinic, where her medical supplies awaited packing.

  On the bridge, Gorgas had explained to deCant about the cutter’s limitations. “I know it is a hard thing to say. It was a harder thing to come to know it, but no amount of wishfulness can alter it. If three of us stay behind, the rest of you may have a chance. Bhatterji and I have elected to do so. And now Ratline. But, Number Two, there is no need for four to stay—or five, young woman! No need at all for that.”

  “Yes,” said deCant, seizing on the chance. “Please, mother! Please! Come to the cutter!”

  Satterwaithe’s smile was a sad one. “It’s not about ‘need,’ Stepan. Or at least not the need you have in mind.”

  “What is it, then?” Gorgas asked, genuinely puzzled, but Satterwaithe only shook her head. “Old wounds heal slow,” she said. Then, seeming to come to herself, she turned to Twenty-four deCant and performed a miracle. The miracle was this: she hunkered down on her haunches to speak directly to the girl, something that Gorgas had never seen the woman do.

  “DeCant,” said Satterwaithe. She spoke severely at first, but then seemed to hear herself, and continued more gently. “Twenty-four. You were right. I am your mother, and—”

  “I knew it!” the wrangler cried. “I knew it!”

  “Hush. Listen to me. You must leave the ship. No, listen, I said! You must leave the ship, for my sake. You are all I have. You, and my grandchild.” She laid a hand on deCant’s womb. “Do you understand? If you stay here, that is the end of me; but if you go, then I go on. I’m old, my ship is dying. A man I might have loved is dying too. Do you understand why I can’t leave, even if the cutter could have taken every one of us? I’ve got to do what is right—for me, for him. For my sins.”

  DeCant nodded dumbly. Gorgas listened with astonishment.

  “Then go. Be with your husband. Raise your child. Someday, when she’s older—or he—tell her…Tell her about her grandmother.” She took both of deCant’s hands in hers. “Will you do that for me?”

  “But, Ma! We never had any time to—You ’n’ me…”

  “Will you do that for me? Please?” And there was another part of the miracle, for Gorgas had never heard the woman say please before as anything more than a conversational ornament.

  Martians seldom cry, but they can weep. DeCant did not trust her voice, but ventured to say, “Would you…? I mean, I wish you would…” And she stood there, trembling with hunger.

  Satterwaithe hesitated before, suddenly understanding, she fed her. Leaning forward, she kissed the girl lightly on the cheek, whereupon, convulsively, deCant threw her arms around the older woman and squeezed. After an awkward moment in which she did not know what to do with her hands, Satterwaithe reciprocated.

  “I’ll never forget you,” deCant said.

  “Nor I you,” said Satterwaithe. She loosened the girl’s embrace. “Now, go. Take care of my grandchild.”

  “Eugenie. Her name’s Eugenie.”

  Satterwaithe swallowed. “Take care of Eugenie.”

  “I will, I will.” DeCant backed away and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I love you, Ma.”

  Satterwaithe’s hesitation was fractional. “I love you too.”

  When the wrangler had gone, the second officer closed her eyes and remained hunkered down for a time. When she rose, she rose only to lower herself in the nearest clip-chair. It was the captain’s chair, but neither officer took note. “Ship,” she said when she had found a measure of calm.

  “Ready, Mrs. Satterwaithe.”

  The second officer noted the honorific, and a wry smile crossed her features. “Message. To: Corrigan, Grubb, Akhaturian. Text: Make sure deCant gets on that shuttle and stays on. Tie her down if you have to. End message.” She sat in the chair a moment longer, gazing at nothing. Then, spinning the chair to face the plotting tank, she saw Gorgas’s curious, owlish stare. “What?”

  “You are the girl’s clone-mother? I never knew that.”

  Satterwaithe snorted. “Don’t be absurd.” She lifted herself from the chair and stepped to the tank.

  “But you said…”

  Sharply. “It got her on board the shuttle, didn’t it?”

  “Well,” said Gorgas, who then could think of nothing to say. He wanted to ask who was the “man I might have loved,” but the only two possibilities that came to mind terrified him. “Well, let us resume our calculations. Ship. Resume projections. Display.” The plotting tank came alive again with silvery threads looping past Jupiter into the Outer System. “Perhaps we can obtain a gravity desist from Jupiter,” he suggested.

  “You mean a gravity assist?”

  “No, a desist. We’re trying to slow the ship down…”

  Satterwaithe had no ear whatever for humor and it took her a moment longer to get it. When she did, she could only shake her head. After a while, glancing off toward the bridgeway, she noticed that deCant had taken the satchel with her. As a keepsake? The sailing master sighed. It was not as if she would have much need for whatever the girl had stuffed within it.

  She had had a daughter once, a long time ago, but for too brief a time and she had never known her. Now she had another, and for nearly as brief a span and nearly as little known.

  “By damn,” she murmured, “I wish she were.”

  Later, as they worked the navigation problem with the AI, Gorgas silently handed her a handkerchief and Satterwaithe, without a word, took it.

  It is said that to every man is given a talent, though some bury theirs in the ground uncommonly deep. Fife had waited in the cutter with growing impatience and agitation while Corrigan programmed the computer with their escape route. “It’s an old model,” the snake explained cheerfully, as if such a statement could possibly ease anyone’s mind.

  “I know that,” Fife said. “Who do you think discovered it?”

  “Oh,” said Corrigan absently, “you can’t rightly say you discovered it. It was here all along, wasn’t it?” Fife rolled his eyes and Corrigan turned to Grubb and winked.

  “How much longer?” Fife asked.

  Grubb, who was running down the life-support system checklist, answered without turning. “Keep your pants on. She isn’t here yet.” Grubb did not yet know of the lovers’ quarrel. He thought the passenger anxious to escape, but he was only half-right. Fife was afraid that if the cutter did not leave soon, he would run back into the ship looking for ’Siska and that was not a survival-oriented thing to do.

  “It’s only withdrawal,” Fife told himself, and cinched the belt tighter on the seat he occupied lest his traitor body act on its own behest.

  Besides, she would be coming on board herself, once she had rounded up all the strays like some overweening mother hen. He wondered if he had the willpower to stay away from the bitch for however many days this transit would take. He would make a fool of himself before they reached safety. He knew that. Confined as closely as they would be, sleeping in shifts, sharin
g quarters, how long could he stand fast?

  She had violated him, and what had given her that right? She had seemed like such a nice person, and he had done her the favor, and this was how she had paid him back! His hands shook, but whether from agitation or chemical imbalance, he could not tell. It only proved that nice people could not be trusted. Naked self-interest was more reliable. Deals could be struck in the pure light of interest; cards could be placed on tables.

  Of course, the doctor had acted out of self-interest and not from “niceness,” but Fife, for all his brain-proud posturing, was not thinking clearly. That was Wong’s fault too.

  Behind him, the black girl moaned a little in her sleep and Fife jerked at the sound. His nerve ends sticking several inches beyond his skin, every noise struck him as sharp and as sudden as a knife, every color stunned him with bright pastel. It’s withdrawal, he told himself again. His senses were dazzled and confused. How could he make reliable decisions with his inputs so distorted?

  The passenger seemed jittery to Miko. When the Amalthean entered the cutter, the Lunatic jolted and turned to look at her with a visage both relieved and disappointed. Miko ignored him. “Here are the boards you wanted,” she told Corrigan. “Don’t know if they’ll help. The engine on this tub isn’t a Wright and Oldis, and the focusing rings are the smaller gage. Maybe LJ can grow a patch.”

  Corrigan took the parts from her. “Can’t you do it?”

  “Engine software? I’m just a ’prentice. Bhatterji might know.”

  Corrigan opened the panel and ran his finger down a wire, looking for the connection. “Yes, but he won’t be with us, will he?”

  “I don’t think he’s staying just to inconvenience you.”