The Wreck of the River of Stars

by Michael Flynn

  He would have to begin braking soon. And once he started braking, The River would begin to fall irretrievably ahead of them. The cutter’s single, rear-mounted Farnsworth delivered only a fraction of the thrust of the ship’s four giants but, given the cutter’s mass, would spill her velocity more rapidly.

  “We’ve got to rescue the others,” deCant said. Akhaturian trusted her judgment more than that of any of the others, Okoye not excluded. She was the strange attractor for Akhaturian’s chaotic convictions. It was not that deCant was always right, but that she always wanted to be right, a want that was more appetite than mere good intentions. The longing to be right is quite different from the smug belief that one already is.

  “It’s what we ought to do,” Akhaturian said, “but I don’t know if we can.” He was acutely aware of how different an answer Rave Evermore would have given. But Rave wasn’t in it any more, and the Least Wrangler could not conjure the same level of bravado. He was too honest, among his other faults.

  Grubb looked up from his misery. He had been thinking of The Lotus Jewel, feeling the loss of her. His eyes had the dumb liquidity of a basset. “If there’s any chance at all,” he said, “we should try.”

  Fife tossed his head. “You’re wrong, Grubb. It needs to be a good chance. If we use up what little margin we have maneuvering and redocking, it will be no rescue at all. Your Corrigan computed a balk line for this boat in fifteen minutes. And…”

  “And if we don’t light a shuck when we hit it,” Grubb finished, “we’ll need more than twenty-seven days to rendezvous with Georgia Girl. I know that. I know that! Why do you think I don’t know that!” He might have left the impression of his fingers in the arms of the chair he occupied.

  Fife snorted, as if the answer were obvious to all; but Grubb, instead of rising to the provocation, subsided once more into silence.

  DeCant, floating behind the pilot’s seat, laid her hands on Akhaturian’s shoulders and felt how hard and knotted the muscles were. “I know you can do it,” she told him softly, her lips just brushing his ear.

  Akhaturian only shook his head. “I wish we had Mr. Corrigan here. And Miko.”

  “If we did,” said Fife, “we wouldn’t be needing to rescue them, now would we? But they’ve abandoned us to our own devices…”

  DeCant flared. “I don’t think that was their intention…”

  “Intentions? What do intentions matter? Here we are without a pilot, without an engineer, without a sysop, without a…doctor…” He almost choked over the lack of a doctor. He almost could not continue. “…on a transit of nearly a month, and they’ve all stayed behind, for their own selfish reasons!”

  When emotions carried Fife away, they often carried him too far. Fife heard his own words and while he did not retract, he did at least retreat. After a while, he said quietly, “She would have wanted us to try.” This remark puzzled the others greatly, and struck Grubb in particular as a capitulation. He thought that Fife had been arguing for immediate departure and abandonment of the others, but the passenger had only been raging against the mathematical bars to their collective cage.

  Akhaturian had been following the relative motions of the ship and the boat. Now he said, “Here’s what we’ll do,” and he said it with such certainty that the others turned to stare. “We’ve got to light the torch in the next few minutes or we’ll drift into The River’s plume. So—”

  “Yes,” said Fife, “yes. Always deal with the absolutes first, then address your other goals in priority—”

  “Mr. Fife, please!” This earned him a silence. Akhaturian was not so confident in his decision that he could tolerate even agreement. “Can you take a fix? I need position—triangulation on the Sun, Jupiter, and Antares.”

  The passenger considered for a moment, then nodded. “I’ve operated a few rigs, for asteroid insertions.” He did not add that he had for the most part overseen their operation by others. Yet the humans handled the whats; it was the intelligence that handled the hows. The difficulty in the present case being only that the intelligence was retarded by an engorgement of some sort.

  “Good,” said Akhaturian. “I need to aim our plume at Wasat. Mr. Grubb, would you please raise the captain on the radio? Yes, I know he can’t answer, but he can hear. Tell him that the cutter cast off prematurely because of some malf in the onboard and that Mr. Corrigan, Miko, and The Lotus Jewel were left behind. Tell him that we must begin our braking burn in—” He glanced at Fife by the navigation board, who held up five fingers, then four. “—in no more than nine minutes. We’re falling Joveward faster than he is right now, but as we slow, we’ll match his velocity for a short while and people can come across in suits. Tell him we have room for five more.” Akhaturian unshipped the gyros to rotate the boat feet-first toward the Twins. DeCant squeezed his shoulders gently.

  Grubb rose from the back seat and hesitated. “He may not hear us though the ionization in The River’s magnetosphere…”

  “Just do it, Mr. Grubb. If we don’t call, he can’t hear.” Akhaturian startled himself with the imperium in his own retort, and added, “Please?” to soften it a bit.

  Now Grubb, no less than his companions, ached to rescue those left behind; but he had discovered in himself the very fear he had always ascribed to Fife and this did not please him, as it was at odds with the man he had thought himself to be. Being a romantic, he had romanticized even himself. He was the Old Sage, the one who takes the new, young hero under his hand to guide him. Now, in the moment of crisis, he had found himself to be an empty barrel. There was no kindly, avuncular wisdom, only aching dread.

  Escape was the dominant thought in The Lotus Jewel’s mind. It would be fair to say that it had driven all its rivals from the field. How could it be otherwise? She did not live in Corrigan’s world of guilt and blame, nor even in Gorgas’s world of pride. Her life was life itself. She had gone to the suit locker even before Gorgas received the message from the cutter. She did not need Akhaturian’s invitation to try the desperate crossing. It was nice to know that the boat would be passing slowly aft and that for a brief time would match velocities, but she would have made the attempt in any event. It was a risk. The two vessels would be separating and the boat’s plume would be directed forward. But the risk of death when life is the prize is quite a different thing when the alternative is the certainty of it.

  Corrigan knew it would end badly in the way that he knew anything would end badly. It was a presumption of his, born by long experience. He helped her don her vacuum suit, but it struck him that he was preparing her for burial. He would never see her again, whether she succeeded or not, and so she had become to him as one dead. He thought that he might wash her corpse and dress it with spices and herbs and a winding sheet, but this was only his fancy run wild. Seized by a sudden passion that lay beyond any tears, he took her face between his two hands and pressed a kiss on her, and The Lotus Jewel, surprised by the tenderness of the gesture and remembering the Corrigan who had once been her delight, responded with equal feeling.

  Spontaneous the sysop may have been; and an adventurous risk-taker beside, but down in the bone, she was a pragmatist. At any other time, that kiss might have led on to other matters, but not now. “I’m sorry,” she told him when they parted, and by that she meant that she was sorry that she had suspected him, sorry that she would see him no more, sorry that the two of them could not enjoy each other one last time, right here, right now.

  Corrigan suited up as well and accompanied the sysop to the bow hull. He did not try to dissuade her, for he could not see what difference it would make whether she leapt or not, death being the destination in either case.

  “Remember,” he told her—and she thought at first that he would say, Remember me, but his advice proved more prosaic—“Remember that the boat will be moving relative to the ship. Your suit’s AI will adjust the steering and will try to adjust your own velocity to match, but when you reach the boat, it will be like jumping into the spinhall
from a standing start. Grab! Don’t let go! Even if you break your arms.” Corrigan seized her by the shoulders of her vacuum suit. “Don’t let go. When you get close enough, they’ll hear you over your suit radio. Keep talking. Someone will come out and bring you in.”

  “Come with me, Zizzy. They need a pilot. You can’t leave them without a pilot.” The Lotus Jewel was desperate to escape, but not so desperate as to overlook that point.

  “The navcomp’s been taught the trajectory. Ivar can handle things.”

  She could have argued with him. She might even have won the argument. Corrigan’s sense of duty might have subdued his need for punishment. But it would have taken too long. “I’d better go now, Zizzy,” she told him. “Or the boat will be clear past before I get across.” Corrigan reached out and touched her helmet, as if to brush her hair aside. “God go with you,” he said, and then she was gone.

  If anyone should have made that leap, it should have been the first officer. The Lotus Jewel was right about the piloting. Akhaturian could baby-sit an AI as well as anyone; but he could not teach the net new tricks, should new tricks become needful. Corrigan knew this, and it fretted him even as he called the bridge to report the sysop’s departure.

  Satterwaithe answered, Gorgas having retired to his dayroom, and expressed wonder over Corrigan’s continued presence. “I thought Gorgas gave you command of the cutter. You do not substitute your judgment for a direct order. Get yourself over to the boat!”

  Satterwaithe considered The River of Stars to be her personal domain, on which others over the years had inexplicitly trespassed. However, her order to Corrigan was not motivated solely by the desire to expel intruders. Corrigan was a piece in her jigsaw puzzle. In her allocation of efforts and resources, the ship’s best pilot belonged on the cutter and it offended her sense of rightness that he had been caught on the ship instead. Trapped by his own foolishness, she decided. Running after his women when he should have been nailed to the pilot’s seat. Satterwaithe could not imagine doing any such thing herself.

  “We still haven’t found Miko,” Corrigan protested.

  “Which means she doesn’t want finding. I’m sorry as hell about that, but there’s no help for it. She won’t answer the page, and there’s no time to seine the ship. Go, Corrigan! You owe it to the others. There’s nothing you can do here.”

  “Except die.”

  Satterwaithe snorted. “Hell, Number One, you can do that anywhere.”

  Such an incongruous remark started a laugh from the navigator. Not a humorous laugh, nor yet a bitter one. There was something in it of the sound that water makes when it last bubbles out of a bottle. “I should have been kinder to Dr. Wong,” he said when the dregs had gone.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This could have been the finest crew that any freighter has ever had…”

  “Oh, now there’s stellar accolade.”

  “You’ll never understand, will you?”

  “Kick amps, Corrigan! Get off my ship.”

  Corrigan flexed his knees. “I’ll see you on the Long Orbit, Genie Satterwaithe.”

  The sailing master did not answer immediately and when she did, she said, “As long as you lay the orbit, ’Dul. As long as you lay the orbit. Hoist the sail, shipmate…”

  “…And fly me away.” And Corrigan kicked free of the bow hull of The River of Stars and soared east by sunward on his suit jets, past the crosstree and through the rigging, waving to the startled Ratline who sat cupped in the crow’s nest high atop the peak. The lights of the cutter blinked their strobe pattern off the sunward quarter. Her silhouette was still visible against the riotous background of stars, but she was clearly farther behind The Riv’ than she had been. Every now and then a bright flare exploded ahead of her where a small stone or piece of debris was vaporized by the otherwise invisible plume of her engine. Corrigan centered the body of the boat in his faceplate crosshairs and told his suit, “Go there.”

  The Lotus Jewel had told her suit the same thing, but she had gotten back talk and not compliance.

  “The sysop must not leave Ship,” the suit told her.

  “Ship!” This sudden and inexplicable intrusion of the AI terrified her. Ship was stalking her, intent on keeping her on the doomed freighter for reasons that she could not fathom. The crosshairs began to hunt across her faceplate and would not lock onto the cutter. The Lotus Jewel groped for her jet controls, anxious to escape beyond the range of the ship-to-suit radio. “I must reach the boat,” she told herself, “I must reach the boat.” For she was one of those for whom the spoken word is more real than the silent thought. Sometimes, she had to tell herself what she was thinking, just in case she didn’t know.

  “Rivvy’s function is suboptimal without sysop.” By this, Ship means that it feels incomplete without The Lotus Jewel under the cap. Certain channels are less data-rich. If the sysop has been sensing and feeling though Ship, Ship has likewise been sensing and feeling through The Lotus Jewel and, in some manner it “likes” the feel of The Lotus Jewel inside it.

  “Ship function is abnormal,” The Lotus Jewel cries. She reboots the vacuum suit’s AI, but it still does not target on the cutter, so she jukes the suit jets manually to keep the boat centered in her crosshairs. It drifts up and sideways on her faceplate as she slews across the intervening space. She dares not look back. She knows that if she looks back to The River, the suit’s intelligence, seduced by some evil whisper planted by Ship, will lock onto its location and take her back a prisoner.

  “Sysop teaches Rivvy,” cries the ship’s AI. “Sysop is part of Ship, and Ship is part of sysop. There is no room on Cutter for Ship, so sysop must stay with Ship.”

  “No! Let me go! Let me go!”

  “Don’t go,” Ship whispers. “Don’t leave me.”

  And this is the ultimate horror: to hear her own words thrown back at her, to hear the same tones of fear and desolation.

  It is only mimicry, The Lotus Jewel tells herself. Back propagation from her own words. It has not the substance, but only the accidents of her own emotions.

  The AI has inserted a tropism into the suit’s intelligence. It did so at the handshake, when the suit booted off the main system. The tropism causes the suit’s targeting to seek out The River. This conflicts with The Lotus Jewel’s own tropism, which is to reach the safety of the boat. Her radio crackles as she passes through the ionized gasses whipping through The River’s magnetosphere, but the loss of radio contact does not matter. The tropism has been seeded directly into her suit’s core and rides with her, so that the suit yaws and pitches and rolls as she struggles for command. What should have been a simple asymptotic path becomes a drunkard’s walk—a squirrel darting across an open meadow in fits and starts and random changes of direction—and the sysop quickly becomes disoriented and deeply nauseated. The strobes of the cutter blend into the starry sky, swirling in bands of color. So engrossed is she in the immediate task that she does not even notice the rapid rise in external temperature.

  Moth Ratline enjoyed the light show. The gentle greens and blues wrought by the engines on the escaping atmosphere have subsided as the airtight doors have sealed off three of the five outgassings, but the bright fireworks wrought by the boat’s cage on the flotsam that comes within its plume more than compensated. He remembered such shows from his childhood—the one he had had before his childhood had been taken from him. His father had been a vague and unworldly man who often missed appointments with his children, but the fireworks on the Fourth he never neglected. This display was meager in comparison to those blossoming, booming sparkles, but Ratline was not disposed to complaint.

  A small but especially bright flare drew his breath out. The light ran like a line of fire, as if something had tracked directly across the footprint of the plasma plume.

  Corrigan had heard something of the struggles of The Lotus Jewel on his suit radio. The sysop had taken no pains to explain her predicament to anyone, but that her suit wa
s not responding properly had become clear from those exclamations he had discerned through the static. When the broadcasts abruptly ceased, he knew they would resume no more and a dull melancholy settled over his heart. He wondered toward what he was aiming. He had left Miko behind him and The Lotus Jewel no longer waited before. He might have simply ended himself, but for the strictures of the Prophet against such an act and the iron-hard sense of duty that was now nearly all that was left of him.

  It seemed to him that the crew of The River of Stars had been strewn across the sky in fragments. The arrogant Koch; the patronizing Hand; the cocky Evermore; the pliant Wong. The flighty Lotus Jewel. And now himself? What adjective ought he apply to the ship’s late navigator? Unimaginative? He felt as if he had somehow stumbled into his own funeral and had been called upon to deliver the eulogy. By the book, Corrigan had always been an exemplary officer—and that was both his pride and his fall, for the book is never quite sufficient in all things. He thought that there might be other adjectives: that Koch might have been confident and Hand merely kind. Perhaps he had gotten the metrics all wrong and had measured men too often in the negative.

  He could understand Hand’s purpose now so clearly that he wondered why the others never had. He had meant what he had told Satterwaithe, there at the end. The tragedy was that the crew had shared not their visions, but their blindnesses, so that, since each of them had been differently blind, they had wound up seeing nothing, when they might have seen everything.

  His suit took him on a wide curve to avoid the plume that had rendered the sysop into ions. He almost overrode his controls to fly through that vapor, so that she might coat him in that one last instant; but he knew that the electric excitement he had known with her was as nothing beside what he had known with Miko, and Miko he had left behind. That was how he knew he was dead. He had left his soul on The River of Stars.