Cave of Stars (Macrolife Book 2)

by George Zebrowski

  “The theory was proven a long time ago,” Voss said, “by countless experiments. Relativistic travel was the first method of interstellar travel, but too costly in energy and time—and dangerous. For example, we have the power to accelerate, but we have to provide adequate shielding to protect the ship at even ten percent of light speed. At very high fractions of light speed, every bit of gas and dust becomes a deadly missile, wearing away at the ship and producing hard radiation in the collisions. We’re trying to sustain a force shield ahead of us even as we accelerate. If we don’t get well above half light speed, our relativistic journey will take more than a century. Even the most longlived among us cannot last a century and a half without treatment, which means, as you know, that only our children and the sleepers will get to Praesepe.”

  “You will just have to take his word for it,” Lemuel had said, but to Jason it all had the ring of truth. If there was a deception, what was its purpose?

  “But isn’t there any circumstance,” Jason asked, “under which you would try the drive again?”

  “If our life support systems were failing,” Voss said, “if we had other massive breakdowns we couldn’t repair, if we were so hard-pressed that there would be nothing to lose by jumping—those would be reasons to take the risk.”

  Jason looked at the stars in the tank. There was not the slightest sign that the ship was moving, and he wondered at the reality of distances so great that all comparisons were lost.

  “But the shuttle’s return would make all this unnecessary,” Jason said. “Should it have been back by now?”

  Voss nodded. “It’s already late.”

  “How late?” Jason asked.

  “It should have been back in ten days, if everything had gone as it should have.”

  “And how long will we—” he started to ask, then realized the uselessness of his question.

  “We will have to wait while preparing for the worst,” Voss said. “Supplies and equipment for growing food will last more than a century, or longer, as will our basic medical facilities. But the renewal of our bodies requires a link intelligence to send small machines into our bodies to make repairs at the molecular and genetic level, in effect rebuilding aged structures as cell division is restarted. We can’t do any of it on this ship, and there was no way to save any of the needed systems before the mobile struck Ceti.”

  Jason saw that Voss was trying to explain things to him as well and as clearly as he could.

  “There’s no partial or piecemeal way to do any of this?” Jason asked.

  “That’s a good question, but no,” Voss said. “We must reach Praesepe, and get there while everyone is still in reasonably good enough condition to benefit from the procedures.”

  “And you are certain of these constraints?” Jason asked.

  “I wish I weren’t, and there are other problems. We can’t carry on the manufacture of many other things, since most of the work was done by replicators—again, small machines working at molecular and atomic scales. In the mobile we had large industrial systems, where we could grow or build whatever we needed, from biologicals to mechanical and electrical devices. We can still do a few of the basic things, but until we have a full habitat again we’ll have to depend on tools, and even on human machine-tool craftsmanship, which is an inefficient and labor-intensive way of doing things, but the only way when you have no choice.”

  Jason sat back in the station chair and tried to imagine the truth of what he was being told. It was clear to him that no one individual could grasp it all, and even on the mobile no one had ever been called upon to do more than a small part of anything.

  “The greatest difficulty for us,” Voss said, “is being cut off from our knowledge base. We have much of it with us, but it’s not as accessible as it was through the Link. We have to search out everything laboriously, using simple and slow retrieval programs, using people who don’t know enough to do it quickly and efficiently. No one had to specialize in the kind of direct access which the Link gave us, and in which we now have to specialize.”

  “Can you ever get back everything?” Jason asked, feeling overwhelmed by Voss’s description of the problem.

  “Another mobile may be able to give us an infusion of data equal to what we lost, updating whatever new knowledge has been gained in the time it takes us to reach Praesepe and build a new mobile. Most of our scientists, doctors, historians, and psychologists are dead, and the few who still live do not have their Link. Our culture did not live in its individuals, but in the very structure of the mobile’s social container, which can accommodate any kind of culture or subcultures within the secure economic framework.”

  “But it wasn’t secure enough,” Jason said, “because you were vulnerable to an unexpected attack.”

  “Yes,” Voss said. “It was both unforeseen and unimaginable, and unforeseen because we could not imagine it.”

  “Now imagine our plight,” Jason said, seeing his chance. “Think how our small group feels in your midst, with all our hopes gone, and yours in peril. The help that was held out to us when you took us away from the islands now seems a cruel joke.”

  He looked into Voss’s eyes and hoped to guess at the man’s trustworthiness, what his father had called character. Voss gazed back at him, but Jason was unable to see into him—and for a moment he suspected that what sat before him was not a man at all, but something that had lived according to the rules of a now dead god called the Link, without which the human shape was only a feeble fragment of that lost awareness.

  “We will do what we can to keep your group alive,” Voss said.

  “What can you do? By your own admission, you can’t keep everyone alive for the time that might be needed.”

  “Everyone will live for as long as possible,” Voss said, sounding both methodical and insistent. “The oldest and most vulnerable will sleep. In time we may be able to try blind rejuvenations. Some of us will die in sleep and in the blind tries. But enough of us should live to reach Praesepe and rebuild.”

  Jason stared ahead at the stars in the tank. “Don’t you see? If it’s so difficult for three thousand of you, what chance do fourteen Cetians have?”

  “Your children will live,” Voss said. “That much is nearly certain.”

  “But they won’t be ours!” Jason shouted, hearing Lemuel within himself. ‘They’ll grow up looking to your way of life.” He felt bitterness climbing into him, reminding him that Josepha had chosen this man. It seemed impossible that he had chosen her with any passion or love. Josepha would get everything Voss could give her to keep alive, Jason told himself, while he grew old and died.

  He sat in silence, struggling both to calm himself and to find what he must say. “Sleep seems the surest way to survive,” he said at last without looking at his rival.

  “But it’s not reliable, and we can’t sleep many. We need everyone who knows anything and has any necessary skills to monitor and maintain the ship, even among the oldest.”

  “Then put all of us from Ceti into sleep, since we know the least,” Jason said.

  “Let me explain again,” Voss said. “You might all die in sleep. Only the oldest, who have nothing to lose, and when their lifespan is coming to an end, decades from now, when there is no other choice, should risk going into sleep.”

  “No one goes now?” Jason asked, turning to face him.

  “We won’t even begin to think about it until the shuttle returns and Iannon Brunei tells me what is possible. When and if that happens, we may not have that many problems left.”

  Jason waited a moment, then said, “I’m sorry to be so insistent. I did not quite understand.”

  “It is often difficult,” Voss said, “for me to keep so much distinct in my own head, without the Link.”

  “Was it a great help to you?” Jason asked, grateful to have something of the man’s feelings.

  “Yes. I had never really been alone before—inside myself.”

  Jason waited another moment,
then said, “You must know that I love Josepha and want her.” He waited for Voss’s reaction, but the look on the other man’s face seemed to be one of curiosity, not surprise or angry jealousy. “Do you understand?”

  “I have no objection—” Voss started to say as the door slid open behind them.

  They both swiveled around at their stations and saw Josepha standing in the entrance, staring ahead nervously. She came forward stiffly, and Jason saw the thin wire drawn tightly around her neck.

  “Don’t move,” Lemuel said. “She’ll die with one twist!”

  Jason and Voss stood up as the rest of the Cetians came in, took up positions around the drum-shaped bridge, and the door slid shut.

  “Sit down!” Lemuel shouted to Voss.

  Voss obeyed. Jason saw that Josepha was staring upward, unable to move her head.

  “We’re all here,” Lemuel said, “so there’s not one of us your people can threaten in return.”

  Josepha’s mouth opened to get some air.

  “Let her go,” Jason said, still standing.

  “We’re not listening to you any more,” Lemuel said. “They’ll make you over, just like her, so we have to look out for ourselves now.”

  “Are you hurt?” Jason asked Josepha.

  “No—” she managed to whisper.

  “Sit down!” Lemuel ordered.

  Jason sat down.

  Lemuel glared at Voss and said, “You will do as we say or she dies.”

  Voss did not reply. Jason looked at the faces of his people as they stood around the drum, and saw by the resignation in them that Lemuel was in complete control. It had been a mistake to humiliate him in front of the others, he realized.

  “You will jump this ship—or whatever it is that you do—to its destination, right now. Clear enough? Right now.”

  Voss said calmly, “You don’t appreciate the dangers.”

  “Anything’s better than dying on this ship!”

  “You’re endangering three thousand lives,” Voss said calmly.

  Lemuel gazed at him with contempt. “We don’t care about your three thousand lives. She dies in front of you if you don’t do it.”

  Jason tensed. Josepha’s head was tilted back and he could no longer see her eyes.

  “If she dies,” Jason said, “you won’t get anything of what you want.”

  “But she’ll be dead. Do you want that?”

  “No,” Voss said calmly.

  “We have nothing to lose,” Lemuel added, “and we don’t care.” Behind him, old Padraic was grinning with pleasure, and Jason reminded himself again that not all the outcasts of the islands had been political prisoners. He had never met Padraic, but he seemed to be neither a member of some political cadre nor a religious heretic. All such distinctions had been lost during the comradeship of imprisonment and in the exhilaration of escape.

  “Prepare to jump!” Lemuel cried, shaking, and Jason saw the strain in the man’s face.

  The door slid open again. Lemuel tugged on Josepha’s wire, forcing her to move with him.

  Blackfriar’s tall figure entered the control room.

  “Now the gang’s all here!” Lemuel cried. “Sit down on the floor!”

  Blackfriar surveyed the room, then lowered himself to the deck, assuming a cross-legged position.

  Josepha gasped and was struggling to get her fingers under the wire around her neck. “She’s choking!” Jason cried.

  Lemuel loosened the noose. Josepha gasped and took a deep breath.

  “They insist that we jump,” Voss said to Blackfriar.

  Blackfriar nodded. “One more try might not make any difference,” he said, turning toward Lemuel. “Will that satisfy you? It will pose a danger.”

  Lemuel nodded.

  “Listen to me,” Jason said to him. “I’ve learned enough to know that you’ll be risking even our smallest hope, not just theirs. If we’re thrown distantly, no one of us will ever have a chance to see a world again.”

  Lemuel clenched his jaw and said, “We don’t care. Trying anything is better than doing nothing, living for nothing, being nothing in these people’s eyes. Get that through your lovesick head.”

  “Lemuel, listen to me,” Jason continued, looking around at the four Cetian women, hoping to find more reason among them. “We can make a community for ourselves on this ship, raise children. There are ways to help us have them, believe me. These people are not our enemies.”

  “You’ve gone soft and stupid!”

  “You should consider,” Voss said calmly, “that if we succeed in shifting our position, the shuttle won’t be able to find us on its way back.”

  “It’s never coming back,” Lemuel answered, “if one was ever sent.”

  Blackfriar said, “But if it does return, it may solve all our problems—and you would never know, would you?”

  Lemuel seemed to consider this as his free hand gripped Josepha’s shoulder. She turned her head to one side, and for a moment Jason saw how she might look with her neck broken in the wire garrote.

  “Lemuel,” Jason said, “if you hurt her, I’ll choke you myself until your eyes burst. I promise you that. Whatever happens, you won’t be able to stand there forever.”

  Lemuel smiled. “You don’t frighten me. Nothing can frighten me. If the jump works or even if it doesn’t, we can kill all of you in here and run the ship our way. We’ll have that for sure one way or the other. These people are so cooperative, so full of their own brains.” He smiled again. “All that power and knowledge—and old Bely did them in.”

  Jason looked around at his fellow Cetians. Their faces still seemed resolved, but he was certain that walls of suffering hid their doubt. If only he had known some of them better on the islands, they might have been more willing to listen to him; but these had kept away from the political prisoners, and chance had permitted them to survive Bely’s bombs. The promise of health and a new life had also faded from their minds, taken away by the same man who had imprisoned them; yet they blamed the people of the mobile. He knew their confused feelings—but Josepha and Voss had pulled him into the middle position, where he could do nothing.

  “Set up the jump!” Lemuel shrieked.

  Voss looked to Blackfriar, and Jason hoped that the older man would not say, “You have to let her die, if need be, because it’s one life against the whole ship.”

  Blackfriar said, “They know that if they kill her they will lose their hostage. Therefore they will not kill her if we refuse their demand.”

  Jason tensed, knowing that Josepha would die.

  “Oh?” Lemuel asked. “We don’t care what happens after she’s dead. All you can do is kill us. But she’ll go before we do!”

  Lemuel had convinced them that they had nothing to lose, no matter what they did.

  “Do it now!” Lemuel shouted.

  Blackfriar finally nodded to Voss, and Jason relaxed slightly.

  Voss now turned to the panel before the tank and began entering program commands. “It’ll take a few minutes to ready the energy outlay,” he murmured.

  “Don’t stall!” Lemuel barked, tightening the noose. Josepha cried out softly.

  “It’s true!” Jason answered.

  “Four minutes,” Voss said, hunched over the panel.

  “See! See!” Lemuel chided his followers. “See how they obey. I told you. Old Padraic told you they would obey.”

  The old man cackled behind him.

  Blackfriar said, “Now you’ll see what we’re up against out there.”

  “Shut up!” Lemuel answered. “What kind of people are you? Don’t you ever take a chance? Cowards!”

  “Lemuel,” Jason pleaded as he looked at Josepha, “stop and think of the risk.”

  Lemuel spat on the deck. “Voss there wouldn’t be doing this if it were that dangerous, not for one life.”

  Voss said, “We’ll lose the shuttle. It will come back to the expected coordinates, but we won’t be there.”

  And Jason
knew that Lemuel was at least half-right. Voss would not risk Josepha’s life. He was acting without thinking, hoping that the danger would not be too great, that the shuttle would still find its ship, and that the ship would not be thrown so far into the dark desert of space that it would fail to find its way to Praesepe.

  Lemuel stood very still, the wire turned tightly in his right hand, and Jason was shamed by a brief impulse to choose Josepha’s death and save the greater number of lives, or to live with the fact that he had seen what was coming and done nothing to stop it.

  “Reset is on,” Voss said. “Here we go.”

  Jason felt a moment of vertigo.

  The stars flickered in the tank.

  Three Cetians fell to the deck, holding their stomachs and moaning.

  “It’s malfunctioning,” Voss said. “There should be no extreme bodily reactions.”

  We’re lost, Jason thought, thinking that Bely would have been pleased to know that his daughter had unbalanced the judgment of the same Voss Rhazes who had denied him life.

  The stars steadied in the tank.

  “Have we jumped?” Lemuel asked.

  “No,” Voss replied. “The timer is at zero and the stars have not shifted position.”

  “Do it again,” Lemuel said, unshaken.

  “Not for five hours,” Blackfriar announced.

  “I don’t believe you,” Lemuel said.

  “It’s true, Lemuel,” Jason said.

  Lemuel looked around at his people. The four on the floor were sitting up, as if recovering. He tugged on Josepha’s noose. “Sit down, we’re going to wait.”

  They lowered themselves to the floor. Lemuel looked directly at Jason and said, “Don’t even think of it. The wire will slice through her neck before you can reach me, and she’ll bleed to death even if you get me.”

  Voss said, “Lemuel, you don’t really want to kill her, do you?”

  “Ah, the other lover speaks! So both of you really do want her.”

  “Surely you now see the dangers in what you’re forcing us to do,” Voss said.

  “I’ve got nothing to lose.”