Between the Strokes of Night

by Charles Sheffield

  Sy swept his arm around the control chamber, indicating the arrays of instruments and equipment. “How much of this do you recognize? If you are anything like me, damned little.”

  Libby Trask objected, “Even if you are right about the equipment — and I must admit I don’t recognize most of it, even in my own field — it would make no sense to abandon Gulf City as the central organizing group.”

  “Wrong. It would make no sense to keep Gulf City in the decision loop at all, so long as people here insisted on remaining in S-space. Interstellar communication times are long enough as it is. Can you imagine the frustration of waiting for some answer, knowing that for every day in S-space on Gulf City, two thousand days — more than five years — were flashing by on your planet? The center of action moved to the planets, coordinating their own development. This place became a backwater.”

  Emil said, “A backwater, maybe. But that doesn’t account for Gulf City being totally deserted.”

  “Correct. I suspect there is a different reason for that, and it’s something we’ll be able to confirm when we send messages to the planetary web and say we’re home from Urstar. When we left Gulf City, we had on board the most advanced knowledge that humans could offer. But by the standards of planetary civilizations we were travelling for a long, long time. Humans moved out of caves and into space in less time than it took us to go to and return from Urstar. I think that human scientific knowledge has moved on, far past anything with which we can claim familiarity. Someone — almost certainly, a group working on a planet and therefore working in N-space — discovered for themselves the unpleasant truths that we were warned about after our ship was halted and JN’s body was taken over. S-space, over long periods of time, is fatal to us. What was it we were told? Ultimately, time consumes flesh.”

  Dan Korwin, sitting next to Sy, turned in his seat. “So everyone returned to live in normal space and time, leaving Gulf City to fade away? I don’t believe it.”

  “Nor do I, and I didn’t say that. I think something much more complicated took place. I agree with the list that Delsy Gretz showed us, those are a hundred and seventy-eight different planetary colonies, all operating and communicating with each other in N-space. But there are other lists. Here’s one that I found when I was poking around.”

  A group of about twenty names and coordinates appeared as glowing symbols, standing a few centimeters in front of the tall unit that still displayed Delsy Gretz’s list.

  “Not nearly so many of these,” Sy said. “But there’s an important difference. Not one of them is associated with a planetary or a stellar system — not even a brown dwarf or a free-flying rogue planet. My guess is that every one is like Gulf City, as far removed as they can get from all other matter.” “Doing what?” Eva Packland was making her own rapid check, confirming that the coordinates did not correspond to any known celestial objects.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Free space facilities, far away from gravitational perturbations. Low density of interstellar matter, and with only the galactic fields as disturbance.”

  “Perfect for delicate physical measurements,” said Rolf Sansome. “Minimal interference.”

  “Or for long-range astronomy and astrophysics,” Eva Packland added. Sy nodded. “Both of those are logical. My own belief is a little different. Humans set up Gulf City to study parts of the universe that they didn’t understand, but this was also a fine place to explore the different states in which people can exist. S-space was used here, but this is also where the first T-state experiments were performed. I believe that those” — he pointed to the list — “represent the next generation of free-space experiment stations. Different groups had different ideas as to what should be done next. They took everything learned here on Gulf City as a starting point, and set up facilities dedicated to their own explorations.”

  “Exploring what?” Charlene, not for the first time, was losing track of the direction of Sy’s thinking.

  “All the open questions of space and time. When we left for Urstar, people here were groping their way toward understanding how humans could live in T-state. A time-rate difference of two million to one sounded like a lot to us — it is a lot, four Earth-years flashing by for every minute spent in T-state. But why think of that as an end point for progress? We can survive, unconscious and in cold sleep, and we have no idea how much time would elapse before physical deterioration. There could also be any number of other states between T-state and cold sleep, in which humans can remain conscious and with reduced rates of perception.”

  Emil shook his head. “The beings who met us at Urstar said not. You yourself just quoted what they did say: Time consumes flesh.”

  “True. But I’ll also quote something else they said: they don’t know everything, and the universe contains many unsolved mysteries. The aliens at Urstar know more than humans — at least, they know more than humans did at the time we left Gulf City. Suppose there are other states, and other forms of life extension, possible for our species but not for theirs? Also, exploration of human physical potentials is just one form of research. Some of the free-space colonies may be devoted to social experiments, or pure physics research, or fields of science totally new to us.”

  Charlene had never seen Sy so talkative. She asked, “So some humans have returned to the planets, and are living in normal space. And others have established free-space colonies, to explore we don’t know what. Where does that leave us? We travelled all the way to Urstar and all the way back — but there’s no one here to know or care what we found out.”

  “We’ll send messages to all the colonies, free-space or planetary, telling what we’ve learned. Whether they care or not — well, that’s another matter.” Sy looked all around the chamber. “I want to make one point clear to everyone. We went to Urstar as a united group, with one main purpose, and Judith Niles was our undisputed leader. When she left us, we had no leader. Many of you cast me in that role, and maybe for a while I served in it. But it’s not something I like doing, and it’s not something I’m well-suited to carry out. So far as I am concerned, we are thirty-seven individuals, each of us free to pursue his or her own goals. I’m not going to set anyone else’s agenda. At the moment I’m not even sure of my own. What I am sure is that I need some time to myself, to consider my options. I recommend that each of you do the same. I’ll be here at the same time tomorrow. If anyone is interested, I’ll tell you my intentions and listen to yours.”

  A couple of people started to speak, either to make comments or to ask questions. Sy waved them away and hurried out of the chamber. Behind him he left a stunned and troubled group.

  Or not a group at all. Charlene, gazing around her, saw confusion on every face. The voyage to Urstar had become history. The great expedition, designed by Judith Niles to include matched and complementary skills, was no more. All that was left was a motley assortment of individuals.

  What would happen to them now — to her now? That, to Charlene, remained the unanswerable question.

  * * *

  Twenty-four hours did nothing to lessen Charlene’s misgivings. Unable to sleep or relax, she roamed the deserted corridors. Gulf City had become Ghost City, populated only by the arrays of silent and motionless robots, awaiting commands that never came. The space docks were the same, filled with ships ready and waiting to take nonexistent passengers and crews to the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

  Charlene saw devices, familiar and unfamiliar, in a thousand deserted chambers. None of them interested her. She realized that her pleasures — all her pleasures — came from living things, people and animals. She had joined the Institute not because she cared about sleep research, but because it had offered her a chance to work with the nervous marmots and the great, gentle Kodiak bears.

  It was a mixed blessing when the time came to return to the central chamber and meet with the others. She knew she had little to say to them, but she craved human company.

  They drifted in, in ones and
twos. Emil came in with Eva Packland, but he moved at once to sit next to Charlene.

  “Where have you been? I looked everywhere — even back on board the Argo.” “Wandering about. Thinking.” If you could call it that.

  But Sy’s arrival cut off further conversation. He looked as tired as Charlene felt, and he at once slumped down in a chair at the side of the room. Even if he didn’t want to be a leader, many of the others still treated him that way. They all stared at him expectantly. He glared back at them.

  “What are you all looking at me for? Don’t any of you have anything better to do?”

  “Yes.” It was Dan Korwin, as belligerent as Sy. He was the center of a group of five people, two men and three women. “I knew what I wanted to do ages ago, before we arrived at Gulf City. Hell, I knew it even when we were stuck close to Urstar. We” — his nod took in his companions — “have never been satisfied with the line of talk we were given by the aliens there. We’re going to load one of the research vessels with special equipment, and we’re going back. I want to know how anything could stop a ship that’s going at a fair fraction of light-speed dead in its tracks. What happened to inertia as an invariant property of matter?”

  If Korwin was hoping to start an argument with Sy, it didn’t work. They stared at each other for a few seconds, then Sy nodded. “I’d be as interested in hearing the answer to that as you are. Good luck. Anyone else?”

  “Yes.” Eva Packland spoke diffidently. “One of the free-space colonies is building special instruments to observe the universe at the greatest distances and earliest times. There’s a message in the files, posted recently, saying they could use a few well-qualified researchers. Libby and Gretchen and I already sent a message back to them, saying we’ll soon be on our way. They need to know what we were told about the logic the beings we encountered presented in favor of stellarforming. The colony we’re going to is five hundred and sixty light-years from here, but they’re doing all their work in S-space. In terms of S-time we’ll be with them pretty quickly, so they’ll still be able to use our help when we get there.”

  There was a silence, then Gus Eldridge said, “Well, that makes me feel a good deal better. I thought we were going a long way, Chang and Rolf and me, but you make us look like stay-at-homes. We plan to head for Tellus Prime, where the focus is on the Pipistrelles and the Gossameres. We figure that the records the Argo made when we were marooned near Urstar might come in useful. We don’t understand what we saw, but maybe the people on Tellus will have ideas.” He glanced across at Eva. “Tellus is only ninety-seven light-years, hardly like travelling at all after what we’ve been through getting to Urstar and back.” A feeling was growing around the chamber, not exactly of excitement but of resolve to seek new challenges. People piped up, in twos and threes, choosing from a growing number of projects all around the spiral arm. Some were intrigued by the information offered by the Judith Niles’ embodiment, that no world where intelligence might develop would see its primary star changed. Checking such a statement would be a long and difficult job, calling for a cooperative effort among hundreds of groups in widely scattered locations. The biologists in the party wanted to see what life forms might thrive on planets circling red dwarf stars. If that was the future of the galaxy, better know what it looked like. Others wanted to be near a star when the change to a red dwarf first began. Techniques to predict when and where that would happen needed to be developed. Finally, almost everyone had spoken. Gretchen Waltz, standing close to Charlene, turned to her smiling and said, “What about you, Charlene? You haven’t said a word.”

  “I know.” Charlene felt her face turning red. “This probably sounds stupid, but I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  “Well, no hurry.” Gretchen switched to Emil. “How about you?”

  He shrugged his great shoulders and shook his head, with its bald and cratered dome. “I’m the same as Charlene. Give me a few more days, and I’ll know where I want to go and what I want to do.”

  Charlene felt a surge of gratitude. He did know his own plans, she felt sure he did — but he was saying he didn’t, so she wouldn’t feel like the odd exception. Emil went farther, turning deliberately away from Gretchen toward Sy and saying, “You’ve asked everybody else, but you’ve been very coy about your own intentions. What will you be doing?”

  “I wish I knew. I can assure you of one thing, I won’t be working as part of a group.”

  Everyone laughed, and Charlene was astonished. Sy had actually made a joke about his own solitary preferences.

  “I can tell you my goal,” Sy went on. “The beings performing the stellarforming may seem omnipotent and omniscient so far as we are concerned, but they made it clear that there’s one thing they don’t understand. The Kermel Objects are as much a mystery to them as they are to us. I want to take a closer look at them and see what I can learn.”

  “But they’re outside the galaxy,” Eva Packland objected. “Tens of thousands of light-years, and some of them a lot farther than that.”

  “So?” Sy shrugged. “Did I say I was in a hurry? I’m willing to travel in T-state, or in cold sleep, or whatever it takes. We don’t even know the best time rate at which to study them — it could require some new state we haven’t discovered yet.”

  “But the time it will take — “ Eva paused.

  “ — is nothing to worry about, considering how much time we’ve got. Even if we question the motives of the disembodied aliens we met at Urstar, we know from our own work on stellar evolution that a small red dwarf star can sustain fusion processes for a hundred billion years or more. If understanding takes that long, I’m willing to wait.”

  “But that’s so far ahead, general expansion will have made the universe unrecognizable — probably incomprehensible. Acceleration may make everywhere inaccessible beyond the local galactic cluster.”

  “So the universe may become beyond our comprehension. Do you understand the universe as it is now, Eva? I certainly don’t.”

  “You may not be able to survive in what the universe becomes.”

  “True. That would be bad, because you know what I really want? I’ll tell you: I want to live forever. But I’m willing to risk death in order to do it. Now, that’s enough talk about me. We all have things to do. Let’s go and do them.” Sy promptly left the control chamber. Other people, following his lead, began to drift out in small groups of three or four. Finally, only Charlene and Emil were left. He leaned back in his chair and said, “What now?”

  “I don’t know. You pretended you didn’t know where you were going, just so I wouldn’t feel bad. I appreciate that, but you shouldn’t have done it.” “I didn’t do it. I spent most of last night and this morning trying to find you. Where were you?”

  “Nowhere. Everywhere. Wandering around Gulf City.”

  “Well, that’s a shame. I wanted to talk to you. You’ve been restless ever since we started back from Urstar. I wanted to ask why.”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I’m out of place among the rest of you. I was never a super-brain or a super-achiever. Just a normal person, with average abilities.” “I don’t see you that way, and I never have. The reason I wanted to find you was to make a proposition.”

  He was rubbing his head, shielding the scarred and battered area. Charlene stared at him, afraid she was misunderstanding.

  “A proposition? What sort of proposition?”

  “I could say, the usual kind, but that’s not true. Look, Charlene, I’m tired of life out in open space. I want to get back to a planet. I know I’m a pretty battered object, and not much of a catch.” He hesitated. “Not a catch at all, you might say, for any rational person. But I wondered if you might be willing to go with me.”

  Charlene stared at him and said nothing.

  “I mean, as my partner,” Emil went on at last. “Live together. Maybe even start a — “

  “Emil, I’m old. I’m at least fifty thousand years older than you are.” “Not really. I’ve thought abou
t that, and I’ve done the calculations. If you allow for all the time you’ve spent in S-space, and in cold sleep, you are still a young woman. In subjective time, you have lived only two years more than I have. We are both easily young enough to start a family.”

  “On a planet?”

  “It would have to be.”

  “That would mean N-space, with time running at normal rates. Even with the best life-extension treatment, we would die in a few centuries.”

  “I know. That’s why I was almost afraid to ask. But I’m asking. Will you do it, Charlene? Pick a place, and go there together, and see what happens.” He saw her hesitation, and added, awkwardly, “If you didn’t like it, or couldn’t stand me, you could always leave.” He looked at her, the hand covering his forehead held so low above his eyes that he seemed to be peering out from under its shield. “What do you say?”

  “I say — “ Charlene felt as though she could not breathe, and she had to pause for a moment. “Emil, I don’t know — I can’t — I’ll have to think about it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The sun was a fraction redder than Sol, although nothing like the red dwarf stars making their steady takeover of the galaxy. The planet was also a little too far away to be an ideal home for life. Except for a brief period close to summer solstice, frigid air from the poles took the night-time temperatures below the freezing point of water.

  And yet — Charlene smiled to herself — to pretend that this was in any sense a “frontier existence,” in the old meaning of the word, was ridiculous. The fusion energy plant in the corner of the kitchen room, an unobtrusive object the size of an old wastepaper basket, would warm the house at any preferred level. It would continue to do that for centuries, without need for adjustment or maintenance.

  As for cooking and cleaning and laundry, Charlene could do those herself — if she chose. She rarely did, except for such personal assignments as the decoration of a child’s birthday cake. Normally she instructed the robots and left them to get on with it.