The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  The majority of us will travel down-phase, in ursidormizine slumber. Commander Stefan Odenwald will yield the bridge and his primary continuity-preserving duties to Hiller Nevels and a fresh team of self-sacrificing troubleshooters, all volunteers, for Odenwald hopes to wake with legs fresh enough to climb a lovely new peak on the world that we discover and colonize in the Tau Ceti system.

  Who can blame him? He has aged beyond any of the rest of us, excepting only Commander Roosenno, who will stay here in the Epsilon Eridani system, and Commander Joanna Diane Joplin, who ceased aging forever in the fatal millrace of the Barricado Stream.

  As noted, the personnel aboard Zwicky will remain in orbit around New Home for as long as it takes to outlast the surface inferno brought about by the impact of the asteroid that Bao has named Epimenides, after a figure in Greek mythology who, while seeking a lost sheep, fell asleep for fifty-seven years and on awakening resumed his search unaware that so much time had passed. The oracle of Delphi then recruited Epimenides to cleanse Athens of a plague. Bao sees parallels between our slumbers and Epimenides’, and between Zwicky’s task upon coming awake and that of the ancient Greek shepherd.

  Briefly, Roosenno, like Odenwald, plans to send most of his would-be colonists down-phase until planetary conditions permit their revival. Then they will undertake the daunting task of turning New Home into a permanent human colony. Blessedly, the ark-to-ark redundancy of our skills makes the separate agendas of our ships both feasible and attractive. The survival of our kind, we feel, depends not only on diversity, but also on our projection across as much of the inhabitable or terraformable galaxy as we can reach.

  How did we make these decisions? Most democratically, in the extraordinary session I will now describe.

  * * *

  Twelve days ago, when Odenwald first broached this plan in the auditorium of Annie’s A-Tower, few of us could credit that he wanted us to vote on an “option” as hare-brained as resuming our expedition. We had gathered, after dozens and dozens of rim-car trips, to discuss the issue in face-to-face assembly (rather than from separate electronic carrels), and the first question from the floor surprised no one, least of all Stefan Odenwald himself.

  “How can we go on to another solar system when by most cogent reckonings, we’ve nearly exhausted our supplies of antihydrogen ice?” Thom Koon asked this for everyone but about thirty techs and/or scientists already in the know.

  At the head of our banner-hung auditorium, Odenwald asked Thich Ngoc Bao to reply. Bao stepped to the podium to address us: “Good evening.”

  I had Dean in my lap, for Odenwald had told us that no one should miss this gathering; that, in fact, children should also attend.

  So when Bao said, “Good evening,” we replied in kind, like children answering a teacher.

  Dean, waving crazily, called out, “Bao! Bao! Bao!” until I brought his arm down and whispered as quietly as the noise level allowed, “Hush, DeBoy. Hush.”

  Dean hushed.

  “Hydrogen is no problem,” Bao said confidently, his reedy voice echoing. “We harvested this fuel during the deceleration process, from the Barricado on in.”

  “What about the antihydrogen?” Thom cried. “Do you guys plan to turn regular hydrogen molecules inside out?”

  Bao shifted his weight. “You should know that every ship in our armada, including Chandrasekhar”—he briefly shut his eyes—“was built with the capacity to generate antihydrogen for travel beyond the Epsilon Eridani system.”

  This news stunned most of us in the A-Tower auditorium. I had certainly never supposed us to have the ability to journey to another system, perhaps even back to Earth. And none of my friends—with the conspicuous exception of Thich Ngoc Bao—had suspected it either.

  “How can we do that?” somebody shouted.

  “Each ark is also a cyclotron, a particle accelerator,” Bao said. “Each accelerator runs right down the underside of the fuel wheel itself, around its circumference. Given enough time and energy, the cyclotron belting Annie Jump will produce the hydrogen antiprotons necessary to fuel our journey from here to Tau Ceti.”

  Across the hall from where Lily, Dean, and I sat, Milo Pask stood up and shouted, “You geniuses kept this a secret? Why? Are we nonphysicists mere freeloaders? Idiot peons unworthy of consultation?”

  Odenwald rejoined Bao at the podium. “Please recall that when the U.N. originally began planning a mission to Epsilon Eridani, we didn’t know for sure if any planet out here would prove suitable for colonization. We thought it highly likely, of course, but didn’t really know.”

  “Sir, what’s your point?.” Milo Pask asked.

  “Simply that our mission’s first mandate was one of hopeful exploration. Originally, then, U.N. planners allotted us only two ships, both of which were to have antimatter factories so that they could return to Earth after exploring the target star system. In that scenario, I’ll remind you, Annie Jump Cannon didn’t even exist.”

  Pask, peevishly flushed, was still on his feet, and an undercurrent of impatience—lapping the commander, not Pask—ran through the hall.

  “During this initial planning,” Odenwald went on, “off-Earth telescopes on Luna and the moons of Mars strengthened the case for a habitable planet here in EE. As a result, our mission changed, from one of exploring and establishing a permanent base if conditions allowed, to one of pure colonization. That change led us to add a third ship and extra people, not only because many more nations were clamoring to take part but also because planting a successful colony requires a diverse genepool and a third ship would give us insurance against an act of fate. In this, by the way, you can see how prescient the U.N. planners proved themselves.”

  “What about the antimatter factories?” Pask yelled.

  “When we added Annie, mission costs skyrocketed. The most effective way to cut costs was to dump the notion of putting an accelerator on each vessel. Bao here, along with Trachtenberg and Arbib, considered that suicidal; the manufacturers of our wheelships thought it a kind of sacrilege—namely, bad design—and worked fiendishly to come up with a dirtcheap redesign that would save the antimatter factories. They did. Then they shunted their costs into other systems, at least on disk, and actually built the accelerators. Unfortunately, they couldn’t test them without betraying their presence, and they had no money for testing anyway. So the planners kept them a secret—to prevent protests, work stoppages, maybe even the collapse of the entire project.”

  Pask was having none of this. “Why keep the accelerators a secret once we’d fled our Earthbound debts? It all smacks of a sleazy elitism!”

  “Damned straight!” people cried.

  “¡Eso es verdad!”

  “Go get ‘em, Milo!”

  “¡Claro que si!”

  Like a bidder at a noisy auction, Odenwald raised his arm. “True, once we were on our way, no one on our dirty, anarchic planet was going to stop us. We had what we needed, and we ran so far beyond Earth’s jurisdiction as to become a species apart from those left behind. So we stayed mum, both over the radio and aboard our ships, out of respect.”

  “Respect?” several people cried incredulously.

  Odenwald increased the gain on his mike. “We didn’t want to rub our patrons’ noses in either our early defiance or our present freedom. More important, we were afraid the cyclotrons might not work. We had no reason to try them while in transit and no desire to raise false hopes about their capabilities if the trip to Eppie went forward smoothly, as it did until we hit the Barricado. And even the painful loss of Chandrasekhar did nothing to persuade Commander Roosenno or me we should tell you the accelerators existed. What for? Epsilon Eridani Two—New Home—still looked to be a viable colony site. So our silence about them was meant to keep everyone up-phase focused on our prime destination, not to relegate any of you to the status of mere steerage riders.”

  “But that’s what it did!” Pask shouted. “Knowing we could go from this system to another, and maybe e
ven from Tau Ceti to yet another one, would’ve eased our minds! It would’ve saved me a lot of anxiety!”

  Pask looked around. Odenwald’s explanation had quieted the bulk of the hall. Reluctantly, Pask sat down, and Bao moved up to the podium again to speak:

  “Recent tests of the accelerators on Annie Jump and Fritz Zwicky confirm their reliability. Tau Ceti is closer to Eppie than Eppie is to Sol. We can accomplish the trip without undue emotional stress or physical hardship—in about half the time it took to come here. I have nothing else to add unless some of you have technical inquiries that would fall within my areas of expertise.”

  “Wonderful!” someone not far from me shouted—Thom Koon, I think. “A mere half century!”

  “Ursidormizine slumber will turn that half century into a sleep and a forgetting,” Bao said smoothly.

  Too smoothly, I’m afraid.

  The med techs responsible for maintaining the bioracks and their monitoring systems had seats on a catwalk to Bao’s left; a dozen of them stood up and booed. Several other maintenance specialists—down on the floor with Lily, Dean, and me—joined the med techs in jeering Bao’s proposal.

  “Booooo! Booooo!” The auditorium echoed with this ugly rumbling. A few people began to stamp their feet.

  “It’s Bao, not Boo,” Bao told us. “You’re using the wrong diphthong.”

  Not many of Bao’s auditors—if you could call them that—caught this witticism. In fact, the booing and foot-stamping got louder. Here and there throughout the hall, people stood to voice their dissent, if not their outrage.

  When the woman in front of me rose, Dean struggled out of my lap and held himself upright with his feet on my thighs. I could no longer see the podium.

  “Quiet!” I heard Odenwald’s amplified voice say. “Resume your seats!”

  In the face of this esteemed authority, the mutiny more or less ended. Silence settled. People sat back down. Tension, however, left an inaudible buzz in the air; and if Pask or some other aggrieved renegade chose to challenge Odenwald, I feared that chaos—out-and-out insurrection—would erupt in full and undefeatable cry.

  Meanwhile, Dean continued to balance himself erect on my thighs. When I tried to tug him back down, he seized the chair back in front with one hand and, with the other, fended off my frustrated tugging.

  “Bao!” Dean shouted into the silence. “Bao! Bao! Bao!” He pistoned his right arm, an emphatic machine, up and down. “Bao! Bao! Bao!”

  At the mike again, Bao said, “Of all the learned people in this gathering today, only young Gwiazda seems to know how to pronounce my name. Thank you, Dean.”

  “Bao!” Dean shouted again. “Bao, holy crow, you are really welcome!” Then eased back into my lap.

  A ripple of applause and a drizzle of cheers boomed into a tidal swell of acclamation. Singlehandedly, so to speak, Dean had scotched any threat of mayhem.

  Lily rolled her eyes at me. She patted Dean on the leg. Under her breath, she murmured, “Way to go, Tiny Tim. And God bless us, every one.”

  Bao had control of the meeting again. He pointed out that even if we moved Annie ten times closer to Eppie than New Home orbited—to make use of the energy generated by the solar cells affixed to the hydrogen tanks covering our fuel wheel—we would still require about eighty-five days to create a single ton of antihydrogen. Given Annie’s overall weight and the speeds that we had to achieve to complete our journey to Tau Ceti in fifty years, it would take another half century, up front, to concoct the 370 tons of antimatter necessary for our trip.

  If Bao had given us this news a moment ago, an all-out riot would have broken out. As it was, we began to hear hostile—if not downright bloody—murmurings again.

  Greta Agostos stood up. “That puts us back to where we were when we left Earth—a century away from our destination! Possibly more!”

  “If I could lessen the time and energy requirements,” Bao said, “believe me, I would. But some things are givens. You either deal with them or pitch an infantile tantrum. I would strongly urge the former.”

  “Amen,” said Milo Pask. “Amen.” And his consent, after the outrage he’d so angrily voiced, seemed to bring a rational truce upon the convocation.

  Odenwald took over good-naturedly from Bao, secret-keeper par excellence, and let it be known that Commander Roosenno and he favored a plan whereby Fritz Zwicky stayed in orbit around New Home until it became habitable again and Annie Jump went on to the Tau Ceti system. However, within certain well-defined parameters, they would permit personnel exchanges between our ships: the trade-offs mustn’t drastically unbalance the skills available to either the would-be colonists or the interstellar voyagers. Whatever we did, long stretches of ursidormizine slumber lay ahead of us, as did a host of catch-as-catch-can repairs. Our wheelships, after all, were old. On Earth, we’d regard them as antiques.

  “But the plan favored by Commander Roosenno and me isn’t a fait accompli,” Odenwald said. “I called you here to vote on, not merely to endorse, it, and I trust you to discuss and pass on the question like intelligent adults.”

  I squeezed Dean’s leg and whispered to Lily, “Do our less than genius kids get a vote too?”

  “Ask him,” Lily said sotto voce.

  But before I could, Kaz had risen to his feet. “Sir, why don’t we return to Earth—not just Annie Jump, but Fritz Zwicky too? Tau Ceti may well lack a colonizable planet, and New Home may never recover from its asteroid strike.”

  “Are you making a motion that we return to Earth?”

  “No, sir. I’m putting it forward as an option worthy of debate. The Sol system bred and gave us birth. Neither Tau Ceti nor Epsilon Eridani can say as much, and some of us now have children. Who wishes to doom them to death in an alien star system with no provision for basic human needs—food, air, water, a sense of belonging?”

  Kaz sat down, and we debated the matter. Few wanted to return to Earth. In a quick poll, even our children rejected that option. We had fled Earth to explore, to claim new and rejuvenating territories for our species, not to bail out when that very enterprise—as we had known it would do and so had tried to anticipate—threw obstacles in our way. Besides, we all owed the universe a death, and better to pay up seeking a fruitful tomorrow than retreating to a polluted cradle.

  When Odenwald actually called the vote, less than a hundred people selected the return-to-Earth option. Not even Kaz voted for it. He had raised the question with an eye on the future of the innocents born in transit to New Home, and I respected his love and scrupulosity in this. He had completely overcome his early bias against Dean.

  After that, the final vote was easy. Annie Jump Cannon’s personnel overwhelmingly approved Commander Odenwald’s plan to resupply ourselves with antihydrogen ice and then to set out for Tau Ceti. A gathering like ours on Fritz Zwicky approved Roosenno’s plan to remain in orbit, waiting out the dust storm and the greenhouse effect on New Home. If we were all equally lucky, Annie would leave for Tau Ceti about the time those on Zwicky ventured to the surface for the initial steps of their colony planting.

  “Hooray!” cried Dean, clapping, when Odenwald announced the results of our vote. “Bao! Bao! Bao!”

  * * *

  At the end of this same meeting, Odenwald congratulated us not only on our decisions, but also on having participated in humanity’s first successful venture to another solar system. Whatever happens to us in the coming weeks, months, and years, we have made history, and no one can take that achievement away from us.

  “So Commander Roosenno and I agree that we should celebrate our arrival here,” Odenwald told us. “We therefore decree a three-day festival, to begin officially at 0800 hours the day after tomorrow.”

  And so it has happened—namely, an alternately solemn and gala commemoration of what we’ve done, featuring personnel exchange between our wheelships and continuous ship-to-ship TV broadcasts. Our revelries have included songfests, skits, mess parties, musical competitions, art shows, vidouts
, seminars, and, most important to me, poetry head-to-heads.

  Thich Ngoc Bao on Annie Jump and Bashemath Arbib on Fritz Zwicky organized competitions in the writing of ballads, odes, sonnets, sestinas, and haiku, among other forms, and required contestants to use different astrophysical phenomena as their poems’ subjects or controlling metaphors.

  Inevitably, Ghulam Sharif and I found ourselves squared off in three categories, the most amusing a haiku-writing contest. We wrote in our cubicles aboard our own ships, but the finished poems flashed onto toadstool units everywhere as well as onto the huge softscreens in our A-Tower auditoriums.

  In her broadcast introduction, Arbib explained, “In its classical form, the Japanese haiku evokes a season. So each contestant must write four poems, using astrophysical phenomena for their primary metaphors.…”

  Ghulam and I had ten minutes for each haiku, after which we screened them simultaneously (despite their staggered display here), on penalty of disqualification. Their progression ran winter, spring, summer, fall:

  Sharif

  Gwiazda

  Interstellar planet

  ice glistens in star-lit dark:

  does it dream of spring?

  Each vast aggregate

  glitters, a many-armed flake:

  beautiful, unique

  Hydrogen ions

  chirp and twitter microwaves

  making nests: the stars

  Plasma stirs and jets:

  a furnace catalyzer

  in cold birth-throe depths

  Swelling blue-white star