Not that all ten thousand are expected to be implanted in wombs the instant we arrive. If the medical science is right, those embryos will be good for at least a hundred years or more, on top of the total trip time. So that as new generations of Delta Pavonians—my Lord, that is clumsy, we simply must come up with a better word for ourselves—come of age, the women can have some original offspring, and at least one or two "stasis babies" originally carried from Earth.
Inside of two centuries, if everything progresses according to the plan, there'll be no fear of inbreeding. For anyone. And there will be so many people living on the new world that even a significantly major disaster won't be able to wipe us all out.
Much depends on those first twenty-five years.
When we'll be digging in. Putting down roots. Staking our claim.
To that end I've been slowly and methodically constructing my arsenal of weaponry. Using the rifle designs Ben and I first finalized way back when I was in my twenties. I've taken them outside and test-fired the lot of them, and am satisfied that they will suffice. Unless the new planet is literally infested with bloodthirsty monsters bigger than the biggest elephant, we ought to be able to fend off whatever nasties may be lurking in those jungles and forests.
Which we still can't see—as anything more than a green blur.
It takes hours for the telescopes to find the planet circling Delta Pavonis, and then it's impossible to get a clear shot because of relative drift. Even when we're getting closer and closer all the time.
Audio Journal Transcript: Day 20,000
Twenty-kay day.
I'll turn 63 soon.
In a few more years we will begin our down-thrust into the gravity well of Delta Pavonis.
I'm not paying much attention to the names of the people to be woken up next. They are babies, basically, and I've gotten tired of changing diapers. Metaphorically-speaking.
I now spend as much time away from the youngsters as I can.
My jobs on the maintenance schedule are forgotten.
There are younger people to do all of it now. Quicker, smarter, stronger. I try to keep up with them in the gym, but it's tough. I'm not the man I used to be. If only I could talk to my grandfather now, I know he'd understand. But he's been dead for a long time. In fact, most of the people I knew on Earth when I was a boy, are gone. Memories only. Washed away by time and distance.
Once in awhile I still go to the medical bay and talk to Li, or my parents. Sometimes I even talk to Leah, who still looks like a young teenager. Or is it that I've gotten so old, everyone around me seems impossibly youthful? I can't really say for sure. All I know is that I seem to have an easier time talking to the near-dead, than I do to the alive.
The kids think I am the strangest sort of creature: odd, annoying, occasionally funny, but also occasionally scary.
One of the older crew yelled at me one day when he caught me chasing a crop of little ones down the corridor, roaring like a beast and wagging my arms and legs about: my tongue flapping and my eyes huge.
Apparently I'd caused one of them to cry!
A menace, I was.
Fuck 'em. It's not my fault if they don't have a sense of humor.
Audio Journal Transcript: Day 25,000
I'm old.
Old, and tired.
And they turned the goddamned gravity back on.
Not that you can "turn on" gravity. It's just that the Osprey has done an about face, and we've been burning the engine again. Bleeding off relative velocity as we close in on Delta Pavonis. It's been a long time in coming. But I am resenting having the full weight of my body—not to mention my years—pressing down on me a little bit more each passing day.
If the math holds we should reach our target in about a dozen years.
Enough time for one more awake shift.
Joy. Another patch of snot-noses to wrangle with. This last group almost did me in. Thought they knew everything. Even the tots. It was enough to drive a man crazy.
I'll be glad when everyone finally gets off this stinking ship.
Audio Journal Transcript: Day 28,900
One of the little ones came jumping up to me today and exclaimed, "We can see home!"
Ordinarily I'd have ignored such ruckus, but I decided to humor the child and allowed myself to be lead away to the control room where the telescopes were capturing high-quality, high-resolution images of the Earth-type world which has been drawing us onward like a bulb draws moths in the summer evening.
Even with the better part of a year still in front of us, I have to admit, the view is fairly spectacular.
The planet is a ball of mostly-blue from pole to pole, with fantastic archipelagos and island chains wrapping and rewrapping the planet from east to west, and back again. As if all the world has become Indonesia. But unspoiled. Pure. Each small land mass covered in lush, green vegetation. Mountains and valleys, rivers and river deltas, masses of white clouds and broiling storms and, yes, there in the southern hemisphere, the tell-tale whorl of a typhoon.
Room enough for ten thousand nations, I thought.
Give people enough time...
But will we get it right? I mean, any more right than we got it the first time, back home on Earth?
Wait, this is home now. Or rather, it will be.
I must admit to being surprised I made it this far.
My health is fragile, and my bones are thin, and my hands and face are covered with spots. There's no hair on my head, and I've got to use a cane I built from a piece of mill stock in the maintenance bay.
Whole generations of crew have passed through the bowels of the Osprey, one after the next, and I'm the only one to have seen and experienced them all. I am like the biblical Methuselah: the living hourglass by which the entire mission has been measured. Can I hold out for just one more year? What will it be like to actually stretch my toes out into the sand on those new beaches? Of which there will doubtless be an endless variety.
Audio Journal Transcript: Day 29,199
We're in orbit, by God.
500 miles up, and doing fine.
Not a single fleck of space debris—nor any artificial satellites.
A clean slate in space, as well as on the ground.
The new planet has a moon about the size of Callisto. Much bigger than Earth's moon. But roughly about as dense. We're seeing evidence of active volcanism on that moon, as well as on the planet below. Which doesn't necessarily mesh with our expectations, given the estimated age of the Delta Pavonis system.
But then, that's part of the fun, right? To come all this way and have assumptions overturned?
Magical.
With everyone being woken up and the aerospace shuttles officially unpacked from their bulbous conformal cocoons amidships, the Osprey is suddenly alive with chattering and laughter and arguments—both civil and not-so-civil.
I have retreated to the room just underneath the bow shield.
Where Leah and I used to come.
I haven't had the heart to find or talk to her yet. I've mostly kept out of the way and let the kids do all of the work. This is their party, not mine.
Li found me sulking.
If she was mad at me for putting her back into stasis against her wishes, she didn't show it. She simply ran a finger along my chin and over my jaw, then leaned in and gave me a very gentle kiss on the lips. Before tears pooled at the corners of her eyes and she floated away from me back toward the IST that would take her down to where the action was.
It wasn't the kind of steamy kiss I'd last gotten from her, but it was sufficient to get my blood moving. I sat there for a long time, remembering how things had been when she'd still held out hope that my stasis instability syndrome could be cured.
She'd wanted so many things for us then. Things we'd now never get to have, despite having made it to the new star.
My mother and father found me next.
It was like seeing ghosts.
Their smiles faltered when
they saw how decrepit I'd become.
"What have we done to you?" Mama said, tears fluttering from her eyes.
"It wasn't your fault," I told her. "Neither of you had any idea this would happen to me. Come now, there's work to be done. A new life to be lived. You and Papa are still young. You have plenty of time for a new son. Go. Down to the new planet. Be happy."
Papa braced my shoulders with his manly, strong hands, and squeezed tightly.
He understood.
He was crying too, but he understood.
I hugged him close to me, then hugged my mother.
I didn't watch them go as they left me to my silence.
Audio Journal Transcript: Day 29,235
They've started a fresh calendar down on the new world. The days are much longer: by about six Earth hours. Perhaps a blessing, or perhaps a curse? I'm pretty sure the tradition of siesta will be alive and well on this, the official second home of humanity in the galaxy.
When all but a few of the landing craft departed the ship, and there was barely anyone left onboard the Osprey, Leah came and asked me to come down.
Molly, and Kroger too.
And Ben and Laura. And Chris. And Kevin and Cassie.
I'm older now than all of them.
We packed up all of my belongings, to include an ancient kite which had been under my bunk for almost eight decades. The plastic had become brittle. I wasn't sure it would fly. But I figured I would give it a shot.
Everyone ushered me to the precipice—the docking tunnel that would take me over to the aerospace shuttle, which sat fully-fueled and ready to streak down towards the planet's surface.
I stopped there, considering.
It would be hard, the new world. So much work to do. If I'd hated the gee exerted on the ship during downthrusting, I'd hate the real gravity twice as much. My old body might last a week or two in such an environment, but probably no more than that. I'd have a stroke, or my heart would give out, or I'd fall and bust a hip. That was no way to go. Not when they still needed the Osprey to remain functional in orbit. As a satellite relay, both for on-world communication and for pitching messages back toward Sol System—our far away brothers and sisters on the old world.
"No," I finally said to my friends. "I can't go down. But you can do one thing for me. Take Janicka's body and bury it in a sunny place, with the others who died. Where the trees grow tall and the noise of the ocean is in the wind."
I gave them my kite.
"Make sure one of the children gets to fly this too."
There was, of course, much protest.
But I waived them off.
"Are you going to argue with your senior?" I said, half-joking. "I will stay here. It'll be just the Osprey and me. Together. She's my woman now. We are the only ones old enough to understand each other."
Their faces showed concern and sorrow, but they ultimately left me in peace.
Audio Journal Transcript: Final Entry
And here onboard the Osprey I remain. The ship is all but empty. Nobody comes up anymore, though occasionally I do send something down when they need it—in one of the numerous emergency reentry pods. Eventually I'll run out of those, but not before the ship has been stripped of virtually every usable piece of technology that can be put to work below. There's only enough left onboard these days to keep the power, the air, and the hydroponics farm running.
My lovely farm.
Where I grow just enough for me to eat, which isn't much.
And where I suppose someday I'll lay down and let the Universe take me.
To be totally honest, it's not been a bad life. I've had responsibilities and I've taken lovers and I've made amends for my wrongs. I've also helped bring a miracle to fruition. There's a new civilization going on down there, on that new world. I think they named it something lofty-sounding, but I can't remember what. A pretty name. Doesn't really matter. They're doing what needs to be done. And I am fully confident that a thousand years from now, this place will be vibrant and alive with people. Maybe launching their own ships towards still more distant stars? Maybe cracking the light-speed barrier altogether, and turning voyages like mine into a question of months, weeks, or even days.
Who knows?
I've got the Osprey's long-range radio dishes fine-tuned for communication traffic with Earth. Broadcasts back to Sol System take a long time. I let them know that the Osprey has arrived, and that her mission is officially accomplished to satisfaction.
I don't expect anything in return. I won't be alive to listen to their reply.
One thing, though.
Today Leah sent me a high-resolution image of Janicka's grave, where the four bodies of our fallen starfarers now rest.
It's a monument, actually. A huge stone obelisk twenty meters high watches over a gorgeous bluff that looks out across an amazing, endless, wave-tumbled sea.
The plants look a bit strange. Not like Earth plants.
But green is still green.
And the clouds are bright white.
And the sky is true blue.
* * *
Rubik's Chromosomes
Megan Chaudhuri | 3352 words
Tecca inspected the tooth marks on the Rubik's cube, running her thumb over the gouged squares. "These vintage cubes're pricey, Jonathan," she said, looking at the albino mouse sitting on her desk. "Stop chewing off the colors when they don't match."
A small curl of yellow plastic dropped from his mouth as he squeaked defiantly at her. Tecca set the cube at the edge of the desk's built-in display. Turning his white back to her, Jonathan waddled over to the cube, leaving paw prints across the display.
"While you're at it, little man," Tecca said, buffing the prints off with her sleeve as she watched Jonathan inspect the cube. "Figure out how we're going to make rent on this glorified Seattle closet, because—"
"Urgent," the desk chirped. Tecca flinched, her hands smacking the gel display and bringing it out of sleep mode. The desk continued blithely. "Self-referred consultation, ten minutes. Regarding: peer-review of core genetic sequence modifications."
Tecca immediately forgave the desk's bad timing. "Summarize client!" she shouted. The desk chugged a moment, trying to parse the command out of her excited squeal, and Tecca slapped the surface to cancel it. "Summarize client," she repeated, her voice flat and slow even as she pumped her fist in the air.
As the desk chugged through that command, Tecca snatched up the Rubik's cube and Jonathan. Ignoring his protests, she set him in his toy-stuffed cage on the far wall of her office.
"Client name: ibn Saud, Faisal, and bint Khalid, Seeta," the desk said.
Tecca's hands went still, the cage lid only half on.
"Deposit: paid. Tracking number confirmation in progress. Consent pursuant to Gene Expression Variability and Genetic Fraud Act of 2143: confirmed."
"Sauds," Tecca said. Jonathan looked up at her tone, his whiskers quivering curiously before he appeared to remember that he was ignoring her. "I thought they never left Vashon nowadays, if they could help it." She dimly recalled visiting Little Riyadh as a kid, back before the '48 recession made the locals growl about hidden oil money and unpaid taxes. The Sauds had abandoned Little Riyadh soon after the graffiti and threats had started, retreating to Vashon.
Tecca closed the cage lid and went back to her desk chair. The gel rippled beneath her fingers as she queried for SAUDI EXILES AND VASHON ISLAND SEATTLE AND FAISAL IBN SAUD OR SEETA BINT KHALID.
A knock. Tecca jumped, hastily closing the search results. She called out, "Come in, please."
The door opened, letting in the smell of wet pavement, a man in a pricey-looking suit, and a woman in a—robe? A five-sizes-too-large black poncho? Tecca didn't recall seeing the getup in Little Riyadh, but it was vaguely familiar. Reminded her of that baggy cloak and dress combo the Christ's Children women wore in eastern Washington. Not that one of those nutjobs would ever come near a geneticist.
Abaaya, that was it.
T
ecca caught herself staring and stood up, covering her rudeness by enthusiastically putting out her hand. "Faisal, Seeta? I'm Tecca Jamison. How're you doing?"
Faisal shut the door as Seeta silently shook her hand. Tecca gestured them into the seats opposite her, busying herself as Seeta pulled the abaaya off and draped it over the back of the chair. Without it, the woman could have passed for a well-tailored Seattlite.
"Thank you for seeing us on such short notice," Faisal said, ignoring Tecca's pleasantries. He had no accent, although the rhythm of his speech was—different. "We haven't much time—our shuttle is cleared to take off within the hour—but we need a second opinion on a DNA design." He removed a small chrome data stick from inside his suit jacket. Tecca caught a brief glimpse of silk lining. Silk suits and private shuttles; maybe there was something to those old oil money rumors.
"I'm happy to take a look," Tecca said. "Was the build done by a Saud geneticist?"
"It will be reviewed by one," Faisal said. Tecca waited for him to actually answer the question but the man jerked his head to one side, as if dismissing that line of thought.
All right, then. It'd be clear who did the design soon enough; all the major firms had their own quirks. Tecca gestured at the data stick, probing for what several descendants of the royal House of Saud were doing in her low-rent office. "Has the design already been built into an embryo?"
"No," Faisal shook his head. He cupped his wife's hand as Seeta slipped her arm through his. "My wife has some reservations about its quality."
Before Tecca could open her mouth to ask why, Seeta glanced up and shrugged. "Oh, just woman's intuition." She had the same rapid speech as Faisal. "Our first child and all."
"If you're worried about the sequence quality," Tecca said, a little more sharply than she'd intended. Honesty at this point might cost her the rest of the job. "Most geneticists'd be happy to review their own work for free. Design neglect has, uh, some legal repercussions."
Analog Science Fiction And Fact - May 2014 Page 12
