Watching her hands move on the consoles, as surely as they had moved upon the computer, Peake envied her self-sufficiency.
She doesn’t need anybody. She has never had this sense of being only half a person, only half alive, the rest of the self moving away at nine point eight meters per second per second… it overwhelmed him to think how far apart he was already from Jimson, separated already by time as well as distance.
Ching slid open a panel; a savory smell emerged from the inside. She said, “I hope you like your steak well done.”
“As a matter of fact,” he said, chagrined, “I like it rare, but I’ll eat it any way it comes, Ching.”
“I like it well done,” Teague said, somersaulting down from the spincter lock. “Ouch! Someday I’ll have to get used to where the gravity is in the different modules! Can I have that one, Ching, and you fix a rare one for Peake? Don’t tell me your friend the computer mixed up the orders? I thought computers were infallible!”
Ching shook her head, handing him the plate of well-charred “steak.”
“A computer,” she said, glad to have something else to think about, “is an idiot savant. It does just exactly what it is told, and absolutely nothing it is not told to do. It’s only as intelligent as the person who programs it — and the person who uses it. It could have all the knowledge of the universe inside—” she waved at the console of the food processor, “and it wouldn’t be a bit of good unless somebody knew exactly the right instructions to give it, put into the computer in exactly the right way. I must have put in the wrong input — I thought I had it marked for rare, because I tend to digest proteins better when they’re somewhat under-coagulated — but it came out well done. But the computer isn’t at fault, only the instructions I gave it. A computer is exactly like an idiot savant. Remember the little boy they had on one of the training films we saw? He was blind, autistic, and couldn’t be toilet-trained, but at the age of nine he could add a column of ninety figures in his head. He didn’t know how he did it — in fact, he couldn’t be asked how he did it, because he seemed to understand numbers, but not verbal speech concepts. But you put in numbers and he would come up with the right answer.” As Ravi came in, still interlaced with Moira, handing her carefully down into the change of gravity in the DeMag units, she asked, “Is that how you do your lightning-calculation, Ravi? I can understand an autistic idiot doing that — he has nothing else to occupy his mind — but you’re highly intelligent and verbal too. Yet you compute automatically, in the same way as that autistic idiot-savant.”
“I wish I knew, Ching,” Ravi said. “All I can say is that old cliché from psychology — a normal person uses five per cent of his brain cells, the greatest geniuses maybe five per cent more than that. The other ninety per cent — well, who knows what’s inside it? Wild talents like Moira’s ESP, or mine, or the idiot-savant’s. Maybe anything, maybe nothing. Who knows? Who cares? Thank you, Ching,“ he added, taking a plate with a sizzling chunk of rare meat on it, “this is perfect.”
“I’ll have one just like it for you in five seconds, Peake,” Ching promised. “Is yours done well enough, Teague? How would you like yours cooked, Fontana?” She felt a surge of pleasure; they might not like her, but at this moment she was catering to their enjoyment, she was useful to them.
Ravi and Moira, still entwined loosely, ate, feeding each other choice bites from their plates. Teague and Fontana chatted, smiling.
“You’re a harpsichordist, a pianist, Fontana. And of course the weight problem, lifting a piano or harpsichord from Earth, would be impossible. But you have an electronic keyboard, don’t you?”
She nodded. “They warned me about that when I decided to specialize in keyboard music,” she said, “that any career off-planet would mean abandoning almost everything I’d done in music.”
“It should be possible to build a harpsichord,” Teague mused. “We’ve certainly got time enough, and we can machine any parts we want to very precise tolerances. Building here on shipboard, we can synthesize the materials…”
She shrugged. “I can play recorder and flute some, and an electronic keyboard will do for accompaniment,” she said, “and I never had any serious ambitions as a solo instrumentalist. It isn’t as if I’d had a talent like Zora’s. That kind of talent sweeps away everything else. Nobody with that much musical talent would have cared whether they made Ship or not, and of course they wouldn’t—”
“I don’t think it’s a question of talent,” Moira said, “Mei Mei had a voice as good as Zora’s. What she didn’t have was the drive, the ambition if you like. It isn’t talent that makes a performer. It’s desire — what a person wants more than anything in the world. I think all six of us wanted to make the Ship more than anything else, and we had more drive and ambition than the ones who turned up second to us.”
“I’m not so sure,” Fontana demurred, “at least half the class never wanted anything else but to be on the Ship, and at least thirty of them got cut out. I think there’s a certain amount of luck involved—”
“Luck!” Ching scoffed, “luck has nothing to do with it! We’re here because, basically, we worked harder than the others at what it takes…”
“Compatibility, too,” Teague said, “I think they tried mixing different combinations and we just came up as the ones who were most likely to be able to adjust…”
“I suspect,” said Peake, “that we’ll be debating that point for the next nine years or so! Why it was us, and not some other members of our class. But does it matter?” He yawned. “I’m tired. Excuse me — I want to explore the sleep cubicles. It’s your on-shift in navigation, Ravi, if anything should come up—”
“It won’t,” Ravi said, “as far as I can imagine, we could probably get along without any of us going to the Bridge for the next nine years or so.” His arm was still around Moira’s waist. He made a small, interrogative sound, tightening his arm around her. For a moment she was abashed; there was a momentary silence in the cabin, and she felt as if everyone was looking at them where they sat. Then, defiantly, she tossed her head. In this crowded ship everybody was going to know what everybody else was doing, and she had no reason to be ashamed of it. She might as well start the way she intended to go on, doing what she chose.
I’m not like Ching, I can’t be as self-sufficient as she is. I need people, I’m frightened…. The very thought of the vast window on the stars made her feel dizzy and weak, the steak curdling her stomach; she clutched at Ravi, hungry for reassurance.
Fontana said, “I think we all need a break. Suppose we all meet in four hours, here, for the first of those music sessions? Peake, you know Schubert’s Nocturne for piano and violin, don’t you?”
She knew he knew it, she knew it perfectly well, Peake thought angrily. She was rubbing it in. He and Jimson had played it at the last of the Academy concerts, they had been playing it that ghastly final night…. Queers, he heard again the taunt Jimson had flung at him. But Fontana was testing him, perhaps, seeing how well he could stick to the agreement not to cling to the past or torment one another with memories of those who were not with them. He said, “Sure, I know it, can you handle the piano part? I don’t know how it will sound on an electronic keyboard, though.”
“We’ll try it, anyhow,” Fontana said.
Teague said, a little diffidently, “Would anyone like to try the Mozart clarinet quintet?”
“I’ll take the second violin for that,” Ravi said, and they agreed to meet.
The six sleeping cubicles were arranged in a semicircular pattern around the spherical module; each cubicle, Ching had expected, would be the shape of a section of tangerine, but instead the cubicle was vaguely roomlike, the ends chopped off; she supposed that was to make them feel familiar, safe, womblike. At one side was a bunk with a restraining net; on the other, a small cubbyhole with shower and washing equipment, this part heavily DeMagged to full gravity for proper water-flow. She brushed her perfect teeth, feeling some comfort in the famili
ar ritual, and realized she had forgotten to get herself a disposable nightgown, or fresh clothing for the next shift, from the machine in the hallway. Darting out for it, she saw Moira and Ravi coming out of Moira’s cubicle, turning into Ravi’s, and heard their husky laughter. She felt a sadness too deep for mere envy. What does she know that I don’t know?
She punched the proper co-ordinates for fresh disposable clothing, stuffed everything she was wearing, except her panties, into the recycling chute. She had no particular modesty taboos, but somehow she could not force herself to strip to the skin before Moira and Ravi, who were behind her, also stripping, stuffing clothing into the recycler, stark naked. She turned her eyes shyly away from Ravi, who was strongly erect, and hurried into her cubicle, sliding the door shut. She fastened the restraining net over her bunk, turning the DeMags to half gravity, and forced her thoughts to try and float free. Fortunately the cubicles were completely soundproof.
Why should I wear a nightgown? There is no one here, nor likely to be anyone here! She pitched it fiercely out of her bunk and watched it drifting in lazy circles, trailing one sleeve, until finally, in the low gravity, it settled to the floor. Then she slept.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to make love in free-fall,” Fontana laughed, turning down the DeMag units almost to zero; the reflex action of the twist sent her into a gentle somersault, and when Tea-gue pulled her toward the bunk, he overreacted and sent them crashing toward the opposite wall where they came to rest against the safety net guarding the door of the shower cubicle and its full gravity.
“What is that? Irresistible passion?” Fontana laughed, and the very reflex of the laughter sent them bouncing away from the bunk. Before long they were laughing so hard that Teague lay back, helpless, unable to do anything at all with her.
“So much for all the jokes about the delights of making love in free-fall,” Teague said, making swimming motions in the air toward the stud on the DeMag unit.
“I still want to try it,” Fontana murmured, but Teague said, laughing, “I like my women to stay in one place— not go bouncing across the room when I do this—” he demonstrated.
“You’ve given me a good reason,” Fontana whispered, and put up her face to him.
Moira slept at his side, but Ravi lay awake staring at the ceiling of the bunk, his mind on the huge window from the Bridge, opening on the vastness of the stars.
The face of the Night, the face of god, perhaps, the very Unknown itself, envisioned by the religious philosophers of my ancestors.
It’s too much, how can a human mind envision it?
And, irrationally, he thought; I envy Ching. She manages to face solitude without refuges like this. He looked, tenderly and yet with great detachment, at Moira, clipped under the safety net, her hair floating loosely around her as she slept. He knew, if Moira did not, that his immediate response to her had been a refuge, an escape from a vastness too great to imagine.
And yet somehow I must manage to face it. I have wondered about the spiritual truths of the universe. When I can look into that enormity which represents the Face of God, then perhaps I shall be able to contemplate the nature of Truth, the nature of God, the nature of the Universe.
Peake had dozed only briefly, and returned to the main cabin, sorting music, tuning his violin. He would have to face it sooner or later, the thought of playing without Jimson at the piano. Fontana and Teague came in together, then Ching, in fresh disposable uniforms — Peake had not thought of that, and felt a little abashed at his own rumpled one. Perhaps they should make a habit of turning up in clean fresh clothing for their daily music session. It would give structure to the rhythms of the day. There would be so little to do, strictly speaking, that rigid structure might defend them against any chance of boredom and apathy setting in. Moira came in, getting out her cello and laying it against her knee.
“Give me an A, Peake,” she said lazily, and he sounded it.
Ching tuned her viola. Teague began putting his clarinet together.
“I’m better with a flute,” he warned. “I haven’t worked with a clarinet for some time.”
“Is there any reason you can’t play a clarinet part on a flute?” Fontana wanted to know.
“Only the tone color,” Teague said dryly, “and the range. Come to think of it, I do have an alto recorder, which has about the same range as the clarinet.” He went to the shelf where the various woodwinds were stacked. Ravi came in, asking, “Do you want me to play second violin in this one?”
Peake said, “You can play first if you want to,” but Ravi shook his head. “The first violin part is too hard for me. I’m not that good.”
When they began to play, Peake realized that Ravi was not being modest, but telling the precise truth. He was not much more than competent, as they all were competent, having studied violin since kindergarten. Nevertheless, he was competent. Ching’s playing was beautifully nuanced, unemotional — but then, baroque music was not intended to be emotional; Peake suspended judgment until he had heard her playing some romantic music. He wondered if, being a computer expert, she would play Mahler or Schonberg or Mendelssohn in that same technically-perfect, unemotional way.
Moira was almost a virtuoso; he quickly discovered that she was a match for him. Perhaps they could play some violin-and-cello duets — and he flinched away from the thought. Was he so quickly disloyal to Jimson? When they finished the quintet, and Teague put away his clarinet — he had played only the first movement with the recorder and switched to the clarinet, saying it was a more flexible instrument — Ching, Moira, and Teague, with Ravi playing his drums, began improvising on a jazz theme, and Peake went to sit and listen, saying that the audience was also a valid part of a musical experience,
He listened to Ravi, who was as much a virtuoso on drums as he had been undistinguished on the violin.
Jimson had loved to improvise, to take off on a theme and carry it to new heights where Peake could not follow him….
To Fontana it was obvious what Peake was thinking; he had agreed not to speak of those left behind, but could anything keep them from brooding? She came over and sat down on the arm of his chair.
“Still brooding over Jimson, Peake?”
“I suppose it doesn’t make sense,” he said, defensively.
“Considering that, within five years, Jimson will probably be governing a Space Station, and the probability of our surviving five years hasn’t even been computed yet, I wouldn’t think it made much sense to worry about Jimson,” she agreed.
“It’s just — I never even thought about what would happen if we didn’t both make it. I’m having to — to rearrange all my mental furniture.” He added, defensively, “You can’t expect me to — to change everything in my head overnight, just like that, just cut him right out of my life as if he’d never even lived!”
“Well,” Fontana said, “I know the books say it’s inevitable that you’ll mourn over the death of a relationship. I guess we’ve simply got to let you mourn. But I suspect that’s why they don’t encourage us to have relationships like that.”
Peake wondered how she had managed to say that without even a hint, in her voice, of you should have known better, but somehow she managed it, and it encouraged him to ask:
“Fontana, was it wrong of us to want to be together?”
“Wrong? How can I say? Unwise, certainly. They’d have separated you, anyway, after graduation. There was never even a fighting chance you could have made it together on to a Ship. A Ship’s company can be as few as four people; it would put an unholy strain on the other two, if the first two were a committed couple. There has to be room for outside commitment — sharing, affection, caring, with everybody on the crew,”
“Then why did they take me?” Peake flared, “since, unwise or not, I was committed?”
And suddenly Peake faced what he really felt. It was not parting from Jimson which had hurt too much. That parting had been inevita
ble, he had already known that, he had begun to suspect that the parting was already overdue.
“What hurts, is guilt,” he mumbled, “guilt that I was the one to go and he was the one to stay.”
And the memory still hurt, that moment when Jimson had flung it at him, Do you think they’re going to take a pair of queers? Against that memory he said, still defensive, “Then why in hell would they take me? I’m not going to fit in much better than one half of a — of any committed couple. It’s not as if I’d been the only homosexual in the Academy. There was Fly. And Duffy. And Janet.”
Fontana shrugged. “What can I tell you? I don’t think it made any difference, any more than I think they picked Moira because they needed a cello for the string quartet. Homosexuality is a legitimate lifestyle option — there are years when it’s been a plus quality, when there was an all-male crew…. Survey Ship number seventy-two was all-male, and I think seventy-nine was all-female. There were a couple of other all-male crews, too. One year — I read this in psychology — there was a crew where the top seven just happened to be males, and they sent an all-male crew. Compulsive heterosexuality would have been pointless on a crew like that. No, with Jimson it was something else. He was — he was so damned defensive about it. Do you remember Duffy? He made a point of bragging that he’d never had a woman and never would. There are professions where that lifestyle could be an asset. But not on this particular Ship.”
“Then why did they take me?” Peake wondered, but Fontana had no answer. She said, “I don’t know, Peake. Maybe they supposed you were flexible enough to adapt, to — to live and let live. Or thought, maybe that you were strong enough to live that way. I just don’t know. But whatever they thought, they knew Jimson couldn’t — and since even I knew that, I guess it’s probably the best they could do.”
Slowly, painfully, Peake nodded. In his deepest despair, it would never have occurred to him to call himself — far less someone he loved — queer. He had loved Jimson without reserve, had not hesitated to define himself, at least in relationship to Jimson, as homosexual. But he had never thought that he would be thus defining himself for all time, and certainly he had never guessed at the reservoir of self-hate that had led Jimson to fling that insult at him — or at their love. And self-hate, he realized, would be about the most dangerous trait possible aboard a Survey Ship.
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