Encounter With Tiber

by Buzz Aldrin

  As I looked at the hideous matting of blood all over Poiparesis, I thought how distressed he would be to be out in public and looking such a mess. As soon as I could I was going to get a wet cloth and clean all that up.

  Finally Soikenn spoke. “Poiparesis was different from the rest of us. Osepok likes it out here, she’d have sailed the ship, all by herself, to wherever they told her to, and been happy to have it all to herself. I like getting papers written and doing science. And Kekox—well, you understand, don’t you, that he’s from a minor house? His family isn’t very high in the Palathian order of things … so what he has been doing is serving out a difficult, boring duty, so that his nephews and nieces can rise in the world. But Poiparesis wanted to go there and see. He wanted to actually go to another world.

  “How strangely it’s all turned out! There was one thing that we all thought we were united about—that we were going to put an end to the deep split between the races, somehow we were going to be the first really fair and just society Nisu ever produced. Maybe not enough people ever tried before, or maybe we didn’t listen to the ones who had. Eight people can’t undo hundreds of years of history in just twenty years. Not even within themselves. I try so hard to accept the cross-mating and I just make a fool of myself. Kekox turns out to have principles better than his feelings. And Poiparesis … well, that was where he was different, too, a little.”

  “We always felt welcome around him.” I pressed the knotted muscles behind Soikenn’s ears; she must be giving herself a headache.

  “He used to have arguments with all the rest of us, trying to get all of you a fair shake. He thought it mattered, I guess, that all you kids felt welcomed and accepted. More than the rest of us thought about it, anyway.” She groaned and I thought now maybe she would cry, but instead she said, “I guess I need to get some sleep.”

  I walked her to her chamber; we didn’t speak. She looked down at the deck the whole way.

  Afterwards I realized I was so tired that I might as well just go back to bed myself, but then I remembered that I had wanted to clean Poiparesis’s body. I got the things to do it with and went back to the room; when I got there I found Otuz already doing it. We didn’t speak at all, but we cleaned him up together and arranged the body more carefully than the hasty job the captain and I had done. After that we cleaned the floor, so that when we were done it looked as if Poiparesis had just gone to sleep on the dining table.

  Still without talking, Otuz and I went back to my chamber, holding hands. The bunk was really too small for both of us, but we curled against each other tightly. It was the first time we had ever dared to share a bunk for the whole night.

  10

  THE FUNERAL WAS THE first time since Poiparesis’s death that we had all been gathered together. Soikenn was chief mourner and sat closest to the body; she shuddered through the whole service. When her time came to give the first eulogy, she merely got up, stood behind his body, raised his hand between hers, and stammered that we had loved him and would remember him. Captain Osepok had enough composure to stand still; her eulogy was delivered in neat, crisp, military sentences, a brief summary of Poiparesis’s career, but as she gave it her face became wet with tears, and we could see that she clutched Poiparesis’s hand hard.

  The funeral lots may choose wisely but never kindly. Tradition was that after the chief mourner and the captain, the rest of the order of speakers was determined by lot, and though we had no reason to maintain any particular tradition, we had no cause to change this one. The lots decreed that the other three children spoke, then me, then Kekox. Mejox, Priekahm, and Otuz said essentially the same thing: that we had always relied on Poiparesis and looked up to him, and we would miss him terribly.

  I had spent most of the past day thinking about what I would say, and now, as I stood before the others, holding Poiparesis’s dead hand in both of mine, I had a sinking feeling that it was a terrible idea and a terrible speech, but it was too late to think of anything else to say. His hand was so cold, his dead face so empty … I swallowed hard and began. “This is our first parting. When they sent us, they assumed that if we were not directly linked by family ties, we would have none of the problems of a family. But they were wrong. … As we gather here to say good-bye to Poiparesis we discover that this is our family.” I worked from there to what I really wanted to say—that somehow we all needed to come back together again, even if it meant some of us would have to give in on any number of issues. I was really talking to Mejox and Kekox, of course, but I tried to address it to everyone. I finished by saying something that I knew was true—that Poiparesis would not have wanted us to quarrel.

  Then I set the heavy weight of his arm down, looked at his face one more time—thought of ten thousand little things from childhood and my education—and sat down. Kekox rose and walked to the speaker’s position behind the body.

  He looked down for a long time before picking up Poiparesis’s hand with his good one; the other, in its splint, reminded us all of what had happened. Then he looked out and said, “I had thought I had a speech. I had thought I had three speeches or so. And now I find I don’t want to deliver any of those.” Kekox seemed to stare at his face. “Now I find that what Zahmekoses said is so bitterly true.

  “We are a family; we are joined more intimately than most families of either Palath or Shulath, and nothing matters more than that, nothing can matter more. As Nisu has receded behind us, it has ceased to be our home; now it is merely where we are from. We don’t feel much kinship with the ones who sent us anymore. Poiparesis mattered more to us than our whole home planet and all the generations yet to be born.” He gasped, choked, and broke down a little, looking at that cold hand in his own, struggling to get enough control of himself to go on. After a moment Otuz got up and stood beside Kekox, resting her hand in his elbow.

  He breathed deeply a couple of times and then at last spoke again. “I’ve struggled not to see it, and I’ve deluded myself that as an Imperial Guard I had a stronger loyalty to home than all of you. But this place has been my home as long as it has been all of yours, and I could bear that all of Nisu had been blown apart far easier than I could bear this.” He drew a deep breath and said, “I’ve lost my dearest friend and I never told him that that’s what he was. I’ve spent years struggling to make everyone behave according to rules that didn’t really even matter to me anymore. I’ve behaved shamefully toward several of you. Well, now, too late, I can at least do what he’d have wanted me to do—forgive, forget, join with the rest of you. I will. Let that be my monument to my best friend.” He set Poiparesis’s hand down tenderly and gently pressed his fingers down on his forehead, the same gesture of putting a child to sleep that we all remembered so well. Then he looked up. “And I love all of you. You are all my family.”

  So far we had been following the tradition for a burial at sea, the analogy they had suggested in our standing orders. Now we did something new; we stood in a circle as we watched the little cargo elevator carry Poiparesis up into the central services core. A moment later, as we stood quietly with each other, in a linked circle of hands, there was a hard, shuddering thud through the ship; our probe catapult had hurled Poiparesis out and away, ahead of us, into the dark of space. We were still above escape velocity for our new sun. He would make a fast hyperbolic orbit around it, then continue on out into the depths of space forever.

  For two days after the funeral, we went by “sick rules,” the provisions that had been made in case the whole crew fell ill at once; no one felt like working or attempting the simplest things. The third day, we held a meeting of the whole crew, and at least for me, Poiparesis was only absent physically. In most senses his was the biggest presence there.

  The first question was what, if anything, to tell them back on Nisu. Despite orders we had not been reporting daily for many years. In fact we had come to realize, by comparing timing of responses, that the messages we did send were being spooled and sometimes not read for several eightdays
. It would be at least another eightday before we had to transmit.

  “You know what they would make of it,” Otuz said. “It would become entertainment. By the time we got back, if we decided to do anything as foolish as go back, we’d be nothing more than a set of freaks for exhibition, the survivors of ‘the most famous murder case in history’ or something. And long before we get any message from them we’re going to have to settle everything anyway. So why tell them? Why even talk to them at all?”

  We all must have appeared a little surprised, because she looked around impatiently, as if wondering why we could not see it. “If we’re never going back and we want no more to do with them—and those are at least the positions I’m in favor of—then why do we have to shame ourselves in front of them? You know that they’re never going to understand anyway, because they won’t want to understand. They’ll do what Nisuans always do: make a big flap, do a lot of talking, throw around all kinds of feelings and expressions and make sure everyone gets heard—and upset, and then arrive at the conclusion that we should have consulted them and that it was a terrible thing. Probably it will be an excuse for just turning off the laser, canceling everything, and partying till the rocks fall.”

  After a pause, Soikenn said, “I don’t see what purpose it could serve to tell them what’s happened, either. If Poiparesis just disappears from the story, it will occur to someone to wonder and there will be all kinds of wild speculation. If we tell them the truth, we’ll end up as material for sensational news-telling. Nothing we can do will get them to think about species survival, that’s plain. Nisu sent us out and then forgot about us. So your idea is that we just stop transmitting?”

  Otuz nodded. “Or even better, we make our landing and leave behind a message that breaks off, as if we had crashed on landing. Maybe if we can’t get them to come out here to save civilization, a news-teller company might finance an expedition to find out what happened to us. And by the time they get here, our great-grandchildren will have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “There are other advantages, too,” Mejox said. “Back on Nisu there’s bound to be a lot of controversy about these intelligent animals. Look at how we all reacted here. So whatever solution we arrive at will already be in place—for generations—before they ever hear about it. And I trust us, and our descendants, a lot more than I trust Nisuans.”

  “Not only that,” Priekahm pointed out, “but if we just vanish, they have to build two more starships. One to find out what happened to us and one to get a backup destination in case whatever killed us might prevent their using Setepos. Nisu gets two refuge worlds and two chances to survive. And they’ll afford it if they have to—let’s not forget that the total mission cost for putting another ship on its way out here, now that the big laser is built, is only about the budget of one big entertainment show.”

  Kekox nodded. “So we might be more valuable as a silence than as a presence.”

  I thought about it and decided not to speak. It seemed to me that we didn’t actually know what was going on back on Nisu, and especially we didn’t know what effect the data coming from the last two years of probes had had on Nisuan public opinion. For all we knew the Nisuans had thrown out Fereg Yorock and the Planetary Improvement Program, the empress was dead in childbirth, and the new emperor had ordered the whole Migration Project sped up. Indeed for all we knew there were four ships being launched behind us at this very moment, and they would all arrive within our lifetime. There were a lot of uncertainties.

  And everyone seemed to be rationalizing going off the air and not telling Nisu what had happened, sparing us vast amounts of shame. That seemed to be our unspoken first priority.

  I wasn’t about to say that, and I kept my peace. For many long years in the future I would wonder whether that had made any difference; I always concluded that if I had spoken up, it would have made no difference at all.

  We didn’t really even take a vote; everyone favored sending routine reports back for the twenty eightdays until we entered deceleration. Chances were that no one would pay much attention to the routine reports—more likely if anything got attention it would be the data coming back from the probes. The report from our close pass at the new sun, Kousapex, could be mainly technical, as could the maneuvers to get us into orbit around Setepos. And then we need only begin our landing in the usual fashion, and click off the required channel at the right moment—a robot circuit on Wahkopem Zomos could do that.

  With almost no discussion, we decided to make the real commitment to staying; Soikenn undid everyone’s sterilizations, because by now even if all four females got pregnant immediately, we should be safely down on the ground and settled before any of them began to be inconvenienced. Long before we rounded the sun, it was no surprise to discover that Otuz and Priekahm were both pregnant; a bit more surprising when it turned out that the Captain was as well, but at least it gave Mejox and me something to tease Kekox about.

  Our plan for staying and settling got more and more advanced as we brought more probes to bear on the little settlements in the southwest corner of Big. We had ascertained a great deal about them, but we still weren’t sure whether they were smart animals or stupid people, so we developed plans for either case. Both plans were simple enough so that it was hard to see how anything could go wrong with them. And if our reasons for not returning and starting a colony of our own weren’t quite what we pretended they were, still, the effect back on Nisu might well do more good than not.

  As we fell into the new solar system we gave Poiparesis a kind of last tribute: we took thousands of observations and measurements of the Kousapex system’s eight planets, working at a frantic pace to make sure that all those observations got back to Nisu under his name before we had to cut off transmissions. Naturally it also helped to conceal that he was no longer with us, but speaking for myself, anyway, knowing how much his scientific career had mattered to Poiparesis, I don’t think that’s why we did it; I think we just wanted his name remembered. During that same time, as Mejox and Priekahm worked the probes exploring Setepos, they often signed his name to that work as well.

  We multiplied our knowledge of the system manyfold as we steadily closed in on Kousapex. We jettisoned the magnetic drag loop, which we would not need again, and let it tumble on into space ahead of us; almost surely it would pass close enough to Kousapex to be annihilated, but it was such thin stuff, spread across such an immense distance, that our best instruments would be hard pressed to see it. We unfurled the sail and spun it up to full extension, facing the ever-brightening new star.

  There was another period of a day’s miserable high acceleration as we used the solar sail for braking, making a close pass at Kousapex; it reminded us far too much of twenty-three years before, when Poiparesis had been there to take care of us, and though there were no injuries this time, and indeed we were all adults and could take care of ourselves, still we were all quiet and withdrawn for a day or so afterwards.

  We came out of the blazing light of our new star in a highly elliptical retrograde orbit and made a near pass by the second planet of the system, using its gravity to brake us further. Visually it was about the least interesting planet in the system, covered with a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere with an all-but-featureless cloud layer so that it merely looked like a shiny ball. Still, we all spent as much time as possible at the viewports as we swung by it. After twenty-three years en route, it was strange to see a planet, unmagnified, hanging in space. Its gravitation dragged at us as we made our near pass, and now we were just rising in Kousapex’s gravity fast enough so that when we intercepted Setepos, on the prograde side, we would fall into the right orbit—more or less. There were still a thousand tiny adjustments to be made.

  More eightdays went by as we closed in on Setepos. Once we had moved at a speed so great that we would have crossed this solar system in about a day and a quarter; now we were taking ten eightdays to get between two of its closer planets. When Wahkopem Zomos was within a hund
red planetary radii of Setepos, we spent a day furling the sail, just as if we were going to use it again.

  Six days after furling the sail, we fired the rocket motors to bring us into orbit around our new world, and Osepok spent all of that day in her cabin, having been assured by the rest of us that we could handle the very small amount of manual work necessary. She was listening to music, we realized later, because this would be her last chance to lie in the comfort of her bunk, just listening. Kekox sat and gazed out the view port, and Soikenn sat beside him, both silent and motionless as statues, watching Setepos grow from a dot until it filled the view port. With Otuz at the helm, Priekahm monitoring engines, and Mejox and me reading instruments and verifying astrogation, we slipped into our new orbit. That evening at the last meal of the day, all three of the older generation congratulated us on doing it so neatly.

  The next thing we did had been a matter of some discussion. About a third of the central cylinder of the ship had been taken up with the furled sail, which we now, at least theoretically, were not going to need. We had now all gone off birth control, which meant after the children were born we would rapidly reach a point where we could no longer take everyone back with us. We had resolved to fake the accident. In every way we had committed to this system, and the sail that was to take us back was taking up a great bulk of room that we needed for Wahkopem Zomos in its new capacity as the space station that would provide technical support for our civilization down on the surface. Thus the sensible thing to do was to get rid of the sail.

  And yet we hesitated, a little, because it was our only way to go anywhere else if this didn’t work out. Once we jettisoned the sail, the maneuvering engines on Wahkopem Zomos were so low-powered that we couldn’t even get out of orbit around Setepos; their primary intention was for station keeping. “But,” Mejox pointed out, “if we dock one of the landers at the back of this thing—well, then we can use it to push us up to escape velocity. We’d have to go to wherever else by ballistic flight, and that could take a few years, but so what? We’re used to living in this thing for years at a time, and anyway there really isn’t anywhere else worth going in this solar system. My vote is we jettison it.”