Dusk

by Ashanti Luke

  Cyrus was not proud of his own progress in becoming more alert and mobile, but he could tell, at least, he was making progress. It was less difficult to walk now than it had been yesterday, and it was definitely easier than the day before, but he still had trouble walking more than three meters without steadying himself on something. No wonder the sleep chambers are so close together, he thought as he braced himself on another open chamber. A violent series of twitches in his bracing arm almost sent him stumbling to the floor. But he caught himself with his elbow as the twitching slowed into an erratic flutter. Cyrus began sweating from the effort it took to pull himself back to his feet. As he steadied himself again, the flutters began to slide down his thighs, all the way to his ankles. He was able to take another three steps before a cramp almost sent him face-first into an occupied sleep chamber. “Damnation,” Cyrus muttered to himself and ventured into the lav.

  After relieving himself for what seemed too long, Cyrus stared into the mirror giving his eyes time to adjust. He was sure his pupils dilated faster before he had entered the Hyposoma Apparatus 192 years ago. The lines of his face were much more evident now. Apparently the Hyposoma caused hair to grow much more slowly, so he only had stubble on his face even after spending most of the last two day cycles in the sleep chamber. They had all had the option of having military cuts before entering the Hyposoma, and most of the scientists had gotten them. What little of Cyrus’s hair had grown back seemed less curly than before his haircut. Even though the lines alongside his nose were more pronounced now, and the ones around his mouth seemed more pronounced as well, the new thinness in his face made him look wiser and oddly younger at the same time. Not bad for 225 years old, he thought, straining weakened muscles to smile.

  “You’ll catch a cramp if you keep that up,” a familiar voice said from the entrance to the lav. It took longer than it should have to register the voice with the face, and the name still eluded him. Cyrus hadn’t spoken to anyone other than Dr. Fordham in the last 192 relative years—almost six hundred real years shrunk by a constant rate of speed approximately 95% of the speed of light. Although he had been released from the infirmary in what Dr. Fordham assured him was excellent health, his brain was still slow to react. He struggled to chuckle, but could only muster the strength for a staccato wheeze.

  “I’m serious. My first time out of the Apparatus, I laughed at a joke, and my whole face was sore for two whole days.” Cyrus still could not remember his colleague’s name as he spoke.

  “When does the twitching stop?”

  Finally he remembered. The man speaking to him was Dr. Marcus Tanner, archaeologist, anthropologist, certified personal trainer, and all-around geek. He had been selected for this mission because he had been one of the first to test the Hyposoma on a space faring ship, and had studied extensively human social behavior patterns in space colonies as a lead researcher at the Arcology of Cincinnati. His skills as a personal trainer were also well-received in the circles that had made selections for the mission. Cyrus remembered Dr. Tanner had been thin, but much more muscular before the trip. At every briefing and meeting he had worn a suit that was not too flashy, but not too conservative either. His hair had always been groomed and close-cut, and he had always looked freshly shaven, even after hours of meetings. He was clean-shaven even here, but his hair seemed thicker and a little bushier than on Earth. He had what looked like a small scar across the left side of his cheek. At most angles, before they had boarded the Paracelsus, the scar looked like a worry line, but here, after too many years in stasis, the pallid hue of Tanner’s skin and his more gaunt face made the scar very clear—memories came back slow, and in waves, but once they came back, they stayed.

  “The nanocytes that rebuilt your muscles are still working to reacclimatize your body to movement. Once you reach static equilibrium again, you’ll hit the sleep chamber, they’ll dissolve in your sleep, and you’ll wake up feeling like a million Uni creds,” Dr. Tanner reassured.

  Another twitching attack sent Cyrus’s face into a violent contortion that made it look like he was about to vomit out of the left corner of his mouth. “They never said it would be like this in the briefing. I feel like the last leper in hell.”

  “You look like you’ve lost about thirty pounds in the Hyposoma, plus your brain has been frozen in place for almost two hundred years. I’d say you’re doing well considering most people can’t even remember how to talk until the fourth day out of the Apparatus. And then they have to learn to walk all over again.” Cyrus felt around his abdomen, admiring the absence of the gut he had been forming since his fourth year of marriage. His belly was soft but flat. As he rubbed his fingers across, he could feel the minute vibrations caused by the nanocytes exercising his stomach muscles. “Is all this really necessary?”

  “Come on, you should know better than that,” Dr. Tanner chided.

  “I’m an astrophysicist, not a physician Dr. Tanner.”

  “Touché. Hyposoma is as close to death as a human body can come without actually being dead. After more than 190 years of it, you’d come out looking like Stephen Hawking without the nanocytes.”

  “Who the heck is Stephen Hawking?”

  A smile spread across Dr. Tanner’s face, but quickly turned into a wince. “Either you’re trying to get me to catch a cramp or the Hyposoma had your brain stem in a serious choke hold.”

  “Well, I’m not exactly the fastest ship in the fleet right now. It took me two full minutes to remember my own son’s name when I first got out of the Apparatus.”

  “That is pretty bad. You couldn’t stop talking about him before we left Eros. Darius is his name, right? He’s following us on the Damocles with your wife is he not?”

  Cyrus’s body lurched feebly over the sink. He looked as if he was about to vomit, but nothing came out. After his attack, he turned back to Dr. Tanner. “You seem sharp as a laser bit, and stable too. How’d you fare so well through this whole wretched ordeal?”

  “I had a two-day head start out of stasis with Dr. Fordham because I was a veteran Hyposomatic. In the downtime before the rest of you guys hatched, I made a point of brushing up on everyone else’s dossier. But as far as stability goes, you should have seen me on the first day. I looked like a lab monkey on galvacet I had the twitches so bad. The Shipmate had to tie me to the gurney.”

  “Now you’re trying to get me to catch a cramp.” What looked like a weak attempt at laughter proved to be another involuntary lurch. “But yes, Darius is due on the Damocles, but I don’t know if Feralynn is going to make it. Hopefully my best friend Earth-side will still get Dari on the ship if she doesn’t.”

  “I don’t understand. Maybe I missed something in the dossier. Why wouldn’t she make it?”

  The effort required for Cyrus to stand and hold his head up to face Dr. Tanner forced out rivulets of sweat around the contours of his eyes. They could have been mistaken for tears if not for his poise. “You know, your dossier doesn’t say everything. Not enough about the man. You see, she and I weren’t exactly copasetic when I left. I doubt I could have left if we had been.”

  Cyrus stood there, perspiring. It seemed like he wanted to speak, but the effort to stand without assistance drew all his strength. Dr. Tanner paused uncomfortably, looking past Cyrus at his own reflection. “We’re having dinner in the Common Hall at the twentieth hour for all those who can physically make it. Dr. Fordham and Dr. Villichez want this to be the first of a regular week cycle gathering. I don’t know what the Shipmate is serving, but it will probably be liquid, per Fordham’s orders.”

  There was more awkward silence. Cyrus had turned back to look at himself in the mirror. Another, less violent wretch broke his composure, but his own thoughts, cavernous and secluded, did nothing to arrest the stillness.

  “I’ll see you at the gathering.” Dr. Tanner said as he took his leave, steadying himself on the wall as he went.

  • • • • •

  Dr. Tanner sat at table, his left hand cupp
ed over his right fist, his face bowed over his tray. He mouthed thankful, reverent words, twisting the lines of his face into an expression of solemn meditation. The others sat quietly at the table, either in observation or in deference to Dr. Tanner’s personal rite. This was the third meal Cyrus had shared with this man whose tactful intuition and inoffensive manner were glaring opposites of his own sometimes abrasive demeanor. It was the first, however, where anyone other than Dr. Tanner, Dr. Fordham, and Cyrus had been present. Dr. Villichez had shown up on the first day, but had respectfully retreated to his own sleep chamber when he saw that most of the scientists had not made it. The last occasion was an informal meeting where Tanner, Fordham, and Cyrus discussed when the physical training could begin on the ship and how the gravity waves would affect their bodies. At that time, Dr. Tanner had also spent the moments before drinking his pint of blended essential nutrients, which tasted remarkably like smoked turkey, in genuflection. Cyrus had then wondered if the man was truly pious, or reserved this quiet devotion for more trusted company. Now, with eighteen other members of academia looking on, Cyrus realized that although two-hundred years of hurtling through the universe suspended by a thin thread over the gaping maw of death had sapped their bodies of physical strength, this man possessed something that not even the stench of the reaper’s breath could overwhelm. Even as Dr. Tanner bowed his head, he seemed like a kneeling giant as his gaunt and gangly spectators afforded him his pause. To Cyrus, it seemed whatever Dr. Tanner revered, whatever his vigil stood for, these others had lost long before the Hyposoma nanocytes began depleting their fat cells for the energy to sustain their long catatonic stasis. He could see that even he had begun to lose it before he had set foot on this vessel.

  Dr. Fileas Winberg, the least gaunt of the lot, spoke first as Tanner raised his head. Dr. Winberg’s cheeks jiggled awkwardly as he talked, and his hair, dusted with as many gray hairs as black, seemed to shake in the same rhythm as his cheeks as he reached for his pint and spoke, “So it seems some antiquated conventions have stowed away with us on our grand exodus.” Cyrus noticed that Dr. Winberg had positioned himself at the only seat that could be considered the head of the table.

  Dr. Tanner finished a long sip from his pint. At first, he seemed either unconcerned with or unaware of Dr. Winberg’s comment. He set his cup delicately on the table as his eyes moved to Dr. Winberg. “I feel a certain amount of antiquation helps keep us balanced. Move too far, too fast and eventually you will lose your footing. It would seem in our reaching out to another world, searching for truths about our past and our future, we would want to maintain our balance—or at least I would.”

  “Understandable, but I tend to agree with Nietzsche. If we are on this trip in search of some sort of greater truth, religious convictions would be more dangerous enemies of that truth than blatant lies,” Dr. Winberg answered.

  Cyrus had seen this coming before they had even selected him as the astrophysics specialist on this team of eminent scientists and researchers. A crock pot of twenty men, all reputed and dominant in their own fields, holed-up and concentrated under the pressures of trailblazing a virgin frontier; it was only a matter of time before teeth bared, horns locked, blood was drawn. But Winberg wasted no time. As soon as the Call to the Post was sounded, he strained against the reigns of discretion. There was no doubt that he too saw something in Dr. Tanner, but unlike Cyrus, it was dark and threatening to Winberg. Cyrus had guessed Dr. Winberg would be the first to pound his chest. He was a fellow professor at the Los Angeles Arcology of Science and had as great a reputation for groundbreaking arrogance as he did for groundbreaking lectures. Cyrus had only met him directly once briefly at a conference on the long-term effect of gravity waves on the brain. The brevity of the meeting had kept the situation sociable, but students and teachers alike had known Dr. Winberg to brandish his prominence and knowledge like a standard, and often at the expense of those less prominent or knowledgeable. Even here, it seemed he had a refinement of insult that would make those who responded in a manner Cyrus felt was necessary, appear brazen and uncouth. Although Cyrus had expected the first press for the hill to come from Winberg, he had expected it later in the trip, and he had expected it to be directed toward him.

  Dr. Tanner calmly took another sip of his pint. “There is a line, however, between the proselytizer and the zealot, and it is quite wide.”

  Dr. Fordham added as Dr. Tanner drank, “Dr. Tanner here is merely exercising his own right to worship as he pleases. He has not sought to offend or accost any of us with his beliefs.”

  “To Dr. Tanner’s credit, I agree. But, personally, in the company of such educated men. I find the very idea of a belief or a religion prostrating any of us as offensive. In my experience, religion itself is a bandage masking the abscess of a frail intellect. An ointment to sooth the palsy of ignorance feebly supported by the gnarled crutch of dogma.” Dr. Winberg lifted his pint to eclipse what Cyrus thought must have been a smirk. Any thoughts that his assumptive assessment of Winberg had been unfounded drained away as quickly as the thick liquid that passed from Winberg’s cup into his still pudgy belly. Cyrus could sit idle no longer.

  “Are you suggesting that education is somehow more valuable than imagination?” Cyrus knew this was not exactly what Winberg had meant, but he figured if he attacked his statement directly, he would be walking into a timeworn, prefabricated response. A response that would, without a doubt, degrade the discussion to an academic shouting match, filled with intelligent sounding, but pedestrian, aphorisms and verbiage. Cyrus was comfortable even in that arena, but he could not watch this man posturing himself by pushing others around with his academic ale-belly, and playing on Dr. Winberg’s field would only elicit more of that.

  “I don’t feel archaic dogmas and traditions have anything to do with imagination. I think they anchor us to our lower selves and that education is the only way to free ourselves of those shackles. It seems it should be obvious to anyone who has matriculated through Laureateship as we all have.” He spread his arms to indicate everyone at the table. It was a welcoming gesture, but to Cyrus it seemed histrionic and overblown.

  “Only those who are born into the Meritocracy are guaranteed Laureateship, and the Freeschool transfer process is as cutthroat and bloody as an uberhound pit. And even if you’re selected for Laureateship, the Meritocracy taps people to go to the Arcologies virtually at random.”

  “But they have to pick selective members from the top tier. Surely you are not suggesting the mass populous is worthy of Laureateship.”

  “It’s common for Arcologists to tell themselves and the general populace that the Laureateship process is selective, but honestly, once you’re in the top tier, you are practically handpicked by the Meritocracy. They should call it what it is, a sanctioned aristocracy—an academic cotillion designed to keep the upper echelon free of undesirables.”

  Dr. Winberg lifted his cup again, this time allowing the smirk to remain as he lowered the pint from his face, “How then do you explain your tapping?”

  Cyrus raised his brow slowly as he met Dr. Winberg’s gaze. Dr. Tanner lowered his pint and pursed his lips to speak, but Cyrus had already released his volley, “As eloquent as that sounded, it’s still a cheap shot. So I will call your little insult and raise you one. As much as you wear your credentials on your sleeve, and as feverishly as you wave the banner of sociological evolution, the notion of Manifest Destiny seems to have escaped your distaste for the archaic. No matter how much you misquote Nietzsche, you will always stand as the foremost example of why society made it much easier for me to leave Earth and get on this ship.”

  There was an audible shuffling at the table as if the tension had taken a physical form and was shambling beneath it. Dr. Villichez lowered his empty pint like a gavel, he was short and slouched over the table, but the white of his hair, and the hard, experienced features of his face lent him authority his posture did not, “Gentleman, gentleman, let’s try to keep this diplomatic.
We have to live together for the next five years on this bucket of bolts. Let us try to keep the dinner conversation kosher.”

  “Well, as Dr. Winberg here so deftly eluded, diplomacy does not run so thick in my blood as piss and vinegar—a fact I will not be ashamed of. I only stood in for Dr. Tanner because I know he is too dignified to respond to such a lowbrow attack. I, on the other hand, have no problem playing the role of the demon beast, and I cannot abide by a bully, no matter how affluent. If you do not want to smell the beast, don’t fan his clothes. If we are to live on this alloyed crucible in a kosher manner, as Dr. Villichez put it, Dr. Winberg here should understand that.”

  “I apologize for my affront,” Dr. Winberg conceded with a somewhat smug lilt as he passed a deliberate gaze at Dr. Villichez. He took another sip and turned his attention back to Cyrus as he lowered the pint, “However, I cannot let slide your more subtle attack on my upbringing as well. I feel a need for further explanation.”

  Cyrus tested the warmth of his neglected pint with the tip of his index finger, “As I understand it, you seem to espouse that knowledge somehow supersedes religious philosophy. But I don’t agree. I cannot.” He took in the juices the left on his fingertip with pursed lips as he turned his attention back Dr. Winberg, “Even a scalded animal learns to stray away from the steaming pot. Our instincts move in to cover what the weakest of intellects cannot, sometimes better so. A man learns whether he wants to or not. It is whether or not that man is given access to formal education that can be coddled over.” Cyrus paused to finally take a sip from his pint. It was cooler than he liked, but acceptable given his options. He continued as he lowered it back to the table, “We shelter knowledge with deadlocks as if it is some sort of prized commodity. How can we call ourselves professors, when our happenstance superiority is all we profess?”