Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers
Page 96
seemed to be. And although this ship bore no physical resemblance to
Jacob's office, it was similar in that it was more than it appeared;
under its drab skin, it harbored wondrous things, great mysteries.
Spaced along each long wall were four coffinlike containers of a
semitransparent, milky-blue substance that looked like carved quartz.
These were, Miles Bennell explained, the beds in which the travelers had
passed their long journey in a state of near-suspended animation, aging
only the equivalent of one earth-year for every fifty that passed. As
they dreamed, the fully automated ship proceeded through the void,
reaching ahead with an array of sensors and probes for indications of
life in the hundreds of thousands of solar systems that it passed.
It did not escape Ginger's notice that the top of each container was
marked by two raised rings precisely the size of those that had appeared
in Dom's and Brendan's hands.
"You told us they were dead when they got here," Ned reminded Bennell.
"But you never answered my question. What did they die from?"
"Time," Bennell said. "Although the ship and all its devices continued
to function well right through the descent and the landing there along
I-80, the occupants had perished of old age long before they ever got
here."
Faye said, "But . . . you've told us they aged one year for every
fifty that passed."
"Yes," Bennell said. "And from what we've learned about them, they're
long-lived by our standards. Five hundred years seems to be their
average life-span."
Standing with Marcie in his arms, Jack Twist said, "But, my God, at one
year for fifty, they'd have to've been traveling twenty-five thousand
years to have died of old age!"
"Longer," Bennell said. "In spite of their vast knowledge and
technology, they never found a way to exceed the speed of light-186,000
miles per second. In fact, their ship cruises at ninety-eight percent
of that, something like 182,000 miles per second. Fast, yes, but not
fast enough when you consider the distances involved. Our own galaxy-in
which they're our neighbors-has a diameter of 80,000 lightyears, or
about 240,000 trillion miles. They tried to pinpoint the location of
their home world for us through tridimensional galactic diagrams. We
believe they come from a place more than 31,000 lightyears around the
perimeter of the galaxy from us. And since they travel at just under
the speed of light, that means they left home a little less than 32,000
years ago. Even with their lives extended by suspended animation, they
must have perished nearly 10,000 years ago."
Ginger found herself shaking again, as she had shaken upon first turning
her gaze upon the ancient ship. She touched the nearest of the
milky-blue containers, which seemed to her to be a powerful testimony to
compassion and empathy beyond human understanding, the embodiment of a
sacrifice that staggered the mind and humbled the heart. To have
willingly given up the comforts of home, to have left their world and
all their kind to travel such distances on the mere hope of being able
to help a struggling species at the far, far end. . . .
Bennell's voice had grown lower as he spoke, and now it was as soft as
if he had been speaking in a church. "They died twenty-five thousand
lightyears from home. They were already dead when humankind still lived
in caves and was just beginning to learn the basics of agriculture. When
these . . . incredible journeyers died, the entire population of our
world was only about five million, fewer people than now live in New
York alone. During the past ten thousand years, while we've struggled
out of the dirt and broken our backs to build a shaky civilization
always teetering on the edge of destruction, those eight dead seekers
were coming steadily toward us across the vatness of the galactic rim."
Ginger saw Brendan touch the other corner of the coffin on which she'd
rested her own hands. Tears glistened in his eyes. She knew what he
was thinking. As a priest, he had taken vows of poverty and celibacy
and had forsworn many of the pleasures of secular life as an offering to
God. He knew the meaning of sacrifice, but none of his sacrifices
compared to what these beings had given up in the name of their cause.
Parker said, "But to have found five other intelligent species when the
distances are so great and the odds so small, they must send out a great
many of these ships."
"We think they dispatch hundreds a year, maybe even thousands-and had
been doing so for longer than 100,000 years before this vessel left
port. As I said, it's their religion and their racial purpose combined.
All the other five species they discovered were within 15,000 lightyears
from their world. And remember, even when they locate an intelligence at
that distance, they don't know of it until 15,000 years after the
discovery, for it takes that long for the message of the contact to
reach home again. Are you beginning to grasp the depth and scale of
their commitment?"
"Most ships," Ernie said, "must go out and never come back-and never
meet with any success. Most of them just cruise on and on into endless
space while the crew perishes, as this crew perished."
"Yes," Bennell said.
"And yet they keep going," Dom said.
"And yet they keep going," Bennell said.
"We may never meet others of them face-to-face," Ned said.
"Give humanity a hundred years to learn to apply all the knowledge and
technology they brought us," Bennell said. "Then give us another . . .
oh, at least one thousand years more to mature to the point where we're
capable of making that same commitment. Then a ship will be launched,
manned by a human crew in suspended animation. And possibly we'll find
a way to improve the process, so that they don't age at all or age far
more slowly. None of us will be alive to watch it take off, but it will
go. I know in my heart it will. Then . . . 32,000 years after that,
our distant descendants will be there, returning the call, remaking the
contact these creatures don't even know they've established."
They stood in stunned silence, trying to grasp the immensity of what
Bennell envisioned.
Ginger felt a chill of the most delicious and indescribable nature.
Brendan said, "It's God's scale. We're talking about ... thinking,
planning, and doing on God's scale rather than mankind's."
Parker said, "Sort of makes it a whole lot less important who's going to
win this year's World Series, doesn't it?"
Dom put his hands upon the rings that were featured on the top of that
particular suspended-animation chamber around which everyone was
gathered. He said, "I believe only six of the crew were dead, fully
dead that night in July, Dr. Bennell. I'm beginning to recall what
happened when we entered this ship, and I feel as if we were called to
two of these containers by something that still lived within them.
Barely lived but was not yet entirely dead."
"Yes," Brendan said, tears weaving down
his cheeks now. "In fact, I
remember the golden light was coming from two of these boxes and that it
exerted not only an obvious but subliminal attraction. I was compelled
to come and put my hands upon the rings. And when I put them here ...
somehow I knew that, beneath the lid, something was desperately clinging
to life, not for its own sake but for the sake of passing on some gift.
And by putting its own hands against the inner surface of those
conductive rings . . . it gave me what it had come so far to give.
Then it died at last. I didn't know what was in me then, exactly. I
suppose it would have taken some time to understand, to learn how to use
the power. But before I ever had a chance, we were taken into custody."
"Alive," Bennell said-shocked, fascinated. "Well, the condition of the
eight bodies . . . two were virtually turned to dust . . . two
more were badly decomposed . . . apparently because their
suspended-animation boxes had shut down once they died. Four were in
much better condition, and two seemed perfectly preserved. But we never
dared imagine . . ."
"Yes," Dom said, clearly recalling more. "Just barely alive, but
holding on to pass the gift. Of course, I expected to be interrogated,
to have a chance to tell what had happened to me in the ship. But the
government was so eager to protect society from the shock of contact,
and then so afraid of the unknown . . . I never had the chance to
tell."
"Soon," Bennell said, "we can tell the world."
"And change the world," Brendan said.
Ginger looked at the faces of the Tranquility family, at Parker and
Bennell, and sensed the bond that would soon exist between all men and
women, an incredible closeness that would arise from their sudden shared
leap up the evolutionary ladder toward a better world. No more would
people be strangers, one to another, not anywhere on earth. All prior
human history had been lived in the dark, and now they stood at the
gates of a new dawn. She looked at her two small hands, a surgeon's
hands, and she thought of the decade-long studies to which she had
diligently applied herself with the hope of saving lives. Now, perhaps
all that training would be for nothing. She didn't care. She was
filled with joy at the prospect of a world that did not need medicine or
surgery. Soon, when Dom had passed the gift to her, as she would ask him
to, she'd be able to heal with her touch. More important, with only her
touch, she would be able to pass unto others the power to heal
themselves. The human life-span would increase dramatically
overnight-three hundred, four hundred, even five hundred years. Except
for accidents, the specter of death would be banished to a distant
horizon. No more would the Annas and Jacobs be wrenched away from the
children who loved them. No more would husbands have to sit in mourning
at the deathbeds of young wives. No more, Baruch ha-Shem, no more.