Dusk
Published by Kiaju Publishing
Copyright 2010 Ashanti Luke
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contents
• • • • •
prologue
They should have shot him where he stood. If he died here, there would still be hope—and hope was what had brought him from very different beginnings to this point. But if he surrendered, every gram of that hope would be lost.
Dr. Cyrus Chamberlain held the pistol in his right hand over his head with his fingers clearly off the trigger. Four elite soldiers settled in a modified phalanx and trained their assault rifles on him.
He should have been wracked with anxiety, should have been disabled by erratic breathing, high blood pressure, slowed reactions. But he was calm, his breathing in perfect sync with his heart rate. It was remarkable how losing a son could move the mind to places you could never have imagined when life went as planned.
“Drop your weapon and kick it over or we will finish you!” The noise of the battle behind Cyrus muffled the voice of the soldier at the head of the phalanx, but his words could not have been clearer. Cyrus should have been dead or dying by now, and the soldier who was now repeating his threat was standing too far from the men in his formation.
Cyrus pressed the clip release on his automatic pistol, but held the gun so the clip stayed inside the handle. He slowly lowered his right hand and then let the pistol fall to the ground. As it fell, he shifted his weight slightly forward, expecting to get launched backward by a hail of automatic weapon fire. But the men before him were convinced they had the situation under control even as he lifted his right foot to kick the falling pistol toward them.
Cyrus should not have been this fast, this strong, this agile, and that had been what had kept him from dying the moment he had reached the door, because these elite soldiers were reacting to him as if he were a regular human being—even though from his reputation they should have known better.
A sharp pain numbed his foot and sent a shock coursing up his shin as his foot launched the gun toward the soldier in front. The clip and pistol separated in the air and the soldier fired, but Cyrus was already launching himself forward with his left foot. He prayed his training had been enough as he vaulted forward, covering much more distance in a much shorter time than the soldier could have expected. The gun and clip sailed on opposite sides of the man’s face, missing, but the soldier’s dodge gave Cyrus enough time to cover the distance between them. Cyrus felt the air next to his left ear crackle as a bullet passed through it and the other rounds of the volley missed him. The other soldiers had fired, but their bullets found their marks where Cyrus had stood, while now, he was under the lead soldier’s firing arm, twisting the rifle and tensing the shoulder strap around the soldier’s neck. What felt like an elbow hit the right side of Cyrus’s neck, but Cyrus used the momentum from the strike to shift his own weight and flip the rifle from the soldier’s hand. He lifted the soldier’s body from the ground slightly as the loop of the strap tightened even more around the soldier’s neck. Cyrus did not have a good grip on the rifle, but he fired anyway. He could not aim, but he only needed to fill the space the other three men occupied with rounds. The gun jumped, vibrating the grip against the palm of his left hand as the stock slammed against his chest with each report. The stock aggravated the bruise that was already forming on his neck. One of the men flipped backward, and one went straight down. The third collapsed on one knee, but managed to steady himself with his off-hand and keep his rifle up.
Cyrus yanked the rifle strap to flip the soldier over his shoulder and the man’s neck must have snapped because his body twitched and fell awkwardly, snatching the rifle from Cyrus’s hands.
As the last soldier lifted his gun, Cyrus launched himself forward again, this time pulling his feet in front of him as he made another extraordinary leap.
An explosion rocked the hangar floor as Cyrus landed on his butt and slid. He could not tell if the man had fired or not, which seemed strange because he could hear the snap of the tendons in the man’s knee as Cyrus slid into him and kicked. The soldier collapsed over Cyrus screaming, and Cyrus elbowed him aside. He fell next to Cyrus, clutching his awkwardly twisted leg.
Another soldier moved out from behind a loading lev with a set of nondescript canisters in the loading clamps. The assault on the hangar had left everything in its normal operational state. Technicians and non-military staff scurried about hysterically and took refuge. The pilot of the lev had left it running and floating above the hangar floor, and soldiers were forming up now on the other side. Cyrus saw three sets of feet visible beneath it even as he brought his elbow down across the throat of the soldier he had slide-tackled. He smashed his elbow down again and felt something in the man’s throat collapse with a sickening gurgle.
As he saw the barrel of the assault rifle peek from behind the canisters, Cyrus realized he himself had pulled too far ahead of his own van, but the only chance any of them stood was him taking advantage of the chaos his own friends were causing behind him.
Chaos.
That was not the right word. Chaos was what was going to happen in seven minutes if he did not make it to the ominous grey ship that was more than two hundred meters away. Chaos and the bloody destruction of everything Cyrus had fought for up to this point.
Cyrus deftly unhooked a grenade from the belt of the man sputtering and clutching his damaged throat beneath him. Cyrus lifted his shoulder, pressed the activation button on the side of the grenade, and then rolled to his left. He counted three beats, rolled again, and released the grenade on the fourth beat. The grenade left his hand, hit the ground between him and the loading lev, and spun awkwardly as it slid beneath the floating vehicle. The soldiers on the other side recoiled, but the explosion sent the lev flipping, toppling the canisters in various directions as the vehicle spun and landed on its side.
Cyrus gambled on the soldiers being shaken by the explosion and was already up and running again. The lev smashed against the ground with canisters boggling around it.
Over his shoulder he heard more gunfire and glanced to see Dr. Marcus Tanner and Commander Azariah Uzziah run from behind the massive ship that was behind him. They provided cover fire as Cyrus continued to sprint.
Someone grabbed Cyrus from behind, locking his arms in front of him. Cyrus felt himself being lifted and pulled away from the destination that lay only meters in front of him. His breathing, erratic from the last attack, now failed him. For a moment he felt his eyes glaze, his head lighten, and in the haze he saw his son. Not as the man he would be now, but as a boy. The promising eight year-old he had left too many years ago.
He bit down against the pain, ignored the complaints of his oxygen-deprived brain, and gripped his captors thumb with his left hand. Cyrus pulled, and as the man resisted, he twisted his own body and dug the back of his arm into his captor’s throat. The man tried to adjust and shift Cyrus’s weight to get a better grip, but Cyrus had gained enough leverage to thrust his left hand over his own shoulder. His thumb, held rigid in a martial claw, struck cheek bone and then slid into what must have been the man’s eye socket. Cyrus felt something gooey and warm, and then his feet were on the ground again.
Cyrus kicked the man backward as a nearby explosion tumbled the man to the ground. Three more men rounded the edge of the ship. The one on point fired as he cleared the edge, but Cyrus was already diving toward a rifle on the ground. Bullets tore into the ground where he had leapt from, and he heard someone on his side fire a cover volley at the three men. The first fell as Cyrus scooped up the rifle, rolled, and fired back at the two now taking cover behind the nose of the ship.
Before he had left Earth, life had been so different. It wasn’t so long ago that he been just a pudgy scientist, trying to rebuild his body and condition his mind to survive long enough to stake a claim on a barren wasteland. How did I get here? he wondered. It was a strange thought to have in the midst of a gunfight. Cyrus knew how he had gotten there didn’t matter as he angled toward the entrance to the ship, pulling the electronic key Dr. Taewook Jang had programmed to defeat the security system. All that mattered was getting onto the ship. The men who had come with him covered the front of the ship with suppression fire. The hull would hold under the assault of the small munitions, but if one lucky shot from any of those soldiers found his flesh, their entire plan could be for naught.
Cyrus fired another volley of his own with his left hand as the key, now magnetically attached to the door, decrypted the security code. Someone squeezed off a burst at Cyrus and bullets sparked as they hit the ship just in front of him. Then something caught him low on his left shoulder. He reeled backward and to his right, but he continued with the momentum and pressed himself against the rounded edge of the ship. He steadied the rifle with the side of the ship and fired again, one-handed. The rifle jumped violently, but it was enough to make his attackers use their cover. Cyrus’s right arm began to throb with pain. Something might have been broken, but the shear Comptex suit had stopped the shell from penetrating his flesh. It was not the first time he had been shot. It was not the first time Comptex protected him. And now, Cyrus prayed once he got this ship out of this god-forsaken hangar, it would be the last time for both.
Then there was a gush of air as the seal broke on the giant cargo door, and Cyrus ducked inside as Commander Uzziah ducked in behind him, still firing even as he cleared the threshold.
“Five minutes and this whole place turns into a chimp rodeo!” Uzziah yelled, already moving toward the bridge.
That
meant they had a little more than two minutes to get the ship
started, with only a rushed training and a little bit of luck to help
them. But that was what had to be done. The sun was setting them all,
and that ship was the only way he, or anyone else he had grown to
love in this forsaken place, would ever see the sun again.
one
—Tell me a story before I go to bed, Dada.
—What story do you want to hear?
—The story about Aryal and the Unicorn.
—You always want to hear that story. This will be the 50th time.
—No, just the 47th time.
—You counted? I can’t believe you want to hear it again.
—Come on Dada, I like hearing you tell the story.
—Okay, Okay, for the 47th time. Here goes… A long, long time ago, before the world was as complicated as it is now, in a time when people appreciated their lives and the world around them, there was a growing village bordered by a raging river on one side and a dense forest on all the others.
—How dense was the forest, Dada?
—It was so dense that even during the day the forest was as dark as the darkest midnight, and whenever anyone ventured too far outside the village, they became hopelessly lost. They not so creatively named this no-man’s land ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread.’ Well just on the edge of ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread,’ there lived a beautiful black Unicorn with a golden horn. For as long as anyone in the village could remember, the Unicorn had always lived there, and whenever anyone became lost in the wilderness, the Unicorn would always show up and lead them back to the village. There was a myth in the village—or it was a long passed rumor anyway—that if anyone could speak the name of the Unicorn, he would stay with them forever and lead them to a magnificent treasure. Many people ventured into the forest just to see the Unicorn and all marveled over his beauty and his power. Everyone except Cellius Wormheart.
—Tell me about Cellius. I like the way you talk about Cellius.
—Cellius Wormheart was a blacksmith and owned the largest and toughest safe in the village. Everyone loved him because he kept their gold safe, even though he wasn’t a very nice person.
—Why wasn’t Cellius very nice?
—Well, no one was sure, but some of the elders said it was because his parents spent so much time building the village that they didn’t pay very much attention to him, so he took his anger out on the village. But I think he was bitter because no matter how much he built, or how much money he made, it didn’t make him happy.
—Maybe it was a little of both things, huh, Dada?
—You may have a point there. Either way, Cellius was determined to find the Unicorn’s treasure, so he built an elaborate trap and captured the Unicorn. He then prepared a large pen and kept the Unicorn in the center of the village and charged people to look at him. He made a good deal of money, but it wasn’t enough, so he began to starve the Unicorn and treat him poorly to try and discover the location of the treasure. Meanwhile, the people of the village would accost the Unicorn every day, screaming any name they could imagine at him in hopes one of them would be his real name.
—What happened to the Unicorn, Dada? What happened?
—The bitterness and spite around him, coming from people he had never shown anything but kindness to, changed him. Slowly, he became more beastlike, more hideous, until he was completely unrecognizable as the Unicorn. He began to snarl and snap at people and he tugged at his reigns each day until his legs bled and he collapsed into a bellowing, exhausted heap. People began to question what they should do with the Beast that had once been the Unicorn. No one paid to see him anymore and Cellius had grown weary of him and wanted to kill him.
—He wanted to put him to sleep?
—No, Darius, kill him. People who can’t own up to their own actions ‘put animals to sleep.’ Cellius was many terrible things, but he was no coward. He could not get what he wanted, so he wanted the Beast dead. The village folk would not have it though, until one day, a young boy paid to see the Beast and threw a tomato at him. And while he had turned to his friends to taunt and jeer, the Beast bit down on the boys arm and dragged him through the bars where he devoured him.
—Ouch.
—Ouch indeed. Well, the town was outraged, so they barred anyone from entering the tent where the Beast was kept, and the Commissary of the town ordered the Beast summarily destroyed.
—Summarily means in public right, in front of everybody.
—Well, it means without delay, but is usually for all to see. The people were so angry they made preparations to make a fancy ceremony of the whole event. Someone even painted ‘Where even fools fear to tread’ on the outside of the tent, thinking it was a clever thing to write.
—But it was their fault, Dada. Why couldn’t they see that? Why didn’t they just leave the poor Unicorn alone?
—I don’t know Dari. I’ve been trying to figure that one for years. Must take a wiser man than me. So, one day, this little girl wanders near the cage.
—Aryal.
—Yes, Aryal. Aryal wasn’t the most beautiful girl in the village, and she didn’t score in the highest percentiles in her school, but she had a kind heart, and she always looked at things for what they were, not what she wanted them to be.
—Why did she think that way when the others didn’t?
—Maybe it was because she wasn’t beautiful. Because she wasn’t smart. Maybe she needed to see things differently just to survive—to know she was more than people saw her as. Well, Aryal wandered to the cage for the first time ever because she was poor, and before the execution, her parents could not afford to take her to see the Unicorn. Not that they would have anyway, for they were angry and spiteful people, and resented having such an unspectacular daughter they couldn’t brag about to their friends. So she went to see the Beast before the execution, and instead of a snarling, angry beast, she saw a sad, wounded creature that was wounded to his very soul by treachery, by ingratitude.
—Maybe she saw a little bit of herself in the Unicorn Beast.
—Quite possibly. Either way, the next day, the day of the execution, Cellius found the cage unlocked and empty. Both Aryal and the Unicorn had disappeared, never to be heard from again.
—What happened? Where did they go?
—Most think Aryal spoke the Creature’s name and he took her away to the treasure and they lived there until the end of time.
—And how did she guess the Unicorn’s name?
—She didn’t guess. She just did what no one else bothered to do. What no one thought to do.
—She just asked.
—Exactly.
—So Dada, what do you think the treasure was?
—You tell me Dari.
—I don’t know. Before I guessed gold, money, candy but I’m pretty sure now it wasn’t any of that stuff. I’m beginning to think there was no treasure. Maybe it was anyone who actually could do what they needed to find it, actually had it already.
—You know I never thought of it like that. Maybe you’re a wiser man than me.
—No, Dada. Not me. You know everything.
—Not everything Dari. The wisest man knows what he knows, and what he doesn’t, and is comfortable with those things he can’t. Sometimes, it seems like I don’t know what I should, and I think I know what I can’t. Hopefully, when you’re my age, what you do know will be clear, and what you can’t know will be even clearer, so that what you don’t know can exist in an attainable spot somewhere in between.
—I’m not sure what that means, Dada.
—Me neither, but I think, by the time you’re my age, you will understand much better than I.
• • • • •
To Dr. Cyrus Chamberlain, everything seemed smaller. He couldn’t tell if the launch station being so close to home was a good thing or a bad one—if he had had to travel to Houston or Florida, at least the entire process would have mirrored the weight he now felt on his shoulders. The other scientists milled around the inside of the large craft that levitated above the track leading to the launch pad. The tension inside the massive cargo barge, which had been converted into a mobile ballroom, was almost tangible. The faces of everyone there, whether somber or excited, were full of emotion. The hazy morning light that filtered in through clear plastic windows that surrounded them gave everyone’s face a morbid, orange glow. The pain of not seeing loved ones and friends for another ten years, if ever, was visible. As clear as the craft set on the horizon to take those loved ones away. There were twenty scientists in all, each surrounded by several family members and colleagues that had come to see them off. They moved slowly over the metal-laced track toward the looming Unified Nations Rosamond Land Dock in the distance, and the closer they got, the more the ballroom felt like a mortuary. Some cried, mourning those that still walked among them, at least for the next hour or so. Cyrus stood with his wife Feralynn, his son Darius, and his best friend, Dr. Alexander Kalem and watched the dust of Antelope Valley float in lazy swirls as he felt the sting of his choice—he was leaving this overpopulated rock forever. Cyrus, one of the premier astrophysicists in the Unified Nations, had been notified the moment they had discovered Asha. Ten years later, he had been formally asked to join the team of scientist-pioneers that would make up the first expedition to this planet they hoped would become the sister-world to Earth. Only a few months later, the Unified Nations Census had revealed the Earth now held in excess of ten billion people—and that was discounting the Fringe States that had held out in the Unification. And now, Cyrus was about to leave his life behind for a new one. And it floored him.
To Cyrus, Kalem had always looked older than he was. And it seemed he had purposefully promoted that image. The grey flecks in his hair made his skin look lighter. The pale light that streamed in through the large windowed side of the conveyance vehicle gave his light skin an odd glow and accented the lines of his face that made him look serious even when he smiled.
Cyrus imagined Dr. Kalem would have made an excellent poker player if he had believed in gambling. But the man, who had been his closest friend since his matriculation to the physical sciences tract of the Arcology, was too interested in a concrete sense of security to gamble on anything except his own mental ability, which he had in droves.
The lines in Kalem’s face seemed an odd contrast to Feralynn’s. It was hard to read her expression, but Cyrus had grown accustomed to seeing the lines that formed around her jaw line whenever she was quietly upset with something he had said, or something he had done, or something he had not done that he should have. But today the lines were gone. She seemed torn, but was not combative. She was not usually quiet about her emotions, whether she understood clearly what she was feeling or not, but today, her mixed feelings were solemn and unmanifest. Standing there in the pale orange light of the smog tinted sun, Cyrus could see the fire in her eyes that he had recognized the moment he met her—the fire he had not seen in the eight years since his son had been born.
Cyrus looked up at the browning film that limited visibility even out this far from the growing sprawl of Los Angeles. Most of the desert had been consumed by urban renewal and the need to accommodate more and more people. “People just don’t die like they used to,” David Chamberlain, his father, had once said. It wasn’t until now, looking at the dinge-filled sky, Cyrus really understood what he meant. The Silverlake Terraforming Processor had been cleaning the noxious city air now for more than half a century. Ironically, this technology, made obsolete by the discovery of a planet that could sustain humanity without terraforming, now served to make Earth itself more inhabitable—all the while, forcing the filth out here to the desert.
People weren’t even born right any more. Podcenters robbed the mothers who could afford it of the last trimester of motherhood in order to eliminate birth defects and disease. Human beings were surviving better than ever—and that survival was killing them. No one had officially stated that this mission was to ‘save humanity,’ but the shoulder pads in their month-long briefing definitely acted as though this mission had more riding on it than just human curiosity. Something was about to break, and he and the nineteen other eggheads on this barge were being lined up to put their fingers in the dam. No one said it. The words probably didn’t exist to call out the problem by name. But Cyrus could feel it. The thought alone was so ominous it seemed like a promise. He could tell his son felt it too.
Cyrus ran his fingers through the curly strands of hair that always seemed to collect on the front of the boy’s head. The curls made his head look too big for his body, which was smaller than it should have been. Cyrus took his wife’s hand in his other. Her hand was warmer than he expected given the chill he felt in his own. Her long black hair concealed her face, but he caught a glimpse of her eye as she turned her head toward him, and he saw a glimmer there. She squeezed his hand and held her grip, and then turned slowly to meet his eyes. The glimmer had been a tear that had formed on her tear duct, yet refused to run down her face. Her porcelain skin was a strong contrast to his own, but he had always liked that. She didn’t bother to wipe at her eyes, but the tear moved down her cheek slightly as she turned. She opened her mouth to speak, but then turned back to the window, squeezing his hand even tighter.
Darius had been looking through the window of the conveyance lev. “Dada,” he asked, continuing to look toward their destination—it was endearing that his son, as eloquent as he could be for an eight year-old, had never grown out of that particular moniker.
“Yes Dari?” Cyrus continued to look out of the window as well as the Land Dock grew in the distance. The Mercury Six was moored to the massive platform. It would take them to the Eros Slingshot where they would rendezvous with the larger Paracelsus that would take them to Asha.
A tumbleweed rolled away from the lev as it sped down the track. “Miss Hasabe says a long, long time ago they used to land the first space ships here.”
“That’s right Dari. Five hundred years ago, they would land a space ship they called the space shuttle here. It was a military base then too, but not for the Uni.”
Darius looked up at his father, his eyes wide. He began to say something, stopped, looked outside at the sky for a moment, and finally turned back again. “Will they have the Damocles next to the Paracelsus at the Eros station, Dada?”
“They haven’t built the Damocles yet,” Cyrus said as Darius turned to face him. Something moved over the boy’s face and it was as if those words alone carried the pain of how long it would be before he would see his father again. He didn’t cry, but the look of horror on his face was worse than tears. Cyrus wanted to comfort him, but he could only find the words, “I’m sorry, Darius.”
Dr. Kalem saw Cyrus and Darius and moved closer to them. Cyrus shook his hand and then pulled him in, hugging him brusquely, “Take care of my family, old friend.” The lines on Kalem’s face deepened, and his lips parted as if to say something, but he only smiled and gripped Cyrus’s shoulders tightly. When Kalem released him, Feralynn stepped between them, agape with tears. Cyrus pulled her close as she sobbed and suddenly felt the heaviness between them lifted. In that moment, it was just the two of them, as they had been during their years at the Arcology. Someone more inclined to melodrama would have described the feeling as warmth, but even in that moment where the entire universe was a small space that included only them, Cyrus knew that warmth was no longer a part of their equation. The raw emotion between them had no name, and it was too humble to be overwhelming, but it filled the expanse that had grown between them for the last eight years. And for a moment that seemed longer than the trip Cyrus would soon embark on, he coveted the feeling of every sensation of every gram of flesh where their bodies touched.
As they embraced, the conveyance lev reached the Dock. Feralynn pulled away from Cyrus, punched him rather abruptly on his shoulder, and then turned away lowering her head. Cyrus backed away slowly. He understood more of her mixed emotions than maybe she did herself—enough to know nothing he could say in the time they had left would change them. But he paused anyway, almost apologized, but saved his words, turning to hug Darius one more time. Cyrus almost convulsed as he felt the warm moisture between their cheeks. Then he set his son down, turned as quickly as he could, and walked down the jetway with some other scientists. It felt as if he were walking through a swamp as he trudged toward the airlock. He wanted to turn to get one more glance at his family, but he pressed himself to keep moving toward the ship.
Suddenly, there was a commotion behind him. He heard a shout and then a shuffling, and as he turned, he saw a soldier trying to restrain Darius. Darius flailed his elbows to squirm out of the soldier’s grasp. The soldier moved his hand to get a better grip and Darius twisted. The man only managed to grab the collar of his jacket, and Darius spun out of it, stumbled, and then pedaled his feet beneath him to run outside the reach of the soldier. The soldier cursed under his breath, but Kalem placed his hand on him, spoke some words, and the soldier relaxed and did not give chase. Darius barreled up the jetway, and if he had been six or seven kilos heavier, would have tackled Cyrus. As Darius looked up, he was gasping for air and his cheek was wet, but he did not appear to be crying. Cyrus could not tell if the boy was gasping from crying earlier, from his struggle with the soldier, or from trying to get his words out too fast.
“Dada! Dada! Remember the other day when I said I felt selfish?”
“Yes Dari.”
“I don’t feel so selfish anymore. I feel like it’s gonna be impossible without you, but I don’t feel so sad anymore.”
“I’m glad Dari, but what changed?”
“I figured out what the treasure in the Aryal story was!” He paused to wipe something from his nose, sighed a little, and then continued, “The treasure isn’t a thing, at least not a grabby kinda thing. It’s a feeling. A feeling that someone loves you enough to give up a part of themself because you need it.” His words came in between sniffles, but he managed to hold back any tears.
“That’s pretty deep Dari, but I’m not sure I see what I’m giving up.”
“That’s because you aren’t. I think you need something Dada. I’m too young to know what it is, but I’m Big Man enough to let you go look for it, at least for a little while. But you better find it before mommy and me get to Asha, because you leaving is almost too much once. I know I couldn’t do it two times.”
And
then he couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. His body began to
shake with sobs and he turned, buried his face in his hands, and
stumbled back toward the soldier that still held his jacket. Feralynn
moved to the soldier and sidled past him, pulling her son to her side
with one arm. She looked up, tears in her own eyes, and Kalem put his
arm around her and Darius. Kalem nodded to Cyrus before uttering some
quiet consolation to Darius and Feralynn. With her free hand Feralynn
blew Cyrus a kiss, her tears adding a melodramatic twinkle to her
eyes. She had never looked as beautiful as she had at that moment. It
was as if the pall that had hung over her for the last eight years
was lifting, slowly, but lifting nonetheless. And that was how Cyrus
knew he would never see her again. Darius would make it to the
Damocles, but she never would.
two
—Dada, why are you leaving me and mama?
—I’m not leaving you. You will be meeting me on Asha with your mother once the Damocles is built.
—That’s gonna take five years for them to build it though.
—But it will land a year after the Paracelsus, because it will be a bigger and faster ship with a much more efficient drive.
—But I’ll be a grown up man like you before I see you again.
—I know Darius, but this trip may help us understand things we couldn’t understand before. Things we would never be able to see and study here on Earth.
—What’s Asha like Dada? At school they say it’s like a really big desert.
—Well, there’s a huge ocean that runs under the surface. But the surface is barren and dry as far as we can tell.
—Why is it like that?
—Because it spins on its side. Like Uranus. We think a large comet hit it when it was a young planet. The impact created a giant crater we call the Bereshit Scar and knocked Asha on its side. Because the comet was made mostly of ice, the ice melted and filled the gaps under the surface. The comet created the conditions that will allow humans to live on the planet. But because the planet turns on its side like that, a day on Asha is half a year, and it’s night for half a year. And a year on Asha is twenty-five Earth years, so it’s good the ocean is underground, because the water would evaporate and Asha would be covered in clouds like Venus.
—But I don’t get it, why is Asha so important?
—Because it’s like a young Earth. Studying the planet up close might help us learn how life on Earth started. Plus, pretty soon there will be too many people on Earth, we will need a place to go, and that place will need to be prepared.
—Can’t you wait until I’m older to leave?
—I wish I could, but we have to leave now because it takes so long to get there. At the speed the Paracelsus goes, it will take a hundred ninety-six years to get there. A machine called the Hyposoma Apparatus will keep my body from aging until the ship begins to slow down. It takes the ship five years to slow down because it is going so fast, so we use the five years to make our bodies healthy again, because the Hyposoma makes our bodies and brains weak.
—The Paracelsus will travel at ninety-Five point oh five percent of the speed of light, two hundred, eighty-five thousand, one hundred fifty kilometers per second, right Dada? Miss Hasabe taught us about it.
—That’s right. But because the ship goes so fast, it takes a hundred ninety-six years on the ship, but it will be six hundred thirty-one years for everyone else because traveling close to the speed of light bends time.
—So while you’re in bent time, me and momma and everyone else will be in straight time, and we’ll get older. Then me and momma will go on the Damocles, and we will go into even more bent time, and everyone else will get old and die, but we’ll be okay because of the Hyposoma At-her-at-us.
—App-er-atus. And yes, your Uncle Xander already made the arrangements for you and your mother to go on the Damocles when they are done building it. If it didn’t have to slow down, it would actually catch up to us before we got to Asha.
—That’s because the Damocles travels at ninety-eight point one three percent of the speed of light, two hundred ninety-four thousand, three hundred ninety kilometers per second.
—Since when do you pay so much attention in class?
—Well, it’s not all the time the teacher talks about my Dada in class. Are you sure I’m going on the Damocles. No one at school believes me, and Terry Gallager says only important people get to go.
—You’re important to me, so the next time Terry Gallager runs his mouth about something he knows nothing about, tell him to stuff it in his undersuit.
—Okay Dada. Is it gonna be fun on Asha?
—There will be a lot of work for me to do. But the settlement should be prepared by the time you and your mother get there. And you should be traveling with other families as well.
—I don’t want you to go Dada. I think I’ll miss you too much.
—I will miss you too. Terribly. But this is work I have to do. A chance to do something that could change everything we know—everything we thought we knew. But you will be fine. Before long, you won’t even notice I’m gone.
—I don’t think so Dada. The launch is forty-seven and a half days away, but I feel like I’m never gonna see you again, and it hurts so much already. It feels like it’s never gonna stop hurting.
—Well, one way or the other, it will stop eventually.
—You’re real smart Dada, and you always seem to know all the right answers, but I don’t think you got it right this time.
—For both our sakes, I hope you’re wrong.
—Me too, Dada. Me too.
• • • • •
A gasp of stale air escaped as Cyrus Chamberlain exhaled the first breath of the day cycle. He rolled sluggishly out of the sleep chamber and onto the warm, slightly curved floor of the claustrophobic sleeping quarters. At least the floor isn’t cold, Cyrus thought to himself as he slowly inched one bare foot in front of the other. The earthy green walls of the room were as calming as the designer had intended, but the last two mornings had been met with frustration. The first day had been easier because emerging from the Hyposoma, Cyrus could barely remember his own name, let alone move. The second day, he had awaken in this sleep chamber that looked like a medical monitoring station for Intensive Care patients.
But that is what they were at the moment. They would be packed inside these tubes that looked like detached fighter cockpits for another four day cycles. The sleep chambers ensured the microscopic robots that helped to stimulate their bodies back to health were working properly. The sleep units also served to alert the automated Shipmate android if there was a complication. Most of them still lay closed, their occupants opting for rest over attempts at roaming the ship, but Cyrus could not stay in his sleep chamber any longer this day cycle.
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 cupped 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.”
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