Now and Forever (10 page)

Quell observed, “Our studies appear to be at an end.”

“If so,” I said, “our life begins. Let us find our rocket.”

We returned to our room, where our orders were awaiting us. We collected our gear and, donning our jet-packs, rose into the air and flew. The clouds gave way, the birds parted, and at last we landed at the great launching area of Cape Kennedy. We were surrounded by skyscraper gantries, gleaming rockets, the persistent buzz of intense activity.

I stared around me, stunned by the immense size of it all.

“Look, Quell, there, and there! Rockets! At least two dozen. Listen to the names:
Apollo 149, Mercury 77, Jupiter 215.
And there …”

Quell finished for me. “The
Cetus 7.
”

I stared at the gleaming cylinder, towering above all the other craft. “The largest interstellar ship ever built,” I said, in awe.

Quell mused, “I wonder if, in their dreams, your Bach and Beethoven ever built such as these?”

A voice broke our reverie. “They did, oh yes they did.”

We turned to find an old man in a faded astronaut's suit emerging from the shadow of a gangway. He spoke, saying simply, “Hello, friends.”

Quell must have scanned the stranger's mind, for he replied, “We are no friends of yours.”

The old man chuckled mirthlessly and continued. “You're quick to judge me, telepath. Be quicker still. Is the
Cetus 7
to be your ship?”

“It is,” I replied.

The old man groaned. “Ah, you tread the rim of the Abyss. Pull back, if you know what's good for you.”

Quell uttered a curse from his far world and pulled at my elbow. “Let's go, Ishmael. No need to listen to this one's false warnings.”

The old man pursued us. “You, young man, do you know that spaceship's captain?”

“Not eye to eye,” I said, turning back, curious.

“Eye to eye! My God, you've touched the nerve. For when you meet him, do not look into his eyes. Be warned—he has none.”

“None?” I asked. “Blind?”

“No, stricken's more the word. Burnt blind in space some years ago. Ah, but
you
knew it,” the old man said, turning to Quell.

“No, I did not,” said Quell, tugging at my arm again. “And we'll hear no more from you.”

But the old man would not be silenced. “You've already heard it, my friend, for you have just read the whole inside of my mind. You've seen. Now tell your young friend what you've learned. Tell him what's in store.”

I shook off Quell's hand and stood waiting.

The old astronaut came closer and spoke very clearly. “What burnt the captain blind? Where? When? How? You may well ask. Was he a priest of space, chasing God, and God spun and struck darkness at him in one blow? Is your captain all in one smooth piece, or do the ragged edges show where he was sewn back up? Does midnight still peek out through those raw holes the doctors could not mend? Was he born an albino, or did terror bleach him like a terrible snow?”

I turned to look at Quell to see how he was taking all this, and the immense shadow that was Quell trembled in the sunlight but would not give answer.

The old astronaut, triumphant, moved yet closer.

“Now hear this. Aboard that ship, far out in space, there'll come a time when you see land—a world on the horizon—where there is no land, find time where there is no time; when ancient kings will reflesh their bones and reseat their crowns. Then, oh then, ship, ship's captain, ship's men, all, all will be destroyed! All save one.”

My hands were fists. I stepped toward the old man in anger, but he backed off to finish.

“Believe me. The
Cetus 7
is no fair ship. It is its captain's. And the captain is forever lost.” And finally he turned and started to walk away.

“Wait,” I cried. “Hold on. What is your name?”

The old man paused, as if searching for an answer.

“Elijah. Name's Elijah. Good morning to you, friends, morning.”

He spread his arms and, a moment later, where he had been was darkness.

Quell and I stood, abandoned, as a swift shadow passed over us, and the voice came one more time from above, fading, “Morning, morning.”

Before either of us could say a word, there came an immense sound of thunder as a rocket, perhaps five miles distant, took off shuddering, filling the sky with color; the crimson and white flashes of ascension. As the sound receded, we became aware of sudden activity around us—the stirrings of technicians and robots and astronauts, the sounds of radios and electronic pulses, the shadows of rockets connecting to gantries, ready to lift into the universe.

Quell at last said, “It's time to go. Our ship is waiting. Ishmael, attend, we must aboard.”

And so we continued on to the
Cetus 7.

CHAPTER 2

Oh, the logistics of the rocket. Computerize the billion and one decisions. Ten thousand nursing bottles filled with super-homogenized gunk for space children. Fresh air produced by glass-enclosed botanical gardens. Sweat recycled into sweet water by machines.

Ring all the bells and klaxons. Flash the lights and prepare the thunders. Men and women run.

Quell and I stood by the gantry, staring up at the giant ship. It had been a week since our strange encounter with Elijah, seven days filled with intense activity as the
Cetus 7
crew, of which we were now members, prepared the ship for voyage.

“Quell,” I said, “at no time in the last week, in all the rush and work, upon or around the ship, have we seen—blind or otherwise—the prophesied captain of our ship.”

Quell shut his yes and cocked his strange head.

“Him,” he whispered.

“What?” I urged. “What?”

Quell murmured, “He is near.” And he turned and pointed up at the gantry. Its elevator was slowly rising and within the cage we saw a lone, dark figure.

“There is our captain,” said Quell.

 

The spaceman's chapel. I had come to say a prayer before liftoff the next morning. Quell accompanied me, although I knew not to what god he prayed, if any. The muted light soothed our eyes after the blinding glare of the launching pad. Within the quiet and sacred space we stared up at the curved panoramic ceiling and there we saw, floating, the translucent shapes of men and women long lost in space. Soft murmurs emanated from them, a multitudinous whispering.

“And those? Why?” said Quell.

I watched the floating shapes and said, “Memorials, images, and voices of those who have died and are buried forever in space. Here, in the high air of the cathedral, at dawn and at dusk, their souls are projected, their voices broadcast, in remembrance.”

Quell and I stood and listened and watched.

One lost voice recited, “David Smith, lost near Mars, July 2050.”

Another, higher, softer, said, “Elizabeth Ball, adrift beyond Jupiter, 2087.”

And a third, sonorous, again and again, “Robert Hinkston, killed by meteor swarm, 2063, buried in space.”

Another whisper: “Buried.”

A further sound: “Lost.”

And all the whispers at once, repeating: “In space, in space, in space.”

I took Quell's arm and turned him toward the front of the chapel. “There,” I said, pointing. “In the pulpit, at any moment, we will see a man who died nearly a hundred years ago, but so remarkable a man was he that they computerized his soul, tracked his voice, made circuitries of his merest breath.”

At that, the lights rose to illuminate a figure that was rising behind the pulpit.

“Father Ellery Colworth,” I murmured.

“A robot?” said Quell, quietly.

“Yes,” I said, “but more. Before us is the gentle
essence
of the man.”

The lights dimmed somewhat as the incredible three-dimensional duplicate of Father Ellery Colworth began to speak.

“Is God dead?” he said. “An old question now. But once, hearing it, I laughed and replied: Not dead, but simply sleeping until you chattering bores shut up!”

There was a soft sound of laughter all around Quell and me, which faded as Father Colworth continued.

“A better answer is yet another question: Are
you
dead? Does the blood move in your hand, does that hand move to touch metal, does that metal move to touch Space? Do wild thoughts of travel and migration stir your soul? They do. Thus you live. Therefore God lives. You are the thin skin of life upon an unsensing Earth, you are that growing edge of God which manifests itself in hunger for Space. So much of God lies vibrantly asleep. The very stuffs of worlds and galaxies, they know
not
themselves. But here, God stirs in his sleep. You are the stirring. He wakes, you are that wakening. God reaches for the stars. You are His hand. Creation manifest, you go in search. He goes to find, you go to find. Everything you touch along the way, therefore, will be holy. On far worlds you will meet your own flesh, terrifying and strange, but still your own. Treat it well. Beneath the shape, you share the Godhead.

“You Jonahs traveling in the belly of a new-made metal whale, you swimmers in the far seas of deep space, blaspheme not against yourselves or the frightening twins of yourselves you find among the stars, but ask to understand the miracles which are Space, Time, and Life in the high attics and lost birthing-places of Eternity. Woe to you if you do not find all life most holy, and coming to lay yourself down cannot say, O Father God, you waken me. I waken Thee. Immortal, together we then walk upon the waters of deep space in the new morn which names itself: Forever.”

The congregation—above and below—softly repeated the word, “Forever, forever.”

There was a swell of soft music from somewhere in the heavens as Father Ellery Colworth finished, his figure went dark, and his silhouette was seen descending silently behind the podium.

In the long silence that came upon us I wept.

 

I lay awake that night in my berth aboard the
Cetus 7.

Quell was already asleep. Rain patterns, simulated to aid slumber, fell on our faces and behind us on the wall.

The voice of a clock repeated, very softly, “Tick tock, two o'clock … tick tock, two o'clock.”

At last I spoke.

“Quell, awake?”

And his mind spoke to me silently from across the room.

“Part of my mind, yes, the rest sleeps. I dream of the old man who warned us.”

“Elijah? Did you believe him, that our captain is blind?”

“Yes. That much is common knowledge.”

“And that he is mad?”

“That we must discover for ourselves.”

“But by that time, mightn't it be too late, Quell?”

The soothing rain patterns continued to fall on my cheeks and the walls. There was a faint rumble of thunder from beyond.

“Quell? What, is all of you asleep now? Good companion, lie there. Your body the strange color of a world I will never see. Cold blood but warm heart; your mouth silent but your mind, even in sleep, breathing friendship.”

Quell's voice, within my head, murmured drowsily, “Ishmael.”

“Quell, thank God for you in the days ahead.”

From all around me Quell's voice repeated, “Ishmael … Ishmael.”

CHAPTER 3

A voice boomed over the loudspeakers. “The captain is in quarters, prepare for countdown.”

The crew all hurried to their assigned stations, suited up and strapped in. The great doors were shut and sealed, the gantries rolled away, the engines fired up.

“Minus one and counting.”

We lay waiting for the fire-wind to seize and throw us at the sky.

And seize and throw it did.

Oh my God, I thought. Help me to shout, “We rise, we rise.”

But silence took us, like penitent monks, to its bosom.

For even the thundering rocket, which rips the soul on Earth, walks silently some few miles high, treads the stars without footfall, as if in awe of the great cathedral of space.

Free, I thought. No gravity. No gravity! Free. Oh, Quell, I find it most pleasant to be … alive.

Safely in orbit, let out of our constraints, I asked, “And now, what do we do?”

“Why, collect data,” said one of the crew.

“Add and subtract constellations,” said another.

“Photograph comets,” said a third. “Which means, capture God's skeleton in an X-ray.”

Another crew member said, “I grabbed a flash of those passing comets. From such huge ghosts of suns, I borrow cups of energy to power our ship. Sweet alchemy, my game, but fine fun pumps my blood. All round lies death, but I greet even Death with, look, this grin.”

It was First Mate John Redleigh. I touched a computer screen, which whispered his name, and I saw there his log of the first hours of our journey:
August 22, 2099. Out of sight of land, yes, out of sight of the blessed land, which means all Earth and those we hold dear upon it. All faces, names, souls, remembrances, streets, houses, towns, meadows, seas—gone. All longitudes, latitudes, meridians, hours, nights, days, all time, yes, time, too, gone. Christ, guard my soul. How lonely.

And to me Quell set free his thoughts: “Friend, I read minds, not futures. Space is large. They say it curves. Perhaps our end is our beginning. Our destination: far, very far, three mystery comets to be found by us in one constellation. Chart their course and map their routes, take their temperatures.”

“How long will we travel?” I asked.

“Ten years,” came the answer.

“My God, how boring,” I said.

“No,” said Quell, “for see how your God sends His meteors to entertain us.”

“Meteor strike!” a voice cried. “Deck seven. All hands report!”

We ran. All ran to the sounds of bells and klaxons and worked to repair the ship's hull.

And at last I stood, back inside the hatch, taking off my helmet along with the rest of the crew.

And so it went, day in, day out—our ship hurtling through space, each of us with his assigned task, measuring, scanning, calculating, plotting a safe course among the broken stars.

And yet, with all this happening, still, after forty days out in space, not once did we see our captain. He stayed locked up in his cabin. But sometimes, at three or so in the deep morning, I heard the hiss of the elevator shaft, like a long, drawn-out sigh, and knew he was passing, rising up from the interior living and work levels to the outermost deck of his great ship, restricted to all but our ghost leader.

We all listened and heard.

In private, Downs said, “What does he do, up there? I hear he suits up, goes out alone, tethered by just one line.”

Someone answered, “Fool, he plays games with meteors, reaching out as if to catch them, even though he cannot possibly see them coming.”

And Quell added, “He shows no trust in our radar screens. Blind, he thinks he sees clearer and beyond the human eye.”

“Sees what?” I asked. “Quell, you catch his thoughts. What?”

Quell was silent for a few moments, then said, “My mind hears, but the captain's mouth must speak. It is not for me to say. When he finds what he searches for, he will let us know. He—”

Suddenly Quell put his strange hands to his face, and from far off we heard the captain's cry over the intercom.

“No, no!” Quell yelled, and fell to his knees. He collapsed before us, and contorted one of his hands into a fist, eyes shut.

Quell shook his fists at the unseen stars. “Gah!” cried Quell, as if possessed. “No more of this, no more!”

And, suddenly, all was quiet. No sound came from the intercom, and Quell's arm dropped to the deck. He stood, weakened, shaken by this strange thing that had happened.

I went to my friend. “Quell,” I said. “Tell me what just happened. That was not you, was it? That was the captain. You knew the captain's mind, you acted as he did, yes?”

“No,” said Quell, quietly.

“Yes,” I insisted. “You have no reason to defy the stars. It was he who raised his fist at the universe.”

But Quell refused to respond, turning his gaze upward instead.

 

From First Mate John Redleigh's log:
Fifty days out. Correction: twelve hundred hours out from Earth. Student, do your sums. Computer, electro-psychoanalyze my soul. Thrust your finger, First Mate Redleigh, in a computer socket. What would you find? John Redleigh, born 2050, Reedwater, Wisconsin. Father, a maker of outboard motors. Mother, a baker of children, a dozen in all, of which the plainest of plain bread is old John Redleigh. Old, I say. Old when I was ten, long gone in senility by thirteen. Married a fine plain woman at twenty-two; filled the nursery by twenty-five. Read occasional books, thought occasional thoughts. Ah, God, Redleigh, haven't you more to put in this damn machine? Are you so stale, flat, unbumped, untouched, unscarred, unmoved? Have you no nightmare dreams, secret murders, drugs, or drink in your soul? Is your heart missing, the pulse spent? Did you give over when you were thirty, or were you ever more than a dry biscuit, an unbuttered bun, flat wine? Pleasantly sensual, but never passionate. A good husband, fair friend, far traveler, without worry, coming and going so quietly that God himself never noticed. And when you die, Redleigh, will even one horn sound? Will one hand flutter, one soul cry, one tear drop, one door slam? What's your sum? Let's finish it. There, there it is: zero. Did my secret self put those ciphers there? Feed zero, get zero? So I, John Redleigh, sum myself.

 

“You there,” said Redleigh, as I passed him outside the door to the captain's cabin.

“Sir,” I said.

“Don't jump. What are you doing here ? Shouldn't you be on the quarterdeck?”

“Well, sir,” I said, nodding at the captain's door. “Six days. Isn't that a long time for the captain to be shut in? I can't help but wonder … Is he all right? I have an urge to knock upon his door.”

Redleigh regarded me for a moment, then said, “Well, then …”

I stepped quietly to the door and rapped upon it lightly.

“No, no,” said Redleigh. “Let me show you.”

And he stepped up and knocked hard on the door with his fist.

He waited a moment, then knocked again.

I said, “Does he never answer, then?”

“If he knew that God Himself were out here, he might venture forth for a chat. But you or me? No.”

Suddenly there was the sound of a bell, a klaxon, and from the intercom a voice spoke: “Hear this! Captain's inspection. All hands assemble, main deck. All hands, Captain's inspection.”

And we turned and ran.

All gathered, five hundred strong, on the main deck.

“In line!” called Redleigh, from the head of the assembly. “He's coming, the captain is coming. Tenshun!”

There was a faint hum, a touch of electrical sound, which wavered like a swarm of insects.

The door to the main deck hissed open, and the captain was there. He stepped forward three steady, slow paces and stopped.

He was tall, well proportioned, and his uniform was completely white. The great shock of his hair was almost white, with faint traces of gray.

Over his eyes he wore a set of opaque radar-vision glasses, in which danced small firefly electric traces.

To a man, we held our breath.

At last he spoke.

“At ease.”

And, as one, we let out our breath.

“Redleigh,” the captain said.

“All present, sir.”

The captain traced the air with his hands. “Yes, the temperature has gone up ten degrees. All present, indeed.”

He moved along the front line, then stopped, one hand out, hovering near my face.

“Ah, here's one who runs the very furnace of youth. Your name?”

“Sir,” I said. “Ishmael Hunnicut Jones.”

“God, Redleigh,” said the captain, “isn't that the sound of Blue Ridge wilderness or the scarred red hills of Jerusalem?”

Without waiting for a response, he continued, “Well, now, Ishmael. What do you see that I don't?”

Staring at him, I pulled back, and from the far side of my mind, in a panic, I whispered, “Quell?”

Suddenly I knew that if I should seize the captain's dark machine electric lenses, behind them I would find eyes the color of minted silver, of fish that had never been born. White. Oh, God, this man is white, all white.

And in my head I heard Quell, a shadow upon the air: “Some years ago the universe set off a light-year immensity of photographic flash. God blinked and bleached the captain to this color of sleeplessness and terror.”

“What?” the captain demanded, for he had sensed our thoughts.

“Nothing, sir,” I lied. “And there is nothing I can see that you do not.”

I waited for his reply, but none was forthcoming. Instead, he turned and walked back to the head of the assembly and spoke. “How runs a ship in space, men?”

The crew murmured, and one replied, “With tight seams and oxygen suits at the ready, sir.”

“Well said,” the captain replied, and continued. “And how do you treat a meteor, men?”

This time I gave him the answer. “A seven-second patch and all hands saved, sir.”

The captain paused at this, and then gravely asked, “Then how do you swallow a flaming comet whole, men?”

Silence.

“No answer?” thundered the captain.

Quell wrote invisibly on the air. “They have not as yet seen such comets, sir.”

“They have not,” the captain said. “And yet such comets do come by. Redleigh?”

Redleigh touched a control pad and a star chart descended from the ceiling before us. It was a three-dimensional work of art, a chart-maker's multi-textual dream of the universe.

The captain reached out a blind hand.

“So, here, in miniature, is the universe.”

The star chart blinked.

The captain went on. “Will your eyes accomplish what mine, gone dead, cannot? From the regions of the Horsehead Nebula, among a billion fires, one special light burns. Blind, I feel its presence thus.”

He touched the center of the screen. At that instant, a vast, long, beautiful comet was illumined before us.

“Do I touch the maelstrom, Redleigh?” the captain said.

“Yes, sir,” replied Redleigh, as the crew whispered at the vast beauty revealed.

“Closer. Brighter,” commanded the captain.

The image of the comet brightened to an immense ghost.

“So,” said the captain. “Not a sun, a moon, or a world. Who'll name it?”

“Sir,” said Redleigh, gently. “That is merely a comet.”

“No!” shouted the captain. “It is not
merely
a comet.
That
is a pale bride with flowing veil come back to bed her lost unbedded groom. Isn't she lovely, men? A holy terror to the sight.”