The Songs of Distant Earth (18 page)

“Hello,” said a deep male voice from a few metres away. “Welcome back.”

Loren rolled his head towards the sound, and had a blurred glimpse of a bandaged figure in an adjacent bed.

“I guess you won’t recognize me, Mister Lorenson. Lieutenant Bill Horton, communications engineer – and ex-surfboard rider.”

“Oh, hello, Bill – what have
you
been doing
–
” whispered Loren. But then the nurse arrived and ended that conversation with another well-placed hypodermic.

Now he was perfectly fit and only wanted to be allowed to get up. Surgeon-Commander Newton believed that, on the whole, it was best to let her patients know what was happening to them, and why. Even if they didn’t understand, it helped to keep them quiet so that their annoying presence did not interfere too much with the smooth running of the medical establishment.

“You
may feel
all right, Loren,” she said, “but your lungs are still repairing themselves, and you must avoid exertion until they’re back to full capacity. If Thalassa’s ocean was like Earth’s, there would have been no problem. But it’s much less saline – it’s drinkable, remember, and you drank about a litre of it. And as your body fluids are saltier than the sea, the isotonic balance was all wrong. So there was a good deal of membrane damage through osmotic pressure. We had to do a lot of high-speed research in Ship’s Archives before we could handle you. After all, drowning is not a normal space hazard.”

“I’ll be a good patient,” Loren said. “And I certainly appreciate all you’ve done. But when can I have visitors?”

“There’s one waiting outside right now. You can have fifteen minutes. Then nurse will throw her out.”

“And don’t mind me,” Lieutenant Bill Horton said. “I’m fast asleep.”

33. Tides

M
irissa felt distinctly unwell, and of course it was all the fault of the Pill. But at least she had the consolation of knowing that this could only happen one more time – when (and if!) she had the second child permitted to her.

It was incredible to think that virtually all the generations of women who had ever existed had been forced to endure these monthly inconveniences for half their lives. Was it pure coincidence, she wondered, that the cycle of fertility approximated to that of the Earth’s single giant Moon? Just suppose it had worked the same way on Thalassa, with its two close satellites! Perhaps it was just as well that their tides were barely perceptible; the thought of five- and seven-day cycles clashing discordantly together was so comically horrible that she could not help smiling and immediately felt much better.

It had taken her weeks to make the decision, and she had not yet told Loren – still less Brant, busily repairing
Calypso
back on North Island. Would she have done this if he had not left her – for all his bluster and bravado, running away without a fight?

No – that was unfair, a primitive, even prehuman reaction. Yet such instincts died hard; Loren had told her, apologetically, that sometimes he and Brant stalked each other down the corridors of his dreams.

She could not blame Brant; on the contrary, she should be proud of him. It was not cowardice, but consideration, that had sent him north until they could work out both their destinies.

Her decision had not been made in haste; she realized now that it must have been hovering below the verge of consciousness for weeks. Loren’s temporary death had reminded her – as if she needed reminding! – that soon they must part forever. She knew what must be done before he set forth for the stars. Every instinct told her that it was right.

And what would Brant say? How would he react? That was another of the many problems yet to be faced.

I love you, Brant, she whispered. I want you to come back; my second child will be yours.

But not my first.

34. Shipnet

H
ow odd, thought Owen Fletcher, that I share my name with one of the most famous mutineers of all time! Could I be a descendant? Let’s see – it’s more than two thousand years since they landed on Pitcairn Island … say, a hundred generations, to make it easy …

Fletcher took a naive pride in his ability to make mental calculations which, though elementary, surprised and impressed the vast majority; for centuries Man had pushed buttons when faced with the problem of adding two and two. Remembering a few logarithms and mathematical constants helped enormously and made his performance even more mysterious to those who did not know how it was done. Of course, he only chose examples that he knew how to handle, and it was very seldom that anyone bothered to check his answers …

A hundred generations back – so two to the hundred ancestors then. Log two is point three zero one zero – that’s thirty point one … Olympus! – a million, million, million, million,
million
people! Something wrong – nothing like that number ever lived on Earth since the beginning of time – of course, that assumes there was never any overlapping – the human family tree must be hopelessly intertwined – anyway, after a hundred generations everyone must be related to everyone else – I’ll never be able to prove it, but Fletcher Christian must be my ancestor – many times over.

All very interesting, he thought, as he switched off the display and the ancient records vanished from the screen. But I’m not a mutineer. I’m a – a
petitioner,
with a perfectly reasonable request. Karl, Ranjit, Bob all agree … Werner is uncertain but won’t give us away. How I wish we could talk to the rest of the Sabras and let them know about the lovely world we’ve found while they’re asleep.

Meanwhile, I have to answer the captain …

Captain Bey found it distinctly unsettling, having to go about the ship’s business not knowing who – or how many – of his officers or crew were addressing him through the anonymity of SHIPNET. There was no way that these unlogged inputs could be traced – confidentiality was their very purpose, built in as a stabilizing social mechanism by the long-dead geniuses who had designed
Magellan.
He had tentatively raised the subject of a tracer with his chief communications engineer, but Commander Rocklyn had been so shocked that he had promptly dropped the matter.

So now he was continually searching faces, noting expressions, listening to voice inflections – and trying to behave as if nothing had happened. Perhaps he was overreacting and nothing important
had
happened. But he feared that a seed had been planted, and it would grow and grow with every day the ship remained in orbit above Thalassa.

His first acknowledgement, drafted after consultation with Malina and Kaldor, had been bland enough:

From
: CAPTAIN To: ANON

In reply to your undated communication, I have no objection to discussions along the lines you propose, either through SHIPNET or formally in Ship’s Council.

In fact, he had very strong objections; he had spent almost half his adult life training for the awesome responsibility of transplanting a million human beings across a hundred and twenty-five light-years of space. That was his mission; if the word “sacred” had meant anything to him, he would have used it. Nothing short of catastrophic damage to the ship or the unlikely discovery that Sagan 2’s sun was about to go nova could possibly deflect him from that goal.

Meanwhile, there was one obvious line of action. Perhaps – like Bligh’s men! – the crew was becoming demoralized, or at least slack. The repairs to the ice plant after the minor damage caused by the tsunami had taken twice as long as expected, and that was typical. The whole tempo of the ship was slowing down; yes it was time to start cracking the whip again.

“Joan,” he said to his secretary, thirty thousand kilometres below. “Let me have the latest shield assembly report. And tell Captain Malina I want to discuss the hoisting schedule with him.”

He did not know if they could lift more than one snowflake a day. But they could try.

35. Convalescence

L
ieutenant Horton was an amusing companion, but Loren was glad to get rid of him as soon as the electrofusion currents had welded his broken bones. As Loren discovered in somewhat wearisome detail, the young engineer had fallen in with a gang of hairy hunks on North Island, whose second main interest in life appeared to be riding microjet surfboards up vertical waves. Horton had found, the hard way, that it was even more dangerous than it looked.

“I’m quite surprised,” Loren had interjected at one point in a rather steamy narrative. “I’d have sworn you were ninety per cent hetero.”

“Ninety-two, according to my profile,” Horton said cheerfully. “But I like to check my calibration from time to time.”

The lieutenant was only half joking. Somewhere he had heard that hundred percenters were so rare that they were classed as pathological. Not that he
really
believed it; but it worried him slightly on those very few occasions when he gave the matter any thought.

Now Loren was the sole patient and had convinced the Lassan nurse that her continuous presence was quite unnecessary – at least when Mirissa was paying her daily visit. Surgeon-Commander Newton, who like most physicians could be embarrassingly frank, had told him bluntly, “You still need another week to recuperate. If you
must
make love, let her do all the work.”

He had many other visitors, of course. With two exceptions, most were welcome.

Mayor Waldron could bully his little nurse to let her in at any time; fortunately, her visitations never coincided with Mirissa’s. The first time the mayor arrived, Loren contrived to be in an almost moribund state, but this tactic proved disastrous, as it made it impossible for him to fend off some moist caresses. On the second visit – luckily there had been a ten-minute warning – he was propped up by pillows and fully conscious. However, by a strange coincidence, an elaborate respiratory function test was in progress, and the breathing-tube inserted in Loren’s mouth made conversation impossible. The test was completed about thirty seconds after the mayor’s departure.

Brant Falconer’s one courtesy visit was something of a strain for them both. They talked politely about the scorps, progress at the Mangrove Bay freezing plant, North Island politics – anything, in fact, except Mirissa. Loren could see that Brant was worried, even embarrassed, but the very last thing he expected was an apology. His visitor managed to get it off his chest just before he left.

“You know, Loren,” he said reluctantly, “there was nothing else I could have done about that wave. If I’d kept on course, we’d have smashed into the reef. It was just too bad
Calypso
couldn’t reach deep water in time.”

“I’m quite sure,” Loren said with complete sincerity, “that no one could have done a better job.”

“Er – I’m glad you understand that.”

Brant was obviously relieved, and Loren felt a surge of sympathy – even of pity – for him. Perhaps there had been some criticism of his seamanship; to anyone as proud of his skills as Brant, that would have been intolerable.

“I understand that they’ve salvaged the sledge.”

“Yes – it will soon be repaired, and as good as new.”

“Like me.”

In the brief comradeship of their joint laughter, Loren was struck by a sudden, ironic thought.

Brant must often have wished that Kumar had been a little less courageous.

36. Kilimanjaro

W
hy had he dreamed of Kilimanjaro?

It was a strange word; a name, he felt sure – but of what?

Moses Kaldor lay in the grey light of the Thalassan dawn, slowly wakening to the sounds of Tarna. Not that there were many at this hour; a sand-sledge was whirring somewhere on its way to the beach, probably to meet a returning fisherman.

Kilimanjaro.

Kaldor was not a boastful man, but he doubted if any other human being had read quite so many ancient books on such a wide range of subjects. He had also received several terabytes of memory implant, and though information stored that way was not really
knowledge,
it was available if you could recall the access codes.

It was a little early to make the effort, and he doubted if the matter was particularly important. Yet he had learned not to neglect dreams; old Sigmund Freud had made some valid points, two thousand years ago. And anyway, he would not be able to get to sleep again …

He closed his eyes, triggered the search command, and waited. Though that was pure imagination – the process took place at a wholly subconscious level – he could picture myriads of Ks flickering past somewhere in the depths of his brain.

Now something was happening to the phosphenes that forever dance in random patterns on the retina of the tightly closed eye. A dark window had appeared magically in the faintly luminescent chaos; letters were forming and there it was:

KILIMANJARO: Volcanic mountain, Africa. Ht. 5.9 km.

Site of first Space Elevator Earth Terminus.

Well! What did
that
mean? He let his mind play with this scanty information.

Something to do with that other volcano, Krakan – which had certainly been in his thoughts a good deal recently? That seemed rather farfetched. And he needed no warning that Krakan – or its boisterous offspring – might erupt again.

The first space elevator? That was indeed ancient history; it marked the very beginning of planetary colonization by giving mankind virtually free access to the Solar System. And they were employing the same technology here, using cables of super-strength material to lift the great blocks of ice up to
Magellan
as the ship hovered in stationary orbit above the Equator.

Yet this, too, was a very far cry from that African mountain. The connection was too remote; the answer, Kaldor felt certain, must be somewhere else.

The direct approach had failed. The only way to find the link – if he ever would – was to leave it to chance and time, and the mysterious workings of the unconscious mind.