Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 56 Read online

  “I understood this was to be informal, Mr. Bishop.” She nodded toward Carter who stood at Trent’s side, hands clasped before him. “Should I have brought representation?”

  Trent tried to gesture reassurance. “He’s just here in case I say something insane.”

  Valikova looked at Carter. “Is that something he’s likely to do?”

  Carter nodded. “Very likely.”

  Trent smiled. “He’ll verify that I really mean it.”

  The woman’s face remained expressionless as she looked back to Trent. She stared at him as if trying to see past everything that everyone “knows” about wealthy, famous people to find the man behind it. “Very well,” she said at last.

  They sat down in a cluster of chairs angled to take advantage of the view. Before Trent could say anything, Valikova spoke again. “You should know at the start that you’re wasting your time, Mr. Bishop. Diaspora launches in three days and there is no more room.”

  “So you’ve said.” Trent leaned forward. “But I understand you’re already organizing the funds for the second wave. I thought, perhaps, I might help.”

  “All donations are welcome,” she said.

  Trent smiled, pausing for effect. “I was thinking something on the order of my entire net worth.”

  Valikova merely glanced at Carter, her eyebrows slightly raised.

  “Yes, he means it,” Carter said. “And strictly off the record, yes, he’s insane.”

  Still expressionless, Valikova looked back at Trent. “It took us twenty years to build Diaspora. Will you still be so committed after another twenty? You would still arrive twenty years behind her, you know.”

  Trent cleared his throat, staring intently at the way his white-knuckled fingers were twisted together. He couldn’t look her in the eye. “I was thinking — ”

  “No.” The woman’s voice wasn’t any louder, but it was stronger, sterner. “You were not thinking that I would keep another passenger in hiber-sleep for an extra twenty years while you took his place, because if you were thinking that, I would lose out on a lot of funding when I told you to take a long walk in a short airlock.”

  Trent’s face reddened as he kept his gaze locked on his hands.

  “At least you have the good sense to be embarrassed,” she went on. “Tell me honestly, Mr. Bishop. Is that the sort of person you’d want to start a new world with?”

  “Sorry,” Bishop breathed. He finally forced himself to look up at her face. The hardness there was gone, replaced by a kindness and compassion that seemed to shave a decade off of her age. He tried to smile. “Maybe we can do it in ten.”

  For the first time since they’d met, Valikova smiled. “Even ten years is a long time,” she said.

  “Everything.” Bishop trembled with the strength of the admission. “Everything I have. Everything I am. I’d trade it all to talk to her one more time.”

  Carter leaned over and put his hand on Trent’s shoulder. “It’s not that long,” he said.

  Ten years is nearly half the attendant’s life so far. To her, it is very nearly forever. She shakes her head in awe of the commitment.

  He can walk without her help now, but still she hovers as he reacquaints his limbs with the idea of motion.

  They are all human, he notes, and humans make mistakes. Sometimes our actions are mistaken. Sometimes it’s our inaction. Either way, they haunt us. Some hide from their mistakes. Some feel compelled to fix them.

  But some mistakes just can’t be fixed, can they? Not in ten years. Not in a hundred. Not in a quarter of a millennium. We can only hope to ease the consequences of the things we should have done but didn’t — to still the echoes of a moment’s carelessness.

  He’d never seen a river until he came to Terranova, but he’d recognized it immediately. He’d lived his life in such a place, struggling to stay upright through the churning rapids. Thinking of it, he finds he is uncomfortable imparting wisdom to the attendant. He is not well suited to the role of elder statesman. But the words need saying, because even now, here in this quiet eddy away from the froth and foam, he still feels the inexorable pull of the current that has swept him so far along. Too, he feels the need to ease the consequences.

  He moves his left arm, feeling it resist. He’d nearly lost it to a real river in his second waking period after the landing. Their power needs had outgrown the tiny nuke plant they’d brought, and the solar panels had been under-performing. He wonders if the hydroelectric plant is still running so many years later. Two people died when the original foundation collapsed. He had nearly been the third.

  He smiles to himself. The plans never tell the whole story, do they? There are always hidden costs.

  Trent punched up the design specs for Diaspora’s main thruster while Carter and Chen Xiang, Bishop Engineering’s most competent propulsion expert, looked on. The skeletal plans filled the two-meter bubble tank.

  Chen leaned closer, his nose almost touching the glass of the three-dimensional display. “I’ve seen it,” he said. “Magneto-plasma rocket. Very elegant.”

  Trent folded his arms. “I need to boost its thrust.”

  Chen picked up the design station’s control puck and used it to fly through the plans. He moved around at dizzying speed, zooming in to read details here and there, then flying off to examine something else entirely. At last, he pulled away again, leaving the design rotating slowly in the middle of the tank. He looked at Trent. “By how much?”

  “Double.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Fifty percent, then,” Trent said. “Whatever you can give me.”

  Chen shook his head. “Mr. Bishop, that thing can already move a small asteroid, given time. Just what are you planning to — ?” He broke off, glancing at the ceiling as if he could see through the intervening structure and all the way to orbit.

  “Whatever you can give me,” Trent repeated.

  Chen nodded. “Give me Hirakawa from the materials division,” he said. “He’s working on some bleeding-edge ceramic magnets. He’ll probably want a raise. Just give him whatever he asks for. It’s no time to be cheap.”

  More than once, Carter had suggested to Chen that he pay more attention to the norms of employer-employee relationships, but meaty engineering projects always seemed to wipe everything else from the man’s mind.

  Trent smiled, giving Carter a quick shake of his head. “Anything else?” he asked Chen.

  “A thirty gigawatt reactor.”

  “Too much mass.”

  “We’ll work it out,” Chen said. “For now, we just make it work. If I’m going to a new planet, I want to get there as soon as possible.”

  “You?” Trent shook his head, looking surprised. “Chen, are you signed up for the second wave?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then why?” Trent hooked his thumb at the plans in the bubble tank. “Because of this?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Chen said. “It’s just a rocket.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Chen looked uncomfortable. He turned away for a moment, then snatched up the control puck and gave his full attention to the bubble tank. “Let me know when Hirakawa’s transferred, will you?”

  Carter gently took Trent’s arm, steering him toward the door. He nodded firmly in answer to Trent’s questioning glance and tugged him along. Outside, already moving down the corridor, he finally spoke. “He’s going because you’re going,” Carter said. “He can’t say it. Probably doesn’t even completely understand it, but it’s true.”

  “How do you know?”

  Carter shrugged, walking more slowly. They were heading toward the dome’s central hub. “I recognize the look,” he said.

  Trent shook his head, but kept walking. “I don’t understand.”

  They reached the end of the corridor. The hub of the enormous dome was open space, fifty meters across, stretching from ground to roof. Carter led Trent over to the railing. Every one of the dome’s ten floors h
ad a wide boulevard that circled the hub. From where they stood, five floors above the ground, the sense of space was tremendous. A delicate-looking lattice filled the hub, supporting engineered plants and mosses that contributed a good share of the building’s atmosphere recycling. The space glittered green with life. From where they stood, they could see thousands of people going about their day’s affairs.

  “You built this,” Carter said. “On a dusty, airless rock, you made this happen.”

  Trent smiled at that. “It was a good job.”

  “It’s more than that,” Carter said, sweeping his hand across the scene. “It’s a quarter of a million lives. It’s Chen’s life.” He paused and looked at Trent’s face. “My life.”

  Trent stared back at him, wide-eyed. “You too?”

  Carter shrugged and looked away. “You’re my only client,” he said. “What the hell else would I do?”

  “There are no guarantees, Carter.”

  “There never are.” The lawyer was quiet for a while. When he finally spoke, it was with an uncharacteristic hesitancy. “This dome isn’t the only thing you built, Trent. You’ve touched…. What was I when we met? Do you remember? I do. I look in the mirror and see that rat-assed loser. Desperately trying to hide from everything. Too afraid to live. Too scared to end it.”

  “You turned yourself around.”

  “You got me through college and into law school,” Carter went on. “Made me stay when I wanted to quit. Kept me straight when I wanted to wash it all away in a sea of drugs. Convinced me that what happened to me mattered — to me.”

  Trent peered at Carter’s face, but the man refused to meet his gaze. “Carter, this is too big a decision to make out of some sense of loyalty.”

  Carter just laughed and said, “I know.”

  Great men inspire loyalty, the attendant says. It’s a powerful force.

  He snorts. Loyalty is a piker. It’s what you do because it’s the right thing to do. It’s a beggar, dependent for its power on the goodwill of others. Even great men are lost if all they can martial behind them is feeble old loyalty.

  In his fourth waking period — the unscheduled one — there’d been that one guy — what was his name? Mendenhall. That was it. His people had been loyal to him when he’d tried to take control of the colony. The plan was all wrong, he’d said. It was stupid to live their lives for people who were already more dead than alive.

  They woke you to help, the attendant says.

  They’d conjured him like some elder ghost to settle things and bring peace to the world. Peace through strength. He’d done it, too. He shudders now, recalling the needless deaths that had brought the colony to the edge of failure.

  He’s grown tired of this room and ready to test his legs in the hallway outside. She reluctantly agrees, but never lets her hand stray more than a breath from his arm as he toddles out the door.

  She’s getting it all wrong, he fears. She just doesn’t understand. When she tells others this story, it should be the right story. Loyalty merely begs. Love commands. Even death is helpless before love.

  For most, the launch ceremony for Diaspora was anticlimactic. The long, showy countdown culminated in little more than satellite-relayed video of a bright, blue-white glow streaming from the back of the ship. There was no dramatic scene of the great ship zooming off into the cosmos, not even the slow, grand rise of a ground-based lift-off. One moment, the giant screen in mission control held an image of the starship against a scattering of stars, the next the image was exactly the same, except for a flood of ion plasma streaming from the back of it. It would be weeks before Diaspora showed any perceptible motion. The cheering of the crowd made more commotion than the ship did.

  Trent leaned against one of the room’s many consoles. He and Carter had been invited to watch the launch with the staff. He stared at the screen, letting the celebration surge around him, the cheers and laughter splashing uselessly against his stony mood.

  “Odd, isn’t it?”

  Trent started, surprised to find Valikova and Carter standing beside him. “What’s odd,” Trent said.

  She glanced at the big screen. “For them, it will be tomorrow,” she said. “But they won’t arrive for a hundred and fifty years. Nearly another hundred before a signal can get back to us. They have this amazing future ahead of them, but for most of the people here, they’re already dead.”

  Trent turned to look at her profile while she stared at Diaspora. “They’re not dead,” he said.

  “Yes, they are.” Now she turned to him, staring into his face with a surprising intensity. “And so will you be, once you enter hiber-sleep. We who remain will be left with nothing but your memory and a vague hope that you’ll find happiness in another life. Does that sound familiar?”

  Someone walked by with a tray of champagne-filled cups. Trent took one, but merely stared at it in his hand. “Are you trying to talk me out of this?”

  “My people are Russian,” she said, shrugging. “Every silver lining has a dark cloud around it.” She paused for a while before going on. “You know, Egyptian pharaohs used to have their loyal servants buried with them to help in the afterlife.”

  Carter stepped closer, sliding between Valikova and Trent. “Your point?” he said.

  “There’s been quite a flood of sign-ups since Mr. Bishop went public.” She glanced toward Trent quickly, then back to Carter.

  “Speak plainly,” Carter said. “He knows I’m going.”

  “Very well,” Valikova said. “The pharaoh’s servants didn’t have a choice, Mr. Bishop. Your people do. That’s a lot of power to wield.”

  “It’s their choice,” Trent said.

  But the woman didn’t even glance at Trent. She kept her gaze fixed on Carter. “They’re following you into heaven, Mr. Bishop. Maybe into hell. All I ask is that you use the power wisely.”

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Carter said.

  “I don’t doubt that.” Valikova looked back at the image of Diaspora. “It’s not him I’m worried about.”

  Twelve years, not ten. He tells the attendant that’s how long it really took to build Irene. He feels more stable now. His legs seem as good as they’re going to get. The attendant’s hovering is beginning to annoy him, but he tolerates it because he wants her full attention. The story isn’t finished yet.

  He takes a few quick steps away from her and turns, just to show her that he can. Her face shows more concern than surprise, followed slowly by a smile.

  He asks if she would follow someone into the great beyond, but she misunderstands. She insists he is far from any sort of tomb.

  But something in her expression makes him think twice. Maybe she understands all too well. Her concern is more than professional. Yes, of course. How many greats, he asks, lie between his sperm and her granddaughter-hood.

  She confesses. He is six generations her sire. She mentions a name and he pretends to remember the woman it denotes. He wonders how many of his descendants he’s known during those times when he was awake, guiding the colony through some emergency, or stretching its capabilities into new areas.

  It’s hazy, those early days. Everyone slept with everyone then. Babies were the colony’s future and few wombs went unfilled. It was awkward at times, but strictly voluntary, and ended up producing a culture that at least seemed healthy. Sex was sex and relationships were relationships. If the twain met, well that was just a bonus. Love, though, that was different. Love was a thing unto itself. He’d cared about all of them, but hadn’t loved them. His love slept through it. It sleeps still.

  His newly-revealed quadruple-great grandchild interrupts his thoughts. She thinks he should rest.

  No rest, he says. There’s no time. Never enough time.

  “There’s no time,” Trent said. He coughed again. The cough had become more insistent over the last few weeks. More painful, too. Carter kept nagging him to slow down, to rest, but it had been nearly ten years already. He had to keep to Irene’s schedul
e.

  “A little time now,” Chen said, setting his datapad down on Trent’s coffee table, “or a hundred years later.”

  Trent’s living room had become the project’s hub. The furniture was crowded by computers, displays, and bubble tanks. Bishop Industries no longer existed. Trent had killed it, but it had been left to Carter to slice its carcass up and feed it to the markets. It had taken years and had nearly destroyed the Lunar Republic’s entire economy in the process. Trent himself had been too focused on Irene to notice.

  “Show me,” Trent said.

  Chen just pointed to the datapad. “Run the sim,” he said. “Plasma physics plus fluid dynamics equals cauliflower.”

  Trent tapped the datapad’s screen. A funnel shape appeared, ejecting a simulated ion stream. It was the business end of Irene’s engine. A power meter climbed steadily from thirty to forty percent. When it reached fifty, the stream began to fray along the edges. As the power increased, so did the turbulence, until it became a diffuse, boiling cloud.

  “It’s the bell,” Chen said. “We need to redesign it. Above forty-eight percent power, most of the thrust is lost to turbulence.” He paused for a moment. “Long term, it could also cause significant damage.”

  “How long?” Trent’s cough interrupted him, the fit lasting several seconds. Carter brought him a cup of water and held it while he drank. Trent sipped then nodded his thanks.

  Carter set the cup on the table and went back to his seat. “Go on,” he said to Chen.

  “There’s no telling,” Chen said. “We’re in new territory. Months, at least. The solution could be in the shape. It could be polish or materials. Nano-structure surfacing, maybe. I just don’t know yet.”

  Valikova leaned forward in her seat. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why now? Why Irene and not Diaspora?”