“Sorry, of course.” He pointed to the com screen and the picture of the monstrous apparition jumped back onto it. I’d seen it before, of course — everyone had been watching it over and over, trying to understand what had happened — but it still scared the brass marbles off me. It was like something out of an old ghost story, the kind they tell down in the engine bay on a slow shift, with the lights down. The thing was like some wailing spirit, a banshee heralding death — and not just the death of a few, but of the whole human race. How could we beat something like that?
As the image billowed and stretched in achingly slow motion, like living flame, Balcescu spoke.
“What it seems to be saying, as far as I can tell, is unfortunately just as bellicose as its actions suggest. It boils down to this.” He said it like a man reciting a memorized speech, all emotion squeezed out of his voice. “ ‘Your death is upon you. Only black ash will show that you ever lived. The Outward-reaching Murder Army’ — that’s the best I can do, that’s pretty much what they’re saying — ‘ will spit upon the stars that give you life, extinguishing them all. The cold will suck the life from you. All memory of you will be obliterated.’ ” Balcescu shook his head. “Not exactly Shakespeare. In fact, a rather crude translation, but it makes the main points.”
The monstrous shape still rippled slowly on the com screen, its face glowing like a dying sun.
“Well,” said Captain Watanabe after a long silence. “Now that we know what it said, I’m sure we all feel a lot better.”
Everybody on board the Lakshmi continued to hurry around as the days went past, but with what seemed like an increasing hopelessness. Rainwater was one of the longest and most important holes — without it, it would take us years, maybe decades, to make our way back. There was no other shortcut from this part of the rim.
Under emergency regs most of the passengers had been put into cryo, except for those like Balcescu who had a job to do. I didn’t have much to keep me occupied so I spent a lot of time with the people who had time to spend with me. Chinh-Herrera the navigator didn’t have much to do either, once he’d plotted the various ways back home that bypassed Rainwater, but when he was done he didn’t really want to talk. I’d bring him wine and stay a while, but it wasn’t much fun.
One evening I got called up to Balcescu’s room, an unused officer’s cabin he’d been given. To my surprise, as I got there Doc Swainsea was just leaving, dressed in civilian clothes — a dress, of all things — and carrying her shoes. She smiled at me as she went past but it was a sad one and she didn’t really seem to see me. Balcescu was sitting in the main room listening to music — kind of pretty, old-fashioned music for a change — and when he saw my face he smiled a little bit too.
“We all deal with fear in different ways,” he said, as if that explained something. “Did you bring my coffee, Mr. Jatt?”
I put the tray down. “There’s plenty of coffee down in the commons room,” I told him, a touch grumpily I guess. “Cups, spoons, you name it. Even stuff that tastes like sugar. It’s practically a five-star restaurant down there.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I’d heard it in old movies.
He raised an eyebrow. “Ah. Is it the revolt of the proletariat, then, Mr. Jatt?” he asked. “ The Admirable Crichton? If we are all going to die, let it be as equals?”
I’d seen The Admirable Crichton, as a matter of fact, but I didn’t remember anyone using a word like “proletariat”. Still, I got the gist. “Some would say we were already equals, Mr. Balcescu,” I said. “The Confederation Constitution, for one. I’ve read it. Have you?”
He laughed. “Touche, my good Jatt. As it happens, I have. It has its moments, but I think it would make a dull libretto. Unlike this.” He gestured loosely to the air and I realized he was drunk, so I started pouring the coffee. We might die as equals but it probably wouldn’t be soon, and in the meantime I’d be the one who’d have to clean up any messes. “I said, unlike this,” he told me again, more loudly. The music was getting loud too, some men singing in deep voices, all very dramatic.
“I heard you!” I practically shouted back. “Here’s whitener if you want some. And sweetener.”
“I haven’t been able to get this out of my head for days!” He waved his hand over the chair arm and the music got quieter, although I could still hear it. “ Don Giovanni. That…thing…that alien projection we saw reminds me of the Commendatore’s statue. Come to drag us all to hell.” He laughed and reached clumsily for the coffee. I held the cup until he had a grip on it.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Balcescu,” I said. “Unless you want something else, I’d better be going.”
“That’s what…Diana said.”
“Pardon?”
“Dr. Swainsea. Never mind.” He laughed again, another in a line of some of the saddest laughs I had ever heard. “Don’t you know Don Giovanni? My God, what do they teach cabin boys these days?”
“How to deal with drunken idiots, mostly, Mr. Balcescu. No, I don’t know Don Giovanni. One of those old Mafia films?”
He shook his head. He seemed to like doing it enough that he kept it up for a bit. “No, no. Don Giovanni the opera. Mozart. About a terrible man who seduces women — preys on them, really.” He began to shake his head again, then seemed to remember that he’d done that already, and for a good long while, too. “At the end, the murdered spirit of one of the women’s fathers, the Commendatore, comes after him in the form of a terrible statue. In his foolishness and his pride, Don Giovanni invites the ghost to supper. So the statue, the ghost, whatever you want to call it — it comes. It’s going to take him to his judgement. Listen!” He cocked an ear toward the music. “The Commendatore’s statue is saying ‘ Tu m’invitasti a cena,?Il tuo dover or sai.?Rispondimi: verrai?tu a cenar meco?’ That means, ‘You invited me to dinner — now will you come dine with me?’ In other words, he’s going to take him off to hell. And Don Giovanni says, ‘I’m no coward — my heart is steady in my breast.’ He’d rather go to the devil than show himself afraid — that’s panache!” Balcescu was lost in it now, his eyes closed as the music swelled and the voices boomed. “The ghost takes his hand, and Don Giovanni cries out, ‘It’s so freezing cold!’ The ghost tells him it’s his last moment on earth — repent! ‘No, no, ch’io non me pento!’ Don Giovanni tells him — he won’t repent!” Balcescu sat back in his chair, eyes still closed, and sighed. “That is Art. That’s what Art can do!”
He said it — slurred it a bit, actually — as though it were the end of a beautiful dream, but I could hear the music in the background and nobody sounded very happy — not even the stony-voiced thing that I guessed was the Commendatore’s statue. Made sense. What did the poor old Commendatore have to look forward to after his revenge, anyway? He was already dead.
“I don’t get you, Mr. Balcescu.”
He frowned. “You really should call me ‘Doctor’, Mr. Jatt. I am a doctor, you know. Art, I said. Art teaches us the things that reality can’t. Teaches us to live with the things that seem beyond endurance. Missed chances. Failed love affairs. Suffering and death — the stuff of actual life.”
He was lecturing again and I didn’t like it. “But what’s so good about that?” I asked. “I don’t like your kind of art — that high-falutin’ stuff that’s just like real life. Why can’t it be the other way around — why can’t life imitate the stuff I like? Like Casablanca, y’know? Some scary bits, some laughs, then the good guys win — a decent ending, y’know? Why can’t life be like that?” I was getting kind of angry.
“Ah, well. You know what Oscar Wilde once said? ‘God and other artists are always a little obscure.’ ” Balcescu looked just as struck by dark thoughts as I was, his thin face sagging into lines of weariness. All of us on the Lak’ were feeling that way, trying to follow our routines in the long shadow of doom — or at least permanent exile. “You know, I shouldn’t even be here,” he said after while. “I was going to go back to my home in the Gliese Ring, but a colleague asked me to come to the opening of an exhibit at the Xenobiology Gardens on Col Hydrae 7. Just a big party, basically, but he used some of my material from the Xenolinguistic Encylopedia and thought I’d like…” He shook his head. “And here I am. Never going home, now. ‘Cause I said yes to a goddamn cocktail party…” He fell silent again for a long moment. “Never mind, Mr. Jatt. I’ve kept you long enough. I’m sure you have more important people to help.”