“I think now the stability came from the terrible mess created in the twentieth century, the lack of resources and precarious state of the environment. We spent two hundred years cleaning up—trying to return the planet to its former state, trying to undo what those creeps and epigones had done. We didn’t have time for innovation.”
“We built the L-5 colonies,” I said.
“And the ship,” said Derek.
“Those are new objects. I am talking about new ideas. Most of our ideology and technology comes—came—from the old society. Most of what we have done is based on what people already knew prior to the collapse.”
“That isn’t entirely true,” I said.
Agopian said, “It is mostly true. We have been like the people of the early Middle Ages. We used the old knowledge in new ways. But we did not add to it.”
Derek frowned. “I question that analogy.”
“I don’t want to argue about the Middle Ages.”
Derek made the gesture that meant “forget what I said.”
“In any case, the stability—or stagnation—was only temporary. That’s what we learned when we woke up and listened to the messages from home. About the time we left, the various societies on Earth began to change rapidly.”
He paused, frowning. “The changes were disturbing. We—I mean the crew—could barely handle the information we were getting, and we are—without a question—the most disciplined people on the ship. We had no idea what would happen if the rest of you woke up and heard. We imagined panic and a collapse of morale. Some people would want to run home, though home to what is a question. Others would fall apart. There would have been months of argument and a decline in the quality of work. It seemed to us that the expedition had to be protected. We took a vote—everyone who wasn’t frozen. We decided to change the messages.”
I opened my mouth.
He held up a hand. “Don’t ask questions. I don’t know how much time I have, and I want to tell you as much as possible.”
“Okay.”
“We started by changing history. That was comparatively easy. We drafted—I drafted—an alternative history, one we felt more comfortable with. After that it was a matter of searching and replacing. We told the computer system to look for certain kinds of events—and remove them and replace them with other kinds of events.”
He smiled. “I have to say, I have a new respect for liars, especially those who lived before computers. I have no idea how you can manage to rewrite history without a computer.”
“Why did you do it?” I asked. “What could possibly be so terrible about the messages from Earth?”
He sat next to one of the deck lights. I could see him clearly: a rectangular face, pale brown in color. His eyes were large and dark. His nose was high and narrow, with a slight curve. His mouth was ordinary. It was the eyes that dominated the face and the unruly curly hair, worn slightly longer than was fashionable among members of the crew.
“There are three things that matter to me: socialism, Marxism, and the Soviet Union. I don’t think that what I feel is chauvinism. It’s love for a place and pride in what the people there have done. How they fought again and again, generation after generation, to build a society that really embodied the principles of socialism. They succeeded, though just barely. The revolution was not destroyed by Stalinism or Fascism or nationalism or even by the many crimes and the amazing stupidity of the apparatchiks. The people managed finally to create a society that was decent and just.”
“If it makes you feel better, we’ll tell you that your feeling is not chauvinism,” Derek said.
Agopian smiled. “My life has been built around socialism and Marxism and the Soviet Union. They are like coordinates. They give me a place in space and time. They give me a framework: moral, intellectual, historical, social, and personal.
“When I think of losing them—it’s like being in space. Nothing is up or down. Nothing is near or far. There’s only darkness and the stars. Then you turn and the ship’s there or the Earth or a station. You are able to orient yourself. But what if you turned and saw nothing? Only more darkness and stars?
“There are no more countries on Earth or anywhere in the solar system. They have—the messages told us—abandoned outmoded categories such as ‘nation.’ They have abandoned outmoded categories such as ‘socialism.’ The ideas of the nineteenth century have a historical interest, but are no longer relevant. It is no longer possible to use the constructs of Marxism. They simply don’t work. That is what the messages said.”
He picked up his bottle of beer and shook it. “As far as I can tell, these people have no interest in any kind of system: political or economic or intellectual.” He stood up. “I need another beer. What about you?”
“What about Ivanova?” Derek asked.
He listened for a moment. “Still going strong. In any case I have given you the important information. Do you want anything to drink?”
“Beer,” said Derek.
Agopian went into the cabin.
“Is he telling the truth?” I asked.
Derek made the gesture of uncertainty.
Agopian came back and handed a bottle to each of us. He sat down and made a noise between a groan and a sigh.
I drank beer. “You said that you began by changing the history.”
He nodded.
“What else did you change?”
“You don’t have to worry about the personal messages. We did very little to them. Most came from the first two or three decades of our journey. Do you ever think about the people who sent the messages? Our friends. Our families. They knew the people on the ship were frozen. They knew when we awoke, they would be dead.
“Obviously, in time, most of them gave up. Five years. Ten years. Only the fanatics sent much after that. We had moved out of their history and out of the space they knew. We became unreal to them.
“Those messages represented no danger at all. They were chatty and informal, disorganized, full of family news, exactly what you’d expect from Mother or Sister. We had to take out a few references to historical events. Otherwise nothing.”
He paused. “Some of the factual material was okay. Such and such star has just gone nova. We have discovered a new kind of life on Titan.
“But the theories! I told you these people have no interest in any kind of framework. That is problem number one. Number two is—they don’t seem to distinguish between fact and fiction—or between material that is relevant and everything else. Some of the messages sound like poetry. Others are stories with no point that I can find. Others sound like gossip or like a group of proverbs. And others are a string of unrelated facts that don’t even belong to the same discipline.
“And intermixed with everything is junk : stupid jokes and ancient legends and holographic pictures of who knows what? The families of strangers. A vacation hotel on Mars.
“These are the messages from the scientists! Half the time they sound like some crazy old lady you meet in the park who has a theory about astrology and history. Or like the man who comes to fix the plumbing and explains the true cause of the latest viral plague. ‘It all comes from Titan. They got things up there ya wouldn’t believe. Doncha watch the holo? Listen to me, someday a bug’s coming down—make AIDS look like nothing. Hand me the wrench.’ ”