But I will try to understand, so that someday when J speaks to me I will be able to answer.
Then maybe he will take me into the Star Tower and show me all the secrets there and he will teach me how to make Ice People and all the other things he has made.
Sara is reading this and she is angry. She says that I am truly foolish to think that I will ever know all that J knows. She is surely right.
But still I hope. If the Star Tower can fly like a bird, will J not take me with him into the sky? When Ciel is old enough and wise enough I will take him with me everywhere I go, and teach him everything I know. Is this surely not what J intends for us as well? And so I say to J as Ciel said to me, Father let me come.
But for now I will only try to be wise and will study how to not be foolish like a child anymore. J will know when I am ready. And I make an end of writing for this time.
9
STIPOCK WOKE with the sleep helmet still on his head, and as he moved his arms to the sides, he realized to his surprise that he was still in his coffin. It had never happened before. His body was soaked in sweat from the waking drugs, and his mind refused to clear. Bright spots appeared in front of his eyes. He blinked. The spots went away.
He reached up to the sides of the coffin, pulled himself to a sitting position, and looked around.
Not a Sleeproom at all, he knew instantly. The mass of controls placed within arm's reach of a chair could only be a ship's control board. The space was cramped. Garol Stipock had never been in a warship before, but he had seen loops, and he recognized quickly that this had to be the control cabin of a ship of the fleet.
He also recognized the man standing at the head of the coffin, who said softly, "Is everything all right, Dr. Stipock?"
"Jazz Worthing," Stipock said, and his body flushed with heat as everything fit together — waking in a starship, and Jazz Worthing, one of the prime enemies of the people of Capitol, standing by his side.
"I'm in a colony ship," he breathed, the words not sounding real.
"Very quick," said Jazz Worthing.
"Why? I never volunteered —"
"Not so quick, then?"
"No," Stipock said. "We must have launched our little coup attempt. We must have lost."
"In a nutshell," Jazz said, "that's so. There are more ramifications, of course. But I doubt they'd interest you."
"They interest me very much. Who else was caught?"
"Everyone."
Stipock turned away, suddenly conscious of his nakedness, suddenly aware of how vulnerable he was. "Can I have some clothing?"
"The ship has it ready for you." The clothing landed in a pile in the foot of the coffin. Stipock clambered out of the box.
"Is there a shower first?"
The starpilot pointed, and Stipock went in, showered, urinated, and came back out and dressed. His thoughts began to settle down in the process. Colonies. Death. No more somec. The raw emotions never reached panic; instead he began to think: Adjust. Fit in. Get along. Survive.
"What kind of planet is this?"
"Agricultural," Jazz answered.
"Most are," Stipock retorted, "at first."
"This one always will be," Jazz said. "Fossil fuels are buried too deep to get to without metal tools. Copper and tin are extractable with wooden tools. Iron is only within three kilometers of the surface at one place, the middle of an uninhabitable desert. This planet will have a very hard time getting out of the bronze age."
Stipock was surprised at Worthing's attitude. "Don't you have any heavy equipment?"
"Yes," Jazz said.
"Then what's this about the bronze age?"
Jazz smiled. "Awake for three minutes, and already you know more than the captain."
Stipock flushed with anger, and grew angrier at himself because he knew that his pale skin always turned red when he was angry, making it impossible for him to hide his emotions.
"What am I supposed to do? Where are the others?"
"The others are all outside. You're the last."
Stipock didn't know how to take that. "Why last? Why in here, for that matter? I thought colony ships had a tape–and–tap."
"They do," Jazz said. "Ours isn't working."
"Why am I in here alone?"
"Your situation is unique, Dr. Stipock."
"Why? I wasn't even one of the leaders of the coup. I'm not about to cause any problems."
Jazz laughed. "Your existence at this moment is a problem. One which I created myself, I know, but I have to see what'll happen. Experimenting, you know?"
Stipock felt sick. He had seen the stolen loop, knew that Jazz Worthing was set to lead a rebellion of the Fleet to seize control of somec. But if Jazz's rebellion had succeeded —
"What are you doing here? I didn't think top level starpilots were exactly thrilled with colony assignments."
Jazz sighed. "That's the problem with using old tapes to wake you up with. You don't know a damn thing. Follow me." And Jazz turned on his heel and walked to the back of the control room, opened a door, and stepped through. Stipock followed, telling himself that he'd have to humor this man, but knowing that whatever his situation turned out to be, he'd hate it.
They went through a large storage compartment, with many large and small coffins, most of them empty and stacked out of the way. A few were still connected. "Ocelots just aren't needed in the ecology," Jazz explained casually, "and I decided skunks had no useful purpose either, just now. Avoid the nuisance, you know."
Stipock followed the starpilot to the end of the storage room, where he opened a door. Jazz Worthing watched him as he stepped through the door. Stipock looked around — there were three sets of gauges and dials grouped around three doors. He resisted the impulse to ask questions, though he could think of no good reason not to. He just didn't want to converse with a man whom he had long hated (from a distance) and who now had a great deal of power over him (from close up).
Jazz parted the seal on the door marked A, opened it, and stepped back. Stipock moved to the door and looked through.
Dazzling sunlight poured in through a long oval slit in the roof. It took a moment for Stipock to adjust to the light. When he could see clearly, he gasped. The long tube, which had been lined with coffins, was a ruin. All the metal was melted down, and a clear swath had been cut through. There was no way a single passenger in that section could have survived. "What happened?" Stipock whispered.
"An enemy ship. Two of them, as a matter of fact. I had a choice between letting a projectile hit the stardrive and vaporize us all, or letting it hit here, in the hope that some would survive."
"What a choice," Stipock said. "Were either of the other two tubes hit?"
"All the life support in C tube was destroyed by the heat of the projectile's passage," Jazz said. Stipock noticed that the starpilot formed some of the words and sentences with difficulty, as if he were unaccustomed to saying them.
"I was in B tube?"
Jazz smiled patiently. "Isn't that obvious?"
Then Worthing stepped into the ruined tube, and Stipock followed. They walked carefully along the tube. Stipock looked up as he passed under the tear in the roof. The sun was blinding. He looked away, covering his eyes. A purple spot blocked some of his vision. "Don't look at the sun," Jazz said.
"Thanks for the warning," said Garol Stipock.
They made their way to the end of the tube and didn't have to open a door, because the hole left by the projectile was ample. They clambered through, and Stipock was horrified by what he saw — the tape rack mostly fused and melted by heat. "The memory tapes," he said, "Look at this — this is terrible."