Just green stars. Simon pressed his ear to the window. He heard a reverberation, like an immense bell.
‘Earth life turning the Galaxy green. Our thoughts span light years. But we don’t want to forget how it was to be human.’ Father Nolan smiled. ‘It’s a paradox. We have in fact lost so much. As you said – the strange tragedy of being mortal in an unending universe. There’s no more poetry. No more epitaphs. No more stories. Just a solemn calm.’
‘Mother wanted to experience it. Human life.’
‘On behalf of the rest of us, yes.’
‘And what are you, Father?’
Father Nolan shrugged. ‘Everything else.’ He let the curtain drop, hiding the green stars.
The electric light was dimming.
Father Nolan sat down beside Mother and held her hand. ‘Only a few more minutes. Then it will be done.’
Simon sat on the other side of the bed. ‘What about me?’
‘You’re only here for her.’
‘But I’m conscious!’
‘Well, of course you are. She chose you, you know. You always thought she didn’t love you, didn’t you? But she chose you to be beside her, at the end, when all the others, Peter, Mary, even her own father, have all gone. Isn’t that enough?’
‘Do I have a soul, Father?’
‘I’m not qualified to say.’
Mother turned her head towards him, he thought. But her eyes were closed.
‘Help me,’ Simon whispered.
Father Nolan looked at him. Then he closed his eyes and bowed his head. ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.’
‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’
The glow of the single bulb faded slowly, to black.
Dreamers’ Lake
On the shore of Dreamers’ Lake we worked through the night. We had no choice; this pretty world was due to end in two more days. By the time dawn broke we had labelled all the lakes’ stromatolites, and had decided on three candidates, Charlie, Hotel and Juliet, for cognitive mapping. I was tentatively confident that Juliet was the most promising, but I was so dog-tired I didn’t trust my judgment any more.
So I was grateful when Citizen Associate Bisset brought us animists a tray of coffee.
‘Thanks.’ I took a cup, fixed its spigot to my facemask, and gulped it down, welcoming the caffeine fix. Bisset stood beside me on the pebble-strewn beach of that lake of fizzing, acidic water.
GC-174-IV was an infant world, its young sun a lamp hanging over jagged hills. The methane-green sky reflected in the lake’s sluggish ripples, and glistened on the pillow-like stromatolites. The scene was unearthly, beautiful – and I was grateful that the dawn light hid the swarming dangers of the sky, especially the rogue worldlet called the Hammer.
In the foreground my animist cubs were playing soccer, their shouts the only sound on this silent world. I longed to join in, but they didn’t want little old ladies like me.
‘“Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops…”’ Bisset was a lot taller than I was, and under his wide visor his face, turned to the sun, was a mask of wrinkles.
‘That’s a cute line,’ I said.
‘Shakespeare. Of course we’re two hundred light years from England.’
‘But there are hills, a lake, a sky here. Things have a way of converging.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I remember the first robot landing on Titan, Saturn’s moon. The first images from the surface of the Moon had looked like a pebble beach. Then the Vikings on Mars, and the Soviet probes on Venus – more pebbles, more beaches. And even on Titan, where they use water ice for rock—’
‘Pebbles.’
‘Yes.’
I eyed him curiously. Evidently he was older than he looked. We hadn’t spoken, but the Pegasus carried over fifty people, and was roomy enough for twice that number. ‘I’m Susan Knilans. Senior animist on this mission.’
He shook my gloved hand. ‘Professor Knilans, I’ve read about your work.’
‘Susan, please. And you are?’
‘Ramone Bisset.’
‘Ramone?’
He smiled. ‘My father named me after his favourite band. I used to be a software engineer, before the software learned to write itself. Now I’m a Citizen Associate. I’m working on the IGWI with Ulf Thoring.’
It took me a minute to decode the acronym. IGWI: the Inflationary Gravity Wave Interferometry experiment, the establishment of a vast interstellar network of gravity-wave detectors designed to map the echoes of the universe’s very first cataclysmic instants. ‘Interesting project.’
‘It sure is. Not that I understand much of it, either the science or the equipment.’
‘How do you get on with those IGWI guys?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m just the dogsbody.’
‘Don’t knock it. Umm, do you mind my asking how old you are?’
‘A hundred and thirty, to the nearest decade. Born in the 1980s.’ That explained his height; many of his generation, fed on ludicrously protein-rich diets, had grown tall. His accent was British, I thought, but softened by time.
‘Well,’ I admitted, ‘I’m half your age. So what are you doing here?’
‘You mean beside the lake, or on GC-IV?’
‘Start with the lake.’
‘I’m just curious. You’re here to map minds, aren’t you? Minds in those mounds.’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘I haven’t started my day yet. I thought I may as well be useful. You can never go wrong with a tray of coffees.’
‘So what about the deeper question? Why volunteer for GC-IV?’
‘Ah. Why are any of us here?’
‘To do our jobs.’ Captain Zuba joined us. She was a tough, heavily-built New Zealander, aged about fifty. She took one of Bisset’s coffees. ‘And to earn our pay.’
‘Yes, Captain,’ Bisset said respectfully. ‘But why not just sit at home? All humans are restless. Why?’ He pointed to the patient stromatolites. ‘They don’t look restless.’
‘No,’ Zuba said, ‘but it’s a shame they aren’t, because in two days’ time, when the Hammer falls, they’re going to be toast. And speaking of which, the clock is ticking.’ She handed back the coffee cup, already drained, and stalked away, competent, efficient, a tick-box list on legs.
Bisset hesitated. ‘You know – to explore the universe in starships – it’s like something from the kind of science fiction that was out of date even before I was born.’
I wasn’t too sure what ‘science fiction’ was, and didn’t really want to know. On impulse I said, ‘Why don’t you come visit again tomorrow? I’ll give you the guided tour. You don’t even need to bring the drinks.’
He nodded like a gentleman. ‘I’d appreciate that.’ And he walked away, tray in gloved hand, boots crunching over the beach.
The day on GC-174-IV was near enough to twenty hours long (was; now it’s different, changed by the Hammer Blow). I worked through that day, and was dog tired by the end of GC-IV’s short afternoon. As half the complement of the Pegasus wended back to the airlocks the other shift was suiting up to go out; Zuba ensured we made the most of the time we had left.
That evening, before I turned in, I looked for Bisset.
The Pegasus is a tuna can. It sits on four stubby legs, just five metres across, and is only a couple of storeys high, externally. But inside it’s the size of a small hotel. A ship that’s bigger inside than out – another gift of the quantum foam technology that so suddenly opened up the stars. Anyhow, the Pegasus is roomy enough for all fifty of its crew to have a private cabin, but not big enough to hide.