But there was no regret, and in fact, he felt the opposite. This was his opportunity, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.
He hurt. Knees, feet, back, neck … the joints ground down by a lifetime of gravity. Joint replacement, once popular, now superseded by juvenation, was obsolete, a footnote in history. His pain was not terrible, but it was frequent. Occasionally, it would sharpen, and he would gasp, or freeze.
He was hardly alone in this. Soreness, achiness, little stabs and embarrassments were universal in his age group. A fact of life.
But not in space. Being weightless robbed gravity of its teeth. Bone no longer gnashed against bone. Nerves were no longer pinched. Pain went from a roar, or a dull roar, to a whisper, and often to silence. A truly liberating experience.
Liberation came at a price, however, as other age-related problems, previously overshadowed, were now freed to make their presence known. Eyes, bladder, balance, concentration. His wonky heart. Amazing all the ways a body could fall apart. Equally, or more amazing, all the ways it didn’t, how well it worked, and for how long.
He loved being weightless; floating not so much. It was counterintuitive, and made him uneasy, as though his body knew it wasn’t right. He’d stuck a tall stool in front of the Ooi for this reason, anchoring it to the floor. Nothing he liked better than to sit on it, strap himself down, and let his mind drift.
He was sitting now. Bouncing thoughts off the Ooi. Letting them fall where they may. Keeping all channels open.
Death was certain. There was no denying it. It went hand in hand with life.
He had seen his share of dying people. All ages, all walks, all faiths, all stripes. For some of them it appeared to be a momentous event, of the greatest significance. For others, ordinary, even mundane.
He was curious about this. The two experiences appeared so different, so polarized. He wasn’t worried. He believed that all would be well, that his body would take care of itself. That after three billion years, life knew how to handle transitions. And if it didn’t, or couldn’t, there were ways to help. He wasn’t afraid.
He’d been present at his mother’s death. An extraordinary experience. Over the course of two lifetimes so many of his memories were gone, or hopelessly effaced, but this one was indelible. It would be with him as long as he could think.
Her last days, falling deeper and deeper into unconsciousness. Her last eight hours, on her back, eyes closed, lips parted, breathing rapidly, panting almost. Her last twenty minutes, coughing weakly, unable to clear her throat, unresponsive. He’d taken her hand, then leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.
Her breathing became more ragged and spasmodic. They called it the rattle of death. Her body shuddered, then convulsed.
Without warning she bolted upright. Her eyes opened wide. Wider than he’d ever seen them, than they’d ever been. They seemed about to pop out of her head. She had beautiful dark eyes, but all he could see, or remember, were the whites. Huge and shiny.
Eerie. Spooky.
His mother.
He tried talking to her. He might as well have been talking to a bench. He planted his face in front of her face, and tried again.
Slowly, she turned her head toward the window, where day had broken and light was spilling in. She held that position rigidly, raptly, as though unable, or unwilling, to tear herself away. Her eyes remained impossibly big and white; her face, preternaturally calm.
He held his breath. Time ground to a halt. One minute, two, forever, until finally she turned away from the window, lay back down, and died.
Ever since that day, he’d wanted to know what she had seen, if anything, or felt, for surely there was something. He wanted to experience it himself, at least improve the odds, but he didn’t know how.
His death would be what it was. It would be his. He assumed there was a final common path for everyone, but before that path, a thousand different paths, predetermined, possibly by genetics, possibly behavior—nature, nurture—in death as in life. He’d get what he got.
He’d welcome an epiphany, but wouldn’t quarrel with a slower, more gradual demise.
The Ooi was a bump in the road. He’d done everything he could to get it to react, to elicit a response, and still it held out. Alive or not, it was a riddle that begged to be understood.
He loved looking at it. Loved musing about it, which was tantamount to musing about life, what it was and wasn’t, what it could be, what was necessary, what wasn’t.
Energy, for example: necessary. How else was it able to cling to the rock? What was the source? How was the energy maintained? How was it distributed? Did the Ooi have a hibernation mode? Was that what they were seeing? Were there other stages to its life cycle? Was this an adult? A larva? A seed perhaps? An egg, or mat of eggs, embedded in a matrix? Was its surface a protective casing? A skin of some sort? A shell? And what kind of shell resisted every attempt to see past it?
The longer he sat and observed, the greater his sense there was something there. He felt a connection. What could be more real than that? It seemed plausible, even likely, that he himself was being observed. Which not only answered the question of life, but the far more exciting one of sentience.
He couldn’t wait for Dash to arrive. Hated the thought of harming the Ooi, would do everything in his power to limit the damage, but had to know more.
He undid the strap and made his way to the door. He was about to leave when he felt something, a pulse or vibration of some kind, or a sound just beyond the threshold of hearing, something new, previously absent or unexpressed, now suddenly present.
He whirled around.
The Ooi looked different, deeper colored, more saturated, the yellow more lemony, the green more like moss, as though it were concentrating energy, manipulating light somehow. He placed his hand above it, feeling for a change in temperature. Closed his eyes and concentrated. Heard the pounding of his blood, felt it in his fingertips.
Heat?
Yes. A definite feeling of warmth.
Dare he touch it? Actually lay his hand on its surface? Go that far? Take the risk? What was this warmth if not an invitation? Who would fault him?
The answer: he would fault himself if he didn’t.
Three mods and a light year away, while he was making a new friend, Gunjita was working up a sweat. Quads, hams, glutes, fast and slow twitch. It felt good to sweat, like a fire felt to burn. Was it true young people sweated more freely? Seemed true. The glands just seemed to love milking themselves. What better way to spread your already heightened scent, let it do what it was meant to? First dissolve it in liquid, then let it vaporize, like perfume. Fill the air with it. Widest possible coverage and range.
Anyway, it felt good. The perfect balance to her brain, which was doing its own fast twitch. Darting around. Spinning like the cycle. Pondering the mysteries, but at speed.
The thing about alarms, they were happening all the time. All were good, in the sense that being alert and aware were good. Being hyperalert was good, too, it had its place, unless it went on too long, in which case it caused problems. Nervousness, for instance. Anxiety. Paranoia.
You wouldn’t want the very alarm you were using to save a life to trigger a mental breakdown. There were enough of those already. The alarm she needed had to walk a thin line.
Again, she found herself thinking that it should be a sexual scent. Sharp and arousing, to the point of dead in the tracks. No prolonged hemming and hawing allowed. No mooning around. The whole purpose, a call to immediate action. Decisiveness.