But then Bascal surprised them all by rising to the podium and singing, unaccompanied, a song he claimed to have written the night before. It was called “The Storms of Sorrow,” and Conrad found himself weeping afresh at its words—particularly “the rain upon sorrow's face.” Bascal had perhaps written better in his distant youth, but for a long-awaited first effort here in his own kingdom, it did not disappoint. The audience gave him a five-minute standing ovation when it was complete, which afterward seemed disrespectful to poor Wendy, but what the hell; they were out of the public eye here, and Wendy, too, would have liked the song. Her father's voice, barely remembered after all these years, was among humanity's most beautiful.
Later, at the reception, Conrad balanced a plate of synthetic cheese and pickled blackberries on top of his wineglass in order to offer the king an admiring handshake.
“Gorgeous music, Sire. Gorgeous poetry, moving and appropriate for the occasion. Listen to me, I sound like a sycophant! But I loved that, really. You talked about sorrow almost like it was a tangible thing. A place we've all come to.”
Bascal nodded, with tears streaming down his cheeks. “Indeed, boyo, I have named this planet at last. I wanted to wait, you know? To see how things would turn out. And now we know: Sorrow, to remind us of our sins. A whole world of Sorrow for us to explore, to populate, to belong to forever.”
And that was just too wrenching; Conrad put down his plate and glass and threw his arms around the king, and together they wept for a good long while. But while Bascal was weeping in helpless rage, Conrad cried in part for an even simpler reason: because Bascal was the best friend he'd ever had, and yet he felt in his bones that the two of them would never be closer than they were at this terrible moment. The future would not be the quiet downward spiral the former Prince of Sol had described, but something much darker and nastier. Something which would set the two of them firmly apart.
And where do feelings like this come from, these sudden certainties? Are they tricks of neuroanatomy, or perhaps the quantum fluctuations of future time, echoing faster than light so that they impinge—however faintly!—on the past? Or if time be static and free will an illusion, are they perhaps the hand of God, shaping the landscape of immutable history? Are they true prophecies or self-fulfilling ones? In any case, all of history has turned upon them, more than once.
“This place is ugly,” Conrad finally remarked, when the two of them had sought the safety of a bench in another room, away from the party proper. “No offense, Sire, but I wouldn't want my dog frozen here, much less my princess, who changed my own life simply by appearing in it.”
“True,” the king agreed, looking around. The whole structure looked like exactly what it was: a warehouse. An industrial space for the storage of cryogenic goods. “All too true. If death is to follow us at every step, we should turn to face it on the ground of our own choosing: in a house of strength and human achievement. A cathedral, a tower, a fulsome garden! Not this . . . garage. Perhaps you could have a look around before you leave, with an eye toward improvements?”
“Gladly, Sire. I'll begin within the hour. Will . . . you be all right?”
“No,” the king said. “But I'm needed at the party, and at the palace, and at the helm of government. And you, my friend, are needed here in civilization.”
“Aye,” Conrad agreed. “So it would seem.”
He tracked down the mortician again and managed to get a tour of the facilities. Things were even worse than he'd figured; twenty-three thousand bodies entombed here already, in ugly slotted dewars of plastic foam and unprogrammed glass, filled with liquified nitrogen. There were power and temperature gauges all around, and signs full of warnings and instructions. Also warning lights here and there, flashing and beeping irregularly, disturbing the peace.
“Do people come here to visit?” he asked the mortician, whose name was Carl Piñon Faxborn.
“Sometimes. Not often. The bodies are shipped down here for embalming and cryolation, and as often as not returned northward for formal receptions, glass caskets and all, before coming back here for their final rest. Occasionally, we'll disinter one for another brief trip: a busy relative paying his or her respects, and occasionally we'll hold a re-viewing here on the premises.”
That sounded awful to Conrad, and he said so.
“Well,” Carl replied, unoffended, “the status of these people is problematic. Are they really gone? To heaven, or to a distant future? Who can say? Shall we treat them as patients or as vacant husks? We try to err on the side of hope.”
“I wouldn't come to visit here,” Conrad told him. “It's too cold.”
Carl laughed politely.
“Sterile, I mean. Uninviting. These gauges, like something from a power plant. This place should be beautiful.”
“We are none of us opposed to beauty,” Carl agreed.
“What are these flashing lights all about? Here, and here? Why do they beep like that?”
“Ah,” Carl said, running his hand over one. “Those are our cosmic ray counters: proton, photon, heavy nucleus, and ‘other.' Sometimes one goes off: a vertical strike from directly above. Sometimes two go off: a diagonal strike. Sometimes it's three or four in a straight line, if the particle comes in horizontally. That's uncommon; the atmosphere blocks most of those. But we are very close to Barnard, and the planet's magnetic field offers little protection.”
“Can't you put up a local field?”
“We can and do, yes. But how large should we make it? How much energy should we consume in maintaining it? We count the rays that penetrate, sir, not the ones our systems deflect.”
But you don't deflect them all, Conrad thought. And this was significant, because any Navy man or woman knew all about cosmic rays, how they riddled your body, cutting and poisoning. A little bit of damage was easily repaired by your body's own systems. Hell, in the funny ways of biology, a little bit of radiation damage was actually good for you. But a little bit more was bad. If the damage piled up faster than your body could repair it, you shriveled, went blind and senile, eventually died. Here, of course, the cosmic ray counts were smaller than they would be out in space, but . . . a frozen body could not repair itself. And with enough damage, even a high-end fax machine would have a hard time piecing the true person back together.
Posing it as an idle question, he asked, “How long would it take these rays to chew a body up into irretrievable goo?”
“Oh, a long time,” Carl replied. “Two or three millennia.”
“Really, that long. Hmm.” This matched closely with Conrad's internal, off-the-cuff estimate, so he believed the figure at once. And that was a real problem, because Bascal had told him the economic crisis could well last for five. “Over time,” he'd said, “the price of metals will drop, leading to relief in other areas. But it involves centuries of digging.”
Carl Piñon Faxborn waited patiently for ten seconds, and then another ten, before finally asking, “Is everything all right, Mr. Mursk?”
“No,” Conrad told him, looking around for the supports that held this place together. “It isn't. I'm sorry to say it, Mr. Faxborn, but there will have to be some big changes around here.”