“That seems more than a little illogical,” I pointed out. “To get to any interstellar locale takes a Gate. Once the Gate is in place, a return is possible.”
Tomas raised his bushy gray eyebrows “I can suggest several assumptions behind your statement that are normally true, but are not necessarily so.”
I wish I hadn’t spoken so quickly. That habit has always created difficulties for me. “You may be right. What do you think?” That was a safe enough question.
“It seems unlikely that we would not be traveling by Gate. That would require a generation ship or a new technology.”
“So there’s something about the destination that means a Gate can’t be used repeatedly?”
“That thought had occurred to me,” deSilva replied.
“Maybe the star is prenova,” suggested Alyendrya.
“Or approaching a singularity, or close to an event horizon,” I said.
“All of that is possible.” Melani smiled politely, yet warmly. “There may be other possibilities. Since we do not know, I think we should help Professor Fitzhugh get settled.”
“Thank you.” I bowed slightly. She was less imposing than Alyendrya, yet she’d spoken with a quiet authority.
For whatever reason we had been gathered, it had to be important to the D.S.S. and the Comity. Our small group suggested that we were far from the only scholars who would be on the expedition. I just wished I knew what Project Deep Find was all about, but, at the same time, I had a strong premonition that my satisfaction would be less than profound when the aims of the project were revealed.
12
Barna
The unnamed Security agent stuffed himself and me into an orbit elevator. I had been right. He didn’t say anything about the extra twenty kilos. They were mainly canvases and matrices. I could have done everything with light matrices, but light paintings aren’t always the best way to depict some things.
Getting to orbit station took almost a full day. The orbit elevator was an older model. Nothing on Gallia was known for haste. From there, we took a shuttle to another orbit base. That was the local D.S.S. station. I found myself in a D.S.S. courier, headed to an unknown destination, if without the Security agent. The pilot’s disembodied voice reassured me with generalities before subjecting me to confinement and crushing acceleration.
The only interesting aspect of the trip was the Gatetranslation. I’d never made one before. What artist could afford interstellar travel? I tried to hold on to the image of the translation and how all the colors reversed—yet didn’t. After the initial acceleration that followed going through the Gate, I got out my equipment and tried to recreate the visual sense of what I’d experienced.
I wasn’t sure I had, but the work was something very different. It just showed my small cabin, with the two bunks and the acceleration couch, except the pilot called it a clamshell. I tried to depict the cabin at the exact moment of translation when black was white, and the other way around, and when all the colors were wrong, yet right.
I’d barely gotten a first run at it when I had to stow everything for deceleration. I’d used the lightbrushes, knowing there wasn’t time for oils. Charcoal wouldn’t have done what I wanted, and I wouldn’t have had time to fix it properly.
Several hours later, we ended up docked or locked, and the pilot’s voice was ushering me out. Someone in a uniform—I thought it was a D.S.S. uniform with the blue skintights under the vest and shorts—was waiting outside the courier’s lock. The foyer or bay was a hideous shade of blue. It also clashed with the D.S.S. uniform. It was the shade all the occupationalists had declared “stimulating” a generation before. If they had meant that it kept someone awake, that blue was stimulating. “Hideous” was a better term, and more accurate.
“Ser Barna?”
“That’s me.”
“I’m Lieutenant Ruano. I’m here to escort you to your quarters.”
“Where is here? Where am I?”
“Deep Find Station in the Hamilton system, sir.”
“When do I start work?”
“I couldn’t say, sir. Commander Morgan would be better able to tell you.”
“Could you take me to him, then?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. I’m here to take you to your quarters. Your temporary quarters, that is, until we move to the Magellan in a few days.”
“The Magellan is a ship?”
“Yes, sir. Could I help you with one of those cases?”
I gave him the personal case. I wasn’t about to trust anyone else with the two wheeled cases that held all my equipment, and everything except the extra canvases in my valise.
We walked close to half a kay, or so it seemed, along the blue corridor. I was breathing harder than usual, and I seemed to weigh a little more than I did on Gallia. That wasn’t surprising, since Gallia was a bit less than Tellurian norm, and we were clearly inside some sort of D.S.S. space installation with the gravity set at Tellurian norm. I thought it was probably an asteroid station because the walls weren’t jointed or fabricated, but seemed hollowed out of something and covered with the blue synth wall covering.
“Your section is just ahead, sir. That’s where you’ll be quartered, sir.” The lieutenant stopped opposite a hatch. On it were the letters and number RA-1.
The hatch opened, and the lieutenant stepped back. He gestured for me to go first. I wheeled in the equipment cases. The walls of the room, a low-ceilinged combination of foyer and sitting room, were a pale green. The color was even more unpleasant than the blue of the corridor. There were no windows, and the artificial illumination wasn’t even close to replicating natural light.
“Your quarters are labeled, sir, and there is a folder with directions to the mess. Please keep to the blue corridors.”
With a nod, he was gone, the hatch closing behind him.
A large-boned, silver-haired woman watched me. Her hair was plaited into a braid then coiled on the back of her head. She was seated at one side of a square table with four chairs. They were synth-replicated wood, or what some bureaucrat thought might resemble wood.
I looked at the woman. With that silver hair, she was obviously nearing the end of her career, if not her life, and I wondered what she was doing here. “I’m Chendor Barna.”
“Elysen Taube. Are you in the sciences?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m an artist. What is your field?”
“I am an old-style astronomer. I specialize in capturing and interpreting full-spectrum stellar images.”
That was a kind of art in itself. I decided not to say so. Some scientific types resented any hint that their work was art and not science. “All kinds of stars?”
She smiled indulgently.
I ignored the condescension and waited.
“My work has dealt with the images of older galaxies, those formed right after the brane flex.” A chuckle followed. “ ‘Right after’ is a relative term. The first hundred million years or so through the first few billion.”
“How do you separate them out?”
“Finding them is the hard part. The universe…” She smiled. It was a warm smile, that of someone who could have been a grandmother, but probably wasn’t. I wished I could have caught her image at that moment. “Why don’t we get you settled? You’ll have plenty of time to learn about astronomy, and I’ve always wanted to know more about art.”
“You act as though we aren’t going anywhere soon.”
“Soon is also a relative term, Chendor. I’ve been here several days, and I haven’t gotten a definitive answer yet. Astronomy may deal in millions of years, but I don’t have that many years left. I’m certain that you, as an artist, have noted that Like you, I’d prefer to get on with the project, but it’s so large a project that organizing and assembling those involved takes time.”