Was this a rhetorical question? But she was looking seriously at me, as if expecting the answer. “The estimates range from 5 to 8 percent. Hard to say more precisely. Too much information latency between the systems, and no tracking is perfect, especially over that amount of time.”
“And for those people,” she added pointedly. “You learn to avoid it over the course of four hundred years.”
It would take a lot of adaptation, though. We haven’t exactly stagnated over that time. But they say learning is a positive feedback loop, and with enough experience and motivation, I could imagine achieving a lot with so much time. I shifted in my seat.
Bellugi noticed, of course. Sensed my impatience. Seemed to approve of it. Cutting right to the matter: “The man I need you to find is one Antonio Arienti. That’s his original name. Born in 1977 in Nashville. His parents also; grandparents were immigrants from Sicily.” I visualized it on the map. “Joined the U.S. Army, promoted quickly, expanded his education, became a fast-track officer. Left to become a private consultant. Spent some time in Myanmar, Chechnya, Indonesia, Angola, and Syria, always shortly before the local conflicts reignited. Strange coincidence.” Bellugi produced a bitter little smile. “By the time the Ramakhi messenger probe arrived, Arienti was retired and living in Paris, though the rumors were he’d sell some ‘lost’ pieces of army equipment from time to time. Arienti somehow managed to be among the first million people who received the gift.”
“Where were you?” I spoke before she could continue.
The slightest change in her expression. Angry? Amused? Wary? My systems told me it was inconclusive.
“In Rome.”
That wasn’t what I was asking.
How many people who had seen the twilight of the twentieth century were still alive today? Ten million? Scattered across the systems. Statistically speaking, fewer than two hundred thousand should be in ours. I was speaking with one. Floriana Bellugi made her long lifespan no secret. She looked fifty to sixty, but then again, most of them did; some even less. Perfectly groomed silvery hair. Composed face with elegant, gentle features. Misleading. A woman out of time. Free of its tyranny.
She picked up her cup of white tea and sipped. “Arienti’s trail disappears in the post-gift uprisings. Emerges again on a ship to Mars. He spent almost a century there. Very quiet, left almost nothing behind beside the bare evidence of his presence. Then Saturn’s clouds for about two decades, under the name of Paul Olivieri. Jumped on the first starship, arrived at Tau Ceti nearly a century later. As soon as the ship to YZ Ceti was ready, he was in. Going by Louis Castello.”
That left us barely a century more. I fished for the list of voyages in my extended memory. He could have gotten here if he took Kensakan to Teegarden’s Star and then, almost instantly, the Eridanus to us, Epsilon Eridani. Why would he?
“Spent over eighty years out there. From what I’ve heard, YZ Ceti is not a great place to live. Violently eruptive star, very scattered material, one planet tidally locked and practically uninhabitable due to the flares, the other freezing. The rest… just rock, ice, and dust. Why they sent colonists there in the first place, I cannot imagine. Probably because it was so close.” Just the slightest hints of contempt in her voice and the curve of her lips.
“So he’s not here.” Then why am I?
“I never said he was. He sent a message over eight years ago. Arrived last year. Not to me. I learned about it, though, made a brief inquiry, and now I’m talking to you.” She once again enjoyed keeping me in the dark just for a moment longer, expecting me to ask more questions. I waited patiently, not giving her the satisfaction.
“It was meant for an associate of his. He was saying he’d change places again, and sent an encrypted data package. The decryption code is meant to be auto-sent with a fifty-year latency.”
“Unbreakable, I suppose.”
“Correct.”
“How large?” I asked.
“More than my history on him.”
“How did you acquire it anyway?” If the transmission arrived less than a year ago, she couldn’t have contacted any other systems and heard back. She must have been tracking him her whole life or hoarding all information on starships’ passengers—not just those coming here. In any case, a remarkable and most terrifying feat.
“I have my sources.”
I know; asking stupid questions… Just to be sure, I tried to access information about her and cross-reference it with her story of Arienti. No match. But the latency was just a microsecond off. She was restricting me, but didn’t want to make it too apparent. Out of deception or politeness?
“What do you want me to do?”
“Go after him.”
I half-suspected it, but still wasn’t fully prepared to think of leaving my home. “Where?”
“He should arrive at van Maanen’s Star in less than a decade. If you leave soon, you’ll be there some twenty years later.”
“He may not be there anymore by then.”
“May not,” she agreed. “But may yes.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Find him. Find out what he’s doing and why. Report to me.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“You will receive further instructions, but they’ll be available when you need them. No need to distract you if they prove obsolete.”
Somehow, she’d transformed during our conversation. She seemed pensive at first, serious; now she acted openly Machiavellian. I took a chance. “Do you think it was a grave mistake?”
“What?”
Had I really taken her by surprise? Or just more layers of pretense?
“Oh. The gift,” Bellugi realized. “What do you think?”
“We may have still been stuck by the old Sol without it,” I said. “Longer lifespans gave us different motivations, the ability to survive a whole interstellar voyage, the drive to invest in long-term projects.”
“Yet most of the First Generation are dead by now. Most of them voluntarily. Refused further treatments or have taken their own lives. How many mistakes, how much boredom, how much loss and disappointment can one stand in a lifetime?”
I took my own cup, finished it, set it aside. “I don’t understand. All of that can be corrected.”
“Then it wouldn’t be you anymore.”
Should outdated concepts surprise me in someone like her? As old as her?
“You had no… identity corrections?”
“You’re asking a highly personal question, little one. But a good one. What kind of people would, in your opinion, be most likely to disregard negative experiences or feelings, or get them erased just like that?”
Anyone, I was going to say but stopped myself soon enough. Or… maybe we’ve just gotten accustomed to their thinking.
“Psychopaths,” I ventured, having fished for the old term she might be most familiar with.
Floriana Bellugi smiled, offered me more tea, and, when I declined, dismissed me. Her assistants would handle the rest, she assured me. It was my first and last face-to-face time with her.
Five months later, I found myself aboard Chrysalis, a small starship bound for van Maanen’s Star.
The whole hospital was celebrating. The new building had opened. Funding for better instruments had been on its way. Doctor Aster Sebai could not have been happier.
She could already see the better future ahead of them. Not for her own sake, but for all the people who had been lining up in front of the hospital from early morning. For all the villagers who couldn’t afford medical care. For those who remembered darker times. Last but not least, for her daughter. Feven was growing up so fast, already nearly an adult! She should arrive from school any moment.