Tau Zero

She blinked, returning to herself. “Apologies,” she said. “I oughtn’t to have dropped my problems on you.”

“They are everyone’s problems. First Officer,” Chi-Yuen replied.

“Please. My name is Ingrid. Thanks, though. If I haven’t told you before, let me say now, in your quiet way you’re one of the key people aboard. A garden of calm — Well.” Lindgren bridged her fingers. “What can I do for you?”

Chi-Yuen’s glance fluttered to the desk. “It’s about Charles.”

The ends of Lindgren’s nails whitened.

“He needs help,” Chi-Yuen said.

“He has his deputies,” Lindgren answered tonelessly.

“Who keeps them going except him? Who keeps us all going? You too, Ingrid. You depend on him.”

“Certainly.” Lindgren intertwined her fingers and strained them. “You must realize — perhaps he never mentioned it to you in words, any more than to me or I to him; but it’s obvious — there’s no quarrel left between him and me. We eroded that away, working together. I wish him everything good.”

“Can you give him some of it, then?”

Lindgren’s gaze sharpened. “What do you mean?”

“He is tired. More tired than you imagine, Ingrid. And more alone.”

“His nature.”

“Maybe. Still, that was never any of the inhuman things he’s had to be: afire, a whip, a weapon, an engine. I’ve come to know him a little. I’ve watched him lately, how he sleeps, what few times he can. His defenses are used up. I hear him talk sometimes, in his dreams, when they aren’t simply nightmares.”

Lindgren closed her hands on emptiness. “What can we do for him?”

“Give him back a part of his strength. You can.” Chi-Yuen raised her eyes. “You see, he loves you.”

Lindgren got up, paced the narrow stretch behind her desk, struck fist into palm. “I’ve assumed obligations,” she said. The words wrenched her gullet.

“I know—”

“Not to smash a man, especially one we need. And not to … be promiscuous again. I have to be an officer, in everything I do. So does Cari.” Raw-voiced: “He’d refuse!”

Chi-Yuen rose likewise. “Can you spare this night?” she asked.

“What? What? No. Impossible, I tell you. Oh, I’ve the time, but impossible all the same. You’d better go.”

“Come with me.” Chi-Yuen took Lindgren by the hand. “What scandal can there be if you visit the two of us in our cabin?”

The big woman stumbled after her. They went up the thrumming stairs to crew level. Chi-Yuen opened her door, led Lindgren through, closed it again. They stood alone amidst the ornaments and souvenirs of a country that died gigayears before, and regarded each other. Lindgren breathed in deep, quick draughts. Red pursued white across her face, down throat and bosom.

“He should be back soon,” Chi-Yuen said. “He doesn’t know. It is my gift to him. One night, at least: to tell him and show him how you never stopped feeling.”

She had separated the beds. Now she lowered the dividing partition. She did not quite forestall her tears.

Lindgren held her close for a moment, kissed her, and finished sealing her off. Then Lindgren waited.

Chapter 19

“Please,” Jane Sadler had implored. “Come help him.”

“You can’t?” Reymont asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve tried. And I think I make matters worse. In his present condition. I being a woman.” She flushed. “You savvy?”

“Well, I’m no psychologist,” Reymont said. “However, I’ll see what I can do.”

He left the bower where she had caught him at rest. The dwarfed trees, tumbling vines, moss and blossoms made it a place of healing for him. But he noticed that comparatively few others went into these rooms any longer. Did such things remind them of too much?

Certainly no plans were being made for celebration of the autumnal equinox which impended on the ship’s calendar — or any other holidays, for that matter. The Midsummer festival had been dishearteningly hushed.

In the gymnasium, a zero-gee handball game bounced from corner to corner. They were spacemen who played, though, and doggedly rather than gleefully. Most of the passengers came here for little except their compulsory exercises. They weren’t showing great interest in meals, either: not that Carducci was doing an inspired job nowadays. One or two passersby gave Reymont a listless hail.

Farther down the corridor, a door stood open on a hobby shop. A lathe hummed, a cutting torch glowed blue, in the hands of Kato M’Botu and Yeshu ben-Zvi. Apparently they were making something for the recently resumed Fedoroff-Pereira ecological project, and had been crowded out of the regular facilities on the lower decks.

That was good as far as it went, but it didn’t go any real distance. You had to be sure precisely what you were doing before you overhauled the systems on which life rested. As yet, and doubtless for years to come, matters were at the research stage. The undertaking could only engage the full attention of a few specialists, until actual construction began.

Nilsson’s instrumental improvements had been an excellent work maker. Now that was drawing to a close, unless the astronomers could think up new inventions. Most of the labor was finished; cargo had been shifted, Number Two deck converted to an electronic observatory, its haywire tangle trimmed. The experts might tinker and refine, as well as lose themselves in their prodigious studies of the outer universe. For the bulk of the team, no task was left.

Nothing was left save to abide.

At each crisis, the folk had rallied. Yet each upsurge of hope peaked lower than the last, each withdrawal to misery went deeper. You would offhand have expected more reaction to the changed ruling on children, for instance. Exactly two women had applied for motherhood, and their last shots wouldn’t wear off for months. The rest were interested, no doubt, in a fashion — The ship quivered. Weight grabbed at Reymont. He barely avoided falling to the deck. A metal noise toned through the hull, like a basso profundo gong. It was soon over. Free flight resumed. Leonora Christine had gone through another galaxy.

Those passages were becoming more frequent by the day. Would she never meet the right configuration to stop? Ought she to start deceleration, if only to be doing something different?

Could Nilsson, Chidambaran, and Foxe-Jameson have miscalculated? Were they begi

Well, no doubt Lindgren would get the information from Nilsson when it was confirmed, whatever it was.

Reymont floated along the stairwell to the crew deck. After a pause at his own cabin, he found the door he wanted, and chimed. Getting no response, he tried it. Locked. Sadler’s adjoining door wasn’t. He entered her side. The partition was down between her and her man. Reymont swung it out of the way.

Joha

Reymont grasped a handhold, encountered that stare, and said noncommittally, “I wondered why you haven’t been around. Then I heard you aren’t feeling well. Anything I can do for you?”

Freiwald grunted.

“You can do considerable for me,” Reymont went on. “I need you pretty badly. You’ve been the best deputy — policeman, counselor, work-party boss, idea man — I’ve had through this whole thing. You can’t be spared.”

Freiwald spoke with an effort. “I shall have to be spared.”

“Why? What’s the matter?” “I can’t go on any more. It’s that simple. I can’t.”

“Why not?” Reymont persisted. “What jobs we have aren’t hard, physically. Anyhow, you’re tough. Weightlessness never bothered you. You’re a machine-era boy, a practical chap, a lusty, earthy soul. Not one of those self-appointed delicates who have to be coddled every minute because their tender spirits can’t bear a long voyage.” He sneered. “Or are you one?”