Tau Zero

Chapter 4

In one of the garden rooms stood a viewscreen tuned to Outside. Sable and diamonds were startlingly framed by ferns, orchids, overarching fuchsia and bougainvillea. A fountain tinkled and glittered. The air was warmer here than in most places aboard, moist, full of perfumes and gree

None of it quite did away with the underlying pulse of driving energies. Bussard systems had not been developed to the smoothness of electric rockets. Always, now, the ship whispered and shivered. The vibration was faint, on the very edge of awareness, but it wove its way through metal, bones, and maybe dreams.

Emma Glassgold and Chi-Yuen Ai-Ling sat on a bench among the flowers. They had been walking about, feeling their way toward friendship. Since entering the garden, however, they had fallen silent.

Abruptly Glassgold winced and pulled her vision from the screen. “It was a mistake to come here,” she said. “Let us go.”

“Why, I find it charming,” the planetologist answered, surprised. “An escape from bare walls that we’ll need years to make sightly.”

“No escape from that.” Glassgold pointed at the screen. It happened at the moment to be sca

Chi-Yuen regarded her narrowly. The molecular biologist was likewise small and dark-haired, but her eyes were round and blue, her face round and pink, her body a trifle on the dumpy side. She dressed plainly whether working or not; and without snubbing social activities, she had hitherto been observer rather than participant.

“In — how long? — a couple of weeks,” she continued, “we have reached the marches of the Solar System. Every day — no, every twenty-four hours; ‘day’ and ‘night’ mean nothing any longer — each twenty-four hours we gain 845 kilometers per second in speed.”

“A shrimp like me is grateful to have full Earth weight,” Chi-Yuen said with attempted lightness.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Glassgold replied hastily. “I won’t scream, ‘Turn back! Turn back!’” She tried a joke of her own. “That would be too disappointing to the psychologists who checked me out.” The joke dissipated. “It is only … I find I require time … to get used, piece by piece, to this.”

Chi-Yuen nodded. She, in her newest and most colorful cheong-sam — among her hobbies was making over her clothes — could almost have belonged to a different species from Glassgold. But she patted the other woman’s hand and said: “You are not unique, Emma. It was expected. People begin to realize with more than brains, in their whole beings, what it means to be on such a voyage.”

“You don’t seem bothered.”

“No. Not since Earth disappeared in the sun glare. And not unbearably before. It hurt to say good-by. But I’ve had experience in that. One learns how to look forward.”

“I am ashamed,” Glassgold said. “When I have had so much more than you. Or has that made me soft in the spirit?”

“Have you really?” Chi-Yuen’s question was muted.

“Why … yes. Haven’t I? Or don’t you recall? My parents were always well-to-do. Father is an engineer in a desalinization plant, Mother an agronomist. The Negev is beautiful when the crops are growing and calm, friendly, not hectic like Tel Aviv or Haifa. Though I did enjoy studying at the university. I had chances to travel, with good companions. My work went fine. Yes, I was lucky.”

“Then why did you enlist for Beta Three?”

“Scientific interest … a whole new planetary evolution—” “No, Emma.” The raven’s wing tresses stirred as Chi-Yuen shook her head. “The earlier starships brought back data to keep research going for a hundred years, right on Earth. What are you ru

Glassgold bit her lip. “I shouldn’t have pried,” Chi-Yuen apologized. “I was hoping to help.”

“I will tell you,” Glassgold said. “I have a feeling you might indeed help. You are younger than me, but you have seen more.” Her fingers knitted together in her lap. “I’m not quite sure, though, myself. How did the cities begin to seem vulgar and empty? And when I went home to visit my people, the countryside seemed smug and empty. I thought I might find … a purpose? … out here. I don’t know. I applied for the berth on impulse. When I was called for serious testing, my parents made a fuss till I could not back down. And yet we were always a close family. It was such a pain leaving them. My big, confident father, he was suddenly little and old.”

“Was a man involved too?” Chi-Yuen asked. “I’ll tell you, because it’s no secret — he and I were engaged, and everything about this crew that was ever on public record went into the dossiers — there was for me.”

“A fellow student,” Glassgold said humbly. “I loved him. I still do. He hardly knew I existed.”

“Not uncommon,” Chi-Yuen answered. “One gets over it, or else turns it into a sickness. You’re healthy in the head, Emma. What you need is to come out of your shell. Mix with your shipmates. Care about them. Get out of your cabin for a while and into a man’s.”

Glassgold flushed. “I don’t hold with those practices.”

Chi-Yuen’s brows lifted. “Are you a virgin? We can’t afford that, if we’re to start a new race on Beta Three. The genetic material is scarce at best.”

“I want a decent marriage,” Glassgold said with a flick of anger, “and as many children as God gives me. But they will know who their father is. It doesn’t hurt if I don’t play any ridiculous game of musical beds while we travel. We have enough girls aboard who do.”

“Like me.” Chi-Yuen was unruffled. “No doubt stable relationships will evolve. Meanwhile, now and then, why not give and get a few moments of pleasure?”

“I’m sorry,” Glassgold said. “I shouldn’t criticize private matters. Especially when lives have been as different as yours and mine.”

“True. I don’t agree that mine was less fortunate than yours. On the contrary.”

“What?” Glassgold’s mouth fell open. “You can’t be serious!”

Chi-Yuen smiled. “You have only learned the surface of my past, Emma, if that. I can guess what you’re thinking. My country divided, impoverished, spastic from the aftermath of revolutions and civil wars. My family cultured and tradition-minded but poor with the desperate poverty that none except aristocrats fallen on evil times know. Their sacrifices to keep me in the Sorbo

“Oh, my dear—” Glassgold began.

“That’s the surface,” Chi-Yuen interrupted. “The surface. Don’t you see, I also had a loving home, perhaps more than you did, because at the end they understood me so well that they didn’t resist my leaving them forever. I saw a lot of the world, more than can be seen traveling carefully by first class. I had my Jacques. And others, before, afterward, as he would have wanted. I’m outward bound with no regrets and no pain that won’t heal. The luck is mine, Emma.”

Glassgold did not respond with words.

Chi-Yuen took her by the hand and stood up. “You must break free of yourself,” the planetologist said. “In the long run, only you can teach you how to do that. But maybe I can help a little. Come down to my cabin. We’ll make you a gown that does you justice. The Covenant Day party will be soon, and I intend for you to have fun.”

Consider: a single light-year is an inconceivable abyss. Denumerable but inconceivable. At an ordinary speed — say, a reasonable pace for a car in megalopolitan traffic, two kilometers per minute — you would consume almost nine million years in crossing it. And in Sol’s neighborhood, the stars averaged some nine light-years apart. Beta Virginis was thirty-two distant.