48. Decision
Captain Bey had graver problems on his mind and was very glad to delegate this task. In any event, no emissary could have been more appropriate than Loren Lorenson.
He had never met the Leonidas elders before and dreaded the encounter. Though Mirissa had offered to accompany him, he preferred to go alone.
The Lassans revered their old folk and did everything possible for their comfort and happiness. Lal and Nikri Leonidas lived in one of the small, self-contained retirement colonies along the south coast of the island. They had a six-room chalet with every conceivable labour-saving device, including the only general-purpose house robot that Loren had ever seen on South Island. By Earth chronology, he would have judged them to be in their late sixties.
After the initial subdued greetings, they sat on the porch, looking out to sea while the robot fussed around bearing drinks and plates of assorted fruit. Loren forced himself to eat a few morsels, then gathered his courage and tackled the hardest task of his life.
“Kumar –” The name stuck in his throat, and he had to begin again. “Kumar is still on the ship. I owe my life to him; he risked his to save mine. You can understand how I feel about this – I would do anything
Once more he had to fight for control. Then, trying to be as brisk and scientific as he could – like Surgeon-Commander Newton during her briefing – he made yet another start.
“His body is almost undamaged, because decompression was slow and freezing took place immediately. But, of course, he is clinically dead – just as I was myself a few weeks ago…
“However, the two cases are very different. My – body – was recovered before there was time for brain damage, so revival was a fairly straightforward process.
“It was hours before they recovered Kumar. Physically, his brain is undamaged – but there is no trace of any activity.
“Even so, revival may be possible with extremely advanced technology. According to our records – which cover the entire history of Earth’s medical science – it has been done before in similar cases, with a success rate of sixty per cent.
“And that places us in a dilemma, which Captain Bey has asked me to explain to you frankly. We do not have the skills or the equipment to carry out such an operation. But we may – in three hundred years’ time…
“There are a dozen brain experts among the hundreds of medical specialists sleeping aboard the ship. There are technicians who can assemble and operate every conceivable type of surgical and life-support gear. All that Earth ever possessed will be ours again – soon after we reach Sagan 2 …”
He paused to let the implications sink in. The robot took this inopportune moment to offer its services; he waved it away.
“We would be willing – no, glad, for it is the very least we can do – to take Kumar with us. Though we cannot guarantee it, one day he may live again. We would like you to think it over; there is plenty of time before you have to make the decision.”
The old couple looked at each other for a long, silent moment while Loren stared out to sea. How quiet and peaceful it was! He would be glad to spend his own declining years here, visited from time to time by children and grandchildren …
Like so much of Tarna, it might almost be Earth. Perhaps through deliberate planning, there was no Lassan vegetation anywhere in sight; all the trees were hauntingly familiar.
Yet something essential was lacking; he realized that it had been puzzling him for a long time – indeed, ever since he had landed on this planet. And suddenly, as if this moment of grief had triggered the memory, he knew what he had missed.
There were no sea gulls wheeling in the sky, filling the air with the saddest and most evocative of all the sounds of Earth.
Lal Leonidas and his wife had still not exchanged a word, yet somehow Loren knew that they had made their decision.
“We appreciate your offer, Commander Lorenson; please express our thanks to Captain Bey.
“But we do not need any time to consider it. Whatever happens, Kumar will be lost to us forever.
“Even if you succeed – and as you say, there is no guarantee – he will awaken in a strange world, knowing that he will never see his home again and that all those he loved are centuries dead. It does not bear thinking of. You mean well, but that would be no kindness to him.
“We know what he would have wished and what must be done. Give him back to us. We will return him to the sea he loved.”
There was nothing more to be said. Loren felt both an overwhelming sadness and a vast relief.
He had done his duty. It was the decision he had expected.
49. Fire on the Reef
Now the little kayak would never be completed; but it would make its first and its last voyage.
Until sunset, it had lain at the water’s edge, lapped by the gentle waves of the tideless sea. Loren was moved, but not surprised, to see how many had come to pay their last respects. All Tarna was here, but many had also come from all over South Island – and even from North. Though some, perhaps, had been drawn by morbid curiosity – for the whole world had been shocked by the uniquely spectacular accident – Loren had never seen such a genuine outpouring of grief. He had not realized that the Lassans were capable of such deep emotion, and in his mind he savoured once again a phrase that Mirissa had found, searching the Archives for consolation: “Little friend of all the world”. Its origin was lost, and no one could guess what long-dead scholar, in what century, had saved it for the ages to come.
Once he had embraced them both with wordless sympathy, he had left Mirissa and Brant with the Leonidas family, gathered with numerous relatives from both islands. He did not want to meet any strangers, for he knew what many of them must be thinking. “He saved you – but you could not save him.” That was a burden he would carry for the rest of his life.
He bit his lip to check the tears that were not appropriate for a senior officer of the greatest starship ever built and felt one of the mind’s defence mechanisms come to his rescue. At moments of deep grief, sometimes the only way to prevent loss of control is to evoke some wholly incongruous – even comic – image from the depths of memory.
Yes – the universe had a strange sense of humour. Loren was almost forced to suppress a smile; how Kumar would have enjoyed the final joke it had played on him!
“Don’t be surprised,” Commander Newton had warned as she opened the door of the ship’s morgue and a gust of icy, formalin-tainted air rolled out to meet them. “It happens more often than you think. Sometimes it’s a final spasm – almost like an unconscious attempt to defy death. This time, it was probably caused by the loss of external pressure and the subsequent freezing.”
Had it not been for the crystals of ice defining the muscles of the splendid young body, Loren might have thought that Kumar was not merely sleeping but lost in blissful dreams.
For in death, the Little Lion was even more male than he had been in life.
And now the sun had vanished behind the low hills to the west, and a cool evening breeze was rising from the sea. With scarcely a ripple, the kayak slipped into the water, drawn by Brant and three other of Kumar’s closest friends. For the last time Loren glimpsed the calm and peaceful face of the boy to whom he owed his life.
There had been little weeping until now, but as the four swimmers pushed the boat slowly out from the shore, a great wail of lamentation rose from the assembled crowd. Now Loren could no longer contain his tears and did not care who saw them.
Moving strongly and steadily under the powerful drive of its four escorts, the little kayak headed out to the reef. The quick Thalassan night was already descending as the craft passed between the two flashing beacons that marked the channel to the open sea. It vanished beyond them and for a moment was hidden by the white line of breakers foaming lazily against the outer reef.
The lamentation ceased; everyone was waiting. Then there was a sudden flare of light against the darkling sky, and a pillar of fire rose out of the se
a. It burned cleanly and fiercely, with scarcely any smoke; how long it lasted, Loren never knew, for time had ceased on Tarna.
Then, abruptly, the flames collapsed; the crown of fire shrank back into the sea. All was darkness; but for a moment only.
As fire and water met, a fountain of sparks erupted into the sky. Most of the embers fell back upon the sea, but others continued to soar upward until they were lost from view.
And so, for the second time, Kumar Leonidas ascended to the stars.
VIII – The Songs of Distant Earth
50. Shield of Ice
The lifting of the last snowflake should have been a joyful occasion; now it was merely one of sombre satisfaction. Thirty thousand kilometres above Thalassa, the final hexagon of ice was jockeyed into position, and the shield was complete.
For the first time in almost two years, the quantum drive was activated, though at minimum power. Magellan broke away from its stationary orbit, accelerating to test the balance and the integrity of the artificial iceberg it was to carry out to the stars. There were no problems; the work had been well done. This was a great relief to Captain Bey, who had never been able to forget that Owen Fletcher (now under reasonably strict surveillance on North Island) had been one of the shield’s principal architects. And he wondered what Fletcher and the other exiled Sabras had thought when they watched the dedication ceremony.
It had begun with a video retrospective showing the building of the freezing plant and the lifting of the first snowflake. Then there had been a fascinating, speeded-up space ballet showing the great blocks of ice being manoeuvred into place and keyed into the steadily growing shield. It had started in real time, then rapidly accelerated until the last sections were being added at the rate of one every few seconds. Thalassa’s leading composer had contrived a witty musical score beginning with a slow pavane and culminating in a breathless polka – slowing down to normal speed again at the very end as the final block of ice was jockeyed into position.
Then the view had switched to a live camera hovering in space a kilometre ahead of Magellan as it orbited in the shadow of the planet. The big sun-screen that protected the ice during the day had been moved aside, so the entire shield was now visible for the first time.
The huge greenish-white disc gleamed coldly beneath the floodlights; soon it would be far colder as it moved out into the few-degrees-above-absolute zero of the galactic night. There it would be warmed only by the background light of the stars, the radiation leakage from the ship – and the occasional rare burst of energy from impacting dust.
The camera drifted slowly across the artificial iceberg, to the accompaniment of Moses Kaldor’s unmistakable voice.
“People of Thalassa, we thank you for your gift. Behind this shield of ice, we hope to travel safely to the world that is waiting for us, seventy-five light-years away, three hundred years hence.
“If all goes well, we will still be carrying at least twenty thousand tons of ice when we reach Sagan 2. That will be allowed to fall on to the planet, and the heat of reentry will turn it into the first rain that frigid world has ever known. For a little while, before it freezes again, it will be the precursor of oceans yet unborn.
“And one day our descendants will know seas like yours, though not as wide or as deep. Water from our two worlds will mingle together, bringing life to our new home. And we will remember you, with love and gratitude.”
51. Relic
“It’s beautiful,” Mirissa said reverently. “I can understand why gold was so prized on Earth.”
“The gold is the least important part,” Kaldor answered, as he slid the gleaming bell out of its velvet-lined box. “Can you guess what this is?”
“It’s obviously a work of art. But it must be something much more for you to have carried it across fifty light-years.”
“You’re right, of course. It’s an exact model of a great temple, more than a hundred metres tall. Originally, there were seven of these caskets, all identical in shape, nesting one inside the other – this was the innermost, holding the Relic itself. It was given to me by some old and dear friends on my very last night on Earth. “All things are impermanent,” they reminded me. “But we have guarded this for more than four thousand years. Take it with you to the stars, with our blessings.”
“Even though I did not share their faith, how could I refuse so priceless an offering? And now I will leave it here, where men first came to this planet – another gift from Earth – perhaps the last.”
“Don’t say that,” Mirissa said. “You have left so many gifts – we will never be able to count them all.”
Kaldor smiled wistfully and did not answer for a moment as he let his eyes linger on the familiar view from the library window. He had been happy here, tracing the history of Thalassa and learning much that might be of priceless value when the new colony was started on Sagan 2.
Farewell, old Mother Ship, he thought. You did your work well. We still have far to go; may Magellan serve us as faithfully as you served the people we have grown to love.
“I’m sure my friends would have approved – I’ve done my duty. The Relic will be safer here, in the Museum of Earth, than aboard the ship. After all, we may never reach Sagan 2.”
“Of course you will. But you haven’t told me what’s inside this seventh casket.”
“It’s all that’s left of one of the greatest men who ever lived; he founded the only faith that never became stained with blood. I’m sure he would have been most amused to know that, forty centuries after his death, one of his teeth would be carried to the stars.”
52. The Songs of Distant Earth
Now was the time of transition, of farewells – of partings as deep as death. Yet for all the tears that were shed – on Thalassa as well as the ship – there was also a feeling of relief. Though things would never be quite the same again, life could now return to normal. The visitors were like guests who had slightly overstayed their welcome; it was time to go.
Even President Farradine now accepted this and had abandoned his dream of an interstellar Olympics. He had ample consolation; the freezing units at Mangrove Bay were being transferred to North Island, and the first skating rink on Thalassa would be ready in time for the Games. Whether any competitors would also be ready was another question, but many young Lassans were spending hours staring incredulously at some of the great performers of the past.
Meanwhile, everyone agreed that some farewell ceremony should be arranged to mark Magellan’s departure. Unfortunately, few could agree what form it should take. There were innumerable private parties – which put a considerable mental and physical strain on all concerned – but no official, public one.
Mayor Waldron, claiming priority on behalf of Tarna, felt that the ceremony should take place at First Landing. Edgar Farradine argued that the President’s Palace, despite its modest size, was more appropriate. Some wit suggested Krakan as a compromise, pointing out that its famous vineyards would be an appropriate place for the farewell toasts. The matter was still unresolved when the Thalassan Broadcasting Corporation – one of the planet’s more enterprising bureaucracies – quietly preempted the entire project.
The farewell concert was to be remembered, and replayed, for generations to come. There was no video to distract the senses – only music and the briefest of narration. The heritage of two thousand years was ransacked to recall the past and to give hope for the future. It was not only a Requiem but also a Berceuse.
It still seemed a miracle that after their art had reached technological perfection, composers of music could find anything new to say. For two thousand years, electronics had given them complete command over every sound audible to the human ear, and it might have been thought that all the possibilities of the medium had been long exhausted.
There had, indeed, been about a century of beepings and twitterings and electro-eructations before composers had mastered their now infinite powers and had once again successfully married technology and art
. No one had ever surpassed Beethoven or Bach; but some had approached them.
To the legions of listeners, the concert was a reminder of things they had never known – things that belonged to Earth alone. The slow beat of mighty bells, climbing like invisible smoke from old cathedral spires; the chant of patient boatmen, in tongues now lost forever, rowing home against the tide in the last light of day; the songs of armies marching into battles that Time had robbed of all their pain and evil; the merged murmur of ten million voices as man’s greatest cities woke to meet the dawn; the cold dance of the aurora over endless seas of ice; the roar of mighty engines climbing upward on the highway to the stars. All these the listeners heard in the music that came out of the night – the songs of distant Earth, carried across the light-years …
For the concluding item, the producers had selected the last great work in the symphonic tradition. Written in the years when Thalassa had lost touch with Earth, it was totally new to the audience. Yet its oceanic theme made it peculiarly appropriate to this occasion – and its impact upon the listeners was everything the long-dead composer could have wished.
“… When I wrote “Lamentation for Atlantis”, almost thirty years ago, I had no specific images in mind; I was concerned only with emotional reactions, not explicit scenes; I wanted the music to convey a sense of mystery, of sadness – of overwhelming loss. I was not trying to paint a sound-portrait of ruined cities full of fish. But now something strange happens, whenever I hear the Lento lugubre – as I am doing in my mind at this very moment…
“It begins at Bar 136, when the series of chords descending to the organ’s lowest register first meets the soprano’s wordless aria, rising higher and higher out of the depths … You know, of course, that I based that theme on the songs of the great whales, those mighty minstrels of the sea with whom we made peace too late, too late … I wrote it for Olga Kondrashin, and no one else could ever sing those passages without electronic backing…