Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel

  “Well, so am I. The other thing I have to tell you is that the autopsy report on Dr. McKie has been circulated to all medical teams. That’s routine as well. It seems pretty clear he had an old-fashioned heart attack, and died during the bypass. Considering his general condition, there’s nothing suspicious in this. Without the surgery, he probably would have died within days.”

  “I see.”

  “At least we can drop our alert dials down from maximum to moderate.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Are you still swimming every night?”

  “Nope.”

  “I think you should get back to it. Will you do that?”

  “Yup.”

  “Don’t do it for me, Neil. Do it for yourself.”

  “You’re a real pretty lady. That’s reason enough.”

  She regarded me with a distinctly cool expression and firmed her lips. “A real pretty lady, am I? Let me tell you something, Neil, something you should stick into your prodigious brain and keep there.”

  “Fire away”, I said.

  “The very beautiful people and the very unattractive people experience the same suffering. And do you know what that is?”

  “Nope.”

  “No one sees me.”

  “Huh?”

  “My point is, try to hear what I’m saying as your physician.” Chastened, I nodded.

  “And while we’re at it, maybe you should do some thinking about your acts.”

  “My acts?”

  “Your masks, Neil. You’ve got all those accents, for example. One day you’re erudite, and the next you speak only in slang. Are you a rational scientist or a lonesome cowboy?”

  “I’m both”, I said with a laugh. “Yeah—both.”

  “I see. Well then, are you a humanitarian or do you despise mankind?”

  “Both.”

  She gave me a look and turned away, preparing to make her exit. We mumbled good night. I dragged myself back to my room, wondering what she was so intense about. What if I’d called her a real ugly lady? What the heck should I call her? Is she reacting against men? Against the way men see first the external appearance and then get to know the inner person? Did she have a tiff with Paul?

  In retrospect, I see that my self-pity—the self-pity of the unlovely—was the ugliest thing about me at that moment. I gave myself a mental rebuke and decided to resume regular swimming.

  Day 2638:

  Paul was in the pool last night. I accomplished a few laps toward the latter end of his hundred, and we exchanged eye contact in passing. Later, at the edge of the pool, he inaugurated our discussion in loud mode: “Dr. Hoyos, is good you swim. Stay strong. Healthy.”

  “I’ve been getting lax”, I replied. “Time to take hold and build the body up.”

  “You tired?”

  “Yes, very tired. Sometimes I forget about swimming. I forget a lot of things.”

  He winked, and we lowered our voices to continue. “You have new papers for me, Neil?”

  “Nothing, Paul. I saw Pia earlier today. She gave me a lecture.”

  “She is good in this. She give me lectures too.”

  “She’s very important to you, isn’t she?”

  “Very”, he nodded. Then, after a pause, “She is life to me.”

  “I can see you care a lot about each other. She told me you plan to be married some day.”

  “Yes, is possible. She want, I want. But. . .”

  “But it’s illegal.” He nodded.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “We will see. I have plan.”

  “Will the Captain marry you?”

  “No. It is against rule. Another plan.”

  “You’re a clever fellow, Paul, but I can’t imagine what plan you’ll bring off.”

  “You come to our wedding? Please?”

  “I’ll be there in my best suit.”

  “Good. We tell you when.”

  “What do you talk about, you and Pia? The language barrier can’t make it very easy for courtship.”

  “Court . . . ship? Ah, for speak loving, you mean? We talk many things together. Many. With love, you have big language.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  We conversed loudly after that, in order to prop up the cover. Then I did another two laps. He completed six in the same period of time, a human dynamo, a paragon of manhood.

  When we resumed our conversation, he said, “She tell me interesting stories of Orissa, her India home. I tell her my family story in St. Petersburg.”

  “St. Petersburg. Where is that?”

  “Is old name for Petersburg in Russia. They say no more saint.”

  “Illegal?”

  “Yes, illegal to write and print. But we speak it in heart. I tell her Russian fairy story too. She like it.”

  “Paul, forgive me for asking, but have you read my written journal, now that you have it all?”

  “No, I do not read it. If you give permission, then I read.”

  “You have my permission. You’re a good man.”

  “Me, I am not so good. But I hope I be more good.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by this. A reference to morality, his character, his past? I took a deep look into those candid eyes, and saw many mysteries swimming there—a long and complicated Russian history behind them. He looked back at me in much the same fashion, though what he saw I do not know. He said only, “In fairy story, is always love and courage—and treasure. I am guard your journal as treasure.”

  “Thank you, Paul. It seems to me you are already the man you hope to become.”

  This silenced him. He seemed lost in his own thoughts for a while, until finally he looked up and said, “There are two kind of guardian of the treasure of others. There is honest steward. And there is dragon.”

  I absorbed this, wondering at first if he was telling me he wasn’t as reliable as I thought, and as Pia thought. Then I realized that if he were unreliable, it was unlikely he would tell me so. Perhaps he was merely laying bare the natural suspicion I might have, in order to reassure me that he is not a dragon.

  “Dragons hate water”, I said, which made him laugh.

  We did a few more laps (me, two; him, ten). As we toweled off, preparing to make our ways home for the night, he again seemed to be brooding on something. At our parting in the hallway, outside the pool door, we shook hands, and he said in a quiet voice, “My ancestor was Prince Felix Yusupov. You know him, Neil? No? Search his name in library. This man’s blood is in my blood.”

  Day 2641:

  The name wasn’t in my max. However, the master computer informed me that the man was the assassin of Rasputin. The single line of data about the prince was embedded in a turgid, articulate rant against the oppressiveness of Christian theocratic monarchies.

  After our weekly Kashmiri session, Dariush and I went to the Mexican food cafe and ate tacos with beer. In our new common language, I asked him if he thought that love was always rooted in carnal desire.

  He looked shocked by the question, and later I realized that he was shocked that I seemed uncertain of the obvious—rather, what was obvious to him.

  “Absolutely not”, he said.

  “You seem very sure.”

  “I am. It is not theory; it is fact.”

  “But how can one know the motivations of the heart?”

  “By trial, by time, by the measure of sacrifice a person is willing to make for the good of the beloved.”

  “That’s true in romance. Many a lover will sacrifice a lot in order to win his prize.”

  “Yes, but is the lover willing to continue to sacrifice when the prize is no longer desirable, no longer beautiful to his eyes and other senses?”

  “It depends on the lover, I guess.”

  “Neil, think of the most beautiful woman you can remember, the most beautiful you have ever met in your life. Possibly even such a beautiful woman on board this ship. This beauty moves us deeply, not just in the senses, does it n
ot? Why is this, do you think?”

  “I don’t know”, I shrugged. “I suppose it helps with the preservation of the species.”

  “That is facile, my friend. Terribly facile. When beauty shocks us—I do not mean merely attracts us—what does it reveal?”

  “Probably that we like it a lot?” I said in an attempt to lighten him up—to no avail, of course.

  “Shocking beauty, animated with goodness, the emanation of personality as it should be, brings us to a state of reverent wonder, because it is a glimpse of the beauty of the eternal.”

  “The eternal”, I murmured dubiously.

  “And by the same token, if you subtract the visual beauty from the human form, the eternal beauty yet remains, because the source of this beauty is Being.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Dariush.”

  “But you are a man!” he exclaimed, throwing up his arms. “You are a human being! All human beings should know this!”

  “Should, but don’t. Let me ask you, does what you say hold true when the external form and the personality are shockingly degraded?”

  “Yes, but then the eyes must look more deeply—with the eyes of the heart.”

  “The eyes of the heart”, I muttered, thinking to myself that Dariush definitely did not do well on beer.

  My mind blurring from the combination of abstractions and alcohol, I stood and made excuses, pleading fatigue. I returned to my room and lay down on my bed for a troubled sleep.

  Day 2645:

  Today, after downing the placebo, I said to Pia, “Do these things make a person extra hungry?”

  “Is your appetite increasing?” she asked in her professional tone, cool and loud.

  “I have an insatiable craving to munch.”

  “That may be due to the increased exercise. You’re swimming every day now, you say.”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s good. Continue the regimen as you have been doing. Your cholesterol level is a bit higher than it should be, and we need to work on that. You don’t swim alone, do you?”

  This was for surveillance consumption. Through Paul, she knew very well about my every meeting with him. “Sometimes I swim alone.”

  “That’s not advisable, not at your age, and certainly not with the medications you’re taking.”

  “There’s usually a few people doing laps. One or two of the flight crew shows up. Nice guys.”

  “Well, good, but please don’t be reckless, Dr. Hoyos.”

  “All right, I promise.”

  “What time of day do you usually swim?”

  “I go in the middle of the night, when the pool isn’t crowded.”

  “Try going somewhat earlier, say about 2100 hours.” She shook her head in dry amusement, “An insatiable craving to munch, you say?”

  “Yup.”

  Promptly at 2100 hours we met in the temple of the Scream. “What’s on your mind?” she asked.

  “Just feeling nosey. Paul told me he has a plan for you two to be married. It worries me.”

  “Worries you?”

  “I had a careful read-through of the Manual, and also the copies of the contracts we all signed before departure. Both sources say there will be no cohabitation on the voyage, no marriages, and no conceiving children. That eliminates rather a lot of human activities, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Indeed it does. However, from the perspective offered by lightspeed and infinity, I think we can overlook a few fine points in the law.”

  “The administrators of the law might not take such a blithe approach to someone breaking their little regulations.”

  “I know they wouldn’t.” She paused and with a huff she added an Indian word (Hindi, I think) that she refused to translate for me.

  “I take it that’s a pejorative or expletive?”

  “It wasn’t a superlative, you can be sure.”

  “Well, Pia, I’ve noticed that young people, and even the older ones, tend to fall in love despite the little regulations. I presume they’ve all been exercising heroic restraint during the past eight years.”

  “If only that were true. If only you could see what I see in the clinic, you’d be appalled. Every other clinic deals with the same thing, every day. And the volume of contraceptives dispensed through the pharmacy machines is astonishing.”

  “I knew there were fertile people on the ship, but aren’t they a small minority? Didn’t the contract stipulate that there would be double pay for anyone who was previously sterilized, or accepted sterilization before the voyage?”

  “Yes. And the great majority are indeed receiving double pay.”

  “That’s a very stupid policy in terms of the gene pool. I mean, why cut off the genetic continuation of the most intelligent people on the planet?”

  “Not to worry, Neil, not to worry. Part of the contract, don’t you remember, was the depositing of sperm and eggs in the gene bank before the surgery.”

  “Oh, yes, I forgot. Why did you say appalled?”

  She blushed, and her tone of ironic disapproval turned to one of sadness. “Because it’s so blind about what life really means. Because we have a ship full of people engaging in sexual intercourse at a frantic, I would say, addictive, pace.”

  “I assumed there was some activity. But I’ve seen no evidence of frantic.”

  She laughed humorlessly. “I wonder why? In any event, most people on board pursue their pleasures desperately, furtively, and serially.”

  “Hey, Pia, I thought sex was good for us. As in healthy, as in natural.”

  “Yes,” she nodded, “in the right context.”

  “Context? What context?”

  She gave this a moment’s consideration then went on with her own line of thought: “There are no moral sanctions anymore, so why are the majority of the sexually active on anti-depressants, and why are so many of the fertile minority on contraceptives and anti-depressants?”

  “I don’t know why they’re depressed, but the furtiveness is just a need for privacy, don’t you think? And to avoid angry scenes with jilted lovers, no doubt.”

  “But why the desperation and instability of sexual relationships? It has all the symptoms of a pathology.”

  “That’s what the old moralists said.”

  “Yes, and it may be that those old moralists got a few things right.”

  Pia had used some antiquated terms, and it sounded like her disapproval was more than scientific.

  “There is absolutely no life coming from it”, she went on. “And very little love, I would say.”

  “That’s no different from the way things are back on Earth.”

  “Yes”, she nodded. “And what a happy planet we are.”

  “You sound harsh today. This isn’t like you.”

  “Isn’t it? Maybe I’m just getting tired of it all—the way everyone treats the pathological as normal. The way people treat their bodies and their hearts like pleasure machines. I’m tired of what this is doing to human nature in the long run. Tired of having to pick up the pieces.”

  “What pieces? Do you mean there are still sexual diseases?”

  “Oh, no, certainly not. Everyone’s clean as a whistle now. You know that. We beat the consequences ages ago. There’s only one remaining sexual disease we haven’t been able to conquer, and never will.”

  “Which one is that?”

  “A child”, she said with a ferocity that was unbecoming of her. “A child in the womb.”

  “Surely that doesn’t happen on the Kosmos.”

  “Oh, yes, it happens. It’s rare, but it happens.”

  “Then what?”

  “Mandatory termination of pregnancy and sterilization of the biological parents. It’s all in the contracts. Didn’t you read the fine print?”

  I shook my head. “Pia, what about you and Paul?”

  “What about me and Paul?”

  “I mean. . .”

  “I know what you mean. The answer is no. Neither of us are sterilized, and we a
re not sleeping together. And we won’t until we’re married. Weird, eh?”

  “I’m sorry I asked.”

  She stared at me hard, as if I too were a brainwashed member of the sterile elite.

  “Pia . . . I hope this won’t sound, well, patronizing . . . but I just want to say that I’m proud of you. I’m proud of you both.”

  “Proud?” she said in a quiet voice. “Why would you be proud of us? Are you a moralist too?”

  I shrugged. “Nah, I just admire resistance.”

  She gazed at me without speaking, weighing what I had said.

  “I don’t think it’s a mask, Pia. I just feel . . . proud of you.”

  She swallowed, and her hard expression melted. Tears sprang into her eyes. “Be as patronizing as you like, Neil. It’s so refreshing.”

  I patted her shoulder. She put her head on my chest. I hugged her, kissed the top of her head. She cried. Then we said good-bye and went off in opposite directions—furtively.

  Day 2646:

  I had a bizarre dream last night. In it, we had landed on AC-A-7. I was exploring a jungle filled with exotic flowers and wild animals with eight legs. I stopped by a forest stream to take a drink from it, my first sip of real water in nine years. Without warning, Don Gunn dropped out of a tree above my head. He was ten feet tall, his skin was blue, and he was naked except for a feather loincloth. Pointing a buzzing golf club at me, he growled in an impossibly deep voice, “Now, you die!” His little dog Feedo was yapping about my ankles. I backed away from them in terror.

  I was preparing to take my last breath when out of the bushes sprang a giant Sonoran toad with a wide open mouth, roaring like a lion. The mouth had rows of fangs. It gobbled down Feedo and then hopped lazily away into the jungle, knocking over trees in its path. Don fell to the ground and threw a screaming fit: “Feedo, Feedo, Feedo!”

  Mercifully, I woke up.

  While eating my solitary breakfast, I wondered what Don and Raydawn and Feedo were having for their morning fare. It wasn’t worth thinking about, and I glanced around the room hoping for a distraction. I spotted Maria Kempton sipping coffee at a table nearby and went over to her.

  “Good morning, Maria.”

  “Good morrow, kind sir.”

  “Maria, I know this is out of the blue, but I wonder if you’d mind showing me the photos of your grandchildren again.”