“Delighted”, she said, reaching for a voluminous purse.

  We looked at the beautiful faces for some time, and she told me stories about their interests and activities, their personal foibles, and a surprising variety of fine qualities.

  Over a second cup of coffee, she said, “How strange a world it would be without children.”

  “That is our world”, I answered.

  “Yes, true. Or almost true. Some do get through the screening, though it’s really not enough. It’s enough for the survival of a depopulated race, perhaps, but not enough for human hearts.”

  “Well, we’ve got a taste of a childless world here on the ship.”

  “A sterile world. Strange, isn’t it, Neil, the way we’ve got everything turned upside down? Health is dangerous; fruitless is good.”

  “Yup.”

  “Tell me, if you had ever married, what would you have given your children?”

  “You use the plural, Maria. There’s volumes of meaning in your word-choice.”

  “You’re a rebel, sir—that I can see very well. So, what would you have given?”

  “Horizons.”

  “What kind of horizons?”

  “The desert, for starters. I would have taken them out into the wild open spaces and showed them sunrises and sunsets. I would have tried to give them what I had when I was a boy.”

  “Tell me, what was it exactly?”

  “Some dangers, some adventures, the sight of distant mountains, a glimpse of the wildlife scurrying in the bushes, the smell of mesquite wood burning in a campfire. I would have liked to tell them wonderful stories. Most of all, I’d have given them a sense of the great solitude of the universe—and its beauty.”

  “Did you live with your biological parents?”

  “Yes, I did. We were poor enough and overlooked enough that I made it through the screen without being taken away.”

  “I’m glad. I was fortunate too. Sometimes when I look at these pictures of my sweeties, I can hardly believe how good we have it. Thank heavens, we Aussies resisted for so long.”

  “It amazes me that you delayed it that long.”

  “We’re tough when we have to be. The land teaches us that. But city people get soft and dependent. Century by century, our people, like the rest of the world, became more and more lethargic. We didn’t have to struggle any more against hunger, weather, the uncertainties of life in the outback. And then we forgot how to do it. So when resistance was needed, we didn’t know where to find it within ourselves. You’re an independent sort, aren’t you, Neil?”

  “I try to be.”

  “It can give you horizons.” She paused and a thoughtful look crossed her face. “It has its hazards too.”

  “What kind of hazards?”

  “A person can be too alone.”

  “Seems to me, Maria, that solitude is one of the great resources of life, and an endangered one at that.”

  She nodded. “Yes, there’s so little silence. But I think that a person can be in reaction to all that’s mad about our world and go too far in the opposite direction.”

  “Become a crazy hermit, you mean?”

  “The rugged individualist can be very sane and still lose his way. He can forget he’s part of a community; he might even wash his hands of it. And if that happens, he becomes just another kind of victim.”

  I smiled understandingly, though I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. My cabin in the mountains was the great love of my life. My lack of visitors was bliss. Cacti and squirrels were reliable; human beings were not.

  “So what’s the desert for you, Maria? I know you’re dreaming of retiring in one when we get home.”

  “The desert for me? It’s the same as it is for you, Neil. A place of horizons, where one can think for oneself. I want to make a place where my family could live—where we all could live together on the edge of the infinite. And if we can’t do that, I want it to be a place where they can visit from time to time.”

  “And eat your rabbit stew.”

  She smiled.

  “Do you ever visit the desert in a DEC?” I asked.

  She gave the question some thought before answering. “I used to. After a while, I didn’t like what it was doing to me.”

  “I know what you mean. I tried it once, and that was enough.” I laughed. “Fantasy—especially very convincing fantasy—is unreality. And unreality can really screw you up.”

  Her eyes pooled with tears, and for a moment she seemed to forget I was there. She stared down at the photos, shuffling and reshuffling them in different order. Finally, with trembling hands, she put them back into her purse.

  Day 2647:

  I went swimming at my usual hour, the middle of the night. I had completed a dozen of my geriatric laps by the time Paul arrived. He pretended to ignore me, dove from the high diving board, and completed twenty of his own stupendous laps before he stopped for a break and swam to the side of the pool where I sat with my legs dangling in the water.

  “Hello, Dr. Hoyos. Is good swim?”

  “A good swim, Lieutenant Commander Yusupov.”

  Pia told me his rank some time ago. In the flight crew hierarchy, he is two ranks below the Captain, one of six lieutenant commanders, the heads of flight divisions. He is head of Navigation.

  “You are catch breath?” he asked.

  I nodded and patted my towel.

  In a low voice, he said, “More?”

  “More. In it, you’ll read about a conversation I had with Pia a couple of days ago.”

  “She tell me. We have supper at Euro restaurant on A. No Russia food there. But French is good.”

  “I want to say personally to you what I told her, and what I recorded in my journal. I want to tell you that I am very proud of you.”

  He was standing chest-deep in the water with his arms folded on the tiles. He cocked his head and gazed at me, his expression grave and attentive.

  “Thank you for it”, he said quietly.

  The remainder of the swim went as usual. When we were preparing to leave the pool, he murmured, “It is good Pia have you. You are like papa for her.”

  I digested this silently and returned to my room.

  Day 2648:

  Where on earth did I get that paternal feeling? Absorbed by osmosis from my Papacito? Probably. I have to say, though, that it wasn’t anything like mimicry of external patterns of behavior. It was just suddenly there.

  I found a sheet of paper slipped under my door this morning.

  Sorry for my moods. Thank you for your patience. I am angry at the world, and I hope none of it rubbed off on you. Thank you for being a good friend. My parents were killed during a riot in our city of Cuttack, Orissa, many years ago. My brothers and sisters were confiscated by the State. I have never been able to trace them. I escaped to Mumbai and entered university there.

  Death rules us. Our world has become death’s realm, death’s sovereignty, and this has been accomplished in the name of life, progress, humanity. I thought I could escape the dark cloud of my memories by coming on this voyage. But now I see that we take the world with us wherever we go. I know also that we must resist it. Is it possible? I think it is—no, I hope it is. Each soul is a world, a universe, really. Thus, our ship carries all that is worst about our race and—I hope—all that is best.

  About the pregnancy terminations, let us call it by its true name. In case you wonder if I am involved—no, I am not. I have never done such things. It is handled by another clinic, on Concourse D. The bodies of children are “recycled”. Do you understand? Death infects everything on board. We are prisoners.

  A holy man, Fr. Ibrahim, once told me that a slave, if he lives for virtue and if he keeps alive within himself all that is good, is a free man. But a man who serves evil, even if he be lord over all our sad Earth, is a slave. The evil man does not know he is evil. He thinks he is free, while all the while he is the slave of numerous masters, for he is ruled by many lies and vices.

/>   We are prisoners, Neil. This ship is a prison. But we are free.

  Do not forget this.

  (It was unsigned.)

  Day 2657:

  After our study session this evening, I told Dariush about Pia’s letter. He surprised me by saying that she had informed him some time ago about the same things.

  “They call taking a child’s life ‘recycling’ ”, he said with a look of profound sadness. “Nothing is wasted. Except human lives. Except the annihilation of the concept of the soul.”

  Without voicing it, I asked myself, Do I believe in the existence of the soul?

  As if he had heard my thoughts, Dariush said, “In our civilization’s psychological ecology, as one might call it, not a single person has eternal value; everyone and anyone is ultimately disposable. And yet one becomes accustomed to this most severe disorder because it is normality. This has a cost.”

  “What cost?” I asked.

  “For those who suffer disposal, the cost is their very lives. For those of us who survive, there is a creeping indifference to anything other than one’s own survival, which results in increased selfishness, hardness of heart, denial—which in the long range will bring about the devaluation of self. To counter this devaluation, therefore, one flees into pride of accomplishment. Isn’t what we do the defining measure of selfhood in our society?”

  “Is it? I can’t agree. Not everyone thinks that way.”

  “Not everyone, this is true, Neil. Yet very few see further than their own public honors.”

  “Pia lost her parents and siblings”, I said. “Did you know that?”

  “Yes”, he nodded. “I know.”

  “It may have prejudiced her view of humanity.”

  “It may have opened her eyes. I, too, have lost family. My brother and my two sisters were illegals. I was the eldest, and thus I was a legal child.”

  With sorrowing, quiet eyes, he observed my reaction. I stood abruptly.

  “Were you an only child, Neil?”

  The pain that surged up from within was nearly unbearable. I had not felt anything like it for years. Choking, I said good night and left him.

  Day 2664:

  There has been too much focus on dark issues. I can solve nothing in our situation. Nor can I change the past.

  To counteract the magnetism of negativity, I have spent several days going through my old papers that occasioned the two Nobels. My work was a major contribution to progress. This is what I gave to mankind.

  Day 2702:

  Xue and I celebrated our Nobel anniversary by blowing hundreds of Uni credits in the Asian restaurant. Somewhere in the middle of the meal I looked at the protein nuggets in sauce, and without warning, phantom images of the hidden “recycling” flashed through my mind. Old memories too. I don’t need to remember everything. It was so long ago, and I can’t change what happened.

  I killed the pain by inebriating myself with rice wine, and as a result made a grand fool of myself, loudly declaring to everyone in the restaurant that we needed more kangaroo meat in our diet. Angry for no reason, I smashed a glass to the floor. Then I mouthed off to Xue, telling him that Asiatics should try being less inscrutable some time. I was awful. I deserved a kick in my bad leg. Xue tenderly took charge of me and led me by the arm back to my room.

  This is not without beneficial side effects, since it adds to the cumulative appearance of my supposed degeneration.

  Day 2703:

  The morning after my shameful display, I went to Xue’s room and apologized to him for my behavior and especially for my comments the night before.

  “Ah, dear Neil, you were merely being scrutable”, he replied with a smile. Then he presented me with a Shui-mo drawing on pale green rice paper, with little ferns trapped in the fibers. Ink-brushed on it is an elegant swirl, an incomplete circle (or sphere) in mauve ink bleeding into silver, the latter achieved with a combination of white and gray. Three tiny stars dance around the rim of the circle. There are Chinese characters at the bottom of the page in red ink, his pictograph name, and the title. He calls it “Diagram of the Universe”.

  As a belated NP anniversary gift, I gave him my leather-bound facsimile edition of Edwin Hubble’s notebooks, which includes his stunning black-and-white photographs of spiral galaxies, the images which had first demonstrated that galaxies are composed of stars, are “island universes” rushing away from our galaxy at unthinkable speeds.

  I also gave him my paperback copy of The Enigma of the Quasar, which I had brought on the voyage before knowing that its author would be along for the ride. I had often reread passages in it, appreciating the amalgamation of pure science and philosophy. Indeed, within that old scientist there was a bard.

  I had toyed with the possibility of giving Xue the clothbound copy that Stron had bequeathed to me, but in the end I couldn’t bring myself to part with it.

  Day 2705:

  Today I received an official letter delivered by hand to my door, co-signed by the directors of DM and DSI, informing me that my continuing “instability” has caused the authorities to review the “advisability” of me being part of any on-planet exploration teams. They leave me a small loophole. If there is “significant improvement” in my “behavior”, my status will be reviewed, and permission to land on AC-A-7 may be granted to me.

  Uh-huh. Just so I don’t forget them, they give me a little warning now and then, a jerk on my chain.

  Day 2748:

  Life continues: I swim, I read, I haunt the hallways, I chat with Paul and Pia in our customary modes, but there is little to add to what has already been said.

  Dariush and I continue our studies. I wonder if there is any word in the Kashmiri vocabulary that he doesn’t know. He is obsessed with mastering accents. As for myself, I have now memorized more than three thousand words, a point he reached some years ago. I am also working on perfecting my grammar.

  Day 2922:

  Eight years down, the final year begins. Nothing changes in ship routine.

  I have been rereading my old notes on anti-matter enhancement combined with fusion power. Also a few articles about Nihman’s early work on anti-gravity.

  Anti-matter has been inactive for years. We sail through the cosmos at constant speed because there is no resistance. No thrust is needed.

  Day 3135:

  Today, we began deceleration. Five months to go (an imprecise measurement, but mentally serviceable, since relativity will speed our clocks as the ship decelerates.)

  The robot telescopes flying in formation with us had all been brought back into the holds. The two reverse engines were lowered from the body of the ship and emitted micro-seconds of burst, very small measures of released energy. So small, in fact, that the body of the ship did not really feel it. It was experienced as a faint tremor, but there was no slamming of bodies and possessions into the bulkheads. Everything inside the Kosmos would be instantly liquidated if full power were suddenly turned on. Our internal gravity would not be sufficient to resist the g-force.

  The bursts will steadily increase in minute quantities and frequency throughout the remaining months, until we are in proximity to the outermost ring of AC-A’s planetary orbits. There, the engines will cease their counterthrust of the forward trajectory, which by then will have slowed to about 0.025% of lightspeed. The rear engines will be activated and continue to push us forward at a moderate speed as we navigate through the solar system.

  Day 3164:

  This morning, I received another letter from the powers that be. They have now concluded, “after a comprehensive review” of my medical condition, that I cannot be permitted to take part in the exploration teams. I have permission to live my daily routine on board the ship, as long as I continue to submit to “proper medical supervision”.

  So, there it is. This is bad news. Very bad. Nevertheless, I am surprised by my lack of outrage. Xue, Pia, and Paul are outraged for me. Dariush expresses his empathy in less vocal form. They promise to organize a protest am
ong their fellows. Without doubt, their attempt will come to nothing.

  I wonder why I have sacrificed nineteen years of my life (if I should live that long), only to come to this.

  Despite all that has happened during the voyage, there are moments when I feel the first flickers of excitement over our impending arrival at our destination—so long anticipated. I will not be able to land on the new planet, but it is some compensation to know that I will be able to behold it near at hand. The on-ground cameras, we are told, will transmit a continuous series of images to the public screens, and there will also be special programs on the findings of the various scientific teams. It is with mixed feelings that I realize I will see what Stron and David cannot see.

  We are close. At this range, the onboard telescope images reveal a planet that is apparently pristine.

  The Planet

  Old men ought to be explorers

  Here or there does not matter

  We must be still and still moving

  Into another intensity

  For a further union, a deeper communion

  Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,

  The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

  Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

  —T. S. Eliot, East Coker, in Four Quartets

  AC-A-7, Day 1:

  The ship rests. The Kosmos will remain at 4,300 kilometers above the mean sea level, positioned over the equator and orbiting the entire sphere once every three hours. (The following day / time references in this journal are shipboard measure, not AC-A-7 days / hours.)

  I am sure that no one has slept much. We are all somewhat breathless, gazing for timeless hours at the huge panorama screens.

  I am enraptured by the planet’s immensity, most of all by its beauty. It resembles Earth in many ways. The long-distance analyses of atmosphere, land and sea formations, the presence of organic life are now confirmed as more or less correct.

  It is so beautiful, so beautiful, like a newborn child.