Dusk (6 page)

Someone giggled lightly as Dr. Torvald
collected himself, apologized, and then shuffled out with the other
scientists. Only Cyrus remained, arms locked, elbows wobbling
erratically as he struggled through another push-up. His face
distended with effort and exaggerated breathing. He lowered himself
with alarming focus and determination given his proximity to the
vomit. As Cyrus forcefully exhaled, Dr. Tanner moved around the
repugnant Rorschach diagram on the floor. As Cyrus pushed himself
to the apex of his push-up, Dr. Tanner knelt and put his hand on
Cyrus’s shoulder.

“The fitness chamber will still be on the
ship tomorrow morning; and by then the Shipmate will have cleaned
it,” Dr. Tanner smiled.

Cyrus only grumbled and moved to lower
himself yet another excruciating time. As he lowered, his right
elbow twitched violently and gave. Cyrus’s body shimmied in a
pathetic effort to maintain balance and then rolled, sending his
overworked legs flailing as he flopped to the floor. Cyrus came to
a rest on his back, left arm outstretched, right arm limp on his
chest. Exertion, concentration, or the fall had blurred his vision,
but his senses returned as he felt oily warmth beneath his shoulder
blade. The pungent odor inspired awareness like smelling salts. As
his pupils dilated his vision returned revealing Dr. Tanner’s
outstretched hand. “You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep this
up.”

Even with the leverage afforded by Dr.
Tanner’s helping hand, it took a Sisyphean effort to rise to his
rubbery legs. “I know,” Cyrus let escape with an exhalation. “I
know.” Cyrus tried to ignore the reek from the muck that was now
settling into the mesh of his jumpsuit, but his breaths were too
deliberate. The fetor of his own sweat and of Dr. Torvald’s bodily
fluids and breakfast assaulted his nose like a siege engine. As
another gasp filled his lungs, Cyrus stumbled against Tanner,
spreading some of the filth. Dr. Tanner stood stalwart, unflagging,
helping support Cyrus’s weight.

“You know, our brains need exercise too. I
have just the thing. Meet me in my quarters after you get washed
up.”

“Okay,” Cyrus coughed, moving away from Dr.
Tanner to seek support from the wall, “As soon as my body stops
revolting against me.”

Tanner smiled. “You know, I read somewhere
once that the best way to avoid revolutions is to take care of
those subject to your control.”

“You know I read that too. I also believe the
guy after the guy who said that said something like ‘No man, no
problem.’”

Cyrus began to shift along the wall, too
tired and out of breath to smile at his own joke. It was hard to
tell if Dr. Tanner had perceived it as such, “Well, we’re going to
need that man on this journey or we’re all going to have problems.”
It sounded like the beginnings of a lecture, until Dr. Tanner
smiled it off, “So just make sure you can extend that focus beyond
push-ups that weren’t authorized in the first right.”

“Okay mother,” Cyrus huffed as he shimmied
toward his room. Dr. Tanner laughed and retreated. He should have
been concerned about Cyrus’s mental state, should have reported the
incident to Dr. Fordham and Dr. Villichez. But even collapsed in a
pool of someone else’s vomit, his eyes rolled back in his head from
exhaustion, something about Cyrus gave Tanner a sense that he had
everything under control.

• • • • •

“I haven’t seen one of these since I was a
Novitiate,” Cyrus looked on the corporeal chessboard as if he were
a life-weary archaeologist looking on some elusive piece of arcana.
“Isn’t this an antique?”

“Oddly enough, most people see owning these
as a sign of lower status. Even some of the most basic broadcast
decks and ephemera have pretty fancy chess holoprograms. Most of
the people who own corporeal chessboards can’t wait to get rid of
them, but wouldn’t be seen selling them,” Dr. Tanner said,
returning to his chair.

“So why do you have one?”

“Maybe as an anthropologist I have a
particular affinity for the rustic. I brought it hoping we could
leave some of the prejudices of our past behind.”

“Well I think it’s plenty stellar.” Cyrus
admired the workmanship and detail on the king. Minor nuances,
beautiful in their subtle imprecision, made it clear that these
pieces had not been carved by machine. Few short of ulti-classicist
sculptors, or artisans on the Fringes of the Unified Territories
who still took pride in working with their own hands would have
focused so much effort on such a small thing.

And that is what made its worth
incalculable.

As Cyrus admired the workmanship of the
board, Dr. Tanner picked up his ephemeris from his bed and began
scrawling on it with his stylus. Cyrus set the chessboard on his
desk and turned to him. “What do you write so diligently into that
thing?”

“Just my thoughts and observations,” Dr.
Tanner didn’t look up from the digital pad. “Helps keep me focused.
It gives me perspective when I look back at the entries.”

“I don’t think I ever had the patience to
write any kind of journal.”

Dr. Tanner looked up for a moment and
reflected, “I don’t really think of it as a journal. More like a
daily vigil. It’s like I’m respecting myself enough to take my own
thoughts seriously and I write them down so they don’t get lost in
the machinations and pretense of everyday life.”

“Well, I’d like to think we left a lot of
those machinations and pretenses behind,” Cyrus fumbled with a pawn
in his hand. Even that most disposable piece had been treated with
the same care and precision as the king he had admired, giving it
an odd dignity that none of the other, less ubiquitous pieces could
share.

“Yeah, except the machinations and pretenses
we create for ourselves,” Dr. Tanner was focused on his own
writing, “Those are the most inexorable of all.”

Cyrus internalized this for a moment then set
the pawn back on the board, “Point taken. I still couldn’t see
myself writing my thoughts down on the daily. I spend so much time
stuck in my own head and not in the real world. I find my thoughts
have often escaped my lips and become real just as soon as they are
complete. And people like my wife and Villichez are constantly
reminding me of that when they don’t like the form the words have
taken. Being reminded again, and by myself no less, seems like a
unique blend of self-hate and masochism. The world and my mind
would have to be on equal terms for that to change, and I don’t
think any of us want to see that.” Cyrus laughed a little, but
either Dr. Tanner missed the joke or didn’t see the humor in
it.

“Sometimes I find myself drawn to problems
that look like they have solutions. Maybe that’s what drew me to
the call for participants in this mission. All we have to do is set
up camp and prepare the way for other settlers and scientists—hard,
but not complicated. Sometimes everyday life is easier than we
think, but it’s always more complicated than we want it to be. Like
that first day at the dinner gathering. I just couldn’t sit there
and watch Winberg throw his weight around at your expense, but I
feel like everyone faulted me for the tension at the table.”

Dr. Tanner set his stylus on his ephemeris,
and then looked up smiling a bit, “I don’t think people feel too
much about it one way or the other—well, no one other than Dr.
Villichez—but you were a little impetuous.”

Cyrus smiled a bit, but then the smile ebbed
away slowly, “I dunno, I just don’t like ‘screwed up’ when I see it
and feel like it has a solution.”

“True, but you do,” Tanner formed a hint of a
smile at one corner of his mouth, “and correct me if I am wrong.
But in the short time I have known you, you do seem like the type
to walk against the wind just because everyone else is getting
blown over.”

Cyrus smiled a little, but his thoughts
quickly moved his lips into a more serious look. “Sometimes, even
though I don’t feel ashamed or guilty, I do feel like I might be
the problem. I always convince myself otherwise, but you know,
sometimes, like the other day, the question is still there. But I
do feel like Winberg was out of line, and I hate seeing people step
across the line like there are no consequences.”

“Well that’s noble,” there didn’t seem to be
sarcasm in Dr. Tanner’s voice, but Cyrus wasn’t sure.

“Not really. I mean, I’d rather spend my
nervous energy going head-up with a problem than being mad at it.
It’s what makes me, or anyone else on this ship for that matter, a
good scientist.”

Dr. Tanner seemed to be thinking about
something for a moment because his eyes seemed to be looking
somewhere other than the room. He inhaled softly and then sighed,
“You know, it’s funny, throughout the whole history of man, we
remember the rabble-rousers, the revolutionaries. But as time
passes, people tend to forget how uncomfortable it is sitting in
the room with someone who is just a bit too intense about something
everyone else is willing to let pass.”

Dr. Tanner paused to take a breath, but
continued, his eyes clearly focused on Cyrus’s now, “Moses was a
fugitive for murder. He had a temper so bad he needed Aaron as a
nabi to keep him in check. Gandhi didn’t believe in violence, but
he damn sure believed in irritating the folk who were ruining
India. Buddha renounced his princedom for his beliefs—if that’s not
anti-establishment, nothing is. Jesus put every governing Judaic
council he came across in a Fringe-fit because his ideas were so
avant-garde.”

He took another breath and began tapping his
stylus lightly against the ephemeris, “Einstein, Faraday, Bohr.
Hell, look at Villichez’s work on human behavior, Davidson’s work
on botany and hydroponic mixtures—Milliken damn near lost his
Arcology commission before he proved his theories on rock dating,
which then turned geology, paleontology, and archaeology on their
necks in one big ground sweep. Even Winberg’s work on Penrosian
brain function horrified the old hat neurologists.”

Dr. Tanner laughed to himself a bit. Cyrus
was not sure where he was going, but his insights were interesting
nonetheless. Dr. Tanner’s smile remained as he continued, “You know
what everyone I just mentioned, and everyone like them, has in
common?”

“They were all innovators,” it sounded like
less like a question than Cyrus had meant it to be.

Dr. Tanner, laughed to himself, smiling fully
now, “Maybe. But that’s not the most important thing about
them.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Everyone in that long list, before anyone
paid attention to who they were, or lauded their ideas for their
brilliance—every last one of them at some point sat at a table with
people who wished they would just shut the
hell
up and
eat.”

Cyrus did not know how to respond at first,
but the joke seemed to lift the weight that had been building in
his lungs and he laughed.

“Not a single one of them needed approval for
what they believed the world was, and what it should be. A man
finds solace on his own terms,” Dr. Tanner added, turning his
attention back to his ephemeris,

“If he finds it at all,” levity was still in
Cyrus’s voice, but his smile faded, “I guess I found the most
focus—and solace—in my conversations with my son. He questioned
everything. He kept me on my toes. And when I didn’t have the
answers, I felt like I needed to find them, if not for me, for
him.”

“That sounds like as good a focus as any,”
Dr. Tanner set the stylus back in its sheath on the ephemeris, set
the ephemeris on the bed, and moved over to his desk. “So, shall we
play?”

“I thought you were never going to
ask.”

• • • • •

—
How was school today, Dari?

—
I dunno. It was okay.

—
You sure?

—
Well, not really…

—
What happened?

—
Scott Seal and Terry Gallagher…

—
What’d those two lab monkeys do this
time?

—
They kept calling me Scariest and Derrière and
they said my name was stupid.

—
They did, did they? What do you think about
that?

—
Kinda bothers me… I kinda dunno if they’re wrong
or not this time.

—
Did I ever tell you where your name comes
from?

—
No Dada. I thought you and mama made it
up.

—
Well, King Darius the Great helped build one of
the strongest empires in the history of the world, the Persian
Empire. He didn’t gain the throne because of who his father was, or
because of politicking. He gained the throne because he was good at
what he did and because the people of Persia believed in him. Not
only was he a great military leader even before he was king, he was
a good leader during peacetime too because he allowed even the
people the Persians conquered to do what they wanted and he didn’t
try to change them.

—
What did he do to be such a good leader?

—
Some say it was because he had the blessing of
the Ahura Mazda.

—
Don’t they make mag-levs Dada?

—
No, that’s a different Mazda. The Ahura Mazda
was what the Persians believed was the supreme god and the creator
of the world. Ahura Mazda had two children; Ormazd, who represented
good and life, and Ahriman, who represented evil and death.

—
How could God have both good and evil children
Dada?

—
Well, I think the Persians believed balance was
more important than comfort.

—
I don’t know what that means Dada.

—
Hopefully, one day you will. The important thing
is that your name represents a strong idea.

—
Yeah, I like that. But it’s still not like the
other kids’ names. Proxy Instructors still mispronounce my name all
the time.