Resurrection

Copyright © 2001 by Arwen Elys Dayton

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

All Rights Reserved.

Published by 47North
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140

ISBN: 978-1-61218-217-9

TO MY PARTNER IN CRIME.

Four Years Ago

The feeling was gray, like dawn, but harder to define. Pruit was surfacing, moving through layers of awareness that seemed to wash over her in varying shades of light. It was minutes, or perhaps hours, before she was aware that she was surfacing. First there was awareness after a fashion, and this was followed by her own knowledge of that awareness, but between the two were infinite levels of gray.

At last, she could feel her own chest moving; she could sense her muscles and the position of her body. She felt the warmth of liquid around her, and she remembered that she could see out of her eyes.

She opened them. She felt the biofluid, and it was pleasant. Through its slightly orange coloring, she could make out a shape above her. Niks. His face was too blurry to discern any expression, but Pruit knew he was smiling.

She saw him move an arm to the controls of her crib. There was a shift in the fluid, and in a moment she could feel it draining away. It slid off of her face, and now she could see Niks more clearly. The plantglass retracted from the top of the crib, and she felt the brush of air from the ship. It seemed too cold. All over her body, bloodarms and feedarms were gently releasing her and moving back into the wombwalls of the crib, leaving no trace on her of their presence. A reedy breathearm withdrew from her throat, and she gagged.

She spit out biofluid and shakily reached for the sides of the crib. Niks took her hands and pulled her to a sitting position. He wiped her eyes gently, and she looked at him.

“Hello, sleepyhead,” he said softly. And he was smiling. He was in his early twenties, with copper-colored skin and hair that was reddish brown. His eyes were blue. This description accurately fit Pruit as well, except for her hair, which was shoulder length and slightly darker brown. It was a description that fit everyone they knew—relatives, friends, strangers in the narrow corridor streets of their home.

She saw that Niks was already dressed and felt a moment of distress at his breach of regulation. He should have woken simultaneously with her, not first.

“Hello,” she said, her voice scratchy. “Year fourteen?” Her mind was still waking up.

He nodded and helped her stand. The remainder of the biofluid slid off of her, back into the crib, to be reclaimed by the ship’s central system. Niks draped a blanket over her shoulders, and Pruit stepped from the crib. She could already feel how weak her muscles were.

She surveyed their small ship. The cribs were in the very center, two oblong boxes, rounded at the edges, made of light-brown solid-reed that had been specially grown in place when the ship was assembled. The inside walls of the cribs were a web of pinkish orange, from which extended the organic-looking, stemlike arms that entered their bodies and kept them alive through years of hibernation.

Along the ship’s walls, on either side of the cribs, were the control centers, the computer systems that navigated the ship and monitored it second by second as it made its journey.

At one end of the oval ship were two bunks, stowed exercise equipment, and an open mat space for exercise. At the other end were the medical station, the food station, and a large, dark structure, loosely the shape of a box, that stretched from floor to ceiling. This was the sentient tank. They would not need it until later in their trip.

Next to the tank was the shower, and Pruit walked carefully toward it. She and Niks said nothing else, not yet. He knew it took several minutes to become oriented after waking, and he gave her time to adjust.

She dropped the blanket and stepped into the shower. As the water sprayed out onto her face and body, she felt the same dread she had felt thirteen times before. It was an eerie sensation that started somewhere in the pit of her stomach. Another day, another year. Fourteen years. A few hours or days awake followed by a year of sleep, and each time they woke their world was farther away.

She washed herself, feeling how thin she was. Thin and atrophied. Niks had looked gaunt as well, his ribs plainly visible through his once muscular frame.

She finished her shower, and he helped her into her blue one-piece undergarment and her white coveralls. He wore the same outfit.

“I feel very weak,” she said. “How do you feel?”

“The same.” He fastened the straps of the coveralls for her. She noticed that he did not caress her, and she was relieved. They should follow their regulations. There would be time for other things later.

“We’re too weak,” she said. “After our checklist, I want to do a full medical.” Pruit was the medical officer of their two-man crew. “We may have to make this a five-day.” She was referring to five days awake, before returning to hibernation. Their usual stint was a single day or less, but five-days were required if their bodies needed extra time to recover. They had been awake for twenty days so far out of the fourteen years of their trip.

“We’ve already taken two five-days. Is that normal?”

“Normal?” She smiled, not cheerfully. “Fourteen years asleep, Niks. Almost anything would qualify as normal.”

They took their seats at the control centers, on opposite sides of the ship, one of them sitting at each, and began their lengthy checklist.

“Checklist begin,” Niks said. He was slightly her senior in rank and the technical captain of the mission. “Hull?”

Pruit sank her hand into the putty control pad and manipulated it. On the screens in front of her, rows of data popped up, displayed by varicolored reeds whose cells formed and reformed in nanoseconds to create the images required. The screens gave the impression that the images on them were growing, and this was close to the truth, for the cells regenerated themselves and reproduced and were, even in their highly manipulated state, biological.

“Hull secure,” Pruit said. “Three incidents in the last period. Two minor. One a level two. The hull was breached for ten seconds by debris. Then regenerated. The hull cell count has been normal since then.”

“Crew radiation exposure?”

She manipulated the putty pad, and new data appeared. “Minimal. The cribs were sufficient protection.”

“Internal systems?” Niks asked, moving to the next item on the checklist. This was his to check, and he began a diagnostic test.

By the time they had completed the checklist, they had examined in detail every system of the ship. They encountered nothing unusual; things were running well.

“Good,” Niks said, marking the list as complete on his screen and asking the computer to file it in the permanent log. “Time to eat.”

Pruit made a face. It was nearly impossible to regain appetite within fifteen hours of waking, but they were required to feed themselves so their bodies would not become too dependent on intravenous nutrition.

They ate a small meal of reconstituted meat and vegetables, prepared by the ship’s food processor. The flavor was good, but they could do little more than choke it down. They promptly threw it up a few minutes later, as had happened frequently on their recent wakes. More slowly, they ate again.

The chore of eating finished, they moved to the medical station, and Pruit began a waking diagnostic check. She compared this with the record from the crib for an accurate analysis of how well their bodies were adjusting to and recovering from the hibernation.

“We need a five-day,” she confirmed, gently pulling the medical reader off of Niks’s wrist. “We’re losing resilience.” Their bodies were manifesting hibernation exhaustion, a condition the doctors back home had predicted. Their body systems had operated so long at near-death levels that they were now having difficulty attaining normal function. Their trouble keeping down food and their general wasted appearance were part of this.

Niks nodded and turned his head slightly, to address the ship at large. “Central, wake.” It was a command, and it was followed by a chime.

“I’m here,” a female voice said, emanating from the walls. It was the human voice they had chosen for the ship’s central computer. Though Central was incapable of actual thought, the computer’s artificial intelligence programming allowed it to carry on very natural conversations with the crew.

“Central, please review medical data. We’re going to take a five-day,” Pruit said.

“Correct,” Central replied after the briefest of pauses, in which it scanned through Pruit’s medical report and extensive medical archives. “That’s advisable. Recheck medical daily, with special attention to rates of metabolism.”

“All right.”

Pruit and Niks looked at each other, and something in their attitudes changed. They had reached the end of their immediate crew obligations. For the moment, they were technically off duty.

“Fourteen years,” he said quietly, sitting into a chair at the study desk by the medical station. “It doesn’t seem real.”

“You say that every time we wake.”

“It’s true every time.”

She moved over to him and sat on one of his legs, putting her arms around his neck, feeling how narrow his shoulders had become. She had tied her hair into two braids, but it still looked brittle and unhealthy. There were dark circles under both of their eyes, and their brown skin seemed ashen. She knew she must feel like a leaf, sitting on his knee, with her coveralls hanging on her body, now several sizes too large. “I know,” she whispered. He put his arms around her. When their duties were finished, there was no routine to distract them from their circumstances.

“Pruit…” He leaned forward to kiss her. It was a kiss to pull comfort from physical contact, but as their lips touched, it turned into something else. She kissed him back, and it became a passionate kiss, both of them feeling the immediacy of desire. Their arms slid around each other more tightly, and she turned to sit astride him as the kiss deepened. She thought how remarkable it was that, despite the frail condition of their bodies, this passion was there every time they woke, urged, perhaps, by the fear of death.

In moments, they were pulling off each other’s clothes and moving to the bottom bunk, kissing, touching, caressing. Niks pulled the bunk down and pulled her down on top of him.

He turned his head away from her to address the ship. “Central, sleep,” he said. A chime sounded, indicating the computer had stopped monitoring them, at least obviously.

He turned back into her kiss. “I love you, Pruit.”

“I love you, Niks,” she breathed.

Their bodies moved together, were together, and they were not alone in the vast reaches of space, they were not alone light-years from home where their families were aging and the Lucien were setting in motion plans to prevent them from ever producing another generation to carry on, and it would be years and years before they arrived home, if there was a home to return to…

They cried out together in the final moment, and then Pruit collapsed on top of him, and Niks let his head fall back onto the bed, both of them completely spent.

Later, they lay side by side in the bunk, feeling the exhaustion that had been sinking into their bodies through years of false sleep. Pruit’s head rested on Niks’s shoulder. Niks was holding up photographs of home in their yearly ritual of remembrance. The pictures had been printed on a mat of light-sensitive plant cells. These cells created nearly perfect images with a hint of depth.

The photograph now in his hand was a picture of Pruit’s family: her mother and father and her younger brother. They looked healthy and vibrant. And happy. The picture had been taken before they knew that Pruit would be leaving.

Pruit noticed that she and Niks no longer asked, “What do you think their lives are like now?” They had exhausted such questions during their previous wakes. Too much time had passed for the people captured in the pictures for any conjectures to be meaningful.

Niks flipped to another photograph. This one was him, standing between his mother and father. Then there was a picture of Pruit. She was riding up an escalator that stretched ten stories and behind her, outside the city dome, stretched fields of radioactive glass. She wore a sleeveless shirt, and the lean lines of her arms were visible. She looked in top physical condition, healthy but not happy.

“Little sourpuss,” Niks muttered affectionately.

He flipped the picture again, and now they were looking at Pruit’s younger brother Makus. He was sitting at the family dining table doing homework. When she looked at him, Pruit saw a man in his late twenties, with children of his own, perhaps. And did he know what was coming? Had the Sentinel told anyone yet, or was it still a secret, a hidden cancer that would eat all of them alive just a few short years from now?

She suddenly grew tired of nostalgia.

“Let’s put the pictures away,” she said.

“We should remember.”

“I do remember.” She got up from the bunk and pulled her clothes back on. “And it doesn’t help.” She fastened her coveralls and pulled her hair more tightly into her braids. “Great Life! What did they tell them, Niks? What do they think happened to us? We’re dead to them. And they don’t know why we left.”

Niks sat up and reached for his own clothes. “It’s better if they think we’re dead.”

“I know!” Then, more calmly, “I know.” This was a conversation that had repeated itself several times in their fourteen wakes. Frustration, suppressed most of the time, would now and then boil to the surface. It was good, a reminder that they still had an emotional connection to those left behind. “It’s better if they don’t know, since there’s nothing they can do.”

Niks did not respond. There was no need. Instead, he stood and took her hands. “We should start our exercises,” he said quietly.

With that, they were back on duty, and they moved to the exercise mat to begin their first-day stretching routine. As they went through the motions together, arms and legs holding positions, reaching, energy concentrated and directed, they both felt their minds clearing. These were peaceful exercises, and they held the comfort of long familiarity. This was one of the first routines they had been taught as young children. The motions were a reminder of their peers, their fellow soldiers. Some of those peers might be alone together, also hurtling through space as Pruit and Niks were, though several years behind. The rest were back home on Herrod, brothers and sisters who bore the weight of the world.