Starborne (17 page)

“
Nothing will be apparent,”
Julia tells him. “
Nothing that we can feel, anyway. You mustn
’
t think of what we
’
ll be doing in terms of a
c
celeration effects. You mustn
’
t think in ter
ms of any sort of phenom
e
nological event that makes sense to you.”

“
But will it make sense to you?”
he asks.

“
It
’
ll make sense,”
Julia replies. “
Not to me, not to you, maybe not even to Sieglinde and Roy. We don
’
t need to have it make sense. We only need t
o have it work.”

“
And it will.”

“
It will. It will.”

Well, then, it will. The year-captain sends for Noelle.

“
It
’
s time to let Earth know about the course change,”
he tells her. “
We
’
re going to be redirecting the ship toward the star of Planet A a li
t
tle later this day. Our first planetary surveillance mission is getting started.”

Noelle nods gravely. “
The people at home will find that news very exciting, I
’
m sure.”
She says that in the most unexcited way possible, as if she is reading it from a script
she has never seen before, and not rea
d
ing it very well.

The year-captain
’
s last few encounters with Noelle have been u
n
comfortable ones. That odd business of having her face pop so vividly into his mind like that, just as he was settling into the home st
retch with Julia, was still bothering him the next time he saw the actual Noelle, and evidently she was able to pick up traces of his discomfort
—
from his body odor, maybe? From some edge on his voice?
—
for she had said, at once, “
Is something wrong, year-c
a
ptain?”
Which he had taken pains to deny. But she knew. She knew. She never missed a nuance. It was hard, sometimes, to banish the suspicion that she could read anybody
’
s mind, and not just her sister
’
s. Most likely not; most likely she simply had greatly
heightened senses of smell and hearing to compensate for the one sense that was missing, as was so often the case among the blind. The suspicion lingered all the same. He disliked holding on to it, but it was difficult for him to discard it. And he hated
t
he thought that his mind might be wide open to hers, all his carefully repressed and buried cowardices and selfishnesses and hypocrisies and, yes, shameful lusts on display, waving like banners in the breeze.

The uneasiness between them had not diminished
in the ensuing days. He found it disturbing in some way to be alone with her, and she was disturbed by his disturbance, and that was upsetting to him, and so it went shuttling back and forth between them in infinite regress, like a reflection trapped betw
e
en two mirrors. But neither of them ever said a word about it.

“
Is this a good time for you to try to send the message?”
the year-captain asks.

“
I can try, yes,”
she says, a little hesitantly.

The interference has been growing worse, day by day. Neither No
elle nor Yvonne has any explanation for what is happening; Noelle clings without much conviction to her sunspot analogy for lack of any better answer. The sisters still manage to make contact twice daily, but the e
f
fort is increasingly a strain on their re
sources, for nearly every sentence must be repeated two or three times, and whole blocks of words now do not get through at all. Noelle has begun to look drawn, even haggard. The only thing that seems to refresh her, or at least divert her from this faili
n
g of her powers, is her playing of
Go
. She has become a master of the game, awarding even the masterly Roy a two-stone handicap; al
t
hough she occasionally loses, her play is always distinguished, extrao
r
dinarily original in its sweep and design. When s
he is not playing she tends to be remote and withdrawn, as she is right now as she stands b
e
fore the year-captain in his working quarters: head downcast, shoulders slumped, arms dangling, blind eyes no longer even attempting contact with his. She has becom
e in all aspects a more elusive person than she had been before the onset of this communications crisis.

Her deepening solitude must be frightful. The year-captain often yearns to extend some sort of comfort to her that would take the place of the ever mor
e tenuous contact with her sister: to sweep her into his arms, to hold her close, to permit her to feel the simple proximity of another human being. But he does not dare. He is afraid of giving offense, or perhaps of frightening her. And he is afraid, als
o
, of certain upwelling inchoate emotions of his own. He has no idea how far things might go, once he lets them begin, and he fears letting them begin.

Noelle
’
s classic beauty no longer seems quite so marmoreal to him. He has started, since the time that th
at apparition of her intruded on his lovemaking with Julia, to admit to himself the existence of a feeling of something as uncomplicated as desire for her. Why else had she entered his mind at that moment in the cubicle, if not that hidden feelings, fee
l
in
gs to which even he himself had had no access up till now, were b
e
ginning to break through to the surface?

But he keeps his distance. He does not dare to touch her. He does not dare.

“
Tell them,”
he says, “
that the transverse journey across nospace will ta
ke approximately four and a half ship-months, after which
—”

“
Wait. Too fast.”

“
Sorry.”

She seems to be shivering. Some part of her mind, he knows, is linked to a woman essentially identical to herself who happens to be some twenty-odd light-years away, eve
n as she seems to be focusing her attention on him. Who is more real to her, the identical twin far away on Earth, or the odd, edgy, troubled man just a hundred fifty centimeters distant from her in this cabin aboard this starship?

“
The transverse journey
across nospace,”
he says again, and waits.

“
Yes.”

“
Will take approximately four and a half ship-months
—”

“
Yes. All right.”

“
After which the
Wotan
will have reached the vicinity of
—”

“
Wait. Please.”

A ripple of something not much unlike pain crosses her fac
e. This is hurting her, this unclarity, the effort of maintaining the weakening link to Yvonne. The year-captain clenches his fists and presses his knuckles together until they pop. Waits. Waits.

“
Go ahead,”
Noelle says. “
Now.”

“
Will have reached the vicin
ity of the G-type star which
—”

“
Wait. I
’
m sorry. It
’
s bad today.”

He waits.

They finish sending the message, eventually. Noelle seems to be at the verge of tears by the time they are done. Her breath is coming in ragged bursts. Her dusky lustrous skin has
taken on a ghostly subcut
a
neous pallor. But after a moment she manages a sort of a smile.

“
Yvonne says she
’
ll tell everyone the news right away. She says it sounds wonderful. She wishes us all the luck in the world. No. In the
universe
.”

***

Indeed, at the next transmission Noelle learns from Yvonne that the news of the Planet A surveillance mission has generated tremendous excitement everywhere on Earth. The reaction to the bulletin has been extreme, a kind of worldwide intoxication, a frenz
i
ed communal agit
a
tion such as has not been experienced by the staid people of Earth in centuries. It is as though the voyagers have announced not merely a surveillance mission but the actual discovery of a habitable New Earth. Yvonne says that they demand
further reports at once: descriptions of the new planet
’
s climate and topography and other geographical details, conjectures about its possible flora and fauna.

The year-captain is pleased that the news from the
Wotan
is having the appropriate beneficial p
sychological effect on the citizens of the home world. But he knows he must clarify the actual situation, and quickly, before their unrealistic expectations become embedded so deeply that it will be difficult for them to deal with the possible, even proba
b
le, disappointment that awaits.

“
Tell them,”
he instructs Noelle, “
that it
’
s too soon to start setting off fireworks
—
that this is probably only the first of many worlds that we
’
re going to have to explore before we find one that we can settle.”

It takes he
r more than an hour to send that one brief message. The communications difficulties seem to be growing worse all the time.

***

Huw holds his smooth black
Go
stone lightly in the center of one broad fleshy fingertip, waggles the finger two or three times in
great s
e
riousness as though trying to estimate the weight of the tiny polished disk, and says, apropos of nothing that anybody has been discussing this morning in the lounge, “
Has he decided, I wonder, which of us are act
u
ally going to make the landing on
Planet A?”

“
Well, he
’
ll be one of them, for sure,”
Leon replies. He is Huw
’
s opponent, doing poorly, and waiting with ill-concealed impatience for Huw to make his move. “
That
’
s his big specialty, isn
’
t it, planetary e
x
ploration?”

Huw grunts and puts his s
tone down with a great flourish, clapping it against the board in a way that makes an emphatic, almost belligerent click. He has only recently surrendered to the
Go
-playing addiction, which by now is almost universal on board. Practically everyone except H
esper, Sieglinde, and a couple of the others has taken to spending three or four hours a day in the gaming lounge.

It is only a couple of ship-weeks, now, until the
Wotan
is due to reach the nospace vicinity of the solar system in which Planet A is the fea
ture of greatest interest, and then must shunt back into realspace for the direct-vision survey work. A great many unanswered questions will begin to receive their answers at that point, not the least of which is whether the starship has traveled in the r
i
ght direction through nospace and whether it will be able successfully to return to realspace at all; and shipboard tensions have begun to run a little higher than usual as the moment of truth approaches.

“
During his term of office the year-captain isn
’
t a
llowed to leave the ship for any reason whatsoever, unless we
’
ve come to our final destin
a
tion,”
Chang says from across the room. “
It
’
s in the Articles of the Voyage.”

“
His year is almost up,”
Leon says. “
Once he
’
s out of office he
’
ll be free to take part
in the exploration mission. My bet is that he
’
ll name himself to the landing party as one of his last official acts.”

“
Why do you think he
’
ll leave office when his year is up?”
Paco asks. “
What if he puts himself forward for re-election? I think he
’
d win.
Who else would want that bloody job, anyway? And there
’
s nothing in the rules preventing a year-captain from succeeding himself when his year is up.”