The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel (12 page)

Ophelia stared at me in frustration.

“The ship’s drive is tied to the computer and the computer only takes orders from the Captain. Only he can run the ship—they made sure of that at Launch. They didn’t want the crew seizing the
Astron
and returning to Earth too soon. Since they couldn’t program everybody, they settled for programming Kusaka . If you want to be poetic, it’s a dead hand that controls the
Astron,
Sparrow.”

I stared at them, more bewildered now than angry.

“Why tell me? I don’t believe you and even if I did, there’s nothing I can do—” I broke off, finally aware of what the meeting had been all about.“You w-want me to join you! You want to start a mutiny you can’t p-possibly win and you want me to join you!”

I was trapped halfway between tears and laughter. They wanted me to join them in a mutiny against the man on board whom I admired the most, and in so doing destroy what little meaning I had found in life. And Crow and Loon, supposedly my best friends, were part of it. Even Snipe…

“Why are you telling me?” I repeated. “I’m nobody.”

Another long silence, broken when Ophelia said tightly: “Don’t flatter yourself that you’re the only one we’ll talk to.”

“You can’t be that foolish,” I said angrily. “I would never join a mutiny against the Captain.”

Then I realized what was at stake and all the bravado seeped out of me. They had told me too much, they couldn’t afford to let me leave the compartment alive.

“What good would I be to you?” I said slowly. “I know nothing about the ship, there’sno way I could help…”

As I spoke, my eyes flicked around the compartment, desperately searching for something to use as a weapon. I finally found it, a piece of a broken writing slate clinging beneath the ledge that held the terminal pad. I dove for it,then waved it at them like a knife. I tried to look fierce, curling my lips away from my teeth as I fumbled at the hatch with my other hand.

What astonished me then was the look of shocked surprise on their faces.

“What are you doing, Sparrow?” Snipe asked. There was a tremor in her voice; she was badly frightened.

Ophelia held out her hand toward me and closed her fingers so they formed a fist, then uncurled them one by one.

“There’s nothing else in the entire universe that can do that, Sparrow—but it’s taken us more than a hundred generations to realize it.” She twisted her wrist and bent her hand back and forth and I followed it with my eyes. “Life is too rare and too valuable. None of us would harm anything living. None of us could.”

I kept a firm grip on the piece of slate.

“Somebody killedJudah ,” I accused. “I saw the bloodstains on the deck mat.”

For the first time since I met her, Snipe looked close to tears.

“I wanted to tell you before, Sparrow. Nobody killedJudah ; he killed himself.”

“He committed suicide?” I was stunned. On a ship where life was so highly valued, it was difficult for me to comprehend—perhaps even more so for them.

Snipe nodded. “None of us can take a life, Sparrow.Except our own.”

Noah looked grim. “If the
Astron
goes into the Dark, we couldn’t replenish mass and minerals at some planet every five years or so. We’d run out of vital elements very quickly and die within eight to ten generations.”

“A lot can happen in eight to ten generations,” I said coldly.

Noah’s expression faded to one of sadness.

“We won’t have that long, Sparrow.Judah lost faith and others will, too. The danger is right now, this generation.”

When crew members went to Reduction, it was with the hope and understanding that they were bequeathing themselves to future generations. But forJudah , there had been no future. I lowered my hand that held the piece of slate and stared at them, trying to make up my mind what to do.

“I’ll tell the Captain,” I said at last. “Hellhave an answer.”

Ophelia laughed cynically. “And implicate us all.”

“If he did,” Crow said hotly, speaking for the first time since the argument began, “he’d implicate himself as well.”

“You’re lying!” I shouted.

He shook his head, ignoring a whispered objection from Noah.

“You were with us before, Sparrow—it was you who persuaded Loon and me to join in the first place.”

I didn’t really know if Crow was lying, but for the first time since I had lost my memories on Seti IV, I didn’t want them back. I didn’t want to know who I had been or what I had believed or how I had been involved. I was safe enough from the mutineers: If I could believe Ophelia, in a hundred generations the crew members had learned to so love life they could not take one even if their own depended on it. But the Captain had been raised on a world where life was commonplace and I knew instinctively that their reluctance didn’t apply to him.

Ihad nothing more to say to them or they to me. Noah let his tray float to the deck and glanced in consternation at Ophelia. Neither of them spoke. Crow put his hand lightly on my shoulder as if he were about to reason with me some more but I was tired of words and arguments I couldn’t win and brushed him aside. I undogged the hatch and slipped out through the shadow screen. My duty was plain, and that was to report them to the Captain. I kicked up through the different levels but found myself growing increasingly reluctant the closer I got to the bridge. What I had to tell the Captain would mean punishment for the plotters. Two of them had been good friends. I was afraid I was falling in love withanother, while still another had “taken an interest” at a time when I desperately needed somebody to show me both attention and affection.

But the Captain
would
punish them, and what his punishment might be gave me great pause. I was still thinking about it as I kicked past the level with the passageway bazaar. I ducked in to glance at the few books offered for sale while I made up my mind what I would do about the mutiny. Two pages into an ancient astronomy text I decided to do nothing. I would wait for a period or so and see what happened. Ophelia and Noah must have talked to other crewmen besides me and certainly not all of them would remain silent.

The next meal period, Ophelia ignored me as usual. On the surface, Crow and Loon were as friendly as always, but there was an undercurrent of tension strong enough to make Thrush glance at Crow and me, his eyes full of curiosity. Fifteen minutes before the end of the period, Noah set up the chessboard and studied the pieces as if he were going to play against himself. After a minute or two I drifted over. Maintaining a routine was all-important, otherwise Banquo might notice and Abel certainly would. I straddled a crate so I wouldn’t drift and tried to decide on my opening gambit, my mind still full of revolts and mutinies.

“The first move is always the most difficult,” I said, making excuses for the time I was taking. Noah didn’t look up from the board. “Not if you have a game plan.”

I pushed a pawn forward,then pulled it back. “We didn’t decide who plays white.”

He shrugged. “You go first, Sparrow. It’s your move.”

I looked at him sharply. We were fencing about the mutiny and that was a game I was bound to lose. I decided to concentrate on simply playing chess.

So I didn’t go to the Captain. Gradually I found myself nodding to Crow when we passed in the corridors, and then we were going out of our way to be civil to one another. Finally, one sleep period, I slipped into his compartment to admire the view from the balcony and share some smoke and the latest gossip with him and Loon.

I didn’t mention the meeting then but later, when Crow and I were alone in an empty corridor, I said,

“You’re not afraid?”

“Of what?”

“That I might go to the Captain about your meeting.”

“If you were going to go, you would have done it immediately.”

“I still might,” I said, annoyed.

“You lost your chance, Sparrow—it’s too dangerous now.”

I was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“The first thing the Captain would ask is why you didn’t tell him sooner.”

“I didn’t tell him sooner because I didn’t want to inform on my friends,” I said, offended.

“You’re not thinking.” Crow lowered his voice. I could feel the faint movement of air at my back—somebody was coming. “The Captain’s not going to give you a medal for putting your loyalty to your friends above your loyalty to him. He’ll think you delayed because you were considering joining us.”

I was indignant. “But I wasn’t.”

Crow sighed. “Use your head, Sparrow.” He slapped my shoulder and kicked off down the corridor, leaving me to wonder if he was right. They had risked too much by trying to recruit me. Crow might have been telling the truth at the meeting; maybe I had been involved before, though how or in what capacity I didn’t know. But if I had been that important to them before, I was probably still important to them now. They would approach me again.

The risk was that somebody else would find out about them and tell the Captain. And because I had kept silent, I would be found as guilty as they.

****

The key was who I had once been and what I had once done. The one person who could help me was Huldah , but she hadn’t stepped out of character since the time in the mess when she had suggested that if I wanted to discover my past, I should study my present.

I had never had a chance to talk to her alone to ask her what she had meant. Even when I shared supper with her and Noah, she always played the part of the dutiful wife who dialed the meal on the food machine, then sat quietly in a corner reading at the terminal screen or working on a string tapestry while Noah and I played chess.

I waited for my opportunity; one time period when Noah had been called to a meeting in Exploration, I slipped through her shadow screen after first announcing myself and receiving permission. She offered me a collapsicup of tea,then relaxed in the compartment sling, a plump little olive-skinned woman with eyes much too bright and intelligent for the matron whom she played. She did me great honor by not making me waste time trying to coax her out of that role. I didn’t know how to begin but she made it easier by saying, “I’ve been hearing about you, Sparrow, from Noah and Ophelia. Crow and Loon mention you from time to time. So does Corin , when he stops by. And Snipe.”

I said, “You know.”

“About the meeting?Of course.But you make a mistake if you think those six are the only members.”

She read my face and smiled. “The mutiny is an open secret, Sparrow. You can spare yourself a trip to the Captain, though I believe you already have.”

“You have your loyalties. I wouldn’t impose on them.”

“I don’t talk,” she said dryly, “I watch. Everybody respects that.”

“And the Captain?”

“He has his own eyes. He doesn’t need mine.”

“Who do you watch?” I asked casually.

She smiled and squeezed a small bulb of liquid into her cup. I caught the odor and wondered what it was. Later, Loon told me about the secret distillery on board.

“Children.”She sipped at her cup and relaxed still more.“And their parents. I watch genes work their way from generation to generation, not only in the shape of bones and the color of eyes and hair but also in actions. I watch children when they get angry or when they laugh and I know I’m watching their parents and their grandparents as well. You watch long enough and you can tell who mated with whom—it’s not that difficult.”

My respect for her was turning to amazement and I said so. She smiled. “Anybody can do it, Sparrow. I’m just the one who takes the time.”

“Nobody knows who their father is,” I said. “Why?”

“You can’t hide maternity, Sparrow, that’s why the
begats
follow the mother’s line. But there’s no easy way of determining the father.”

She drained her cup and let it drift to the bulkhead, where it clung. “Life is very rare and valuable in the universe. It’s also rare and valuable on board ship. Mass is limited, so nobody can have a child until food is assured. That usually means somebody has to die before a child can be born.”

She leaned forward, her eyes glowing in the soft light of the compartment.

“Think of it, Sparrow—the creation of life! For both men and women, the birth of a child is a miracle. It’s also an act of pride and possession, especially for the man. So impregnation is not restricted to one man. Because nobody knows who the father is, one child is everybody’s child.”

Her words were a revelation. I had been too young to realize what it might mean to a woman to have a child—or to a man to father one.

“How’s the woman chosen?”

“Usually by lot.Sometimes by the Captain’s fiat.”

“And the… father?How many men have a chance to impregnate her?”

“Not fewer than three.Perhaps as many as a dozen.”

It struck me as barbaric,then I realized I had no basis for comparison. Huldah read my expression with disapproval. “It’s a matter of ceremony, Sparrow—probably the most moving one in which you’ll ever take part.”

The honor of fatherhood would be diluted. So would the man’s feeling of possession of either the woman or the child. Long-term relationships would not be based on blood, at least not from the man’s viewpoint.

“The
begats
,” I said uncomfortably. “Aren’t they all in the computer?”

“On some things,” she said with emphasis, “the computer is… unreliable.”

“Nobody ever knows the father?” I asked again.

She shrugged.“Not the biological one, though occasionally that’s obvious. But everybody has to feel they had the chance to create life, everybody has to feel they played God at least once.”

I remembered what she had said about genes. “But
you
know,” I said. “You always know.”

“I watch people, Sparrow, that’s all.”

“My father—”

“Biological?” She shrugged. “I don’t know, Sparrow. Even if I did, it wouldn’t help you remember your past. Nevertheless, it’s important for you to struggle to find out. The very process of trying will help you.”

“And Laertes ?Crow and Tybalt said he… took an interest.”

“A lot of crewmen took an interest, Sparrow.”