Les Johnson - Going Interstellar

“I have some ideas about that.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

They stopped just inside the hold, watching the frantic preparations for disengagement. He glanced down at her. “You want to get back on the ship?”

“No,” she said. “Not really.”

“You want to stay here?”

Breathless with sudden hope, she nodded. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I mean, yes, please. I really do.”

“I suspected as much.” Side by side, they watched the swarm of people preparing to seal the locks and separate the two vessels. “This could have been a tragedy,” he said.

“Yes. A leak like that grows pretty fast once it gets started.” She saw Tie Dye turn to stalk back into the ship. She wondered who would be in more trouble, Tie Dye or herself.

It would all be sorted out at the command level, no doubt. In any case, there wasn’t a damn thing Tie Dye could do now.

Link guided her into the vacuum elevator, and Isabet grasped the knack of traversing the layered decks in an instant. As they floated downward, he pointed out the level where the cubbies were. “We’ll find a free one for you.” He promised a tour of the gallery and the laboratories before they reached the lowest level, where he deposited her in the hydroponics area. “You can watch the ship leave from here,” he said, pointing to an observation window.

Her nerves still on fire from her near-miss, she watched the North America pull back from the habitat and revolve in preparation for its return to Earth. She leaned against the chilly plexiglass and imagined Tie Dye standing impotently near the space window to watch Starhold disappear as the ship revolved and prepared to get under way. She started to grin.

Were Skunk or Ginger or Happy Feet watching in wonder as the ship’s positronic reactors fired and the ship began to vibrate? Did they look around, asking about Isabet, or did they know she was stranded on the habitat? Just in case, she waved her arm in farewell. She kissed her hand to the ship for good measure.

Yep, she was stuck here. For the duration. Twelve months, at least. Helluva way to score a vacation.

She laughed aloud as the North America’s rockets bloomed, driving it away toward Earth.

When she had seen enough, she turned from the window, and stepped out into the ship. With a deft twist of her feet and her hands, she shot upward toward the gallery level. She would ask Link for work to do, find some way to be of use. Maybe in the kitchens, or maybe she could work on redesigning the crawler. It didn’t matter. She’d meet some other people, get to know the place, this first step on the path to the stars.

She was going to feel right at home.

The first thing most American readers will have to do when reading Twenty Lights to “The Land of Snow” is put aside their preconceived notions of what the crew and culture of an interstellar spacecraft must emulate—western culture. And with the current pace of space exploration in the West, new notions of how it might actually happen are certainly worth considering.

Awards? Michael Bishop has them: two Nebulas, four Locus Awards, and multiple Hugo nominations. Did we mention that he also writes award-winning poetry? Mysteries? And that he has edited several science fiction anthologies? And, yes, he was an English teacher….

Aboard Kalachakra ,I open my eyes again in Amdo Bay. Sleep still pops in me, yowling like a really hurt cat. I look sidelong out of my foggy eggshell. Many ghosts crowd near to see me leave the bear sleep that everybody in a strut-ship sometimes dreams in. Why have all these somnacicles up-phased to become ship-haunters? Why do so many crowd the grave-cave of my Greta-snooze?

“Greta Bryn”—that’s my mama’s voice—“can you hear me, kiddo?”

Yes I can. I have no deafness after I up-phase. Asleep even, I hear Mama talk in her dreams, and cosmic rays crackle off Kalachakra ’s plasma shield out in front (to keep us all from going dead), and the crackle from Earth across the reaching oceans of farthest space.

“Greta Bryn?”

She sounds like Atlanta, Daddy says. To me she sounds like Mama, which I want her to play-act now. She keeps bunnies, minks, guineas, and many other tiny crits down along our sci-tech cylinder in Kham Bay. But hearing her doesn’t pulley me into sit-up pose. To get there, I stretch my soft parts and my bones.

“Easy, baby,” Mama says.

A man in white unhooks me. A woman pinches me at the wrist so I won’t twist the fuel tube or pulse counter. They’ve already shot me in the heart, to stir its beating. Now I sit and look around, clearer. Daddy stands near, showing his crumply face.

“Hey, Gee Bee,” he says, but doesn’t grab my hand.

His coverall tag is my roll-call name: Brasswell. A hard name for a girl and not too fine for Daddy, who looks thirty-seven or maybe fifty-fifteen, a number Mama says he uses to joke his fitness. He does whore-to-culture—another puzzle-funny of his—so that later we can turn Guge green, and maybe survive.

I feel sick, like juice gone sour in my tummy has gushed into my mouth. I start to elbow out. My eyes grow pop-out big, my fists shake like rattles. Now Daddy grabs me, mouth by my ear: “Shhhh shhh shhh.” Mama touches my other cheek. Everyone else falls back to watch. That’s scary too.

After a seem-like century I ask, “Are we there yet?”

Everybody yuks at my funniness. I drop my legs through the eggshell door. My hotness has colded off, a lot.

A bald brown man in orangey-yellow robes steps up so Mama and Daddy must stand off aside. I remember, sort of. This person has a really hard Tibetan name: Nyendak Trungpa. My last up-phase he made me say it multi times so I would not forget. I was four, but I almost forgetted anyway.

“What’s your name?” Minister Trungpa asks me.

He already knows, but I blink and say, “Greta Bryn Brasswell.”

“And where are you?”

“ Kalachakra ,” I say. “Our strut-ship.”

“Point out your parents, please.”

I do, it’s simple. They’re wide-awake ship-haunters now, real-live ghosts.

He asks, “Where are we going?”

“Guge,” I say, another simple ask.

“What exactly is Guge, Greta Bryn?”

But I don’t want to think—just to drink, my tongue’s so thick with sourness. “A planet.”

“Miss Brasswell,”—now Minister T’s being smart-alecky—“tell me two things you know about Guge.”

I sort of ask, “It’s ‘The Land of Snow,’ this dead king’s place in olden Tibet?”

“Good!” Minister T says. “And its second meaning for us Kalachakrans?”

I squint to get it: “A faraway world to live on?”

“Where, intelligent miss?”

Another easy one: “In the Goldilocks Zone.” A funny name for it.

“But where, Greta Bryn, is this Goldilocks Zone?”

“Around a star called Gluh—” I almost get stuck. “Around a star called Gliese 581.” Glee-zha is how I say it.

Bald Minister T grins. His face looks like a shiny brown China plate with an up-curving crack. “She’s fine,” he tells the ghosts in the grave-cave. “And I believe she’s the ‘One.’”

Sometimes we must come up. We must wake up and eat, and move about so we can heal from ursidormizine sleep and not die before we reach Guge. When I come up this time, I get my own nook that snugs in the habitat drum called Amdo Bay. It has a vidped booth for learning from, with lock belts for when the AG goes out. It belongs to only me, it’s not just one in a commons-space like most ghosts use.