Les Johnson - Going Interstellar

“Next week,” Ennio said.

“Why that long?”

Even without being able to see Ennio, I knew he had shrugged. And I realized I was a total idiot. There were many things to do before an execution, most of them procedural and technical. While the administration alone decided on death or life, they had to be really sure that nothing could be done to reclaim a trained linguist, like Ciar.

“Where are they holding him?” It seemed impossible we were talking about this, in connection with Ciar. Like Ennio, I kept thinking there had been some horrible mistake and we should, somehow, be able to clear him. I’d read stories of Earth where someone was broken out of jail and he and his rescuers vanished into the sunset, but aboard the ship there was no possible way to do that. Unless we escaped into the no-grav areas, and even there, repair people and maintenance people would find us eventually—let alone the fact that staying in no gravity too long would make us ill in very short order.

Ennio made a sound of dismissal, and then turned on something. It had a small screen that glowed feebly, but in the total darkness it looked like a spotlight. After my eyes adjusted, I realized it was just a little data port, which could function independently of the main computer. It was what most of us used to read for amusement.

“I correlated all the things the nursery rhymes say about the wise old owl,” he said. “While I was waiting for you. I think …I think it’s a hidden computer somewhere in the ship.”

“Right,” I said. “Because it makes perfect sense to spend twice the needed amount of money, to give a ship like this two completely separate computer systems.”

He shook his head. “It does, if you think about it. For one, there could be a space disaster or something, that wiped out the other one. And besides, there’s …other reasons. Like for instance, people not wanting us to know things, like how many generations there have been in the ship.”

“Why would they want to do that?” I asked. “I mean, you’re assuming someone is deliberately hiding the number of generations from us. What you said earlier is much more likely. That they don’t want feuds and such to propagate and perpetuate.”

But he shook his head. “No, I think it’s more than that. I think the administration doesn’t want us to arrive.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at them. They have all this power, over the ship and over us. Why would they want us to arrive?”

“Because the whole point of this trip is to arrive ?”

“Is it? It was when we launched, but is it still? Most people aboard care about what ? Who they’ll marry, how many children they’re allowed to have, and how many luxury points they have that they can spend this week. And when we arrive, what is supposed to happen?”

“We …we’ll settle,” I said. “Depending on what the world is like. I mean, they know it has water and is the right temperature and …” I dredged up from my mind the memory of childhood lectures. “I think they somehow established that it either had life or could support life. Depending on which one it is, we either settle right in, or we warm up the plants and animals and give them some time to establish. And then we move down to the surface, and we have farms and …and stuff down there, just like we have here. The whole point was to expand human civilization and knowledge.” The idea of living somewhere without the upper limits of the tunnels overhead, of the floor beneath, made my heart pound. Just looking at movies of Earth made me a little dizzy, unless I thought of the sky as a tunnel top. But I knew the name for that was acrophobia and that there were hypnotic treatments for it. We’d been provided with those, since everyone knew after …ten generations? In the ship that was bound to happen.

“Right,” Ennio said. “But there won’t be any restrictions on how many children you can have, anymore. And after a while there won’t be any restrictions on how much you can eat, and where you can go.” He looked at me with the look of someone who’d just won an argument, and exhaled, forcefully. “ Think , Nia. The administrators will lose all their power over us.”

“But they’ll have farms and …and stuff.”

“Right. Only they can’t be assured they’ll be the best farmers. Remember what I said about what most people care about?”

“Children and luxury points, I think you said.”

“Yeah, that and how much other people admire and respect you.”

“But we’ll all have all the children we can want, and unlimited food, and….”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. But they don’t know they’ll be the best farmers, will they?”

For a moment I didn’t understand, then I got it. When I was apprenticed as a repair person, I’d made use of a natural talent to become the best of the apprentices in very short order. But then, when we’d become craftspeople, with our licenses in order, I’d found I was only the best of the most inept group—that is the just-graduated ones. I would always remember the sting of that reduction in status. I hadn’t liked even that little step. How much less would people who were at the top of their social and professional ladder enjoy having the ladder pulled away from them and falling …into an entirely different category?

“But …to the point of hiding the files? To the point of lying to us about where we are in space? Or at least not telling us when we approach and …risking our going right past? To the point of having Ciar executed ?”

Ennio bit his lip. “It seems so. I don’t like to think about it anymore than you do, but it seems so. They’re killing him just for trying to find this information.”

“And you want us to look at the nursery rhymes?” I said, baffled. If this was true, it seemed more productive to call a public meeting; to shout it from the roof tops; to sound the alarm; to try the administrative board for treason. Which is where I came up against an obstacle. The administrative board and the captain had absolute power aboard. Who would try them?

“No, not just look at nursery rhymes,” Ennio said. “You weren’t listening. I have compiled all the instructions on how to find the wise old owl.” He looked at me, his gaze so determined that you’d swear he was the one condemned to death and seeing only one means of escape.

“What good would that be? Even if it’s another computer.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But we got into this by looking at the rhymes. And they all told us to find the Wise Old Owl. If you don’t come with me, I’ll look myself.”

I took the reader from his hands, looked at his notes. If he’d culled the hints properly, then the wise old owl, whatever it was, was located in one of the external maintenance tunnels, in section 25. That section was little inhabited and I couldn’t remember ever going into that tunnel. How something like a computer would stay undetected all that time, I couldn’t imagine, but neither could I tell him categorically that it hadn’t happened.

“Tonight,” I said. “After my parents go to bed. I’ll meet you in the alley where you were today.”

“You’ll help me look?” he asked, and, for the first time that day, I heard a smile in his voice.

“Of course.” The last thing I needed was an educational machine programmer lost in the maintenance tunnels. With my luck, he would trip over some wiring and destroy one of the air pumps or the light banks.

That was the longest dinner of my life. Nighttime is artificial on the ship. It always falls at precisely 20:00, when they close the system of mirrors that brings sunlight into the ship. My mom had said that her parents said sunlight used to be a lot stronger, when we were closer to Sol. Now it had to be supplemented with specialized lamps. I knew because I had to fix them, rearrange them and, occasionally, install them.