Poul Anderson - Tau Zero

He gestured bow-ward. “Finally you reach a point where little or no further condensation is possible. The energetic, short-lived blue giants bum themselves out and have no successors. The galaxy’s luminous members are entirely dwarfs — at last nothing except cool, red, miserly Type Ms. Those are good for almost a hundred gigayears.

“I’d judge this galaxy we’re aimed for isn’t that far along yet. But it’s getting there. It’s getting there.”

Boudreau pondered. “Then we won’t gain as much speed per galaxy as we did before,” he said. “Not if the interstellar gas and dust are being used up.”

“True,” Foxe-Jameson said. “Don’t fret. I’m sure ample will remain for our purposes. Every bit doesn’t get collected in stars. Besides, we have the intergalactic medium, the intercluster, the interfamilial — thin, that, but usable at our present tau — and eventaully we should be getting work out of the interclan gas itself.”

He clapped the navigator’s back in friendly wise. “We’ve come about three hundred megaparsecs now, remember,” he said. ‘‘Which means about a thousand million years of time. You’ve got to expect some changes.”

Boudreau was less accustomed to astronomical concepts. ‘‘You mean,” he whispered, “the whole universe is growing enough older for us to notice?” It was the first time since his early youth that he had crossed himself.

The door to the interview room was shut. Chi-Yuen hesitated before pressing the chime button. When Lindgren let her in, she said timidly, “They told me you were here alone.”

“Writing.” The first officer stood somewhat slumped; nonetheless she topped the planetologist by a head. “A private place.”

“I hate to disturb you.”

“What I’m for, Ai-Ling. Sit down.” Lindgren went back behind her desk, which was covered with scrawled-on papers. The cabin hummed and trembled to irregular acceleration. More than a day of weight remained. Leonora Christine was bound through a clan of unprecedented size and opulence.

For a while, hope had lived that this might be the one where the ship could reach a halt within some member galaxy. Closer observation showed otherwise. Inverse tau had gotten too immense.

A faction had argued at general assembly that there ought to be limited deceleration anyhow, in order that requirements for stopping inside the next clan be less rigorous. One could not prove the contention wrong; not that much cosmography was known. One could only use statistics, as Nilsson and Chidambaran did, to prove that the likelihood of finding a resting place seemed greater if acceleration continued. The theorem was too involved for most persons to follow. The ship’s officers elected to take it on faith and maintain full forward thrust. Reymont had had to quell some individuals whose objections approached mutiny.

Chi-Yuen perched herself on the edge of a visitors’ chair. She was small and neat in high-collared red tunic, broad white slacks, hair brushed back with unwonted severity and held by an ivory comb. Lindgren contrasted in more than size. Her shirt was open at the neck, rolled up at the sleeves, smudged here and there; her hair was tousled, her eyes haunted.

“What are you writing, if I may ask?” Chi-Yuen ventured.

‘‘A sermon,” Lindgren said. ‘‘Not easy. I’m no writer.”

“You, a sermon?”

The left corner of Lindgren’s mouth twitched slightly upward. “Actually the captain’s address at our Midsummer Day festivities. He can still conduct divine service, after a fashion. But for this he requested me to, ah, inspirit the troops in his name.”

“He is not a well man, is he?” Chi-Yuen inquired low.

The humor flickered out in Lindgren. “No. I assume I can trust you not to blab that around. Even if everybody does suspect it.” She rested elbow on desk, forehead on hand. “His responsibility is destroying him.”

‘‘How can he blame himself? What choice has he except to let the robots move us onward?”

“He cares.” Lindgren sighed. “Also, mis latest dispute. In his condition, that was more than he could take. He’s not nervously prostrated, understand. Not quite. But he’s no longer able to buck people.”

‘‘Are we wise to hold a ceremony?” Chi-Yuen wondered.

“I don’t know,” Lindgren said in a worn-out voice. “I simply don’t. Now when — we aren’t announcing it, but we can’t prevent computation and talk — when we’re somewhere around the five-or six-billion-year mark…” Her head lifted, her hand fell. “To celebrate something as purely Earth as Midsummer Day, now when we have to start thinking of Earth as gone —”

She seized both arms of her chair. For a moment the blue eyes were wild and blind. Then the straining body eased, muscle by muscle; she leaned into the seat until its swivel joint tilted with a creak; she said flatly: “The constable persuaded me to go ahead with our rituals. Defiance. Reunification, after the past quarrel. Rededication, especially to that unborn baby. New Earth: We’ll snatch it from God’s grip yet. If God means anything, even emotionally, any more. Maybe I should lay off religion altogether. Carl didn’t give me any details. Only the general idea. I’m supposed to be its best spokesman. Me. That tells you a good deal about our condition, doesn’t it?”

She blinked, returning to herself. “Apologies,” she said. “I oughtn’t to have dropped my problems on you.”

“They are everyone’s problems. First Officer,” Chi-Yuen replied.

“Please. My name is Ingrid. Thanks, though. If I haven’t told you before, let me say now, in your quiet way you’re one of the key people aboard. A garden of calm — Well.” Lindgren bridged her fingers. “What can I do for you?”

Chi-Yuen’s glance fluttered to the desk. “It’s about Charles.”

The ends of Lindgren’s nails whitened.

“He needs help,” Chi-Yuen said.

“He has his deputies,” Lindgren answered tonelessly.

“Who keeps them going except him? Who keeps us all going? You too, Ingrid. You depend on him.”

“Certainly.” Lindgren intertwined her fingers and strained them. “You must realize — perhaps he never mentioned it to you in words, any more than to me or I to him; but it’s obvious — there’s no quarrel left between him and me. We eroded that away, working together. I wish him everything good.”

“Can you give him some of it, then?”

Lindgren’s gaze sharpened. “What do you mean?”

“He is tired. More tired than you imagine, Ingrid. And more alone.”

“His nature.”

“Maybe. Still, that was never any of the inhuman things he’s had to be: afire, a whip, a weapon, an engine. I’ve come to know him a little. I’ve watched him lately, how he sleeps, what few times he can. His defenses are used up. I hear him talk sometimes, in his dreams, when they aren’t simply nightmares.”

Lindgren closed her hands on emptiness. “What can we do for him?”

“Give him back a part of his strength. You can.” Chi-Yuen raised her eyes. “You see, he loves you.”

Lindgren got up, paced the narrow stretch behind her desk, struck fist into palm. “I’ve assumed obligations,” she said. The words wrenched her gullet.

“I know—”

“Not to smash a man, especially one we need. And not to … be promiscuous again. I have to be an officer, in everything I do. So does Cari.” Raw-voiced: “He’d refuse!”

Chi-Yuen rose likewise. “Can you spare this night?” she asked.

“What? What? No. Impossible, I tell you. Oh, I’ve the time, but impossible all the same. You’d better go.”

“Come with me.” Chi-Yuen took Lindgren by the hand. “What scandal can there be if you visit the two of us in our cabin?”