Дэймон Найт: Orbit 11

When the research team published its results, several days elapsed before several popular science writers realized the significance of the discovery.

The quanta said this: the universe does not pulsate. The gravitational potential of all the matter in the universe is not sufficient to overcome the outward kinetic energy of that matter. The nebulae will never cease their outward flight, will never come hurtling back to fuse into a new cosmic egg. And certainly there have been no previous universes that have contracted to reexplode and give birth to the present one. This universe is the only one that has ever been and the only one that ever will be.

The Seed had been sown on barren ground.

Cain had seriously considered suicide. He had not completely dismissed the possibility, but he wanted to communicate with Cullins, who shared the guilt. I did not do this alone, he had kept telling himself. He had thought that the sight of Cullins would underline that defense.

Instead, he found that the sight of Cullins made it worse. This is the man I followed, he now thought. My decision. Why?

Sometimes the banal is inevitable. “Have you heard the news?”

“That the universe will never contract? Of course. What do you want, Jack? You have the hangdog look of somebody who needs to be forgiven. I can’t do it. Only the crew could do it. And they knew that the Seed was a risk. A step into the unknown always is.”

Cain, in spite of his tendency to laugh off unpleasant matters, had admiration for dramatic gestures; therefore the small pistol in his coat pocket contained only one dart, which he had tipped with poison himself, rather than the usual anesthetic, and which he had intended for his own neck. At this moment he was tempted to put it to another use. “You don’t care. You’ve killed those nine people and you don’t care.”

“Not to mention the several thousand fertilized ova. But I do care. And I didn’t murder them. They believed in the Seed, just as I did. And at that time I thought that more Seeds would come. If I had known that no more funds would be given to us, I would have been on that first Seed. But I’m not and there is nothing I can do for them. And it won’t help them if I send myself out—yes, the bulge in your jacket is obvious.”

“Nine people, lost. They aren’t dead, but they will never live again. Nothing you say can change that. We put them there.” Cain was trembling, but from an internal cold, perhaps the absolute zero within the Seed.

“I won’t share your guilt, Jack. We made a decision after considering all the available data, then acted on that basis. And that’s all anyone can ever do. The only alternative is not to act at all. Stop making decisions and acting on them and you’re as frozen as you would be in a McJunkins field and just as dead; and it isn’t as clean a death. We couldn’t have waited until all data was in, because there is no way that we can ever know we have it all. Even now, we don’t know that. Maybe next year more data will show that the universe pulsates, after all. Or the old steady state theory might be correct.”

“You make the Seed sound noble!” Cain shouted. “Not now, not anymore, because it isn’t a seed, it’s a tomb. We didn’t just make a mistake because of erroneous data, Cullins. We were playing with human lives.”

“Which you have to do throughout your life unless you live in a cave by yourself. Understand this, Jack: if I had known that the universe was not a pulsating one, I would have stopped the project at all costs, even if I had to blow up the Seed. But, without that knowledge, the project was right. Everything I did was right. And if the human race ever stops acting on the basis of what it thinks it knows, paralyzed by the fear that its knowledge may be wrong, then Homo sapiens will be making its application for membership in the dinosaur club.”

“You really believe you were right.”

“I do.”

“I can’t. I’m guilty. I know I’m guilty.”

“I know that you can’t believe it. And I’m sorry.”

Q: You should know. Will the universe ever contract or will it keep expanding?

A: No hope there. The nebulae will hurtle outward forever, even as the heat death overtakes them and entropy triumphs.

Q: Perhaps some method will be found of collapsing a McJunkins field and the nine can be released. How about it?

A: No such method will ever exist.

Q: How can you know for certain?

A: Take it from me.

Q: Is Roy Cullins right? Was the launching of the Seed the right thing to do? Was it what had to be done?

A:

Q: Didn’t you hear me?

A: Yes.

Q: Aren’t you going to answer my question?

A: No.

In a dark place which is filled with light, but none for seeing, are nine figures. They do not move. They never will.

Father died in April. In July Mother said, “We’re going home.”

Like that. We’re going home. Over the next four weeks, through the packing and sorting and getting rid of, and real estate people, and prospective buyers, through it all I kept coming back to those words. Montauk was home, the only one I’d known, although Eleanor said she remembered a city apartment, and Rob insisted he did too, lying, because he was only a baby when they bought the Montauk house.

“You mean Lexington?” Rob asked.

Horses, rolling pastures, the old Widmer farm where Grandma still lived.

“No. I mean Salyersville.”

I was washing dishes. Eleanor was dashing around getting ready for a date and Rob was fixing the stereo, across the counter in the family room. There was a long quiet waiting time after Mother said Salyersville. Eleanor broke it. “Why? I thought you’d have to be carried back there, words to that effect.”

“Things change.”

“Well, not me. I have to be in Ithaca by the end of August, and . . .”

“Of course,” Mother said. “We’ll get you settled in school first.”

“Are we broke?” Rob asked.

“Not completely. Near enough. Too broke to keep this house. I’ll work, but even so . . .”

He had a wreck the first day of March and died April 6, and in between he had two operations and never left the hospital. I saw myself on the starched sheet, pale, hovering between life and death, the doctors thick around me, the first such case they’d ever seen. And such a pretty girl, so brave.

“I won’t go either. Those hick schools!”

“Rob!”

“I won’t!”

I turned from the sink to see her standing at the table looking at me. I knew that if I said no, too, we wouldn’t go. I knew that. She was waiting, not moving. Maybe not even breathing. And I thought, I can’t decide. I’m not old enough. I don’t understand enough. She waited, and I knew that I was afraid, not like in the movies, or from reading a horror story, not like anything I’d ever felt before. I nodded.

So Eleanor went to college and Rob went to live with our uncle and Mother and I began the long drive home. I took a test once, along with some of the girls. It was a scientific personality survey to gauge the chances of your having a happy marriage. Joanne found it in a true love magazine. One of the questions was, “Are your parents (1) estatic together, (2) happy, (3) neutral, (4) unhappy, (5) miserable?” I checked number one. My score showed that I would have a much better than average marriage. They never fought, and it seemed natural to walk into a room where they were and see his arms about her, or see them kissing, or something like that. I couldn’t really believe they’d still be interested in sex, he was already forty and she was nearly there. At that time I thought they’d had sexual intercourse in the past because they had wanted a family, and I forgave them for it.