Дэймон Найт - Orbit 6

Cargill made an ominous discovery the second week out. He was lonely. But he put it aside, as a busy man does a dull ache which is not importuning enough to be attended to at the moment. Besides which, he had expected to be lonely. “His lonely vigil,” “the vast and drear watches of the night,” “the odyssey of a solitary spirit”—such were the newspaper and magazine phrases, implying a quiet and resolute endurance, that had stuck in his memory. But as the weeks and months passed, the ache grew until it throbbed through his whole consciousness, grew until he found that he never lost it for more than a few minutes at a time.

Loneliness and boredom. The two were one. He had never realized before how social a person he was. Though perfectly amiable and possessing (he couldn’t help but know) an enviable public presence and social command, he had thought of himself as being as independent and self-sufficient as a person reasonably free from conceit could be. The one fault which had been found with him in the midst of the recent adulation was that, with all his good humor, there was a muted but unmistakable reserve — it had been noted, for instance, that he had never been known to laugh in public — and a cool touch of dignity. But these, it was usually added, were admirable qualities in a man undertaking “an odyssey of the solitary spirit” who was to stand “the vast and drear watches of the night.”

The loneliness was torture. He finally had to admit that very phrase to his consciousness, although it was several weeks more before he could bring himself to put it down in his journal. But he couldn’t turn back. The humiliation would be unendurable. Especially to him, who had tasted the sweets of fame and whose future fame, if he persevered, was certain.

He had his work, of course: his scientific observations and studies (his training, still continuing, was in mathematics and astro-physics) and his journals (the raw materials of more than one future book). And he did his work with a kind of desperate scrupulousness.

And he had entertainment. There were books and magazines on microfilm; music, plays and movies on tapes. But never before — he often exclaimed to himself: sometimes aloud, a habit he was falling into — never before had he realized the banality of most popular entertainment. Even of such superior entertainment as this, which had, after all, been carefully selected by a committee to conform to his tastes.

More and more, that vacuity on the other side of the curved steel came to seem expressive of his own life.

The one-quarter mark. Twenty-five years had passed on Earth. Two and a half years of his life had “flashed by.” His boredom and loneliness reached a kind of crisis. If he should turn back now … He loitered at the controls for days, hovering over them; but he couldn’t bring himself to touch them.

He listened to the sound of his footsteps walking up and down, up and down the narrow corridor.

He lay on his bunk, remembering the faces and bodies of girls. That deprivation was torturous too. I will still be young, I will still be young. The thought ran through his mind like a tag of a song. I will still be young / When I get back. He would be only in his late thirties and would have before him years of the enjoyment of women. And he would have them too, he knew that, because of that most potent of aphrodisiacs, Fame.

The halfway mark. He swung past and around the great Alpha Centauri cluster. In the excitement and activity of those weeks, he forgot his sufferings. He filled half a large journal with notes. He discovered two dark planets near Proxima Centauri and gave them names, names which they would bear always — Michelson and Morley — and a third one, which he named Bessel, in the vicinity of the double suns. These discoveries alone would have gained for him a lasting distinction. But he made other observations too, acquisitions worth adding to the coffers of science, such as his discovery of those inexplicable traveling “blips,” apparently faster than his ship, but also, apparently and fortunately for him, harmless. And at last he was on the downward slope toward home. His sufferings changed pitch. Now that it no longer lay in his power to shorten the flight, he no longer lived in an agony of indecision. Rather, he lived a fretting agony of impatience, lapsing at times into exhausted resignation.

A feature of his loneliness, which had nagged at him for some time, increased during this period. He would catch a glimpse of a figure from the corner of his eye and start, violently. Or he would awaken in the darkness to find that he was listening, and had been listening for some minutes. He began to have a fearful sympathetic understanding of the madness of solitary prisoners and castaways. Careful, he told himself. Careful, or he would people the ship.

But one thought kept him sane: his future fame. He clung to it. It was his stay, his only prop, in the insupportable night: the sure foreknowledge of his fame when he returned. There was an old joke, “Why should I do anything for posterity? What has posterity done for me?” Well, he was one benefactor who was going to see what posterity could do for him. He was going in person to collect the debt. All he would ask of posterity would be universal respect and recognition — which would surely bring in their train position, money and women. In short, all he would ask was that it should “heap up his moments with life, triple his pulses with fame.”

These were some of his thoughts as he dropped toward Earth and listened to the sound of his footsteps going up and down, up and down the narrow corridor.

And now the ground is under his feet. His descent has been dizzying, but he staggers out at last upon the solid ground, to find himself greeted in the morning sunlight by a delegation representing (or so he gathers, along with his scattered wits) the Public and Culture. The Public is disappointingly scanty. It consists of a half-dozen rather ordinary-looking men in highly stylized suits; but Culture, though even less numerous, is embodied more beautifully. He wonders at her beauty, staring a little. Perhaps there is no art — no make-up is visible — but merely heightened feeling. Mary Godwin, she says her name is, and she shows the expected excited interest in him. Of course, they all are most kind, most cordial and most attentive to him. He had expected that, but after his long isolation, his starved longing for human society in his cramped cell, he is thrilled by it, pierced, and his volubility gushes forth. They speak to him and no doubt ask him questions and try to answer some of his, but he finds it quite impossible to stint the flow of his own words and can hardly take in what they say. They have no trouble taking in what he says, though. Their intelligence, their receptivity, is so great that it swallows up everything, every description, observation and report of discovery, without effort and without amazement. But he understands, as they conduct him across the field, Miss Godwin at his side, that they are inviting him to address the public (ah! there is his public: things are to be done ceremoniously) from the stage of the Academy. The Academy? Of Arts and Sciences (with a bow to Miss Godwin). Of course. He had wondered why Science wasn’t among his greeters. It would seem that the two cultures are now one.

They show him to a car, in which they glide into the city. He is calmer now and more alert, composing mental notes. His first, on looking out upon the wide prospect, is that the world has become not older, but newer. And his second, looking around with a wistful pang at his fresh-faced companions, is that the people have become not older, but younger. They take him to a luxurious suite to rest and refresh himself before meeting the general public.