Пол Андерсон - Explorations

"Yes, I've been told," she said. "I'm sorry I grew impatient."

"You have a downright duty to enjoy yourself." I wagged a finger at her. "Where will you go, if I may ask?"

"Well," she said, "my parents have passed away, I haven't anybody close, I'd like to, oh, bid Earth

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good-bye. Luna was magnificent but stark. Doesn't the Corps maintain a wilderness resort?"

"Aye," I answered, and changed my mind about visiting my sons.

Autumn descends early upon the Grant Tetons. Except for the lodge staff, we had this part of them to ourselves. During the days we tramped their trails, canoed on their lakes, dared their glaciers, found nooks of sunlit warmth and sat down to wonder at their birds, beasts, trees, and distances. Evenings we attacked dinner, surprised at how often we japed and laughed; afterward we took our ease before a stone fireplace, in dimness that burning pine logs made flickery fragrant, and talked more seriously, traded memories, thoughts, and — shyly at first — dreams.

I will sketch a single hour, soon after we arrived. We left in the morning for a hike to the peak above. Our path took us through a wood where leaves glowed in crystalline sunlight, scarlet maple, golden birch, fallow aspen. Between their slim trunks we saw how the mountain slanted toward a dale where a brook went rushing, and how on the far side the range lifted anew in white and violet purity. The sky was like sapphire. The air was chill in our nostrils, smoky when we breathed out, sweetened by faint odors of soil and damp and life. Sometimes a raven went "Gruk!" or a squirrel streaked up a bole and chattered at us; twice a flock of geese passed overhead, their calls drifting down; else our footfalls resounded through holy quietness.

We stopped a while to rest. The ground was soft beneath us. Daphne sat looking outward, arms clasped around knees, cheeks flushed from our climb. The warmth of her went over me in a wave. Her hair, tumbling from a headband and across her shoulders, shimmered as bronze does, or heavy silk.

She said at last, low, maybe to herself, "Val

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spoke of this country a lot. We were going to pay a visit together. But something always made us postpone. We didn't really understand that we weren't immortal. So now it seems we never will come."

"You will," I promised.

"I… won't be able to. Fm temporarily associated, not actually in the Corps."

"I can bring guests."

She turned her head and gave me a grave smile. "Thank you, Alec. You're kinder to me than is right. But no. I've seen what it costs, and won't have that sort of money."

"Eh?" I was startled, having read the dossier on her which Personnel compiled. "I thought your parents left you quite well off."

"They did. Everything's gone for a bribe, though."

"What?"

She chuckled. "Poor shockable Alec! Nobody told you? Oh, not strictly a bribe. I informed the Pastorate that if it would approve my going in your gang, and pressure an acceptance through secular channels, I'd donate my inheritance to the Church. I dropped a strong hint that otherwise I'd endow a synagogue. They huffed and puffed, but in the end—" She shrugged. "I'll spare you the list of my other blackmails, browbeatings, bluffs, and deceits."

"Lass, lass," I whispered, "how can it mean that much to you, squinting at him through a helmet visor?"

"It does."

I gathered courage to say, "He himself begged you to put him behind you."

She looked back toward the snowpeaks. "I don't think I can. 'In plenty and in want; in joy arid in sorrow; in sickness and in health; as long as we both shall live.'" Her hands, groping about, closed

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on a fallen dry branch. "I… suppose… I'm more of a monogamist… in my way… than he is." The noise was startlingly loud when the branch snapped. "But he does love me!"

A deer bounded into sight. Our gaze followed, enchanted. "He loves Earth also," she ended, "and he's been forever shut away. Shouldn't I bring him what touch — what remembrance I can?"

To hurt him the worse? Have you thought how selfish you maybe are? I barely halted my tongue, and hunched appalled. What good would lie in lashing out at her craziness? The fault was mine. I should have stood on my veto at the beginning. Now we were locked in. She was precision-fitted for a crucial role. Quite rightly, the directors would not allow me to substitute her backup for any reason less than a medical emergency. Nor would she ever forgive me.

Whereas — Very well, keep silence, let her get that adieu out of her system. Afterward—

"You find this a bonny land, do you not?" I asked rhetorically.

She nodded. "I'll never forget," she murmured.

"You need not hanker," I told her. "When we return to Earth—" My heart slammed. "We can come here. Whenever we're both free. No matter money. I draw a good wage, and nobody depends on me anymore."

"Oh, Alec!" For an instant I glimpsed tears. For another instant her arms were around me, her face buried in my shoulder. Then she leaped up. "C'mon, lazylegs!" she cried, and we were on our way again.

We made rendezvous beyond Mars, where Uriel had lately been flying a prearranged exact circle. Knowing position and quasispeed of the exiles, my instruments, automatons, and I brought Gabriel carefully closing in. When the two counterinertial

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fields, extending a few kilometers beyond either hull, began to mesh, I saw ghostlike waverings across the Milky Way. As we neared, our objective solidified. Having reached the same phase, an optic screen showed it not far off, as real among the stars as we were… or as unreal, in this mass-annulled condition we shared.

"Synchronism achieved," I mumbled into the intercom, and sank back in my pilot chair. The process had been slow, trying, dangerous because of the short range within which mutual detection was possible; inside our fields, we still had inertia with respect to each other if not to the outside cosmos, and a collision would wreck us both. I smelled the sweat rank on me, heard breath and pulse rattle, felt the separate stiffnesses and aches in a body no longer young.

"How are they?" rang Daphne's voice. "May we see?"

I decided I wasn't ready for the boneyard yet, and switched the telereceivers aft into the visual compensator circuit. A buzz of excited talk reached me vaguely, from my men. They were five altogether besides her, excellent fellows, who had treated her with awkward chivalry while we rehearsed and at last ran outward from Earth orbit. I wish them well. But none of them especially matters.

"Maintain stations," I ordered. "I'll try for contact." Right off, I saw my mistake. "I'll make contact," I amended. They must not be dead or insane over there! My fingers stumbled across the com panel. "Gabriel to Uriel, come in."

"Uriel to Gabriel." The screen flashed color. Matt King stared forth. His eyes and cheeks were sunken back among the bones of his face, and he spoke in a hoarse whisper; but he was clean, closely groomed, crisply uniformed. My worst fears drained out of me. "Welcome, welcome." He managed a shaky smile. "You're skippering the

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mission, are you, Alexander Sinclair, you old rascal? What a pleasant surprise."

"How is everybody?" I barked.

"Basically healthy, praise God. Weak but functional, and we got out of the habit of hunger six months ago. Morale is, um, not bad. We do hope you've brought steaks and champagne! When do you expect you can board?"

"We need rest, and I want a complete final checkout of every system… Let's say in twenty-four hours. I'm sorry it cannot be sooner. Uh, I wonder if Valdemar Asklund could come to your pickup?"

"Why, well, yes, if you wish."