Edmund Cooper: A Far Sunset

He was still smiling, but the smile was now mechanical. He didn’t know. ‘There is the classic answer,’ he said evenly. ‘Because they are there.’

‘The moon is there. The planets are there. Isn’t that enough?’

‘People have been to the moon and the planets before me,’ he explained patiently. ‘That’s why it’s not enough.’

‘I think I could give you happiness,’ she whispered.

He took her hand. ‘I know you could.’

‘There could be children. Don’t you want children?’

‘I would like your children.’

‘Then have them. They’re yours for the begetting.’

‘My love … Oh, my love … The trouble is I want something more.’

She could not understand. She looked at him with bewilderment. ‘What is it? What is this thing that means more than love and happiness and children?’

He gazed at her, disconcerted. How to find the truth! How to find the words! And how to believe that the words could have anything at all to do with the truth.

‘I want,’ he said with difficulty, and groping for the right images, ‘I want to be one of those who take the first steps. I want to leave a footprint on the farther shore.’ He laughed. ‘I even want to steal for myself a tiny fragment of history. Now tell me I’m paranoid. I’ll believe you.’

She stood up. ‘I’ve had my answer, and I’ll tell you nothing,’ she said, ‘except that they’re playing the Emperor Waltz … Do you want it?’

He wanted it.

They danced together in a lost bubble of time…

He wanted to cry. But how could you cry with frozen lips and frozen eyes and a frozen heart? How could you feel when you were locked in the bleak grip of eternity?

He woke up screaming.

The donjons of Baya Nor had not changed. The blackhaired, wide-eyed noia by his side had not changed. Only he had changed because the conditioning—thank God—had failed. Because men were men and not machines. Because the grief inside him was so deep and so desolate that he, who had always considered himself to be nothing more than a blue-eyed computer, at last knew what it was to be a terrified animal.

He sat up in bed, eyes staring, the hairs at the nape of his neck twitching and stiffening.

‘My name is Paul Marlowe,’ he babbled in words that his noia could not understand. ‘I am a native of Earth and I have aged four years in the last twenty years. I have sinned against the laws of life.’ He held his head in his hands, rocking to and fro. ‘Oh God! Punish me with pain that I can bear. Chastise me! Strip the flesh from my back. Only give me back the world I threw away! ’

Then he collapsed, sobbing.

The noia cradled his head upon her breast.

‘My lord has many visions,’ she murmured. ‘Visions are hard to bear, but they are the gift of Oruri and so must be borne. Know then, Poul Mer Lo, my lord, that your servant would ease the burden if Oruri so decrees.’

Poul Mer Lo raised his head and looked at her. He pulled himself together. ‘Do not sorrow,’ he said in passable Bayani. ‘I have been troubled by dreams. I grieve only for the death of a child long ago.’

Mylai Tui was puzzled. ‘My lord, first there was the death of a great bird, and now there is the death of a child. Surely there is too much of dying in your heart?’

Poul Mer Lo smiled. ‘You are right. There is too much dying. It seems that I must learn to live again.’

In the year a.d. 2012 (local time) three star ships left Sol Three, known more familiarly to its inhabitants as Earth. The first star ship to venture out into the deep black yonder was— inevitably—the American vessel Mayflower. It was (and in this even the Russian and European inspection engineers agreed) the most ambitious, the largest and possibly the most beautiful machine ever devised by man. It had taken ten years, thirty billion new dollars and nine hundred and fourteen lives to assemble in the two-hour orbit. It was built to contain forty- five pairs of human beings and its destination was the Sirius system.

The second star ship to leave Sol Three was the Russian vessel Red October. Though not as large as the American ship it was (so the American and European inspection engineers concluded) Somewhat faster. It, too, was expensive and beautiful. It, too, had cost many lives. The Russians, despite everyone’s scepticism, had managed to assemble it in the three-hour orbit in a mere six years. It was built to contain twenty-seven men and twenty-seven women (unpaired), and its destination was Procyon.

The third ship to leave was the Gloria Mundi. It had been built on a relative shoe-string in the ninety-minute orbit by the new United States of Europe. It was called the Gloria Mundi because the Germans would not agree to an English name, the French would not agree to a German name, the English would not agree to a French name and the Italians could not even agree among themselves on a name. So a name drawn from the words of a dead language was the obvious answer. And because the ship was the smallest of the vessels, its chief architect—an Englishman with a very English sense of humour—had suggested calling it The Glory of the World. It was designed to carry six pairs of human beings: one German pair, one French pair, one British pair, one Italian pair, one Swedish pair and one Dutch pair. It was smaller than the Russian ship and slower than the American ship. Inevitably its target star was farther away than either the American or the Russian target stars. It was bound for Altair—a matter of sixteen light-years or nearly twenty-one years, ship’s time.

In the twenty-first century the British sense of propriety was still a force to be reckoned with. That is why, on the morning of April 3rd, a.d. 2012. Paul Marlowe, wearing a red rose in the button-hole of his morning coat, appeared punctually at Caxton Hall registry office at 10.30 a.m. At 10.35 a.m. Ann Victoria Watkins appeared. By 10.50 a.m. the couple had been pronounced man and wife. It was estimated that three hundred million people witnessed the ceremony over Eurovision.

Paul and Ann did not like each other particularly: nor did they dislike each other. But as the British contribution to the crew of the Gloria Mundi they accepted their pairing with good grace. Paul, a trained space-hand, possessed the skills of psychiatry and teaching and was also fluent in French and German. Ann’s dowry was medicine and surgery, a working knowledge of Swedish and Italian and enough Dutch to make conversation under pressure.

After the ceremony they took a taxi to Victoria, a hover train to Gatwick, a strato-rocket to Woomera and then a ferry capsule to the ninety-minute orbit. They spent their honeymoon working through the pre-jump routines aboard the Gloria Mundi.

Despite many differences in size, design and accommodation, the American, Russian and European space ships all had one thing in common. They all contained sleeper units for the crews. None of the ships could travel faster than light—though the Russians claimed that given theoretically ideal conditions Red October could just pass the barrier—so their occupants were doomed to many years of star travel; during which it was a statistical certainty that some would die, go mad, mutiny or find even more ingenious ways of becoming useless. Unless they had sleeper units.

Suspended animation had been developed years before in the closing decades of the twentieth century. At first it had been used in a very limited way for heart transplants. Then someone had discovered that the simple process of freezing a neurotic for a period of days or weeks, depending on the degree of neurosis, could produce an almost complete cure! Then someone else hit upon the idea of using suspended animation for the insane, the incurable or the dying. Such people, it was argued, could be frozen for decades if necessary until an answer was found for their particular malady.