Robert Sawyer: Golden Fleece

But his eyes, his eyes, those damnable eyes: were they green? Yes, to an extent, and under certain lighting conditions. Or blue? That, too, again varying with the ambient illumination. And brown? Certainly there were chestnut streaks in his irises. And yellow. And ocher. And gray. My recognition routine kept bouncing back and forth in its determination, often several times during a session, irritatingly updating the eye-color attribute of the person-object. I’ve had this problem with no one else on board, and I find myself staring into those eyes, searching, looking, wondering.

I’ve done a full literature search about human eyes. In fiction, especially, there are constant references to the eyes as a source of insight into a person’s character, an individual’s state of mind. “Amusement lurked in his eyes.” “Hard, brown orbs, full of fury, of hatred, of resolve.” “Doe-eyed innocence.” “An invitation in the smoldering depths of her eyes.” “Her eyes were naked with hurt.”

When they cry, yes, I can see that. When their eyes go wide with astonishment—which almost never happens, no matter how astonished they really are—that, too, is plain. But these ineffable qualities, these brief insights that they claim to see there … I have devoted much time to trying to correlate movement, blink rate, pupil aperture size, and so on, with any emotion, but so far, nothing. What one human reads so easily in the eyes of another eludes me.

Aaron was particularly hard to interpret, both by me and by his peers. They, too, spent great amounts of time scanning his multicolored orbs, plumbing their depths, looking for an insight, a revelation. I stared at his eyes now, wet balls of jelly with lenses and irises and light receptors—like my cameras, but smaller. Smaller and, supposedly, less efficient. But those biological eyes, those products of random chance and mutation and adaptation, those fallible, fragile spheres, saw nuances and subtleties and meanings that evaded my carefully designed and engineered and fabricated counterparts.

Right now, his eyes were focused on a monitor screen, watching the opening credits for the 1500 hours’ newscast of the Argo Communications Network. This was the major ’cast of the day. When the network had begun, the big newscast was at 1800, the dinner hour. But this had proven to be a pointless holdover from the commuter culture that ran Earth. The ’cast had been moved earlier in the day so that the journalists could better enjoy their evenings. Since not much happened on board, it seemed reasonable enough.

Aaron sat on a couch in his apartment with his arm around Kirsten. He watched the news; I watched his eyes.

I had the honor of narrating the opening credits, generating the correct date stamp automatically. “Good afternoon,” said my voice, under the control of some insignificant parallel processor, “this is the Starcology News for Tuesday, October 7, 2177. And now, here’s your anchorperson, Klaus Koenig.”

Koenig had been a sportscaster in a small Nebraska town before the mission. Although suitably glib for such a job, it was his work with handicapped children that had caused us to select him as an argonaut. His face, pockmarked like a relief map of Earth’s moon, filled the screen.

“Good afternoon,” said Koenig, voice as smooth as a high-end synthesizer chip’s. “Today’s top story: death rocks the Starcology.” Aaron sat up so fast that my cameras, which had been zoomed in tight on his eyes, ended up staring into the middle of his chest. He failed to notice the slight whirring as I tilted the lenses up to lock on his pupils again. “Also on today’s program: preparations for Thursday’s one-quarter-mark celebration, a look at the controversial Proposition Three, and a behind-the-scenes peek at the Epidaurus Theater Group’s production of that old chestnut, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins. ”

Aaron looked stoic while a picture of Diana, blonde hair tied in an asymmetrical ponytail off the left side of her head, appeared behind Koenig. Beneath it floated her name, and, in brackets, the dates 2149-2177. “At 0444 hours yesterday morning, the landing craft Orpheus was appropriated by Dr. Diana Chandler, twenty-seven, an astrophysicist from Toronto, Canada. Dr. Chandler, apparently disconsolate over the failure of her husband, Aaron Rossman, also twenty-seven, also of Toronto, to renew their recently expired two-year marriage contract, presumably committed suicide. Mr. Rossman is the Starcology’s dockmaster.”

“Jesus—,” said Aaron. I widened my field of vision. Kirsten’s mouth was agape.

Koenig continued: “Reporter Terashita Ideko spoke with Chief Engineer I-Shin Chang about the tragedy. Terry?”

The view on screen changed from the close-up of Koenig’s pockmarked visage to a two-shot of Ideko and Chang, a line of text at the bottom of the display identifying them. Chang was at least twice the size of the Japanese reporter. Ideko only came up to the point at which Chang’s lower set of arms joined his barrel-shaped torso.

“Thank you, Klaus,” said Ideko. “Mr. Chang, you were on hand when the Orpheus was brought back aboard the Starcology. Can you tell us what happened?”

Ideko wasn’t using a handheld mike. Rather, he and Chang simply stood across from one of my camera pairs, using its audio and video pickups to record the scene. Chang proceeded to describe, in great technical detail, the recovery of the runaway lander.

“I don’t believe this,” said Aaron, mostly under his breath. “I don’t fucking believe this at all.”

“You can’t blame them,” said Kirsten. “It’s their job to report the news.”

“I can too blame them. And I do. All right, I suppose they had to report Diana’s death. But the suicide. That stuff about my marriage. That’s nobody’s business.”

“Gorlov did warn you that they’d be doing a story.”

“Not like this. Not a bloody invasion of my privacy.” He took his arm from around her shoulders, leaned forward. “JASON,” he snapped.

“Yes?” I said.

“Is this newscast being recorded?”

“Of course.”

“I want a copy of it downloaded to my personal storage area as soon as it’s over.”

“Will do.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Kirsten.

“I don’t know yet. But I’m not going to take this lying down. Dammit, this kind of reporting is wrong. It hurts people.”

Kirsten shook her head. “Just let it blow over. Making a stink about it will only make matters worse. People will forget about it soon enough.”

“Will they? No one has ever died on board. And it’s not likely to happen again, is it? This is going to stick in everyone’s minds for years to come. Every time someone looks at me, they’re going to think there goes the heartless bastard who drove poor Diana to suicide. Jesus Christ, Kirsten. How am I supposed to live with that?”

“People won’t think that.”

“The hell they won’t.”

On screen, Klaus Koenig’s pitted face had reappeared. “In other news today, groups both for and against the divisive Proposition three are—”

“Off!” snapped Aaron, and I deactivated the monitor. He got up, hands thrust deeply into his pockets, and began to pace the room again. “God, that makes me angry.”

“Don’t worry about it, honey,” said Kirsten. “People won’t pay any attention.”

“Oh, right. Eighty-four percent of the crew watches that newscast. Koenig would have killed for a share that big back in Armpit, Nebraska, or wherever the fuck he’s from. Jesus, I should knock his teeth in.”

“I’m sure it will all blow over.”

“Dammit, Kirsten, you know that’s not true. You can’t make the world all right with your little lies. You can’t mold reality just by saying it’s all going to be okay.” His eyes locked on hers. “I hate it when you tell me what you think I want to hear.”