Joan Vinge - Heaven Chronicles

“What do you mean, you won't leave this ship?” Wadie pushed back from the screen, caught her chair arm. “It's just a ship, Betha; it doesn't control your life. You aren't chained to it.”

She shook her head. “You still don't understand, do you? After all this time. This is my ship. I was part of its design, and part of its construction. Its crew were the people I loved; this journey meant everything to us, the future of our world.… Everything about it binds me to my people, my past, my home. I can't leave it. I don't want to lose everything, I don't want to live forever in the place where it happened. I don't want to live like that.”

“Now who's indulging in the ultimate selfishness?”

Her mouth tightened. “It's not going to hurt anyone but me”—realizing, as she saw his face, that that wasn't true.

“Well, what about … what about Clewell?”

“What about me?” Clewell opened his eyes, irritably, at the communications board. “I have no intention of leaving the Ranger for that overgrown cinder down there.”

“Dammit, you're just makin' her more stubborn. Why the hell don't you tell her she's wrong?”

“She's my wife, not my child. She has a right to make her own decision. And so do I.… I've lived too long already if I've lived to see this day. My body already knows the truth.” He closed his eyes again. “Now let me do my job; monitoring the Demarchy is hard enough as it is at this distance.”

“May it do us some good.” Wadie pulled himself back to the panel, massaged the cramped muscles of his neck. “All right, then.… I'll stay too. I guess I've earned the right. I lost everythin' I ever valued because of this ship.”

Betha froze her expression, willed emotion from her voice. “You won't blackmail me into changing my mind, Wadie.”

He bowed solemnly. “Not my intent. Allow me the privilege of making my own decision, since you expect me to accept yours. I'd rather die a martyr than a traitor.”

She sighed, her nails digging into the palms of her hands. Thank you . “All right, then. So only two will be going to Lansing.”

Bird Alyn raised her head from Shadow Jack's shoulder, drifting, cradled in his arms. “No. Betha, we're not goin'.”

“Now, listen—”

“No,” Shadow Jack said. “We did what we wanted to do for Lansing. But there's nothin' anybody can do for us. We'd rather be—together—now, for a little while, than be apart forever.” He glanced at the doorway.

“I see.” She nodded once, barely hearing her own voice. “Come here, then, both of you.” They drifted forward obediently. Betha worked a golden band from one finger of each of her hands. Reaching out, she took their own left hands, one at a time, slipped a ring over a thin straight finger, a thin crooked one. She joined the hands to keep the rings from floating free. “By my authority as captain of this ship, I pronounce you husband and wife.… May your love be as deep as the darkness, as constant as the sun.”

Their hands clung to her own for a moment; she felt Shadow Jack's trembling. She turned away, heard them leave the room. Clewell's eyes touched her face in a caress. “Pappy, get off the radio a minute. We've got to leave those people some hydrogen.…”

There were seventeen hundred seconds until encounter.

Three hundred kilometers away now, Lansing was a greenish, mottled crescent on the darkness. Far enough away, Betha hoped, to survive whatever fires must burn across Heaven. On all sides emptiness stretched, filling the light-years to the distant stars. And the Ranger had been built to bridge those distances, at speeds close to that of light itself. But it would never cross them again … it lay stranded like a beached cetoid on the desolate shores of Heaven, trapped by primitive ships with primitive weapons in the ultimate irony of defeat.

“Five hundred seconds,” Wadie said. Rusty curled serenely in the crook of his arm and washed a protruding foot.

Betha lit her pipe, inhaled the familiar, soothing odor of the smoke. “That's when the first ship will pass; they're strung out at about one-hundred-second intervals. But it doesn't matter … we can't comply with MacWong's demand now.”

Clewell chuckled suddenly, oblivious.

“God, Pappy, what in hell are you laughing at?”

He shook his head apologetically. “At the Demarchy reacting to Nakamore's speech—their righteous indignation at being named for what they are.”

“Well, put it on,” Wadie said, strangely eager. “I want to hear that.”

A burst of static mixed with garbled speech filled the room. Clewell lowered the volume. “Sorry; even with enhancement, it takes some practice to make sense out of that.”

Four hundred seconds.

He pulled off his ear jack. “My God, Betha, I think they're actually trying to take a vote … a vote on whether to let us go.”

Betha pushed up out of her chair, caught herself on the panel edge with a gasp. “Pappy! Can't you clean up the transmission?”

“I'll try. MacWong's ships are close enough now; we may be in the tight beam from the Demarchy.” He put an image on the screen; Betha saw print, illegible through snow, recognized the format of a Demarchy general election. A band of golden yellow brightened at the bottom.

“It takes about five hundred seconds for a full tally.”

“Five hundred! Christ.” She felt Wadie move close, his sleeve brush her arm. “Pappy, raise MacWong's ship.”

“I've tried. They're not talking.”

She could almost see the numbers, almost see them change. And beside the static-clouded picture, the Ranger 's displays projected the track of three closing ships on a star-filled sky. Three ships that stood out like flares now, their torches extended ahead of their flight, decelerating at last. She searched their brilliance for a smaller track, a seed of blossoming destruction. Give us time, MacWong.… Clewell left his seat, moved slowly along the panel to her side; she took his arm. The digits on the chronometer narrowed like sand in an hourglass, eroding their lives. One hundred seconds until the first ship passed … sixty … fifty … She realized she had stopped breathing. “They're holding off! Forty seconds; that first ship can't fire on us now.”

MacWong's face appeared below the tally. “Captain Torgussen.” They saw the stress on his face and on the faces that ringed him in. “We're just now receivin' the results of a vote from the Demarchy. The majority accepts your aid to Lansing as evidence of your goodwill, Captain, and favors a modification of our mission.… I hope you're listenin', Nakamore; you've just seen a demonstration of the real flexibility and strength of the people, the wisdom and fairness of the Demarchic system.” He looked away, into the media cameras, and back.

“Captain Torgussen, the Demarchy will allow you to depart—if you will assure us that the Demarchy will be the center for distributin' your aid when you return to Heaven.” His eyes asked her to promise anything.

On the center of the screen Betha saw the second Demarchy ship fall past them.

Nakamore's image came onto the screen. “You know I can't accept that, MacWong.” His voice was even, no longer reaching out to goad an entire people. “I don't demand that control go to the Harmony. But it's not goin' to you.”

Betha froze, realizing that Nakamore might still let them go. A promise at knifepoint was no promise at all … and no solution. There had to be a way to reach both sides, or the next Morningside ship to come to Heaven would fall into the same deadly trap of greed. She heard someone come up behind her, turned to see Shadow Jack and Bird Alyn, peacefully hand in hand.

“What happened?” Bird Alyn brushed her soft floating hair back from her eyes and blinked at the screen.