Майкл Бишоп - The Final Frontier - Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

Some argued that an expedition was justified, because we hadn’t heard from the Ashtan system since my ancestors had arrived on Dhara. Two generation ships had left the old world, one bound for Dhara, the other for Ashta, and they had been one people before that. So our people had always wondered what befell our kin around the brightest star in our sky. Others in the Council argued that this was the very reason we should not venture out, because the silence of the Ashtans—and the probe—pointed to some unknown danger. And what if the current took us somewhere else entirely? What guarantee that we would wash up on a world as kind as our own? To go out into the void was to seek kinship with death before our time. And so on.

But at last the Council gave its reluctant blessing, and here I was, on a ship bound for the stars. I am a woman past my youth, although not yet of middle age, and I have strived always to take responsibility for my actions. So I watched the moon and the great curve of the planet that was my home fall away into the night, and I wept. But I did not turn around.

I float within my ship like a fishling in a swamp. I have swum through the inertial webbing (softer and more coarse at the moment, since we are at low acceleration) from chamber to chamber, checking that all is well. No more strange images on the radar. All systems working in concert. The bioskin that lines each chamber, produces the air I breathe, recycles waste, and spins the inertial web looks a healthy gold-green. We are now moving at half the speed of light, absurdly fast. From the porthole, the distant stars are like the eyes of the night. I sip a tangy, familiar tea from a tube (I have a little cold) and breathe slowly, remembering what my friend Raim told me.

Raim taught me to sail on the Western sea. His people designed the altmatter wings that spread within the navigation chamber (surely the only ship ever built whose sails are on the inside) . When I woke from cold sleep there was a message from him. He said: Mayha, farsister, when you are lonely, make a friend of loneliness.

So I make kinship with the dark. I whisper to it, I tell it stories. Perhaps the dark will have something to say to me in turn.

At first our plan was to make the inside of the ship a biosphere, rich with life, choosing the most appropriate and hardy species, so that I would feel more we than I. But after debating on it the Council decided that unless I wished it very strongly, this would not be right. To subject other lifeforms to human whim, to put them in danger without compelling reason was not our way. Besides, we ran the risk of upsetting the balance of life on other worlds in case our containment protocols failed. When I heard the reasoning, I too fell in with this. We compromised thus: the inner surface of the ship would be a bioskin, but that was all. To save energy and to enable the long years to pass without pathological loneliness, we would install a cryochamber. My apprehensions at the length and solitude of the journey were nothing to that old desire within me since childhood: to soar skyward in search of our kin, new and old.

But as I was leaving, saying my forever goodbyes amidst tears and jokes and good wishes, Parin came up to me, indignant. She was worked up about the Council decision to not install a biosphere within the ship. She thrust something at me: a transparent dome of glass within which a tiny landscape grew.

“Mayha, take this!” she said fiercely. “I can’t believe they’re going to condemn you to such a long journey alone!”

I tried to argue that the Council’s position was an attempt to be just to all lifeforms, and that I didn’t know how her sealed-in, miniature biosphere would adapt to zero gravity—but I’ve lost most arguments with Parin. And the little biosphere was beautiful. Besides, I did not want our parting to be acrimonious. Parin and I had grown up with the rest of the horde of children under the same kinhouse roof. Through much of my childhood I had been part of her schemes and adventures. I remembered the time we had rescued a nest of firebirds from some imagined danger, and how we’d wept copiously when they died. Most of Parin’s schemes had involved guilt and good intentions in about equal measure.

I took the little biosphere, as she’d known I would. She scowled at me, then started to cry. We hugged and wept. Then the others had their turn at goodbye. Goodbyes at the kinhouse always take a long time; there are so many of us. And this time, for this historic one-way journey, there were people from nearly all the hundred and twenty-three kinhouses of the Kinship of the Devtaru, waiting to see me off on the shuttle that would take me to the moon, where I was to board my craft. There were also representatives from the People of the Western Sea, my friend Raim, tall and grey-skinned, stared at by the children, waving at me with one webbed hand. The Ship University folk had adapted the spacecraft from one of the shuttles aboard the old generation ship and tested it. A knot of them was present, waiting at the edge of the crowd for their turn. Closest to me stood my mothers, each displaying grief and pride consistent with her nature: Kusum yelling about the dangers of the journey and how I should be careful about this or that, as though I was three again, Brihat simply holding my arm and staring into my face, with tears streaming down her broad cheeks, and Simara being sensible and controlled although her smile wavered. My birth-mother Vishwana was behind them, regal as always, our representative to the Council. She nodded and smiled at me. Although I had never known her well, I had always been in awe of her. My kin-sisters and brothers were there, alternately cheering and weeping, and Sarang, grown so tall since I’d last seen her, tossed me a braided ribbon over the heads of the crowd.

My father was not there. I saw him rarely, since he was a traveler and a trader, and when I did we always took pleasure in sharing stories with each other. He had sent me a message by radio wishing me luck, but he was halfway across the world, too far to come in time.

Then near the back with the guests I saw Vik. He had partnered with me for fourteen years, and we had gone our separate ways, in friendship, until my decision to go on this journey became public. He had become a bitter opponent in the Council discussions, and would no longer speak to me. He looked at me from the back of the crowd and looked away again.

I have partnered for long and short periods with both men and women, but Vik was the one with whom I spent the longest time. There were times I thought we would always be together, as some partnerships are, but we sought joy in different things that took us on diverging paths. He was a historian at Ship University, content to stay in one place and let his mind go into the deep past. Like my father, I needed to wander. It was as simple as that.

I wanted very badly to end things well with Vik. I took a pendant off the string around my neck and flung it over the heads of the crowd toward him. It hit him on the cheek—he caught it, looked irritable, put it in his pocket. I smiled at him. He rubbed his cheek, looked at me and away again.

The shuttle finally took off. I scarcely remember my time at Roshna, at the Lunar Kinship, where my spacecraft was waiting. They took care of me, asked me again the ritual question before one goes on a long journey: Is your heart in it, kinswoman? Do you really want to go on this quest? And I said yes, yes , and there were more goodbyes. At last I was in the craft, up and away. As I manipulated the sails in the navigation chamber, as I’d done so many times on my way to the moon—except that this time I would be going beyond it—as I felt the familiar tug of the Antarsa current, the old excitement rose in me again. It was too soon to feel lonely, or so I thought, because the love of my people was an almost tangible presence.