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

Of course, the Godspeed had no choice but to keep all of us under constant surveillance. We were her charges. Her cargo. Over the course of one thousand and eighty-seven standards, she witnessed six homicides, eleven suicides and two hundred and forty-nine deaths from accident, disease, and old age. She took each of these deaths personally, even as she rejoiced in the two hundred and sixty-eight babies conceived and born in the bedrooms of Dream Street. She presided over two thousand and eighteen marriages, four thousand and eighty-nine divorces. She witnessed twenty-nine million eight hundred and fifteen thousand two hundred and forty-seven acts of sexual congress, not including masturbation. Since she was responsible for our physical and emotional well-being, she monitored what we ate, who we slept with, what drugs we used, how much exercise we got. She tried to defuse quarrels and mediate disputes. She readily ceded her authority to the project manager and team leaders during a colonizing stop but in interstellar space, she was in command.

Since there was little privacy inside the Godspeed , it was difficult for Kamilah, Adel, Jarek, Meri, Jonman and Robman to discuss their situation. None of them had been able to lure Sister out for a suit-to-suit conference, so she was not in their confidence. Adel took a couple of showers with Meri and Jarek. They played crank jams at top volume and whispered in each other’s ears as they pretended to make out, but that was awkward at best. They had no way to send or encrypt messages that the Godspeed couldn’t easily hack. Jonman hit upon the strategy of writing steganographic poetry under blankets at night and then handing them around to be read—also under blankets.

Steganography, Adel learned from a whisperer in the library, was the ancient art of hiding messages within messages. When Robman gave him the key of picking out every fourth word of this poem, he read: We can’t go home she must have killed up would . This puzzled him until he remembered that the last pilgrim to leave the Godspeed before he arrived was Upwood Marcene. Then he was chilled. The problem with Jonman’s poems was that they had to be written mechanically—on a surface with an implement. None of the pilgrims had ever needed to master the skill of handwriting; their scrawls were all but indecipherable. And asking for the materials to write with aroused the Godspeed ’s suspicions.

Not only that, but Jonman’s poetry was awful.

Over several days, in bits and snatches, Adel was able to arrive at a rough understanding of their dilemma. Three months ago, while Adel was still writing his essay, Jarek had noticed that spacewalking on the surface of the Godspeed felt different than it had been when he first arrived. He thought his hardsuit might be defective until he tried several others. After that, he devised the test, and led the others out, one by one, to witness it. If the Godspeed had actually been traveling at a constant 100,000 kilometers per second, rocks dropped anywhere on the surface would take the same amount of time to fall. However, when she accelerated away from a newly established colony, rocks dropped on the backside took longer to fall than rocks on the frontside. And when she decelerated toward a new discovery…

Once they were sure that they were slowing down, the pilgrims had to decide what it meant and what to do next. They queried the library and, as far as they could tell, the Godspeed had announced every scan and course change she had ever made. In over a thousand years the only times she had ever decelerated was when she had targeted a new planet. There was no precedent for what was happening and her silence about it scared them. They waited, dissembled as best they could, and desperately hoped that someone back home would notice that something was wrong.

Weeks passed. A month. Two months.

Jonman maintained that there could be only two possible explanations: the Godspeed must either be falsifying its navigation reports or it had cut all contact with the Continuum. Either way, he argued, they must continue to wait. Upwood’s pilgrimage was almost over, he was scheduled to go home in another two weeks. If the Godspeed let him make the jump, then their troubles were over. Hours, or at the most a day, after he reported the anomaly, techs would swarm the transport stage. If she didn’t let him make the jump, then at least they would know where they stood. Nobody mentioned a third outcome, although Upwood clearly understood that there was a risk that the Godspeed might kill or twist him during transport and make it look like an accident. Flawed jumps were extremely rare but not impossible. Upwood had lost almost five kilos by the day he climbed onto the transport stage. His chest was a washboard of ribs and his eyes were sunken. The other pilgrims watched in hope and horror as he faded into wisps of probability and was gone.

Five days passed. On the sixth day, the Godspeed announced that they would be joined by a new pilgrim. A week after Upwood’s departure, Adel Ranger Santos was assembled on the transport stage.

Sister was horribly miscast as Miranda. Adel thought she would have made a better Caliban, especially since he was Ferdinand. In the script, Miranda was supposed to fall madly in love with Ferdinand, but Sister was unable to summon even a smile for Adel, much less passion. He might as well have been an old sock as the love of her life.

Adel knew why the Godspeed had chosen The Tempest; she wanted to play Prospero. She’d cast Meri as Ariel and Kamilah as Caliban. Jonman and Robman were Trinculo and Stephano and along with Jarek also took the parts of the various other lesser lords and sons and brothers and sailors. Adel found it a very complicated play, even for Shakespeare.

“I am a fool,” said Sister, “to weep when I am glad.” She delivered the line like someone hitting the same note on a keyboard again and again.

Adel had a whisperer feeding him lines. “Why do you weep?”

“Stop there.” The Godspeed waved her magic staff. She was directing the scene in costume. Prospero wore a full-length opalescent cape with fur trim, a black undertunic and a small silver crown. “Nobody says ‘weep’ anymore.” She had been rewriting the play ever since they started rehearsing. “Adel, have you ever said ‘weep’ in your life?”

“No,” said Adel miserably. He was hungry and was certain he would starve to death before they got through this scene.

“Then neither should Ferdinand. Let’s change ‘weep’ to ‘cry.’ Say the line, Ferdinand.”

Adel said, “Why do you cry?”

“No.” She shut her eyes. “No, that’s not right either.” Her brow wrinkled. “Try ‘why are you crying?’ “

“Why are you crying?” said Adel.

“Much better.” She clapped hands once. “I know the script is a classic but after three thousand years some of these lines are dusty. Miranda, give me ‘I am a fool’ with the change.”

“I am a fool,” she said, “to cry when I am glad.”

“Why are you crying?”

“Because I’m not worthy. I dare not even offer myself to you—much less ask you to love me.” Here the Godspeed had directed her to put her arms on Adel’s shoulders. “But the more I try to hide my feelings, the more they show.”

As they gazed at each other, Adel thought he did see a glimmer of something in Sister’s eyes. Probably nausea.

“So no more pretending.” Sister knelt awkwardly and gazed up at him. “If you want to marry me, I’ll be your wife.” She lowered her head, but forgot again to cheat toward the house, so that she delivered the next line to the floor. “If not, I’ll live as a virgin the rest of my life, in love with nobody but you.”