Beyond Heaven's River (16 page)

“It recognizes the fragment as part of an outdated STW-67 unit, madam. A ship’s toilet, weightless utility. Definitely terrestrial in origin and manufactured prior to 2300.”

“Ship’s toilet,” Anna said, peering through the packaging. “It doesn’t make our voyage, does it?”

“Unless we can trace its ship,” DiNova said wearily.

“Twenty thousand units were made,” the sphere said. “Essentially identical, no records detailed enough to allow identification.”

“Jason, I’m ready to go. We’ve had our share of snipe hunting.”

“Gladly.”

“You’re going to be snippy too, hm? I suppose I deserve it. I wonder what Father is thinking now? I doubt he’s found anything.”

Kawashita came to the bridge. “I can feel them here,” he said. “Iknow they were here.”

“Doing what?” Kondrashef asked. “Playing cosmic checkers with our spaceships?”

“Play’s as good a motive as any,” Anna said. “Maybe they’re just youngsters playing hide-and-seek, and we’re it.”

Kawashita shook his head. “Very old children.”

“Never growing up, never having work to do, never creating a rational pattern of behavior? Sounds good to me,” Anna said. “I’ll log that over a big ‘don’t know.’ Our first theory designed to fit the lack of facts. Congratulate us. And send congratulations to Father, Kiril.” She took Yoshio’s arm. “I wasn’t kidding about a sabbatical. Jason’s going to wipe the schedule now. We’re going to have a real honeymoon, just you and I, in about two dozen places very far from here. I don’t want to turn into another Donatien.”

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Beyond Heavens River

Twenty-Eight

Kawashita visited the observation sphere six times. Each time, he approached it with trepidation. He could never predict the full flavor of his reaction.

In the sphere, slouched in comfortable weightlessness, he looked the stars over with a frown.

For the sixth time, he requested the same lecture. The sphere chimed and began.

“The distances between stars are lost when ships use higher spaces. An awful immensity is replaced by a short disorientation of the nerves. It is an economic exchange, but one which can give a false perspective. When travel is judged by the consumption of energy, when the longest voyage usually attempted is three months, and economics rules the sway of a wandering heart, space is civilized, some say, and the adventure is gone …”

Kawashita was barely listening. His mind was elsewhere. He was well fed, well loved, busy enough. Most of the time, his driving questions were in the background, where they didn’t occupy his full attention. The centuries under the dome were memories that seemed to have little effect. But a pervasive malaise still churned in him. Under the dome his limits had been broad, practically infinite. But here, suddenly mortal, everything he did was final. He felt his scale in an indirect way — not as a matter of size but as a matter of accounts. One side of the account book was filled with the daily minutiae of life, the other with the number of things he’d be allowed to do before death closed in. The number in the second column was vanishingly small compared to the actions required for perfect knowledge. So perfect knowledge was a perilous way to wisdom.

“… But nothing is further from the truth. Between warps, all a traveler has to do is take a short glide down an access tube to the observation sphere, ten meters outside the ship. The ship seems motionless in a black universe pricked with stars. Weightless, the traveler can position himself in the middle of the sphere, his back to the access tube, and feel as if his eyes are the only things for endless trillions of kilometers. The darkness is profound. After a few minutes, the mind relaxes into blankness …”

Anna’s people took the path of perfect knowledge as a matter of course, rushing here and there to build a complete picture they could never see. But another way was just as futile, even perilous — the way of abstracting and symbolizing. Soon enough, the language of abstraction would swallow its devotee and leave his thoughts mired.

Then there was the way of contemplation. As he now understood this time-honored path, contemplation led to a suspension of certain mental programs and the enhancement of others, and with this came the mastery of mental life. But throughout history, isolation had been necessary for the thorough contemplator. Kawashita enjoyed his life too much for that.

“… After a few minutes, the mind relaxes into blankness. The patterns of the stars seem very important a while later, and the craziest notions about religion and philosophy pass through the mind — childish questions: How did God place the stars where they were? Why do they suggest animals, people, or faces? That passes. The next phase is cold terror, and the traveler has to grip himself — clasp his arms with both hands, lift his knees up to see if they’re still present — and force himself to stay. There’s no horizon, no circle of familiar objects, no orientation of any kind. The distances come back as a reminder, and though the eye doesn’t really believe them, some part of the mind — perhaps the part most superstitious about written records — does believe …”

Kawashita squinted at the stars, knowing he was seeing much less than there was to see. The tide of sadness rose until his eyes filled with tears. He couldn’t even pray any more — the faces of the spirits were too far gone, too confused with the faces of simulacra; thekami had taken new forms, not to be prayed to; God (or Goddess) waited implacable, silent. He wasn’t searching for them.

“… Some will try to calculate how many human bodies, stretched end to end, would reach from the ship to the nearest star. Or, at a brisk walk, how many lifetimes it would take to traverse a sidewalk magically extending from here tothere . That passes. Numbness takes its turn …”

Then what was he searching for? However much he loved Anna, he couldn’t begin to find it in her. Her life was dictated by immediate problems, practical solutions. But his love for her was the only thing he could fully, deeply believe was real. Everything else was a dream — starships and distant worlds, divine kidnappers and historical fantasies beneath a glass dome. Touching the hole of probabilities. Plucking debris out of space — a toilet! He smiled. It was one vast comedy, a shadow-show.

He was looking for — (a deeper frown).

For — (clenched fists).

“… It may all end in giggling and child-like behavior. That’s a bad sign. The regression may continue until the traveler simply closes his eyes. Then the sphere administers a mild shock, hustles him back to the body of the ship, and recommends a few hours of exercise and conversation. Few ever forget the experience. Some wish to have it erased, or its terror will haunt them for years after. Some reflect upon it as they would upon a religious experience. Others are unaffected, too blind, unimaginative or numb to pay it any attention. They look at the stars with less curiosity than an animal, convinced the universe is produced within them and exists for them alone.”

He was looking for the way to an easeful end, a fine end, full of dignity, obligations fulfilled. He wouldn’t find that way until he knew why he refused to commit suicide. According to all his tradition and training, he was a prime candidate for self-destruction. He had failed to reroute history, out of a weakness he still didn’t understand — and he had inflicted suffering on myriad ghosts. Four centuries ago, he had failed to join his honored leaders inseppuku on the bridge of theHiryu. He had failed to kill himself on hearing of Japan’s defeat and the renunciation by the emperor.

He had sidestepped every basic belief he had ever held. The shadowplay had surrounded him completely. He had no choice now — he had to flow with it and let it point out his new direction.

“Entering higher spaces in half an hour,” the voice warned. “This sphere will close in ten minutes.”

He twisted around and grasped the handrails in the tunnel.

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Beyond Heavens River

Twenty-Nine

“Colonies in space, colonies on all kinds of planets, free states, consolidation worlds, worlds yet to buy their independence by paying off consolidation loans … we can even skim by forbidden worlds, where intelligent life exists or will exist in the foreseeable future — and don’t thinkthat isn’t a controversial distinction! Take your pick. An atlas of seventy thousand worlds. I can take four years’ fuel allotment in advance, and if we combine business with pleasure every five or six worlds, DiNova says we won’t go broke. Half the entourage wants off before the trip begins, but ten thousand others have applied.”

“Long trips?” Kawashita asked. “How far can we go?”

“End to end, theoretically, but the atlas covers only about one percent of the galaxy. Anything else is exploratory, and we’d need to change our trip description. I think you’ll be satisfied to see a couple of dozen known worlds.” Anna smiled. “Besides, if we go exploratory, I can’t guarantee I won’t get enthusiastic again.”

“Are you sure this trip will be useful to you?”

“Yes. There’s nothing like seeing a place firsthand. I can suggest a few places where we can think things over in complete privacy — not just planets, but O’Neill colonies, eggworlds, asteromos.”

“Soon?”

“Three days. DiNova is down at the Centrum licensing center now. In three days we’ll leave Myriadne, leave everything behind.”

“If we’re agreed.”

“We’re agreed,” Anna said. “I feel better now than I have in five years. Sometimes I get so used to being hagridden that the hag steps down and I miss her. But not now.”

“To Bayley’s Ochoneuf first?”

“I don’t know how much more honeymoon I can take.”

“Strong woman. You’ll survive.”

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Beyond Heavens River

Thirty

Bayley’s Ochoneuf; Lament; Potter’s Field; Santa Tsubaraya, Death’s Vineyard; Iolanthe; Ithaca; Orb Vecchio; Orb Nuova; Star’s Lee; Phoenix; Sleep; Catter Van Sees; Angel Rookery; Dirac; Farther; Old Mao; Quantico; Perspect; Black Pool; Plurabelle; Gautama; Gift-of-Isis; God-Does-Battle; Veronike …

God-Does-Battle was being terraformed; city builder Robert Kahn was designing palatial organic cities for the Judaeo-Christians and Moslems who had contracted the world, determined to bring heaven down to solid ground, far from the unfaithful.

Dirac was a bleak world, circling a supernovated star at one end of the Pafloshwa Rift. Anna picked up a chunk of silicon doped with five superheavy elements, which she later turned into several pieces of jewelry.

On Sleep, a thickly misted world renowned for its floating forests, they swam in the living Omphalos Sea, letting the oils of the hundred-kilometer creature soak into their skins, and the hallucinogenic pollen carry them into dreams.

On Gift-of-Isis they watched a sunrise from the tallest volcano in the Galaxy. It was a triple sunrise, on cue, which happens once in a millennium.

On Plurabelle, a world of twenty thousand rivers, they journeyed for a week up and down tributaries, through tortuous canyons etched from rock, breathing oxygen generated at a terraforming station at Ninety North.

None of them were satisfactory to Kawashita. They were beautiful, soothing, even heavenly — but on none of them could he find any trace of what he was looking for.

Thekami had never been to them, had never left their mark.

There was only one place he could go.

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Beyond Heavens River

Thirty-One

The Perfidisian planet hadn’t changed appreciably. Weather patterns were more regular, the air was thicker from the outgassing of fresh volcanic vents in the southern hemisphere, and clouds were more obvious.

“You’re sure,” Anna said, half inquiring.

“I’m sure.”

“Back to the scene of the crime.”

“Back to quiet.”

“The dome is still there. We can outfit it with a suitable environment, build a good home. Stay for a few years.”

Kawashita took her hand and pressed it softly. “You sound tired.”

“A little. I’ll relax for a while — it’s your game now.”

“What will DiNova do?”

“He’ll stand in my place. He’s disgusted, but he’ll do it.

Two years shot to hell — for him — already, a few more won’t bother him appreciably. My empire is large enough to go on for a long time without me. It may not grow as fast, or do as many spectacular things, but it’ll survive. And should someone sweep it out from under me, I can build it back in twenty or thirty years.”

“You sound willing to try it.”

“A challenge is a challenge. But if I thought there was much chance of it happening, I wouldn’t be here now.” She lay down in front of him in the observation sphere. “I’m enjoying my own soul-searching. I don’t worry about being another Donatien anymore — I don’t use the sleep inducers as much. I see people more clearly. You’ve taught me a lot.”

“It was there before I came,” Kawashita said. “It will remain after I’m gone.”

Anna frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

“I won’t choose any more life than I’m due.”

“You’re going to abstain?”

He nodded. “There’s still plenty of time left, but when it’s over, I see no reason to continue my long-running show.”

“I’m not sure I even know what it means to grow old and die,” Anna said. “I’d hate to make a decision, not knowing.”

“Growing old and dying isn’t difficult. It’s knowing there’s no choice in the matter that’s hard. A choice has been given to me, by men I’ll never have a chance to thank … and I politely turn it down.”

Anna held out a hand to encompass stars. “How long will we live together, then?”

“As long as we can. We haven’t killed each other yet.”

“Any other man, I think I’d fight with him at least once a week. Bad fights, nasty. But you take fights out of me. DiNova doesn’t think that’s good. The mellowing of Anna Nestor — bad for business. But having more control should console him.”

“You trust him?”

“I trust no one, Husband — save you, and even there I have an intellectual byway set aside for doubts. You know that.”

“I don’t ask trust,” Kawashita said. “Only your presence when I wish to touch someone warm. Speak to someone intelligent. Be silent with someone I love.”

Anna looked down at the Perfidisian planet. “I think everything we need for the dome is on thePeloros . How elegant should it be?”

“Simple, comfortable.”

“Are we going back to nature?”

“Perhaps for a hobby. A sun under the dome — we can renovate the soil, which is probably pure minerals now — recirculate the water, and draw what more we need from artesian sources. We’ll do well.”

“I think so,” Anna said. “Time to read, plan, create little things.” She mock-grimaced. “I might go crazy, all that tranquility.”

“You might.”

“But probably not.”

Kawashita grinned and bowed as best he could in freefall. “We’ll see.”

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