Dusk (4 page)

—
Me too, Dada. Me too.

• • • • •

A gasp of stale air escaped as Cyrus Chamberlain
exhaled the first breath of the day cycle. He rolled sluggishly out
of the sleep chamber and onto the warm, slightly curved floor of
the claustrophobic sleeping quarters. At least the floor isn’t
cold, Cyrus thought to himself as he slowly inched one bare foot in
front of the other. The earthy green walls of the room were as
calming as the designer had intended, but the last two mornings had
been met with frustration. The first day had been easier because
emerging from the Hyposoma, Cyrus could barely remember his own
name, let alone move. The second day, he had awaken in this sleep
chamber that looked like a medical monitoring station for Intensive
Care patients.

But that is what they were at the moment.
They would be packed inside these tubes that looked like detached
fighter cockpits for another four day cycles. The sleep chambers
ensured the microscopic robots that helped to stimulate their
bodies back to health were working properly. The sleep units also
served to alert the automated Shipmate android if there was a
complication. Most of them still lay closed, their occupants opting
for rest over attempts at roaming the ship, but Cyrus could not
stay in his sleep chamber any longer this day cycle.

Cyrus was not proud of his own progress in
becoming more alert and mobile, but he could tell, at least, he was
making progress. It was less difficult to walk now than it had been
yesterday, and it was definitely easier than the day before, but he
still had trouble walking more than three meters without steadying
himself on something. No wonder the sleep chambers are so close
together, he thought as he braced himself on another open chamber.
A violent series of twitches in his bracing arm almost sent him
stumbling to the floor. But he caught himself with his elbow as the
twitching slowed into an erratic flutter. Cyrus began sweating from
the effort it took to pull himself back to his feet. As he steadied
himself again, the flutters began to slide down his thighs, all the
way to his ankles. He was able to take another three steps before a
cramp almost sent him face-first into an occupied sleep chamber.
“Damnation,” Cyrus muttered to himself and ventured into the
lav.

After relieving himself for what seemed too
long, Cyrus stared into the mirror giving his eyes time to adjust.
He was sure his pupils dilated faster before he had entered the
Hyposoma Apparatus 192 years ago. The lines of his face were much
more evident now. Apparently the Hyposoma caused hair to grow much
more slowly, so he only had stubble on his face even after spending
most of the last two day cycles in the sleep chamber. They had all
had the option of having military cuts before entering the
Hyposoma, and most of the scientists had gotten them. What little
of Cyrus’s hair had grown back seemed less curly than before his
haircut. Even though the lines alongside his nose were more
pronounced now, and the ones around his mouth seemed more
pronounced as well, the new thinness in his face made him look
wiser and oddly younger at the same time. Not bad for 225 years
old, he thought, straining weakened muscles to smile.

“You’ll catch a cramp if you keep that up,” a
familiar voice said from the entrance to the lav. It took longer
than it should have to register the voice with the face, and the
name still eluded him. Cyrus hadn’t spoken to anyone other than Dr.
Fordham in the last 192 relative years—almost six hundred real
years shrunk by a constant rate of speed approximately 95% of the
speed of light. Although he had been released from the infirmary in
what Dr. Fordham assured him was excellent health, his brain was
still slow to react. He struggled to chuckle, but could only muster
the strength for a staccato wheeze.

“I’m serious. My first time out of the
Apparatus, I laughed at a joke, and my whole face was sore for two
whole days.” Cyrus still could not remember his colleague’s name as
he spoke.

“When does the twitching stop?”

Finally he remembered. The man speaking to
him was Dr. Marcus Tanner, archaeologist, anthropologist, certified
personal trainer, and all-around geek. He had been selected for
this mission because he had been one of the first to test the
Hyposoma on a space faring ship, and had studied extensively human
social behavior patterns in space colonies as a lead researcher at
the Arcology of Cincinnati. His skills as a personal trainer were
also well-received in the circles that had made selections for the
mission. Cyrus remembered Dr. Tanner had been thin, but much more
muscular before the trip. At every briefing and meeting he had worn
a suit that was not too flashy, but not too conservative either.
His hair had always been groomed and close-cut, and he had always
looked freshly shaven, even after hours of meetings. He was
clean-shaven even here, but his hair seemed thicker and a little
bushier than on Earth. He had what looked like a small scar across
the left side of his cheek. At most angles, before they had boarded
the Paracelsus, the scar looked like a worry line, but here, after
too many years in stasis, the pallid hue of Tanner’s skin and his
more gaunt face made the scar very clear—memories came back slow,
and in waves, but once they came back, they stayed.

“The nanocytes that rebuilt your muscles are
still working to reacclimatize your body to movement. Once you
reach static equilibrium again, you’ll hit the sleep chamber,
they’ll dissolve in your sleep, and you’ll wake up feeling like a
million Uni creds,” Dr. Tanner reassured.

Another twitching attack sent Cyrus’s face
into a violent contortion that made it look like he was about to
vomit out of the left corner of his mouth. “They never said it
would be like this in the briefing. I feel like the last leper in
hell.”

“You look like you’ve lost about thirty
pounds in the Hyposoma, plus your brain has been frozen in place
for almost two hundred years. I’d say you’re doing well considering
most people can’t even remember how to talk until the fourth day
out of the Apparatus. And then they have to learn to walk all over
again.” Cyrus felt around his abdomen, admiring the absence of the
gut he had been forming since his fourth year of marriage. His
belly was soft but flat. As he rubbed his fingers across, he could
feel the minute vibrations caused by the nanocytes exercising his
stomach muscles. “Is all this really necessary?”

“Come on, you should know better than that,”
Dr. Tanner chided.

“I’m an astrophysicist, not a physician Dr.
Tanner.”

“Touché. Hyposoma is as close to death as a
human body can come without actually being dead. After more than
190 years of it, you’d come out looking like Stephen Hawking
without the nanocytes.”

“Who the heck is Stephen Hawking?”

A smile spread across Dr. Tanner’s face, but
quickly turned into a wince. “Either you’re trying to get me to
catch a cramp or the Hyposoma had your brain stem in a serious
choke hold.”

“Well, I’m not exactly the fastest ship in
the fleet right now. It took me two full minutes to remember my own
son’s name when I first got out of the Apparatus.”

“That is pretty bad. You couldn’t stop
talking about him before we left Eros. Darius is his name, right?
He’s following us on the Damocles with your wife is he not?”

Cyrus’s body lurched feebly over the sink. He
looked as if he was about to vomit, but nothing came out. After his
attack, he turned back to Dr. Tanner. “You seem sharp as a laser
bit, and stable too. How’d you fare so well through this whole
wretched ordeal?”

“I had a two-day head start out of stasis
with Dr. Fordham because I was a veteran Hyposomatic. In the
downtime before the rest of you guys hatched, I made a point of
brushing up on everyone else’s dossier. But as far as stability
goes, you should have seen me on the first day. I looked like a lab
monkey on galvacet I had the twitches so bad. The Shipmate had to
tie me to the gurney.”

“Now you’re trying to get me to catch a
cramp.” What looked like a weak attempt at laughter proved to be
another involuntary lurch. “But yes, Darius is due on the Damocles,
but I don’t know if Feralynn is going to make it. Hopefully my best
friend Earth-side will still get Dari on the ship if she
doesn’t.”

“I don’t understand. Maybe I missed something
in the dossier. Why wouldn’t she make it?”

The effort required for Cyrus to stand and
hold his head up to face Dr. Tanner forced out rivulets of sweat
around the contours of his eyes. They could have been mistaken for
tears if not for his poise. “You know, your dossier doesn’t say
everything. Not enough about the man. You see, she and I weren’t
exactly copasetic when I left. I doubt I could have left if we had
been.”

Cyrus stood there, perspiring. It seemed like
he wanted to speak, but the effort to stand without assistance drew
all his strength. Dr. Tanner paused uncomfortably, looking past
Cyrus at his own reflection. “We’re having dinner in the Common
Hall at the twentieth hour for all those who can physically make
it. Dr. Fordham and Dr. Villichez want this to be the first of a
regular week cycle gathering. I don’t know what the Shipmate is
serving, but it will probably be liquid, per Fordham’s orders.”

There was more awkward silence. Cyrus had
turned back to look at himself in the mirror. Another, less violent
wretch broke his composure, but his own thoughts, cavernous and
secluded, did nothing to arrest the stillness.

“I’ll see you at the gathering.” Dr. Tanner
said as he took his leave, steadying himself on the wall as he
went.

• • • • •

Dr. Tanner sat at table, his left hand cupped
over his right fist, his face bowed over his tray. He mouthed
thankful, reverent words, twisting the lines of his face into an
expression of solemn meditation. The others sat quietly at the
table, either in observation or in deference to Dr. Tanner’s
personal rite. This was the third meal Cyrus had shared with this
man whose tactful intuition and inoffensive manner were glaring
opposites of his own sometimes abrasive demeanor. It was the first,
however, where anyone other than Dr. Tanner, Dr. Fordham, and Cyrus
had been present. Dr. Villichez had shown up on the first day, but
had respectfully retreated to his own sleep chamber when he saw
that most of the scientists had not made it. The last occasion was
an informal meeting where Tanner, Fordham, and Cyrus discussed when
the physical training could begin on the ship and how the gravity
waves would affect their bodies. At that time, Dr. Tanner had also
spent the moments before drinking his pint of blended essential
nutrients, which tasted remarkably like smoked turkey, in
genuflection. Cyrus had then wondered if the man was truly pious,
or reserved this quiet devotion for more trusted company. Now, with
eighteen other members of academia looking on, Cyrus realized that
although two-hundred years of hurtling through the universe
suspended by a thin thread over the gaping maw of death had sapped
their bodies of physical strength, this man possessed something
that not even the stench of the reaper’s breath could overwhelm.
Even as Dr. Tanner bowed his head, he seemed like a kneeling giant
as his gaunt and gangly spectators afforded him his pause. To
Cyrus, it seemed whatever Dr. Tanner revered, whatever his vigil
stood for, these others had lost long before the Hyposoma nanocytes
began depleting their fat cells for the energy to sustain their
long catatonic stasis. He could see that even he had begun to lose
it before he had set foot on this vessel.

Dr. Fileas Winberg, the least gaunt of the
lot, spoke first as Tanner raised his head. Dr. Winberg’s cheeks
jiggled awkwardly as he talked, and his hair, dusted with as many
gray hairs as black, seemed to shake in the same rhythm as his
cheeks as he reached for his pint and spoke, “So it seems some
antiquated conventions have stowed away with us on our grand
exodus.” Cyrus noticed that Dr. Winberg had positioned himself at
the only seat that could be considered the head of the table.

Dr. Tanner finished a long sip from his pint.
At first, he seemed either unconcerned with or unaware of Dr.
Winberg’s comment. He set his cup delicately on the table as his
eyes moved to Dr. Winberg. “I feel a certain amount of antiquation
helps keep us balanced. Move too far, too fast and eventually you
will lose your footing. It would seem in our reaching out to
another world, searching for truths about our past and our future,
we would want to maintain our balance—or at least I would.”

“Understandable, but I tend to agree with
Nietzsche. If we are on this trip in search of some sort of greater
truth, religious convictions would be more dangerous enemies of
that truth than blatant lies,” Dr. Winberg answered.

Cyrus had seen this coming before they had
even selected him as the astrophysics specialist on this team of
eminent scientists and researchers. A crock pot of twenty men, all
reputed and dominant in their own fields, holed-up and concentrated
under the pressures of trailblazing a virgin frontier; it was only
a matter of time before teeth bared, horns locked, blood was drawn.
But Winberg wasted no time. As soon as the Call to the Post was
sounded, he strained against the reigns of discretion. There was no
doubt that he too saw something in Dr. Tanner, but unlike Cyrus, it
was dark and threatening to Winberg. Cyrus had guessed Dr. Winberg
would be the first to pound his chest. He was a fellow professor at
the Los Angeles Arcology of Science and had as great a reputation
for groundbreaking arrogance as he did for groundbreaking lectures.
Cyrus had only met him directly once briefly at a conference on the
long-term effect of gravity waves on the brain. The brevity of the
meeting had kept the situation sociable, but students and teachers
alike had known Dr. Winberg to brandish his prominence and
knowledge like a standard, and often at the expense of those less
prominent or knowledgeable. Even here, it seemed he had a
refinement of insult that would make those who responded in a
manner Cyrus felt was necessary, appear brazen and uncouth.
Although Cyrus had expected the first press for the hill to come
from Winberg, he had expected it later in the trip, and he had
expected it to be directed toward him.