Emprise (27 page)

“You see? It’s mesmerizing. You’ll have to turn it off to get any work done. Sit here awhile and you’ll find you can see anything you want. You can imagine you’re climbing Jacob’s Ladder into heaven,” she said, unbuckling.

“Or falling into the pit of hell,” he said cheerfully. “No offense.”

“You’re not of the Church, are you.”

“ ’Fraid not. That won’t be a problem, I hope.”

“No,” she said, pushing lightly on the armrests and drifting up out of her seat toward the passway. “But sometime when I’m not so tired, could we talk about it?”

“Why not?” he said. “I’ll even let you try to convert me.”

“I just want to find out more about you.”

“So much the better. Sleep well, Jo.”

Before the week was out, Rankin had occasion to disturb the sleep of both Joanna and Charan, setting off a strident call-to-stations alarm which they had heard until then only in drills. Within minutes, all four were in the mod A bridge, three of them looking disheveled and looking for an explanation.

“I suppose you’re all wondering why I called you here,” said Rankin, his mouth twisted by a half smile. “There’s no emergency. But there is a matter that demands our attention.

“Those who sailed the seas of Earth made the crossing of the equator an occasion of high solemnity and frivolity. A new salt’s first crossing required an initiation and later crossings required rum-soaked celebrations.

“We space sailors should have our own traditions, which we of
Pride of Earth
are privileged to make up as we go along. One of the most important of these involves the first outcrossing. Ten minutes ago
Pride of Earth
broke out of the heliosphere, the sun’s atmosphere of charged particles. We are now truly in interstellar space. It doesn’t look any different except to a couple of my instruments, but then there wasn’t a dotted line painted on the ocean, either.”

He looked at Charan. “I don’t know what the Captain will think, but it seems to me that becoming the first true space travelers from Earth is as good an occasion as any to break out the liter of port which I brought aboard in my personal gear.”

Charan shook his head bemusedly. “I didn’t know that port came in zero-G decanters.”

“Ordinarily it doesn’t,” Rankin said, grinning back. “But there are ways. What say you, Captain? It’s hardly enough to get us drunk, but I wager we’ll favor the flavor.”

A smile briefly touched Charan’s lips. “I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of tradition, of whatever vintage. But if you’ll hold off the libations for a few moments, perhaps I can provide the solemnity you mentioned.”

Moving gracefully, Charan floated through the passway and then disappeared into his quarters at the aft end of the module. In less than a minute he returned, the long pocket on the right thigh of his jumpsuit bulging.

“Your insignia, please?”

Almost as one they looked to Charan’s collar and saw that the sun-yellow ellipse of the System Pilot was missing from its accustomed spot. Rankin was the first to comply, unpinning his System Engineer insignia—a sun-yellow ellipse enclosing a capital sigma, symbolizing the summation of knowledge in the sciences—and sending it spinning across the compartment to Charan.

Charan caught it deftly and soon he had all three. He zippered them into a breastpocket, then produced three small black boxes from his thigh pocket.

“Chairman Rashuri thought there should be some way of distinguishing between the local system crews and people like us,” he said, sending a box tumbling toward each of them. While they opened them, he pinned his own in place—a gleaming jet-black ellipse. “I have a message from him,” Charan said, fumbling with a card.

“ ‘As the blue of the orbital insignia reminds us of the fertile Earth and the yellow of the system insignia our warming Sun, so the black of your new insignia reminds us of the ultimate voids into which you journey. I am confident that, as the first to attain this new rank, you will, by your conduct and achievements, make it a symbol to be respected and an honor to be coveted.”’ He looked up to find the others listening silently, their new emblems in place. “But enough of that. I thought I heard something about wine?”

A day later, Joanna had a run-in with a balky water injector in the galley and called Rankin down from the bridge she had abdicated to him just minutes before. Between them they mastered its eccentricities, and when Joanna had finished preparing her meal she followed Rankin and settled in the right-hand seat.

“Have you discovered yet that the food consistently smells better than it tastes?” Rankin said, eyeing the clip-tray.

“They did their best.”

“Oh, yes. Rehydratable shrimp cocktail, irradiated corned beef, and freeze-dried bananas. A menu fit for the King’s table.” He patted his belly. “I shall be glad I’m carrying these extra pounds. Rhonda may not recognize the new streamlined model she gets back.”

“There’s still plenty of normal food. And I noticed your private stock includes more than wine.”

Rankin chuckled. “Now, children, let’s not mutiny over the sweets. I promise not to torment you with the smell of mint on my breath.”

He occupied himself with the instruments for a time, not ignoring her, yet not inviting conversation. She finished her meal in silence, then set the clip-tray aside.

“What are you expecting to find when we get there?”

“This is that ‘talk,’ isn’t it?” he asked rhetorically. “I expect only that the Senders will be the product of some very alien world’s very fascinating natural history.”

“That’s a code word. You mean evolution.” Rankin raised his hands in supplication. “No intent to deceive. Yes, that’s what I mean.”

“How can you believe that? It’s been proven that evolution is a false dogma, statistically and thermodynamically impossible. The odds against—”

“Please,” Rankin implored, sighing, “I don’t want to be a party to an argument that can only stir up hard feelings. Joanna—there’s no profit in this.”

“I
want
to understand you. I want to understand how you’ve persuaded yourself to ignore the truth of God’s Creation.”

He shrugged apologetically. “All I can really say is that I find neither half of that idea compelling.”

“So the Universe is just an accident?”

“The Universe is a marvelous stage on which many dramas can be played.”

Joanna frowned crossly. “You’re real quick with glib answers. Are you even thinking about them or really listening to me? Or is your mind closed?”

“You’re asking me questions I found my answers to years ago,” he said gently. “I don’t mean to be glib. But this is old ground we’re treading.”

“You’ve decided there’s no God.”

“None that a traditional western Christian would recognize.”

“No devil.”

“No.”

“No heaven for the blessed or hell for the damned.”

“No.”

“No afterlife at all.”

“Afraid not.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand why people who feel like you do don’t just stay in bed in the morning. There’s no point to your life. You have no goals, no commitments, no hope, no purpose—”

“I can see why you might think that; but it isn’t so.”

“What kind of purpose can there be in a Creation that runs itself like some giant machine?”

“I’ve never asked my Universe to provide me with purpose. I’ve always been content to provide that myself.”

“You must think of believers as fools, then.”

Rankin considered a moment before answering. “I think of formal religion as the last respectable expression of the wishful belief that there’s magic in the world. I try not to judge the believers on their belief alone. We all hold beliefs where the holding is more important than their objective truth.”

“Even you?”

“Of course.” He smiled wistfully. “For example, the belief that Rhonda is well and happy and at peace with herself for making it possible for me to be here. You see, the belief is a necessary one—because there is nothing I can do now to help her or comfort her, no matter how much I might want to.”

“I don’t understand how you can consider my faith in the Lord to be in the same category as your concern for your wife.”

Rankin sat back in his seat and hooked his folded hands behind his neck. “Joanna, I really have very little interest in driving a wedge between us this way. I would far rather talk with you about the food, our favorite books, the dumbest thing we’ve ever done, et cetera. We’re going to need each other out here, all of us—even Charan and the Major.”

“I’m not angry. I’m really not,” she said earnestly. “But you
are
a different kind of person than I’ve been surrounded by since—for the last year.”

Rankin pursed his lips. “All right. I am trying to suggest that your belief in God is necessary to you in the same way mine about Rhonda is to me, and that neither belief says anything about the world outside ourselves.”

“You’re talking in riddles.”

“Not at all.” He leaned toward her. “Have you ever seen an old film called
The Wizard of Oz?
”

“No.”

“There’s a magical city named Oz that’s watched over by a great wizard. When people come to see him, the wizard appears as an enormous apparition with a propensity for bellowing and belching fire. That tends to inspire both fear and devotion in quantity. But the wizard is actually a quite ordinary man hiding behind a curtain and pulling levers.”

“What are you saying?”

A wistful expression crossed his face. “I’ve looked behind the curtain. And once you’ve seen what’s there, the wizard can never scare—or inspire you—again. Like Dorothy discovered, if there’s any magic in the universe, it’s in here,” Rankin said, tapping his chest with his fingertips. “It’s in us, and the dreams we dream—and always was.”

Joanna sat for a moment with eyes downcast and said nothing. Then she perked up and smiled a small smile. “Would you like to hear about the dumbest thing I ever did?”

“Very much so. But I wager I can top it.”

Pride of Earth
was three weeks out, and Major Wenyuan wanted a woman.

It was not an uncommon state with him, though surprisingly it had rarely caused him difficulty. In Beijing, he had expected women to be provided him as one of the perks of his position, and they were. He did not concern himself with where they came from or where they went when he tired of them, only that when he felt the need an attractive young woman be available. He preferred them publicly servile but privately aggressive, not mere passive receptacles but skilled and enthusiastic partners.

Cut off from that supply in England and later at Unity, Wenyuan had discovered to his surprise that even among West-em women there were those for whom an explicit or even an implicit demand from a strong-willed man was sufficient to stand in for weeks of more chivalrous courting. Though the quality of their ministrations was not the equal of his political courtesans, Wenyuan did not lack for bedmates up to the time of the starship’s departure.

In his largely unconscious and automatic appraisal, Wenyuan had marked Joanna as just such a submissive personality, likely to provide him with what he needed. It would not have mattered measurably had she impressed him differently, since Wenyuan found the prospect of six years of chastity unthinkable. Joanna was the only woman on board; therefore he would have her.

He came to her quarters early in his day, late in hers. He had awoken with the hunger strong and the knowledge that she was just thirty feet away, two cabins aft. He went into the transfer section, where the tunnels to the other mods and the hatch to the drive core were located, and found the passway screen to Joanna’s cabin closed..That was no obstacle, since the screen did not lock; he simply slid it aside.

She was lying in her bunk with her fiche viewer and a page from the Book of Deeds, and looked up with surprise as he entered.

“What do you want?” she asked. “Is someone hurt?” He slid the screen closed again. “You are needed for something else.”

“I use this time for my studies. I asked that no one disturb me. If it’s something that can wait—”

“I have already waited too long.”

She saw the outline of his hardness in the crotch of the jumpsuit and understood. “If it’s medical advice you want, I recommend masturbation.”

“There is a more palatable alternative.”

“There may be drugs in the ship’s stores to reduce your libido. I can check tomorrow.” She slipped her arms out of the restraining straps and floated free of the bunk, fiche viewer in hand.

“You are a playful one.”

“I have no intention of playing,” she said calmly.

He drifted toward her. “You are no blushing virgin. The voyage will pass more pleasantly if you admit to your own desires.”

“My only desire right now is for privacy.”

He reached out and grabbed her wrist. “I know your past. Not only your feat of ‘faith’ but the time before. You opened yourself up to many.”

“If so, I chose to,” she said, tight-lipped.

“I choose, now,” Wenyuan said.

Her eyes flashed anger and she swung the viewer wildly at his head. Releasing her wrist, he ducked it easily, and the motion carried her around until her back was to him. He grabbed her and pulled her to him, pinning her arms to her side with his own, his hands fondling her breasts through the fabric of her nightshirt. “You’ve made the required protest,” he hissed in her ear. “Now let yourself enjoy.”

“You—
will—not
do this to me,” she screeched, kicking and squirming to free herself from his grasp. “Let—
me
—
go
. Let me
go!
” She had no leverage, and her struggles did nothing but send them tumbling across the compartment to bang awkwardly into the bulkhead. Still, her struggles redoubled in violence, as her words gave way to the frenzied grunts of an animal in combat.

Finally Wenyuan released Joanna, grabbing a handhold near the passway arid shoving her away with his feet in the small of her back. She caught herself a moment before she would have crashed painfully into the mounting of her bunk.

“I have never forced myself on a woman except at her request,” Wenyuan said stiffly, his chest rising and falling from the exertion. “I will not start with a fool and an emotional child. When you know yourself, come to me.”