Variable Star (33 page)

But in those times, war and plague were expected dangers, and survivable ones. I doubt there have been many humans in history who’ve known anything like the instant ice-cold horror that comes to every passenger aboard a relativistic starship when they suddenly find themselves in free fall.

Where
I
was that day was on Bravo Ag Deck, goofing off behind the goatshed, chewing the fat with Sol Short, while the two colonists I’d drawn as my unskilled labor that shift, John Barnstead and Adewale Akbage, listened and tried not to look awed. We were passing around a flask of wine Zog had made from the Brasilian flower Muira Puama (
Ptychopetalurn Olacoides
), which was making a very happy adjustment to Brasil Novo conditions.

I can even remember what we were talking about. At the gentle urging of Dr. Amy, and with Sol as intermediary, I had long since buried the hatchet with transportees Richie and Jules, going so far as to comp them for a night at the Horn so they could hear me play. It made a difference; Richie came backstage after to stare at the floor and say he “apollenized,” and Jules put one arm around me and hugged me, and from then on whenever we encountered each other in the corridors, they were both loudly friendly.

So I had begun a small but precious collection of Richie-isms, and loved to compare specimens with Sol, who appreciated them as much as I did. That day, I recall, I had shared with him, “Don’t kill the goose that laid the deviled egg,” and, “You can’t sell a fuckin’ book by looking undercover.” John threw one in, then: he’d heard someone ask the pair why they were constantly together, and Richie had said, “Two heads are better than none.”

And Sol had just gifted us all with the gem “Atojiso,” as in, “I knew that would happen. I hate to say atojiso, Jules, but I fuckin’ atojiso,” and we were roaring with appreciation, when all at once the ceiling came down to join us, and the floor fell away.

S
udden unexpected
weightlessness can only mean drive failure, and this is never good news.

But if you’re on a starship, it probably means you’re dead. You and everyone in your world.

It is just barely possible to restart a quantum ramjet at velocities higher than 0.5c. But time is critical—and luck even more so.

It had been done. Twice before in history, in each case by a Relativist said to be particularly adept. Successfully, I mean. There had been two spectacular failures—by colleagues generally agreed to have been equally good. That was why the
Sheffield
needed a minimum of four Relativists—six hours was the longest one could reliably sustain the necessary concentration—and why it carried six. We’d have carried more, if Kang/da Costa had been able to hire more.

If the quantum ramjet was
not
restarted, and damn quickly, the
Sheffield
would literally never get anywhere. There would be plenty of power for life support—and nowhere near enough to slow all those megatons of mass appreciably. We would drift for all time through the void at more than nine-tenths of the speed of light, forever unable to decelerate to any more reasonable speed, incapable of making any port.

John and Adewale and I were none of us spacemen. We panicked. The blood did not drain from our heads because there was no gravity; but we didn’t become as ruddy as we should have. We’d all been in free fall long enough to learn some basics, but none of us had free-fall instincts or reflexes. All we had was enough intelligence to understand how much trouble we were in.

The goats didn’t even have that—they knew only two gradations of terror: none and total. They simply happened to be right for once. The goat shed exploded, and jagged pieces of its walls became lethal Frisbees, followed by a second wave of hay, hooves, and horns.

Miraculously, none of us was hurt by any of these. It was Solomon Short who broke my collarbone, using it to launch himself toward the stairwell, and who dislocated Adewale’s shoulder using him to leapfrog, and busted John’s nose when he couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. I figure I’m responsible for my concussion; I could probably have ducked that goat, if I hadn’t been watching Sol dwindle in the distance. But how can you look away from somebody crying like that?

To be honest, I don’t think I’d have been much help to him even if I hadn’t gotten my skull kicked. I was already thinking in terms of coping with my own responsibilities: my livestock, my farm—both my farms! Everywhere, things would be going to hell, delicate hydraulic systems pumping dry, containers spilling over, lattices coming apart, koi trying to swim in damp air—

So it was John, not even particularly a friend of Sol’s, who thought of it first, and did it in time, and so ended up accomplishing far more good than I would that day. The instant he had drifted within reach of something substantial enough to change his vector—a light fixture in the ceiling, still on, still hot—he used it to launch himself after Sol. He stayed close to the ceiling, and used every surface feature he passed to add speed, so he had soon built up nearly as good a head of steam as Sol had.

At about that point I heard the right rear quadrant of my skull make the sound “KLOP!” and decided to take a little nap, so I missed John’s triumph.

Sol had sensibly ignored the lift, beelined for the emergency stair-shaft/drop-chute, and flung himself down it like a hungry ferret going down a hole. It was the mental picture of him in that ship-length tunnel, reaching ever higher velocity with the help of the handholds that were usually rungs under gravity, that had galvanized John. He was far less free-fall savvy than Sol, but massed more, so he arrived at about the same speed. He knew there was no way he’d make the turn. But he never even attempted to decelerate, just sailed into the chute, slammed against its far wall, and accepted the damage. “
FLIP! FLIP!
” he was screaming as he came through the doorway, and after he crashed and got his breath back, he resumed screaming it at the top of his lungs down that long Freudian shaft. “
FLIP, SOL! FOR CHRISSAKE, FLIP!
”

Would I have understood what he was saying, if I’d heard it? Interesting and pointless question. Adewale said later he did hear it, and didn’t get it—as far as he could see,
everyone
around there had flipped.

Halfway down that stair-shaft—any and all gods be thanked, once they’ve been cleared of any involvement in the original catastrophe—Solomon Short heard John Barnstead’s scream. He was then in a kind of frenzy, or fugue state, as fixated as a heat-seeking warhead. But John had selected a word from the tactical menu used by warheads. It was a legal command, and as Sol received it he instantly saw the sense of it and obeyed. By a process that has never been properly described because everyone who’s spent time in free fall knows it, and nobody who hasn’t can ever understand it, Sol tumble-flipped his body end over end, and continued his plunge feet first.

John’s mental process had gone more or less like so: if Sol is the first Relativist to reach the Power Room, we’re all screwed. By the time
he
can get there from this far away, the ramjet will probably have been off too long to restart safely. So we must pray that another of his colleagues beats him there.

But if so, what of Sol, in the stair-shaft?

Sure enough, the
Sheffield
was later able to tell me that it was less than a second after Sol stabilized in his new position that weight suddenly returned—followed a split second later by the siren blast that was supposed to give ten seconds’ warning before any vector change. At once he began slapping at passing rungs to kill velocity, and looking below for his landing site. In the end, he landed with nothing worse than a sprained ankle, which became severely sprained after he ran on it.

By the time he landed, that was important. Crucial, even. Because by then George R was dead, and London was…was permanently out of action.

The
Sheffield
was down two Relativists, now…and that left us exactly enough to keep the quantum ramjet running twenty-four hours a day. There was going to be no acceptable excuse to miss a shift…for the next fifteen years.

W
hat happened
in the Power Room that day?

There’s a lengthy report on file, which I am assured is accurate and complete; you’re welcome to look it up. It’s full of what look like words, arranged in sequences that seem to be sentences, and the one I come closest to understanding seems to say that the Zero Point became briefly numerable, and George R was unable to deny it. Maybe that conveys something to you; it’s noise to me.

Months later, at various times, I heard Dugald Beader say that George R had “stopped surrendering,” and heard a massively drunken Kindred assert that his colleague had “lost his focus.” How those two things could describe the same event, I cannot imagine.

Here’s what little I do understand.

First of all, George R was not supposed to be on duty that shift. Hideo was. That was why Sol lost it. But at the last minute, one of Hideo’s Zen students had come to him with a spiritual crisis, and he’d asked to be replaced.

This was no big deal. By that point in the voyage, all of the Relativists had missed a shift or two; it was part of what spares were for. Hideo had probably missed fewer than anyone else but Kindred—and had extracurricular responsibilities the others lacked. If anyone was entitled to blow off a shift, it was him.

The person he was supposed to succeed was George R. When his request showed up on George R’s board, George R should have messaged backup, confirmed availability, then let Hideo know he was off the hook—a total of three keystrokes. He did only the third.

Who can say what was in his mind? Of the Relativists aboard, Sol was the loudest, and Peter Kindred the most egotistical, but George R was far and away the most sheerly
confident
. There was no leader, but he was senior among equals. The backup he should have called was London. She was asleep just then, in their quarters. Perhaps he just wanted to do something nice for his wife. Maybe it was a gesture of apology to get him out of some marital doghouse. It may simply have been easier for a man as confident as him to push one key than three.

He certainly was not the first Relativist ever to work a double shift. But I think it’s safe to say he was the last.

Fatigue? Monotony? Bad judgment? Bad luck? None of them ever said, and none of us ever had the balls to ask.

Something Horrible happened in there, that’s all.

Whatever it was took something like thirty seconds to finish burning his brains out, and matters should have ended there. It is certain that he did not at any time trigger an alarm or send out a message of any kind. The ramjet should have failed, and then whoever won the race to the Power Room should have yanked his smoking body out of the way and, hopeably, restarted it.

I do not know how London got there before he finished dying. She knew exactly how dangerous it was to try and go in there, just then, and never hesitated. Whether she believed she could save him or simply didn’t care to outlive him is not for me or anyone to say. If it was a mistake in judgment she paid dearly enough for it—with her eyesight, most of her hearing, and about eighty-five IQ points.

A rain of shit can take time to stop. It was doubtless lucky for all of us that Hideo was the next to reach the Power Room. Of all of them he most had the kind of iron discipline and diamond calm it must take to toss the smoldering bodies of two friends out in the corridor for others deal with, forget them, and try to restart a quantum ramjet. I honestly think any of them could have done it, but I’m glad it was Hideo who got the job.

But when he emerged, and had been thanked in turn by Captain Bean, Governor Roberts, Governor-General Cott, and Coordinator Grossman, Sol and Dr. Amy had to take him aside and tell him that the student he’d blown off his original shift to counsel had pieced events together, and committed suicide from guilt.

A poor reward for heroism.

T
he next few weeks were dark.

Disaster on that scale can demoralize a community—or draw it together. The crucial factor seems to be, how fast does the fear ease?

It was touch and go. Dr. Amy and her three other Healers had their work cut out for them. Coordinator Grossman and the Zog, Governor Roberts, Governor-General Cott and his partner, Chief Engineer Cunningham, even Captain Bean himself, all made a point of wandering around the ship with cheerful optimistic expressions fixed on their faces. It did help, a little. But only a little.

How do you tell someone falling through the universe at nearly the speed of a photon there’s nothing to worry about? When the most valued, pampered members of the ship’s company can die and worse than die, who is safe? I don’t think any of us had really expected any dying to begin until we got to Bravo. Now all our lives and plans and hopes depended on four particular people remaining not only alive but healthy enough to work for every day of the next fifteen years.

And that was the heart of our darkness: theirs.

“T
hanks for
coming in ahead of schedule, Joel,” said Dr. Amy.

“No problem,” I said, settling into my chair. “To tell you the truth, though, things haven’t been too bad lately.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said.

“I mean, I know you must have your hands full—”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about, this time.”

“Crave pardon?”

“I’m going to be more blunt and candid with you than I have been with the rest of the colony, Joel.”

Yikes. “Okay.”

“This ship is in trouble.”

I nodded. “I know.”

“The morale crisis is not responding to anything we can do. I think you know why.”

I nodded again. “The Relativists. The rest of us…colonists, administrators like you, crew…none of us can begin to heal until they do.” All four stalked the corridors like golems, now, and were given as wide a berth by all they passed. All four had politely declined to speak to a Healer, as was their right. They didn’t even seem to crave each other’s company. They spoke as little as possible at shift change, and less at any other time.