Golden Fleece

JASON here.” He pointed at my camera pair, mounted on a buttress supporting the sculptured ceiling. “Life created in the laboratory. Interstellar travel with crewed missions. Teleportation, even if only over a distance measured in millimeters. Artificial gravity and antigravity, like the system used to augment the perceived gravity due to Argo’s acceleration.”

“Granted the world will be different when we get back,” said Aaron.

“Yes!” Chang’s grin had returned. “Yes, indeed. But different how? What kind of welcome are we going to get?” He sidled around the workbench to stand next to Aaron again.

Aaron tried to sound jaunty. “You kidding? Parades. Talk shows. The first interstellar travelers.”

“Maybe. I hope so. But I don’t think so.” He put his arm around Aaron’s shoulders. “Suppose there’s a war on Earth. Or a disaster. Things could be very hairy by the time we return, each person carving out an existence in a savage society. We might not be welcome at all. We might be resented, hated.” He lowered his voice. “We might be eaten.” He gave the steel casing a pat. “My bombs could make all the difference. We can take what we want if we have bombs, yes?”

Aaron peered through the large access panel, looking at the gleaming electronics. He shuddered. “What do you want from me?”

“Two things,” Chang said, holding up thick fingers in what used to be a symbol for peace. “You’re in charge of scheduling the Colchis survey flights. You must organize a search for deposits of uranium that we can mine.”

“It’s over six years until we arrive at Colchis.”

“I know, but the other project will keep you busy from now until the end of the flight. You’ve got to modify those boomerang craft of yours to carry my bombs. Picture those ships, zooming over fields of savages, dropping bombs here and there to keep them in line. Stirring, yes?”

As always, Aaron’s EEG was calm. Ironically, so was Chang’s. “Come on, I-Shin—,” began Aaron, but he ground to a halt. He looked into Chang’s brown eyes, almost invisible behind epicanthic folds, then tried again. “I mean, seriously, Wall, wouldn’t it be better if we find we’re unwelcome on Earth to just take Argo somewhere else? That’s the beauty of a ramship, isn’t it? We’ll never run out of fuel.”

“Somewhere else?” A look of terror crossed the vast globe of Chang’s face. “No! Never.” His vital signs had suddenly changed from peaceful to agitated, his voice rising an octave and gaining a rough edge. “Damn it, Aaron, I couldn’t take that! I couldn’t take another eight or more years in this flying tomb! I—” He made an effort to calm himself, to breathe evenly, deeply. He looked at his feet. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry, it’s just that, well, I—I don’t think I can even last the next six years to Colchis.”

“It is a long time, isn’t it?” said Aaron.

Chang eased himself onto a stool next to the workbench, its plastiwood legs creaking under his weight. “We’re not even halfway there,” he said at last. “We’ve been at it for two years now and the end isn’t even in sight.” Now that he was seated, Chang’s eyes were level with Aaron’s. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I—I’ve been working too hard.”

Aaron’s expression was blank, but perhaps he was thinking the same thing as I, which was, No, you haven’t; there hasn’t been any work to do. “It’s okay,” he said softly.

“You know,” said Chang, “when I was little, my parents used to send me to camp in the summer. I hated it. Other kids made fun of me because of my extra arms, and I never could swim very well. I’m not sure, but I don’t think I would have enjoyed it much even if I had been …” He paused, as if looking for an appropriate word. Apparently, though, he couldn’t find one. He smiled sadly. “… normal.”

Aaron nodded, but said nothing.

“Anyway, I used to keep track of the time. They sent me away for three weeks. Twenty-one days. That meant each day represented four and three-quarters percent of the time I had to spend there. Each night before bed I’d calculate how much had gone by and how much I had left to endure. Two days meant nine and a half percent had been done; three days, fourteen and a quarter percent done. But even though I was miserable, the time still passed. Before I knew it, I was on the downside—more time had elapsed than I had left to spend.” He looked at Aaron, eyebrows up. “Do you see what I’m getting at?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve been gone for 740 days. We left Earth ages ago, an eternity. But we’ve still got 2,228 days left to go. We’ve covered just one-quarter of the time we’ve got to endure. A quarter! For every day we’ve spent here, locked in this tin can, we’ve got another three to go. It’s—it’s—” Chang looked around him, like a man lost, trying to get his bearings. His gaze fell on the cylinder of the bomb, his own round face reflecting back at him from the metallic casing. “I think …” he said slowly, “I think I want to … cry.”

“I know how you feel,” said Aaron.

“It’s been twenty years since I last cried,” said Chang, shaking his head slightly. “I’m not sure I remember how.”

“Just let it come, Wall. I’ll leave you alone.” Aaron started to move toward the exit.

“Wait,” said Chang. Aaron did so, standing quietly for a full ten seconds while Wall sought the words he wanted. “I— I don’t have any family, Aaron. Not here, and not back on Earth. Oh, I did, but my parents were old, very old, when we left. They could very well be gone by now.” He looked away from Aaron. “You’re the closest thing I have to a brother.” Aaron smiled a little. “You’ve been a good friend, too.”

Silence again, its passage marked only by the regular dripping of condensation from the ceiling.

“Please stay with me,” said Chang.

“Of course. For as long as you like.”

“But don’t look at me.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

Chang put his head down on the table next to the bomb, but no tears came. Aaron took a seat and gazed absently at the bends and curves of the sculpted gray ceiling, outlining the features of the lake above. I shut off my cameras in that room.

When I checked again half an hour later, they were still there, sitting exactly the same way.

ELEVEN

MASTER CALENDAR DISPLAY • CENTRAL CONTROL ROOM

STARCOLOGY DATE: WEDNESDAY 8 OCTOBER 2177

EARTH DATE: MONDAY 26 APRIL 2179

DAYS SINCE LAUNCH: 741 ^

DAYS TO PLANETFALL: 2,227 Ў

The Place of Worship on level eleven wasn’t much more than an empty room, really. We didn’t have the space to provide a dedicated church or synagogue or mosque or other specialized hall. Instead, this simple chamber, with seating for five hundred, served as called upon.

The chairs were a bit too comfortable to be called pews, a bit less tacky than the folding metal seats most of our Unitarians seemed to be used to. There was a simple raised platform at one end of the room and a small structure that was called a podium or a pulpit, depending upon who was occupying it. The rest of the Place of Worship changed as required through the miracle of holography. Aaron had only been to church once with Diana, he had said, back in Toronto with her family just before they had married. He had tried to describe the place to me as best he could remember it—dark and gloomy, with a musty odor, but a magnificent, oh, so magnificent, stained- glass window at one end. He had stared at it through most of the service.

I had a holographic library of generic architectural components, and with help from Aaron, I re-created as best I could what the Chandler family church had apparently looked like, at least in general appearance.

The Place of Worship was full, all five hundred seats taken. What my cameras were seeing, processed and color-corrected so as to resemble human vision, was being fed to monitor screens all over the Starcology. A funeral may be a morbid event, but at least it is an event—and events had been in short supply these last couple of years.