The Quiet Pools

Choose to keep them and they will become part of you. Find the dark places and open them to light. Find the weight and release it. Feel it leaving your body, discharging into the Earth. Feel your body become light. Feel the light within.”

As she spoke, the young man’s hands dipped slowly toward the floor. When his knuckles brushed the wood planking, it was as though a static charge had grounded. A hundred muscles in his body relaxed, and his face at last looked peaceful. She felt him floating, freed, and floated with him. She heard his silent half-sobbing laughter of release, knew the moment that he achieved ephemeral egoless being and the moment it was permissible to call him back.

“Jeremy,” she said.

He opened his eyes and sought hers.

“We’re finished for today.”

A deep breath left him smaller and sadder. “Thank you, Malena,” he said, skirting the candle and coming to hug her.

Unwanted hugs were an occupational risk for counselors, and all the more so for her, a prisoner in the chair. This hug was not unwanted, and yet it made her uncomfortable all the same, for she had to wonder if she had projected her earlier thought. She accepted the embrace self-consciously and kept her contribution as chaste as possible, considering that the object of the hug was nude.

“I’ll leave you to get dressed,” she said finally, and the air-chair lifted. Way to go, bozo. Let him know that you noticed he was naked. Very professional—

The counselor’s lounge was empty, and she shut the door behind her in the hopes of keeping it that way. Hormones from hell, she fussed at herself as she drew a glass of hot cinnamon tea. Ron, you’d better be there tonight, or I’m going to end up drooling on Father Brett again—

It was not until several minutes later, when she retrieved her slate to resume reading, that she saw the V- mail marker blinking. The message was from Karin Oker, Supervisor of Selection, Diaspora Project, Allied Transcon.

She watched the message once, then immediately watched it again. For a long moment, she sat in her chair clutching the slate against her breasts, eyes glittering, hands trembling. Then she let out a whoop and sent the airchair into a dizzying spin.

The door flew open, and Kirella, the branch chiropractor, and the branch manager piled up in the doorway. “What’s the matter?” Kirella demanded, approaching. “Are you okay?”

Smiling beatifically, Malena tipped her head back against the rest and closed her eyes. “Cancel my appointments,” she said dreamily.

“What?”

“Cancel my appointments,” she said, opening her eyes to let the tears run free. “They picked me. They picked me, Kirella. I’m going to Tau Ceti.”

Ten thousand for Tau Ceti.

However euphonious it might be, the unofficial motto of the Selection Section was not quite accurate. Counting the core crew of roughly five hundred, drawn equally from Allied and Takara, plus between one and three hundred “discretionaries,” split between paying passengers and other payoffs, plus a handful of creative stowaways, the final outbound head count would be closer to eleven thousand.

And that was only if you discounted the quarter million frozen eggs (five per donor) and five myriad frozen sperm samples which would also make the trip—consolation prizes in the star-bound sweepstakes. In all, Karin Oker would get to say “Congratulations” not ten thousand, but a hundred and ten thousand times. (Lesser Selection officials would say “Sorry” to more than ten million.)

But it was the ten thousand pioneers who were the focus of most of the energy, most of the urgency, most of the romance, most of the anger. They were the elect, the chosen. They were the ones who would pass, knowingly and willingly, through what one popular commentator dubbed “the one-way door.” To those who would stay behind, the pioneers were humanity’s hope, or its arrogance; its idealism, or its idiocy; but most often, all of that and more.

It was different in Houston and Munich and Tokyo, in Brazil and Kenya, on Takara, on Memphis herself. To Karin Oker and the rest of Selection, to Hiroko Sasaki and the whole of Allied, the pioneers were the moving pieces in a complex ballet too serious to be a game. Ten thousand to pluck from homes and families across six continents. Ten thousand to process through the training and transshipment centers. Ten thousand to lift skyward a hundred at a time and ferry to the great sky city which would be their new and possibly last home. Ten thousand to meld into a working community that could survive fifty years in the crucible of interstellar flight.

Ten thousand for Tau Ceti.

There was no way of avoiding a Graham family conference on Malena’s news. And once the conference began, there was no way to avoid splitting the family into warring camps.

It had started tranquilly enough. Unflappable Mother Alicia, possessor of a wonderful matter-of-fact pragmatism which had made her the emotional keel of the family for as long as Malena could remember, was alone in the main house when Malena got home, and so was the first to know.

“We’ll need to talk about this as a family,” she said on hearing the news. “I think all of the adults will be home tonight, so no point in delaying. An advisory, of course, not a decision conference. You are twenty, after all. But this does affect all of us, so it’s only right that we talk about it together.”

As the other parents arrived home, Mother Alicia took them aside and informed them of the news, asking them to hold their thoughts until the conference. Malena hid in her room, reviewing the information files that had been attached to her selection notice. The only intrusion was by Father Brett, whom she had wanted to tell personally. It was Brett who had given her the chance, transferring his own option to her after he failed to make the cut for Ur. He responded to the news with an ecstatic, enthusiastic hug that did much to fortify Malena for the ordeal to come.

Several hours later, with the family’s three youngest children in bed and the other four asked to respect the closed door of the family room, the adults gathered, and the issue was joined. By then it was already clear that both her blood parents, Father Jack and Mother Caroline, and Father Michel were united in their shock and opposition. Only Mother Alicia’s thoughtful emphasis on the ground rules for an advisory conference as she opened discussion checked what might have been a summary execution.

“We can’t tell Malena what to do, of course, any more than if she had announced that she was moving out or marrying,” Alicia said, concluding. “Our place is to help her explore the dimensions of the decision, so that she can make the best possible decision. Malena, if you choose to accept their offer, what does that mean?”

“Mine is a staff selection,” she said. “I’ll be part of the counseling staff on the ship. That means I have to report sooner than the regular selections—in no more than thirty days.”

“Where will you go?” asked Alicia.

“To the center in Houston.”

“And how long will you stay there?”

“It’ll be in Houston for sixty days of ground training. Then they’ll give me ten days off for personal business— packing, good-byes—before I move up to the ship. From what I’ve been reading, we’ll only be on board for a few weeks before the first group of pioneers moves in.”

“Only ten days?” asked Michel. “Not very much to say goodbye to a whole world.”

“We’ll get another ten days closer to departure,” Malena said. “If we want them.”

Mother Caroline edged forward in her chair. “Malena—why do you want to do this?”

Malena turned the question on its head and fired it back at the source. “Wouldn’t you want to if you could? Wouldn’t you go if they wanted you?”

“Could I take Jack, and Michel, and you, and your brothers?” asked Caroline, knowing the answer was no. “Could I take this house, and my friends, and the Bay? And if I couldn’t, what would I be getting in return that could be worth giving all that up for? Nothing. No, I wouldn’t go. And I don’t understand why you want to.”

“We understand that you’re flattered,” Michel said, playing Tweedledum to her Tweedledee. “Anybody would