They walked together to their adjacent cubicles; and, as always, turned into the nearer one, which was Jim-son’s. The cubicles had already been stripped; tradi-tionally, before the torch ceremony, all mementoes of the twelve years of training were thrown away, given away, or passed down to anyone in the next class who could use them. Ship members would take nothing from this life — except their own musical instruments — aboard the Ship; and gradually it had become customary for all members of a graduating class to part with their possessions as if each was going to the life of a Ship. Everyone would have to rebuild a new life anyway.
Jimson sprawled full-length on the cot; Peake crouched in the single chair, which was, like almost everything else, too small for him. At seven, David Akami had already been taller than anyone else in the class; he had been dubbed “Pike’s Peak” which the years had gradually shortened to Peake.
“You’ve got surgery, deep-space navigation, geology, agronomy,” Jimson repeated, obsessively, “I’m worried about that damned geology. I knew I ought to go into organic chemistry instead! And since all my other specialties are in the biological sciences—”
“They aren’t going to get anybody on the crew who doesn’t have at least one overlap with somebody else,” Peake said gently, smiling at his friend, “It’s a plus, if anything, that you can move outside the field of Life Sciences. You have linguistics and life support, too — I don’t think the overlap matters all that much. Look, Jimmy,” he went on, “We took a calculated risk and we have to be ready to stick by our decision. The two of us are right at the top of the class; nobody except Ching has a higher grade-point average—”
“But they don’t always go by marks, and you know it,” Jimson said, gloomily. “They take in compatibility, and personality, and there’s something else too, that a couple — like us — might have trouble adjusting to living with others… that’s why they want us not to make permanent commitments, on the chance that we’ll be separated if one makes Ship and the other doesn’t—”
“Hey Jimson, what’s all this?” Peake interrupted with a grin. “We went all over that three years ago, and decided we had two choices; break up, or make us into such a great team they’d want both of us! At the worst, we’ll both stay Earthside; at best, when that Survey Ship pulls out, we’ll both be on it, you in Life Support and me in Medic…”
Jimson glared at his friend. “No, that’s not the worst and you know it,” he flung at him, “the worst would be that one goes and the other stays — and I ought to have known it years ago, damn it, why did I let you sell me a deal like that? A good Life-Support man who was a surgeon too — that would have been sure to get on the Ship!”
Peake looked at him in dismay; in twelve years in the Academy, each as the other’s closest friend, they had never exchanged a harsh word. “Jimson, that’s not fair; we decided it together. And anyhow, it would be too late to worry about it now. Are we going to spend our last night together fighting?”
“Yeah, you know it’s going to be the last time, too, don’t you?” Jimson flung at him with enormous bitterness, “You set it up just fine, didn’t you, to eliminate at least one rival?”
Peake stared in consternation. But he had been intensively trained in group living and the avoidance of conflict. He unfolded his long legs, towering over the boy in the cot.
“I’m not going to quarrel with you, kid. I hoped we could spend tonight together — I think we both need it. But if you feel this way it wouldn’t do either of us any good. Look, you’ll feel better tomorrow, Reuben.” The use of the private name, rather than the Academy-imposed nickname, was as much a caress as the dark fingers touching Reuben Jamison’s light hair.
“Take it easy, kid. Save a seat in the auditorium for me if you get there first. Look,” he added, eager to comfort, “whatever happens, the decision’s made — one way or the other, nothing we can do is going to change it. Get some sleep, Reuben. It’s settled, right or wrong, it’s done. Relax.”
Jimson flung after him, in sick misery, “Yeah, the decision’s made, all right! You don’t think they’re going to take a pair of queers on their Survey Ship, do you?”
Peake, heartsick, closed the door.
The chapel was an afterthought in the Academy, built in, and still functioning in the style of, a time of agnosticism or atheism among the Establishment; teachers, and therefore almost all the students, were militant atheists. It had been built to appease a small pressure group who had been very vocal about the need for it, but there was no longer, even on paper, an official UNEPS chaplain. The chapel was used, now and then, for concerts of chamber music, and one of the Recreation Officers numbered, far down on the list of his purely nominal duties, that of chaplain and counselor.
Ravi sat there now, cross-legged, silent, breathing in and out almost imperceptibly. Small, dark-skinned, with sharply handsome features, he had been given his nickname because of a chance resemblance to a legendary musician from his own country of origin. Now, deep in meditation, for a time surface thoughts played back and forth across his mind.
It is done. They have made the choice. It is too late for wish or regret. In his heart Ravi was not sure he wished to be sent away from Earth, although his only memories of his world, outside the clean mathematical world of the Academy, were fragmentary; burning heat, blistering sky or torrential stinking rains, the festering sores of beggars crowding, which sometimes haunted him in uneasy nightmares. So that he wondered, sometimes, with something he was too well-trained to identify properly as guilt; why am I here, clean, fed, pampered, and they dying outside there? Images remained in his mind; his father, cross-legged on the ground before a silk-weaving loom; crowded streets, women still clad in saris and veils; but all of it had gone, except for these scattered, fading dreams.
Ravi had taken up meditation without any real purpose; many cadets tried it, as a method of relaxation, a simple cure for insomnia. To his own surprise, he had found that it fitted some small and formerly inaccessible corner of his own psyche, filled a need, scratched an itch he had never known that he possessed. Ravi had been trained as a scientist, not a mystic; he found himself uncomfortable, even while he did it, with the obsessive study he had taken up, of his own roots, of the culture of his native country — not forbidden, never that, but certainly never encouraged. He knew, intellectually, that he belonged to UNEPS, not to his own country. He knew, too, that if he had revealed any trace of his questionings and his inner search, he would have been laughed out of the Academy. And now he wrestled with a question he had not had enough training to regard as spiritual.
I am expected to regard God as superstition and mathematics as ultimate reality. Yet I feel, I know, God as ultimate reality and mathematics as one of His choicer games and methods of revealing Himself. I want to learn more about that, and how can I ever know the things I need to know, if I am sent into the greater vastnesses of outer space with no one except my crewmates? I have heard there will be only five of them, and they are even more ignorant of these realities than I am.
Am I being exiled from God in being exiled from the planet of man, His creation?
He let his consciousness drift in meditation, until his mind narrowed itself to a single point of awareness; somewhere, detached from himself, he wondered if perhaps outer space was like that, a greatness beyond comprehension… like God?
God exists; I must simply trust in what is necessary for me. If God created the Universe, then surely he is everywhere in it, in the space between the stars… as much as here in my mind.
Fontana, small and dark and delicately made, with sleek dark hair and thick freckles, was in bed with Huff. They had been exploring each other’s bodies with curiosity and good-natured affection for more than a year now, in their leisure moments; but both were conscious of the admonition against pairings or permanent commitments, and both had been seen, often enough, with others.
Now, lying at ease in the afterglow, she smiled at him, a pixie smile, and said, “I’m going to miss you, Huff. I’m going to miss this—” and she touched him, playfully. He chuckled.
“Sure of yourself, aren’t you, girl? Well, I don’t blame you; you’re at the top of the class, you’re sure to be on the crew.”
Fontana smiled and shook her head. “Not sure at all. Only whatever happens, we’re going to be separated. It’s scary, Huff, they blend us together so well, teach us to care about each other, up to a point, and then, after graduation, no two of us are ever likely to work together again. Maybe ten of us — six this year, I heard somewhere — will stay together on the Ship. The rest of us — well, scattered all over the universe. But you’re just as likely to make Ship as I am. You’re a good navigator—”
“Not half as good as Ravi.”
“And you’re skilled in linguistics—”
“Jimson and Janet and Mei Mei and Smitty are all better than I am.”
