“Stop!” cried Father.
Rigg stopped.
“You see the size of the tree,” said Father. “You cannot lift it. You cannot move it.”
“With a lever, Father, I could-”
“You cannot move it because I have been pierced by two branches, completely through my belly.”
Rigg cried out, imagining the pain of it, feeling his own fear at Father’s injury. Father was never hurt. Father never even got sick.
“Any further movement of the tree will kill me, Rigg. I have used all my strength calling to you. Listen now and don’t waste what life I have left on any kind of argument.”
“I won’t argue,” Rigg said.
“First, you must make your most solemn promise that you will not come look at me, now while I’m alive or later after I’m dead. I don’t want you to have this terrible image in your memory.”
It couldn’t possibly be worse than what I’m imagining, Rigg said silently. Then he silently gave himself Father’s own answer: You can’t possibly know whether what you imagine is worse than the reality. I can see the reality, you can’t, so… shut up.
“I can’t believe you didn’t argue with me right then,” said Father.
“I did,” said Rigg. “You just didn’t hear me.”
“All right then,” said Father. “Your oath.”
“I promise.”
“Say it all. Say the words.”
It took all Rigg’s concentration to obey. “I promise solemnly that I will not come look at you, either now while you’re alive or later after you’re dead.”
“And you will keep this promise, even to a dead man?” asked Father.
“I recognize your purpose and I agree with it,” said Rigg. “Whatever I imagine might be awful, but I will know that I don’t know that it’s true. Whereas even if the reality is not as bad as what I imagine, I will know it is real, and therefore it will be a memory and not my imagination, and that will be far more terrible.”
“So because you agree with my purpose,” said Father, “following your own inclination will lead you to obey me and to keep your oath.”
“This subject has been adequately covered,” said Rigg, echoing Father’s own way of saying, We have achieved understanding, so let’s move on.
“Go back to where we parted,” said Father. “Wait there till morning and harvest from the traps. Do all the work that needs doing, collect all the traps so you don’t lose any of them, and then carry the pelts to our cache. Take all the pelts from there and carry them back to the village. The burden will be heavy, but you can carry it, though you don’t have your manheight yet, if you take frequent rests. There is no hurry.”
“I understand,” said Rigg.
“Did I ask you whether you understand? Of course you understand. Don’t waste my time.”
Silently Rigg said, My two words didn’t waste as much time as your three sentences.
“Take what you can get for the pelts before you tell anyone I’m dead-they’ll cheat you less if they expect me to return for an accounting.”
Rigg said nothing, but he was thinking: I know what to do, Father. You taught me how to bargain, and I’m good at it.
“Then you must go and find your sister,” said Father.
“My sister!” blurted Rigg.
“She lives with your mother,” said Father.
“My mother’s alive? What is her name? Where does she live?”
“Nox will tell you.”
Nox? The woman who kept the rooming house they sometimes stayed in? When Rigg was very young he had thought Nox might be his mother, but he long since gave up that notion. Now it seems she was in Father’s confidence and Rigg was not. “You tell me! Why did you make me think my mother was dead? And a sister-why was this a secret? Why haven’t I ever seen my mother?”
There was no answer.
“I’m sorry. I know I said I wouldn’t argue, but you never told me, I was shocked, I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry. Tell me what else you think I should know.”
There was no answer.
“Oh, Father!” cried Rigg. “Speak to me one more time! Don’t punish me like this! Talk to me!”
There was no answer.
Rigg thought things through the way he knew Father would expect him to. Finally he said what he knew Father would want him to say.
“I don’t know if you’re punishing me with silence or if you’re already dead. I made a vow not to look and I’ll keep it. So I’m going to leave and obey your instructions. If you’re not dead, and you have anything else to say to me, say it now, speak now, please speak now.” He had to stop because if Father wasn’t dead he didn’t want him to hear that Rigg was crying.
Please, he said silently as he wept.
“I love you, Father,” said Rigg. “I will miss you forever. I know I will.”
If that didn’t provoke Father into speech, nothing ever would.
There was no answer.
Rigg turned resolutely and walked back, retracing his own bright path among the trees and underbrush, along the deer path, back to the last spot where he had seen his father alive.
CHAPTER 2
Upsheer Ram Odin was raised to be a starship pilot. It was his father who adopted the Norse god of the sky as their surname, and it was his father who made sure Ram was absolutely prepared to go into astronaut training two years before the normal time.
Every bit of surplus wealth on Earth had been used to build humanity’s first interstellar colony ships; it took forty years. Under the shadow of moondust that still blocked out more than a third of the sun’s rays from the surface of Earth, the sense of urgency flagged very little, despite the human ability to get used to anything.
Everyone understood how close the human race had come to extinction when the comet swept past Earth and gouged its way into the near face of the moon. Even now, there was no certainty that the Moon’s orbit would restabilize; astronomers were almost evenly divided among those who thought it would sooner or later collide with Earth, and those who thought a new equilibrium would be achieved.
So all who had survived the first terrible years of worldwide cold and famine dedicated themselves to building two identical ships. One would crawl out into space at ten percent of lightspeed, with generation after generation of future colonists living, growing old, and dying inside its closed ecosystem.
The other ship, Ram’s ship, would travel seven years away from the solar system and then make a daring leap into theoretical physics.
Either spacetime could be made to fold, skipping ninety lightyears and putting the colony ship only seven years away from the earthlike planet that was its destination, or the ship would obliterate itself in the attempt… or nothing would happen at all, and it would crawl on for nine hundred more years before reaching its new world.
The colonists on Ram’s ship slept their way toward the foldpoint. If all went well, they would remain asleep through the fold and not be wakened until they neared their destination. If nothing happened at all, they would be wakened to begin farming the vast interior, starting the thirty-five generations that the colony must survive until arrival.
Ram alone would remain awake the entire time.
Seven years with only the expendables for company. Once engineered to do work that might kill an irreplaceable human being, the expendables had now been so vastly improved that they could outlive and outwork
