Outnumbering the Dead

10

Rafiel knows that Alegretta has come from somewhere near Mars, and he knows pretty well how far away Mars is from the Earth: many millions of kilometres. He knows how long even a steady-thrust spacecraft takes to cross that immense void between planets, and then how long it takes for a passenger to descend to a spaceport and get to this remote outpost on the edge of the Sonoran desert. And he is well able to count back the days and see that Alegretta must have started this trip to his side - at the very least - ten days or two weeks before, which is to say right around the time when he collapsed into the hospital back in Indiana. He knows all that, and understands its unpleasing implications. He just doesn't want to think about any of those implications at that moment.

When you have lost the love of your life and suddenly, without warning, she appears in it again, what do you do?

First, of course, there is kissing, and It's been so longs, and How good it is to see yous, and of course Alegretta has to see how well the kitten she sent is doing, and Rafiel has to admire the fat white cat Alegretta has brought with her, a server carrying it for her in a great screened box (it has turned out to be the kitten's mother), and of course Rafiel has to offer food and drink, and Alegretta has to accept something ... but then what? What - after half a century or more - do you say to each other? What Rafiel said, watching his love nibble on biscuits and monkey-orange and beer, was only, 'I didn't expect you here.'

'Well, I had to come,' she said, diffident, smiling, stroking the snow-white cat that lay like a puddle in her lap, 'because Nicolette here kept rubbing up against me to tell me that she really missed her baby kitten - and because, oh, Rafiel, I've been so damn much missing you.' Which of course led to more kissing over the table, and while the server was cleaning up the beer that had got spilled in the process, Rafiel sank back to study her. She hadn't changed. The hair was a darker red now, but it was still Alegretta's unruly curly-mop hair, and the face and the body that went with the hair were not one hour older than they had been - sixty? seventy? however many years it had been since they last touched like this. Rafiel felt his heart trembling in his chest and said quickly, 'What were you saying about Hakluyt?'

'My ship. Yes.'

'You're going on that ship?'

'Of course I am, dear.' And it turned out that she was, though such a thing had never occurred to him when he was talking to the dramaturge woman. There definitely was a Hakluyt habitat, and it really was, even now, being fitted with lukewarm-fusion drives and a whole congeries of pion generators that were there to produce the muons that would make the fusion reactor react.

'You know all this nuclear fusion stuff?' Rafiel asked, marvelling.

'Certainly I do. I'm the head engineer on the ship, Rafiel,' she said with pride, 'and I'm afraid that means I can't stay here long. They're installing the drive engines right now, and I must be there before they finish.'

He shook his head. 'So now you've become a particle physicist.'

'Well, an engineer, anyway. Why not? You get tired of one thing, after you've done it for ninety or a hundred years. I just didn't want to be a doctor any more; when things go right it's boring, and when they don't-'

She stopped, biting her lip, as though there were something she wanted to say. Rafiel headed her off. 'But what will you find when you get to this distant what's-its-name star?'

'It's called Tau Ceti.'

'This Tau Ceti. What do you expect? Will people be able to live there?'

She thought about that. 'Well, yes, certainly they will - in the habitat, if nothing else. The habitat doesn't care what star it orbits. We do know there are planets there, too. We don't know, really, if any of them has life....'

'But you're going anyway?'

'What else is there to do?' she asked, and he laughed.

'You haven't changed a bit,' he said fondly.

'Of course not. Why should I?' She sounded almost angry - perhaps at Rafiel because, after all, he had. He shook his head, reached for her with loving hunger, and pulled her to him.

Of course they made love, with the cat and the kitten watching interestedly from the chaise longue at the side of the room. Then they slept a while, or Alegretta did, because she was still tired from the long trip. Remarkably, Rafiel was not in the least tired. He watched over her tenderly, allowing himself to be happy in spite of the fact that he knew why she was there.

She didn't sleep long, and woke smiling up at him. 'I'm sorry, Rafiel,' she said.

'What have you got to be sorry for?'

'I'm sorry I stayed away so long. I was afraid, you see.' She sat up, naked. 'I didn't know if I could handle seeing you, well, grow old.'

Rafiel felt embarrassment. 'It isn't pretty, I suppose.'

'It's frightening,' she said honestly. 'I think you're the main reason I gave up medicine.'

'It's all right,' he said, soothing. 'Anyway, I'm sure what you're doing now is more interesting. Going to another star. It takes a lot of courage, that.'

'It takes a lot of hard work.' Then she admitted, 'It takes courage, too. It certainly took me a long time to make up my mind to do it. Sometimes I still wonder if I have the nerve to go through with it. We'll be thirty-five years en route, Rafiel. Nearly five thousand people, all packed together for that long.'

He frowned. 'I thought somebody said the Hakluyt was supposed to have twenty thousand to start.'

'We were. We are. But there aren't that many volunteers for the trip, you see. That's why they made me chief engineer; the other experts didn't see any reason to leave the solar system, when they were doing so many interesting things here.' She leaned forward to kiss him. 'Do you know what my work is, Rafiel? Do you know anything about lukewarm-fusion?'

'Well,' he began, and then honestly finished: 'No.'

She looked astonished, or perhaps it was just pitying. 'But there are powerplants in every arcology. Haven't you ever visited one?' She didn't wait for an answer but began to tell him about her work, and how long she had had to study to master the engineering details. And in his turn he told her about his life as a star, with the personal appearances and the fans always showing up, wherever he went, with their love and excitement; and about the production of Oedipus they had just finished, and the members of the troupe. Alegretta was fascinated by the inside glimpses of the lives of the famous. Then, when he got to the point of telling her about Docilia and her decision to try monogamy with the father of her child, as soon as the child was born, anyway, Alegretta began to purse her lips again. She got up to stare out the window.

He called, 'Is something wrong?'

She was silent for a moment, then turned to him seriously. 'Rafiel, dear,' she said. 'There's something I have to tell you.'

'I know,' he said reluctantly.

'No, I don't think you do. I didn't come here by accident. Mosay-'

He was beside her by then, and closed her lips with a kiss. 'But I do know,' he said. 'Mosay called you to tell you, didn't he? Why else would you come all the way back to Earth in such a great hurry? That little episode I had, it wasn't just fatigue, was it? It meant they can't keep me going much longer, so the bad news is that I don't have much time left, do I? I'm going to die.'

'Oh, Rafiel,' she said, woebegone.

'But I've known that this was going to happen all my life,' he said reasonably, 'or at least since you told me. It's all right.'

'It isn't!'

He shrugged, almost annoyed. 'It has to be all right, because I'm mortal,' he explained.

She was shaking her head. 'Yes. But no.' She seemed almost near tears as she plunged on. 'Don't you see, that's why I came here like this. You don't have to die completely. There's a kind of immortality that even short-timers have open to them if they want it. Like your Docilia.'

He frowned at her, and she reached out and touched his lips. 'Will you give me a baby?' she whispered. 'A son? A boy who will look just like you when he grows up - around Tau Ceti?'