The Quiet Pools

CHAPTER 18 —GCA— “There is only one history…”

It was ten days until the end of ground training, and excitement was building in the village at AT-Houston. It was obvious to Thomas Tidwell, still sharing a house with three Memphis colonists. But it seemed to him that even a casual visitor to the compound could not fail to notice, would see it in the self-delighted smiles, the surreptitious winks and thumb-in-fist salutes.

Soon, the winks and smiles and salutes said, soon.

Soon the staff would scatter across the globe and throughout the orbiting worlds on a last sojourn home, for a final farewell to family and familiar. Even though the sailing date was still three months away, it seemed to Tidwell that the whole planet must soon echo with the ache of the tearing away, that the pain of those good-byes would surely more than cancel the giddy pleasure he was seeing on the faces of the villagers. But if that were so, he was the only one who saw it. When Evans or Colas said, “Ten more days,” it was said with potent anticipation, as a promise and a bond between the elect.

The selection sociometricians had explained their strategy to Tidwell in effusive detail—how the ground training had less to do with technology than with psychology, with forging emotional links through shared homes, shared labors, shared goals. The demanding schedule only intensified the effect, an old workshop leader’s trick carried off on a much greater scale. The colonists would part on the last day saying, “See you on the ship.” and that vow would help assure that most would keep the appointment.

Ten more days, they said. Ten more days until tomorrow begins. Ten more days until we can finally close the old book, open a new one.

And for Tidwell, ten more days until he could return to Half-whistle, the episode over, his mission concluded, though far from complete. Evans and Colas and Graham, reunited on Memphis, would count him as one who had faltered, who surrendered the dream in exchange for a tamer security—if they noted his absence at all.

No, he thought, they would not question it, or even be surprised. They had to know, just as he had come to know, living with them, that he was not one of them, one with them. They had to sense that he was deaf to whatever music pounded in their blood. There had been no lapse in civility, no attempt to exclude him. But they had to wonder why he was struggling, wonder if in his case Selection had made a mistake.

Tidwell would have thought they would shy from him, fearing that their own certainty would be contaminated by doubt. Instead, they had wrapped him in a gentle cocoon of silent sympathy and support, and went right on.

From within that cocoon, he watched them. He saw their naive energy and marveled as a parent marvels at the boundless energy of a child. He saw that they were helpless in the grip of their own dimly apprehended need, and happy being so. That selection counselor, Keith, had been right. Everything Tidwell had learned in his brief career as Thomas Grimes he learned that first day, except that he had rejected the wisdom.

They burned. He did not.

With each day, that gulf seemed wider, his estrangement from their passion more complete. They were leaving. He would stay. And in recent days it had become more important to consider what that meant to him than what it meant to them. New questions intruded on his thoughts: What becomes of the nest when the children have flown? What sort of world would the last of Allied Transcon’s starships be leaving behind? How much energy of will, how much love of life, could five ships, a mere sixty thousand people, carry away with them?

For the first time, Tidwell wondered darkly if those who remained would have enough dreams to sustain them.

These were thoughts which would not have seemed out of place in a tirade by the mythical Jeremiah, and Tidwell was discomfited by hearing them rattle, homeless and unclaimed, around his own skull. He had gotten too close; the charade had gone on too long. He had lost perspective, lost the surety of his own judgment. It was past time to withdraw, to regain the balance, to become the observer, to begin the synthesis.

And still not yet time. Ten more days.

Lying wide awake in his darkened room, the thinnest of sheets covering his nakedness in the clammy warmth, Tidwell stared ceilingward and tried to make sense of his day. I no longer know what questions to ask, he thought. I no longer know what matters.

Point: his interview that morning with Carl Miller, the University of Texas systemist whose theory of “bioeconomics” had caused such a flap in the popular media since October. The most common spin on Miller’s work was that it offered the first authoritative scientific support for Jeremiah’s claim that Allied Transcon was “bleeding” the earth.

Tidwell had put Miller on his schedule merely to fill time, to occupy a block when “Thomas Grimes” was scheduled for meaningless proficiency examinations. But Tidwell was unable to put away what Miller had to say, unable to render it meaningless with logic or counterargument.

“I’m not a Homeworlder, Dr. Tidwell,” Miller kept repeating. “I’m as excited about the Diaspora as anyone—I even subscribe to the Ur journal, Frontier. All I’ve done in my paper is analyze some of the issues in macroeconomic terms. And I think I’ve demonstrated that this is, in fact, a one-sided transaction, building and outfitting these starships. In fact, I think that it’s time to revive the notion of the altruistic act.”

“On whose part?”

“On the part of the entire species,” said Miller. “I’ve heard Sasaki claiming that Allied has paid its own way on this. But that balance sheet is missing a lot of entries. If Sasaki wants to amortize the cost of the Project against the entire future of the colonial units, that’s fine. But what about the knowledge that these ships carry? What about the technical expertise required to build them? That’s an unvalued transaction. The cumulative cost of that intellectual capital is by far the single largest cost item on the ledger.”

“Come now,” Tidwell said dismissively, “that ‘capital’ can be spent a thousand times over and never exhausted. It goes on Memphis’s ledger as a gift of great value and no cost. Every bit of knowledge that went into its conception and construction remains available to this community—perhaps even more available, considering the effort which we’ve put into collecting and organizing it. You’re grandstanding, sir, with meaningless hypotheticals.”

“I understand your defensiveness,” Miller said. “I can’t say it often enough—I’m with you, not against you. But where does intellectual capital come from? It’s the product of an even more precious emotional capital. And emotional capital can be spent, because one of the multipliers is time. Is spent, every day, as we choose what to do with our opportunities. With our lives.”

“You are inventing realities again.”

“Are you familiar with CFS, Mr. Tidwell?”

“CFS?”

“Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,” said Miller. “It’s a useful one-organism model for bioeconomics. CFS victims are achievers, ambitious, inventive. And then they reach a point where they can’t keep the pace they’ve set for themselves. They’re weary. They sleep too much. They’re always sick, little nagging draining kinds of illnesses. The ambition vanishes. In short, they just don’t care anymore. It happens to individuals. It happens to communities. It happens to civilizations. I think it’s happening to us.”

“This is not economics,” said Tidwell. “This is political metaphysics. And you are aiding the Homeworlders, whether you consider yourself one or not.”

“Do you expect me to stop talking about this? We have a right to know what’s coming. I think that Jeremiah is right about the price we’re paying, about the decline to follow. But I think that he’s wrong to try to stop the Diaspora. Because the decline will come anyway. The capital is spent.”

“We have survived the worst of our problems,” said Tidwell. “The human race has a long and fascinating future ahead of it.”

“Yes,” Miller said. “But not on Earth. For us, this is the end of the race. This is the finish line, coming up on us now.”

Point: the afternoon briefing from the Memphis mission planners.

It was not as though there was anyone in the Building 2 auditorium who didn’t know where Memphis was headed. Sasaki’s predecessor had announced the Tau Ceti system as the provisional choice for prime rendezvous eleven years ago, and Sasaki had reconfirmed the choice three years later, long before staff and community selection had begun. The Tau Ceti of New Moon Over Barridan and other popular fictions was well ingrained in the public mind.

But Training was fond of bringing the staff together, 300 people in a 270-seat hall, for this conference or that presentation, a seminar here, a briefing there. Never longer than a fast ninety minutes, the gatherings figured in Training’s “unitary identity” strategy, a product of the best available sociometric and sociodynamic models. And an update briefing on the latest information on “T.C.,” as Anglish slang rendered it, was as good an excuse as any.

The briefing was brisk and well organized. The lecturer, a polished presenter, recalled the relevant astronomical history, with the big Publook imager above him providing three-dimensional visuals. Listening idly as he watched the pioneers watching the show, Tidwell absorbed some details to which he hadn’t attended during any previous exposure.

One of the nearest naked-eye stars, Tau Ceti had apparently been singled out early as a prime candidate for, in order, terrestrial planets, intelligent life, and Diaspora colonization. The first question was settled last, with the Hawking Space Telescope finally confirming seven planets in orbit around the G-class yellow star shortly after it went into operation in 2028.

An optimist could have taken a bet on the question of intelligent life more than a century ago, as the star had been a target of Frank Drake’s unsuccessful OZMA, the first radio-based SETI search. Every extrasolar study since had yielded the same negative result. And that included the ongoing Allied-sponsored studies employing the big scopes on Einstein, the new U.N. research station in polar orbit around the Sun.

Nowhere in the sky had they found the handiwork of intelligent life. Nowhere but on Earth had they found the signature of biological systems, past or present. Life, it seemed, was precious and rare, and the universe a lonelier place than many had once believed. Every indirect evidence, every reasoned analysis, said that Memphis might find a Venus, a Jupiter, if they were lucky a Mars or Titan, but no lush garden worlds, no alien Earth.

“We’ll go to Tau Ceti with a pocketful of options,” said the lecturer, “and write our own story as we go. If we find an interesting planet with an unfriendly climate, we might establish a research colony of a few hundred volunteers and then continue on. If the parameters are marginal, we could found a terraforming colony of up to a thousand inhabitants before leaving.

“And if they’re downright agreeable, we’ll likely all go down, keeping Memphis in orbit as a lifeboat for a few dozen years until a new generation comes along to carry on where we left off. Because you can be sure that some of them will inherit our wanderlust, and you can be just as sure they’ll think we’re as stuffy and settled as some of us consider our parents.” Laughter rippled through the room, self-knowing. “And they’ll have us as proof that it can be done. Won’t that be a moment to remember, when the first colony sends out its own colony ship?”

The question was answered by a swell of appreciative applause. Waiting it out, the lecturer smiled, nodded acknowledgment, and gave the thumb-in-fist salute. In a heart’s breath, the applause doubled, and scattered members of the audience came to their feet.

“I want to leave you with the best new picture of Tau Ceti, which we received from Einstein just this morning,” the lecturer continued as the applause faded. Above him, the Publook offered a dramatic image of a ghostly yellow star matted with the shadowy disk of one of its orbiting worlds.

“The best so far,” he said, as the applause picked up again, at first scattered, growing as he continued into an almost tribal drumming of hands. “But there’ll be better, and they’ll come from us. No one will know Tau Ceti better than we will.

“I’m glad for the pictures Starwatch feeds us. It’s amazing what additive digitizers and enhancers can do with a few photons captured ten light-years from their origin.”

He paused and swept the room with his smile. “But I’m looking forward to seeing Tau Ceti for myself, without benefit of technology. And if wishes are horses, some morning I’ll get to see it rise over a world that never knew life until you and I and the rest of the ten thousand arrived to make it our home.” He stepped down from his dais, signaling the end of the assembly, as cheers and whoops and defiant cries punctuated the fevered ovation.

How gently he plucked their strings, Tidwell thought as he sat in his seat, politely applauding. Yet how strongly they respond. Just a few months ago, Tidwell would not have wondered at the scene. He would have written it off to passionate emotion and a skillful orator—no more mysterious than a preacher exhorting his flock, or a revolutionary inspiring his followers. No different.

We shall be delivered. The message was the same. And perhaps the passions were also the same. A ready well of courage, of commitment, waiting to be drawn on. Missionary zeal, waiting for a moment in time. Had the speaker spoken knowingly of inheriting a wanderlust or merely reached for a resonant idiom? No matter. The idiom recurred in the words of many speakers.

There is only one history, but there are many historians. Where was the truth written? The fire was lit. Where did it burn? In the hearts of men? Or in the cold nucleic chemistry of their cells?

Floating in and out of consciousness, Tidwell heard a sound in the hall and then at the open doorway. He was asleep enough to be puzzled, awake enough not to startle. Looking toward the sound, he saw a moving shadow, heard a breeze, or was it a whisper? The door swung shut with a hiss.

“Who’s there?” he asked, rising to his elbows.

“It’s me, Thomas.” Softly, a woman’s voice.

The shadow became a shape alongside the bed. The breeze carried the faint scent of flowers and something more to Tidwell’s nostrils. “Miss—Malena—I am—”

A match flared in her hand, showing him the young girl’s face. The black chemise she wore showed him more, even in the flickering light. She touched the match to the wick of a stout red candle, then set the candle on the end of Tidwell’s trunk, which he had pressed into service as a nightstand.

He stared, and she smiled. “You told me to try and shock you.”

The airchair’s mounting bar silently telescoped upward and out over the bed, and Malena reached up and gracefully lifted herself onto the bed beside him. Her hand touched his hip, scalding him through the light sheet. “Have you ever made love with a woman like me?”

“No,” he said, too dumbfounded to challenge the premise of the question.

“Well,” she said with a flame-lit twinkle in her eyes, “I may not be as agile as some, but I’m not fragile, and everything else is just as you’d expect. I like to touch and be touched,” she said, her fingertips moving, burning a line across his abdomen. “I’ll need to hold on to you or the bed or my bar when I’m on top, or I won’t have any leverage. But we can take that as it comes.”

He reached out and caught her hand, firmly but not harshly. “Malena, this is—I’m afraid you expect too much from me.”

She brought his hand to her mouth and bit the ball of his thumb. Startled, he flinched and pulled his hand free, not in pain, but from the sudden charge of sexual energy, so alien and unfamiliar now.

“Please,” he said, “it has been years—”

“I know,” she said. She reached up for the bar again, and a moment later she was no longer beside him, but astride him, straddling his waist, the sheet still between them like a frail chaperone.

His breath caught, his hands shook. “Malena, please—you are a lovely girl. But how can I—you cannot understand the difficulty—”

Clinging to the bar with one hand for balance, she reached forward and pressed her other hand over his heart. She closed her eyes, as though listening intently, as though taking his measure.

“Let it back into your life,” she said gently, opening her eyes. “You’ve waited long enough, invented enough fears. You don’t have to hold yourself apart, Thomas. You have a right to permit yourself pleasure.”

What door she had thrown open he did not know, but he suddenly felt naked before her, and panic began to rise in his chest. She sensed it in an instant and caught his face in her hands.

“Just be with me,” she said gently, making him meet her eyes. “Just be here and let go of the rest. It will be all right.”

“I don’t know if I can—”

“Of course we can,” she said, touching a finger to his lips and sitting back with a little smile.

Tidwell closed his eyes and sighed away his quailing, then looked up and beheld her in the candlelight. “You are lovely,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said with a hint of a blush. Purposefully, almost theatrically, she slipped the thin straps of her garment off her shoulders, one at a time. A fetching wriggle, and her chemise slid down to bunch about her waist, baring her young breasts, her upturned nipples. Tidwell swallowed his breath as he admired her.

“Do you like them?” she asked softly.

His drawn breath an anticipatory sigh, Tidwell confessed, “Yes.”

Malena leaned forward, propping herself on her hands on either side of his shoulders, and lowered herself down to kiss him. Her lips were soft, yielding, melding, her taste the fresh-sweet peppermint of a too-recent brushing or candy.

“If you touch them, I can enjoy them, too,” she said as she broke away from the kiss.

By then, Tidwell had caught enough of her playfulness that he could take it as an invitation, not a critique. “You did warn me you would expect that,” he said, and reached for her.

Cooing happily as he caressed her nipples, Malena slid her body backward a few inches, until the bulge of his growing erection was trapped beneath her. She rocked her hips, rubbing herself against him, until the thin fabric barrier was velvet-slippery with their wetness, until Tidwell rose up, tore the sheet away, and took Malena to her back in an adolescent rush.

That was the first time: affirmation for her, release for him. The second time, with the knifelike edge of need gone for both of them, was a more leisurely, more playful ballet. Climbing a gentler curve of sensuality, fingers and mouths exploring, they became truly lovers. Her touch was new on his body and knowing on her own, their bodies sweat-slick in the heat, the humid air.

And though a second orgasm was beyond him, a second erection was not. When she straddled and rode him, leaning on his chest with one hand, being close to her and feeling the sensuality radiating from her was like being an old cat soaking up a spring sunbeam. When her body shook and clutched and she cried out her pleasure, his body was indistinguishable from hers, and he was part of what they made together, drawing from it a peace almost as profound as hers.

“You see,” she said, blowing out the candle and snuggling against him, “I knew it would be all right.”

And it was. But it could not last. When the moment was passed, the connection broken, all the thoughts which had been driven away while he lived in that moment, in a world of senses and sensation, returned to him. Joining them was an uncertain flavor of guilt and confusion, the deception which stood between him and the young woman in his arms tainting the contentment he might otherwise have felt.

“You’re still troubled,” she said, disappointed, as they cuddled together, legs entangled, Her cheek on his chest. “I wanted to take that away from you.”

Tidwell smiled in the darkness, wry and sad, as he stroked her hair reassuringly with his aged fingers.

“You took me away from it, at least for a while,” he said. “And even that is more than I would have thought anyone could do.”