He found himself suddenly and unexpectedly grateful to Curnow; the other was obviously surprised at his concern for Zenia, but had not attempted to exploit it in his own defence.
And if he had, would it have been unfair? Now, days later, Floyd was beginning to wonder if his own motives were altogether admirable. For his part, Curnow had certainly kept his promise; indeed, if one did not know better, one might have imagined that he was deliberately ignoring Max – at least while Zenia was around. And he treated her with much greater kindness; indeed, there were occasions when he had even succeeded in making her laugh out loud.
So the intervention had been worthwhile, whatever the impulse behind it. Even if, as Floyd sometimes ruefully suspected, it was no more than the secret envy that normal homo or heterosexuals feel, if completely honest with themselves, toward cheerfully well-adjusted polymorphs.
His finger crept back toward the recorder, but the train of thought had been broken. Inevitably, images of his own home and family came crowding into his mind, He closed his eyes, and memory recalled the climax of Christopher’s birthday party – the child blowing out the three candles on the cake, less than twenty-four hours ago but almost a billion kilometres away. He had played the video back so often that now he knew the scene by heart.
And how often had Caroline played his messages to Chris, so that the boy would not forget his father – or view him as a stranger when he returned after missing yet another birthday? He was almost afraid to ask.
Yet he could not blame Caroline. To him, only a few weeks would have passed before they met again. But she would have aged more than two years while he was in his dreamless sleep between the worlds. That was a long time to be a young widow, even a temporary one.
I wonder if I’m coming down with one of the shipboard maladies, Floyd thought; he had seldom felt such a sense of frustration, even of failure. I may have lost my family, across the gulfs of time and space, all to no purpose. For I have achieved nothing; even though I have reached my goal, it remains a blank, impenetrable wall of total darkness.
And yet – David Bowman had once cried: ‘My God! It’s full of stars!’
29
Emergence
Sasha’s latest edict read:
RUSSLISH BULLETIN #8
Subject: Tovanshch (tovarish)
To our American guests:
Frankly, pals, I can’t remember when I was last addressed by this term. To any twenty-first century Russian, it’s way back there with the battleship Potemkin – a reminder of cloth caps and red flags and Vladimir Ilich haranguing the workers from the steps of railway carriages
Ever since I was a kid it’s been bratets or druzhok-take your choice, you’re welcome.
Comrade Kovalev
Floyd was still chuckling over this notice when Vasili Orlov joined him as he floated through the lounge/observation deck on his way to the bridge.
‘What amazes me, tovarishch, is that Sasha ever found time to study anything besides engineering physics. Yet he’s always quoting poems and plays I don’t even know, and he speaks better English than – well, Walter.’
‘Because he switched to science, Sasha is – what do you say – the black sheep of the family. His father was a professor of English at Novosibirsk. Russian was only allowed in the house Monday to Wednesday; Thursday to Saturday it was English.’
‘And Sundays?’
‘Oh, French or German, alternate weeks.’
‘Now I know exactly what you mean by nekulturny; fits me like a glove. Does Sasha feel guilty about his… defection? And with such a background, why did he ever become an engineer?’
‘At Novosibirsk, you soon learn who are the serfs and who are the aristocrats. Sasha was an ambitious young man, as well as a brilliant one.’
‘Just like you, Vasili.’
‘Et tu, Brute! You see, I can quote Shakespeare as well – Bozhe moi! – what was that?’
Floyd was unlucky; he was floating with his back to the observation window, and saw nothing at all. When he twisted around, seconds later, there was only the familiar view of Big Brother, bisecting the giant disk of Jupiter, just as it had done ever since their arrival.
But to Vasili, for a moment that would be imprinted on his memory forever, that sharp-edged outline held a completely different, and wholly impossible, scene. It was as if a window had suddenly been opened onto another universe.
The vision lasted for less than a second, before his involuntary blink reflex cut it off. He was looking into a field not of stars, but of suns, as if into the crowded heart of a galaxy, or the core of a globular cluster. In that moment, Vasili Orlov lost forever the skies of Earth. From now on they would seem intolerably empty; even mighty Orion and glorious Scorpio would be scarcely noticeable patterns of feeble sparks, not worthy of a second glance.
When he dared to open his eyes again, it was all gone. No – not completely. At the very centre of the now-restored ebon rectangle, a faint star was still shining.
But a star did not move as one watched. Orlov blinked again, to clear his watering eyes. Yes, the movement was real; he was not imagining it.
A meteor? It was some indication of Chief Scientist Vasili Orlov’s state of shock that several seconds passed before he remembered that meteors were impossible in airless space.
Then it blurred suddenly into a streak of light, and within a few heartbeats had vanished beyond the edge of Jupiter. By this time, Vasili had recovered his wits and was once more the cool, dispassionate observer.
Already he had a good estimate of the object’s trajectory. There could be no doubt; it was aimed directly at Earth.
V
A CHILD OF THE STARS
30
Homecoming
It was as if he had awakened from a dream – or a dream within a dream. The gate between the stars had brought him back to the world of men, but no longer as a man.
How long had he been away? A whole lifetime… no, two lifetimes; one forward, one in reverse.
As David Bowman, commander and last surviving crew member of United States Spaceship Discovery, he had been caught in a gigantic trap, set three million years ago and triggered to respond only at the right time, and to the right stimulus. He had fallen through it, from one universe to another, meeting wonders some of which he now understood, others which he might never comprehend.
He had raced at ever-accelerating speed, down infinite corridors of light, until he had outraced light itself. That, he knew, was impossible; but now he also knew how it could be done. As Einstein had rightly said, the Good Lord was subtle, but never malicious.
He had passed through a cosmic switching system – a Grand Central Station of the galaxies – and emerged, protected from its fury by unknown forces, close to the surface of a giant red star.
There he had witnessed the paradox of sunrise on the face of a sun, when the dying star’s brilliant white dwarf companion had climbed into its sky – a searing apparition, drawing a tidal wave of fire beneath it. He had felt no fear, but only wonder, even when his space pod had carried him down into the inferno below… to arrive, beyond all reason, in a beautifully appointed hotel suite containing nothing that was not wholly familiar. However, much of it was fake; the books on the shelves were dummies, the cereal boxes and the cans of beer in the icebox – though they bore famous labels – all contained the same bland food with a texture like bread but a taste that was almost anything he cared to imagine.
He had quickly realized that he was a specimen in a cosmic zoo, his cage carefully recreated from the images in old television programmes. And he wondered when his keepers would appear, and in what physical form.
How foolish that expectation had been! He knew now that one might as well hope to see the wind, or speculate about the true shape of fire.
Then exhaustion of mind and body had overwhelmed him. For the last time, David Bowman slept.
It was a strange sleep, for he was not wholly unconscious. Like a fog creeping through a forest, something invaded his mind. He sensed it only dimly, for the full impact would have destroyed him as swiftly and surely as the fires raging around him. Beneath its dispassionate scrutiny, he felt neither hope nor fear.
Sometimes, in that long sleep, he dreamed he was awake. Years had gone by; once he was looking in a mirror, at a wrinkled face he barely recognized as his own. His body was racing to its dissolution, the hands of the biological clock spinning madly toward a midnight they would never reach. For at the last moment, Time came to a halt – and reversed itself.