Li, Davout observed, was waiting for Davout to absorb this information before continuing.
“The accident happened seven light-years out,” Li said. “Beagle began to yaw wildly, and both automatic systems and the crew failed to correct the maneuver. Beagle’s automatic systems concluded that the ship was unlikely to survive the increasing oscillations, and began to use its communications lasers to download personality data to collectors in Earth orbit. As the only crew member to elect disassembly during the return journey, you were first in the queue. The others, we presume, ran to nano disassembly stations, but communication was lost with the Beagle before we retrieved any of their data.”
“Did Katrin’s come through?”
Li stirred uneasily in his chair.
Davout closed his eyes. He had lost her again. Over the bubble of hopelessness in his throat he asked, “How long has it been since my data arrived?”
“A little over eight days.”
They had waited eight days, then, for Beagle–for the Beagle of seven years ago–to correct its problem and reestablish communication. If Beagle had resumed contact, the mass of data that was Davout might have been erased as redundant.
“The government has announced the loss,” Li said. “Though there is a remote chance that the Beagle may come flying in or through the system in eleven years as scheduled, we have detected no more transmissions, and we’ve been unable to observe any blueshifted deceleration torch aimed at our system. The government decided that it would be unfair to keep sibs and survivors in the dark any longer.”
He envisioned the last moments of the Beagle, the crew being flung back and forth as the ship slammed through increasing pendulum swings, the desperate attempts, fighting wildly fluctuating gravity and inertia, to reach the emergency nanobeds . . . no panic, Davout thought, Captain Moshweshwe had trained his people too well for that. Just desperation, and determination, and, as the oscillations grew worse, an increasing sense of futility, and impending death.
No one expected to die anymore. It was always a shock when it happened near you. Or to you.
“The cause of the Beagle’s problem remains unknown,” Li said, the voice far away. “The Bureau is working with simulators to try to discover what happened.”
Davout leaned back against his pillow. Pain throbbed in his veins, pain and loss, knowledge that his past, his joy, was irrecoverable. “The whole voyage,” he said, “was a catastrophe.”
Li signed. “You terraformed and explored two worlds,” he said. “Downloads are already living on these worlds, hundreds of thousands now, millions later. There would have been a third world added to our commonwealth if your mission had not been cut short due to the, ah, first accident . . .”
Davout hesitated, but the words were insistent; he gave them tongue. “Have Katrin’s sibs sent messages?” he asked.
Li’s grave expression scarcely changed. “I believe so.” He tilted his head. “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything I can arrange?”
“Not now, no,” said Davout.
Li’s look turned abstract as he scanned indicators projected somewhere in his mind.
“West Java. The city of Bandung.”
Earth, then. Which Davout had not seen in seventy-seven years. Memory’s gentle fingers touched his mind with the scent of durian, of ocean, of mace, cloves, and turmeric.