NOTHING NATURAL could have steered the ship. It did itself, a set of systems joined in a unity as complex as a living organism, maintaining its motion and existence outwardly, its livable environment inwardly. Humans became passengers, occupying their tune as best they might.
Living quarters were bleakly functional, eight individual staterooms, a gymnasium, a workshop, a galley, a dining saloon, a common room, certain auxiliaries such as bathrooms and a dream chamber. Making them pleasanter gave enjoyment to those whose talents lay in that direction. Yukiko urged that they begin with the common room. “It is where we shall most be together,” she said. “Not simply for ease and company. In trouble too, or communion, or awe.”
Hanno nodded. “Our marketplace,” he agreed. “And markets began with temples.”
“Well,” cautioned Tu Shan, “we’d better plan things so the decorating doesn’t interfere with the use.”
The three found themselves alone there one evening. The ship maintained Earth’s immemorial cycle of day and night, the clock to whose beat life had arisen and evolved. It would gradually shift to the different rhythm of the destination world. Dinner was past and others had withdrawn to their rest or their recreations, none of which happened to be here. In the corridor beyond, twilight deepened toward darkness. Soon the widely spaced soft ganglights would turn on.
Tu Shan fixed a box to wall brackets he had forged in vine shapes. “I thought you were going to carve decorations on that first,” Hanno remarked.
“I want to put soil in it now and begin raising flowers,” Tu Shan explained. “Later I will make an ornamental railing and attach it.1’
Yukiko gave him a smile. “Yes, you do need flowers,” she agreed. “Living things.” What grew beneath her own hands was a mural painting, a landscape of hills, village, bamboo, in the foreground a blossoming cherry bough.
“I will carve the railing in animal shapes.” He sighed. “If only we could have animals aboard.” Their DNA patterns reposed in the databank. Someday, if all went well, there would be synthesis, growth tanks, release.
“Yes, I miss my ship’s cats,” Hanno admitted. “But a sailor got used to doing without most things. It made going ashore that much the happier.” His fingers plied rope, knot-work to hang at certain spots. Its Phoenician pattern would not clash with the Asian motif. He glanced at the mural. “That’s becoming lovely.”
Yukiko bowed in his direction. “Thank you. A poor copy, I fear, of what I can remember from a building that perished centuries ago.” —before things were recorded, for presentation at will in total-sensory imaging.
“You should have done it on Earth.”
“Nobody seemed interested.”
“Or had you simply lost heart? Never mind. We’ll beam it back from our planet. It’s as special as anything we’re likely to find there.” Its physical self would long since have gone down into the databank, its materials into the nanotech processors, converted to whatever was needed for the next project.
Aliyat had contended that the whole idea was foolish. No one wanted to spend fifteen years staring at a changeless picture. Why make it, to destroy and replace with something else, when projection panels could instantly create any of thousands of simulacra?
“I think before then, our friends will accept that this work was worth doing,” Hanno added.
“They kindly let me indulge in my pastime,” Yukiko said.
“No, I mean for its own sake. More than a pastime. We could invent plenty of mere amusements. We doubtless will. If necessary, we can just wait. A year goes by fast after you’ve had hundreds or thousands of them.”
“Unless much happens,” Tu Shan observed.
Hanno nodded. “True. I don’t pretend to understand what the physicists mean by time, but for people, it isn’t so-and-so many measured units; it’s events, experiences. A man who crowds his life and dies young has lived longer than one who got old sitting in tame sameness.”
“Perhaps the old man was finding his way toward wisdom,” Yukiko ventured. She lowered her brush. Her tone grew troubled. “For me, that was never possible. My years of quietness always Became, at last, a burden. It is the penalty of never aging. The body does not ease its hold on the spirit.”