Dividing up h by 2ir
That damn differential equation
Still has no solution for V.
“Bring back, bring back—”
Aliyat and Tu Shan laughed into each other’s mouths. Wanderer and Svoboda circled as if through a dream.
“Well, Heisenberg came to the rescue, Intending to make alt secure. What is the result of his efforts? We are absolutely unsure.
“Bring back, bring back—”
Aliyat left her partner, approached, beckoned to Yukiko. Macandal stepped aside. The two whispered together.
“Dirac spoke of energy levels, Both minus and plus. Oh, how droll! And now, just because of his teaching, We don’t know our mass from a hole.
“Bring back—“ Aliyat returned to Tu Shan. They left the room arm in arm.
“She asked if you’d mind, didn’t she?” Macandal inquired.
Yukiko nodded. “I don’t. I truly don’t. She surely remembered that. But it was good of her to ask.”
Macandal sighed. “His nature too, isn’t it? I’ve wondered—I’m a trifle in my own cups—don’t be offended, please, but I’ve wondered how much you really love him.”
“What is love? Among my people, most people, what counted was respect. Affection normally grew out of it.”
“Yeah.” Macandal’s gaze followed the pair still on the floor.
Yukiko winced. “Are you in pain, Corinne?”
“No, no. Nothing’s going to happen with those two. Though, as you say, it shouldn’t matter if anything did, should it?” Macandal made a laugh. “Johnnie’s a gentleman. He’ll ask me for the next dance. I can wait.”
“Bring back, bring back,
Oh, bring back that old continuity—”
18
STRANGER AND ever stranger gjew the cosmos that the ship beheld. Aberration of light sent star images crawling aside, while Doppler shift blued those forward and reddened those aft until many no longer shone at any wavelength the eye could perceive. In the ship’s measure, the mass of the atoms that its fields scooped up increased with the rising velocity; distances that it was traversing shrank, as if space were flattening under the impact; time passed more quickly, less of it between one atomic pulsebeat and the next. Pytheas would never reach the haste of light, but the closer it sped, the more foreign to the rest of the universe it became.
Alone among the eight, Yukiko had taken to seeking communion yonder. She would settle in the navigation chamber, otherwise unused until journey’s end drew nigh, and bid the screens give her the view. It was a huge and eerie grandeur, there around her shell of humming silence— blacknesses, ringfire, streams of radiance. Before the spirit could seek into it, the mind must. She studied the tensor equations as once she studied the sutras, she meditated upon the koans of science, and at last she began to feel her oneness with all that was, and in the vision find peace.
She did not let herself go wholly into it. Had she become able to, that would have been a desertion of comrades and dereliction of duty. She hoped she might help Tu Shan, and others if they wished, toward the serenity behind the awe-someness, once she herself had gone deeply enough. Not as a Boddhisatva, no, no, nor a guru, only as a friend who had something wonderful to share. It would help them so much, in the centuries to come.
They had need of every strength. Hardships and dangers counted for little, would often be gladdening, a gift of that reality which had slipped from their hands on Earth. The loneliness, though. Three hundred years between word and reply. How much more distanced might Earth become in three hundred more years?
Never before had the eight been this isolated for this long; and it would go on. Oh, it was scarcely worse than isolation had grown at home. (And if shiploads of settlers arrived, once Pha-eacia was proven habitable—if it was; if they did—what would they really have in common with the Survivors?) But it worked on them more than they had foreseen. Forced in upon themselves, they discovered less than they perhaps had looked for.
Horizons and challenge should open them up again. Yet they might always be haunted by the understanding that they were not actually pioneers, mightily achieving what they had determined they would do. They were … not quite outcasts … failures, leftovers from a history that no longer mattered, sent on their way almost casually, as an act of indifferent kindness.