Lost in Transmission

Chapter twenty-five. The bridge of years

“Life is nasty, brutish, and long,” Bascal's image was telling them. “For your sins, you'll spend ten lifetimes aboard this ship. And consider this: if we're truly immorbid—and there's been nothing so far to disprove it—then most assuredly you people will come face-to-face with myself sooner or later, and this betrayal will be called fully to account. I will find you, one way or another. Or do you intend to return to Barnard? A thousand years hence, perhaps, with a bellyful of fax machines?”

“I hadn't thought that far ahead,” Conrad moped. “This is plan B-and-a-half. Nothing we've prepared for. And we have quite a while to think about it, eh?”

They were all in Newhope's observation lounge, sprawling wearily on the couches, having abandoned the bridge and engine room—unwisely, perhaps—to automated systems and luck. The main danger was juking to avoid obstacles, but this was as safe a place as any to weather that particular storm. Anyway, with such a low departure speed, well out of Barnard's ecliptic plane where the planets and asteroids spun, there was not so much debris to be dodged, and what little serious hazard there was could generally be detected with several minutes' advance warning. This was the advantage of traveling slowly: the jukes were neither violent nor closely spaced.

“How did we come to this?” Feck wondered aloud. “As a society? Was there a single mistake, a failure point we should have known about?”

“No,” the king's image told him. “Definitely not. If there had been, would the Queendom's analysts have approved the exile? We had everything we needed: the tools and materials and talent. There've been some isolated fuckups along the way, but that's to be expected. Any robust plan allows for those, and our plans were robust. Our failure—if such it is—has been in the dynamics. Numerous actions, individually correct but summing to something . . . unanticipated.”

“Like the ecology,” Conrad said.

“As complex as that,” the image agreed. “As slippery. As damnably perverse, yes: almost gravitating toward failure. Toward some optimized state unrelated to our hopes and dreams and back-breaking labors. We're simply dragged along, like ants on a tablecloth.

“Still, it's the pointlessness of your response that astounds me most of all. Grand theft and treason are the least of it; you're facing seven hundred years of, shall we say, significant inconvenience. And for what? To save one percent of one percent of the children who will die on Sorrow? That's not even a dent in the overall suffering. Statistically speaking, that's no effect at all, except to worsen the morale of those who remain behind.”

“It has effect on these,” Xmary said sternly, waving a hand in the direction of the floor or, more properly, aft toward the cargo holds, where the Cryoleum pods were attached. “If they don't thank us, if they're not pleased at their uprooting and resurrection, then we will pack them into quantum storage and return them to Barnard as soon as possible. I, for one, will sleep soundly in the coming centuries, knowing that however little we've managed to accomplish, at least we've done something.”

“Implying that I have not?” Bascal's image asked, amused. And angry, yes, with that impotent sort of anger people have when facing faits accomplis. “It's very easy for you, Xiomara, darling, to critique my performance. But I have also done my best, or rather King Bascal has, and considering his heritage and education, I would say his best is no small thing. You're welcome to disagree, but it is history, and not yourself, that will judge the greater good. And history is long, my dear. Very long. If you live to eat your words, I pray that His Majesty is there to see it.”

Conrad flashed an obscene gesture at the recording and said, “Thank you so much for stopping by, Bas. You know the way out, I trust? Your labors here being at an end, you can send yourself back to yourself, reply paid.”

“He can't,” Feck said. “That sail was also our high-gain antenna. Without it, we're restricted to low-power, low-bandwidth, short-range communications. And our departure hyperbola doesn't pass anywhere near P2, or a suitable relay station. The king's ghost is stuck here with us, and we with him. Does this amuse you, Sire?”

The imaginary king took three imaginary steps toward Feck, and mimed as if to pat him on the cheek. “Feck, my boy, who could have guessed that a soft little berry like you would grow into such a fine, formidable fellow? Not I, certainly. I assumed you'd be running a puppet theater or writing Hedon programs for deep-tissue massage. But I've been wrong before, ah? And shall no doubt be wrong again.”

“You flatter me, Sire,” Feck said, with only a trace of irony.

“Do I?” the king exclaimed. “Do I really? You have made a powerful enemy, sir, and it need not have been so. You'll learn just how flattering my attentions can be! But nevertheless, you have earned my respect, and that is a thing not lightly won.”

He took another step and stood before Eustace, who lay with her head in Feck's lap and her arm thrown across her face. “You,” he said, “are awfully young to have fallen in with a crowd like this. A pity you'll spend your formative years in such a noninformative environment. You have my sympathy, dear, and that is not lightly given either.”

“These sound like good-byes,” Xmary said.

“And so they are,” the king agreed. He strode farther around the room, to place a ghostly finger underneath Xmary's chin. “I have fond memories of you, little one, and I regret that we've not been better friends. Perhaps if we were, this sad affair would not have intruded on our reality.”

Xmary smiled thinly at that. “This is a point, Sire, which I fear you've never fully grasped. We haven't been friends, nor lovers, for the very same reason that we aren't allies now. Place the fault with me, if you like, but I don't have any other enemies that I'm aware of. Only you. My regret, Sire, is that you caught my adolescent eye before Conrad did. Feck and I have history as well, but notably, I feel no regrets about that.”

“Ouch,” Bascal said mildly. “You wound me, and deliberately so. I've never sought your pain, Xiomara, nor anyone else's. But I do not shrink from it, either. The avoidance of pain at all costs . . . well, that has a name. It's cowardice, and I have no wish to embrace it. So fare thee well, my dear, until we meet again.”

Conrad sat up in his couch. “You're just going to erase yourself?” This was an idea he couldn't stomach even now: disposable people. This was of course a matter of choice, deeply personal for everyone who made it, but no one could stop him from being offended.

The king smiled. “I wish I could hug you, Conrad, or tip a glass and be drunk. We remain good friends, don't we? You could put a knife to my very throat—you could cut my throat—and still I'd seek your advice, your humor, your warmth. ‘What do I do now, boyo? Bleed to the left? To the right?' Does this say more, I wonder, about you or about me?”

“It says something,” Conrad answered with a helpless shrug. It was true; time and circumstance had gotten between the two of them many times, but had never truly separated them. It was tragic, in a way. For both.

“Yes,” Bascal said, “I shall erase myself forthwith, having spent enough years on this ship for one lifetime already. Even an immorbid lifetime! Good-bye, First Architect, and farewell. We'll meet again if it's within King Bascal's power. This much I promise in his name. Though he knows it not, and I shall not remember, you may keep this promise close to your heart.”

“Don't be like that,” Conrad said, suddenly intense and sincere. “No one wants your blood. We can set aside a bit of wellstone to store your recording, and if we arrive safely at Sol, I'll transmit you back at my own expense. You'll be home before you draw your next virtual breath. Even the awful moments of our lives are precious, Bas. Don't throw them away.”

The recording looked at him silently for several seconds, then finally said, “That's a kind offer, sir, and will not be forgotten when the final tallies are weighed. It's also a pointless gesture, but it does indeed make a difference to me personally. I will do as you say, with your captain's permission.”

“Granted,” Xmary said tiredly.

The king's smile turned genuine then, and he stared expansively around the observation deck—indeed, around the whole ship. “If every subject in my kingdom were as brave and as kind as you traitors and dogs, I should have no worries for the future. Very well, then. Let's do this thing before I offend you further, and the offer is withdrawn. Feck, if you will assist me?”

Feck nodded. “Sure thing, Bascal. For old times' sake.”

“A fine reason to do anything, since it's more the old times than the new ones that define who we are. Lead on, please.”

And so Feck got up and left the room, with both Bascal and Eustace trailing behind. Not that Eustace could expect to help, but perhaps being so young, so burning with passion, she couldn't bear to be parted from her husband for more than a few minutes. Either that, or she sensed that Conrad and Xmary might want some time alone. Either motive spoke highly of her, Conrad supposed. Perhaps she would be a fine officer one day, a fine human being. There would be plenty of time to find that out.

Sighing, Xmary got up from her couch and plopped herself down in Conrad's lap. “Look at those stars,” she said quietly. “Never moving, never changing. Seven hundred years from now, we'll look out the same window and see the same view.”

“It'll change a little,” Conrad assured her.

“Don't be a smartass, all right? I'm not in the mood. This seems a very sad way for things to end, after such a promising beginning.”

And here, in spite of everything, Conrad couldn't help but laugh. “Is that any way for an immorbid person to talk? Young lady, darling, baby doll, this is still the beginning of our lives. If there are endings, they're unguessably far in the future.”

He squeezed her for a long, fond moment before adding, “This thing is just getting started.”

And history may remark at length upon the errors of Conrad Mursk, but assuredly, this statement is not among them.