Into the Sea of Stars

Chapter 7

Colonial Unit 287

First Completion Date: 2052

Primary Function: Experimental Longevity Unit. Com bined Russo/American effort with cybernetic implants designed to continue life beyond the then 130-year maximum. Such research had been banned on Earth in 2041 by the United Nations as a response to Third World pressures concerning the question of population control. Anyone already using artificial organ implants was exiled to space in 2050, with most moving to the 280-model units.

Evacuation Date: December 2085.

Overall Design: Bernal Sphere. Lower rotation rate with. 3 G standard gravity. Extensive living area in the zero- G regions.

Propulsion: Matter/Antimatter mix.

Course: Galactic Core.

Political/Social Orientation: Corporate model managed by ruling board. This unit was a nonpolitical interface be tween the Americans and the Soviets, and yet another example of their expanding cooperation in the middle twenty-first century.

" Discovery, you are cleared for final approach and docking."

Stasz had them lined up on the long axis of the slowly rotating sphere, and with gentle nudges of the thruster controls he guided Discovery toward the main external docking bay. They had been invited to enter via the main interior bay, but Ian insisted on an outside dock so they could leave whenever they desired and, if need be, with out hindrance or permission.

As the massive bulk of the two-kilometer-diameter sphere filled their forward viewscreen, Ian was finally torn from his observations by Shelley's insistent nudge.

"Here's a brief review of the records in your file, I thought you'd like to take them with us. I've provided copies to Richard and Ellen, as well."

"Thanks, shall we join them?"

Shelley nodded her agreement and together they floated down the corridor to the docking bay.

Damn, she's simply too efficient at times, Ian thought. He always felt uncomfortable around efficient people, they made him feel foolish and somewhat guilty. He knew his dallying with Ileia bothered her, but Shelley was only his graduate assistant. Richard had commented time and again over the last ten days 'Remember that virginal graduate assistant of yours is only three years older than your redheaded Amazon.'

Naw, there can't be anything in it. Shelley's a gawky grad-ass with a mild dose of hero worship for her brilliant professor… He pushed the thought aside; they came through the airlock and joined the other two.

"You've had a chance to scan my notes?" Ian asked.

"Looks fascinating," Ellen replied. "What've they dis covered if their experiments have been continued since their departure?"

"We'll soon know," Richard murmured expectantly as a faint jolt ran through the ship. The docking adapter hooked on to the colony's exterior airlock and quickly formed a pressurized seal.

"All clear," Stasz called from the control room.

Ian reached out and pushed the door release. It slid back noiselessly. Even as their hatch opened, the colony's hatch parted, as well, to reveal the usual double-entry system

Ian and the others pushed off, and as the last of them cleared the second doorway, it slid shut behind them.

"Dr. Lacklin," said the voice of the colony's approach control, "as I mentioned earlier, we do request disinfec tion."

"I doubt if that is necessary," Richard replied.

"Use our disinfection facilities or leave us, Dr. Lack lin."

Ian looked at the others, shrugged. They put on safety glasses as requested and were dosed with an ultraviolet bath, followed by a disinfectant spray. Finally they were required to don robes, surgical masks, and gloves.

Richard looked professional in the robes, but Ellen snickered at the sight of the old M.D. as he flapped around in zero G wrapped in a green hospital gown.

"We're ready," Ian called. The second doorway opened. The slight inrush of air carried the scent of disinfectant and alcohol, mixed with a slightly unpleasant something that made all of them feel uneasy.

They exited into the main corridor, where a slender man floated in free-fall. Ian had wondered what he would look like. He had expected a bent form, aged beyond imagining, dried out, his desiccated flesh fit only for the grave. But this one was different. He was old, extremely old. If anything gave the age away, it was the eyes that betrayed a soul that had seen too much. The man was totally bald; the skin of his head wrinkled and yellow like old parchment. But he moved with an easy grace as he floated closer, his robes rustling lightly and giving off a scent of cleanness and starch.

"I am Joshua Morisson," the man said with a crisp voice that was almost too precise and clear, "and you must be Drs. Lacklin, Croce, and Redding." He nodded to each in turn.

He stared at Shelley for a moment and smiled softly. "And you are their young assistant Shelley."

His smile flickered and then died. "You have much to tell me, all of you. I want to hear again of Earth."

Ian looked at him closely, almost afraid to ask.

"I want to hear again of my home," Joshua whispered, "for you see, Dr. Lacklin, I am over sixty-score years of age. And I wish again to hear of the world where I was young."

The others were gone, off on a tour of the colony, led by an assistant who looked even older than Joshua. But Ian had not wanted to leave the man. Here was the dream of a lifetime fulfilled at last. He stood face to face with a life that had spanned a millennium, a life that had seen that distant time of so long ago when the world was young-and the greatest of adventures was just begin ning.

So he had answered with patience the old man's ques tions and watched with fascination as his host explored the corridors of long-forgotten memories. Occasionally the old man softly cried, as if each of the memories was a sharpened point driven into his psyche, reopening long- forgotten wounds.

"So, it is all gone-Washington, London, Moscow, the great museums, the lovely churches, the soaring monu ments-all gone, as lost now as Troy and Carthage."

"Not really," Ian replied. "There is a New Mosca and Nova Washington. I participated at a dig for the old Cap itol building when I was a graduate student."

Joshua nodded sadly. "You see, young Ian. You see. You participated in a 'dig,' as you call it, for something that is still alive in my mind. You were digging for relics where I walked when I was a boy. I remember"-and his voice grew softer-"I remember seeing a President buried out of that Capitol when I was seven."

"Who?" lan's curiosity was screaming at him. Here was the link. The living memory that could touch back into a long-lost world. It was the ultimate dream come true. This man had been there, had seen, had experienced it all-ten thousand questions begged to be answered.

"Who? Who? Why I'm not sure," Joshua said softly. "I can see him, I can remember his voice carrying clear and high on a cold January day, and then he was dead. But who was he, you ask." His voice drifted away.

Ian waited patiently, hoping that the layers of memory would be stirred, but nothing came, just a slight shaking of the head and then a half-bemused smile of sadness.

"It is so long ago that I have not thought of it in a hundred, maybe two hundred years. I am old, Ian, my comrades and I. Old as if we were like Adam, bent under the weight of endless centuries since the loss of Paradise."

Ian leaned forward and touched Joshua on the hand. He felt a sense of awe that he was touching something alive from the distant age he had dreamed about since childhood. He realized, as well, that underneath this "specimen" that he wished to probe and record, there was a man like himself. "How does it feel?" Ian whispered. "I somehow can't imagine it-how does it feel to have lived so long?"

Joshua smiled, as if he had waited and prepared for that question. "I can remember when I was a child. There was a thing called movies, do you have them still?"

Ian nodded.

"I can remember a day when I wanted to go to a movie and my mother said she would take me that afternoon into the city. How I wanted to see it, how I had waited for weeks for that film to arrive. It was early in the morn ing, and so I settled down to wait for my mother to take me. And the seconds dragged by as if each fragment was a frozen entity slowly melting, to be replaced by yet another slow melting fragment. I waited for an eternity…" His voice trailed off for a moment, so that Ian thought he had fallen asleep, but suddenly he stirred.

"Do you remember the eternity of time when you were a child? That morning will be forever frozen in my mind. I believe that only a child can truly see time in its passage. As we grow older time slips through our fingers without our ever grasping it. And now you ask what my eternity is like.

"I will tell you, Ian Lacklin, that the centuries of this endless journey have seemed like but a moment to me, when compared to that morning of a millennium ago. For all of time is an illusion. I drift now through eternity and no longer feel its passage. There is no awe, there is nothing to excite, there is only eternity."

He knew the question was foolish but he had to ask.

"What was the, ahh, movie, I think you called it?"

Joshua smiled again, as if he knew that this question would be asked, as well. "I can't recall now, it was some thing about the future and our distant past. It was about space and a man who traveled far, but I can't recall. All I remember is that in the end, we didn't go. My mother forgot her promise to me and left with some friends, and so I didn't go. And across the centuries all I can now remember is the pain."

"How have you managed this?" Ian asked. "How have you lived so long?"

" Ahh, how have I kept the spirit trapped in this vessel? I believe you are the historian, Ian, you must know of our grand design?"

"All I have are the few records that survived the Ho locaust."

"So that is what you call it now. I remember we used that word for something else, as well. But I guess that it is fitting, a burnt offering, yes, that is fitting.

"But you wish to know how, rather than simply to hear the ramblings of an old man."

"They're not ramblings," Ian said softly. "If need be I'll stay here as long as you will allow me, for I am far more interested than you can imagine. Joshua, you are my dream, you lived then, while I can only dream of that time. You saw it with those eyes, and through you I want to see it, as well."

"These eyes, you say." Joshua chuckled softly. "Yes, these eyes. But let me return to your original question as to how."

Ian pointed to his wrist to ask if he could record the conversation. It took Joshua several seconds to realize the nature of the small device on lan's wrist, but he nod ded his approval even as he started to talk.

"I was a genetic engineer, a researcher on the edge of our bold new frontier. And through our research, and in many other realms as well, we felt at last that we could even stare death in the face and turn him back. Our strat egies were many, just as a general will employ many dif ferent weapons, each appropriate to its task, to win his war. For this indeed was war-we were fighting the great est tyrant of all.

"Some followed the paths of mechanical engineering, so that it became possible to replace many of the organs that had once been the cause of so much anguish and pain. Soon we had the heart, the liver, the kidney, hormone producers, and even the eyes," and as he said that he gently pointed to his right eye, "which you in error said had witnessed such distant times. But the engineers' victories were merely successful counterattacks; it was we, the bioengineers, the genetic scientists, who turned the tide of victory. We learned cells would only reproduce for so many generations before losing their vitality; we learned to halt that decline in individual cells; we learned, as well, to supply antibodies tailored to the needs of each individual, growing outside his body a reserve specially designed and ready for instant application. We also mastered the rebuilding of major organs by genetic manipu lation of individual cells.

"We learned these things, and the world hated us. For our wonders were expensive beyond all imagining. Only the wealthy, only those who had made their fortunes could afford our treatments. And as billions starved, hundreds who had everything learned to extend life, to stare death in the face and cheat him of his prey. So at last the hatred of the world turned against us, and we were banished to space.

"But we already knew that space was the only place we could go to if we truly wished to cheat the final adversary. For on Earth there was too much that killed. Gravity kills as inexorably as any disease. It taxes the body, it exacts payment from its victims. Here there would be no accidents to our bodies that we could not repair, here our environment could be controlled, everything softened, everything designed, everything…"

His words drifted off for a moment.

"We've cheated him," Joshua whispered, " we've cheated him. I can live yet another thousand years and if need be, I can be saved."

"Saved?"

"Yes, many choose that in the end. If something goes wrong that we cannot stop-forms of senility, damage to memory, certain rare cancers that we have yet to learn how to control-we simply save the person. He is placed in suspended animation- ahh, I think the word is hiber nation."

"You've mastered that?"

"Yes, in the year that we fled from Earth, before the war, our researchers found the answers and learned to synthesize the necessary hormones that would trigger that most ancient of protections."

"That is fantastic!" Ian replied. "Richard has to hear about this! It could revolutionize space travel. It could open up the entire universe!"

"Yes, I would have thought your people knew about this; we shared the knowledge with another colony as payment for their leaving us alone. This was just before we left Earth. I would have thought they would have spread the information."

"What colony was that?" Ian asked casually.

"I remember meeting with their leader, he was a stu dent of mine. Funny-he was a reasonable sort of man, but driven. I gave him a small supply of the hormone, and to my surprise, he honored his word and left us. I had thought there for a moment that we would have died after all."

"Who was he?"

"His name was Smith."

Ian wanted to push for more on that, but his thoughts were becoming disoriented, as if he had suddenly been turned round and round. So what if Franklin Smith had been here? More than a millennium had passed, and with it a journey across trillions of miles. But he still felt the haunting image of the poet, floating-his words, a portent of warning.

"Would you like to see the rest?" Joshua whispered.

"What?" He was suddenly pulled back from his thoughts.

"The rest, my old friends, my fellow travelers."

"How many are like you?" Ian asked. "How many were born before the Holocaust?"

"All of us," Joshua replied. "The youngest woman to come aboard was already long past childbearing age. We are all of the long before."

Floating up out of his chair, he gently pushed off to ward the doorway and beckoned for Ian to follow.

They passed out of the docking and reception areas and finally entered the main living area of the sphere.

The smell of antiseptic was overwhelming, and with it that faint, unpleasant scent Ian could not quite place. There was a silence to the colony, as if they were in the realm of the dead.

Occasional white-robed figures would float by, and some would nod a greeting to Joshua. Ian soon noticed that very few of the ghostlike people displayed what he thought should be a natural curiosity over a stranger. The colony's inhabitants drifted by as if lost in a dream.

Joshua finally led the way out of the free-float envi ronment, and, boarding an elevator, they rode down to the one-third-gravity level at the base of the sphere.

Joshua walked with obvious discomfort and unstea diness. This section was almost entirely empty. They slowly walked along a white corridor that looked to Ian to be typical of some early hospital ward.

"Where is everyone?" Ian asked. "I haven't seen any one since we've come down."

"I'll show you," Joshua replied as they came to a dou ble door that opened silently at their approach.

Ian felt a sudden uneasy compulsion. He wanted to break away from this skeletal figure and run. Run out of the hospital with its nightmarish feel of infirmity and death.

He saw Richard, Ellen, and Shelley standing on the other side of the door, the three of them obviously sub dued.

" Ahh, your friends," Joshua said softly. "Dr. Croce, I hope you've found our technology to be of some interest."

Richard nodded slowly but was silent. lan's eyes gradually adjusted to the low level of blue lighting, and he recoiled with horror. The nightmare flashed back for a second and he wanted to scream.

They were standing in a long corridor that curved up ward and away, and he suddenly realized that this hallway completely circled the ship. And it was packed with bod ies.

They were suspended from the ceiling, each one wrapped in a see-through sarcophagus; each sarcophagus was linked with several tubes and monitors to a biosensor.

"Here is our sleep," Joshua whispered, as if afraid that too loud a voice might awaken the sleepers.

"When something finally strikes us that we cannot cure, we take the hormonal injections that trigger our hiber nation. Thus we shall ride out the millennium until at last the cures are found, until rejuvenation itself can be re created, until even we can be made young again."

Ian walked away from Joshua. And stared off aim lessly. The bodies hung around him on either side. All of them old, old and shriveled, yet still alive in their endless sleep journey. To each was affixed a data card, and he quickly scanned some.

JOHN KEENE b. 5-3-1965 HIB. 7-11-2238. ALZHEIMERS, RECURRING

MALIGNANCY.

ANDREW BARRY b. 7-17-1964 HIB. 8-1-2718. INSANITY.

WILLIAM WEBSTER b. 8-18-1945 HIB. 4-4-2110. INSANITY.

Ian looked back at Joshua. All of them born a hundred years before the Holocaust! In their minds were locked the memories. And such memories- memories of a grand and heroic age that he thought was lost. How they must have felt to have been part of the great epic. How they must have been enthralled. But as he looked back at them he also felt a growing sense of uneasiness. And Joshua stood quiet. Watching.

"How many like this?" Ian asked.

"As of yesterday's accounting, 28,455."

Ian turned and started to walk down the corridor, casually glancing at each nameplate.

INSANITY ALZHEIMERS ATTEMPTED SUICIDE SENILITY INSANITY

"What is happening here?" Ian whispered, as if to himself.

"You know," Joshua said, coming up alongside of Ian, "there are only one thousand fifty of us left-those that are still awake. I find it strange somehow to think of it. We have turned ourselves into a company of sleepers. We have cheated death and will continue to cheat him across all eternity, as we fly through the night-forever running. But eternity itself is a trap. We have cheated it. But still it exacts its price."

Ian found he could not look into his eyes. Joshua floated before him, that distant enigmatic smile still on his face.

"Of all the places I have visited or shall visit, this is the one I shall come back to," Ian said.

Joshua nodded.

"You have gazed at man-made eternity," Joshua re plied. "And Ian Lacklin the historian only wishes to visit so that he can look into the past."

Ian did not reply, for what Joshua said was true. If this was the potential of living across the millennium, then he would indeed prefer death. And in that thought Ian Lack lin started to discover something else, as well. All his life he had been a coward. In fact, at times he felt rather proud of his cowardliness and viewed it simply as the proper reaction of any intellectual. But he saw a deeper fear haunting Joshua. A fear of death so all-consuming that life in a mausoleum was thought by him to be preferable. Ian felt that he would never again fear death in quite the same way, having seen what the extreme could bring.

Joshua seemed bowed down, as if the weight of ages was oppressing him. And with that weight had come the loss of all vitality, all life-so that he was nothing but a husk, floating through the motions of living.

"I'll be back, Joshua, and we can spend long days talking, talking of all that you once saw."

"All that I once saw," Joshua said as if echoing his words.

"I've loaded our ship's memory right to capacity with your records, thank you for helping me with that. I know Richard will be fascinated with your medical data, and I can't begin to tell you how your early data library will help my research. Thank you again."

"You're welcome," Joshua replied, his voice barely audible. He seemed to be staring off into the distance, as if looking beyond to something Ian knew he could not see.

"I might not be awake when you return, Ian Lacklin. Just our talking for the last ten days has conjured up so many memories better left undisturbed. And each memory is a weight, a heavy chain dragging me down into a swirling circle of despair that I cannot escape. I may not be awake then when you return, and if not, come and visit me in the corridor of sleep and say hello, Ian Lacklin. Say hello to one who shall outlive you into eternity."