The Dark Beyond the Stars Page 6

  As I drifted down the corridor back to my compartment, I reminded myself that he had borne a crushing responsibility for those two thousand years. He had not only watched over all of us, he had led the crew in fulfilling the destiny for which the Astron had been launched so many years before.

  If I had to die for anybody, it would be for him.

  And then I started to shiver uncontrollably, no longer able to deny what I had known from the start. If he wanted me to die, I would die all right. He was The Captain, and as such he held the power of life and death over everybody on board.

  He was also the man from my nightmares, the man in black who could see into the depths of my soul.

  Chapter 6

  I didn’t sleep well the rest of that time period, and gratefully floated free of the hammock when the wake-up light came on. The division mess wasn’t hard to find: I followed my nose to a cluttered storage compartment down the same passageway where Crow and I had our living cubicles. Clustered around a few metal crates in the middle were Ophelia, Crow, Loon, Thrush, and a dozen others, including a pleasant-faced older woman. All of them were sipping collapsicups of hot coffee.

  Members of other exploration teams were clinging to the compartment’s racks and stanchions—Hawk and Eagle, two wide-eyed fifteen-year-olds who were as new to the division as I was; Swift, beautiful but nervous and almost as shy as Pipit; Heron, sly and pimply-faced, who apparently had found a hero in Thrush; and a thin, flat-muscled girl named Snipe, with close-cropped brown hair and that air of superiority with which so many young girls antagonize immature boys.

  Ophelia was present, as were some of the other team leaders. The one nobody could ignore was Portia, fat and sharp-tongued, whose saving grace was that she was as hard on herself as she was on others. Her lover and second in command was an untidy little man named Quince who seldom had anything to say except in support of whatever she said.

  I almost didn’t notice Tybalt, but then nobody noticed Tybalt at first. He was a weathered, gray-bearded man, minus a left foot. I was later told he had lost it in a landslide on Galileo III twenty years before. He was chief of the planning division and my immediate superior when I wasn’t on call for Ophelia. He had a reputation as an easy man to work for—if you knew your job.

  The last one, Banquo, was heavy-eyed and yawning. Muscular but larded with fat, he was a member of Security as well as an assistant team leader. He took both much too seriously and made a point of sitting by himself. It was Banquo who had woken me up and taken me to the Captain a few hours before.

  I said “Good morning” to nobody in particular. Most of them murmured something in reply and all of them studied me, trying to figure out what I was like now. In turn, I studied them and wondered what I had been like before.

  Thrush roosted in a corner, apparently his favorite spot for watching the others and taking mental notes. His hair was still matted from sleep, his face occasionally distorted by a yawn. He noticed me when I slipped in but his eyes were fixed on Pipit, who was busily pushing various pouches of leaves and powders into the food dispenser.

  Crow glanced at me once, his expression hostile. I wanted badly to tell him about my visit with the Captain, but I couldn’t talk to him if he weren’t talking to me. Loon was right; I had been a fool.

  Ophelia caught my eye and nodded to the woman next to her. “Huldah, partnership Noah.” She sounded curt and looked as hostile as Crow, though I couldn’t think of any way I had antagonized her.

  Huldah was a plump little woman, eager to smile at anybody and anything. A working matron, I supposed, some minor duties in Hydroponics and a life that revolved around her partner. I nodded out of a vague sense of politeness.

  “You should talk to Huldah sometime,” Ophelia said pointedly, dropping her voice. “She knows all about the families on board.”

  I dipped my head, embarrassed. Huldah smiled the same empty smile that she had before.

  Thrush smothered another yawn, then said loudly so everybody would hear, “Did the Captain tell you all about the Astron, Sparrow?”

  I didn’t know how he knew but I didn’t try to hide my enthusiasm. “He said he wanted to go in with us at Aquinas II.”

  “I’m impressed,” Thrush mocked. “He hasn’t been off ship in a thousand years.”

  Tybalt came alive then. He glanced at Thrush with contempt, then back to me. “Pay no attention, Sparrow—if the Captain says he’s going to go in, he’ll go in.” He sipped his coffee, studying me as intently as Thrush had. What did they hope to see? I wondered.

  Thrush shrugged. “He’s an old man, he won’t remember what he said.”

  I suddenly felt ashamed. The Captain had befriended me but I had yet to defend him. I slitted my eyes and glared.

  “Say it to his face, Thrush.”

  The compartment fell silent. Thrush had disliked me before, but from now on he would be an active enemy. I didn’t think it would be any great loss.

  Heron looked at me and smirked. “Two thousand years old—he must creak when he walks.”

  Tybalt turned on him.

  “You have to be as old as the Captain to have vision, Heron. You wouldn’t understand that.”

  Whatever Thrush’s faults, he didn’t strike me as a coward. I wasn’t that sure about Heron.

  Thrush grinned and scratched his chest.

  “A vision, at any rate.”

  Ophelia said sharply, “Shut up, Thrush.” He shrugged and went back to watching Pipit. Through it all, Banquo held his tongue, leaving the reprimands to Tybalt and Ophelia. That surprised me—I would have thought Banquo was the Captain’s man if anybody was.

  The buzz of talk started up again while Pipit distributed the breakfast trays. I was as interested in the people in the compartment as I was in the food. It was easy to figure out the chain of command, which followed generational lines. There was the Captain and then probably a few right-hand men. After that came the heads of departments, like Noah and Abel, and finally the Seniors, team leaders like Ophelia and Tybalt.

  Most of the talk over breakfast was of Aquinas II, with the younger team members bragging about what they would do once we landed. Ophelia, Crow, and a few others said nothing at all, making a point of not even looking at one another though it was plain they all agreed on something.

  Breakfast was textured protein flavored with Pipit’s secret store of spices and served in edible casings to keep it together; I had no idea what it was supposed to be but it tasted very good. Halfway through the meal, there were squeals in the passageway and three youngsters burst through the shadow screen. The smallest had misjudged his speed and I grabbed his legs to keep him from colliding with the bulkhead. We spun through the air, the contents of my tray spattering over the others in the compartment.

  While I tried to stop, the boy clung tightly to my arm and stared gravely into my face. He was a chubby three-year-old with brown hair and overly solemn eyes. I recognized him: K2, one of the children Pipit had been tutoring.

  Hawk and Eagle scrambled around the compartment with spare equipment rags to clean up the mess. The others in the compartment were annoyed, while Thrush watched with a sour smile on his face, amused by the flurry of activity.

  We settled back around the crates. Huldah absently brushed K2’s hair and asked him if he knew all his begats.

  He looked away, suddenly shy. I interrupted, saying, “I don’t know mine.”

  There was an abrupt hush. Huldah cleared her throat and began in a sing-song: “Sparrow was begat by Nerissa who was begat by Abigail who was begat by Hake who was begat by Fox…”

  I held up my hand after the first dozen. “You know them all?”

  Another vacant smile. “They’re in the computer—you can look them up.”

  Nobody was listening to us now, the begats having bored all of them.

  “You know my family history?” I asked anxiously.

  Huldah’s smile vanished and she bent closer, her eyes filled with speculation. In that brief
moment she became a different person, though nobody else seemed to notice the change.

  “People telling you about your past is not the same as you remembering it, Sparrow. You should look for your past in your present. Your memories may be gone but you haven’t changed.”

  As quickly as it had vanished, the empty smile reappeared. I had misjudged her. But then, it hadn’t been the first time I had misjudged somebody, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  K2 shoved away from Huldah and settled in the crook of my arm, helping himself to the bits of food that still clung to my tray. Pipit floated over to the food dispenser to get another one and as she passed Thrush, he stroked her leg possessively. She brushed his hand away without visible resentment, but when she returned she made a point of sitting next to Crow. Thrush now stared at Crow and Pipit in much the same way he had stared at me on board the Lander.

  The last person to enter the compartment was Abel, brusque and officious; he ignored the sudden silence and went directly to Pipit for his tray. He glared at Noah, which surprised me since they had been friendly in sick bay, then anchored himself in a corner.

  “Keep right on talking—nobody has to be quiet on my account.”

  But everybody watched what they said after that and even Thrush guarded his tongue.

  Once again I had misjudged someone. Banquo may have been the Captain’s man but he wasn’t nearly as close to the Captain as Abel. The more serious implication was that the Captain had informers among the crew and Abel was one of them. For what reason? I wondered. I felt uneasy, suspecting that I had become a player in a game whose rules I didn’t know and whose penalties might be more serious than I could imagine.

  I shivered and went back to feeding K2 and myself. A moment later the glow tubes flickered red and the crew members finished their breakfast and drifted out the hatch to start their shift. Ophelia touched my arm just before she left and said, “You’ve been assigned to Snipe for indoctrination. Check in with Tybalt when you’re through.”

  K2 twisted in my arms, trying to find the best position for a nap. I glanced at the young woman named Snipe. “Where’s the nursery?”

  She wiped her hands on her waistcloth and said, as if I should have known, “Where you were—sick bay.” She held K2 by one arm; I took the other and we pushed out of the compartment.

  “Who’s his father?” I asked.

  “For now? You.” I looked surprised and she sniffed, “It’s ship’s custom, you took an interest. Anybody can take an interest—sometimes it’s women who never had a chance to be birth mothers but when men do it, they become fathers, at least for a while. I think everybody should take an interest in one of the children, don’t you?”

  I didn’t think I was all that involved with K2, though I was sure that of the three-year-olds on board he was probably the smartest and the strongest and the best looking. Then the whole subject struck me as maudlin and I refused to think about it any more.

  What I did think about was Noah, who hadn’t said a word during the meal but had roosted quietly by himself, watching all of us while we ate. And I thought about those who had remained silent while the rest of us talked, and realized there wasn’t one crew aboard the Astron, there were two—though what the differences between them were, I wasn’t sure.

  But mostly I wondered why all of them had spent so much time studying me. And why nobody had mentioned the crewman who had died that sleep period.

  “I expect I’ll have to show you everything,” Snipe said, “right from the very beginning.”

  We were standing at one end of the darkened hangar deck where they kept the Landers and Rovers and where they docked the huge Inbetween Station, the planetary orbiter they used when they couldn’t bring the Astron in too close. The rest of the bay was empty. A gigantic shadow screen covered the glassteel docking doors that formed the immense overhead, hiding the view of Outside.

  “Pipit already showed me the ship,” I said, annoyed. “You don’t have to.”

  “Pipit showed you her ship,” Snipe corrected. “She didn’t show you my ship.”

  Which irritated me even more, but this time I bit my tongue. I waved at the huge hangar deck surrounding us.

  “Why are we up here?”

  “Because this is where the stage is.”

  I looked surprised. “Stage for what?”

  “Plays,” she said, impatient once again. “Plays about the Astron and its mission. It’s one way we keep our continuity with previous crews and with the Earth itself. It’s not the only way but it’s probably the best way.”

  “Plays,” I said, mystified.

  “Plays,” she repeated. She drifted over to the palm terminal. There was a flickering on the hangar deck and I was suddenly looking at a vast expanse of purple sand dotted with small hillocks sweeping upward toward a range of pink mountains. It was an alien planet at dusk, with two moons overhead and an impossibly large spaceship settling to the ground a kilometer away. Two odd-shaped military tanks came clanking around one of the small hills between us and the ship but I could see nothing else moving. I stared, fascinated, hastily shielding my eyes when flares exploded above the ship.

  The scene faded and Snipe said, “That was the invasion of Pilar, this is—”

  “Did that really happen?”

  “It could have.” The difference didn’t seem to matter to her. “We use it for training.”

  “I didn’t see any people.”

  She made a face. “Of course not, that’s just the set.”

  “And the actors?”

  “Almost everybody acts in them from time to time.” She looked me up and down, obviously unimpressed. “If you can act, maybe we can find a part for you. But Ophelia said she didn’t think you would be very good.”

  The projections were changing now, from the alien battlefield to a jungle of huge trees with trailing vines and many-colored birds flying through the branches overhead, to an outer-space battle between a ship I took to be the Astron and vessels crewed by intelligent insects.

  There were at least fifty “sets” that flickered in and out of existence so fast they became a confusing blur—a universe of alien creatures and civilizations, the purpose of the Astron made fresh every time actors appeared to bring that purpose to life.

  The last of them faded and I said, “Do you ever act in them?”

  Snipe became surprisingly shy and said, “Sometimes.”

  “Which ones?” I persisted.

  She gave me a sidelong glance, debating whether to trust me.

  “The historical—those where I can dress up. You know…” She opened her eyes wide and suddenly looked small and demure and three years younger.

  “‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face, else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek for that which thou has heard me speak tonight.’”

  She relaxed into herself again. “That’s from Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. He’s… very good.”

  I was astonished. For a moment she had become a character who had lived and died in imagination thousands of years before. I took a closer look at her as she floated in the flickering glow from the terminal. She was skinny, her nose was too big, her hips stuck out, and she was much too quick to tell you the truth about yourself even if it hurt—or maybe especially if it hurt.

  But despite all of that, she was very pretty. And fragile. And she had trusted me enough to let me see her fragility.

  “Which plays are the most popular?”

  “The historicals, of course. We like to live other people’s lives because our own are so dull.”

  I was surprised. “Do you really believe that?”

  In a small voice: “Most of the time.” Then, irritated by her own weakness, she burst out: “You have eyes. Can’t you see?” She immediately followed it with a contrite “I forgot, I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t ask what she forgot, but changed the subject to something more important to me. “Did I ever act in the historicals?”

  “Everybody on
board does at one time or another.” As Crow had when I asked too many questions, she suddenly became evasive. “I really don’t remember, I didn’t know you very well.”

  In seventeen years, it would have been difficult for Snipe not to know me very well. But whatever I had been like before, Snipe wasn’t about to tell me. She was no different from Crow in that respect.

  Thinking about Crow made me remember something from breakfast. “Crow and Pipit,” I said casually. “They’re lovers?”

  She pursed her lips. “Pipit’s a friend of mine. I won’t talk about her.”

  I smiled to myself; she would talk about Pipit, and probably as soon as possible. “How did Thrush know I had been to see the Captain?”

  She sniffed. “Thrush knows everything. Or thinks he does.” Without a pause she added: “He’s jealous with no reason to be. He and Pipit have already been with each other, why should he begrudge Crow?”

  At first, I didn’t realize what she meant. I wanted to ask her more, then decided against it. “Tell me about Tybalt.”

  “He’s my father.” She said it with an affectionate enthusiasm and I knew she meant he “took an interest.” She was relaxed arid talkative now and I asked her about other members of the crew. She had an endless supply of gossip and a ready imagination. I don’t think she ever consciously lied but I wasn’t always sure when she was telling the truth. To Snipe, what might have been was just as exciting as what was.

  She told me almost everything I had wanted to know about the crew on the Astron and quite a bit that I hadn’t. But of all her store of gossip, she hadn’t mentioned the one thing I thought she would.

  “Somebody died the other time period,” I said.

  She paused, her face suddenly pale.

  “People die,” she said in a faint voice. “All the time.” For once, she didn’t want to talk about it, and that surprised me more than anything else.

  The glow tubes suddenly flickered red around the palm terminal. It was time to report to Tybalt in Exploration.

  “I can’t stay with you this sleep period,” Snipe said casually. “I’m on shift.”