Brown, Eric Page 2

  He wondered too how she might have changed in the two years since he’d last seen her in the flesh; the com-link was no indication, with its distorting static.

  It was after twelve when he roused himself from his daydreams. He looked at his watch: quarter past. In the old days, when society had been dictated to by clocks and timetables, he might have worried, but in these days of ad hoc transport systems a delay of hours was not uncommon.

  It was almost one when he heard the sound of chopper blades stropping the air. He stood and scanned the shimmering horizon. The helicopter was coming in low from the north, nose down. He watched it settle about a hundred metres beyond the perimeter fence of the graveyard. A tiny figure jumped out and ran doubled-up through the rotor’s downdraught, waving briefly to the pilot. The chopper lifted, turned and swept away.

  Chrissie began walking towards the dilapidated fence. Hendry went to meet her, something expanding in his chest and forcing tears into his eyes.

  They stopped and stared at each other. Then Chrissie ran through the gap in the fence. Hendry grabbed her, feeling her solidity, the reality of the first human being he’d held since her last visit.

  She pulled away, dashing tears from her eyes. “Look at me... I can’t help it. There I was, saying I’d be all strong and unemotional! It’s great to see you, Dad.”

  She was so like her mother; she had inherited Su’s Japanese features, though tempered by his Caucasian genes; she was taller than Su had been, but carried herself with the same confidence and assurance.

  He took her hand. “Come on. Let’s get inside. I’ve fixed lunch. Catfish and salad—with real coffee.”

  “Real coffee? Dad, how on earth did you manage that?”

  “Well, I know an exclusive supplier in town...”

  He took her through the garden, proudly showing off the potato plants, the beanstalks heavy with pods. She smiled, suitably impressed.

  She looked around at the derelict reminders of humankind’s dream of conquering the solar system. The ships hulked against the blue sky, massive and ugly and yet, for some reason, oddly beautiful. Over the years the sun had excoriated their paintwork, continuing the work started by solar flares and hard radiation during the vessels’ long service between the inner planets.

  “And you’re here all alone?” Chrissie asked. “What happened to... I forget their names?”

  “O’Grady, Greg? They left, moved on. Stella died.”

  “I worry about you, you know?”

  “Don’t. I’m old enough to look after myself.”

  She laughed and they climbed into the shuttle.

  She looked round the long lounge. He wondered if she was comparing it to her luxurious apartment back in Berne.

  She said, “I only have an hour. I’m sorry. They’re pretty strict.”

  “That’s okay. We can talk over dinner.”

  She helped him prepare the food and carry it outside. They sat beneath the awning and sipped the freshly ground coffee.

  “Okay, now. Out with it. What’s it all about? This mission, the training.” He shook his head. “You look, I don’t know... like the cat who’s got the cream.”

  “Do I? I hope that doesn’t mean smug, self-satisfied.”

  “No, just contented. What’s going on?”

  She took another sip of coffee, sighed with pleasure. “That’s good.” She paused, then went on, “I’m glad you think there’s hope, that we aren’t doomed to repeat our mistakes. I think we’ve learned from them, so that we can move on, build a successful society that doesn’t consume resources.”

  He thought he knew where this was leading. “They’ve tried colonies, Chrissie. Look what happened on Mars, Luna. Neither of them could sustain themselves. They were both dependent on Earth.” He looked at her. She was smiling at him, blithely. “You are talking about a colony, aren’t you?”

  She nodded. “Of course. Where else could we start again, anew?”

  “Chrissie...” He was aware of the despair in his tone.

  “Listen, Dad. This is different.”

  “One of the moons of Jupiter, Saturn? Harnessing the power of the planet’s radiation...?” He stopped, realising how improbable this was.

  She was shaking her head. “Try further out.”

  “Further out?”

  She leaned forward. “Dad, the European Space Organisation has developed a starship, a colony ship, to take four thousand specialists out of Sol system.”

  Staggered, he opened his mouth to say something, finally managing, “Ah... And to where, exactly?”

  “Another star system, in Ophiuchi to begin with. The mission will last hundreds of years, maybe even thousands, travelling at around half the speed of light.”

  He said, “A colony ship? What do they call them, generation starships?”

  She shook her head. “Not a generation ship. The colonists won’t be conscious. They’ll be in cold sleep, suspended animation. They’ll be awoken at journey’s end, when a habitable planet’s been found.”

  “That’s some undertaking.”

  “A last, desperate measure.” She shrugged. “I was approached over a year ago by the ESO. They wanted people with my specialism.”

  He felt something surge through his head, rocking him. His vision blurred. He tried to pull himself together.

  “Dad,” she said, “you don’t know how hard this is for me... When they asked me... at first I said no. It felt like treachery, deserting a sinking ship: Why me? Why not thousands of other people? I had an okay life in Europe... But then I began to think about it. A new beginning, a chance to start again, and this time do it right. They wanted me, and thousands like me, because we were at the top of our fields. The more I thought about it, the more I knew I had to go. Then I thought about you.”

  Despite his fear, despite the inner voice saying that he didn’t want to lose his daughter, he found himself saying, “You have to go. If you didn’t... you’d never forgive yourself. I can’t hold you back—that’d be selfish.”

  She nodded, tears sparkling in her eyes. She looked up. “I knew you’d say that. I know I have to go. But it’ll be so damned hard.”

  He stood and moved around the table and took her in his arms, wanting to break down himself but instead rocking her and reassuring her that she was doing the best thing.

  They resumed their seats. Hendry ate without tasting a thing and Chrissie told him about the training she’d been doing for the past nine months. “Basic stuff, survival in extreme conditions, medical procedures. I’ll be specialising in plant biology when we reach a habitable planet.” She stopped and shook her head. “I get an odd feeling whenever I say that.”

  “When do you... when’s the launch?”

  “Well, we board the shuttle next week and ascend to the starship. Then we’ll be put into the deep freezer, or rather the cryogenic units. But the ship itself won’t be launched for six months after that. The techs need to iron out the bugs, check the systems.”

  “So after next week, for the next six months, you’ll be in suspended animation.” He tried to think about that, his daughter frozen in orbit high above the Earth.

  “And then for... who knows how long? Certainly hundreds of years.”

  He would be long dead by then, and Earth would be a wasteland by the time she awoke, no older than when she had set off.

  He said, “I didn’t think they had the technology.”

  “It’s been developed over the past ten years, when it became obvious that things were getting bad here. The ship was constructed in orbit. The fact wasn’t broadcast.”

  Hendry smiled. “The Fujiyama Green Brigade would take a dim view.”

  “They’re suspicious, which is why they bombed the ESO headquarters.”

  Hendry shook his head. “They were always fundamentally selfish,” he said, and wondered if by that he meant that Su was too.

  “The paradoxical thing is, Dad, that the ship’s named after Lovelock, the eco-philosopher. The colony wi
ll be founded on principles mainly promulgated by him and his followers. The Fujiyama Green Brigade should be championing what we’re doing, rather than trying to blow us up.”

  “Terrorism might start out with principles,” he said, “but it finishes by being driven by nothing more than egoism. They can’t go themselves, so they don’t want anyone else to go.”

  She stared across the table at him. “You know something, Dad? I thought you’d object, take it badly. I mean... you lost Mum, and now I’m going—”

  “The two are completely different!”

  “Well, yes, but the end results are the same. We left you.”

  “Chrissie, Chrissie... You’ve got to do it. I’ll be so proud of you.” He smiled. “You know something? When I was up there, pushing those shuttles between Earth and Mars, there wasn’t a shift went by when I didn’t think about the stars, the planets out there, the opportunities just waiting. And now my daughter’s going to the stars...” And Christ, how I’ll miss you, he thought, how bloody hard this goodbye will be.

  “We’re going to succeed, Dad. We’re not going to make the same mistakes. We might be human, but that doesn’t mean we’ll take our flaws to the stars— or if we do, then we’ll have systems in place to ensure that they don’t destroy us, or our new world.”

  They finished the meal, Chrissie describing her training, the other specialists in her team. He listened to her words without really hearing them. But he watched her, he stared at her as she spoke, and realised how incredibly beautiful she was, and how much he loved her.

  The sound of the chopper blatting through the hot air came as a shock. Hendry started, wishing that the last few minutes could have been extended for ever. The helicopter landed beyond the perimeter fence, and the sudden silence when its engines cut was almost as shocking as the sound of its arrival.

  They stood, facing each other across the table, then moved around it and embraced.

  “Oh, Dad, I wish it didn’t have to be like this. I love you so much.”

  He felt so weak, so vulnerable, but for Chrissie’s sake he held himself together. “Love you too,” he whispered.

  “I’ll call you by com-link the day before I take the shuttle, okay?”

  “I won’t go out,” he managed to joke.

  The pilot leaned from the helicopter’s bubble fuselage and waved.

  They walked to the torn perimeter fence, hand in hand. He paused there, but she pulled him after her.

  Before the chopper, the ugly vehicle that would carry her away, they stopped and faced each other. “Dad...”

  “Go on,” he said. “Good luck. Name a planet after me. Discover an alien race...”

  “I love you.”

  “Love you too, Chrissie. Go on...”

  They held on tight, then she broke away with a sob, ran to the helicopter and dived inside.

  It jumped into the air, blasting him. He backed off, waving.

  Chrissie was a tiny figure next to the pilot, waving frantically at him.

  The helicopter turned tail and fled, and Hendry watched it until it was a tiny comma on the horizon. Seconds later it had vanished from sight. He wanted to yell, “No!” and deny the fact that he would never again hold his daughter.

  He returned to the shuttle, a pain like grief excavating a hollow in his chest. He kicked out at the shuttle’s dented engine nacelle and cried out loud. There was so much he wanted to say to her, so much he had to tell her, so much left unsaid. He wanted an age in which to simply stare at the reality that was Chrissie Hendry. It was impossible to conceive that she would exist only in his thoughts and memories, now.

  He moved into the shuttle and wept.

  * * * *

  3

  The days afterChrissie’s last visit were the bleakest of his life, emptier even than the empty days after Su had left him. He’d had Chrissie then to fill his time, his thoughts. Now he had nothing. He maintained the routine of his days through habit, but the tasks which before had filled him with satisfaction— the hoeing, the examination of his haul of fish—now only served to point up the fact of his loneliness.

  It tortured him to think that, soon, she would be frozen for the duration of his life. In hundreds of years, maybe even thousands, she would be awoken... It was not knowing what might become of her that was so galling. She was his daughter, whom he had spent a good part of his life protecting, ensuring her physical and mental well being. To lose control of that, to know that at some point in the future she would be in danger and he wouldn’t be around to help... This kept him awake long into the hot early hours of the long nights.

  Four days after her visit, the com chimed at nine. Thinking it was Old Smith, he accepted the call and sat back in the couch.

  Chrissie’s face materialised on the screen, hazy with static, and the sight of her took his breath away.

  “Dad, I said I’d call.”

  “Chrissie...” He was totally unprepared, at a loss how to respond.

  Her image wavered, flickered. The line was particularly bad tonight.

  She appeared again, smiling. “I’m fine. Everything’s going great up here.”

  “Up here? You’re aboard the ship?” The knowledge, for some bizarre reason, distressed him. He had thought she was still on Earth, that there was still some geographical connection between them, however tenuous.

  “I’m in the com-room of the Lovelock. I’m going under in...” She checked her watch. “In about two hours. I know it’s painful for you, but I said I’d call one last time.”

  He smiled. He hoped that his image was as hazy as hers, for he was weeping again. “I’m fine. Shooting the breeze with Old Smith in Tasmania, growing my peas...”

  “Dad, I love you...”

  “And I...” He stopped. Her face vanished. He leaned forward in panic. “Chrissie!”

  She appeared again. “The link’s breaking up. I’ve almost had my allotted time. I’m thinking of you always. I love you...”

  “Chrissie, take care. I—”

  “Dad!” she cried, as her image fragmented. He had a last fleeting image of her, reaching out, the pink of her face rendered in tiny pixelated rectangles, a cubist representation of frozen anguish. Then the screen blanked and Hendry leaned forward and called her name, attempting to re-establish the link.

  He sat before the screen for a long time, hoping against hope that she would be able to contact him again, wanting it but knowing that it would only prolong the torture.

  At last he pushed himself from the couch and stumbled outside. He sat in his chair beneath the awning and watched the sun set, its glare made spectacular by atmospheric pollutants. He recalled what she’d said, and looked at his watch. In a few minutes she would be put under, frozen in a suspension unit. He imagined her lying there, thinking of him, wondering about her uncertain future.

  He glanced at his watch. She would be unconscious now, cryogenically suspended. When she woke up it would be as if no time at all had elapsed for her, while he would have lived his life and died long ago.

  He looked up, into the deepening dark of the night sky, and searched for the tiny speck that would be the Lovelock. He should have asked her where it would be, so that he could have watched its daily orbit and then, in six months, raised a glass to her as the starship lighted out of Earth orbit and began its long journey to the stars.

  He saw nothing that might be the starship.

  That night he dreamed that Chrissie had died in her suspension unit, and he awoke in a sweat. All the next day he catalogued the myriad fates that might befall her. Every possibility, he realised, was valid when viewed in ignorance—and that was what tortured him.

  The following day he didn’t bother going down to the sea to fetch the fish and check the desalination plant. He didn’t even venture out into the garden, the first time he had missed doing so in years. It all seemed so pointless. Why was he living like this, alone, in hardship, waiting out his days until incapacity claimed him and he died a slow and lonely, painf
ul death.

  But what was the alternative? He could venture out into the real world of people and communities, but that would only be to confront the ravaged mess the world had become. He had run away and come here to get away from all that... So why was he going on, day after day, living the same futile, repetitious existence?

  That evening Old Smith called. They chatted for an hour, the old man telling Hendry in great detail how he’d built three new beehives that morning and transferred a queen to each.