Homeward Bound Page 6

  “Good.” Atvar’s mouth fell open not in a laugh but in an enormous yawn. Whatever else the physician did to him, he never knew it.

  When Glen Johnson woke, he needed some little while to realize he was awake and to remember he’d gone into cold sleep. Something here was emphatically different from the way things had been on the Lewis and Clark, though. He had weight. He didn’t have much—only a couple of pounds’ worth—but it was the first time he’d had any since the Lewis and Clark got out to the asteroid belt. The Admiral Peary stayed under acceleration all the time.

  “Here,” a woman said. “Drink this.” Dr. Blanchard, he thought as his wits slowly trickled back into his head. Her name is Dr. Blanchard. She handed him a plastic squeeze bulb. The liquid in the bulb had weight, too, but not enough to keep it from madly sloshing around in there.

  It tasted like chicken soup—hot and salty and fatty and restorative. And he needed restoring. He had trouble finishing the bulb, even though it wasn’t very big. Sucking and swallowing all but drained him of strength. “Thanks,” he said. “That was good. What was it?”

  “Chicken broth,” she answered, and he would have laughed if he’d had the energy. Little by little, he noticed he was hooked up to a lot of electronic monitors. Dr. Blanchard checked the readouts. “Sleep if you want to,” she told him. “That seems normal enough.”

  “Seems?” he said around a yawn. He did want to sleep. Why not? The habit of a lot of years was hard to break.

  “Well,” she answered, “we haven’t thawed out a whole lot of people yet. We’re still learning.”

  He yawned again. “Why am I one of your guinea pigs?” he asked. If she answered, he didn’t hear her. Sleep reclaimed him.

  When he woke again, he felt stronger. Dr. Blanchard gave him more chicken soup, even if she primly insisted on calling it chicken broth. He found out her first name was Melanie, right out of Gone with the Wind. She disconnected him from the monitors. He looked at his hands. His nails seemed no longer than they had when he went under. He felt his chin. His face was still smooth. “This beats the heck out of Rip van Winkle,” he said.

  “I thought so, too.” There was a familiar voice. “Then I found out what I’d have for company.”

  “Well, well. Look what the cat drug in.” Johnson yawned again. Talking still took an effort. Getting his mind to work straight took a bigger one.

  “I was thinking the same thing about you,” Mickey Flynn replied with dignity. “I have better reason, too, I daresay.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Johnson said. Another yawn came out. He wondered if he would ever feel awake again. He looked around. The chamber where they’d revived him wasn’t big enough to swing the cat he and Flynn had been talking about. “Where the devil are we, anyway?”

  “The middle of nowhere,” Flynn replied. “And I mean that more literally than anyone has in all the history of humanity. We’re more than five light-years from the Sun, and we’re more than five light-years from Tau Ceti, too.”

  Even in Johnson’s decrepit state, that sent awe prickling through him. But then he asked, “Why wake me up for this? I don’t know anything about flying the Admiral Peary out here. I’m the in-system pilot.”

  “Two reasons,” Flynn said. “One is, I wanted to see if you were still alive. Present results appear ambiguous.”

  “And the horse you rode in on,” Johnson said sweetly. The fog was beginning to lift—a little.

  “Thank you so much,” the other pilot replied. “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I wanted to see if you were alive. If by some mischance you weren’t, that would make me in-system pilot and change the revival schedule. So I needed to know. You went into cold sleep earlier than I did. The techniques have been improved since.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re the teacher’s pet,” Johnson said. “Healey couldn’t wait to put me on ice, the son of a bitch.” He didn’t much care what he said. That was probably an effect of coming out from under the drugs, too.

  “I could call that a slander on the whole of the Hibernian race,” Flynn said. “On the other hand, seeing that it’s Healey, I could just nod my head wisely and say, ‘You’re right.’ All things considered, I have to go with the second approach. However Irish the man may be, a son of a bitch he is, and that without a doubt.”

  Back on the Lewis and Clark, he never would have admitted such a thing. Of course, back on the Lewis and Clark he had to deal with Lieutenant General Healey. Now he must have been sure the bad-tempered officer was as far behind them as the rest of the Solar System. More than five light-years . . .

  “You said there was more than one reason to wake me up now,” Johnson observed. He remembered. He was proud of himself for remembering. That said something about how fuzzy his wits had been before.

  Mickey Flynn nodded. “That’s true. I did.”

  “What’s the other one?” Johnson asked.

  “In my ignorance, I thought you might be interested in seeing what the sky looks like out here as we turn the ship,” Flynn said. “No matter how good we get at flying between the stars, this isn’t something a whole lot of people will ever get to do.”

  “I should say not!” Johnson exclaimed, eagerness blazing through him no matter how weak and woozy he felt. “Most of the passengers will stay frozen from start to finish.” He turned to Dr. Blanchard. “Can I go up?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “Can you?”

  “We’ll find out.” He tried to lever himself off the table where he lay, only to discover he was strapped on. Melanie Blanchard made no move to set him free. It’s a test, he realized. If I can’t undo the straps, I don’t deserve to do anything else. His fingers were clumsy and stupid. They took longer than they should have to figure out how the latches worked, but they did it. He sat up, torn between triumph and worry. “My brains will come back?” he asked her.

  “They’re supposed to,” she said, which struck him as imperfectly reassuring.

  The Admiral Peary’s acceleration produced barely enough weight to keep him on the table. When he slid off, he glided ever so slowly to the metal floor. He would have had to go off a cliff like Wile E. Coyote to do himself any serious damage. He bounced from the floor toward Flynn. “Lead on, Macduff.”

  “That’s, ‘Lay on, Macduff.’ ” Flynn looked pained. “Don’t tamper with the Bard.”

  “At this late date and this distance, I doubt he’ll complain,” Johnson said.

  “Oh, so do I,” the other pilot said. “That’s why I’m doing it for him.”

  “Helpful,” Johnson observed, and Flynn nodded blandly. Johnson went on, “Well, anyway, show me. Show me around, too. This is the first time I’ve been conscious—as conscious as I am—on the Admiral Peary. Would be nice to know what I’m flying.”

  “You don’t ask for much, do you?” Flynn brachiated up the hatchway. The starship’s tiny acceleration wasn’t enough to worry about, not as far as motion was concerned. Feeling like a chimpanzee himself—an elderly, arthritic, downright spavined chimpanzee—Johnson followed.

  The Lewis and Clark had had observation windows fronted by antireflection-coated glass. The Admiral Peary had an observation dome, also made from glass that might as well not have been there. Coming up into it was like getting a look at space itself. Johnson stared out. Slowly, his jaw dropped. “Jesus,” he whispered.

  Mickey Flynn nodded again, this time in perfect understanding. “You’ve noticed, have you? It does hit home.”

  “Yeah,” Johnson said, and said nothing else for the next several minutes.

  There was no sun in the sky.

  That hit home, sure as hell, like a left to the jaw. Johnson understood exactly what it meant. It wasn’t that the Sun was hiding, as it hid behind the Earth during the night. When it did that, you knew where it was, even if you couldn’t see it. Not here. Not now. There was nothing but blackness with stars scattered through it. And the closest of those stars was light-years away.

/>   “And I thought the asteroid belt was a long way from home,” Johnson murmured at last. “I hadn’t even gone into the next room.”

  “Does make you wonder why we thought we were the lords of creation, doesn’t it?” Flynn said. Johnson hadn’t thought of it that way, but he couldn’t help nodding. Flynn continued, “Look a little longer. Tell me what else you see, besides the big nothing.”

  “Okay,” Johnson said, and he did. He knew how the stars were supposed to look from space. Not many humans—probably not many Lizards, either—knew better. As Flynn had said he would, he needed a while to see anything else by the absence of a sun. But he did, and his jaw fell again.

  The outlines of the constellations were wrong.

  Oh, not all of them. Orion looked the same as it always had. So did the Southern Cross. He knew why, too: their main stars were a long, long way from the Sun, too far for a mere five or six light-years to change their apparent position. But both the Dogs that accompanied Orion through the skies of Earth had lost their principal stars. Sirius and Procyon were bright because they lay close to the Sun. Going halfway to Tau Ceti rudely shoved them across the sky. Johnson spotted them at last because they were conspicuous and didn’t belong where they were.

  He also spotted another bright star that didn’t belong where it was, and couldn’t for the life of him figure out from where it had been displaced. He finally gave up and pointed towards it. “What’s that one there, not far from Arcturus?”

  Flynn didn’t need to ask which one he meant, and smiled a most peculiar smile. “Interesting you should wonder. I had to ask Walter Stone about that one myself.”

  “Well, what is it?” Johnson said, a little irritably. Mickey Flynn’s smile got wider. Johnson’s annoyance grew with it. Then, all at once, that annoyance collapsed. He took another look at that unfamiliar yellow star. The hair stood up on his arms and the back of his neck. In a very small voice, he said, “Oh.”

  “That’s right,” Flynn said. “That’s the Sun.”

  “Lord.” Johnson sounded more reverent than he’d thought he could. “That’s . . . quite something, isn’t it?”

  “You might say so,” the other pilot answered. “Yes, you just might say so.”

  Tau Ceti, of course, remained in the same place in the sky as it had before. It was brighter now, but still seemed nothing special; it was an intrinsically dimmer star than the Sun. Before the Lizards came, no one had ever paid any attention to it or to Epsilon Eridani or to Epsilon Indi, the three stars whose inhabited planets the Race had ruled since men were still hunters and gatherers. Now everyone knew the first two; Epsilon Indi, deep in the southern sky and faintest of the three, remained obscure.

  “When we wake up again . . .” Johnson said. “When we wake up again, we’ll be there.”

  “Oh, yes.” Flynn nodded. “Pity we won’t be able to go down to Home.”

  “Well, yeah. Too much time with no gravity,” Johnson said, and Mickey Flynn nodded again. Johnson pointed back toward the Sun. “But we saw this.” At the moment, it seemed a fair trade.

  Kassquit swam up toward consciousness from the black depths of a sleep that might as well have been death. When she looked around, she thought at first that her eyes weren’t working the way they should. She’d lived her whole life aboard starships. Metal walls and floors and ceilings seemed normal to her. She knew stone and wood and plaster could be used for the same purposes, but the knowledge was purely theoretical.

  Focusing on the—technician?—tending her was easier. “I greet you,” Kassquit said faintly. Her voice didn’t want to obey her will.

  Even her faint croak was enough to make the female of the Race jerk in surprise. “Oh! You do speak our language,” the technician said. “They told me you did, but I was not sure whether to believe them.”

  “Of course I do. I am a citizen of the Empire.” Kassquit hoped she sounded indignant and not just terribly, terribly tired. “What do I look like?”

  To her, it was a rhetorical question. To the technician, it was anything but. “One of those horrible Big Uglies from that far-off star,” she said. “How can you be a citizen of the Empire if you look like them?”

  I must be on Home, Kassquit realized. Males and females on Tosev 3 know who and what I am. “Never mind how I can be. I am, that is all,” she said. She looked around again. The white-painted chamber was probably part of a hospital; it looked more like a ship’s infirmary than anything else. Home, she thought again, and awe filled her. “I made it,” she whispered.

  “So you did.” The technician seemed none too pleased about admitting it. “How do you feel?”

  “Worn,” Kassquit answered honestly. “Am I supposed to be this weary?”

  “I do not know. I have no experience with Big Uglies.” The female of the Race never stopped to wonder if that name might bother Kassquit. She went on, “Males and females of the Race often show such symptoms upon revival, though.”

  “That is some relief,” Kassquit said.

  “Here.” The technician gave her a beaker filled with a warm, yellowish liquid. “I was told you were to drink this when you were awake enough to do so.”

  “It shall be done,” Kassquit said obediently. The stuff was salty and a little greasy and tasted very good. “I thank you.” She returned the empty beaker. “Very nice. What was it?”

  She’d succeeded in surprising the female again. “Do you not know? It must have been something from your world. It has nothing to do with ours. Wait.” She looked inside what had to be Kassquit’s medical chart. “It is something called chicknzup. Is that a word in the Big Ugly language?”

  “I do not know,” Kassquit answered. “I speak only the language of the Race.”

  “How very peculiar,” the technician said. “Well, instructions are that you are to rest. Will you rest?”

  “I will try,” Kassquit said. The sleeping mat on which she lay was identical to the one she’d had in the starship. Why not? A sleeping mat was a sleeping mat. She closed her eyes and wiggled and fell asleep.

  When she woke, it was dark. She lay quietly. The small sounds of this place were different from the ones she’d known all her life. Along with the noises of the starship’s ventilation and plumbing, there had been lots of tapes of random sounds of Home. But she knew all the noises on those by now. Here, her ears were hearing things they’d never met before.

  Something buzzed at the window. When she looked that way, she saw a small black shape silhouetted against the lighter sky. It moved, and the buzzing noise moved with it. She realized it was alive. Awe washed through her again. Except for males and females of the Race and a few Big Uglies, it was the first living thing she’d ever seen in person.

  She got to her feet. Slowly, carefully, she walked toward the window. Her legs were uncertain beneath her, but held her up. She peered at the creature. It sensed she was near and stopped buzzing; it clung quietly to the window glass. As she peered at it, she realized she knew what it was: some kind of ffissach. They had eight legs. Many of them—this one obviously included—had wings. Like most of them, it was smaller than the last joint of her middle finger. Home had millions of different species of them. They ate plants and one another. Bigger life-forms devoured them by the billions every day. Without them, the ecosystem would collapse.

  Kassquit knew all about that from her reading. She hadn’t expected to find any ffissachi inside buildings. She especially hadn’t expected to find one inside a hospital. Didn’t the Race value hygiene and cleanliness? She knew it did. Her experience on the starships orbiting Tosev 3 had taught her as much. So what was this one doing here?

  As she stood there watching it, it began to fly and buzz again. Its wings beat against the window glass. She didn’t suppose it understood about glass. Everything in front of it looked clear. Why couldn’t it just fly through? It kept trying and trying and trying. . . .

  Kassquit was so fascinated, she thought she could have watched the little creature all night. She thou
ght so, anyhow, till her legs wobbled so badly she almost sat down, hard, on the floor. She also found herself yawning again. Whatever went into cold sleep, it hadn’t all worn off yet. She made her way back to the sleeping mat and lay down again. For a little while, the ffissach’s buzzing kept her from going back to sleep, but only for a little while.

  When she woke again, it was light. Sunlight streamed in through the window. The ffissach was still there, but silent and motionless now. Before Kassquit could look at it in the better light, the technician came in. “I greet you,” she said. “How do you feel this morning?”

  “I thank you—I am better.” Kassquit pointed to the window. “What is that ffissach doing there?”

  The technician walked over, squashed it against the palm of her hand, and then cleaned herself with a moist wipe. “They are nuisances,” she said. “They do get in every once in a while, though.”

  “You killed it!” Kassquit felt a pang of dismay at the little death, not least because it took her by surprise.

  “Well, what did you expect me to do? Take it outside and let it go?” The technician sounded altogether indifferent to the ffissach’s fate. There was a stain on the inside of the window.

  “I do not know what your custom is,” Kassquit answered unhappily.

  “Do you know whether you want breakfast?” the technician asked, plainly doubting whether Kassquit could make up her mind about anything.

  “Yes, please,” she answered.

  “All right. Some of your foods came with you on the starship, and I also have a list of foods from Home you have proved you can safely eat. Which would you prefer?”

  “Foods from Home are fine,” Kassquit said. “I am on Home, after all.”

  “All right. Wait here. Do not go anywhere.” Yes, the technician was convinced Kassquit had no brains at all. “I will bring you food. Do not go away.” With a last warning hiss, the technician left.

  She soon returned, carrying a tray like the ones in the starship refectory. It held the same sorts of food Kassquit had been eating there, too. She used her eating tongs as automatically and as well as a female of the Race would have. When she finished, the technician took away the tray.