Far Frontiers Part 4

"Good! Why can there be oniy one truly smart species?"

"Because we're human and are made in G.o.d's image and he has only one image."

"Now if someone asks you about whales being just as smart as humans, what would you say?"

'They're wrong."

"Why?"

"G.o.d's not a whale or dolphin or ape. He's just like us."

"Very good." I hugged him and Angshu returned to play, but I didn't feel very proud of myself.

Everything I told him was theologically correct. The politically correct information would protect him, but it was a lie. All of it. Someday I would tell him the truth. When he was old enough to keep silent. I wondered what age that would be.

Yet he knew about his father, and even when taunted by playmates, never voiced this secret. But then, if he did talk about his father, the little he knew could be pa.s.sed off as learned by gossip. No, Angshu was still too young for the whole truth.I leaned back against the tree trunk. Before too long, Matt's familiar figure approached.

As he sat down nearby, I held out a bag of juice, which he declined.

"What's wrong, Mafl? You look upset."

He raked fingers through thick locks. Then he carefully pulled something from his pocket and placed it in my hand. I put the object in my own pocket. Without looking at it, I knew what it was by feel. My pulse raced-one of Greely's best scramblers!

"Greely made me promise to give you one. He thought you would need it. I destroyed all the others. I had to, too dangerous now."

"Why? What's going on?"

"Doctor Greely was arrested an hour ago by the Station's Theological Council on charges of capital crime."

My heart was a lump in my throat. I managed to ask, "Why? What crime?"

"Divine slander, for a start. The charges are expected to escalate with the inquest. He published a paper ent.i.tled, 'Cosmology, Evolution, and Alien Intelligence."'

"Why would he do something so foolish?" My voice was an angry whisper.

"He thinks a public trial of a leading theologian will open some eyes."

"He's wrong. I've lived through such a trial! Ninety percent of what he has to say will never be made public. And the rest will be distorted and altered so no one will recognize the truth behind the words." I restrained myself from moving, although I wanted to run to Greely and beg him to recant. "That explains the cryptic message I got this morning. He said, 'There are more important things than being safe. ' I didn't understand what he meant."

"He said there is no way you, or I, could be dragged into this mess."

"Easy to say, but reality? Nichols will-"

"Do nothing. Somehow Greely listed Nichols as coauthor. I don't know how Greely got the proper electronic signature to do it, but Nichols was arrested, too. They stand trial together. It looks ironclad."

I was too stunned to laugh or cry. My thoughts skipped from the past to the now at random. We waited in silence for a few minutes before Matt spoke up.

"I've got to go. My flight for Earth leaves in two hours."

"What? But I thought you were accepted at-"

"My acceptance to North American came through last night.""Greely's school?" I whispered.

Matt shrugged. "You don't have much time either. The Van Hise leaves day after tomorrow."

"So?"

"You're on it. You've been transferred by order of the Science Council. Carrie is packing your lab even as we speak. She's been transferred, too." He shrugged off my unasked questions.

"The Chamberlin is grounded with most of her crew, science or service staff, to stand as witnesses at Greely's trial. Not all the crew, though. Tom's been transferred to an Explorer cla.s.s ship."

"He'll wash out," I mumbled.

"Doesn't matter. He won't be accessible at the trial. Some of the Chamberlin's XO staff have also been transferred. Everyone to different ships or Earth posts."

"d.a.m.n, Greely is thorough."

"Or his friends are. I left a few other messages and notes for you with Carrie. She's good.

You can trust her. I do."

"I'm going to miss you, Mall. You're the best student I've ever had. You're going to do well."

He nodded, then smiled. "Yeah, I think so. I've a lot to thank you for, most of all for teaching me how to keep an open mind on research."

"Can you hide that quality? You'll need to be able to control your feelings in front of strangers, especially if you want to pa.s.s your doctoral exams."

"Yeah, I think so. I'll just have to remember how your eyes change when you talk about your husband's trial. I'll never doubt the power of the Council again. Maybe we'll serve together on the same ship someday after I finish school. It'll be three years at least. I plan to take a heavy theology load."

"You're smarter than I was. Take care, Mall."

"You, too, Somita." We stood and he gave me a hug, and then went over to hug Angshu good-bye. I watched Matt's receding back as if the whole world had collapsed around me. I was afraid that I'd see him arrested and then the police would be here next. They'd make Angshu a ward of the state and turn him into a darker version of Nichols. I shivered despite the warm air.Maybe no matter what I did that would happen. I envisioned the plaque back where it belonged.

... Fearless shifting and winnowing... It was not fearless, not now. Not for a very long time to come, if ever. Angshu had to know the truth and I had to teach him how to hold that truth deep within his heart and mind where it would remain safe. So he would always be safe, despite whatever might happen to me.

I had to leave to help Carrie pack, but I couldn't make myself move. It felt safe here.

When Angshu came back for more cookies, I told him we were going to be leaving soon on another ship. He didn't mind. s.p.a.ce was in his blood, just as it had been in Martin's.

"Angshu, why are whales so smart?"

"G.o.d made them that way."

"Maybe, maybe not." I didn't know how much I wanted to say just now, but I knew I could not let my son grow up to be another Nichols. I could almost hear the prison doors closing around me as they had closed around my husband. Maybe Greely was right; there were more important things than being safe. Maybe. There was such a fine line to walk between truth and reality, between fearful and fearless.

STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT.

by Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer's novels The Terminal Experiment, Starplex, Frameshift, and FactoringHumanity were all finalists for the Hugo Award, and The Terminal Experiment won the Nebula Award for Best Novel of the Year. His latest novel is Calculating G.o.d. He lives near Toronto.

Visit his web site at wwwsfwriter.com.

"Daddy, what are those?" My young son, Dalt, was L/pointing up. We'd floated far away from the ancient buildings, almost to where the transparent dome over our community touches the surface of the great sphere.

Four white hens were flying across the sky, their little wings propelling them at a good clip. 'Those are chickens, Dali. You know-the birds we get eggs from."

"Not the chickens," said Dali, as if I'd offended him greatly by suggesting he didn't know what they were. 'Those lights. Those points of light."

I squinted a bit. "I don't see any lights," I replied. "Where are they?"

"Everywhere," he said. He swung his head in an arc, taking in the whole sky.

"Everywhere."

"How many points do you see?"

"Hundreds. Hundreds."

I felt my back b.u.mping gently against the surface; I pushed off with my palm, using into the air again. The ancient texts I'd been translating said human beings were never really meant to live in such low gravity, but it was all I, and countless generations of my ancestors, had ever known. 'There aren't any points of light, Daft."

"Yes, there are," he insisted. 'There are thousands of them, and-look!-there's a band of light across the sky there."

I faced in the direction he was pointing. "I don't see anything except another chicken."

"No, Daddy," insisted Dalt. "Look!"

Dalt was a good boy. He almost never lied to me- and I couldn't see why he would lie to me about something like this. I maneuvered so that we were hovering face-to-face, then extended my hand."Can you see my hand clearly?" I said. "Sure."

"How many fingers am I holding up?" He rolled his eyes. "Oh, Daddy..

"How many fingers am I holding up?" 'Two."

"And do you see lights on them, as well?"

"On your fingers?" asked Dalt incredulously. I nodded.

"Of course not."

"You don't see any lights in front of my fingers? Do you see any on my face?"

"Daddy!"

"Do you?"

"Of course not. The lights aren't down here. They're up there!"

I touched my boy's shoulder rea.s.suringly. "Tomorrow, we'll go see Doc Tadders about your eyes.

We hadn't built the protective dome-the clear blister on the outer surface of the Dyson sphere (to use the ancient name our ancestors had given to our home, a term we could transliterate but not translate). Rather, the dome was already here when we'd come outside. Adja- cent to it was a large, black pyramidal structure that didn't seem to be part of the sphere's outer hull; instead, it appeared to be clamped into place. No one was exactly sure what the pyramid was for, although you could enter it from an access tube extending from the dome. The pyramid was filled with corridors and rooms, and lots of control consoles marked in the script of the ancients.

The transparent dome was much larger than the pyramid-plenty big enough to cover the thirty-odd buildings the ancients had built here, as well as the concentric circles of farming fields we'd created by importing soil from within the interior of the Dyson sphere. Still, if the dome hadn't been transparent, I probably would have felt claustrophobic within it; it wasn't even a pimple on the vastness of the sphere.

We'd been fortunate that the ancients had constructed all these buildings under the protective dome; they served as homes and work s.p.a.ces for us. In many eases, we could only guess at the original purposes of the buildings, but the one that housed Dr. Tadder's offlee had likely been a warehouse.

After sleeptime, I took Dalt to see Tadders. He seemed more fascinated by the wall diagram the doctor had of a human skeleton than he was by her eye chart, but we finally got him to spin around in midair to face it.I was floating freely beside my son. For an instant, I found myself panicking because there was no anchor rope looped around my wrist; the habits of a lifetime were hard to break, even after being here, on the outside of the Dyson sphere, for all this time. I'd lived from birth to middle age on the inside of the sphere, where things tended to float up if they weren't anch.o.r.ed.

Of course, you couldn't drift all the way up to the sun. You'd eventually b.u.mp against the gla.s.s roof that held the atmosphere in. But no one wanted to be stuck up there, waiting to be rescued; it was humiliating.

Out here, though, under our clear, protective dome, things floated down, not up; both Dalt and I would eventually settle to the padded floor.

"Can you read the top row of letters?" asked Doc Tadders, indicating the eye chart. She was about my age, with pale blue eyes and red hair just beginning to turn gray.

"Sure," said Dalt. "Eet, bot, doo, shuh, kee." Tadders nodded. "What about the next row?" "Hih, fah, roo, shuh, puh, ess."

"Can you read the last row?"

"Ayt, doo, tee, nub, tee, ess, guh, bib, fah, roo."

"Are you sure about the second letter?"

"It's a doo, no?" said Dalt.

if there's any letter my son should know, it should be that one, since it was the first in his own name. But the character on the chart wasn't a doo; it was a fali.

Dr. Tadders jotted a note in the book she was holding, then said, "What about the last letter?"

"'[bat's a roo."

"Are you sure?"

Dalt squinted. "Well, if it's not a roo, then it's a shuh, no?"

"Which do you think it is?"

"A shuh... or a roo." Dalt shrugged. "It's so tiny, I can't be sure."

I could see that it was a roo; I was surprised that I had better vision than my son did.

"Thanks," said '[adders. She looked at me. "He's a tiny bit nearsighted," she said.

"Nothing to worry about." She faced Dalt again. "What about the lights in front of your eyes? Do you see any of them now?"