Chapter Twenty-Six

THE PROFESSOR MIGHT have been the first offender of the night, but he was far from the only one. As soon as the rest of us finished eating, we all followed suit. We picked a spot to sleep. And off came the boots.

Soon the entire room reeked of soggy, sweaty feet. It got so bad we had to prop open the door for a few minutes, despite Caspersen’s protests.

Finally, we settled in for the night. As we were back on a rotating watch schedule, and Caspersen took the first shift, I took the opportunity to get some long overdue shuteye. I drifted off almost as soon as I lay down.

My dreams were troubled, and full of endless halls and haunted cryopods. The ship seemed to stretch on forever, and everywhere I heard the whispers of the dead. The bones we’d seen so briefly during our earlier search had multiplied. The evidence of death and the cries of the deceased followed me wherever I went.

I started to wakefulness when Cohen roused me. The particular dream images vanished, but the uneven beating of my heart signaled it hadn’t been pleasant.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, fine.”

“All right. Your turn, Captain.”

I pulled myself onto my feet. Fuck. It seemed a moment of downtime had given every ache and pain I’d ginned up over the course of the journey time to catch up with me. Either that or I was just getting old. I seemed to remember being able to do a lot more than this, on less sleep, and still feeling better when all was said and done.

It’s probably atmospheric differences or something. That had been on Earth, after all. New planet, new problems.

That settled to my satisfaction, I chose to ignore that Cohen walked without a limp, and his joints didn’t creak and groan as he lowered himself onto his bed as mine had done as I’d gotten up.

I concentrated on my watch, and the night wore on. Time seemed to drag during my shift. The moons were bright enough now that light made it past the growth on our windows, illuminating the room in a ghastly pallor.

Now and again, a shadow flitted across my field of vision, sometimes from the hall and sometimes from outside. The first two or three times, my heart discovered a direct route from my chest to my mouth. But in a bit, I relaxed. There was nothing nefarious about it, no cannibals lurking in the far shadows, no ghosts prowling the ancient halls.

Nerves turned pretty quickly to boredom, and I was fighting drooping eyelids when Dr. Kimutai stirred awake, saying he had to use the bathroom.

Grumbling to myself at Caspersen, whose bright idea this bathroom buddy system had been, I escorted him all the way out the door, across the expansive few feet of hall, and to the far distant…opposite door. There, I waited rather impatiently until he emerged, and we braved the perilous return trip.

Somehow, we made it. All five feet or so. Caspersen will be so proud. Naturally, she was sound asleep while I was making sure people could figure out how to cross the hall.

But while my mind had flooded with complaints at the indignity of waiting outside our makeshift toilet facilities, I had acknowledged it was the first time in days Caspersen actually slept. I didn’t really begrudge her the rest, but I did resent playing babysitter. And was tired and cranky myself.

Dr. Kimutai didn’t seem to notice. On the contrary, he seemed to be in a talkative mood. “Any trouble so far?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s good. No sign of anything?”

“Nothing.”

For a minute, he fell silent, and I supposed that he was going back to sleep. But then, in a tone low enough not to wake anyone else, he continued, “I’m guessing this probably wasn’t how you pictured your tour when you signed up.”

I laughed at that. Not a laugh of genuine amusement but a sardonic acknowledgment of the understatement in that observation. He was sitting rather than lying, so I figured we were in for a chat. I wasn’t in a talkative mood, but Kim was one of the few members of the crew I’d make an exception for, even when I preferred to mope in solitude.

“No, not really. I mean, I figured there’d be tough times. Can’t say I counted on cannibals though.”

He nodded. “No. Not cannibals.”

“Yeah. Figured the environment and other life-forms would be a problem. Not…us.” Despite the truth of my words, it occurred to me I probably wasn’t doing much to boost morale, so I offered a “But I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”

It was his turn to laugh. “And I am sure pigs will fly.”

“Well, I think we’ve got a good chance. I mean, we’ve got some brilliant people on our side,” I stonewalled. He didn’t bite, so I opted for a bit of self-depreciating humor. “And the rest of us are pretty good shots.” Not even that worked. An uncomfortable silence descended on us, and I had the sinking sensation that Caspersen, if she ever found out about this conversation, would kill me.

“Who do you suppose they are?” Kim asked in a bit.

“The cannibals?”

He nodded again.

“Who? Well, I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I mean, they’re obviously human.”

“Oh, yes. That much is clear.”

“So I suppose they came from Earth.”

“Yes.”

“Did they come with us, you think? Or after?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” he mused.

I didn’t have a response to that. He was the one asking the questions, after all. But he seemed to be thinking aloud, bouncing his ideas off of me. So I chose a response that might prompt him to keep going and said, “I guess so.”

“What’s the likelihood, do you think, of a second journey following ours?”

“Hell, how should I know? We barely survived getting here ourselves. But if things got better on Earth…”

“Hmm,” he mused. “Do you think they’d send a second mission here? After losing contact with the first?”

“Maybe…I mean, it depends on…on the tech, you know? If they could figure out what happened, or if any of us survived…maybe then they’d send someone else.”

“For a one-way trip? For six hundred people? You think they’d send a rescue mission that would take hundreds of years to get here?”

I blinked at the implied reproof. He had a point—my logic didn’t hold up to scrutiny—but I wasn’t claiming to have the answers. “Well, what do you think they are?”

“Hmm,” he repeated. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

Trying not to shake my head, I answered, “Yeah, maybe so.” I could have left it there, as a mystery neither of us would be able to solve.

Based on the silence that followed, I’d almost convinced myself Dr. Kimutai had finished with the topic too. But then he asked, “Why did you apply for this mission? If you don’t mind my asking, I mean.”

“Why?” I shrugged. “Hell. New start, I suppose. Someone had to do it. I fit the criteria. Had the expertise, didn’t have the attachments back home.”

“No family, you mean?”

“Yeah.” It had practically been one of the requirements since this had been a one-way trip after all. “Seemed a better use of my skills than staying. Chance to do something good. I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted an adventure.” I shrugged again. I was tired and not really in the mood for introspection.

“It was quite the risk,” Dr. Kimutai observed.

The sardonic laugh surfaced again. “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

“Do you know why I applied?”

“No.” I had no idea, but I had the sneaking suspicion I was about to find out.

“Well, I wasn’t ‘wanting an adventure,’ as you put it.”

Again, that implied reproof to his tone. “I suppose you were in it for the science?” I asked, with only a touch of mockery to my own voice. I could well imagine Kim, or any of the scientists in our band, blinded to the dangers of our endeavor by the lure of discovery. They were like kids at Christmas with every new species we encountered. What would the prospect of an entire planet of new species have done to cloud their reason?

“No.” He shook his head and, for a minute, stayed absolutely silent. I was on the verge of inquiring if he was okay when he resumed, “I tell you, Captain, do you have any idea what wealth meant when I was a child?”

“Umm…no, what?” I was somewhat taken aback by the journey our conversation had taken in that span of time—all, apparently, in Dr. Kimutai’s head as I had no clue how we’d gotten from there to here.

“To be safe, to have food, clean water, medicine, a good school for the children, a home for the family. That was wealth in my village. The man who had that, had everything.”

I still didn’t see the import, so I quipped, “Sounds nice right about now, doesn’t it?”

He ignored this. “It is what you would call ‘the American dream,’ I think?”

“Yeah, sounds about right. As long as you threw in a fast car and a big TV.”

This, at last, elicited a laugh from him. He lapsed again into reflective silence. Then he resumed on seemingly another topic altogether. “What do you suppose I did when I was out of school and had my first job that paid?”

“No idea.”

“I put aside enough money to pay my bills and put the rest in a jar. It was not much, but every check, I did the same. Can you guess why?”

“To get that sports car?”

“I did not take you for such a…how is it called? Gearhead. But no, not for a car. So I could build that home for my mother. She was my family, and I wanted to provide for her in my wealth.”

“That’s…that’s really decent of you.” I had absolutely no idea where this story was going, but I was getting the feeling it was actually leading somewhere. Despite the random threads, there seemed to be a point. “So, did you build it?”

“Of course. You see, in your country, I was not very wealthy. My work was grant-funded; it belonged to the university, so I earned my salary, but that is all. I was not wealthy by American standards. But in my village, that was wealth. I had everything I could ever need and could provide the same for those I loved.”

“I dunno, I think most people would consider that pretty successful.”

“Would they though? In the world we lived in, success was not measured by providing for your needs or preparing for future needs. It was measured by excess.”

“That wasn’t ‘the American Dream.’” I frowned.

“No. But, tell me, Captain, was it the teacher or the accountant that our society revered? Was it the grocery clerk and the delivery driver? Or was it the tycoon, the movie star, the man with private jets and overseas accounts? Was it the man who had enough or even a little more than enough who had the success, or was it the man who always wanted more because he felt there was no such thing as enough? Did we celebrate that American dream, or did we celebrate the insatiable appetite?”

“I don’t know. I think we confused the two a lot.” I recognized he had a point, but I was too tired to delve into the economic and societal reasons behind it. This seemed a good time to cut to the chase. “But what does that have to do with the Genesis mission?”

He spread his hands, and his deep voice was rich with passion. “Everything. Because if we are honest with ourselves, it was the men who could never get enough, even when they had everything, who took everything from those of us who had just enough. Yes? Would we be here at all, if some men hadn’t been so concerned with their personal wealth that they disregarded the future of our entire species? Would there have been a Genesis mission?”

I thought about it for a moment before conceding, “Probably not.”

“Men like Matt’s father and grandfather. Men for whom the Earth herself was made to bow.”

I nodded silently, the old, familiar dislike of Matt seeping back into my thoughts. It was irrational, of course, to place culpability on Matt for the crimes of his ancestors—irrational, but very difficult to avoid.

“Our greed, human greed, pushed us almost to our own destruction. So why did I apply? Not for perhaps a very good reason, if we’re still being honest. I wanted to believe we could get it right if given another chance. That humanity, our species, was good, was worth saving. That what we had done on Earth was the mistake, the perfect storm of bad choices and misfortune. That we would not fall again if only we had that one second chance. I wanted to believe it, so much that I would travel through deep space to make it happen.”

“And your mother?” I asked. It seemed out of character for Kim to leave behind his only family, even for a cause he clearly believed in so deeply.

“My mother? Ah.” His tone held bitterness now, raw and palpable. “My mother is dead. She was asleep in her bed, in the house I had built for her, when the floods came. Our entire village. Half of our nation, like so many other nations—washed away.” Again, he spread his hands. “Gone.”

“I’m sorry.” I should have guessed. Many people had lost family in the climate catastrophes. Most of us on this voyage had lost someone.

“So I, too, had no more ‘attachments’ when the call came.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated.

“You have nothing to be sorry about. No more than I, or any one of us who was so busy with our day-to-day that we did not see the world slowly catching fire around us. But that, you see, is my own selfish reason for applying.” He laughed a strange, hollow laugh. “And now, I am not so sure it was worth it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, here we are again, are we not? We find ourselves in the midst of cannibals. The last vestiges of our species, almost certainly the distant offspring of our own crew, descended to this.”

“You do think they’re from the Genesis, then?”

“Don’t you?”

I’d rather been hoping there might be another explanation. “It seems likely.”

“So now, perhaps, I have the answer to my own question. What, if given a second chance, would we achieve?” He paused for a moment. “Only it is not the answer I had hoped for.”

“Are you sure? I mean, there are cannibals, but what of us? We’re still here; we haven’t given up. Even Carter is making a brave show of it. Shit, even Frat Boy is pulling his own weight.”

“Yes.”

“And what about the other people, the ones the cannibals were eating. We don’t know that they’ve resorted to cannibalism, do we? Who knows what their culture is, what their moral system is?”

“And what if they are no better?”

“Well…well, we’ll figure something out. But, damn it, as long as there are decent human beings left, I’m not ready to give up.”

A spell of silence followed my declaration, and then Kim laughed again. This time, there was more genuine amusement to his tone.

“Well, Captain Johnson, in that case, I, too, will maintain the faith. As long as there are fifty righteous men in Sodom, eh?”