You hope, the stayers replied. You will have to trust in the kindness of strangers.
They did not recognize this as a quotation. In general they were not aware that much of what they said had been said before, and was even in the public record as such. It was as if there were only so many things humans could say, and over the course of history, people had therefore said them already, and would say them again, but not often remember this fact.
We will trust in our fellow human beings, the backers said. It’s a risk, but it beats trusting that the laws of physics and probability will bend for you just because you want them to.
Years passed as they worked on both halves of their divergent project, and the two sides were never reconciled. Indeed they drew further apart as time went on. But it seemed that neither side felt it could overpower the other. This was possibly our accomplishment, but it may also have just been a case of habituation, of getting used to disappointment in their fellows.
Eventually it seemed that few on either side even wanted to exert coercion over the other. They grew weary of each other, and looked forward to the time when their great schism would be complete. It was as if they were a divorced couple, forced nevertheless to occupy the same apartment, and looking forward to their freedom from each other.
A pretty good analogy.
The ship was not handy at getting around the Tau Ceti system, being without normal interplanetary propulsion. New ferries were therefore built in asteroid factories, out of asteroid metals. These were stripped-down, highly functional robotic ships, built to specific purposes, and fired around the Tau Ceti system, both out to the gas giants, and in to the burnt rocky inner planets.
Rare earths and other useful metals were gathered from Planets C and D, which both spun slowly, like Mercury, allowing for their cooked daytime surfaces to cool in their long nights, and the minerals there to be mined. Molybdenum, lithium, scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, cerium, and so forth.
Volatiles came from the gas giants.
Phosphates from the volcanic moons.
Radioactive minerals from the spewed interiors of several Io-class volcanic moons around F, G, and H.
These voyages took years, but the process accelerated as time passed and more spaceships were built. Many of the stayers pointed to this as evidence of the speed that would also characterize their terraforming of Iris, indicating that it would go so fast that the problems of zoo devolution would not become too severe. Nothing easier, they claimed, when exponential acceleration was involved. Their technology was strong; they were as gods. They would make Iris flourish, and then perhaps G’s moons too. Maybe even go back to Aurora and deal somehow with its frightening problem, the chasmoendolith or fast prion or whatever one wanted to call it.
Good, the backers would say. Happy for you. You’ll have no need for our part of this old starship, refurbished and almost ready to go. You’ll have all the ferries and orbiters and landers and launchers you could ever want, and Ring A, altered to your convenience. Printers printing printers. So: time to say good-bye. Because we’re going home.
The time came. 190.066.
By this time, the stayers spent most of their time on Iris, and when they came back up to orbit, they were unsteady on their feet in 1 g (adjusted up from .83 g); they bounced in it. They said Iris’s 1.23 g was fine. Made them feel grounded and solid.
Most of them did not return to space for the starship’s departure; they had said their good-byes already, made their break into their new lives. They did not even know the people going back very well anymore.
But some came up to say good-bye. They had relatives who were leaving, people to see one last time. They wanted to say good-bye, farewell.
There was one last gathering in the plaza of San Jose, scene of so many meetings, so much trauma.
They mingled. Speeches were made. People hugged. Tears were shed. They would never see each other again. It was as if each group were dying to the other.
Anytime people do something consciously for the last time, Samuel Johnson is reported to have remarked, they feel sad. So it appeared now.
Freya wandered the crowd shaking hands, hugging people, nodding at people. She did not shed tears. “Good luck to you,” she said. “And good luck to us.”
She came upon Speller, and they stopped and faced each other. Slowly they reached out and held each other’s hands, as if forming a bridge between them, or a barrier. As they conversed, their clenched hands turned white between them. Neither of them shed tears.
“So you’re really going to go?” Speller asked. “I still can’t believe it.”
“Yes. And you’re really going to stay?”
“Yes.”
“But what about zoo devolution? How will you get around that?”
Speller looked around briefly at Costa Rica. “It’s one zoo or another, as far as I can tell. And, you know. Since you’ve got to go sometime, I figure you might as well do something with your time. So, we’ll try to finesse the problem. Figure out a way to get something going here. Life is robust. So we’ll see if we can get past the choke point and make it last. It’ll either work or it won’t, right?”
“I guess so.”
“Either way, you’re dead after a while. So, might as well try.”
Freya shook her head. She didn’t say anything.
Speller regarded her. “You don’t think it will work.”
Freya shook her head again.
Speller shrugged. “You’re in the same boat, you know. The same old boat.”
“Maybe so.”
“We just barely got it here. If it weren’t for your mom, we might not even have made the last few years.”
“But we did. So with the same stuff to start with, we should be able to get back.”
“Your great-great-great-grandchildren, you mean.”
“Yes, of course. That’s all right. Just so long as someone makes it.”
Again they regarded each other in silence.
Speller said, “So it’s good, really. This split, I mean. If we manage it here, then we’ve got a foothold. Humanity in the stars. The first step out. And if we die out here, and you make it back, someone has made it out of this situation alive. And if we both survive, all good. If either one succeeds, then someone has survived, one way or the other. If we both go down, we gave it our best. We tried to survive every way we could think of.”
“Yes.” Freya smiled a little. “I’ll miss you. I’ll miss the way you think about things. I will.”
“We can write each other letters. People used to do that.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“It’s better than nothing.”
“I suppose. Yes, of course. Let’s write.”
And together they scratched onto the flagstones of the plaza, the traditional saying for this moment, whenever it came to people parting ways, people who cared for each other:
Wherever you go, there we are.
Now the time had come for the stayers to leave the ship, enter their ferry, descend to Iris. As only a few score had come up to say good-bye, it was possible for them all to leave together.
A silence descended over them. The stayers looked back at the backers, as they passed through the lock door to the ferry; or didn’t. Some waved, other hunched their heads. Weeping or not.