“Or dead,” said Kamilah as she came out of the bathroom. “Shall we tell young Adel here how long it’s been since Speedy discovered a terrestrial planet?”
“Young Adel?” said Meri. “Just how old are you?”
“Nineteen standard,” Adel muttered.
—twenty-six back home—buzzed plus.
“But that’s twenty-six on Harvest.”
“One hundred and fifty-eight standard,” said the wall. “This is your captain speaking.”
“Oh gods.” Kamilah rested her forehead in her hand.
The image the Godspeed projected was more uniform than woman; she stood against the dazzle of a star field. Her coat was golden broadcloth lined in red; it hung to her knees. The sleeves were turned back to show the lining. Double rows of brass buttons ran from neck to hem. These were unbuttoned below the waist, revealing red breeches and golden hose. The white sash over her left shoulder was decorated with patches representing all the terrestrial planets she had discovered. Adel counted more than thirty before he lost track.
“I departed from the MASTA on Nuevo Sueño,” said the Godspeed, “one hundred and fifty-eight years ago, Adel, and I’ve been looking for my next discovery ever since.”
“Longer than any other threshold,” said Kamilah.
“Longer than any other threshold,” the Godspeed said amiably. “Which pains me deeply, I must say. Why do you bring this unfortunate statistic up, perfect one? Is there some conclusion you care to draw?”
She glared at the wall. “Only that we have wasted a century and a half in this desolate corner of the galaxy.”
“We, Kamilah?” The Godspeed gave her an amused smile. “How long have you been with me?”
“Not quite a year.” She folded her arms.
“Ah, the impatience of flesh.” The Godspeed turned to the stars behind her. “You have traveled not quite a third of a light-year since your arrival. Consider that I’ve traveled 50.12 light-years since my departure from Nuevo Sueño. Now see what that looks like to me.” She thrust her hands above her head and suddenly the points of light on the wall streamed into ribbons and the center of the screen jerked up-right-left-down-left with each course correction and then the ribbons became stars again. She faced the library again, her face glowing. “You have just come 15.33 parsecs in ten seconds. If I follow my instructions to reach my journey’s end at the center of our galaxy I will have traveled 8.5 kiloparsecs.”
—if?—buzzed minus.
“Believe me, Kamilah, I can imagine your experience of spacetime more easily than you can imagine mine.” She tugged her sash into place and then pointed at Kamilah. “You’re going to mope now.”
Kamilah shook her head. Her medallion had gone completely black.
“A hundred and thirty-three people have jumped to me since Nuevo Sueño. How many times do you think I’ve had this conversation, Kamilah?”
Kamilah bit her lip.
“Ah, if only these walls could talk.” The Godspeed’s laugh sounded like someone dropping silver spoons. “The things they have seen.”
—is she all right?—buzzed plus.
“Here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know,” said the Godspeed. “A fun fact. Now that Adel has replaced Upwood among our little company, everyone on board is under thirty.”
The four of them digested this information in astonished silence.
“Wait a minute,” said Meri. “What about Jonman?”
“He would like you to believe he’s older but he’s the same age as Kamilah.” She reached into the pocket of her greatcoat and pulled out a scrap of digitex. A new window opened on the wall; it contained the birth certificate of Jon Haught Shillaber. “Twenty-eight standard.”
“All of us?” said Jarek. “That’s an pretty amazing coincidence.”
“A coincidence?” She waved the birth certificate away. “You don’t know how hard I schemed to arrange it.” She chuckled. “I was practically diabolical.”
“Speedy,” said Meri carefully, “you’re starting to worry us.”
“Worry?”
“Worry,” said Jarek.
“Why, because I make jokes? Because I have a flare for the dramatic?” She bowed low and gave them an elaborate hand flourish. “I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”
minus buzzed—time to be afraid—
“So,” said the Godspeed, “we seem to be having a morale problem. I know my feelings have been hurt. I think we need to come together, work on some common project. Build ourselves back into a team.” She directed her gaze at Adel. “What do you say?”
“Sure.”
“Then I suggest that we put on a play.”
Meri moaned.
“Yes, that will do nicely.” The Godspeed clapped her hands, clearly pleased at the prospect. “We’ll need to a pick a script. Adel, I understand you’ve had some acting experience so I’m going to appoint you and Lihong to serve on the selection committee with me. I think poor Sister needs to get out and about more.”
“Don’t let Lihong pick,” said Meri glumly. “How many plays are there about praying?”
“Come now, Meri,” said the Godspeed. “Give her a chance. I think you’ll be surprised.”
There are two kinds of pilgrimage, as commonly defined. One is a journey to a specific, usually sacred place; it takes place and then ends. The other is less about a destination and more about a spiritual quest. When we decide to jump to a threshold, we most often begin our pilgrimages intending to get to the Godspeed or the Big D or the Bisous Bisous, stay for some length of time and then return to our ordinary lives. However, as time passes on board we inevitably come to realize—sometimes to our chagrin—that we have been infected with an irrepressible yearning to seek out the numinous, wherever and however it might be found.
Materialists don’t have much use for the notion of a soul. They prefer to locate individuality in the mind, which emerges from the brain but cannot exist separately from it. They maintain that information must be communicated to the brain through the senses, and only through the senses. But materialists have yet to offer a rigorous explanation of what happens during those few seconds of a jump when the original has ceased to exist and the scan from it has yet to be reassembled. Because during the brief interval when there are neither senses nor brain nor mind, we all seem to receive some subtle clue about our place in the universe.
This is why there are so few materialists.
Adel had been having dreams. They were not bad dreams, merely disturbing. In one, he was lost in a forest where people grew instead of trees. He stumbled past shrubby little kids he’d gone to school with and great towering grownups like his parents and Uncle Durwin and President Adriana. He knew he had to keep walking because if he stopped he would grow roots and raise his arms up to the sun like all the other tree people, but he was tired, so very tired.
In another, he was standing backstage watching a play he’d never heard of before and Sister Lihong tapped him on the shoulder and told him that Gavrila had called in sick and that he would have to take her part and then she pushed him out of the wings and he was onstage in front of a sellout audience, every one of which was Speedy, and he stumbled across the stage to the bed where Jarek waited for him, naked Jarek, and then Adel realized that he was naked too, and he climbed under the covers because he was cold and embarrassed, and Jarek kept staring at him because he, Adel, was supposed to say his line but he didn’t know the next line or any line and so he did the one thing he could think to do, which was to kiss Jarek, on the mouth, and then his tongue brushed the ridges of Jarek’s teeth and all the Speedys in the audience gave him a standing ovation…