When I came out of my sleep and went up to the bridge and looked out the window, there was Belson at about the size the moon is when seen from Earth. It looked as empty as the moon. I had awakened with cold in my gut and remembered no dreams; the sight of that planet of black glass sent a deep chill into my soul; it was all I could do not to quail at it and tell Ruth not to land. Where did these spooky feelings come from, anyway? I had never felt anything but love for Belson—even when it had broken my arm.
I steeled myself, shook off the bad feelings as well as I could, and told Ruth to pick a spot on the other side of the planet from where we were before. She was shocked to hear my voice. She had been sitting hunched over the controls when I came in and hadn’t looked up. Somehow she had cut her hair. It looked nice short. She blinked at me and then frowned slightly. “Good morning, Captain.”
“Good morning, Ruth. Find us a big plain of obsidian and come down on it. I don’t want us hurting the grass.”
“Okay, Captain,” she said. And she did it. Within two hours she had set us down on the planet’s day side without even a bump. Out the portholes was Belson, looking the same here as on its other side. And my spooky feelings had evaporated. I couldn’t wait to get out there and start making my homestead.
It took a week. On the first day we explored the new area just to make sure. There was a higher proportion of obsidian to grass here, but that was the only difference. On the second and third days I erected myself this shack of moonwood, with the help of five crew members.
We outfitted it from the ship. We carried out the little red computer that I use for writing this journal, four of the Nautilus machines, eighteen cases of wine and, from the ship’s garden, an array of hydroponics. I have my Eames chair, a mattress, my books and a very serious voice-activated recorder for recording the song of the Belson grass. A lot of food, a lot of whiskey, the drug synthesizer, seeds and hydroponics. I am relatively happy now.
My stateroom aboard the Isabel was not much bigger than my bathroom at the Pierre; it barely held my narrow bed, my Eames chair and a small desk. Above the desk was a narrow bookshelf, and to the right of it a hatchway that led into my private head. Whatever Chinese had designed the head had placed things so that when I sat on the john I faced a porthole that gave a view of the Milky Way; the clarity of the view was, shortly after I arose in the mornings, breathtaking. Being in spacewarp and at an analogy travel rate of two hundred times the speed of light did not affect it. I sat on the can in the mornings and watched the starry universe.
There was a kind of anteroom to the stateroom, and it was much larger. The Chinese had used it as a captain’s mess and boardroom for staff meetings. Since I either ate with the crew or with one guest in my stateroom and since there were no staff meetings, that room was the ship’s gym. During my long sleep I had been carried from my bed daily, worked out and returned; I had had the gym installed next door to simplify that maneuver. There were five Nautilus machines in there; after I was wakened I would work out for an hour each morning and then shower back in my head. It was a good routine. It was good to be away from the Earth and without a telephone, to eat breakfast alone and then move my bowels and then build up a sweat on the equipment. I especially liked working my pectorals and quadriceps until they bulged and hardened. I still work out here on Belson and the machines are better; they have regular weights now instead of springs. But sometimes I miss that little gym on the Isabel; I’ll be working away at leg curls, say, and my mind will go back to those days, to my scrambled eggs eaten at my stateroom desk, to the satisfactions of the journey I am still taking, into myself. Looking back on it, now I feel that my decision to come to Fomalhaut was inspired. The Belson grass and all the things that happened on Juno, even the dreams of my father’s study, were important in bringing about change; and yet sometimes it seems that my mornings on the Isabel alone, my breakfast, my shit, the stars, the Nautilus machines and the sweat that covered my hardening body and the cold shower afterward were what really changed me and began to thaw the glacier that was crushing my soul.
Many middle-aged men can’t seem to change their lives at all. The more scrubby and dour things get, the less rewarding the compensatory pleasures become, the more we tend to hang on and to fear attempting a new bargain with life. I felt that way before I bought the Isabel. The only thing was that I damn well knew my life was getting worse. I wasn’t moving anywhere, and the price for staying where I was was going up. Much of this was invisible to me; but the same voice that could tell me to sell a company no matter what the stock was going for was telling me to pull out. Good ratios all around. Good performance record too. But time to unload nonetheless. Time to sell, move, get out.
I saw my father die. He was the age I am now—fifty-two. Somebody had taken out his false teeth and his mouth closed up like a fist; a sound, half gag and half rattle, came from somewhere inside. It was as though whatever soul he owned had shrunk like a handful of dried peas in a never-opened pod and it was rattling around inside him now. Too late, I thought, too late! He needed a shave. It was the only time I had ever seen him in need of a shave. Somehow for once he looked like a man, in that last grim spasm. The son of a bitch. That was his price for staying where he was. One long soul-shaking shudder and down the tubes. Well. If there’s a life after death he’s probably avoiding it now.
As, come to face it, I am avoiding my own life.
Well, to hell with my life for now. That mess back on Earth. Isabel and money; money and Isabel. Anna! Some nagging voice in me tells me to feel guilty because I am lying on my ass on a barren planet and shooting dope. Because I am not engagé. Because I am shunning relationships. Because I have become asexual and detached. Well to hell with that voice. It’s the one I ignore when I want to make money. I am going to lie on my foam mattress and listen to the grass when it chooses to speak to me or sing to me. I have been a sick man lately; I need respite. I need to do what I need to do to get well. My father decided to die when he was my age; I decided to come to Belson. It beats death. And I can go back.
And that’s how I got to where I am now, tending the seedlings in my hydroponic garden, twenty-three light-years from New York and as alone as the prisoner of Chillon. The Isabel left for Earth three months ago and I fell into my routine here on Belson as though I were born for it. It has been a spare and nearly empty time and one my soul has needed. For some reason during the last week—I count by Earth time on my Chinese watch—each Belson day at twilight the rings have come out for about a half hour and glowed like a giant and perfect rainbow in the green sky. That is the climax of my Belson day; I feel the rings do it because I’m here. Belson’s first resident. I take no morphine after ringtime; I lie on the hard foam mattress on my moonwood porch and stare up at the sky. Sometimes I look at my former sun, Sol. From here it is an undistinguished speck of a star, and because of its distance I see it as it was twenty-three years ago, as I saw it when I was thirty and afraid of love.
Sometimes I fall asleep while staring at the sky. Sometimes I read by the light of a little nuclear lamp, or dictate into my red computer as I am doing now, writing this. I am never lonely here. Sometimes the grass sings to me. Often I lie on it, but it has never again said, “I love you.”