2061 Odyssey Three

chapter 41 Memoirs of a Centenarian
Dr Heywood Floyd preferred not to talk about the first mission to Jupiter, and the second to Lucifer ten years later. It was all so long ago - and there was nothing he had not said a hundred times to Congressional Committees, Space Council boards and media persons like Victor Willis.

Nevertheless, he had a duty to his fellow passengers which could not be avoided. As the only living man to have witnessed the birth of a new sun - and a new solar system - they expected him to have some special understanding of the worlds they were now so swiftly approaching. It was a naive assumption; he could tell them far less about the Galilean satellites than the scientists and engineers who had been working there for more than a generation. When he was asked 'What's it really like on Europa?' (or Ganymede, or Io, or Callisto...) he was liable to refer the enquirer, rather brusquely, to the voluminous reports available in the ship's library.

Yet there was one area where his experience was unique. Half a century later, he sometimes wondered if it had really happened, or whether he had been asleep aboard Discovery when David Bowman had appeared to him. Almost easier to believe that a spaceship could be haunted...

But he could not have been dreaming, when the floating dust motes assembled themselves into that ghostly image of a man who should have been dead for a dozen years. Without the warning it had given him (how clearly he remembered that its lips were motionless, and the voice had come from the console speaker) Leonov and all aboard would have been vaporized in the detonation of Jupiter.

'Why did he do it?' Floyd asked during one of the after-dinner sessions. 'I've puzzled over that for fifty years. Whatever he became, after he went out in Discovery's space pod to investigate the monolith, he must still have had some links with the human race; he was not completely alien. We know that he returned to Earth - briefly - because of that orbiting bomb incident. And there's strong evidence that he visited both his mother and his old girlfriend; that's not the action of - of an entity that had discarded all emotions.'

'What do you suppose he is now?' asked Willis. 'For that matter - where is he?'

'Perhaps that last question has no meaning - even for human beings. Do you know where your consciousness resides?'

'I've no use for metaphysics. Somewhere in the general area of my brain, anyway.'

'When I was a young man,' sighed Mihailovich, who had a talent for deflating the most serious discussions, 'mine was about a metre lower down.'

'Let's assume he's on Europa; we know there's a monolith there, and Bowman was certainly associated with it in some way - see how he relayed that warning.'

'Do you think he also relayed the second one, telling us to stay away?'

'Which we are now going to ignore -'

' in a good cause -' Captain Smith, who was usually content to let the discussion go where it wished, made one of his rare interjections.

'Dr Floyd,' he said thoughtfully, 'you're in a unique position, and we should take advantage of it. Bowman went out of his way to help you once. If he's still around, he may be willing to do so again. I worry a good deal about that ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS HERE order. If he could assure us that it was - temporarily suspended, let's say - I'd be much happier.'

There were several 'hear, hear's around the table before Floyd answered.

'Yes, I've been thinking along the same lines. I've already told Galaxy to watch out for any - let's say manifestations - in case he tries to make contact.'

'Of course,' said Yva, 'he may be dead by now - if ghosts can die.'

Not even Mihailovich had a suitable comment to this, but Yva obviously sensed that no-one thought much of her contribution.

Undeterred, she tried again.

'Woody, dear,' she said. 'Why don't you simply give him a call on the radio? That's what it's for, isn't it?'

The idea had occurred to Floyd, but it had somehow seemed too naive to take seriously.

'I will,' he said. 'I don't suppose it will do any harm.'