2061 Odyssey Three

chapter 7 Transit
'I too take leave of all 1 ever had...'

From what depths of memory had that line come swimming up to the surface? Heywood Floyd closed his eyes, and tried to focus on the past. It was certainly from a poem - and he had hardly read a line of poetry since leaving college. And little enough then, except during a short English Appreciation Seminar.

With no further clues, it might take the station computer quite a while - perhaps as much as ten minutes - to locate the line in the whole body of English literature. But that would be cheating (not to mention expensive) and Floyd preferred to accept the intellectual challenge.

A war poem, of course - but which war? There had been so many in the twentieth century.

He was still searching through the mental mists when his guests arrived, moving with the effortless, slow-motion grace of longtime one-sixth gravity residents. The society of Pasteur was strongly influenced by what had been christened 'centrifugal stratification'; some people never left the zero gee of the hub, while those who hoped one day to return to Earth preferred the almost normal-weight regime out on the rim of the huge, slowly revolving disc.

George and Jerry were now Floyd's oldest and closest friends - which was surprising, because they had so few obvious points in common. Looking back on his own somewhat chequered emotional career - two marriages, three formal contracts, two informal ones, three children - he often envied the long-term stability of their relationship, apparently quite unaffected by the 'nephews' from Earth or Moon who visited them from time to time.

'Haven't you ever thought of divorce?' he had once asked them teasingly.

As usual, George - whose acrobatic yet profoundly serious conducting had been largely responsible for the comeback of the classical orchestra - was at no loss for words.

'Divorce - never,' was his swift reply. 'Murder - often.'

'Of course, he'd never get away with it,' Jerry had retorted. 'Sebastian would spill the beans.'

Sebastian was a beautiful and talkative parrot which the couple had imported after a long battle with the hospital authorities. He could not only talk, but could reproduce the opening bars of the Sibelius Violin Concerto, with which Jerry - considerably helped by Antonio Stradivari - had made his reputation half a century ago.

Now the time had come to say goodbye to George, Jerry and Sebastian - perhaps only for a few weeks, perhaps for ever. Floyd had already made all his other farewells, in a round of parties that had gravely depleted the station's wine cellar, and could think of nothing he had left undone.

Archie, his early-model but still perfectly serviceable comsec, had been programmed to handle all incoming messages, either by sending out appropriate replies or by routing anything urgent and personal to him aboard Universe. It would be strange, after all these years, not to be able to talk to anyone he wished - though in compensation he could also avoid unwanted callers. After a few days into the voyage, the ship would be far enough from Earth to make real-time conversation impossible, and all communication would have to be by recorded voice or teletext.

'We thought you were our friend,' complained George. 'It was a dirty trick to make us your executors - especially as you're not going to leave us anything.'

'You may have a few surprises,' grinned Floyd. 'Anyway, Archie will take care of all the details. I'd just like you to monitor my mail, in case there's anything he doesn't understand.'

'If he won't, nor will we. What do we know about all your scientific societies and that sort of nonsense?'

'They can look after themselves. Please see that the cleaning staff doesn't mess things up too badly while I'm away - and, if I don't come back - here are a few personal items I'd like delivered - mostly family.'

Family! There were pains, as well as pleasures, in living as long as he had done.

It had been sixty-three - sixty-three! - years since Marion had died in that air crash. Now he felt a twinge of guilt, because he could not even recall the grief he must have known. Or at best, it was a synthetic reconstruction, not a genuine memory.

What would they have meant to each other, had she still been alive? She would have been just a hundred years old by now.

And now the two little girls he had once loved so much were friendly, grey-haired strangers in their late sixties, with children - and grandchildren! - of their own. At last count there had been nine on that side of the family; without Archie's help, he would never be able to keep track of their names. But at least they all remembered him at Christmas, through duty if not affection.

His second marriage, of course, had overlain the memories of his first, like the later writing on a medieval palimpsest. That too had ended, fifty years ago, somewhere between Earth and Jupiter. Though he had hoped for a reconciliation with both wife and son, there had been time for only one brief meeting, among all the welcoming ceremonies, before his accident exiled him to Pasteur.

The meeting had not been a success; nor had the second, arranged at considerable expense and difficulty aboard the space hospital itself - indeed, in this very room. Chris had been twenty then, and had just married; if there was one thing that united Floyd and Caroline, it was disapproval of his choice.

Yet Helena had turned out remarkably well: she had been a good mother to Chris II, born barely a month after the marriage. And when, like so many other young wives, she was widowed by the Copernicus Disaster, she did not lose her head.

There was a curious irony in the fact that both Chris I and II had lost their fathers to space, though in very different ways. Floyd had returned briefly to his eight-year-old son as a total stranger; Chris II had at least known a father for the first decade of his life, before losing him for ever.

And where was Chris these days? Neither Caroline nor Helena - who were now the best of friends - seemed to know whether he was on Earth or in space. But that was typical; only postcards date-stamped CLAVIUS BASE had informed his family of his first visit to the Moon.

Floyd's card was still taped prominently above his desk. Chris II had a good sense of humour - and of history. He had mailed his grandfather that famous photograph of the Monolith, looming over the spacesuited figures gathered round it in the Tycho excavation, more than half a century ago. All the others in the group were now dead, and the Monolith itself was no longer on the Moon. In 2006, after much controversy, it had been brought to Earth and erected - an uncanny echo of the main building - in the United Nations Plaza. It had been intended to remind the human race that it was no longer alone; five years later, with Lucifer blazing in the sky, no such reminder was needed.

Floyd's fingers were not very steady - sometimes his right hand seemed to have a will of its own - as he unpeeled the card and slipped it into his pocket. It would be almost the only personal possession he would take when he boarded Universe.

'Twenty-five days - you'll be back before we've noticed you're gone,' said Jerry. 'And by the way, is it true that you'll have Dimitri onboard?'

'That little Cossack!' snorted George. 'I conducted his Second Symphony, back in '22.'

'Wasn't that when the First Violin threw up, during the largo?'

'No - that was Mahler, not Mihailovich. And anyway it was the brass, so nobody noticed - except the unlucky tuba player, who sold his instrument the next day.'

'You're making this up!'

'Of course. But give the old rascal my love, and ask him if he remembers that night we had out in Vienna. Who else have you got aboard?'

'I've heard horrible rumours about press gangs,' said Jerry thoughtful1y.

'Greatly exaggerated, I can assure you. We've all been personally chosen by Sir Lawrence for our intelligence, wit, beauty, charisma, or other redeeming virtue.'

'Not expendability?'

'Well, now that you mention it, we've all had to sign a depressing legal document, absolving Tsung Spacelines from every conceivable liability. My copy's in that file, by the way.'

'Any chance of us collecting on it?' asked George hopefully.

'No - my lawyers say it's iron-clad. Tsung agrees to take me to Halley and back, give me food, water, air, and a room with a view.'

'And in return?'

'When I get back I'll do my best to promote future voyages, make some video appearances, write a few articles - all very reasonable, for the chance of a lifetime. Oh yes - I'll also entertain my fellow passengers - and vice versa.'

'How? Song and dance?'

'Well, I hope to inflict selected portions of my memoirs on a captive audience. But I don't think I'll be able to compete with the professionals. Did you know that Yva Merlin will be on board?'

'What! How did they coax her out of that Park Avenue cell?'

'She must be a hundred and - oops, sorry, Hey.' 'She's seventy, plus or minus five.'

'Forget the minus. I was just a kid when Napoleon came out.'

There was a long pause while each of the trio scanned his memories of that famous work. Although some critics considered her Scarlett O'Hara to be her finest role, to the general public Yva Merlin (nee Evelyn Miles, when she was born in Cardiff, South Wales) was still identified with Josephine. Almost half a century ago, David Griffin's controversial epic had delighted the French and infuriated the British - though both sides now agreed that he had occasionally allowed his artistic impulses to trifle with the historical record, notably in the spectacular final sequence of the Emperor's coronation in Westminster Abbey.

'That's quite a scoop for Sir Lawrence,' said George thoughtfully.

'I think I can claim some credit for that. Her father was an astronomer - he worked for me at one time - and she's always been quite interested in science. So I made a few video calls.'

Heywood Floyd did not feel it necessary to add that, like a substantial fraction of the human race, he had fallen in love with Yva ever since the appearance of GWTW Mark II.

'Of course,' he continued, 'Sir Lawrence was delighted - but I had to convince him that she had more than a casual interest in astronomy. Otherwise the voyage could be a social disaster.'

'Which reminds me,' said George, producing a small package he had been not very successfully hiding behind his back. 'We have a little present for you.'

'Can I open it now?'

'Do you think he should?' Jerry wondered anxiously.

'In that case, I certainly will,' said Floyd, untying the bright green ribbon and unwrapping the paper.

Inside was a nicely framed painting. Although Floyd knew little of art, he had seen it before; indeed, who could ever forget it?

The makeshift raft tossing on the waves was crowded with half-naked castaways, some already moribund, others waving desperately at a ship on the horizon. Beneath it was the caption:

THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA

(Theodore Gericault, 1791-1824)

And underneath that was the message, signed by George and Jerry: 'Getting there is half the fun.'

'You're a pair of bastards, and I love you dearly,' said Floyd, embracing them both. The ATTENTION light on Archie's keyboard was flashing briskly; it was time to go.

His friends left in a silence more eloquent than words. For the last time, Heywood Floyd looked around the little room that had been his universe for almost half his life.

And suddenly he remembered how that poem ended:

'I have been happy: happy now I go.'