Midway: Chapter 14

  “They did a pretty good job in here, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah, but they had to ditch the bed, the flooring, refinish the walls…  Damn blood got absolutely everywhere; they couldn’t get it out of anything it touched.”

  “And where did everything, um… end up?”

  “Well, the body and everything else that had to be removed is all in the vacuum morgue we made out of one of the empty supply compartments some years back.”

  Patriarch Bowland and Captain Tynes were once again in the victim’s suite, evaluating the cleanup job that had been done.  The cleanup crew had done well, but it was nonetheless easy to tell that something had happened here.  What exactly had happened though, would have been impossible to tell.  It was the conspicuous absence of certain items which now gave it away, things missing which would have been found in every other suite.  Somebody not looking for it could easily miss those clues though.

  “Johannes... it’s been a week now.  I have to tell the crew something,” Anaru stated in frustration.  “Everyone knows that he died and that there was something suspicious about his death.  I didn’t want to make any announcements until we knew what happened and who was responsible but the fact is, you’re no closer to knowing now than you were a week ago.   I really don’t want to let the speculation about what happened here run wild any more so I have to tell them something.  I’m just worried that if I tell them what happened before we know who did it… I’m worried they’ll turn on each other.  I’m worried everyone will start accusing each other.”

  “Ana, I think you have to give the crew more credit than that,” Johannes countered, standing up with great effort.

  “You sure, I mean really sure Joh?  Knowing that there’s a killer in their midst but not knowing who?  I wouldn’t be so sure about that old man…”  Johannes looked around the room again, desperately trying to see something he hadn't seen before, if not in the room itself, then in his investigation overall.  

  “Know what you’re going to do with this room yet?”

  “Oh who knows…” Anaru answered a little dismissively, “we always need more room, I’m sure we’ll come up with something.  Johannes I need an answer, do you think I should tell them?  Do you really think they can handle it?”

  “Think they can handle it…” Johannes repeated as he reached up, grabbed a long lock of white hair and started to twirl it between his bony fingers.  “What a wonderful idea… you’d agree that pretty much everyone aboard this ship would be absolutely disgusted by a scene like that right?  Even if just a bit, even if just for a short time before they composed themselves, they’d be obviously disgusted, don’t you think?”

  Anaru knew exactly where he was going with this.  “Yes, of course,” he snapped his fingers to communicate his understanding, “absolutely everyone.  Everyone that is, except for the killer.”

  “Precisely.  So how about this,” Johannes suggested, with an excited twinkle in his eye.  “Tonight is the transmission party.  Earlier in the evening, during the reception, we’ll make sure that every single crew member is in the dining hall and without warning, instead of displaying the greeting message at the beginning of the transmission from Earth, we’ll instead display the worst picture of the murder scene we can find and-“

  “And see who reacts in the wrong way?”

  “Or who doesn’t react at all…”

   

  That evening the entire crew was gathered in the dining hall to await the transmission.  It had been over fifteen years since the New Horizon had sent its last transmission to Earth.  The anticipation of the latest response had been growing for years but had been gaining a special intensity over the last few months.  Each transmission was more eagerly anticipated than the last, even from the very early days of the mission when transmission between the ship and Earth took only a few hours.  Today was special though.  

  In the intervening years since the last transmission, the only remaining member of the original crew had died, signalling the point at which every member of the crew had been born in space.  No one left on the ship had ever set foot on Earth, or any other planet for that matter.  They were all now entirely space born; they were children of the ship now and no longer of the Earth.  

  There were still people on Earth who were old enough to remember the launch of the New Horizon in a distant memory from childhood.  It was one of those things which they were told about as children and told of its importance, but would not really understand the significance of until long after the ship had left.  The two communities had officially diverged; they were now distant cousins as opposed to close siblings.  The transmission was now more like getting mail from relatives you’d never met, as opposed to getting mail from the family you’d left behind.

  The excitement was palpable.  Life on the New Horizon was all too frequently a life of routine and more routine, and then some more routine.  Certainly there were always things to occupy one’s time with; people were infrequently bored and without anything to do.  What was unusual though, was the unusual itself; the out of the ordinary, and nothing was more unusual these days than contact from Earth.  Except maybe, for murder.

   

  “It’s a big day, isn’t it Tycho?” Dhika asked after sitting beside her friend at a table in the far corner of the dining hall where he preferred to sit.

  “I suppose…” Tycho answered glumly.

  “You’re not excited?”

  “Well sure I am, it’s just…” he looked around at the boisterous crowd around them, “not as much as everyone else here seems to be I guess.  I don’t know Dhika... I’m sure I’ll perk up once it gets here and everything starts, I just don’t expect any personal messages for me specifically.   And besides, we’re about exactly midway to Haven, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how we should be starting to think a lot more about where we’re going, and maybe a lot less about where we’ve come from...”

  “Tycho, you know that part of my quaternary training was in Earth history right?”

  “Yeah of course, in ancient Chi- DO YOU MIND??”  Tycho was bumped into from behind by someone who appeared to be having a little too much alcohol in celebration of the occasion.  The man apologized offhandedly (and somewhat indifferently), then carried on.

  Dhika's eyes narrowed as she scrutinized him a little more carefully.  She knew that he could get pretty edgy sometimes, but there was usually a reason for it.  “Are you sure you’re okay Tycho?”

  “Yes…” he uttered unconvincingly, and then added with more conviction, “yes.   I’ve just got something on my mind… something Johannes told me the other day after he visited my class.”

  “What was it” she seemed genuinely concerned.  Tycho had always known that Dhika was interested in him, but something had always held him back from engaging with her.  The truth was he was never one for letting others in at all.  He was a very private soul and he always figured that in romantic entanglements one lost more than one gained, and that simple sexual escapades too frequently and too easily resulted in romantic entanglements.

  “I can't say...  I’m sorry Dhika, he told me in strict confidence.  I really just shouldn’t have brought it up at all.  What were you going to say about history?”

   “Oh… I was just responding to your comment that you think we should be looking more forward as opposed to looking backwards so much.   One of those things that you’re told over and over while studying history is the old saying, ‘those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them,’ or whatever the exact phrasing was…  I think on that basis alone it is at least as important to be familiar with Earth as it is with Haven.”

  “Familiar sure Dhika, and when you’re talking about the sociocultural and political history of Earth of course I agree.  But I more meant the way people around here seem to be longing for Earth, as though it is what matters to us.  I don’t know… to me it just seems like the crew should focus a little less on how to make life on New Horizon better, and a little more on what we’re going to do when we get to Haven.  That is what we should be planning for and spending our time thinking about...”

  Dhika put her hand on his, which was resting on the table.  She looked him in the eyes with sincere sympathy.  “Tycho… I’m sorry that you’ve never felt quite at home here on the ship.  I wish-”

  Clearly irritated, he pulled his hand away and put it under the table with his other one.   “That’s not what I meant.”

  Tycho looked at the large screen at the end of the room which was counting down the time until the transmission was expected, while Dhika looked at him with sadness in her eyes.  “I was going to say,” she attempted to conclude while he continued to look away, “I wish I could make you feel more at home here… the way I do” she said introspectively, turning her focus away from Tycho and on to the countdown clock.  “I wish I could… I don’t know, give you a transplant of it or something,” Dhika added, which amused Tycho but he kept it to himself.

   

  “Transmission receipt in five minutes”

   

  “Are you sure about this Johannes?  The more I think about it… the more I question the wisdom.  I mean, nobody out there has ever seen anything like this, not even close.  It seems… well, mean at best, and dangerous at worst to just spring such an thing on them without any warning.”

  “I know Ana, but I can’t see any other way.  I agree that it seems awful, but, well... unless you have a better idea, the alternative is basically to just give up, to admit to the crew that somebody on board has gotten away with murder, and that he or she remains among them.  I think they’ll forgive us once we explain that… well, I certainly hope they'll forgive us once we explain that,” Johannes added as he pulled the curtain aside just enough to look out over the crowd.   The two were behind the large screen upon which the transmission receipt countdown was projected in large and bold blue numerals.

  “Anaru!!  Johannes!!   What the fuck are you thinking??”  Only one person on the whole ship would dare talk to both Captain Anaru Tynes and Patriarch Johannes Bowland that way; Matriarch Maharet Sengupta.  Maharet was the most genetically anomalous person on the ship, the only one to be an equal blending of two ethnicities.  She was the product of a natural blending between the gametes of Sadhika Sengupta and Neil Sagan, making her half West Asian and half African.  

  After growing up and marrying an African man, when the two decided to have children they decided to both further honour Maharet’s parentage and at the same time bring their family more in line with the New Horizon’s genetics and ethnicities program.   They first produced their daughter Dhika by blending Maharet’s gametes with an appropriately matched West Asian male’s gametes stored in the genetics lab.  When they then decided to have their son Neil, they simply blended Maharet’s gametes with her African husband’s.  

  “I damn near had to beat it out him, but the poor tech did eventually tell me what you two are planning to do here, have you both lost your fucking minds?”

  “Maharet,” pleaded Johannes, increasingly defensively in response to his equal so aggressively dressing him down, “we’ve thought about this at length, and we've agreed that this is the only way.” Johannes looked to Anaru who appeared very nervous to suddenly find himself caught in the middle between the two, and he was rapidly glancing back and forth between them.  The three were subject to majority rule between them, and Anaru hated having to break a tie between the other two.  

  He grew up with them as his elders and it was hard for him to cross either of them.  He was willing and able to when he had to though; if he wasn’t he never would have campaigned to be the captain.  It still made him uncomfortable to be in the situation though.  He was captain, and his responsibility was the ship.   Their responsibility was the crew though; they were mother and father, yin and yang, forces in opposition by design.  He tried to foster unanimity between the three as often as possible but sometimes it wasn’t.

  “Then that only betrays a lack of imagination.  Do you really think that the killer would not also be surprised at seeing his handiwork on full display in front of everyone; do you really think this would elicit no reaction on his or her part?  Come on man, don’t be stupid!  Think about it!!”

  “We were working under the theory that something would give the killer away, something we could see in reviewing the dining hall surveillance video in detail after the fact,” Johannes replied in his defense, clearly taken aback.

  “Well it’s a horrible idea, especially on transmission day.  Maybe, maybe if you could be absolutely certain that your little scheme would actually work then it could be justified, but this is just unimaginative wishful thinking, and I forbid it.”

  “Excuse me?” Johannes boggled.

  “You heard me.   Privately interview every single crew member and show them the images individually if that’s what you need to do, but you were about to expose all of our children to a scene of horror far beyond their wildest nightmares.  I can’t believe that you would have thought this was a good idea.  I’m disappointed in you Johannes,” she turned to the captain, “you too, Ana.”  He looked down at his feet in response, obviously somewhat ashamed of himself and understanding how right she was.

   

  “Transmission receipt in one minute.”

   

  “Um, sirs?”  the technician who had tipped off Maharet drew their attention away from each other, and onto him.

  “What is it Nusrah?” Anaru barked, trying to regain some face at Nusrah’s expense.

  “We haven’t received the pilot signal from Earth yet.”  Transmissions from Earth were always timed precisely; they were transmitted one month later to the second after receiving New Horizon’s last message home.  It was always preceded by a five minute steady tone which warned the recipients to stand by for an incoming transmission and allowed the crew to confirm the alignment of their telescopes.  It was somewhat like a dial tone from early telephone technology on Earth.

  Not quite sure what to think or make of this information, Johannes asked: “what does that mean?”  Poor Nusrah appeared increasingly nervous and agitated.  

  “I… I have no idea Johannes, all I can tell you is that… we should have begun receiving the test signal four minutes ago, but…” he tapped at his screen a few times, navigating between displays to double check and be sure of what he was reporting, “...nothing.”

   

  The mood out in the dining hall was electric with excitement, the countdown on the large projected monitor ticked down, and the crowd counted down with the last numbers, steeped in anticipations.  The transmission always began with a personal greeting video from the Prime Minister of the New Commonwealth.

   

  “5…”

   

  “What do we do?” asked Maharet.

   

  “4…”

   

  “I… I have no idea!” Johannes responded, increasingly tense.

   

  “3…”

   

  “Well, should I… should I stop the countdown?” Nusrah asked with now obvious nervousness.

   

  “2…”

   

  “I don’t know…” the captain said, words which a captain should never say under any circumstances, whether or not he knows what to do.

   

  “1…”

   

  “Here we go!!” exclaimed Dhika as she squeezed Tycho’s hand and put her other hand on his upper arm.

   

  But nothing happened.   The countdown ran out to zero, and then the screen went black.  Nobody said anything for several minutes, and the silence in the room was positively deafening.  Some were in a kind of shock but most were simply confused and had no idea what to think.   Was the signal merely delayed?   Had something in the equipment chain malfunctioned?  Were the telescopes all misaligned?  Were they missing the message?  The possible explanations were endless.  But there was one possibility which everyone deliberately failed to consider.  Had Earth not sent any message at all?

   

  Finally, the silence was broken by someone crying out in confused anxiety.  The silence now broken, the room erupted with a chaos of panicked speculation.  Everybody was talking at once and nobody was listening or being heard.  Somehow though, they all knew that the unspeakable explanation was somehow the most probable one.

   

  “God is dead.” Tycho quietly uttered.  “It’s just us now…”