Midway: Chapter 23

  “Dhika came to see me in the Schmeat Lab today…”   Alissa remarked to her fiancée Nusrah after they’d gotten into bed that night.  They were soon to be married, and they had already been living together for almost two years now.  Alissa had moved into Nusrah’s suite which was a simple one bedroom and one bathroom like all the others.  It was tastefully and purposefully decorated by the two with reflections of both of their personalities, Nusrah loud and Alissa understated.  

  Their suite was buried in the central spine of the ship so they had no windows, but the whole far wall of their living room area was a screen which could simulate anything viewable out of a window, and much, much more.  Ordinarily a newly married couple would graduate to a family suite with three bedrooms and two bathrooms for the next twenty years or so until their children moved on and the parents would return to another one bedroom suite.   Alissa and Nusrah though, would remain in this single person’s apartment after the wedding and indefinitely into the future, since they were not having children.  This was a controversial choice for them to make and some even objected to their marrying at all if they didn’t plan to have children.

  Really it had been Alissa’s idea.  Nusrah suspected that she somewhat resented that nobody ever seemed to care that Anaru, Dhika, and Tycho all seemed to have no interest in having any children, so why should she have to if she didn’t really want to herself.  Nusrah also suspected that he could have just as easily have fallen in love with a woman who did want children, and be equally as happy with her and that life.   One life was as good as another he figured, what mattered was life itself.  He’d fallen in love with Alissa, and she’d made a compelling case for being childless.  He embraced her and the idea together as a package deal and so far, he had no regrets.

  They’d both had quite a busy day, and now was the first time they’d had much of a chance to talk to each other since that morning.  For the most part Nusrah knew about Alissa’s feelings towards Dhika but he regarded it as simply some healthy rivalry and competitiveness.  Her fighting spirit with things like this was after all one of the things he loved about his fiancée, and something he hoped she’d never lose.  It was a welcome counterpoint to his own all too frequent tendency to simply coast and be satisfied with things the way they were; she pushed him and he appreciated that.   Nusrah was more of a natural consensus builder by nature which he felt complemented well with a born oppositionist like Alissa.  So strong a motivating force was she on him, that he was secretly considering campaigning for patriarch when Johannes’ time came, though he’d kept this to himself so far, even from his wife.  He knew she would immediately start pushing him to it, and he wasn’t sure he’d made up his mind yet.  He’d tell her when he had.

  “Oh?  What did she want?” he asked.

  “She has her doubts about Uzodimma… she’s not convinced that he was the murderer.”

  “That’s a pretty serious suspicion.”

  “Yeah… Oh, not like that though.  She doesn’t think there’s any sort of conspiracy to blame him or anything.   She just, well… I guess she just wishes there weren’t still unresolved questions.  And now that she’s told me her concerns… well you know me, I don’t like loose ends either.”

  “Do you think she’s actually right?  I mean do you really think the wrong guy got blamed?”  Nusrah was somewhat concerned; the implications were after all very disturbing if these suspicions were correct.

  “Well, I don’t think either of us are making any specific accusations… neither of us are positively saying he’s not the guy, it’s just that… well, there are just some lingering questions, none of which invalidate his guilt.  She can’t explain how he had the technical capacity to manipulate the Brainchip logs.  Anyone can teach themselves with enough time and effort but there’s no record of him ever even doing that!  Plus… he never actually admitted to it, Nusrah!  And you know what?  That’s the part that really bugs me…  Johannes said he simply refused to offer any defence against the accusations.  He apparently won’t say anything about it at all.   So it is certainly convenient to blame him, especially in the absence of any other suspects… but it would be nice to have a more conclusive case against him.”

  “From what I know of the legal systems on Earth, they could never really be that certain of guilt in general; they had to learn to live with a certain degree of ambiguity in their proclamations of guilt or innocence.   Apparently they went by something they called ‘reasonable doubt’ for which by the way, I could never find any clear definition which weren’t relative and unspecific…  Would you be happier if he’d protested and vehemently pleaded his innocence?”

  “Maybe.  I think so… I don’t know.  Somehow that would have made me more certain of his guilt, how crazy is that?  To tell you the truth husband, I’m not worried about him being falsely condemned, especially if he can’t even be bothered to defend himself.  I’m much more worried about the prospect of having the real murderer still loose on the ship, still free, and not knowing what he might do next…”

  “Well in that case, it seems like Uzodimma would be condemnable no matter what now.  If he were innocent and failed to warn us about the real problem, even if he was innocent of the murder…”

   

  Kirana lay in bed under the covers, reviewing the latest soil analyses and growth yields from the arboretum.  It turned out that they were getting unusually productive growth this cycle and she was carefully studying the soil to figure out why, in the hopes that they could keep up the increased production.  They were after all nearing the last phase of their transit whereupon they would need as many healthy adults for the arrival as they could possibly ecologically afford.  There were already some couples taking on three children, but so far this was just to compensate for a small but growing number of couples who were deciding not to have any children at all and instead focus on their professional tasks aboard the ship.

  Kirana had mixed feelings about this.  Of course the idea of forcing a couple to have children they didn’t want was unthinkable.  Beyond the problem of forcing unwanted burdens on people, she could only shudder to think about what impact that could have on the unwanted children themselves, no doubt they’d somehow be able to tell…  She understood that raising children was indeed a challenge and a great burden as well; it was not something to be taken on lightly.  Despite the many rewarding aspects of parenting which she was quite familiar with from her own experience, she understood how it could be something some might choose to avoid.  

  At the same time though, in a situation like theirs on the New Horizon, each couple who chose not to have children (like it appeared Alissa and Nusrah were trending towards), meant that two other couples had to take up their burden by having a third.  Likewise, those who never chose to couple at all like the captain or her brother also burdened other crewmates with their replacement, their responsibility.

  And it wasn’t just the negation of responsibility in terms of the parenting.  Though the strain was at this point not severe, what was truly at risk of being lost was the transfer of culture.  Tycho, Anaru, Alissa, and Nusrah, were not simply relegating their burden of parenting onto others.  A great deal of investment went into teaching each of them about their cultural background.   Each of them was a representative of one of the six great meta-cultures represented on this ship and while this is technically something which can be passed on to a new child by someone else, something still is inevitably lost.  Each individual person represented something different and unique about that culture they represented.  Each was a distinct genetic individual, modulated by their understanding of their cultural heritage.  Each was an instance of their type, and without passing something of that onto their own children, something was being irretrievably lost.

  Or at least this was how Kirana saw it.  Some agreed with her, some were indifferent, but so far most people simply avoided discussing it.  After all, the only alternative to simply dealing with the consequences would be to force parenthood on the unwilling, and that could only ever engender even greater problems.  The parent’s resentment would seep its way into the children and poison their souls.   On one hand, Kirana understood that it was a burden to raise children, and that it was a responsibility one shouldn’t have forced upon them.  But on the other hand it deeply concerned her that these people didn’t want to be part of the cycle of family.  

  It seemed so selfish to her in a way that she couldn’t understand the appeal of.  Yes it could be hard to raise children, but it was also immensely rewarding.  Maybe what troubled her most was the seemingly growing attitude onboard that it was okay to simply disregard one’s obligations to the community in favour of selfish indulgences.  In a closed society like theirs, it was a darkness which she could see spreading, a rift she was afraid might eventually tear their society apart.

  “Well, the kids are all tucked in, I don’t think we’ll hear any more from them tonight,” Seth said as he entered the room, got undressed, and then got under the covers with his wife.  “I think they were pretty tired out from their time playing in the arboretum today.  Speaking of which, how are your analyses looking?”

  “Normal,” she exclaimed exasperatedly as she pushed the two posts of her scroll together and rested the bars on the blanket covering her chest.   “Don’t get me wrong Seth, ordinarily ‘normal’ is exactly what I would be hoping for in these soil samples, but today I was really hoping I’d find something different which might explain the higher yields we’ve been seeing.  It might have helped us grow food more efficiently but beyond that, it was my first chance in my whole life to discover a genuinely new phenomenon…”  She sighed slowly and heavily, and then added: “but it doesn’t look that way.”

  Seth leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.  “I’m sorry to hear that my dear, don’t give up.  Yes it could just be anomalous, but you never know.   There may be something there, a different balance of nutrients, a genetic variation in your crops, a soil bacteria mutation… there’s lots of things it could be right?”

  “Yes, you’re right of course… thank you.  But I’m not going to find it tonight!”  And at that she reached over and stood her scroll in its dock on her bedside table.  She then rolled over and cuddled up to her husband.  “I’m a little worried about my dad, Seth.  He seemed… I don’t know, off somehow today… he seemed distracted and preoccupied with his thoughts in a way I haven’t seen him before.”

  “Can you be more specific?” her husband asked.  “Could it… could it be the anniversary of your mom that’s getting to him?”  He didn’t have it in him to actually say the words death, or suicide.

  “I don’t think so… at least I really don’t think it could only be that, though it certainly could be contributing to whatever’s really going on with him.”

  “And um… how are you doing with that?” he tentatively asked.

  “Oh, you know… it gets a little less sharp every day.  Some days it hurts more than others… days like today.”

  “Yeah… so what makes you think there’s something more going on with your dad?” Seth asked.

  “Well, he seemed to be a man who was somehow almost… losing his faith.   He was questioning the wisdom of some of the elements of the ship’s mission.  He was lamenting about the burden we are laying at the feet of those who have more recently been born, and those who will be born from now on…  While our lives are trying in the sense of dealing with the isolation and loneliness of our whole lives lived on the ship out here in the middle of nowhere, really it’s nothing compared to what we are asking of our children, and of our children’s children.  Their challenges will be the greatest of the entire mission right from the day of its original conception so long ago on Earth.  They will have to go from a sterile comfortable life, on to a harsh unfamiliar terrain and attempt to tame it for themselves.   All the while never having made that choice for themselves either…”
 “Kirana I’d trade burdens and challenges with them in a heartbeat.”

  Kirana laughed out loud.  Her laugh was warm and genuine and charming.  Seth loved it when that wonderful sound came from her.  “Well now that I think about it I probably would too.   Okay, that’s a good point.”

  “I think a lot of people onboard would,” Seth remarked.  “We all come from the kind of people who were willing to leave everything they knew to initiate a grand adventure.  It’s only natural that a lot of the children of people like that find the reality of life on the New Horizon, and the constant sameness of it all, so taxing…”

  Kirana smiled, “you’re right of course.  I guess I’m just worried about my dad...  He’s always been so confident, so sure of himself and about every aspect of this mission and what it stands for.  To see any cracks at all in that certainty… I guess it just throws me.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it.  He’s been incredibly burdened lately.  Not only has he had to have that gruesome murder business on his mind, but even more recently he’s had to deal with the fallout of the missing transmission from Earth.“