Exceptions to Reality Page 4

  “Mr. Bastrop, sir—we’re looking for something that doesn’t exist.”

  Slowly, painfully, Gibeon Bastrop lifted his gaze to meet that of the master of the Seraphim. It was a gaze that had once struck those upon whom it had fallen with awe or fear, envy or unbounded admiration or a host of other strong emotions. Nowadays it most often inspired only pity. Inwardly, Gibeon Bastrop raged. He could only do so inwardly. It had been nearly two decades since he had been physically capable of expressing extremes of emotion.

  He was not even sure how much of him was original Gibeon Bastrop anymore. So many parts had been replaced; cloned, regrown from his own reluctant tissues, or, where necessary, replaced with synthetics. The brain was still all Gibeon Bastrop, he felt, though even there the physicians and engineers had been forced to tweak and adjust and modify to keep everything functioning properly. They were very good at their work. Gibeon Bastrop could afford the best. If you couldn’t, you were unlikely to live to be 162—next April, Bastrop mused. Or was it May?

  “Mr. Bastrop?”

  “What?” It was Tyrone, badgering him again. Always wanting to give up, that Tyrone. Give up, turn around—although they were so far out now that around no longer had any real meaning—and go home. A fine Shipmaster, Tyrone, but easily discouraged. How long had they been searching now? Barely two years, wasn’t it? The youth of today had no patience, Bastrop reflected. None at all. Why, Tyrone was barely in his eighties, far too young to be complaining about time. Let him reach triple digits; these days, you had to earn the right to complain.

  “Mr. Bastrop.” Contrary to the owner’s belief, the Shipmaster possessed considerable patience. He was exercising some of it now. “The Chauna doesn’t exist. It’s bad enough to take us chasing after a fairy story—but an alien fairy story?”

  “It is not a fairy story.” Gibeon Bastrop might no longer be capable of raging, but he could still be adamant. “The Cosocagglia are insistent on that point.”

  Shipmaster Tyrone sighed. Outside, beyond the great convex port that fronted on Gibeon Bastrop’s ornate stateroom, stars and nebulae gleamed in other-than-light profusion. There wasn’t a one among them the Shipmaster recognized, and he had been journeying among the starways for more than half a century. The Old Man was taking them farther and farther into the void, closer and closer to nowhere.

  “The Cosocagglia are an ancient species existing in a state of advanced decline. Now if the Vuudd, or even the redoubtable Paquinq, had vouchsafed the existence of the mythical Chauna, I would be more inclined to grant the remote possibility of its existence.” He smiled in what he hoped was a sympathetic manner. “But the Cosocagglia?”

  Gibeon Bastrop’s voice dropped to a mutter. He was tired, even more so than usual. “The Cosocagglia were a great race.”

  “Once.” Tyrone was no longer in any mood to coddle his employer. Like the rest of the crew, he had been too long away from home, was too much in need of blue skies and unrecycled air. “That was tens of thousands of years ago.” He sniffed scornfully. “They no longer even go into space. They have forgotten how, and travel between worlds only when they can book or beg passage on a ship of one of the younger species, like the Helappo or ourselves. They have hundreds of legends from those days. The Chauna is just one of many.”

  He felt sorry for the Old Man, marooned in his motile, no longer able to stand erect even with the aid of neurorganetics. For a hundred years, the name of Gibeon Bastrop had been one to be reckoned with throughout the sapient portion of the galaxy. Inventor, engineer, industrialist, megamogul; his influence and his fame were known even on nonhuman worlds. Now he was a shadow of the self he had been, mentally debased, poor at advanced cogitation, unable to survive more than a few days at a time without an immoderate amount of medicinal attention. The medical provisions and personnel he had brought with him on the Seraphim could have equipped a hospital sufficient to serve a good-sized conurbation. It was all for him. Everything and everyone on the ship existed to keep Gibeon Bastrop functioning and his every need looked after.

  What must it be like, the Shipmaster mused, to live out your last days knowing that being the richest human alive no longer meant anything?

  “The Chauna is not a fancy!” Gibeon Bastrop pounded the arm of his motile with suddenly surprising strength. “The Chauna is real!”

  “Far more so the people on board this ship, sir. They have lives, too. And families, and careers, and needs and desires. All of which they have left behind so that you could follow this whim of yours.”

  “They are being well-paid to do so.”

  “Extremely well-paid.” Tyrone was willing, as always, to concede the obvious. “But I’m afraid that’s no longer enough, sir.” Taking a step forward, he gestured at the port and the magnificence of the drive-distorted starfield. “They’ve been away from home for too long. We’re not talking a month or two. Almost two years in Void is enough to drive anyone crazy.”

  The hoverchair hummed softly as Bastrop pivoted to face the same sweeping galactic panorama. “I haven’t changed—but then, you all think I was insane when I began this expedition. Why should you think differently of me now?”

  The Shipmaster’s tone was kindly. Like nearly every other member of the crew, he genuinely liked the Old Man. It was Bastrop’s obsession that was hated, not the individual behind it. Nor was great wealth, as is so often the case, an issue. Gibeon Bastrop was admired for starting from nothing and making his mammoth fortune through the astute application of genius and plain hard work.

  “We don’t think you’re crazy, Mr. Bastrop. Just in thrall to a falsehood.”

  Gibeon Bastrop looked up at the younger man. “Is that a crime?”

  “No sir,” Tyrone replied patiently. “But you must realize that your obsession is not shared by your crew. Initial enthusiasm gave way to tolerance, then to grudging compliance, and most recently to exasperation. I have worked hard to keep it from progressing to the next step.” He leaned toward the floating chair that kept Gibeon Bastrop not only mobile, but alive. “Word that we have finally struck for home would immediately alleviate any potential problem and eliminate tension among discontented personnel.”

  Bastrop nodded thoughtfully. Even his enfeebled voice, when he replied, was one that could still command fleets and minions. “We’ve come to find the Chauna. We will search until we do so.”

  Tyrone’s lips tightened. His response was devoid of insolence, but firm. “At the risk of voicing a cliché, sir, money can’t buy everything. It can’t buy you people.”

  “No, but it can damn well rent them for me,” Bastrop declared with knowing confidence.

  “It can’t buy you a myth.”

  “That remains to be seen. You are dismissed, Mr. Tyrone.”

  The Shipmaster nodded imperceptibly and bowed out. Wakoma and Surat were waiting for him on the bridge.

  “What did he say?” Surat was small and dynamic, like a puppy perpetually kept on a too-short leash. She was also the finest navigator Tyrone had ever worked with. “Did you make your point?” Her expression was no less eager than Wakoma’s.

  “I made it.” The Shipmaster brushed past them. “And he ignored it. Stand by for downslip.” He settled into place in front of his bank of readouts.

  Crestfallen but hardly surprised, the two seconds in command parted, each to their own station. Tyrone’s words meant that more weeks, maybe months, of pointless wandering lay before them. Like the rest of the crew, they were beyond homesick. If this kept up, the home portion of their condition would begin to slough away for real.

  “Maybe he’ll die.” Wakoma struggled to concentrate on his work. Like everyone else on board the Seraphim, he was an exceedingly competent professional.

  “Not likely.” The tech seated alongside him kept his voice down. “There’s enough advanced medical technology on this ship to allow an amoeba to operate a torkue projector. With the medics caressing his carcass twenty-four seven, I’ll bet the old bastard’s got anothe
r twenty years in him before he slides into complete senility.”

  The ship plunged out of OTL to emerge in the vicinity of Delta Avinis. It was the forty-third multiple-star system the Seraphim had visited since leaving home. According to the elaborate Cosocagglia mythology, the Chauna was only to be encountered in multiple-star systems. Why this should be, no one knew—not even the Cosocagglia themselves. It did not matter, Tyrone grumbled silently as coordinates were checked and confirmed, because there was no such thing as a Chauna. They might as well be searching single-star systems, or dark wanderers, or the ghostly gray silverstone spheres known as stuttering molters.

  “Something beautiful.” That was how the Cosocagglia legends identified the Chauna. A stellar phenomenon that was supposedly unsurpassingly beautiful. That was about all the fable had to say about it, too. Tyrone had seen the translations, laboriously performed by the xenologists who worked with nonhuman species, like the Cosocagglia. Where the Chauna was concerned the Cosocagglia could supply reams of adjectives but nothing in the way of specifics. A Chauna was no more, no less, than a beautiful thing.

  They had encountered the phenomenon but rarely; a millennia ago, when the Cosocagglia had been in their prime: a youthful, expansionist, vital race. To see a Chauna, it was said, was to be blessed forever with knowledge of what real beauty was. Any individuals so consecrated by the vision were held up to be the most fortunate of travelers. But for all its supposed wonder, there remained in the crumbled lore of the species not a single description of the Chauna itself.

  How exceptional could it be, anyway? Tyrone mused. Even if it existed, it was hardly likely to be a previously unobserved phenomenon. In the course of the past thousand years humankind had identified an enormous range of stellar objects and events, from X-ray bursters to miniature ambling pulsars to Möbius black holes. Some were so esoteric, the always busy astrophysicists had not found time to name them. Some were even beautiful, like the tornadic nebulae and the gamma-ray ropes. But none, according to the Cosocagglia who had been shown imagings of them, were Chauna.

  Delta Avinis was an impressive, but not unprecedented, double-star system. There were half a dozen planets, all sere, all lifeless. Their orbits were erratic, their gravitational grip on continued existence uncertain.

  As soon as he was confident that downslip had been finalized and that the system held no navigational surprises, Tyrone rose from his seat, formally relinquished control of the ship to Wakoma and Surat, and announced that he was going on sleeptime. Two months ago such announcements by the Shipmaster had been greeted with unified protest. Now people simply muttered to themselves in his absence. Everyone was too tired to remonstrate loudly. Resigned to a seemingly interminable fate, they had not yet decided what to do about it, or what to do next. That eventuality might manifest itself at the next star system, the Shipmaster knew, or the one after that. He would keep things going for as long as he could. It was part of his job.

  Surat waited for several minutes until she was sure her superior was gone before rising from her position. “I’m going to talk to Gibeon Bastrop.”

  One of those who served under her looked up in alarm. “Are you sure that’s wise, Anna?”

  The navigator shrugged slim shoulders. “What can the Old Man do—fire me? I’m not refusing to perform my duties. Maybe later, but not yet. Not today.” Such a refusal, they both knew, could result in a hearing board denying recompense to the perpetrator. Angry and frustrated as they were, no one aboard the Seraphim wanted to sacrifice two years’ accumulated pay in order to make a point.

  No one challenged Surat as she made her way through the ship toward the Old Man’s quarters. The Seraphim was a sizable vessel, with a crew of several hundred. Everyone was too busy or too apathetic to confront her. They knew they had arrived at yet another system. There was no sense of excitement, no joy of discovery. Next week, the procedure would be repeated. As it had been now for nearly twenty-four months. As it might be for another twenty-four. No one wanted to think about it.

  Well, Anna Surat was thinking about it, and she intended to give full voice to her thoughts.

  There were guards posted outside Bastrop’s quarters. They had been there since Tyrone had mobilized them four months ago, when the first serious rumblings of discontent had begun to make themselves known among the crew. Everyone was aware that if Gibeon Bastrop died, his crazed quest across the cosmos would die with him, and they could all go home. No one had tried to hurry the process along—yet. Surat knew that they were hoping time and accumulating infirmities would do for them what none of them could do for themselves.

  She was admitted without having to wait. Depending on his mood and health, Gibeon Bastrop liked company. Long journeys in Void were lonely matters at best.

  She found him seated before his dog. At the moment, the obedient sphere was taking dictation. Bastrop pivoted his motile to greet her. As he did so he essayed the shadow of a smile. Once, that expression had charmed millions. Now it was all the Old Man could do to induce the muscles in his face to comply with the simple physical demand.

  “You’re looking well today, sir.” The polite mantra fooled neither of them.

  Bastrop waved the dog away. It drifted off to sulk in a corner, powering down as it did so. “I’m always up for a visit from an attractive woman, Anna Surat. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

  When was the last time he had a woman? she found herself wondering perversely. Does he even remember what it was like? So old—he was so old! If not for the dozens of doctors and billions of credits at his beck and call, he would have been dead thirty or forty years ago. Instead, he had bought himself an extra lifetime. And for what? So he could spend it like this, visibly decomposing in an expensive hospice motile that every month had to take over more and more of his own failing bodily functions? She resolved never to allow herself to be placed in such a situation. Not that she really needed to worry about it. She was about a hundred billion short of qualifying for that level of care.

  “Mr. Bastrop, I know that Shipmaster Tyrone has been to see you…”

  At her opening words his expression fell. His voice dropped to a raspy whisper. “Oh. That again. I was hoping…” His words trailed away.

  Hoping what? she wondered. That I was coming for the pleasure of your selfish, semi-senile company? She forced herself to smile engagingly, wondering even as she did so if he was capable of responding to such gestures.

  “You can’t subject us to this any longer, Mr. Bastrop. It isn’t reasonable. It isn’t fair.”

  From the depths of memory the parchment-like substance that formed his face twisted into a semblance of a grin. “The search for beauty is never reasonable or fair, my dear. Being beautiful yourself, you should know that.”

  Damn him, she cursed silently. She had been determined that nothing the aged industrialist did was going to affect her. But even the shadow of that smile was capable of lighting something within her. It was no comfort to know that it had done likewise to thousands who had been subjected to it before her.

  “You can’t distract me with words, sir.”

  “Pity.” He turned slightly away from her. “There was a time when I could have done so with a simple phrase. Long ago, that was.”

  Feeling sympathy in spite of herself, she advanced to rest a hand on his shoulder. Beneath the synsilk lay very little flesh and much narrow bone. The feel of it made her want to pull her hand away, but she did not.

  “You are unloved here, sir. I realize you know that, and don’t care. I can’t change that. Not even you can change that.” Her words came a little faster. “But by turning for home now you can regain their respect! You can finish this in a way that will be remembered with pride instead of animosity.”

  He turned back toward her. Not by pivoting the chair this time, but by making an actual uncommon physical effort to rotate the upper portion of his remaining body. “And what about you, Anna Surat? Do you hate me for what I’ve done?”

/>   “No, Mr. Bastrop. I don’t hate you. I just want to go home. I have a husband, you know. At least, I hope I still have a husband.”

  “You are a starship navigator. He knew what he was getting into when he married you. Everyone knows. I’ve been married myself, so even if you think otherwise, I do understand. Outlived most of them.” He shook his head slowly. “They were all comely, in their own way. But they were not the Chauna.”

  Surat knew she was out of line in speaking this way to her admittedly generous if stubborn employer, but the time for overindulgence was past. “Nothing is the Chauna, Mr. Bastrop! They say that you were once the smartest man in the galaxy. What happened to that person? Did he—?”

  “Get senile?” Gibeon Bastrop chuckled. “I don’t think so—but then if I was, I wouldn’t know it, would I? I don’t think the pursuit of ultimate beauty stamps me as mad, Anna. I think it marks me as sane. Saner than most, I should say. Ultimately, what else is there but beauty? Beauty of discovery, beauty of thought, beauty of soul. It’s one thing I’ve never been able to buy, navigator. Now it is all I want. The last thing I want. No other human being has seen it. We will be the first.”

  “Many myths are highly attractive, Mr. Bastrop. Seductive, even. But in the end they’re only myths. Isn’t the loveliness of legend enough? Can’t you leave it at that?”

  “Maybe the Chauna is a world, Anna Surat. Have you thought of that?” Excitement danced in eyes that had been thrice replaced. “A world so wonderful even the Cosocagglia have no words for it. Can you imagine the reaction such a discovery would trigger? A world even more captivating than Earth, empty and waiting for us. Or maybe it’s a gas giant with multiple rings that glow like gold in the light of triple suns. But most likely it’s something we cannot imagine.”

  “Neither can the Cosocagglia,” she responded, “because it doesn’t exist. Anything of absolute beauty has to be imaginary, or it ceases to be exceptional and becomes just one more item in the always expanding stellar pantheon.”