Red slowly drifted out of her apartment on Prometheus and palmed the door closed. She paused and looked across the lift-shaft to the two doors that opened into Thomas's and George's rooms. George was not in. He was probably down in the control room working with James on data reduction. Thomas had not been in his room for two years now. When they had floated him out the portal to take him down to the sick bay, Thomas had insisted that his door be left open.
"I'm not going to let a little heart attack keep me down," he had said. "I'm going to get well and come back to my studio. I've got a lot of pictures to work on."
They assured him he would soon return to work on computer enhancements of his world-famous shots of the ring waves on Eau mountain and the ten thousand kilometer atmospheric volcano on Gargantua. James, however, had been quite insistent that Thomas stay in the sick bay where there was better access to the medical equipment. Thomas had argued with the computer for a while, but after two more heart stoppages that would have been fatal if the Christmas Bush had not been there to apply shock treatment, Thomas finally stopped arguing and accepted the life of an invalid. The view-wall above his bed in the sick bay was identical to the one in his room, but it just never seemed the same. The real problem was that the complex photographic enhancement and display console that took up most of Thomas's private room could not be fitted into the sick bay, and Thomas was reduced to more modest processing of his picture pixels.
Red's eyes swept past the seven other doors ringing the lift shaft on this floor. They and all the doors on the floor above had been closed for a long time. Ten of them at once, some fifteen years ago, when Slam IV had been stranded on Zuni, third moon of Gargantua. The others had died of one cause or another over the years while Prometheus slowly wandered back and forth through the Barnard system, collecting data on the planets and moons as the seasons changed. There were only three of them left now—all old, but still busy. They were presently engaged in a two year survey of the star itself, following it through one of its sunspot cycles. For that job they had used the light from the star to slow Prometheus in its orbit, so that the spinning parasol of their ship had fluttered down closer to the dim red sun. For the first time since they had come to Barnard they had to use filters over the viewing ports.
Red looked upwards at the gaping maw of the central shaft and hesitated. In the past she would have simply flung herself up into the empty hole and used an occasionally flick of hand or foot on the walls to propel herself through the shaft to her destination. She would still do that for a 'tween-decks jump—but now she wanted to go to the starside science dome nearly sixty meters away. They were getting close enough to the sun that the acceleration from the light pressure was becoming almost noticeable. Getting cautious in her old age, she called for the shaft elevator and took it to Starside.
Her arthritic joints creaking in protest, Red wormed her way past a large telescope swung out under the dome. There was very little room left for a human. Red looked up to see a minibush working the controls. It was very busy, scrambling back and forth between the various control knobs at a speed that no human hands could have duplicated. Red was slightly puzzled, "Why are you using such a little branch, James?" she asked. "You'll wear yourself out running back and forth like that."
She heard James chuckle, both in her hair imp and from the minibush on the telescope. "I can handle the telescope fine this way," it replied, "It's a little more wasteful of energy than using a larger motile that can reach both knobs at once, but I felt that it was better to have most of the Christmas Bush elsewhere at this time."
Red's heart skipped a beat. "What's going on?" she asked in alarm, then instantly knew the answer. "There's something wrong with Thomas!" she cried, and started to wiggle her way past the slowly moving telescope.
"I didn't want to worry you," said her imp. "There's nothing bad happening to him, but I just thought it best to have more of my motile close to him since his vital signs are slowly worsening. Red!... Elizabeth!!... Wait for the elevator!!!" the imp screamed in her ear as she dove headlong down the shaft.
"I'll pay for that later," Red said to herself as her adrenaline anesthetized joints ignored their arthritic signals and brought her to a violent stop at the living area deck. She made her way to the sick bay. Most of the Christmas Bush was there, monitoring the medical instruments. Red noticed that Thomas's upper torso was naked and covered with a lacelike net of motile threads. She looked at Thomas and understood why James had been concerned. Thomas's face, usually a handsome and healthy light-brown color, was now a muddy grey. He had aged well, and usually looked much younger than his sixty-eight years. He didn't look young now, more like George's eighty-seven.
Thomas looked up as she came in. He grinned weakly at her and winked their special wink. She blushed, then put an exasperated frown on her face.
"Thomas," she scolded, "You're incorrigible."
"But it's been over two years, Red," he said, "A guy could die if he goes without getting it for that long."
"...and he'd die if he did," she replied.
"But what a way to go!"
Ignoring his remark, Red moved over to him and put one hand on his forehead and one on his cheek. He moved his head and nuzzled his nose in her hand, his lips kissing her palm softly. She tried to hold back her emotions, but finally gave up, fell sobbing across his chest, and hugged him. Through her anguish and tears she could feel the motiles moving between them, keeping out of the way as much as possible, but still maintaining their vigil on the body of the dying man. Thomas ran his fingers through the brilliant red hair that he had loved for so long, grinned inwardly at the slight trace of grey at the root of each hair, and closed his eyes to rest.
After a while, Red got control of herself. She sat up and twisted her body until the sticky patch on the back beltline of her jumpsuit stuck to the holding pad of a work-station arm the Christmas Bush had swung out for her. Now she could stay beside the bed without drifting away. She looked at Thomas's closed eyes with concern, then turned to the Christmas Bush.
He's just sleeping," said James, "But it won't be long now. In his weakened condition his usually benign sickle-cell anemia condition is flaring up and aggravating his other problems."
Red took Thomas's hand and waited, occasionally brushing him on the cheek with a wrinkled, freckled hand.
George was in his bed, staring up at the viewscreen in the ceiling and scanning through an old science fiction novel, Dragon's Egg. He'd read it many times before, but it was so full of scientific tidbits that he always enjoyed dipping into it before going to sleep. His favorite part was when the alien "cheela" came up from the surface of a neutron star to visit the humans in orbit above them, riding on miniature black holes.
George heard the rustle and the occasional odd noise of Elizabeth coming up the shaft. He looked out his open door to watch Red rise up out of the floor and bring herself to a halt at the railing. Instead of going to her door, however, she circled around the railing ringing the lift shaft and disappeared behind the edge of his door. He heard the splat of a human palm on the wall, the sibilant hiss of a compartment door sliding shut, and the deadly click of a bolt. He sat up under his tension sheet as his imp whispered in his ear.
"She wanted to tell you herself," it said.
Red appeared at his door, an inward strength glowing in the tall, green-suited body. Her red hair glistened in the bright corridor light as she said, "There's just the two of us now, George. Can I come in?"
"Sure," he said, "Just a second and I'll get dressed."
"Don't bother," she replied. "I just don't want to sleep alone tonight." She came over to the bed, and kicking off her corridor boots, climbed in under the tension sheet, her back to him.
"Just hold me," she pleaded, and George put the grizzled arm of an old man around the green-clad little girl and lay his head on the pillow next to hers; his imp scrambling around to his other shoulder as he did so. He closed his eyes and went to sleep, while James turned off the bedroom light, the scan book, and closed the corridor door.
Another year passed. George was now hanging loosely from a pylon on the control deck, monitoring the video feedback from the deep space probes in the outreaches of Barnard. The screens showed little that was new, and James could have handled the data by itself, but George insisted on viewing all the scenes that differed in any significant aspect from those that had been seen before. A typical scene of frozen blackness on a distant moon nearly forty light-minutes away had changed to a scene of frozen grayness. The computer had asked the human element in its loop to evaluate the situation.
"Nothing here, James," George said, "Just another mound of dirty ice."
The screen flashed to a new scene, one that had been held up while the previous one had been evaluated. George scanned the picture, looking for anything that the well-trained senses of the computer might have missed. Suddenly, his eyes caught a flash of green out of the corner of his eye, and he turned to see a tumbled mass of green satin clothing converging on his face. He brushed away the intruding jumpsuit and underwear just in time to see two tantalizing white mounds swim out of sight behind the control room door, tiny pink feet propelling them on their way.
It didn't take long. Within ten seconds he was stripped to the uniform that the "Game" called for and was searching through the downs and outs of the corridors that had made their life a heaven in the stars. They had tried other hiding spots, but the best—yes, the very best—was the exercise room.
George found her behind the exercise mats. She thought she was stretched out enough to be as invisible as a pea under the many thick mattresses. He noticed the slight mound, however, and his body rising to the occasion, dove under the layers of mats and pulled a squealing, skinny, red-haired vixen into the open.
"STOP!" she cried. She twisted expertly in the air, trying to break his single hand-hold.
Her struggles to retreat were defeated by a single brushing kiss that he implanted on the tips of her hair. It was his turn to run now, and he bounded off the wall and entered the dim lounge that lead to one of the video rooms. She smiled and stopped at the lift-shaft, her lithe naked body relaxing for a moment. She waited, scanning the tumble of furniture and panels in the lounge, then dived full speed at a bulky grey form bouncing from one panel to another, and caught him in mid-flight as they tumbled through the door into one of the video rooms.
Their play had risen to ecstasy, the dim lights of the video room adding to their games. They were coupled. Her face flushed with pleasure until it was almost the color of her hair. Her body arched back...
"RED! GEORGE!! STOP!!!" Imps shouted in their ears.
"Goddamnit James!" George exploded with fury. "Can't you stay out..." He grabbed the handful of brittle sticks from their perch on his naked shoulder and flung them at the far wall. The mangled twigs and wires hummed to a halt about a meter from his hand and buzzed back past him—heading toward Elizabeth.
George looked quickly around and watched his small wisp of imp merge into the imp on the side of Red's face, a face gasping for breath and wide-eyed with agony. He turned at another sound, a deep thrumming in the air. A thicket of sticks and twigs hit the two of them amidships and thrust him aside.
The fuzzy hands of the Christmas Bush then attempted to press life into Red's naked curvaceous chest, while a dense cluster of cilia pumped a pulsating stream of air into her lax mouth. The Christmas Bush worked on Red for a number of minutes, then the automatic motion finally stopped. Not abruptly; not slowly; but like some automaton given both stop and start signals at the same time.
"She is dead," said James, finally stopping.
"NO!" shouted George. "Don't stop! Save her! Do something!" He reached out and started pulling the Bush off her. "She can't die! I won't let her die!!"
"There is nothing either you or I can do," replied James calmly. "She has suffered a massive cerebral aneurysm."
"Oh..." said George, his hands coming to a halt.
He let go of the Christmas Bush and ran his fingertips tenderly up over Red's face while he slowly calmed himself down.
"Thanks for trying," he finally said. He moved back and floated motionless, eyes staring longingly at her face.
"Are you OK?" said James, a large chunk of Christmas Bush breaking loose from the floating nude to hover at a distance from him.
"I'm fine, James," George said, finally recovering. "Just take care of her, will you?" He went off to cry in a quiet place, his imp reforming unobtrusively on his naked shoulder as he left.
James waited patiently. George's grief eventually shed itself in a floating stream of sparkling spheres. George's imp tenderly flicked each tear from around his red-rimmed eyes, launching them toward the nearby air intake ducts. There was still a deep emptiness in him, however. That void would only be filled by the wash of tears from the intermittent floods of emotional catharsis that would return again and again in the weeks, months, and years ahead. The deaths of the others had been hard, but there had always been someone to share the grief with. This loss he would bear alone.
The computer made no attempt to comfort the human in his grief. Its condolences could have been some temporary help, but psychologists long dead had decided that the last human would be better off if he or she were to regain control of their stricken emotions themselves. The humans were necessarily dependent upon James for their physical survival. It would not do to have them become psychologically dependent on their electronic companion and its bushy motile.
When George finished his crying, he found himself in the starside science dome, lying back in the control chair and looking outward at the distant yellow star studding the end of Orion's belt.
He had decided to get all the misery out of his system at one time, and had deliberately worked up a good case of homesickness to add to his loneliness. He now had cried himself out, and getting up calmly, he floated away from the chair as it folded itself into its niche in the wall. He called for the elevator to take him to the control deck.
"I'd like to read a few words before you put her in cold storage, James," he said quietly to his imp.
"Red left some last wishes with me, as a verbal will," said James. "She didn't want her body to stay on board Prometheus with the others—even if there was a chance that someday it could be returned to Earth. She has no family or friends there. She felt more at home around this strange red star and wants to be buried here."
"A sailor of the skies, her body cast into the deep," mused George. "OK. I'll look up a sea captain's farewell."
"It's going to be more complicated than that, George. She wants to be cremated in the star."
"We can't do that. If we put her out a port, she'll go into orbit," said George, puzzled. Suddenly, he looked up.
"Of course!" he said. "I forgot what kind of ship we're in."
"Shall I decelerate and assume a hovering orbit?" said James.
"Yes," said George. "How long will it take?"
"Two weeks. Less if you don't mind feeling a few percent of gee."
"SURE! I can take the gees!" grumbled George. "I may be old, but I'm not decrepit—you obsolete hunk of frayed wires and diffusing silicon. What'll we do with Red in the meantime? Put her in cold storage with the others?"
"Yes, we'll have to," replied James. "But before that, I'll have to make some preparations. She gave explicit instructions on what she was to wear and how her hair and makeup were to be done. The Christmas Bush is working on that now in the sick bay."
"I want to help," said George, pushing himself over to the lift shaft as the computer began to tilt the huge sail to slow its orbit about the star.
"Are you sure??" asked James, with a concerned overtone in its voice. "I am perfectly capable of handling the whole thing myself."
"Yes!" said George gruffly. He padded into the sick bay and approached the still naked body strapped lightly to the table. The thick red hair that was Red's crowning glory was now full of twigs from the Christmas Bush. One small clump of the Bush was controlling a plastic squeezer full of a reddish liquid and spraying a mist into the air. Each tiny droplet was snatched individually by the cilia on the twigs, carried to the base of each hair stalk, applied to the root, then carefully wiped off as the few millimeters of grey hair became as red as the rest.
"I don't think she would have wanted you to see this," rumbled the Christmas Bush.
"She never fooled anyone," George replied. "We never talked about Red dyeing her hair, but we all knew that she did, and knew that everyone else knew too."
James hesitated a little at that statement. It quickly sifted through sixty-eight years of conversation picked up and recorded by its imps. George was right. No one on the ship had ever talked with anyone else about Red's hair. They must have understood each other from facial expressions.
"I still have a lot to learn about humans," was the summary judgement it entered into its memory.
James let George brush, comb, and arrange Red's hair, but insisted on doing the makeup itself.
"She would come back and haunt me if I allowed you to mess up her lip line," James joked.
As they were finishing, one limb of the Christmas Bush appeared with a set of green satin clothing and a long pair of alligator hide boots.
"Where'd those boots come from?" said George in surprise.
"She brought them on board as part of her personal baggage allotment," James replied. "She was planning to wear them for parties, but she forgot that her ankles swell in free-fall. After trying to get them on a few times, she gave up and shoved them in the back of her locker. Her last instructions about them were very explicit. I recorded them."
Red's voice emerged from the vibrating cilia at the tips of the Christmas Bush as the computer replayed the exact sequence of bits which it had recorded in that long-ago conversation. " 'I want those boots on when I go out the port. Even if you have to cut off my feet to get them on. But don't you dare stretch them.' "
George winced visibly as he heard Red's hauntingly beautiful contralto. "Please don't ever do that again," he finally said.
"I'm sorry," said James in a subdued whisper.
A few minutes of firm pressure on her lower legs by the massive paws of the Christmas Bush allowed the green leather to slide over the sheer green stockings. There was even plenty of room to tuck in the legs of the green satin slacks. As they were putting on Red's shirt, the Christmas Bush stopped, reached into a breast pocket and took out a small gold coin. It handed the coin to George.
"She didn't say what to do with this," James said. "I guess you should keep it."
"I'm sure I can think of a thousand ways to spend a sixty billion dollar gold coin in this thriving metropolis," remarked George sarcastically. He took the coin, folded it up carefully in one of Red's hands, and crossed her arms across her chest. He leaped up toward the ceiling, hung onto the light fixture, and stared down at her critically.
"She looks fine," he said. "Now take her away before I get all soppy and smear her makeup."
The Christmas Bush picked up the stiffening body and headed for the lift shaft as George, floating slowly downward from the ceiling, watched them go.
As the days passed, the huge sail tilted, then tilted back again. George noticed that the maneuver took almost two weeks, and that after the first day, the acceleration had subtlely changed from its earlier high level. He couldn't blame James for trying to take care of an eighty-eight year old man and let the computer get away with trying to fool him. Finally, the ship was hovering over the star. The light from the red globe shot straight up through the bottom science dome and illuminated the ceiling of the control deck. The ship was slowly drifting downward, for the star's gravity was slightly stronger than the push of the light on the sail.
George had been looking through the library for a suitable eulogy for Red. He had skimmed through the Bible and the prayer books for three religions but hadn't found anything that really suited. Then he remembered a phrase. It was simple and short, and spoke of their last years together in this structure that was a combination of home and prison and tomb. He couldn't recall the exact words, however, and all of his reconstruction attempts seemed to lack the poignancy of the original.
The name of the author also persisted in eluding his searching thoughts and it took George nearly four hours to track the phrase down with the help of James's library program. He finally found it, then realized why his brain had refused to come up with the source. He found the phrase in the humor section. The author was Mark Twain.
George followed the Christmas Bush in the two percent gravity as it put the frosty body of the beautiful red-haired woman into the airlock and closed the inner door. The Christmas Bush waited, its colored lights blinking, while George read in a husky voice the words he had carefully copied onto a slip of paper.
"Wheresoever she was, there was Eden."
James, overriding the airlock controls, activated the outer door with the lock still pressurized. The rush of air twirled the body out the hatch, one elbow striking the side of the lock as it left. The last thing George saw before his eyes filled again with tears was a distant figure in frosted green, and between them, just outside the airlock door, flashes of red-gold light reflected from a spinning disk of metal. The coin was slowly dropping sunward as the sailcraft hovered above the all-consuming fire below.
Twenty-four hours and fifty-eight minutes later, the energy in a gold coin, a green-clad figure, and a misplaced alligator from Earth became a burst of photons bathing the farthest reaches of the universe with a minute flash of luminance.
Two years later George picked up the beacon signal from the incoming space vehicle. A large anti-matter-powered rocket, it had left the solar system thirteen years ago, and accelerating at thirty percent of Earth gravity had reached its cruise speed of half the speed of light in only twenty months. After coasting for a decade it had turned around and started to brake. It was decelerating rapidly as it neared Barnard, but it still had a year of thrusting to go before it stopped.
This follow-on mission to Barnard contained a large crew of specialized exploration robots and a small contingent of humans. George's first communication sessions with them were brief, for a round-trip message time of one hundred days made it difficult to engage in brilliant discourse. Besides, both of them were busy collecting data.
George now had Prometheus in a slow spiral about the north pole of Barnard, mapping it from the polar regions outward. As the year passed and the rocket ship of the follow-on expedition drew closer, George visited the communicator more often. When they were a month of travel time away, the round-trip communication time became about twenty-four hours and he enjoyed a short one-way conversation each morning at breakfast. It was about this time that he was able to use the science telescope to pick up the faint speck of the blazing exhaust from the braking rocket as it entered the outskirts of the Barnard system. A few weeks later, when the time-delay was only an hour, and they were only a few days from zero relative speed, George suddenly realized that he was going to have visitors and the place was a mess. He cancelled the science plan, put the Christmas Bush to "cleaning up", and began to prepare for company.
The huge interstellar exploration ship dropped into an orbit about Barnard, not far from Rocheworld. A flitter would come to visit him, while the rest of the expedition started in on the exploration tasks that were ahead.
The small sleek flitter flew smoothly in under the giant sail of Prometheus on a nearly invisible jet of antimatter energized hydrogen. George watched them approach from the bottom science dome, then floated over to the EVA console and readied the air lock. The first to cycle through was one of the new general-purpose robots. Built along the same lines as a human, they could replace a human at any station. They, of course, did not need spacesuits.
The robot exited the lock. It looked carefully around, then fixed its eyes on the human. George noticed a gold caduceus on the breastplate of the shiny black plasticoid. Probably a medic of some sort. There was a dramatic increase in the light display on the Christmas Bush, and George realized that James and the robot were trading information. The robot drifted toward him, propelled by a precision flick of its foot on the air-lock hatchway. It spoke in a deep baritone voice.
"I have received a report on your state of health from the ship's computer, but I would like to calibrate my medical sensors if I may," it requested as it drifted to a halt just an arm-length away.
"Sure," said George. The robot placed its right hand on the side of his neck, its thumb resting on his jugular. As the hand approached, he could see each finger was a complex maze of tiny sensors. He was surprised to feel that the hand was warm, despite its cold looking appearance.
"Nice bedside manner," thought George as he felt an ultrasonic hum pass through his body, while at the same time a tiny section of the robot's chest plate was emitting a multicolored display of lights that explored the front portion of his body. After a second, the robot moved both its hands to place them at opposite sides of George's head, then dropped them at its side.
"Thank you," it said, then backed away.
George cycled the lock to let the next visitor in, and a spacesuited figure stepped through. The plasticoid was very efficient and soon the suit was off the human. The Christmas Bush took it off to the locker and hung it up.
"Hello, there," said George with a twisted smile. "Welcome to Barnard."
The visitor looked at the ancient astronaut. George was dressed in a neatly pressed coverall, but that couldn't hide the angular structure of a computer-controlled motile exoskeleton activating his arm and leg on the left side. The visitor estimated it must have required about one-third of the Christmas Bush. As he looked, his computer implant fed him the background information that it had picked up from James and the recent examination by the medic. George had suffered a massive stroke just eighteen months ago and had only barely survived to greet them. He was getting better though, and probably had a good many years left.
"Hello, George, said the young man. "I bear a proclamation from the President and Congress of the Greater United States, and a personal message from my great-grandfather."
"Your great-grandfather?" asked George in bewilderment.
"I am cursed with the jawbreaking name of Beauregard Darlington Winthrop the Sixth," the young man replied with a faint smile. "But just call me 'Win'. My great-grandfather was Senator Winthrop, formerly General Winthrop, one of your old friends in the Air Force."
George clouded up. "Winthrop?" he said. "What was his message?"
"I don't know," said Win, "It's here in this envelope. Since he was the person in Congress that knew you best, they asked him to write you a personal note to go along with their formal commendation."
He handed over a yellowing ancient envelope with the embossed imprint of Senator Beauregard Darlington Winthrop III in the upper left corner. George tore the envelope open and pulled out a folded sheet of Senate office stationary. There in fading black ink was a short note dated July 4, 2076.
Your goddamn friends in the goddamn Congress finally finagled you a goddamn star. May you be dead and frozen in Hell before it gets to you!
There was no signature.
George smiled quietly, folded the letter carefully, his motile-assisted left arm acting in near-perfect coordination with his good right one, and put the letter into his breast pocket. There was no need for this puppy-dog of a young man to know the contents of the message.
"What did it say?" asked Win, eager to know the family secret. As a child he had become fascinated with the time-spanning history of the piece of paper, and had worked until he was chosen for the follow-on mission to Barnard so he could deliver it personally.
"He mentioned a star," said George.
"Oh, yes!" said Win. He reached into another pocket, and pulled out a small box.
"In recognition of your services to the country," he parroted, "the President and Congress of the Greater United States hereby promote you to the rank of Brigadier General of the Air Force." He handed him the box and George opened it. He took out one of the silver stars inside, snapped the box shut and looked at it contemplatively.
He hobbled over to one of the viewing ports in the side of the command deck and stared out at the dull red ball off to one side. He turned to face the two robots and the human, and said, "James, send the Christmas Bush over here next to me."
The computer obeyed and soon the scraggly looking motile was floating in front of him. He reached up and stuck the shining silver star into the branches at the apex of the Christmas Bush, where the cilia automatically gripped it. George leaned back against the view port and looked at the greenly-glowing Christmas Bush, its colored lights blinking on and off in its never-ending communication with the main computer. The five pointed silver star stuck in the top branches glittered brightly as it reflected the reddish rays streaming in the viewport window from Barnard.
"I think you're the one that deserves a General's star, James, so why don't you keep this one." Stiffly, he turned his back on the group and looked out the window at the dull red globe that was six light years away from the home to which he would never return.
"I already have my star."