Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 12

It was early afternoon in Perth and clearly a warm day.

"Hello, Darling. I wasn't expecting a call until later."

"I've got some good news, Mum. Do you have time? Is Dad there?"

"He's out all day and I've got half-an-hour before lunch - longer, depending on your news. Go ahead, Darling. What do you have to say?"

"Roger proposed."

"Oh, how wonderful!"

"And I accepted him."

"Well, of course you did. Why don't you tell me all about it?"

"First promise me you won't tell Dad. I want to tell him myself."

"Don't worry, Sweetie. I'll tell him to expect call from you. Now give me the story."

Ten minutes later, Mariotta remembered her lunch appointment and interrupted the conversation to call her friends and say not to expect her.

"There's something else," Danielle continued when her mother was back, "it's why I don't want a big wedding. You remember the job on Celetaris I mentioned?"

Her mother nodded, fearing the worst.

"Well, I'm taking it."

"Oh, Darling! But it's so far away."

"Only three days."

"Three whole days!"

"You're five hours away now, and it's just the other side of the planet. Three days isn't so much to go 170 light-years."

"I know, Darling, but there's all the medical tests and the week of quarantine the colonies demand, even before you leave Earth. I can't just nip on a strato-liner and be with you and my grandchildren whenever I feel like it."

"Mum, you never come to England unless Dad brings you. You always say it's too cold."

"Well, it is cold and wet."

"And what do you mean 'grandchildren'?"

"A mother can hope, can't she? ... On that matter, what about Roger? Is he happy to go with you?"

"He's not coming straight away. He's got a project to finish on Earth first, then he'll join me."

"Hmm."

"Out with it, Mum. What does 'Hmm' mean?"

"I mean that long-distant relationships don't often work, Darling."

"We'll be married, Mum. It's different."

Mariotta remained sceptical but kept her own counsel.

Half-an-hour later, they were still arguing. Mariotta treated Danielle and Roger's preference for a small family wedding as an oddity, not to be taken seriously. However, Danielle was a stubborn as her mother and, after all, she was the bride, so Mariotta acquiesced in good grace with the promise of a truly splendid 'real' wedding party a year later.

Her psychic powers none the less sensed there was something Danielle wasn't saying, something troubling her.

"What is it, Darling? I agree to the small family ceremony, so what's the matter?"

"It's Ezra. I always imagined he'd be at my wedding."

"I know, Sweetie, but it will be a nice surprise for him when he gets back. Besides, he might get back in time for the real party."

"Mum, I don't want to worry you but it's odd we haven't heard anything from him yet. It's more than a year since he left Earth. We have to face the possibility that he's run into trouble. Even if he missed his target, he has communications probes to send an emergency signal. We really should have heard something by now, whether he arrived safely or not."

"I'm not worried, Dear." This was true, Mariotta rarely worried. "Ezra's always falling into adventures. He's probably too busy having fun to call us. Remember Liliana whatever her name was?"

"Tatiana Ludmilla Tchernekova."

Danielle remembered the name because it had such a musical sound. It was one of Ezra's early missions, a near-disaster that turned out so well for him that he earned a promotion and a pay-rise. She was aged twelve. It was a summer when she had pig-tails and braces and never took off her dungarees. She remembered sitting on the edge of her seat at dinner while he told the story. She lived his adventure with him, sharing all the dangers. He always spoke fondly of his Russian friend.

"Did you ever see a photo of Tatiana?" Danielle asked.

"No, I don't believe so."

"I met her once. She looks like a matryoshka and she was twice his age when they worked together."

"Really? Lucky Ezra. There are plenty of things I could teach a man half my age. Young men don't know how to go slowly. They're too impatient. And young women are too self-conscious to say anything."

Danielle was once again shocked by how her mother's mind worked. She never imagined that Ezra had a sexual relationship with the woman he considered his mentor. Luckily, she was used to her mother.

"It won't help," Mariotta said, looping back to the main subject, "but now Ezra's been gone a year, I can exercise my power of attorney over his estate and take a look at his communications."

"I can do that anyway, Mum. Ezra sent me his passwords to use in an emergency. I can access his messages and his bank accounts any time I want."

"Well, let's do that. He won't mind. Will you tell me what you find?"

"I can do it now, if you want."

She had the passwords safely stored and, in two minutes, Ezra's mail box was open on her screen. There were only a handful of messages.

"Shall I send them to you, Mum?"

"What are they?"

"Log entries. Mostly technical data from his ship."

"Then just read anything interesting to me."

Danielle read his inbox backward from the most recent messages.

"Ezra must have set his ship to transmit his logs and messages back home after each hyperspace jump, though we will get a message only when he's near a comms beacon, which are rare on his route and non-existent as far out as he went. The last log entry is from after his third hyperspace jump, when he was about eight-hundred light-years from Earth."

Danielle analysed the read-outs from the on-board instruments.

"Everything seems all right. The starboard rocket thruster has been running a little hot and the oxygen recycler is working harder than normal."

"Are they problems?"

"No. The thrusters are only for manoeuvring in space and the low oxygen levels could be caused by anything. Ezra might be cooking with an open flame or increasing his exercises. At those levels, it's nothing to worry about."

"All right, what else?"

"The next entry is a bank statement: a notification that the deposit he left with the Capella Port Authority has been refunded. It was returned to him on the day he left."

"The next entry before that is a message from someone called Yumi Takahashi. It was also on the day he left Capella."

"I don't know any of his friends called Yumi. Do you know him?"

"No and she's a woman. It's a private message, but innocent enough."

Danielle was being coy on her brother's behalf. She didn't mention that Ezra and Yumi seemed to have had romantic attachment: he clearly spent his last night on Capella with her. Also, Yumi signed off her message with the word 'love' and left a home contact address.

"All right, nothing to learn there," Mariotta judged. "What's next?"

"Just records of Ezra's transactions on Capella. He put one-hundred Galactic pounds on a credit stick. That's all there is. There are more ship logs and diagnostics for the month he spent space-testing the ship and, before that, correspondence on Earth."

"So all we know is that Ezra left Capella safely and was still all right nearly a week later."

"I'm afraid so, Mum. It's disappointing but also sort of a relief. He may have reached Samothea safely. I once set one of my classes the task of plotting the trajectory of a trip to Samothea, just to prove it could be done safely, and it looks like it can."

"Well, I'm not going to worry about him, Darling. He's been on more dangerous missions and always turned up again."

Agreeing that her mother was probably right, Danielle confessed she was tired now. Promising to call her parents later that day, she at last went yawning to bed.

* * *

Next morning, as soon as she woke, she a message to the Celetaris Institute of Science, accepting the job offer and the offer to arrange travel and accommodation for her arrival in September. She also sent her company a month's notice of her resignation.

Then Danielle looked for the mailbox addresses of her two star pupils from the previous year's advanced astrophysics course. She knew Rosa Silverstein and Li Qu Yuan were doing master's degrees but she hadn't seen either of them all year.

Rosa's mail address was in Danielle's contacts list. She remembered why as soon as she opened the contact. It linked immediately to the work she'd done ten or so months ago on Rosa's clever but ultimately unsuccessful method of sending a traveller to Samothea in one hyperspace jump.

For fifteen minutes she was absorbed in that problem again, until Roger came into the living room, showered and refreshed.

"Morning, fiancé. I love you. You were amazing last night. How are you feeling?"

"Wonderfully well, future husband. I love you, too. You were pretty good yourself. Mum congratulates us."

"Thanks. I should call my folks today. What's the time?"

"Eight-thirty."

"What're you doing?"

She was sitting at the coffee table with a computer tablet beside her. Rosa's data cube was on a reading pad on the table and above it hovered a holographic projection, filled with equations in black writing with notes and comments in red and blue.

"I came across an old problem while I was looking for an address - which you've just reminded me about. I should call her."

"Whom?"

"Rosa, an old pupil. I want to invite her to do her PhD at Celetaris with me. ... Computer, place a call to Rosa Silverstein."

The computer began to make the connection.

"Isn't it a bit rude calling her this early?"

"Eight-thirty is too early?"

"It's a Sunday, Darling, and she's a student. Mid-day would be too early."

It was too late. The computer completed the connection and a bedraggled-looking Rosa appeared in her pyjamas, with bird's-nest hair, gazing sleepily out of the screen.

"Hello, who's this?"

"Hello, Rosa, it's Danielle Goldrick."

"Doctor Goldrick? Is it an emergency?"

"No, just a beautiful spring morning."

"Huh?"

"Rosa, I'm sorry to wake you but I have a proposition for you. Are you free today?"

"Free? I suppose so."

"Oh, good. It's important. Can we meet up? Would you like to come over here?"

"All right. ... Wait, no, I've got a session with my study partner."

"Bring her along."

"It's a him."

"All right, bring him along. See you at ten?"

"I suppose so. If it's important. ... er, can we make it eleven?"

"Of course. Meanwhile, do you know Li's mail address?"

"Li? No."

"He's still at Trinity, isn't he?"

"No, I think he's in Hong Kong."

"All right. Don't worry. See you later."

Danielle got up to look for Li Qu Yuan's data cube but it wasn't with the other cubes. She double-checked the places she kept university materials and then stood, puzzled.

Roger reappeared, dressed and ready for breakfast.

"Can you help me find a missing data cube from one of my students?" she asked him.

"Of course. Where have you looked?"

"The drawer, a file and this wallet I put all the data cubes in."

"Hmm. Did you use a bag to carry things to and from the college?"

"A small briefcase. It's not in there."

"What if you were going on somewhere after the class. Would you take a bigger bag?"

"You're right. We should look in all my bags."

Danielle had a cupboard full of bags, of different sizes, shapes and colours. Being a man, Roger had no idea why a woman needed more than one bag. Sure, he understood that different bags go with different outfits; but that just raised the question why a woman needed so many different outfits.

They found Li's data cube in a brown leather holdall at the bottom of the cupboard, with a year's fashion accessories, used only once or twice, piled randomly on top.

Danielle put the data cube on the reader. It produced a holographic list. The top item was Li's version of the last task she set the class, with a note to her apologising for leaving it incomplete. She'd forgotten the details of his project but she remembered that having sex in the broom-cupboard distracted her; after which, she forget to check Li's work. She did so now, projecting a holographic image next to Rosa's.

"Well, that's interesting," she said to herself. "Rosa's and Li's methods are the inverse of each other. But Rosa's works, more or less, and Li's is way off. Why is that?"

"It's a rhetorical question, I presume?" Roger asked.

"Hmm, what?"

"I can't really tell you why Rosa's method works and Li's doesn't. But my academic training says you should run them side-by-side to see where they begin to diverge."

She stared at him a second and then smiled.

"Darling, what are we doing today?"

"Nothing until later," he said. "We're going to dinner. I've booked a restaurant."

"Oh, good. What time?"

"Seven-thirty."

"All right, so I'm not spoiling any plans if I look into this?"

"Well, my original plan was to stay in bed all day and have sex, but that's off the menu anyway; so, no, you're not spoiling any plans."

"Good. Also, Rosa's coming over at eleven. She's bringing someone."

"Very well. ... By the way, phone your father," he reminded her.

"Oh yes, I was forgetting. Thanks."

A long video call followed. Though her father gave his congratulations to them both in ten minutes, Mariotta was there and had lots to say about the music, the catering and the dress.

Eventually, Danielle mollified her mother and could sit down and go over the problem of why Rosa's virtual traveller reached Samothea but Li's didn't. She prepped the computer and opened the holographic models again.

"We've missed breakfast, Darling," Roger said. "Do you want anything?"

"Uh, uh," she replied, which he took to mean "No," because she didn't say anything more but stared at her holo-screen, her head already in hyperspace, puzzling over the problem.

She rolled up her sleeves, tied her hair out of the way and traced the virtual spaceships in their hyperspace jump from Capella Spaceport to Samothea. Rosa's program had a margin of error of half a light-year: Li's had a margin of error of fifteen light-years.

"Odd," she said.

Roger was on the couch with a tablet, writing the outline of his amended proposal to send with his acceptance letter to the video company. He took his glasses off to admire his beautiful fiancé. She had a high forehead, currently knitted with a frown, big, wide-set deep-blue eyes, a wide mouth with light-pink lips and a small but determined chin. Her crown of wavy platinum-blond hair shone in the morning light.

He saw her frown suddenly lift and her face light up.

"Aha!" she said. "It's not the programs that are different: it's the data!"

She ran them on the same star-projector program and got similar results: both missed their destination by plus or minus fifteen light-years.

"I've found it, Roger. The anomaly is near Samothea. Look!"

She projected the stars near Samothea onto the holo-screen, toggling between the data-set used by Rosa and that which Li used.

"There's a star missing," he observed helpfully.

"The missing star is on Rosa's old data-set, the one I used to set the question for the class. And this," she toggled the image and pointed to the stars around Samothea with the conspicuous gap, "this is the recent data-set that Li used. No wonder his spaceship never made it."

Then she remembered. The sunny smile vanished from her face.

"Damn!" she exclaimed. "Damn, damn, damn!"

Her body went cold and her heart sank into her feet.

"Ezra," she whispered.

"What about him?"

"That's where Ezra jumped, straight into that anomaly. God, what a disaster!"

"Do you know what happened?"

"No, not yet. Let's see how much data there is. ... Computer," she commanded, "show previous star maps and add updates sequentially."

The star reappeared in the gap nearby Samothea's sun and stayed constant as the map flipped through the years. There were only five updates until the star flickered.

"Stop!" she said. "Show details."

It was the most recent update, arrived just under a year ago. It showed the system one-hundred years in the past.

"Play sequence."

The star - it's catalogue name glowing in red; its local name, 'Sothis', added in brackets - flickered again, then went very bright and began to expand.

"What is it, Darling?"

"I don't know. It's not a true nova but it's definitely a big enough anomaly to explain what happened to Samothea. ... Poor Ezra!"

The star continued to grow. A sphere of gas, illuminated by lightning, arcing and flashing in the cloud, followed the expanding wave-front.

"Why 'poor Ezra'? Is he caught up in this thing?" Roger asked.

"No. It was one-hundred years ago but it's left a source of charged particles, That's the anomaly which caused Li's virtual spaceship to miss its mark. It would have done the same to Ezra's. Depending on how close to Samothea he expected his last jump to emerge, he could be anywhere."

"So he over-shot or under-shot. He's probably alive."

"He could be alive - unlike any poor soul who tried to reach Samothea one-hundred years ago, when this star was going off."

She sat down and felt miserable. Roger sat beside her. He put an arm around her.

"A year ago," he said, "I'd never even heard of the planet Samothea. Since then, I've done my homework - and I wish I didn't know so much."

"Go on, Roger, tell me."

"Nearly one-hundred years ago, a ship with three-thousand settlers went to Samothea. It was never heard from again."

"Oh, God!"

He held her tightly. She put her head on his shoulder.

"Ezra will be safe, I'm sure," he said.

She was silent a minute in his arms then she loaded looked up, eyes damp, but with resolution in her voice.

"Yes, but the best thing we can do is get one of the big science institutions interested enough in the anomaly to send out a probe. If we could do that, maybe it'll pick up signals from Ezra's ship as well. When I get to Celetaris, I'll make it my mission to arrange this, to explore as close to Samothea as we can."

5 Rosa and Herman

Rosa arrived at eleven-fifteen with a young man in tow.

"This is Herman," she said.

He was a thin boy, aged twenty-one, the same as Rosa. He had a prominent Adam's apple, aquiline nose and violent spots; but he was clean and polite. Rosa herself had made an effort to get her wavy brown hair under control and even applied eye-liner and mascara, indicating to Danielle her feelings toward the gangly youth she called her study partner.

They were introduced to Roger, who got to know them while Danielle went off to make coffee (but fruit-juice for Herman, who avoided caffeine).

"Come and sit down," he said.

They all got comfortable on the couch.

"So, do you both study astrophysics?" Roger asked.

"No, I'm a pure mathematician," Herman replied, "I study number theory."

"Number theory? So how come you two are study partners?"

"Our professors suggested we could both learn from taking an extra course," Rosa explained. "A more theoretical one for me and a more practical one for Herman. We both chose programmable maths, which is where we met."

"I know what programmable math is," Roger said brightly. "It's when you let the computer do your thinking for you."

Rosa laughed and Danielle's sigh was audible from across the open-plan flat but Herman's mouth was a perfect O.

"I apologise for Roger," Danielle said. "He's a Philistine."

"But he's nearly right," Herman exclaimed. "The question of how much thinking our computers do for us is a real problem in philosophy and psychology, not just in maths."

"It is?" Roger asked.

"Of course. I don't mean science-fiction rubbish about robots taking over the world; but I mean the question of how much we can trust a computer."

"Go on," Roger pressed him.

"Well, you admit that computers are cleverer than us?"

"I sure do. They're better at math, for example. They can calculate faster and more accurately than a man and they are probably more logical."