Chapter 16 – Homesickness and Stargazing
FOR THE NEXT three or four days, as best she could judge, Jacqui was left alone to her thoughts. No Eels visited her: her meals were brought and her commode was emptied by robots. They may be loathsome in appearance, she thought, but they're non-sentient: they can do me no harm and they can't upset me any more. Was this how she would live out her remaining days? Utterly alone?
She thought about the Eels' 'sampling' method disaster. Would things have been so different if they had arrived at any other period of history? Wasn't the human race naturally aggressive? She thought of all the terrible conflicts that had erupted since WW2. Korea, Palestine and Israel, the Balkans, India and Pakistan, much of Africa, Vietnam, Northern Ireland. Persecution and cruelty in so many countries. Racism. Slavery. And above all, Climate Change, which was set to swamp all other issues. If the Eels' account was true, global warming was already past the 'tipping point'.
And this was the world she was craving to go home to!
Her solitude did not last. Some days later, Major appeared through one of the orifices in the wall. Noting Jacqui's dismay at his appearance, he wriggled discreetly towards the furthest corner of the room, where he coiled up as usual and raised his Trumpet towards her. Jacqui did not look at him.
"We are deeply sorry for the way we upset you, Jacqui. I know you resent my appearance now, but please believe me when I say, were are as upset as you are by what happened. But you can rest assured, we have now gained a full understanding of what 'went wrong' in our attempt at seeding on Earth. I have discussed things with 'Doc' and 'Colonel', and we are agreed that we shall never again use your planet as a seeding host. You have our absolute, unwavering promise on that! Your species is highly intelligent, and we would have succeeded if we had only programmed benign characteristics into our second-phase hosts. But we have wasted our chance. Your planet is deteriorating and will no longer be suitable.
"We shall seek out other planets of course—but there are few which support life in a form sufficiently advanced to serve our needs. If we do not find one, then, given time, our species will become extinct. In a short time by our reckoning—a few thousand of your years—all of us will be dead."
"Good," said Jacqui, resentfully, glancing at Major for the first time. "We shall be gone, too, long before then. Join the club and enjoy the company!"
"I do not understand that last remark, but I had hoped you might have something positive to say, notwithstanding the bleak prospects for both of us. But I shall let that pass. Meanwhile, I came here to warn you that our part of the planet will in a few of your days enter its Night period. It will become dark here, and considerably colder—though not as cold as your planet Mercury in its night-time! Your room here is not suitable to remain in during the Night, so we have prepared a better habitat elsewhere in this complex. I am here to guide you to it. Are you ready? Do you still have your mask?"
There was no argument to that. So, wearing her mask, Jacqui meekly followed Major out through the door and into the open air. She then realised for the first time—although she must have noticed before without taking it in—that the reddish 'sun' which she at first thought was completely stationary in the sky, had indeed changed position. It was now low on the horizon. 'Sunset' was not far off—but still a few days to go by her reckoning.
"Is Night the same length as Day, here?" she asked.
"Yes. I explained this to you before. Our planet has almost no axial tilt relative to its orbit, so we have no seasons like you have on Earth. There is some variation due to the eccentricity of the orbit, but you will notice little. The day-night cycle lasts forty-six of your days: twenty-three of daylight and twenty-three of Night."
It was only a short wade around the perimeter of the 'building' this time, and soon they arrived at another 'room'. This time the wall was a semi-opaque pink and Jacqui had to wait until Major had opened another 'door' and let her inside, before she could see her room.
It was certainly an improvement. The floor was still inundated, but only half of it: the other half, a sort of stage, was raised well above the waterline and reached by a couple of steps. Its surface was slightly soft, like a thick rubbery carpet. There was a much larger bed with some sort of coverlet made of a similar material: a table and a few chairs, a sort of desk, and a curtained-off bathroom which included a shower and, much to her amazement and delight, what appeared to be a flush toilet. "No more commodes!" Jacqui thought.
There was even a mirror.
For the first time in many days Jacqui was able to see her face. It looked thin and drawn, but the Eels had been telling the truth: she had not aged during the forty-three year voyage. She still looked very much the attractive thirty-four year old. If only Adam were here! But Adam, she realised, was probably already dead. Tears welled in her eyes.
"It's lovely: thank you, thank you Major, it's so much more comfortable here. But I want to go home. Really and truly I want to go home! When can I?"
"That is difficult, I'm afraid. We have a ship leaving on a potential seeding mission in two of our Days—about ninety-two of your days..."
Three months! How could Jacqui endure being stuck here for that long?
"...but it is not going in the direction of your planet. It does not carry enough fuel to make the detour."
What sort of 'fuel' did these interstellar ships use? Jacqui thought better than to ask: she wouldn't understand the answer, she was sure.
"However," continued Major, "there is a ship scheduled to leave in sixteen of our Days' time, and it will be travelling in your direction. It is planned to seek out a potential seeding planet which lies some light-years beyond your star system. If you are prepared to wait that long, we can send you as a passenger and drop you off. I cannot promise how you may find things on your planet..."
Jacqui did a rapid calculation in her head. Sixteen times forty-six: that was over two years!
She felt more positively disposed towards Major now. What had happened on Earth, in the 1940s—that was not his fault, nor Doc's fault, after all. Nor was it their fault that they had chosen some of the most horrible events in Earth's history as their 'model'. Perhaps she could 'sit it out'.
"What can I do, in two of my years, to occupy myself until then?" she ventured.
"I shall have to consult. But our robots are capable of constructing many things. We shall do our best." And with that, he was gone.
Jacqui explored her new room. She noted that the green spot in one corner of the room had now turned red, so she took off her mask and thankfully breathed the thin air in gulps. Amongst other things, she discovered on the 'desk' a small pile of square sheets of some sort of grey plastic-like substance, like that which her mask was made of. Beside them was a short pointed stick, not unlike a pencil. I wonder? she thought. She drew up a chair and sat down. Yes, the stick was a pencil, and the sheets could be written on. At least that was something she could do! The journalist in her stirred itself, and she set about scribbling down an account of all that had happened to her since she arrived at this planet. No-one would be around to read it, of course—but it had to be recorded. When a robot next entered her room, she showed it the sheets she had already covered with handwriting, and pointed to the dwindling pile remaining on the desk. The robot appeared to understand; within a few minutes she heard the familiar buzz and the red spot on the wall turned green, so she put on her mask. The exterior door opened and two robots entered bearing a large box containing a huge supply of the 'paper', plus a number of the pencil-like objects. She could now go on writing for years, she reckoned.
She also discovered a discreet knob which enabled her to change the exterior wall through every state between almost-pinkish-transparent and completely black and opaque. That was well: she could look out through the 'window' but could darken the room as and when she wished. She wondered if there was artificial lighting of some sort, and spent a long time hunting for anything that might be a switch. She should have asked Major when he was here, of course! But eventually she found the switch, and the room was bathed in a soft yellow light.
Not pink, she thought with some relief!
She made herself at home in her new room, as best she could. The writing kept her occupied for much of the time, and when she got tired of writing she amused herself by making sketches of what she had seen. She reckoned that she had from memory captured a good likeness of Major on the 'paper', but whether he would 'see' the drawing as she could, or whether he would recognise himself, remained to be seen. She also made sketches of the 'building' as she had remembered seeing it from the outside.
It was while she was drawing that she noticed how dim the light had become outside. Local Night was indeed falling, although it took at least half an Earth day to become truly dark. She wondered if stars were visible. She would have liked to go outside, but she did not know how to operate the exterior door.
She decided that to avoid confusion in her notes, she would write this planet's 'Day' and 'Night' with a capital D and N.
Major reappeared before long. He complimented Jacqui on the writing she had done, and appeared to gaze for a long time at the sketch she had made of him. Of course she could not read any of his emotions—if Trumpet-Eels had emotions, that is.
"That is meant to be a likeness of me," he observed after a pause. "You are a good artist, Jacqui. We do not practise such arts, ourselves. Some of my kin would not understand. But please continue with your sketching."
"I would like to go outside, if possible. Now that it is Night: are the stars visible? Can I—can I possibly see our Sun?"
"All right. You will not see much, I'm afraid. We cannot go far from the complex: it is not safe at Night, and the light from this building will interfere with your view. But you should see some stars. Not your Sun, I'm afraid: at this distance it is too faint to see with the unaided eye. I shall however point out for you the approximate direction. Do not forget your mask."
So Jacqui accompanied Major out of the building, and waded after him for about a hundred yards. Then he stopped. Jacqui looked around her.
There was one very bright star, or possibly a planet, visible, but it was fairly near the horizon. It appeared to be even brighter than Venus. Jacqui first of all pointed to it and asked if it was another planet in their star system.
"No. There are other planets in our system, but they are faint, and none are visible from where we are, at present. What you can see is a star that may be familiar to you: your people call it Arcturus." Jacqui nodded: she knew the name, and recalled that she had been shown how to find it in the sky: not far from the Plough, and pointed to by the Plough's 'handle'. But there was no sign of the Plough itself.
"It is our nearest star after our Sun," continued Major, "about three light-years away. At this distance, it is more than a hundred times brighter than you see it from Earth. We have many names for it, but I am afraid I cannot pronounce them for you. It features in much of our folklore and traditions."
So this afforded a clue as to the direction in which she had been brought! If she ever returned to Earth, could she pinpoint this planet's Sun from there? "Can your Sun be seen from Earth?" she asked.
"You would need an exceedingly powerful telescope for that," replied Major. "It is possible that our Sun shows up in your star catalogues, but I would not know how to direct you. All I can say is, as you no doubt realise, we lie in roughly the same direction as Arcturus, as seen from Earth."
That was the best she would get from them, Jacqui realised, but it was something to go on. No-one on Earth, not even those cleared for Midwich, had ever had an inkling of where the Children's origin planet might be. Perhaps she should pass on what she had learnt to an astronomer—if she ever got round to meeting one back home. If she ever got back home.
"So, you said you would point me in the direction of our Sun, even though I can't see it," she said.
In reply, Major raised his other Trumpet: the one he did not 'talk' with, furled it, and pointed it towards a different region of the sky, fairly close to the zenith. "Do you see that moderately bright star where I am pointing?"
Jacqui crouched down until her head was close to Major's body, thrilling at the touch of his smooth, barely damp skin, and squinted along the direction he was pointing. Yes, there was a star in that direction: not very bright, she thought—about the same as the stars of the Plough.
"That is the star you know as Sirius—and your Sun lies in roughly the same direction," continued Major. "I am informed that from Earth it is the brightest star in the night sky. But from here it is not particularly conspicuous. Quite the opposite situation to Arcturus, you might say."
" 'The tables are turned' is what we would say," remarked Jacqui. She spent some minutes gazing at the night sky around her. She could see several stars which might be grouped into constellations—though of course she could not recognise any of them. But the Milky Way was discernible—looking much as it did from Earth. A wave of homesickness engulfed her once again. She told Major she had had enough, and they returned to her room.