Lethe

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Asimov's - Lethe

Asimov's Logo

Walter Jon Williams: Lethe

First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 1997.

Nominated for Best Novellette.

Davout had himself disassembled for the return journey. He

had already been torn in half, he felt: the remainder, the dumb

beast still alive, did not matter. The captain had ruled, and

Katrin would not be brought back. Davout did not want to

spend the years between the stars in pain, confronting the

gaping absence in his quarters, surrounded by the quiet

sympathy of the crew.

Besides, he was no longer needed. The terraforming team had

done its work, and then, but for Davout, had died.

Davout lay down on a bed of nano and let the little machines

take him apart piece by piece, turn his body, his mind, and his

unquenchable longing into long strings of numbers. The

nanomachines crawled into his brain first, mapping, recording,

and then shut down his mind piece by piece, so that he would

feel no discomfort during what followed, or suffer a memory of

his own body being taken apart.

Davout hoped that the nanos would shut down the pain before

his consciousness failed, so that he could remember what it

was like to live without the anguish that was now a part of his

life, but it didn’t work out that way. When his consciousness

ebbed, he was aware, even to the last fading of the light, of the

Read these

Nebula-

nominated

stories

From Asimov's

Echea, by

Kristine

Kathryn Rusch

Fortune and

Misfortune, by

Lisa Goldstein

Izzy and the

Father of

Terror, by

Eliot Fintushel

Lethe, by

Walter Jon

Williams

Standing

Room Only,

by Karen Joy

Fowler

Winter Fire,

by Geoffrey A.

Landis

From Analog

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Asimov's - Lethe

knife-blade of loss still buried in his heart.

The pain was there when Davout awoke, a wailing voice that

cried, a pure contralto keen of agony, in his first dawning

awareness. He found himself in an early-Victorian bedroom,

blue-striped wallpaper, silhouettes in oval frames, silk flowers

in vases. Crisp sheets, light streaming in the window. A

stranger–shoulder-length hair, black frock coat, cravat

carelessly tied–looked at him from a gothic-revival armchair.

The man held a pipe in the right hand and tamped down

tobacco with the prehensile big toe of his left foot.

"I’m not on the Beagle," Davout said.

The man gave a grave nod. His left hand formed the mudra for

<correct>. "Yes."

"And this isn’t a virtual?"

<Correct> again. "No."

"Then something has gone wrong."

<Correct> "Yes. A moment, sir, if you please." The man

finished tamping, slipped his foot into a waiting boot, then lit

the pipe with the anachronistic lighter in his left hand. He

puffed, drew in smoke, exhaled, put the lighter in his pocket,

and settled back in the walnut embrace of his chair.

"I am Dr. Li," he said. <Stand by> said the left hand, the old

finger position for a now-obsolete palmtop computer, a finger

position that had once meant pause, as <correct> had once

meant enter, enter because it was correct. "Please remain in

bed for a few more minutes while the nanos doublecheck their

work. Redundancy is frustrating," puffing smoke, "but good for

peace of mind."

"What happens if they find they’ve made a mistake?"

<Don’t be concerned.> "It can’t be a very large mistake," said

Li, "or we wouldn’t be communicating so rationally. At worst,

you will sleep for a bit while things are corrected."

"May I take my hands out from under the covers?" he asked.

Aurora in Four

Voices, by

Catherine

Asaro

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"Lethe" by

Walter Jon

Williams,

1997 by Walter

Jon Williams,

used by

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Asimov's - Lethe

"Yes."

Davout did so. His hands, he observed, were brown and

leathery, hands suitable for the hot, dry world of Sarpedon.

They had not, then, changed his body for one more suited to

Earth, but given him something familiar.

If, he realized, they were on Earth.

His right fingers made the mudra <thank you>.

<Don’t mention it> signed Li.

Davout passed a hand over his forehead, discovered that the

forehead, hand, and the gesture itself were perfectly familiar.

Strange, but the gesture convinced him that he was, in a vital

way, still himself. Still Davout.

Still alive, he thought. Alas.

"Tell me what happened," he said. "Tell me why I’m here."

Li signed <stand by>, made a visible effort to collect himself.

"We believe," he said, "that the Beagle was destroyed. If so,

you are the only survivor."

Davout found his shock curiously veiled. The loss of the other

lives–friends, most of them–stood muted by the precedent of

his own earlier, overriding grief. It was as if the two losses

were weighed in a balance, and the Beagle found wanting.

Li, Davout observed, was waiting for Davout to absorb this

information before continuing.

<Go on> Davout signed.

"The accident happened seven light-years out," Li said.

"Beagle began to yaw wildly, and both automatic systems and

the crew failed to correct the maneuver. Beagle’s automatic

systems concluded that the ship was unlikely to survive the

increasing oscillations, and began to use its communications

lasers to download personality data to collectors in Earth orbit.

permission of

the author

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Asimov's - Lethe

As the only crew member to elect disassembly during the

return journey, you were first in the queue. The others, we

presume, ran to nano disassembly stations, but

communication was lost with the Beagle before we retrieved

any of their data."

"Did Katrin’s come through?"

Li stirred uneasily in his chair. <Regrettably> "I’m afraid not."

Davout closed his eyes. He had lost her again. Over the

bubble of hopelessness in his throat he asked, "How long has

it been since my data arrived?"

"A little over eight days."

They had waited eight days, then, for Beagle–for the Beagle of

seven years ago–to correct its problem and reestablish

communication. If Beagle had resumed contact, the mass of

data that was Davout might have been erased as redundant.

"The government has announced the loss," Li said. "Though

there is a remote chance that the Beagle may come flying in or

through the system in eleven years as scheduled, we have

detected no more transmissions, and we’ve been unable to

observe any blueshifted deceleration torch aimed at our

system. The government decided that it would be unfair to

keep sibs and survivors in the dark any longer."

<Concur> Davout signed.

He envisioned the last moments of the Beagle, the crew being

flung back and forth as the ship slammed through increasing

pendulum swings, the desperate attempts, fighting wildly

fluctuating gravity and inertia, to reach the emergency

nanobeds . . . no panic, Davout thought, Captain Moshweshwe

had trained his people too well for that. Just desperation, and

determination, and, as the oscillations grew worse, an

increasing sense of futility, and impending death.

No one expected to die anymore. It was always a shock when

it happened near you. Or to you.

"The cause of the Beagle’s problem remains unknown," Li

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Asimov's - Lethe

said, the voice far away. "The Bureau is working with

simulators to try to discover what happened."

Davout leaned back against his pillow. Pain throbbed in his

veins, pain and loss, knowledge that his past, his joy, was

irrecoverable. "The whole voyage," he said, "was a

catastrophe."

<I respectfully contradict> Li signed. "You terraformed and

explored two worlds," he said. "Downloads are already living

on these worlds, hundreds of thousands now, millions later.

There would have been a third world added to our

commonwealth if your mission had not been cut short due to

the, ah, first accident . . ."

<Concur> Davout signed, but only because his words would

have come out with too much bitterness.

<Sorry>, a curt jerk of Li’s fingers. "There are messages from

your sibs," Li said, "and downloads from them also. The sibs

and friends of Beagle’s crew will try to contact you, no doubt.

You need not answer any of these messages until you’re

ready."

<Understood.>

Davout hesitated, but the words were insistent; he gave them

tongue. "Have Katrin’s sibs sent messages?" he asked.

Li’s grave expression scarcely changed. "I believe so." He

tilted his head. "Is there anything I can do for you? Anything I

can arrange?"

"Not now, no," said Davout. <Thank you> he signed. "Can I

move from the bed now?"

Li’s look turned abstract as he scanned indicators projected

somewhere in his mind. <Yes> "You may," he said. He rose

from his chair, took the pipe from his mouth. "You are in a

hospital, I should add," he said, "but you do not have the

formal status of patient, and may leave at any time. Likewise,

you may stay here for the foreseeable future, as long as you

feel it necessary."

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