Ian R. Macleod - Starship Day

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Starship Day - a short story by Ian R MacLeod

IP fiction

Starship Day

a short story by Ian R

MacLeod

The news was everywhere. It was in our dreams, it was on TV. Tonight, the travellers on the first

starship from Earth would awaken.

That morning, Danous yawned with the expectant creak of shutters, the first stretch of shadow across

narrow streets. The air shimmered with the scent of warming pine, it brushed through the shutters and

touched our thoughts even as our dreams had faded. For this was Starship Day, and from tonight,

nothing would ever be the same. Of course, there were parties organised. Yacht races across the bay.

Holidays for the kids. The prospect of the starship's first transmission, an instantaneous tachyon burst

across the light years, had sent the wine sellers and the bakers scurrying towards their stocks and

chasing their suppliers. And the suppliers had chased their suppliers. And the bread, the fruit, the hats,

the frocks, the meat, the marquees, the music had never been in such demand. Not even when... Not

even when... Not even when. But there were no comparisons. There had never been a day such as this.

As if I needed reminding, the morning paper on the mat was full of it. I'd left my wife Hannah still

asleep, weary from the celebrations that had already begun the night before, and there were wine

glasses scattered in the parlour, the smell of booze and stale conversation. After starting with early

drinks and chatter at the Point Hotel, Hannah's sister Bernice and her husband Rajii had stayed around

with us until late. At least, they'd stayed beyond the time I finally left the three of them and went to bed,

feeling righteous, feeling like a sourpuss, wondering just what the hell I did feel. But some of us still

had work to do on this starship morning. I opened the curtains and the shutters and let in the sound and

the smell of the sea. I stacked a tray with the butts and bottles and glasses. I squeezed out an orange,

filled a bowl with oats and yoghurt and honey. I sat down outside with the lizards in the growing

warmth of the patio.

Weighted with a stone, my newspaper fluttered in the soft breeze off the sea. Page after page of gleeful

speculation. Discovery. Life. Starship. Hope. Message. Already, I'd had enough. Why couldn't people

just wait? All it took was for the tide to go in and out, for the sun to rise and fall, for stars and darkness

to come, and we'd all know the truth anyway. So easy -- but after all this time, humanity is still a

hurrying race. And I knew that my patients would be full of it at the surgery, exchanging their usual

demons for the brief hope that something from outside might change their lives. And I'd have to sit and

listen, I'd have to put on my usual caring-Owen act. The stars might be whispering from out of the black

far beyond this blue morning, but some of us had to get on with the process of living.

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Starship Day - a short story by Ian R MacLeod

Hannah was still half-asleep when I went in to say goodbye.

"Sorry about last night," she said.

"Why sorry?"

"You were obviously tired. Rajii does go on."

"What time did they leave?"

"I don't know." She yawned. "What time did you go to bed?"

I smiled as I watched her lying there still tangled in sleep. Now that I had to go, I wanted to climb back

in.

"Will you be in for lunch?"

"I'm -- meeting someone."

Bad, that. The wrong kind of pause. But Hannah just closed her eyes, rolling back into the sheets and

her own starship dreams. I left the room, pulled my cream jacket on over my shirt and shorts, and

closed the front door.

I wheeled my bicycle from the lean-to beside the lavender patch and took the rough road down into

town. For some reason, part of me was thinking, maybe we should get another dog; maybe that would

be a change, a distraction.

Another perfect morning. Fishing boats in the harbour. Nets drying along the quay. Already the sun was

high enough to set a deep sparkle on the water and lift the dew off the bougainvillaea draped over the

seafront houses. I propped my bike in the shadowed street outside the surgery and climbed the wooden

steps to the door. I fed the goldfish tank in reception. I dumped the mail in the tray in my office. I

opened a window, sat down at my desk and turned on the PC, hitting the keys to call up my morning's

appointments. Mrs Edwards scrolled up, 9:00. Sal Mohammed, 10:00. Then John for lunch. Mrs

Sweetney in the afternoon. On a whim, I typed in

About the starship.

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Starship Day - a short story by Ian R MacLeod

PLEASE WAIT

What do you think will happen?

Again, PLEASE WAIT.

The computer was right of course. Wait. Just wait. Please wait. A seagull mewed. The PC's fan clicked

faintly, ticking away the minutes as they piled into drifts of hours and days. Eventually, I heard the

thump of shoes on the steps and I called, "Come right in," before Mrs Edwards had time to settle with

the old magazines in reception.

"Are you sure, Owen? I mean, if you're busy..."

"The door's open."

Ah, Mrs Edwards. Red-faced, the smell of eau de cologne already fading into nervous sweat. One of my

regulars, one of the ones who keep coming long after they'd forgotten why, and who spend their days

agonizing new angles around some old neurosis so that they can lay it in front of me like a cat dropping

a dead bird.

As always, she looked longingly at the soft chair, then sat down on the hard one.

"Big day," she said.

"It certainly is."

"I'm terribly worried," she said.

"About the starship?"

"Of course. I mean, what are they going to think of us?"

I gazed at her, my face a friendly mask. Did she mean whatever star-creatures might be out there? Did

she mean the travellers in the starship, waking from stasis after so many years? Now there was a

thought. The travellers, awakening. I suppose they'll wonder about their descendants here on Earth,

perhaps even expect those silver-spired cities we all sometimes still dream about, or maybe corpses

under a ruined sky, dead rivers running into poisoned seas.

"Mrs Edwards, there probably won't be any aliens. Anyway, they might be benign."

"Benign?" She leaned forward over her handbag and gave me one of her looks. "But even if they are,

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Starship Day - a short story by Ian R MacLeod

how can we ever be sure?"

After Mrs Edwards, Sal Mohammed. Sal was an old friend, and thus broke one of the usual rules of

my practice. But I'd noticed he was drinking too heavily, and heard that he'd been seen walking the

town at night in his pyjamas -- not that either of these things was unusual per se -- I'd rung him and

suggested a visit.

He sat down heavily in the comfortable chair and shook his head when I offered coffee. There were

thickening grey bags under his eyes.

He asked, "You'll be going to Jay Dax's party tonight?"

"Probably. You?"

"Oh, yes," he said, tired and sad and eager. "I mean, this is the big day, isn't it? And Jay's parties..." He

shook his head.

"And how do you really feel?"

"Me? I'm fine. Managing, anyway."

"How are you getting on with those tension exercises?"

His eyes flicked over towards the cork notice board where a solitary child's painting, once so bright, had

curled and faded. "I'm finding them hard."

I nodded, wondering for the millionth time what exactly it was that stopped people from helping

themselves. Sal still wasn't able to even sit down in a chair for five minutes each day and do a few

simple thought exercises. Most annoying of all was the way he still lumbered up to me at dos, his body

stuffed into a too-small suit and his face shining with sweat, all thin and affable bonhomie although I

knew that he'd only managed to get out now by tanking up with downers.

"But today's like New Year's Eve, isn't it?" he said. "Starship Day."

I nodded. "That's a way of seeing it."

"Everything could change -- but even if it doesn't, knowing it won't change will be something in itself

too, won't it? It's a time to make new resolutions..."

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Starship Day - a short story by Ian R MacLeod

But Sal got vague again when I asked him about his own resolutions, and by the end of our session we

were grinding through the usual justifications for the gloom that filled his life.

"I feel as though I'm travelling down these grey and empty corridors," he said. "Even when things

happen, nothing ever changes..."

He'd gone on for so long by then -- and was looking at me with such sincerity -- that I snapped softly

back, "Then why don't you give up, Sal? If it's really that bad -- what is it that keeps you going?"

He looked shocked. Of course, shocking them can sometimes work, but part of me was wondering if I

didn't simply want to get rid of Sal. And as he rambled on about the pointlessness of it all, I kept

thinking of tonight, and all the other nights. The parties and the dances and the evenings in with Hannah

and the quietly introspective walks along the cliffs and the picnics in the cool blue hills. I just kept

thinking.

The lunches with John that I marked down on my PC were flexible. In fact, they'd got so flexible

recently that one or the other of us often didn't turn up. This particular John was called Erica, and we'd

been doing this kind of thing since Christmas, in firelight and the chill snowy breath from the

mountains. I've learnt that these kind of relationships often don't transfer easily from one season to

another -- there's something about the shift in light, the change in the air -- but this time it had all gone

on for so long that I imagined we'd reached a kind of equilibrium. That was probably when it started to

go wrong.

It was our usual place. The Arkoda Bar, up the steps beside the ruins. There was a group a few tables

off that I vaguely recalled. Two couples, with a little girl. The girl was older now -- before, she'd been

staggering like a drunk on toddler's splayed legs; now she was running everywhere -- but that was still

why I remembered them.

I almost jumped when Erica came up behind me.

"You must be early -- or I must be late."

I shrugged. "I haven't been here long."

She sat down and poured what was left of the retsina into the second glass. "So you've been here a

while..."

"I was just watching the kid. What time is it?"

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Starship Day - a short story by Ian R MacLeod

"Who cares? Don't tell me you've been working this morning, Owen."

"I can't just cancel appointments because there's some message coming through from the stars."

"Why not?"

I blinked, puzzled for a moment, my head swimming in the flat white heat of the sun. "I do it because

it's my job, Erica."

"Sorry. Shall we start again?"

I nodded, watching the golden fall of her hair, the sweat-damp strands clinging to her neck, really and

truly wishing that we could start all over again. Wishing, too, that we'd be able to talk about something

other than this goddamn starship.

But no, Erica was just like everybody else -- plotting the kind of day that she could witter on about in

years to come. She wanted to rent a little boat so that we could go to some secret cove, swim and fish

for shrimps and bask on the rocks and watch the night come in. She even had a little TV in her handbag

all ready for the broadcast.

I said, "I'm sorry, Erica. I've got appointments. And I've got to go out this evening."

"So have I. You're not the only one with commitments."

"I just can't escape them like you can. I'm a married man."

"Yeah."

The people with the little girl paused in their chatter to look over at us. We smiled sweetly back.

"Let's have another bottle of wine," I suggested.

"I suppose," Erica said, "you just want to go back to that room of yours above the surgery so you can

screw me and then fall asleep?"

"I was hoping -- "

" -- isn't that right? Owen?"

I nodded: it was, after all, a reasonably accurate picture of what I'd had in mind. I mean, all this

business with the boat, the secret cove, fishing for shrimps...

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