Iterations and other stories (collection)

Dalt was growing up to be a fine young man. There wasn’t a lot of choice for careers in a small community: he could have apprenticed with his mother, Delar, who worked as our banker, or with me. He chose me, and so I did my best to teach him how to read the ancient texts.

“I’ve finished translating that file you gave me,” he said on one occasion. “It was what you suspected: just a boring list of supplies.” I guess he saw that I was only half-listening to him. “What’s got you so intrigued?” he asked.

I looked up, and smiled at his face, with its bits of fuzz; I’d have to teach him how to shave soon. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve found some documents related to the pyramid. But there are several words I haven’t encountered before.”

“Such as?”

“Such as this one,” I said, pointing at a string of eight letters on the computer screen. “‘Starship.’ The first part is obviously the word for those lights you can see in the sky: stars. And the second part, hip, well—I slapped my haunch—“that’s their name for where the leg joins the torso. They often made compound words in this fashion, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what a ‘stars hip’ might be.”

I always say nothing is better than a fresh set of eyes. “Yes, they often used that hissing sound for plurals,” said Dalt. “But those two letters there—can’t they also be transliterated jointly as shuh, instead of separately as ess and hih?”

I nodded.

“So maybe it’s not ‘stars hip,’ ” he said. “Maybe it’s ‘star ship.’ ”

“Ship,” I repeated. “Ship, ship, ship—I’ve seen that word before.” I riffled through a collection of papers, searching my notes; the sheets fluttered around the room, and Dalt dutifully began collecting them for me. “Ship!” I exclaimed. “Here it is: ‘a kind of vehicle that could float on water.’ ”

“Why would you want to float on water when you can float on air?” asked Dalt.

“On the homeworld,” I said, “water didn’t splash up in great clouds every time you touched it. It stayed in place.” I frowned. “Star ship. Starship. A—a vehicle of stars?” And then I got it. “No,” I said, grabbing my son’s arm in excitement. “No—a vehicle for traveling to the stars!”

Dalt and Suzto eventually married, to no one’s surprise.

But I was surprised by my son’s arms. He and Suzto had been exercising for ages now, and when Dalt bent his arm at the elbow, the upper part of it bulged. Doc Tadders said she’d never seen anything like it, but assured us it wasn’t a tumor. It was meat. It was muscle.

Dalt’s legs were also much, much thicker than mine. Suzto hadn’t bulked up quite as much, but she, too, had developed great strength.

I knew what they were up to, of course. I admired them both for it, but I had one profound regret.

Suzto had gotten pregnant shortly after she and Dalt had married—at least, they told me that the conception had occurred after the wedding, and, as a parent, it’s my prerogative to believe them. But I’d never know for sure. And that was my great regret: I’d never get to see my own grandchild.

Dalt and Suzto would be able to stand on Dirt, and, indeed, would be able to endure the journey there. The starship was designed to accelerate at a rate of five bodylengths per heartbeat squared, simulating Dirt’s gravity. It would accelerate for half its journey, reaching a phenomenal speed by so doing, then it would turn around and decelerate for the other half.

They were the logical choices to go. Dalt knew the ancient language as well as I did now; if there were any records left behind by our ancestors on the homeworld, he should be able to read them.

He and Suzto had to leave soon, said Doc Tadders; it would be best for the child if it developed under the fake gravity of the starship’s acceleration. Dalt and Suzto would be able to survive on Dirt, but their child should actually be comfortable there.

My wife and I came to see them off, of course—as did everyone else in our settlement. We wondered what people in the sphere would make of it when the pyramid lifted off—it would do so with a kick that would doubdess be detectable on the other side of the shell.

“I’ll miss you, son,” I said to Dalt. Tears were welling in my eyes. I hugged him, and he hugged me back, so much harder than I could manage.

“And, Suzto,” I said, moving to my daughter-in-law, while my wife moved to hug our son. “I’ll miss you, too.” I hugged her, as well. “I love you both.”

“We love you, too,” Suzto said.

And they entered the pyramid.

I was hovering over a field, harvesting radishes. It was tricky work; if you pulled too hard, you’d get the radish out, all right, but then you and it would go sailing up into the air.

“Rodal! Rodal!”

I looked in the direction of the voice. It was old Doc Tadders, hurtling toward me, a white-haired projectile. At her age, she should be more careful—she could break her bones slamming into even a padded wall at that speed.

“Rodal!”

“Yes?”

“Come! Come quickly! A message has been received from Dirt!”