Starplex

“It was eighteen years ago now. He would have been twenty-seven.”

“A heartbeat,” said Glass.

There was silence between them for a moment, Keith recalling his reaction when Glass had dismissed his two decades of marriage in a similar fashion. But Glass was right this time. Keith nodded.

“How did Saul die?” asked Glass.

“It—it was an accident. At least, that’s what the HuGo decided. But, well, I always thought it was swept under the rug. You know: deliberately suppressed. Saul and I were living on Tau Ceti IV. He was an astronomer; I was a sociologist, doing a postdoctoral fellowship studying the colonists there. He and I had been friends since our undergrad days; we’d been roommates at UBC. And we had a lot in common—both liked to play handball and go, both acted in student theater, both had the same tastes in music. Anyway, Saul discovered the Tau Ceti shortcut, and we sent a small probe through it to Shortcut Prime. New Beijing was a mostly agricultural colony back then, not the thriving place it is now. Of course, it hadn’t yet acquired the New Beijing nickname. It was just ‘the Silvanus colony’ then; Silvanus is the name of Tau Ceti’s fourth planet. Anyway, they didn’t have many sociologists there, so I ended up in charge of trying to figure out what effect the discovery of the shortcut network would have on human culture. And then the Waldahud starship popped through. A first-contact team had to be hastily assembled; even under hyperdrive, it would take six months for people to arrive from Earth. Saul and I ended up being part of the party that went up to meet the ship, and…” Keith trailed off, closed his eyes, shook his head ever so slightly.

“Yes?” said Glass.

“They said it was an accident. Said they’d misinterpreted. When we came face-to-face with the Waldahudin for the first time, Saul was carrying a holographic camera unit. He didn’t aim it at the pigs, of course—no one could be that stupid. He was just holding it at his side, and then, with a flick of his thumb, he turned it on.” Keith sighed, long and loud. “They said it looked like a traditional Waldahud hand weapon—same basic shape. They thought Saul was readying a weapon to fire on them. One of the pigs was carrying a sidearm, and he shot Saul. Right in the face. His head exploded next to me. I—I got splattered with… with…” Keith looked away, and was quiet for a long moment. “They killed him. The best friend I ever had, they killed him.” He stared at the ground, plucked a few four-leaf clovers, looked at them for a moment, then threw them away.

They were quiet for several moments. Crickets chirped, and birds sang. Finally, Glass said, “That must be difficult to carry around with you.”

Keith said nothing.

“Does Rissa know?”

“She does, yes. We were already married at that point; she’d come to Silvanus to try to fathom why it didn’t have any native life, despite apparently having conditions that should have given rise to it, according to our evolutionary models. But I rarely talk about what happened with Saul—not with her, or with anyone else. I don’t believe in burdening those around me with my suffering. Everyone has their own stuff to deal with.”

“So you keep it inside.”

Keith shrugged. “I try for a certain stoicism—a certain emotional restraint.”

“Commendable,” said Glass.

Keith was surprised. “You think so?”

“It’s the way I feel, too. I know it’s unusual, though. Most people live, if you’ll pardon me my humor, transparent lives.” Glass gestured at his own see-through body. “Their private self is their public self Why are you different?”

Keith shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve always been this way.” He paused again, thinking for a long time. Then: “When I was about nine or so, there was a bully in my neighborhood. Some big oaf, probably thirteen or fourteen. He used to pick up kids and drop them into this thornbush in the park. Well, everyone would kick and scream and cry while he was doing this, and he seemed to feed off that. One day, he came after me—grabbed me when I was playing catch, or something like that. He picked me up, carried me over to the bush, and dumped me in. I didn’t struggle. There was no point; he was twice as big as me, and there was no way I could get away. And I didn’t scream or cry, either. He dumped me in, and I simply got myself out. I had a few scrapes and cuts from it, but I didn’t say anything. He just looked at me for about ten seconds, then said, ‘Lansing, you’ve got balls.’ And he never touched me again.”

“So this internalizing is a survival mechanism?” asked Glass.

Keith shrugged. “It’s enduring what you have to endure.”

“But you don’t know where it came from?”