Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

Rus loved it for the friends he was
making.
    ’They are good kids,’ Rusel said.
    ’Yes. And you need to see more of them,’ Diluc said pointedly.
’But, you know, Rus, they’re not like us. They are the first Shipborn
generation. They are different. To them, all our stories of Port Sol
and Canis Major are so many legends of places they will never see.
This Ship is their world, not ours: we, born elsewhere, are aliens
here. You know, I keep thinking we’ve bitten off more than we can
chew. For all Andres’s planning, already things are drifting. No
wonder generation starships always fail!’
    Rusel tried to respond to their openness by giving them something
of himself. But he found he had little to say. His mind was full of
studying, but there was very little human incident in his life. It
was if he hadn’t been alive at all, he thought with dismay.
    Diluc was appalled to hear of Ruul’s death. ’That pompous
geneticist - I suppose in a way it’s fitting he should be the first
to go. But don’t let it take you, brother.’ Impulsively he crossed to
Rusel and rested his hand on his brother’s shoulder. ’You know, all
this is enough for me: Tila, the kids, the home we’re building
together. It’s good to know that our lives serve a higher goal, but
this is all I need to make me happy. Maybe I don’t have much
imagination, you think?’
    Or maybe you’re more human than I am, Rusel thought. ’We must all
make our choices,’ he said.
    Diluc said carefully, ’But you can still make a different
choice.’
    ’What do you mean?’
    He leaned forward. ’Why don’t you give it up, Rus? This crappy old
Qax nano-medicine, this dreadful anti-ageing - you’re still young;
you could come out of there, flush the shit out of your system, grow
your hair back, find some nice woman to make you happy again…’
    Rusel tried to keep his face expressionless, but he failed.
    Diluc backed off. ’Sorry. You still remember Lora.’
    ’I always will. I can’t help it.’
    ’We’ve all been through an extraordinary experience,’ Tila said.
’I suppose we all react differently.’
    ’Yes.’ Tila, he remembered, had left behind a child.
    Diluc looked into his eyes. ’You never will come out, will you?
Because you’ll never be able to cast off that big sack of guilt on
your back.’
    Rusel smiled. ’Is it that obvious?’
    Tila was a gracious hostess. She perceived his discomfort, and
they began to talk of old times, of the days on Port Sol. But Rusel
was relieved when Tomi came in to announce that the meal was ready,
relieved to hurry through the food and get away, relieved to shut
himself away once more in the bloodless monastic calm of his
studying.

 
V
     
     
    He would remember that difficult visit again, much later, when a
boy came to find him.
    As time passed, the Elders withdrew further from the crew. They
requisitioned their own sealed-off living area. It was close to the
Ship’s axis where the artificial gravity was a little lower than
further out, a sop to muscles and bones expected to weaken with the
centuries. Andres humorously called this refuge the ’Cloister’. And
the Elders were spared the routine chores, even the cleaning, to
which the rest of the crew were subject. Soon it was hard to avoid
the feeling that the crew were only there to serve the Elders.
    Of course it was all part of Andres’s grand social design that
there should eventually be an ’awe gap’, as she put it, between
Elders and transients. But Rusel wondered if a certain distancing was
inevitable anyhow. The differential ageing of transients and Elders
became apparent surprisingly quickly. When an Elder met a transient
she saw a face that would soon crumble with age and vanish, while the
transient saw a mysteriously unchanging figure who would see events
that transpired long after the transient was dead. Rusel watched as
friendships dissolved, even love affairs evaporated, under this
stress.
    However the increasingly isolated Elders, thrown on each other’s
company, were no chummy club. They were all bright, ambitious people;
they wouldn’t have been filtered out for Andres’s inner circle
otherwise, and there was always a certain tension and bickering.
Doctor Selur remarked sourly that it was like being stuck with a
bunch of jealous academics, for ever.
    But the Elders were also cautious of each other, Rusel thought.
Always at the back of his mind was the thought that he would have to
live with these people for a