Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [121]
He knew that if he only looked closely enough, in the right directions, he would be able to make out at least some of the constellations that the ancient astronomers of Earth had defined, no more than slightly tattered by three-dimensional displacement, but that was exactly what he did not want to do. He wanted to appreciate the novelty and the strangeness of the sky. He wanted to make himself as acutely aware as he could be of the fact that this was an alien atmosphere he was breathing, and that this was an alien river whose patient course he was following.
He was fifty-eight light-years from Earth, and this was a different starscape. He wanted to soak up the sensation of that difference. He wanted to savor the miracle that had brought him here, and set him down, able to draw sweet air into his lungs and drink the water of another world, and marvel at the mysteries of an alien ecology.
We can live here, he thought. Blackstone is right and Tang Dinh Quan is wrong. We can stand beneath the vault of this new firmament, and walk and weep and build and dig, as if this were a land promised to us by the unwritten covenant of destiny. We belong here, as we belong everywhere. We are not strangers in the universe, and Earth is not our ghetto. We are free, and we are welcome. Mortal we may be, barbarian too, but we are not bound to any mere patch of mud or cultivated plot. We are here, and we are here to stay. All that remains to be settled is a mere matter of timing, a matter of the eagerness of the embrace by which we take this world to our bosom and commit ourselves to its nurture. Blackstone is right and Shen Chin Che was right, and every one of the self-selected Chosen was right to seize the opportunity of Hope. We can do this. That is what this river journey will prove to us: that we can do what we must and be what we are, without fear and without shame.
Then the lights were lit behind him, and Ike Mohammed called out to him, suggesting that he return to the cabin for a while.
He hesitated, but no one came to join him. Ike remained in the doorway, waiting.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Ike said, quietly, when Matthew finally moved unhurriedly to join him. “The first impression may not last, though. Make the most of it, just in case.”
Matthew had been about to pass him by and go into the lighted cabin, but the warning made him hesitate.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“The exhilaration doesn’t last,” Ike told him. “The wonder fades. After a while, the only sensation that lingers is the sensation of strangeness, of dislocation. Dusk is when everything that’s being lying low comes out to play, including all the fears you thought you’d left behind in childhood. Dusk is when the ghosts begin to walk, when unease begins to become profound. Try to imagine what Tang feels when he watches the stars come out. Maryanne too. God, Dulcie, me…. Bernal. Even Bernal.”
Matthew had stopped on the threshold, and he made no attempt to resume his passage when the speech reached its conclusion.
“What are you trying to tell me, Ike?”
“I’m warning you that there’s an emotional cycle that most of us have gone through. It’s not unlike the effect of a psychotropic drug. The initial entrancement is usually correlated with excitement and exultation, feelings of godlike power and triumph. When that begins to fade, the strangeness becomes disturbing and distressing, giving rise in more extreme cases to paranoia and restless anxiety. The mind becomes prone to hallucination. Some trips turn bad. Even those that don’t leave a hangover … a letdown. If your head’s as hard as Rand Blackstone’s you’ll come through it. Lynn has, I think. I can at least pretend. Sometimes,