Pleas to the Pleiades

“You going to Mars, kid? Aren’t you a little young to be travelling so far all alone?” asked the African-looking conductor on the Earth-Moon-Mars Express.

EMME. It went usually once a year, but not every year, because of the alignments of the planets. It was a huge silvery cylinder hanging out expectantly in the yawning and infinite deep, near the slowly spinning and only slightly larger but much darker New Mir space station.

The sixty or so passengers were boarding the EMME spacecraft from three small shuttle-bottles, each of which carried twenty or so passengers. Two of the shuttle-bottles had left their launching pads from different places on the Moon, but the one that had electro-docked first … well, it had come directly from Earth. It was now a glistening empty plastic bottle in space, shiny plastic seats and all, everything having been sucked out of it. It would be picked up by a recycling ship and used again.

“Documents, please,” politely demanded the dark conductor.

Hmmm … thought Osha, he probably thinks I’m a young teenager. They’ve already checked my documents and scanned my eyeballs and fingertips three times. Would he have to bring his brow for the fourth time onto the cold bright headrest while the dazzling low-level lasers circle-scanned his irises? He did not like the visual after-effects. And then there was their new fingerprint method. It actually scanned the entire palm of the hand. You had to put both your hands onto an electrical ball-plate that vibrated with a mild shock.

Osha was twenty-second in line, and thus twenty-second in class and respect among the passengers. Ahead of him, the passengers were richer and richer, some of them giggling in the unfamiliar weightlessness in their expensive clothes. Most of them looked Korean or Chinese. Osha was not a socialist or communist by any means, but he still liked ordinary workers’ clothing. And he actually liked to work.

Work, what is that? Osha thought. He actually liked to work, and he had done so, on peach farms – picking peaches, and tobacco farms, and supervising the “black” workers whom he had grown to love, and who had taught him how to play real music. Blues and jazz. Those guys had taught him a lot. How to bend notes. How to bend and blend yourself into society. He had also worked in factories, or factor-pees as people called them nowadays. At least you had a place to pee. Your urea got you credits.

As a Native American, Osha had always been fascinated by the successes of the former African slaves. Lots of them were like Jimi Hendrix – a “black” musician of Cherokee ancestry. Osha also appeared to be slightly black, a “high-yellow” mulatto.

So what, his bib overalls and his mule-skinner hat, like a farmer? And his really hairy arms? Red hair on the arms of a mulatto? They’d get used to him over the next three months. Irish, African, Cherokee roots.

Behind him, the passengers trailed down to the not-so-poor who had probably barely managed to rake together the fare for a one-way trip to Mars. None of them were giggling, as they one by one passed through the protective airlock gate from their transparent shuttle-bottle, so diamond-shiny out there hung in space, and an attendant clicked them onto the lanyard rope. Everybody was equally weightless, no matter how rich they were, tied onto the lanyard that led them along. They were all finally on board the spaceship. Then, everything was sucked out from the last shining shuttle-bottle, and it was cast off to be recycled.

“Documents, please,” demanded the dark conductor again.

Osha realized that he had spaced out, thinking about shuttle-bottles, peach-picking, and factor-pees. He pulled out his digital passport card and gave it to the conductor, who was strapped into his weightless workstation like a tired old dark water buffalo in a harness.

Osha felt self-conscious about being a teenager again.

At least it seemed he wouldn’t have to put his eyes and hands onto dazzling laser-scanners and buzzing ball-plates again … for now.

“Whoa! Wa-wa. This here wa-wa says you’re one hundred and thirty two years old! Hard to believe, but I guess they’ve got some new wa-wa health technologies back on Earth. Haven’t been there in years. I’d have to re-learn how to wa-wa walk in that gravity if I wa-wa went back.”

“Yeah, that’s why I went back for a couple years. Earlier, I spent a few years on the Moon, too. Mining titanium, loading freighters. I like the Moon better when viewed from a distance. I like water. Had to do a lot of swimming to re-adapt to Earth gravity.”

“I miss the water too, but the wa-wa of Earth politics I don’t. I ’member when the wa-wa water was clean. I reckon you do too, if this document is genuine. Cherokee, eh? And a Loonie, too.”

The black guy kept talking for some reason. “Wa-wa,” in the new slang.

This guy was talking wa-wa to him while other passengers were wa-wa-waiting and tra-tra-trying to tap their wa-wa-weightless toes. Was he just a Balakooshee motor-mouth who was fascinated by a passenger over one hundred years of age who looked like a teenager, or was he stalling for the arrival of security guards?

Osha gave a concerned look. Was it time to pull out a bribe?

“Oh, don’t wa-wa worry. We don’t have that many passengers wanting to wa-wa go to the dry and cold next planet out. Red, but cold. Costs too much for the ticket, but you’ve got a one-way wa-wa discount, plus, you’re under a hundred kilos, so that gets you another wa-wa discount. Plus you’re a Loonie, and we willy-willy-wa-wa like Loonies. All you have for baggage is this here electric guitar?”

“It’s a bass guitar. It can go with me in my cabin. I’ll sleep with it near me.”

“No baggage, no extra charge. All we get are the misfits for this trip, and I have orders to take all the passengers we can hold. Only crazies and criminals are denied, but hey, I know full-a-bull wa-full-a-bull wa-wa well that most of you are criminals, and you’re all definitely crazy to want to go to that hell of a planet. It’s gonna be a long trip, Cherokee. First time to Mars?”

“Yeah, I hear it’s gonna be more than three months.”

“Right, we have better rockets now, and you’ve got wa-wa good timing. We’re nearing perigee. There will be good wa-wa views for most of the trip. Earth and Moon will fade but still remain beautiful, like a small pearl parked near a sapphire. And Mars will gradually grow in apparent size. Golden-red, like a topaz. Used to be a six-month trip, even at perigee time.

“At least you’ve got a private cabin. Have a pleasant journey … if you can. You’re a full-bull wa-wa Loonie, you’ve lived on the Moon in low-grav for some time, so you’ll do all wa-wa right. Some of these other passengers, I’m not so sure about. Especially those giggling girlfriends of the Marfia guys.”

For some reason this conductor was treating him like a cool cousin, perhaps because neither of them was white or Oriental. Everybody else, all the whites and Orientals, except for the few long-term Loonies, treated him like he had just fallen off the turnip truck. Red hair on the arms of a mulatto? Yeah. Irish, African, Cherokee roots.

“Who’s our captain, if I may ask?”

“Why, he’s Captain Quirk. A very experienced captain he is. I’d even say he wa-wa has soul. Don’t let yourself get too spaced out, Cherokee.”

Osha smiled at that, got on board the ship, and entered his very small cabin. It was a bed in a claustrophobic chamber like a cheap Japanese hotel. Barely enough room to lie down, but blessed with a view of the Pleiades through a tiny porthole.

He would have to share a vacuum-toilet with several other passengers, but he had his own sanitary seat. He also had his own shower-bag that he would hook up to the water supply and bathe in the shared facility. He would eat in a cafeteria with most of the sixty other starry-eyed passengers. They were allowed, even encouraged, to get mildly drunk, and then the stewards and stewardesses would tuck them in.

He really did not much like using a vacuum-toilet. It gave a new meaning to the slang word “head.” Men and women each had their own custom-fitted sanitary seats. You fitted your personal seat onto the suck-bowl, then sat down and did your business, all the while feeling a “gentle” suction pulling your tail end, and everything that came out of it, “down.” Well, it was better than excreting in zero-grav – a very messy affair. Zero-grav toilet users with experience learned how to willy-wa-wa shoot the shit.

Getting up from the suck-bowl, after the vacuum turned off, because it was virtually impossible to get up until the suction did turn off, your tee-hiney had a temporary red ring around it. People joked about it, that if you were lucky, you had a hairy butt, and the vacuum of the suck-bowl could not completely seal, and you could always get up. But there is another side to every coin in life. The smooth hairless tails gave the cleanest elimination.

All the girls always giggled about this.

Then the shower-bags. Very claustrophobic, but still nice and refreshing. You sweat differently in space, whether no-grav or low-grav. All the things inside you go in and out quite differently. Earth-lubbers, try swallowing anything while standing on your head. Never mind. Space sweat is worse than planet sweat. It just does not go away as well, it does not drip, it just kind of collects.

Eating, excreting, sweating. Puking – vomiting, throwing “up” – was the worst, and almost everybody puked a lot on their first space trip. Space-sick was worse than being seasick. At least on the sea there is a down: that rocking down, toward which the greenish rays of light descend to join an indefinite point.

A space voyage was like a sea voyage of old. A very long journey on a thin medium that could kill you when you fell into it, because you couldn‘t breathe it.

Something was creaking and joining with a deep-slamming thud. Ah, the preparation of the main cylinder.

A space … a sea … you couldn‘t breathe it.

Osha had been on lots of seas on Earth. He had been raised in Florida, a sea on each side, lakes abounding, springs and rivers the cleanest in the world. In order, he had swum and sailed the Florida shores of the Bermuda Triangle, the Gulf of Mexico, the East China Sea, the Sargasso Sea of the Horse Latitudes of the Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the Devil’s Triangle east of Okinawa. He had been a sailor, and a good one. He had never been to the Red Sea, or the Dead Sea, but he had been to the Black Sea. He was not afraid of alligators or sharks, just punch ’em in the nose. Bears, he always got along well with them, too. Just keep your distance. Let them show you their food, don’t show them yours. Tigers? He had never yet met one outside of the zoos where they paced, like restless space travellers.

He missed very much the seas and lakes and rivers and springs of the Earth. He really liked being wet, and the way it made his skin feel.

The shower-bag is your best friend in space. As said, you sweat differently. It makes the usual film of dead skin different. Osha never liked his space skin much. Scabs developed that he had to scratch off. Oh, for a good fresh Florida spring-water skin.

You got in the shower-bag, formed to fit your body with a few centimetres extra all around, connected it to the water input at the temperature of your choice, and to the water output. The intensely swirling water felt good. It all took less than one minute. Osha liked the first half to be rather hot, something like one-hundred-and-ten degrees Fahrenheit or forty-four Celsius, then to go to the somewhat cold shock of forty-four Fahrenheit.

Lots of passengers were weird and fetish-oriented. Many of them would do things on the suck-bowl or in the shower-bag. Osha did not get into that.

The five ultra-rich passengers had larger private or couple’s cabins and their own private showers and toilets. They probably had round-trip tickets and were either tourists, or interplanetary criminals, what people called the Mars Mafia, or simply Marfia. The Triads had morphed into the Mariads.

Everything was very clean, and Osha had had to go through medical examinations on the Moon to be sure he was not carrying any kind of communicable disease, or any other health condition that made space travel and its accelerations and decelerations a danger to health. His health was good, because he had Harmonized, and become youthful again. He was looking forward to seeing his old friend Jimmie Memnon again.

He took out his old-fashioned push-button phone and looked at Jimmie’s last mysterious message again. All it said was: Come to Hesperia, I have a new ride.

“Attention, passengers,” the conductor’s voice said like gravel on the intercom, as if he had been reading Osha’s mind. “We are ready to take off. Please strap in. We will have an hour or so of acceleration, during which your strap-bed will be automatically oriented toward the aft – for those of you lubbers, that means the rear end of the ship – and you will endure the gees. Then we prepare for artificial gravity. An attendant will come around to check that you are strapped in, and assist you if necessary.”

Osha had learned to like this dizzying part of the journeys. The take-off gees, then the transition to art-grav. Gee whiz.

After the gees, an attractive young female attendant came floating by in the zero grav and treated him like a teenager, just like the conductor had. Then the EMME began to spin, slowly at first, then a bit faster. It was like some kind of carnival ride. When the rotation speed stabilized, Osha felt himself comfortably pressing down into his bed. He really liked art-grav.

The conductor’s deep gravel-like voice, “Attention passengers. We now have artificial gravity. You may visit the cafeteria, familiarize yourselves with our facilities. You will note in your cabins the routes to the facilities, your personal shower-bags and toilet seats, and the escape routes to the life-boat capsules in case of accident.”

Ha, lifeboats to where? Thought Osha.

“There is no smoking on the flight, unless you are in a filtered ultra-deluxe compartment. Any excessive use of water will be disciplined. Any failure to properly clean yourself and flush the toilets after use will also be disciplined. We have a brig, a jail if you wish, for any unruly passengers, and we have a security officer empowered to arrest anyone breaking the rules. You may not chew gum, either. Those of you who have chosen to be put under sed-meds for the trip, to make you sleep through most of it, will receive your medications when you choose. Most passengers choose to start the medications after the first week, when Earth and its Moon begin to fade from close view, and to stop them when Mars begins to come into closer view. We have a clinic with a nurse practitioner for you if you need it.”

The steady spinning of the huge cylinder of the spacecraft had given gravity, but a low sort of it, about equal to that of the Moon. Problem was, the view, whether of the fading terrestrial system or the approaching Mars, could not be enjoyed, when art-grav was going. Long ago, crews had learned to close and turn off the windows, because the spinning view made everybody puke, even experimental space cats.

Cats had long ago been chosen as the best animals for space experiments, mainly because they kept a cat-box and didn’t stink up the ship too much. They had never adapted to the suck-bowl, however, so there was always the problem of some degree of automatization. Shower-bags for cats? Hah! They just lick themselves.

Space dogs really flunked out. They just whined and whined the whole trip. They were able to learn the suck-bowl and the shower-bag, though. Horses, cows, elephants, and pigs had been tried, and chimps too, but basically, humans were the only ones besides cats and a few types of birds and fish who could do it. Birds and fish didn’t much care about gravity. Reptiles seemed to be rather adaptable too.

Space explorers were usually not vegetarian. It had been a question of what to eat, but also what kind of unpaid – but well-fed – services the animals could perform.

Birds, fish, and reptiles didn’t render much service, and although some of them could be tasty and nutritious, the expense of maintaining them did not always add up well. Horses, cows, elephants, pigs, and chimps were really hard to maintain, and really hard to feed properly. Besides, massive animals really hate zero-and-low-grav. They like being heavy. Chimps like low-grav well enough, but not for long.

Osha walked around in low-grav. He was used to low-grav, but not all the other passengers were. Some of them, including the rich tourists, bounced around in the halls, laughing like chimps, rolling around like turnips and cabbages, just like they had been doing when they were in their sealed-off shuttle-bottle, only now, Osha had to hear their blather. They were obviously fresh from Earth. He was already tired of them, all of them. It did not matter, Malaysian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, or Americanadian, they were all very tiresome. Osha’s passport was Americanadian, with a special Cherokee stamp.

He was tired of everybody. Especially Americanadians. He still liked a few Oriental people, maybe because he had grown up on Okinawa.

There were vegetables and fruits fresh from Earth in the cafeteria, but Osha knew that they would not last the entire trip, so he ate as much as he could. He ate a lot of kimchee – the spicy Korean “Chinese” cabbage salad.

After eating, Osha strapped in and went to sleep in his cabin. He slept through most of the journey, without any sed-meds.

After the first week, the fresh fruits and vegetables and the kimchee pretty much ran out, and the diet for everybody changed over to frozen and dried foods. The only exceptions were sprouts and a few hydroponic vegetables: cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, ruccola, and radishes. The captain also stopped the ship from spinning after that first week, and there was no artificial gravity except when he would start the spinning again for exercise periods.

Captain Quirk was a real character. You never knew when he would wake up and suddenly start the whole spaceship spinning. But, he followed some kind of rules in some kind of estimation. It all averaged out. The change-over was always announced to the passengers who were not sedated.

There was also radiation shielding: the drinkable – potable – water in a thick layer like that of a thermos bottle, and then, the waste water from the toilets, similarly like a thermos. It was all in two different layers, ten centimetres thick. The ship’s spin cycles circulated it.

Osha watched the Pleiades through his tiny private porthole when he could, when the ship stopped its spinning. I’m lucky, he thought, to be on the side facing my favourite star system. Maybe the Captain likes me. He always gives me my view.

When Quirk announced exercise periods, Osha ran regularly in the outer periphery track, for that was where the artificial gravity was strongest. He got up every couple of “days” when Captain Quirk turned on the spinning, and then exercised in the gym and ran in the track. Only a very few stalwart full-bull Loonies were not under sed-meds and intravenous nutrition, as most of the passengers were, drugged up and snoring in their cabins.

It was the best part of the journey, when almost all the passengers were comatose, and only the crew and a few passengers were awake.

While walking back toward his cabin, the conductor met him and asked, “Would you like to meet our Captain? He wa-wa would like to meet you.”

“Yeah, that would be alright.”

The conductor escorted Osha to the bridge, where Captain Quirk was sitting, strapped in. The bridge was in the nose of the ship, and thus without gravity. How could the Captain stand the spinning cosmos in view ahead? It was like something worse than Van Gogh’s starry night.

“Hello, Osha! Our conductor and occasional co-pilot has told me about you. Seems you are our most experienced passenger in terms of space work. If we have any kind of incident with any of these greenies, I hope you will be of assistance to us. More importantly. I REALLY want to know, ‘Who are you?’”

“Of course, Captain. I’ve heard about your reputation as a pilot and captain, and it helps me feel more comfortable and safe to know of your experience. I’m just a guy. Don‘t make me nervous, ok?”

“It helps us to know that you are experienced in space, too. May we enlist you as a crew member? You probably have noticed how scant our crew is. It will earn you some credits which you can spend while on Mars, as nervously as you like.”

“Of course, captain.”

“Tell us, please, why would a card-carrying Native American want to travel to the Red Planet? Most indigenous people I have met prefer to stay on Earth and try to keep protecting Turtle Island.”

Captain Quirk paused. “Yes, I know about Native American and other indigenous people. Always admired your way of life. Glad that you have maintained your integrity over the years, despite all your problems. Shame the way your lands were taken away. Earth would have been better if you had remained in charge, but I know your traditions of government – nobody can ever really be in charge.”

“Thank you, Captain. In answer to your question, Ah’m goin’ to Mars to see an old friend. And to prepare for a voyage to the Pleiades. Ain’t no seekert.”

“The Pleiades? You’re kidding. That’s hundreds of light years away! I always dreamed of warping space and going faster than these old stinking rockets can go. But nobody has been able to go faster than light … yet. I believe it can be done. After all, when I was young, people thought it was impossible to go faster than sound.”

“My great-grand-dad thought it was impossible to go faster than a horse.”

“Osha, I’ve reviewed your family history. Your ancestor was a famous criminal with Frank and Jesse James, robbing trains with their very fast horses. Coleman Younger. It’s all on your card. Forgive me, I don’t mean to snoop, but you understand, every captain must know his passengers and crew very well. I’m not a Pinkerton detective, though.”

“Understandable, Captain Quirk. I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

“So, why this fascination with the Pleiades?”

“May I tell you the mythological foundation?”

“Yes, Yeoman Osha, that’s the only way I would have it.”

“I knew you would be so congenial.”

Yeoman Osha paused.

“An evergreen regarded to have especially celestial qualities, as all trees are that reach to the stars, the pine is felt by Cherokees to be closely related to the Pleiades – the seven heavenly lights about which there are many traditions from all over the world.

“According to Cherokee legend, the pine grew from the place in the ground where the mother of the seventh invisible star son wept her tears, when he disappeared deep into the earth. Her tears still flow forth in the sap that oozes from the pine tree when it is hurt.

“The other six sons of the other mothers ascended into the sky and became the Pleiades, after they had danced the Feather Dance so well that they became light as feathers and circled upward into the night. The seventh son’s mother caught him with his Gatayusti Pole – a special strong stick used to roll round stones in seasonally held ballgames much like hockey without the ice – before he could ascend with the others, but he sank rapidly, and she lost him to the earth.

“Captain, I laid under the north Georgia pines as they were sighing in the wind, and prayed. The Great Spirit told me to go to Mars, meet my old friend, and we would then go to the Pleiades together. I trust the Great Spirit. And I have pine-tree seeds.”

“Fascinating. So do I, Osha, trust the Great Spirit. I think we will have a safe journey, and these oligarch passengers will hopefully give us no trouble. But I’m glad you’re with us … just in case. But, I have one more very pressing question. I go back to Earth frequently and I still love our home planet, very very much. How did you manage to become young again, or stay so young? There is still no such technology there. Well, yeah, you can grow hair again, if you want a drug that makes you less manly. You can take a drug that makes grey hair dark again. As you know, I am no longer young. The question very very much interests me. I have a hair transplant.”

“And it interests me,” said the even older Afro-conductor.

Osha answered, “I learned how to Harmonize.”

“What’s that?” asked Captain Quirk.

“It’s a kind of meditation system. After you master it, a drop of nectar drips from your brain down your spine, through all your nerve plexuses. It makes you younger. You can choose the age you want to have. Sometimes I wish I had not chosen the age of twelve.”

“Why did you choose that age? If I may ask?”

“It was simply the best time in my life. I had come to live with the Navajo people on their ‘Big Reservation’ near Many Farms, after the new law that granted to us Cherokees the right to live anywhere on the Cherokee Outlet.”

“I remember,” said the Captain. “The strip of land from the panhandle of Oklahoma, extended all the way to the Pacific Ocean.”

“That time of my life was a wonderful time. The Navajo People were at first distrustful, but then I met Ed Abbey, and many of the Dine’ became very good friends, as did the Chumash People on the California coast. Also on the Cherokee Outlet.”

“I see,” said the Captain. “Can you teach me this method?”

“I too want to learn it!” said the Afro-conductor.

“It’s not easy, it’s a lot of work. Takes discipline.”

“We wa-wa like work,” the conductor said. “Nothing else to do on such a trip.”

“Very well,” said Osha. “You begin with your breath. Harmonize your breath with the entire cosmos. Understand that the cosmos expands and contracts. Then bring your breath up through all the chakras, through all the nerve centres. If you can manage to keep your focus through all the nerve centres, the drop of nectar will descend and rejuvenate you. You will have a blinding white light that will illuminate you, and make you feel that your body is made of light.”

“Sounds like what Jesus said: ‘If thine eye be single, thy whole body will be filled with light.’”

“That’s absolutely right, Captain Quirk. It will take a few months or maybe years of practice. Ah’m not really a Christian, but Jimmie Memnon, mah old friend whom Ah’m a-gonna see, is. He’s a paradox. Say’s he’s a Jew, a Muslim and a Buddhist too. Me, Ah’m a Native American traditional animist, and I lahk Shinto too. Ah lahk nature. Don’t much keer for all them eye-dears of most religions.”

“Thanks!” said both the captain and the conductor. “Shall we pay you for this?”

“Nobody who teaches how to Harmonize ever accepts money for it.”

Osha went back to his tiny cabin, and slept again.