Going Interstellar (collection)

Ennio emerged from under the terminal, a sticky lump of some unidentified substance in his hand. “It should work now,” he muttered, as he walked across to drop the lump in the disposal chute before washing his hands in the little sink in the corner, which, being set for toddlers, he had to bend almost double to use.

“I could help you,” I said. I hadn’t qualified for intellectual work, as the men had. Not that my IQ tests were inferior to theirs, but I had failed what Ciar called the restlessness test. He said that forced to endure the jobs he and Ennio performed, mostly confined to a single room or a suite of rooms day after day, I would have gone quietly insane. Which I supposed was why I’d been apprenticed to the maintenance crew, where every day brought something new. One day I might be repairing agricultural machines and the next working to remove the socks some toddler had flushed down the toilet on division D before they made all toilets on division F fountain to the ceiling. “I repair machines all the time.”

Ennio wrinkled his nose at me, his mop of reddish-brown hair standing up from being cut so short. There was a fad onboard for longish hair, so of course Ennio wore his almost too short. “This is hardly repair,” he said. “Just clean up.”

The terminal powered up when he tried it and he said, “Right. Now to reprogram it with all the nursery rhymes again.”

Ciar sat up, curious. “Nursery rhymes? You teach them those?”

“At this age it’s the best way to get them to read. I just need to make sure they come up and match the sound,” he said, picking things on the screen, till the screen displayed a series of lines, which were sounded out, aloud, in a babyish voice.

The big ship sails on the vacuum oh, the vacuum oh, the vacuum oh,Oh the big ship sails on the vacuum oh,It will not sail on forever.The captain said it will reach Alpha Centauri ohWhen ten generations are over.The big ship will reach Alpha CentauriWhere our new home will be.It will reach Alpha Centauri when ten generations are over.We will all live in Alpha CentauriIn the world most like Earth.We will all live in Alpha CentauriAfter the eleventh generation’s birth. 

He pushed a few buttons and went on to another screen, where a comical owl hooted, flew away, and then the rhyme flashed:

A wise old owl lived down on area C.The more he saw the less he spoke,The less he spoke the more he heard.Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?Find him and ask politely,He’ll tell you the way to Alpha Centauri.When we’ve all forgotten,He will still beKeeping the time and path to Alpha Centauri. 

Ennio pushed the screen again, but Ciar was sitting up and staring at it. He spoke over the next rhyme, “Those aren’t right.”

I looked at him. “Of course they are. Don’t you remember?” We’d all learned the rhymes at our mothers’ knees—well, except Ciar, who presumably had learned them at the creche-teacher’s knees. And then we’d learned to read them in school.

“I remember,” he said, frowning quickly at me. He pulled at the collar of his grey tunic. “Look, I know those are the rhymes we learned, but they aren’t the right rhymes.”

Ennio turned around. “What do you mean?”

As often happened, Ciar was struggling to form words. It was funny that the one of us who specialized in linguistics was the one who would often find himself struggling for explanations when talking to us. Perhaps because he was the only one of us with a truly intellectual profession?

“I was looking at nursery rhymes today. One of the books was stored on board from early on. It’s part of the historical collection and I don’t think many people looked at it since it came in.” He frowned. “They had those rhymes, but they’re completely different. Nothing about Alpha Centauri or generations or …division C.”

“Maybe they adapted the rhymes for life on board,” Ennio said.

But Ciar was still frowning.

“They might have, Ciar,” I said. “To make it relevant.”

“Why would they?” he said. “They haven’t removed ‘owl’ from there, and the only things we know of owls are in books from Earth. I presume there are owl embryos frozen somewhere in the ship, but …”