Unlike the other ones, Aneirin loved the sun deck. He loved the mornings. He loved to play his harp on the sun deck in the mornings. No one else, on any of the decks, liked any of these things.
Then again, morning isn’t easy on a spaceship. It has to do with whatever star you happen to be by, the size of the planet its circling—if there is one—and things like the chord of the heliacal orbit as it relates to the direction of the ship that he was pretty sure he’d never understand.
But there was a long tradition of harping at dawn. Things were different now, but his people would never have survived this long if they hadn’t had a long tradition, too, of being…flexible.
And so he took his dawns where he could find them. Now, for example. He closed his eyes
Space is blackness, stars are fire. Light was coming, but down below as ever, the dark waves of night beat on and on and on. Forever, as far as they knew. He waited, he could feel it. A firebrand, a torch, the unknown star peering over the horizon of a planet whose name he’d never have to know, or, with the touch of a button, could, the regurgitated number adding nothing to the sleeping giant who, right now, was meeting its sun again. Goodnight, Prometheus. Goodnight.
Sunrise over no one’s world. And no one’s sun. Here, at the last outpost—the last dock. Goodnight, Prometheus. Goodnight, forever.
The sun crests the waves of mountains. Star of the morning, wherever it happens. And he waited until it happened. A ray shot out, a single ray, and touched the plastic cocoon above him, spread like an outstretched hand across the ship. It slid down the sleek black sides of the craft, and stood, for a minute, on the tip of its black hull. It stood, a sunrise like a line of fire. And as it did, he played a chord. As his people had done for millennia. The harper at the gates of dawn.
A distant dawn, one that maybe no one had ever seen. An unnamed dawn. But the chords always have names. He played a chord. Night and day. In space, it was always both. Somewhere.
Down below, the men were waking. He could hear them. When you travel for years on a small ship like this, a cruiser, neither a passenger ship nor cargo, rank doesn’t matter so much, but in the beginning of the voyage the harper, not a useful member of the crew as such things were reckoned, was expected to help in the mess. And he didn’t mind, he was up anyway. And he certainly didn’t mind spending time with the ship’s cook, Elizabeth. That was true—of all of them, really. But…
Away, down the ladder, into the hold, away through the tunnels where the smell of oatmeal was already wafting up. Away, leaving the sun deck alone to hold that brief sun, for an instant like a cup, a goblet of ruby wine, spilling slowly into the cask of endless night, endless ebony sea. The New Voyage of the Argo. To the farthest world. For however long that might take.
Forever twilight, for all of them. As long as it lasts. Just a sunrise, like a flower, now and then. And at night, by the fireside, whatever Aneirin could give them, cruel memories, reminders, and hope.
And nobody’s sunrise drifted into the sky alone. Morning, on board the New Argo.