Trace the Stars

by Nancy Fulda

  A woman’s voice—not anyone on the canoe’s crew—asked, “Sir, do you require a star map overlay?” Winin chewed his lip. Ancient Micronesian custom dictated that women did not sail canoes; his crews were always male. “Computer?”

  “Yes, sir,” the woman’s voice replied.

  “Computer, what are you called?”

  “Sally Ride, sir.”

  “Sally Ride, will you respond to the name “Kurua?”

  “If you’re sure that’s what you prefer, sir.”

  “Computer, give Kurua a male voice. I’m not used to female crew in my canoe; I’m afraid it would distract me.”

  “If you’re sure that’s what you prefer, sir.”

  Cocky AI. Computers weren’t that cheeky five years ago when last he’d navigated a starship. “That is my wish. Kurua, you are now part of my canoe’s crew. Call me Winin, without the ‘sir.’”

  “Yes, Winin.”

  The voice was deep, Network English with just a hint of Micronesian accent. Trukese? Someone had done some homework.

  “Do you wish a star map?” Kurua asked.

  “No thanks, Kurua. I don’t need one.” He had recited the heading until it rang through his head. He knew it without a star map. “Under the rising of the Big Dipper to Beck’s Star, follow the Eridani reef, keeping to the west side, under the rising of Cassiopeia to Epsilon Eridani. . . .”

  A swift trip from Earth—in this fast little ship it would take maybe three weeks. Already they were far enough from Earth that he felt the strong overspace flow, the one his VR software translated into the current of the North Wave flowing beneath his canoe. “Come around this way, Teruo,” he called to his steersman. “A little more. There.” Now the waves passing beneath the canoe felt right, the heading was correct.

  The early dark of the tropics fell, and the stars of the big dipper twinkled before him. Forgetting where he was again, Winin drew a deep breath. Recycled ship’s air, not salty sea tang, filled his nostrils. He exhaled in a snort and stretched. His muscles didn’t cramp in the contour couch like they did on the navigator’s bench in his real canoe.

  “Senior Navigator Sanchez is waiting outside the nav tank to relieve you, Winin,” said Kurua in his deep new voice.

  The timelessness of the voyage had lulled Winin. Six ship’s hours passed already? “Kurua, save my VR settings. VR off.” Canoe, crew, and sea disappeared, to be replaced by the soft pastel walls of the nav tank interior and a minimal navigational display. Winin hit the release, and the door irised open.

  Sanchez slouched against the corridor wall, tossing his cartridge negligently from hand to hand. “Ready to relieve you, Mr. Davis.”

  Winin had given up asking Sanchez to call him ‘Winin.’ “We’re still in the hazard-free zone near Earth, but with this ship’s speed we’ll pass the Eridani reef during one of the next few watches. I’m sure you know to keep west of it; please remind Tevita when he comes on. I’ve set the heading for Beck’s Star, and we won’t need to change that course for several watches.”

  “Right.” Sanchez stepped through the door and it irised shut. Winin stared at the door for a second, sighed, and headed toward the galley for food.

  During the next week and a half Winin met often with Amy and Tevita. They pored over star maps and fine-tuned the heading through the Maelstrom, and they talked endlessly of their islands in the Pacific. The Loloheas were from Hawai‘i but had taken their wayfinding training in Micronesia, so the three had much to share.

  Sanchez avoided all but necessary contact with Winin. His course reports were terse, extra conversation nil. Although the two shared a cabin, Winin’s only reminders of Sanchez were rumpled shipsuits left on the floor and blankets hanging down from the unmade top bunk.

  But now the Maelstrom disturbed the waters beneath Winin’s canoe, and occasional tremors shook the Sally Ride. Sanchez did not know the refinements on the heading that Winin and the Loloheas had made.

  When Winin’s watch ended, he irised the door open and, backing into the head to give the other man room to enter, beckoned Sanchez into the cramped nav tank. “This is it, we’re coming to the bad parts. We’ve tried to make a detailed heading of the next few parsecs, but these are the parts where most star maps say ‘here be dragons.’”

  Sanchez stared at him as if he had no clue what Winin was talking about. Winin wondered what school had taught him; he would never have lasted under Winin’s tutelage.

  Winin slipped into the auxiliary couch and said, “Kurua, give us the star map.” The interior of the nav tank disappeared, to be replaced with the deep black of conventional space, stars blazing huge around the two men. “Kurua, tone it down some.” The stars dimmed to 20-watt bulbs.

  Winin pointed upward. “You’ve been in the Maelstrom before; you know there are no star congruencies in this part of overspace so we have to follow landmarks. I came in here once; we never made it all the way through the Maelstrom, but we did get past the whirlpool, so I have my notes and those of several others who tried this route.”

  Winin pointed at a yellow line amid the various Maelstrom landmarks. “Kurua, bring up the reef.” The line grew until a golden curtain shimmered in the center of the tank. “This is the western end of the great reef. We follow it for parsecs straight toward the whirlpool. It’s fairly safe, but there’s a lot of turbulence. That tosses the ship around, but if you move too far south you’ll lose the pointer of the reef. There’s a bad storm—permanent as far as I know—due south and considerably deeper than the reef. Avoid it, it’s dangerous.”

  “Space isn’t flat like the ocean; why not move ‘up’ to avoid the storm?”

  “Too easy to lose sight of the reef, and that entire area is completely uncharted. It could be easier sailing; it’s more likely worse. We’re not here to take chances.” Winin looked over to where the other man lounged in his couch; Sanchez wouldn’t meet Winin’s eyes. “We need to sail a fine line between the reef and the storm to reach the whirlpool; you’ll have to pay attention to all the signs. Oh—the floaties love this reef, so watch out for them.”

  “I let the AI keep track of most of it for me. She can tell me this.”

  Winin took a deep breath and let it out without voicing the biting words he was thinking. Areas of overspace like this made human navigators necessary; artificial intelligence had not been developed to the point where it could deal with the continual fine judgement calls needed to navigate through the hazardous areas. Finally he said, as mildly as he could manage, “Let the computer be your backup; you pay attention to the signs and keep the ship on course and out of trouble.”

  It sounded like a lecture to one of his students, and Sanchez bristled. “Yes, sir,” he spat. “Is that all?”

  Winin would have liked to say much more, but held it in. “It is.” He slid from the couch and stepped to the door. As it irised closed he heard Sanchez say, “Stuck-up old-fashioned wayfinder.”

  Winin spent most of his next watch keeping close to the reef while fighting the waves that pitched and rolled his canoe. His attention was so completely on the ocean that he jumped when Sanchez suddenly appeared balanced on the lee platform.

  “Here to relieve you, Mr. Davis.” Of course the man stood in the spot where Winin had to slide out of the couch, as if daring the other navigator to push him aside. “Pardon me,” said Winin, refusing to be baited. Sanchez reluctantly stood aside, and Winin slid out, moving quickly to the auxiliary couch. Since Sanchez hadn’t given him time to shut down his VR, he brought up the star overlay over Pacific waves.

  “There have been a lot of floaties this watch,” Winin said without preamble. “We’ve missed ‘em all, but you’ll need to pay close attention. Keep skirting the reef; we’re getting close to the whirlpool—right about here.” He pointed with his finger and Kurua lit it without his having to ask. He might get to like this AI after all. “Since we’ve slowed down, we shouldn’t reach the whirlpool on your watch.”

  “You loaded all this into
the computer, didn’t you?” asked Sanchez as he popped his VR cartridge into the slot.

  “Of course I did.”

  “Then I’ll get it from the computer. Sally, Davis VR off, Sanchez VR up.” The waves gave way to the blackness of deep space.

  The insolence of the man struck Winin speechless. But he couldn’t think of anything to do, short of dragging Sanchez out of the couch and punching him in the face, so he stepped through the anomalous hole in space out into the corridor.

  Winin knew he ought to talk to Captain Teramoto about Sanchez. But it was ship’s night, and he didn’t want to wake her. So he grabbed a box lunch from the galley and retired to his room to think things over before he slept.

  Dirty clothing in the corner did nothing to soothe his mind. Even in his own room he was reminded of the man. He folded down the table, dropped his dinner on it, and collapsed onto his bunk. What was with Sanchez? When one of Winin’s students acted like this, he usually had something to hide. Was that Sanchez’s problem?

  Winin opened his locker and pulled a soft bag from beneath his extra loincloths. This was his joy, the model of his sailing canoe. He carefully unwrapped it, caressed the smooth wood, checked every tiny lashing that held hull and outrigger and sail in place. This was real. Made with his own hands, from wood and fibers he’d collected on Puluwat, this was something warm and human, not cold and electronic. This was a ship.

  The starship shuddered, as it often did while passing through the choppy overspace ‘waters’ around the reef. A loud crash reverberated through the metal members of the ship. Winin grabbed a handhold, staring uselessly in the direction of the nav tank. Had they hit a floaty?

  Then his stomach tried to crawl out of his mouth. Damned souls screamed, and blood writhed up the walls. The starship disintegrated into a billion tiny sparkling fragments that formed unintelligible words in the luminous gray matter of a giant’s brain.

  Overspace. At initiation every wayfinder navigator experienced it—raw, without the protective buffers the starship raised. So they would know it, and just maybe have enough presence of mind to hit the resets . . . but he wasn’t in the nav tank. Sanchez had the reset controls.

  Winin couldn’t find his hands; no, they loomed before him, big enough to pluck a canoe from the ocean. No! The model, hands are not melting, set it on the bed, feel the spikes, sharp coral, cut me, no! Feel my way through the giant’s gut, warm, pulsating, black blood coursing around my knees, screaming at my steps. Door—open? This VR’s good, has smell, but gone wrong, thousands of crabs rotting on luminous green sand, white-hot sun blisters the skin from my bones, no!

  Look, look, my bones are out and my skin is in! A crab, to skitter sideways down the slippery pink seaweed, dead men’s fingers, opening and closing, deep-throated terror roar ebbing with the tide to leave me naked, stranded—door button? Whirlpool to suck me down and in, coral shatters my feet, perfume of anemones moves slowly through the viscous water. No, don’t fight the whirlpool, door irises open! Too deep, too deep, golden syrup sighs around my thighs. No movement, space solid and brittle, cracks and lets the red, oozing hearts of suns leak over all the silver starships, deep bell tones crush the futile jellyfish.

  Any god—that floating one will do—help me! His arms don’t work, my tentacles reach out, feel rough cratered skin, right there! The blades flash past, slice my scalp, forehead, eyes, ears. Oh, ears, I must climb out, escape my head. Lava flows back up into the volcanic crater, so sparkling green it cuts my eyes. But there, there I must push the skeletal tree away and feel the deep oozing fur-covered slime of the leaves.

  Push the reset. Did the god say that? I will, I will, but I cannot hear it, in all the sighing thunder. Hand is on the reset, fool, just push.

  Winin collapsed against the god’s soft side. Ragged panting, whimpering, filled his ears, the cool smoothness of metal supported his legs, his buttocks. He raised his head. Dim emergency lights illuminated the interior of the nav tank.

  Drawing a deep breath, Winin pushed himself to his feet. When his stomach protested, he barely made it to the head in its alcove behind the couch. Relieved of its contents, his stomach settled. He drank two large glasses of water and, less shaky, took stock of the situation.

  The whimpering came from Sanchez, who lay unconscious in the nav couch. Winin would have to reset the VR, which hadn’t come up with the environmentals. The aux couch would do—all the controls were duplicated there.

  “Kurua?” His voice sounded loud over Sanchez’s raspy breathing. No answer. “Computer? Sally Ride?” Nothing. The computer must be down; thank God the enviro was on another circuit. He had never considered how a self-aware computer would react to the chaos of overspace without the interfaces that shielded it and the ship’s crew. Could a computer go mad?

  He’d best see how the rest of the crew were. He knew nothing about avionic or computer repair. And he needed the VR up soon; there was the reef, the storm—and the whirlpool.

  How long had the enviro been down? He looked at his chronometer. An hour had passed since the end of his shift. Winin felt the customary throb of the drive; the ship was still in motion. It would continue indefinitely on the last heading Sanchez had given it, and Winin had no idea what that setting might have been, and how long ago. VR—navigation—became priority.

  He met a pale, shaking Captain Teramoto in the companionway, her round face haggard in the dim emergency light. “Thank God you’re all right!” she cried when she saw Winin. “I just checked on the bridge. Rafe’s unconscious. What happened?”

  “We must have hit something. Environmentals failed. The backup didn’t come on until I hit the reset. Neither the computer nor the VR came back up.”

  “Oh no. I’ve heard overspace is hard on AI. Poor Sally.”

  “Ma’am, we’ve got to get the VR up. I don’t know what heading Sanchez had us on when this happened, and we’re in a hazardous area.”

  “You weren’t in the tank when the enviro went out? How did you reset the systems?” She swayed a little, but caught herself with a hand against the wall.

  “Ma’am, I taught space navigation for fifteen years. The final test—the initiation, as it were—for every navigator who gets a certificate from me is a full eight-hour stint in the tank, in real overspace. I monitor from the aux couch. At the end I turn off the tank enviro.”

  She stared up at him. In the dim light he didn’t know if he imagined a smile quirking the corners of her lips. “You and my old master were stamped from the same mold, I see. He did that to me, to see how I’d react. I didn’t do too well. I screamed, and shook, and threw up all over his nice clean bridge.” She shook her head at him.

  “But did you find the reset?”

  “I did! Even with my guts crawling away and my head on fire, the reset on the armrest wasn’t that hard to find.” Her hands shook uncontrollably. She closed her eyes.

  Winin nodded. “Then you passed with honors, captain. Here, let me help you. Where do we need to go?”

  “Hang on a sec while I pop up to the bridge and slow Sally down, then come to Engineering.”

  Winin, Master Navigator, found himself little more than an awkward extra pair of hands for the next twenty minutes.

  “Can you run the diagnostics again?” Captain Teramoto’s voice came, muffled, from within a hole in the wall.

  Winin punched five keys on the portable troubleshooting console plugged into the wall and watched words scroll over the screen. “Card 46D8EW-33 bad,” he read aloud.

  “It’s here, I know it’s here. Man, somethin’ fried this thing. Even backup’s nuked.” She pulled her head from behind the panel, wavered for a moment, and collapsed into a sitting position against a wall.

  “Ma’am, are you all right?” Winin was on his feet and at her side in seconds.

  “Too much blood to my head, hangin’ upside down in there. I’m okay.” But her face was pale and her hands shook.

  “Have you taken the overspace medication?”

&n
bsp; “Not yet. It makes me dizzy. I need all my concentration for this.” Winin couldn’t argue with that. He hadn’t taken anything either, for the same reason.

  “Rest a moment. I’ll find the card.” They were all labeled in raised letters, which was a good thing. To Winin 46D8EW-33 looked just like all the others.

  “Have you pulled the old one?”

  “Yeah,” she held it up to show him.

  “Is it obvious where it goes?”

  “Yeah, well, no. There are some empty slots in there too. Here, I’m okay now.” Winin helped her to her feet.

  She leaned back into the hole with the card. “Tight connection,” she said. “Try the diagnostics again.”

  “Right.” Punch five letters with a finger, watch symbols float by on the screen. “Diagnostics complete. Virtual Reality and Navigation checks good.”

  “Yo!” She pulled her head out of the hole and clapped Winin on the back. “Go, man, and keep us out of a mess. I’ll button this up and see who else is semifunctional.”

  Sanchez still lay unconscious in the nav couch, his color bad and his breathing harsh, but Winin didn’t have time to do anything for him. He plugged his cartridge into the slot—and met resistance. Sanchez’s cartridge popped out when Winin hit the button; Winin stowed it in the waistband of his loincloth.

  The time his data took to reload stretched on and on. Could the navigation equipment still be broken? Though he used virtual reality and had adapted it to his needs, he still had little idea how the avionics behind it all functioned.

  The load light winked off and the ready light glowed. Relieved, Winin popped his cartridge out and stowed it safely beside Sanchez’s, then settled himself into the aux nav couch. Better fasten the restraints; the trip could get rough.

  “VR, Puluwat, current voyage, night.” Starlit ocean appeared all around him and he knew the canoe was in trouble. The feel of the waves was all wrong, the stars were in the wrong places, and the smell . . . no, the smell didn’t come with the VR. It was Sanchez, who lolled limp in the bottom of the canoe and had reacted to its pitching like most seasick mainlanders did. Winin didn’t have time to clean him up; he’d have to live with the smell.