Slow Train to Arcturus

by Eric Flint

  There are times in your life to be bold as well as hopeful. She was gorgeous. And slightly smaller than Amber was herself. "Are you prepared to teach me?"

  The woman in black raised her eyebrows. Looked thoughtful. "I'll try. You might do better with someone like Maryna, who has young children, but I'll try."

  "Shee-it," said the flashy red-tipped head-dress. "Can't I pretend I don't know how to fly either?"

  "Andy, in your case, there is no need to pretend," said the woman cheerfully. "And most of you are going to be late for work. I'm off shift. I'll take this lot along to the kindergarten. Fortunately, we can walk there."

  "That'll be a first for you, Zoe," said one of the women, launching into space, and unfurling her wings as she fell.

  The tiny raven-haired woman shook her head disapprovingly. "She'll kill herself doing stupid things like that. The first thing you need to learn about flying is that it isn't about showing off."

  "The air is thicker and gravity is lower than on old Earth. This makes flying a lot easier. It's still not easy," explained the slim, raven-haired woman. She was minuscule, Kretz realized. Long boned, but with very little body-weight. It must be awkward maintaining bone density without a rigorous exercise program, here. In the habitat where the women had ruled he'd seen a good few rounded humans. His friend Amber had been heading in that direction-although her weight had come off fairly fast across the primitive habitat. "Rounded" wasn't something you could say about any of these fliers.

  "In addition we heat the air near to the outer skin, and this makes for thermals toward the core. There is also wind-funneling in the shaping of the valleys. Despite the small area there are several thousand edge-rotors." She pointed. "This is Kindergarten Slope, where parents teach their toddlers."

  "Children fly?" said Lani.

  She nodded. "As soon as possible. Learning the interface and building the musculature takes a lot of time, and the younger they start the better they are. In another hour you'll have hundreds of them here. I come here early because it is a safe place to try out new stunts, and test new wings. For my sins I am also the test pilot for Osprey-wings. We have some adult-size trainers in storage here, intended for injured fliers relearning."

  She looked at Howard. "Nothing with a big enough span for you, though. I'll ask work… it could be expensive."

  "What can we pay you in?" asked Lani.

  "That's going to be interesting. The Goshawks hold high wing right now, and unless I manage something spectacular, they will continue to. One of their reps will have to put a value to your labor. The trainers

  … well, temporarily they're not a problem. This is something of a coup for the Osprey, and we need it."

  She'd led them to a wide door. "In here."

  Inside were racks and racks of wings. "We'll need to size you, and weigh you."

  Kretz wondered how the humans would respond if he said it was too dangerous. But it was fascinating nonetheless.

  ***

  Howard found the wings were actually a pair of wings with a body strip and a broad, flare-able tail, which fitted onto the human body. Flight was a dream. Here humanity had reached out and made a reality of Icarus. Each wing had about one hundred and fifty neural inputs, interfacing to the nerves in the hands and arms. You had to learn to read and respond to those inputs without conscious thought, just as the body adjusted to the less complex task of walking, explained the fascinating woman in her black lycra.

  "The first wings were quite simple. About twenty inputs and most people only started to fly as adults. Apparently there was a lot of legislation preventing minors from trying it."

  "The truth is you don't need neural inputs. It's just been the fashion to chase that area of development. Now, there are force-multipliers in the wing mechanical structure, and fail-safes to stop the air dislocating your arms, but it is still hard work. You need to flap your arms for lift, and rotate your wrists for forward movement."

  "You mean you fly by flapping your arms?"

  She nodded. "Unless you're using a thermal, or a rotor on a cliff edge, which in reality is what most people do. The multipliers add a further twenty-five percent to your efforts. With these trainers the wings are helium filled too. Right, let's start fitting."

  Twenty minutes later, all of them except Howard stood uneasily trying their wings' neural interfaces at the edge of a twenty-foot cliff, which had a stiff breeze rising up it. In actuality the wing-interface felt like tiny sensations of pain, temperature, or pressure. "In time you'll learn, or rather, your reflexes will learn what those feelings mean. Basically, the only way to learn is to jump over the edge. Often."

  She stepped over the cliff edge… and seemed to stand on air. With the tiniest occasional flick of the wingtip, Zoe hung there.

  "When you can do this you are ready to move on," she said.

  Dandani shrugged. He obviously thought that if she could do it.. . he now had wings. He launched himself casually. Spun, and managed to nosedive earthwards. The landing-pad was thick and soft, for which he was very grateful.

  "Again," said their instructress. "And try to lift your wings clear when you crash."

  She was merciless. Only Howard failed to try crash landing, and that was only because of a lack of wings. They kept it up time after time, until little two-year-olds started arriving and doing it too-almost inevitably better than they did.

  She'd done some talking on a wrist communicator while this was happening. "The head of Osprey has said that the co-op will sponsor your wings, big one. Also after breakfast you'll all get some decent flying lycra-also with our compliments. The boss says we can make some publicity out of you. And now it is time to eat."

  "No fish? No meat?" asked a dismayed Perp-One, voicing Lani's thoughts. Well, it was sort of payback for the half-raw, half-burned experience they'd had with the uThani. She'd have liked to get them pissed as newts and have them babble the family secrets, and wake up with the mother of all hangovers. However, they'd probably babble in their own language. And they probably had heads like rocks, knowing her luck.

  "We're having a little trouble with our protein vats," admitted their host. "At least we think that's where the problem is. All the instruments read normally, we're just not getting results. Two of our cultures have died. There is more in cryo, but we don't want to break in on the stores until we work out what the problem is. And we're not having much joy, with people trying to make sense out of four-hundred-year-old manuals."

  She grimaced. "It's the Osprey's part of the cooperative. So what production we do have goes to the other flight co-ops. Everyone is a little sour with us, but we've been having seriously worsening problems for twenty-odd years. One of the vats has been out for over a hundred years."

  Amber got up. "Lead me to it," she said. "Flight may not be my field of expertise, but protein-culture vats are. Is it the equipment that's getting tired, like ours?"

  "We don't think so," said Zoe. "You must realize that I just work in fabrication. We've rebuilt from scratch one of the smaller vats for them. I believe they've taken each one of the majors out of service, and refurbished them."

  "Wow," Amber was plainly impressed. "We don't have the basic engineering skills to do that. Right. It looks like a biochem problem, then, unless there's some form of contamination getting in. Can I have a look?"

  "I think they'd welcome you with open arms," said Zoe. She bit her lip. "I'm just trying to think how to get you there without flying. Um. Would you survive the indignity of being hauled around like cargo? There is a winch that we use for bringing up raw feedstock to the plant."

  "No problem at all," said Amber cheerfully. "Indignity I can live with."

  Lani worried about them splitting up the party. True, the local flyboys and girls seemed friendly, but… "I think we'd all better go."

  Amber shook her head. "No insult intended, Lani, but you'd be as much use in a lab as I am in a fight."

  "I'll take good care of her," said Zoe.

  If A
mber had been a male that tone would have made any good mama suspicious. Lani wondered if Zoe was… that way. Oh, well, not her problem. Her problem was examining the mechanics of the wings. Any minute now Howard would take them apart to see what made them work.

  "How about if we went for a walk to help to settle the meal," she said artlessly. The thoughts about having designs on someone had stirred something within her too. And if they were going to split up the party they might as well split up properly.

  He brightened. "I'll ask Brother Kretz and the uThani."

  "Kretz is tired. You need to work the muscles more. And Perp-One and Uppity are trying it on with those girls."

  "I don't think 'You want to make out' is a very polite thing for Dandani to be saying. Is it?" asked Howard doubtfully.

  "Perp-One says he told him it means 'How do you do?" said Lani. "They're terrible practical jokers, those two."

  "So what does it mean?" he asked.

  She linked her fingers with his. "Come for a walk. I'll show you."

  "We'd better not go too far," said Howard, looking at the others.

  "I'll do my best to stop before we do," said Lani, looking at him with half-lidded eyes.

  He might not be following her meaning. But with Howard, you never quite knew.

  They walked to where they could look out into the green folds of the fliers' habitat. Lani, casting a sideways glance at him, decided he looked tired. Hopefully the poison was still leaching out of his system and hadn't done any long-term damage. Except maybe to his brain, she decided. He hadn't removed his hand from hers. It was a sort of brain damage that she decided she could live with. "Let's sit a bit," she said.

  They did. She leaned against him… and he didn't shy away. Instead he put a very tentative arm around her shoulder. "You know," he said. "I'm realizing that it doesn't have to be flat and fertile to be beautiful. For a New Eden farmer that's quite a mind-leap."

  There seemed to be more than the superficial behind that statement, especially combined with the arm around her shoulder. She thought about her reply quite carefully for once. He had that sort of effect on her. "Are you ready to consider that maybe a naked cop could actually be a nice girl? Or is that too much of a stretch for your New Eden imagination?"

  He smiled at her, his innocent, big blue eyes warm. "I decided on that a while back. There are lots of kinds of beauty, and there is more than one kind of nice girl, and it doesn't depend on the clothes that they're wearing, or not wearing."

  "Oh, so there are lots, are there? Some wearing lycra?" she asked, getting a firm grip on his biceps. Torture time!

  "But only one for me. And it doesn't matter what she's wearing."

  Lani sniffed, blinked and smiled, feeling as if maybe she'd caught some of the brain damage. "In this straight-laced stupid culture of yours, when is a man allowed to kiss a woman?" She raised her chin, tilting her head towards him.

  His eyes twinkled. "When they're betrothed, a man may kiss his intended."

  She pushed him over backwards, gently. "Well, I'm intending to kiss you. 'Cause you see as far as I'm concerned you're not just betrothed. You're married. To me."

  "Not in the eyes of God," he said seriously.

  "We can sort that out," she said firmly. "You know her well; have a word with her. In the meanwhile we're both learning and adapting around each other's culture, right?"

  "Right," he agreed after the briefest pause.

  She put her arm across him and rolled onto her knees above him. "Now I've got to show you some aspects of my culture too."

  "Oh?" he said, looking innocently up at her.

  "Yeah," she said, touching the curve of his cheek. "Take a deep breath, honey, because I need to start explaining 'making out' to you. It's a long explanation and I think I've only got time for the very first part."

  ***

  Kretz was fascinated by the culture change. These humans were far more diverse than Miran ever would be. Sort of sociological experiments in miniature, each of these habitats. If he hadn't been in a hurry to get through them, to get to Abret, and to get back to Selna, he would have been content to spend many days just observing. And, of course, taking notes.

  Right now he was employing his skills in rather a different way. The treachery of the small male from Amber and Lani's world had frightened him. Partly he supposed it was size. To Miranese someone that size was a juvenile. To be humored because they were too young to really know better. Of course Bhangella had not been young-but it was hard to rid your mind of such ingrained ideas. He'd decided a long while back that Howard was as trustable as any human ever could be. Amber, as a fellow scientist, he had a bond with. And Lani plainly would stand by Howard. But he was wary about these new two males. So he was watching them. And listening to them. Transcomp was making fast work of learning their language, as there was a fair amount of translation going on. He'd already established that the one who claimed to speak no English certainly understood quite a lot. He'd also established that there was a fairly large amount of mockery going on. They liked to see how much they could get their hosts to swallow.

  It was quite amusing to think that he was fooling them as much as they thought they were fooling everyone. And they were quite happy to say derogatory things in their own language, which Nama-ti did not translate. It let him keep a very careful watch over their plans without them realizing. After Bhangella, that was a good idea. Besides it made the waiting game easier, having such work to do.

  He was so busy listening that he didn't notice that one of the fliers had sat herself down next to him. She put a hand on his inner thigh. "So how different from humans are you?" she asked curiously. "You are male, aren't you?"

  It would appear that physical curiosity went both ways, and that he wouldn't need to ask Howard about human seduction after all.

  "It's actually quite a simple matter," explained Amber. "You weren't looking at biochemistry high enough up your supply chain. With this readout malfunctioning you were getting too few lysines. It's obviously a problem that relates to this instrument batch, and it broke down first on the more popular protein lines. We haven't had the problem because we haven't automated that stage on Diana."

  She smiled at all of them, saving her best for Zoe. She was getting a definite feeling of attraction there… but how did this culture feel about gay relationships? "You should be back on stream and up to full production in a week," she said. "Sometimes it pays to outsource an expert."

  They sat together and had a coffee before heading back down to kindergarten. Zoe, Amber decided, was not just physically attractive. She was bright too.

  "Everyone works," the flier explained. "Look, we were heading into four hundred and ninety years of journey in a very small environment. The problems we were going to face were pretty obviously social as well as merely environmental. Work… well, work keeps people occupied. It's a little artificial but there are jobs for everybody, even just making things we'll need when we get to Signy. Top skills get top dollar-worth trying for. We can-and do-automate the really dumb jobs. Well, we keep a few for nonachievers… Anyway, naturally we were into flight-technology. A fair number of our original people worked or ran the sport-industry. Sure, we could have automated it. But we set up the cooperatives instead, each making and refining low-G wings, and taking a part of the physical environmental maintenance equipment under our wing. We're protein production, and of course, Osprey wings. We hold a biannual comp at which our latest wing flies. It's a complex judging-but pretty fair really. And whichever wing cooperative wins, becomes top wing, and handle general administrivia."

  "After all these years your wing design must be fairly refined," said Amber doubtfully.

  Zoe scowled. "Yep. It's always been a skills contest too. Chief test fliers' skills have been more of the deciding factor the last hundred years or so. There is a limit to what you can really do with remote neural input, and there is a ban on surgical implants. Actual wing shape and response Waldos haven't had major changes fo
r at least two hundred years, although we're still experimenting. And the bad news is the Goshawks pipped me by one point last year. And they'll do anything to make life awkward for your group, as our proteges." She smiled wryly. "I had hopes that you'd give us a new design leap from outside. It's not likely, is it?"

  She was wrong. The idea came from the most unlikely source too.

  Dandani sat down hard, for the maybe the four hundredth time. He'd learned-very rapidly, that you needed to avoid going down head first. Unfortunately he hadn't managed to stop bending his tail pinions.

  "He looks like a quetzal. They fly faster. Dandani only fly faster down," said Nama-ti.

  "What is a 'quetzal'?" asked Amber.

  "Is bird. You no have birds here? Is bird fly very very fast." He showed a pantomime of fast zippy movements. "Got fork tail like Dandani make for himself."

  Amber looked thoughtful, then left the little cliff for her portable. A few minutes later she called Zoe. "Have you actually looked at real bird tails?"

  The dark-haired woman shook her head. "No, we don't have any livestock, not even birds. I do remember studying them as a child."

  "I had the opportunity to see some live ones. Look at this pic. Look at the tails of these 'swifts.' "

  Zoe was already dialing on her wrist-mobile. "I need Aaron and Lee here. Kindergarten. Now. We've still got two days."

  The two arrived posthaste, as Zoe was still talking to Amber about tails and their purpose. "Tails are there to act as air-brakes and to fix yaw and pitch. But look at the aspect changes in this tail." She pointed to the screen for the benefit of the new arrivals. "Look at this thing. Look at the potential for steerage, look at the amount of variation in this sequence. It opens some new doors in design, guys. I want a test-ready prototype by tonight."

  It was apparent that she was used to being obeyed. And by the look on their faces… they were getting ideas. Icarus had the same computer net-resources as Diana did. Amber had found her portable quite happy to hook into their system. Obviously the habitat designers had used the same framework. Lee noted the address, and flicked herself over the edge of the nursery slope. "We'll pick up the pictures in the office. Come on, Aaron."