Superluminal

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  He cursed. The last thing Radu wanted right now was to travel in the company of a pilot. But only a few of the available automated ships offered crew positions. Since automated ships still held the numerical majority, this was a fluke, a coincidence of his misfortune.

  None of the other destinations particularly appealed to him. Since one of Radu’s excuses for leaving Twilight was that his home world needed the foreign exchange he would earn, he chose the automated flight that paid the most. He would crew it on its outbound stops, then, if he could, transfer to another ship traveling even farther. He wanted to travel as close to the limits of explored space as possible. He had applications in for exploratory missions, of course, but so did almost every other crew member he had ever met. They applied out of curiosity, for the excitement, for the money. Radu had very little seniority and it would be quite a while before he could hope to win such an assignment.

  Instead of an electronic approval, the response to his query was a personal reply.

  “Radu, how are you?” The crew member whose translucent image formed before him was a normal-space navigator with the credentials to prepare an automated ship for transit. Atnaterta looked much older than the last time Radu had seen him. The time since they last had flown together was only a few weeks, for Radu, but might be of much longer subjective duration for Atna. The lines in the navigator’s ebony face were more heavily sculpted, and he seemed exhausted in a way that could never be eased by transit sleep. His hair was graying from a black as deep as that of his skin and eyes. Radu trusted his ability and his experience. Most of all he valued his serenity. He was glad to see him.

  “I’m fine, Atna.” It would be too complicated to reply to a purely social question with the convoluted truth.

  Atna’s response took a moment to relay from Earthstation to a satellite to Radu.

  “Can you catch the next shuttle? We need a third.”

  “Yes, I already have a reservation.” Again, the awkward pause of light-speed’s limits.

  “Good. I’ll put you on the roster.”

  An approval notice formed the air into small lighted letters.

  “Thanks, Atna.”

  “Good to have you.”

  He signed off.

  The trick of Radu’s mind that let him always know what time it was, anywhere he was, did not help him know when the sun would rise. Looking toward the east, he searched for a glimmer of light, even false dawn. In the few days he had been on earth he had never seen the sun; he had never been outside in daylight. But until right now he had neither noticed that nor cared. He would have liked to see earth illuminated by its sun, but he would be gone too soon. Perhaps he would never come back.

  He hurried to the shuttle, boarded it, and waited for liftoff.

  Acceleration pressed him into his seat, back toward the earth. But the shuttle escaped, as it always did, and while it did not leave behind his hurt or his memories, it was taking him to a place where he would be busy enough, at times, to forget both for a while.

  o0o

  Laenea staggered out of bed, aching as if she had been in a brawl against a better fighter. In the bathroom she splashed ice water on her face; it did not help. Her urine was tinged but not thick with blood. She ignored it.

  Radu was gone. He had left no message. Nor had he left anything behind, as if wiping out all his traces could wipe out the loss and pain of their parting. Laenea knew nothing could do that. She wanted to talk to him, touch him — just one more time — and try to show him, insist he understand, that he had not failed. He could not demand of himself what he could break himself — break his heart — attempting.

  She called the crew lounge, but he did not answer the page. The computer crosschecked and told Laenea that Radu Dracul was on board transit ship A-28493, preparing for departure.

  There was still time to reach him before he had to go to sleep, but he had chosen an automated ship on a dull run, probably the first assignment he could get. Nothing he could have said or done would have told Laenea more clearly that he did not want to see or touch or talk to her again.

  She could not stay in Kathell’s apartment any longer. She threw on the clothes she had arrived in; she left the vest open, defiantly, to well below her breastbone, not caring if she were recognized, returned to the hospital, anything. At the top of the elevator shaft the wind whipped through her hair and snapped the cape behind her. Laenea pulled the black velvet close and waited. When the tram came she boarded it, to return to her own city and her own people, the pilots, to live apart with them and never tell their secrets.

  Laenea knew where the pilots stayed when they were on the spaceport, but she had never been inside their quarters. She had taken her training on the mainland, and, as far as she knew, no one not a pilot was permitted on their floor. She stepped into the elevator and touched the proper button. The cage fell. When it stopped, the doors remained closed.

  “What is your name, please?” The voice had the artificial smoothness created only by machine.

  “Laenea Trevelyan.”

  Machine response ordinarily occurred instantaneously, as far as human beings could tell. Laenea expected instant acceptance or instant refusal.

  Nothing happened.

  “My name is Laenea Trevelyan,” she said again.

  The pause continued.

  She was about to give up and go away when the doors slid quietly open.

  “Welcome, Laenea,” Ramona-Teresa said. Her voice held just that: welcome, without any hint of satisfaction or censure. “Welcome.”

  She stretched out her hand to Laenea, who hesitated, remembering how it had felt, the last time, to touch Radu. But she and Ramona were of a kind. She grasped Ramona’s warm, pulseless wrist.

  Several other pilots joined them, welcoming Laenea into their company. She wondered if pilots always hugged to say hello.

  She laughed.

  o0o

  By hurrying through Earthstation from the shuttle to the transit dock, propelling himself recklessly through the free- fall of the old station’s central corridors, and barely pausing long enough to show his ID at the transit dock, Radu managed to reach Atna’s ship before its departure. He stepped into its self-contained gravity field.

  He paused in the control room long enough to regain his equilibrium and to say hello. The older man stood up to greet him. Atna was nearly as tall as Radu, but very slender. His skin had begun to acquire the papery softness of old age.

  “I’m glad to have you on board,” he said. He stood back, his hands on Radu’s shoulders, and smiled. “But I’m afraid you’ve come in low again.”

  “I don’t mind,” Radu said. He was used to having the least seniority and to drawing most of the ship’s housekeeping tasks.

  Atna gazed at him more intently. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Radu said. “Of course. What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to invade your privacy,” Atna said with an embarrassed shrug. “But you know the grapevine. Your name has been… frequently mentioned on it, in the last few days. I’ve been concerned for you.”

  As a very new member of the crew, and as someone who was solitary by nature, Radu had little experience with the grapevine, either as recipient of its information, or — so far as he had known till now — its subject. He felt uncomfortable, knowing he and Laenea must be the focus of gossip. He supposed he should have realized before now that they would be.

  “Yes,” Radu said. “I’m all right.”

  “I apologize,” Atna said, and then, with considerable relief, “Ah, Orca. Come and meet Radu.”

  Radu turned. He had not heard the other crew member arrive, she walked so softly in her rubber-soled red deck shoes. Like many crew members she dressed flamboyantly. She wore silver pants, a silver mesh shirt, and a spangled jacket with a pattern like fish scales: silver, gold brass, red copper. Her skin, set off by her very short, pale, fine hair, was smooth mahogany tan, and her eyes were black. Her hands were rather large in
proportion to the rest of her.

  Radu glanced at her hands again, surprised. She was a diver.

  “Hi,” she said, extending her hand. They clasped wrists, and the translucent webbing between her fingers darkened against the black cuff of his shirt.

  “Radu Dracul, of Twilight,” Radu said.

  “Oh,” she said, and Radu had the impression that she, too, had heard things about him on the grapevine. If she had, she refrained from asking him any questions. “Orca, of the Harmony Isles, on earth.” She grinned. “I’m afraid my given name is nearly impossible to say, out of water.”

  Radu had very little time to wonder about a diver’s being on the crew. Atna sent them both off to finish preparing the ship for transit. While Orca made the last checks on the engines and Radu shut down all the semi-intelligents, Atna undocked and eased away from Earthstation. Then Radu and Orca prepared themselves, and their sleep chambers, and hugged each other, as crew members always did, to say good-bye.

  “Sleep well,” Orca said, and closed herself in. Radu climbed into his body box, lay back, and pulled the lid shut. The ship would float gently toward its transit point and pause just long enough for Atna to shut down the cerebral functions of the navigational computer and send himself into deep, sound sleep. Then the ship would vanish, diving into transit. But transit was something Radu knew he would never see.

  He caught the familiar sweet smell of the anesthetic, and fell instantly asleep.

  o0o

  As he awakened, Radu remembered his dreams fondly. He had dreamed of Twilight, and of his clan, and of the few days, the time he could count in hours, that he and Laenea had spent together. It seemed as much fantasy as the dreams themselves.

  Then he was fully awake, and he remembered that his home was far away and all his family dead of the plague that had only scarred him; he remembered that he and Laenea were now and forever beyond each other’s reach.

  Sometimes, coming out of transit, Radu woke before the lid of his sleep chamber unlatched, but this time it was already ajar. He pushed it up as he rose.

  Someone touched his arm.

  Radu started violently.

  “I beg your pardon,” the pilot beside him said quizzically. He was small and frail looking, with very fine black hair and very pale translucent skin. Radu remembered having seen his picture, and of course he knew Vasili Nikolaievich by reputation. He was the first person ever to become a pilot without having served on the crew. And he was a very good pilot.

  “You — startled me,” Radu said. He would have been startled to meet Vasili Nikolaievich at all, much less to find him, unannounced, on a ship that was supposed to be automated. The administrators generally sent Vasili on important flights that required fast round trips: diplomatic missions, or emergencies. “I didn’t expect a pilot, and I’m usually the first to wake up.”

  “You are this time, too, but I thought you might need help.” Unlike every other pilot Radu had ever seen, he wore his shirt buttoned high, covering all but the tip of the pilot’s scar.

  “This was supposed to be an automated ship,” Radu said. He immediately regretted his churlish tone, but the last thing he wanted to see right now was a pilot. He rubbed his face with both hands, as if he could wipe away the last languor of transit sleep. “This was supposed to be an automated ship,” he said again. For any pilot to be reassigned so late was unusual; for this pilot to be sent hinted at extraordinary circumstances. “What happened? Were we diverted? Is this an emergency flight?”

  “I don’t know,” the pilot said. “Nobody said it was.”

  “Didn’t you ask?” Radu glanced at the other sleep chambers, but only the two cradling his fellow crew members were in use. The ship carried no passengers, no medical people.

  “No,” the pilot said.

  “Do we have medicine in the cargo? Hospital equipment?”

  “We don’t have any cargo at all,” the pilot said. “They switched the full module for an empty one.”

  “But why?”

  “I told you. I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I don’t much care.” He scowled. “My bid was up for exploration when the administrators ordered me onto this milk run, and there isn’t another x-team mission scheduled for six months.”

  “Perhaps this isn’t a milk run,” Radu said.

  “Compared to an x team?” Vasili’s laugh was sarcastic. “Look, I only came in here because I thought you might need a hand. The crew usually does after a long trip. But you don’t, do you?”

  Radu’s momentary flash of excitement and anticipation subsided. He felt he owed someone, somewhere, the same kind of risk that Laenea and the others had taken to come to Twilight. But this trip was like all the others, neither danger nor heroic rescue, merely the transportation of frivolous goods for the profit of the transit administrators.

  “No, I need no help,” he said to the pilot, and, after too long a pause, “thank you.” He sat down to put on his boots, and pretended to be concerned with a worn place on his right sock. His hands were shaking, not because he had been startled or because he had thought, if only for a moment, that he was by chance on an important or dangerous mission. He was trembling because the pilot was so near. His heart beat faster. He tried to control his pulse. He knew that his discomfort would continue as long as Vasili Nikolaievich stayed beside him.

  Despite the danger, his adverse reaction to Laenea had until now caused him only grief, not fear. But if their intimacy had sensitized him to the presence of any pilot, then he might eventually have to quit the crew. That did frighten him.

  The silence lengthened. Radu did not look up. The pilot turned away and left the box room.

  Radu released the breath he had unconsciously been holding. He heard the pilot continue on into the crew lounge, to the passageway beyond, and to the pilot’s cabin. The door opened, and closed solidly.

  Ignoring his worn sock, Radu pulled on his boots and stood up. His heartbeat slowed to a more normal rate. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. He had never heard of a crew member who responded to a pilot the way he did. But, then, the pilots never spoke of their incompatibility with other human beings, either. They simply kept to themselves. Maybe that prevented ordinary people from reacting to them.

  Radu checked the other body boxes. Neither Atna nor Orca had yet reached a state approaching consciousness, so he left them alone. He walked quietly through the lounge and past the pilot’s cabin, to the control room beyond.

  At the sight of the viewport he stopped, astonished.

  An emerald green, cloud-wisped world hung just above them. The ship had surfaced out of transit with accuracy impossible for an automated ship and unusual for a piloted one. Most ships returned to normal space in more or less the correct region, too close for another dive but far enough away that the crew had to travel in real time at subluminal speeds, for a week, or a month, unable to escape the boredom even with transit drugs. They were too toxic for any use but sleeping through transit.

  Sometimes a ship surfaced so far off its course that it had to dive again. And sometimes the ships went so far astray that no one on board could figure out where they were, and so they were lost. At least that was what everyone assumed happened to lost ships; there was no real evidence that they did not remain in transit forever, and some theoretical evidence that they did.

  Radu glanced again at the bright world above, impressed despite himself by the pilot’s skill. Vasili Nikolaievich’s reputation was well earned.

  Curious about the changes in the flight, Radu requested the ship’s log. The main computer responded immediately; Vasili had already awakened it from transit mode.

  Not only had they given up their cargo and acquired a pilot, but even their destination was new: Ngthummulun. Radu might as well not have bothered to look it up: He had no idea how to pronounce it. He frowned. The word was so strange to him that for an instant he suspected the ship had been diverted to an alien rather than a human planet. In quarantine before his first visit to
earth, he had received the null-strain bacteria that prevented cross-ecosystem contamination. But Radu needed more experience before the administrators would approve him for alien-contact training. And in addition to training, he lacked the proper immunizations. If Ngthummulun were an alien-inhabited world, the first he had ever encountered, he would be forbidden to land.

  The précis dispelled his moment’s disappointment. Ngthummulun’s colonists were human, from Australia, on earth. Radu thought he could probably even pronounce the original name.

  The schedule showed a brief stopover here and a direct route back to earth. The bonus offered for a fast trip was so large that it easily explained the last minute changes as well as Vasili’s reassignment. The crew’s bonus, which was generous enough to surprise Radu, would be only a fraction of the amount the transit authority collected for itself. Nevertheless, Radu did not want to go back to earth. He could return without landing, of course he could sign onto another ship immediately. But this unexpected change in his ship’s course made his abrupt departure nothing more than foolish.

  Radu cursed softly. He had too little seniority even to complain, as if a complaint after the fact would do him any good at all.

  The potential profit caused the diversion, that was clear. But the log neglected to mention what cargo or what mission was worth the extra cost.

  Radu verified their destination and for practice checked for a better orbit. He knew that the pilot would already have changed whatever needed changing. Piloting, like mathematics, was an art as well as a science. Radu had never tried to fool himself about his own mathematical talents. He saw what anyone saw, he handled the factors anyone could handle. Going beyond, into mathematical originality and intuition, was not something he was capable of doing. He was good crew, but in more ways than one he was not, and never would be, a pilot.

  He returned to the lounge. It was a comfortable sitting room, one wall all tiers of plants, the other walls bright colors. Without checking — though he looked at the sensors anyway, out of habit — Radu could tell that the environmental controls were working properly. However efficient the air circulation, a slightly higher concentration of oxygen always lingered around the plant banks. He gave the ferny leaves a spray of water, then started a pot of coffee. He had drawn cooking duty, of course, as usual, but he enjoyed it and never understood why it was assigned by default.