Superluminal

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “It’s impossible.” Radu stepped away from him. “The ship can’t fly without a crew.”

  “Vaska can get the ship from orbit to a transit point. After that it doesn’t matter. I don’t think it will ever come out again.”

  “I’m to warn Orca, but desert the pilot?”

  “You can tell him if you want. But he won’t pay any attention. Pilots never think they can fail. I can’t save him. I can’t save the cargo. You and Orca are the only ones I can warn.”

  “But you know it’s impossible.”

  “At least give Orca a chance to decide for herself. Will you tell her what I’ve said?”

  “When you know she’ll have no choice, either?”

  “Please tell her, Radu.”

  “All right!” In his confusion, he spoke harshly. He regretted both the harshness and the agreement instantly. Badly shaken, Radu reached out and clasped Atna’s hand; he touched his forehead. “Atna, do you feel well?”

  Atna’s vision was all too similar to the desperate fantasies of plague hallucination, but the navigator had no fever, nor any of the other symptoms Radu would quickly have recognized.

  “Do you mean, am I ill? Am I crazy? No, neither, I understand what I’m asking. I don’t want to frighten you —” He spoke quickly and urgently. “No, I do. Please do as I ask.”

  “I have to leave.”

  Atna hesitated. “You’re sure?” The tension had gone from his voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Then good-bye.”

  They hugged again, briefly and without intensity. Atna behaved as if he thought of Radu as already dead, already lost.

  Atna turned and walked into the forest without another word.

  o0o

  Making the last-minute checks of the shuttle truck’s systems, Radu tried to push away the grim, cold feeling Atna’s words had given him. Things happened to ships in transit — sometimes things happened to ships even in normal space. Atna’s fear and agitation had infected him, and reminded him of experiences he had tried to forget. He found concentrating difficult.

  Atna had given him an impossible demand. Without the navigator the ship was short-handed to begin with. Besides, Radu had already taken as much time off as he dared. If all he did was take vacations, he should go back to Twilight. His home needed either his labor or the currency he earned on the crew.

  What troubled Radu most was the possibility that Atna might be ill. Not with Twilight’s plague: He had none of those symptoms and the cryptovirus that caused it had been, it was claimed, eliminated. But some other disease… He asked a few questions of the shuttle’s computer; finding no useful information in its limited records, he directed it to tap into the transit ship’s database. No epidemics were on report, here or elsewhere; the computer could not find a disease that matched the information Radu offered it.

  Vasili broke into the flow of data.

  “What are you doing with the computer? Do you realize what time it is?”

  Radu noticed with a shock how close he was to the end of the launch window. Vasili’s irritation was justified.

  “Something’s wrong here, Vasili Nikolaievich,” Radu said.

  “Atna just said some very odd things to me. I’m worried that—”

  Vasili cut him off, laughing. “You mean he told you your fortune?”

  “Well… I wouldn’t put it quite that way.”

  “People from Ngthummulun are always claiming to know the future.”

  “Oh,” Radu said.

  “Come back to the ship, right now. We don’t have time to waste with this nonsense.”

  A few minutes later, Radu put power to the cargo truck. It lumbered down the runway, faster and faster, and hoisted itself forcibly into the air.

  After an unexciting flight, Radu docked well, sliding the shuttle against its fittings with a satisfying sharp snap that rang through the craft’s skin. He relaxed his hold on the controls. His knuckles were white and his palms damp.

  He had wanted to dock perfectly, but did not quite know why it was so important. To prove he had never thought they were all exposed to a serious illness? To prove he thought nothing of Atna’s visions? To show off? If so, to whom? Orca? Vasili Nikolaievich?

  “Hurry in,” the pilot said over the radio. “I want to leave orbit immediately.”

  Amused despite himself, Radu realized that the pilot would hardly even notice anything as trivial as a good manual docking in normal space.

  He shut down the controls and the onboard computer, preparing it for transit. He spoke soothing words to it. Though it was not self-aware, he always talked to it when he was alone. It could hear him, it could understand the patterns of his words, but whether it understood words spoken as if to a child going off to sleep, he did not know.

  Unfastening his harness, he floated out of his chair, opened the roof hatch, and pulled himself from the region of freefall into artificial gravity. He felt the familiar lurch and strain, but now the unsettled feeling did not linger, as it had when he first encountered it.

  I wonder if I’ll ever get too used to it to notice? he thought.

  o0o

  Radu went reluctantly into the control room to speak to Vasili. The pilot lay back in his chair, watching the computer display as it changed in colors and waves before him.

  “Are you all calmed down now?” he said, without looking around.

  “I had good reason for being worried,” Radu said.

  “Maybe someone should have warned you that the inhabitants of Ngthummulun can be quite strange. But I thought you knew Atna.”

  “I’ve crewed with him before. Apparently I don’t know him as well as I thought.”

  “You were concerned about him, and about us as well, I assume. That’s commendable, even if it wasn’t necessary. Stop worrying about it.”

  Radu fingered the wyunas in his pocket, drew one out, and offered it to Vasili.

  “Atna asked me to give you one of these, if you want it.”

  Vasili glanced at it with disinterest. “Thanks, but I don’t wear jewelry. Can you find out how long Orca will be? We’re near a transit point.”

  Feeling that he had behaved stupidly ever since waking up, Radu shoved the wyuna back into his pocket and left.

  o0o

  Radu climbed down into the engine room. The high and low notes of the resting transit engines beat together around him. The amber light of an information display glowed beyond banks of control nets. He started toward it.

  “Orca?”

  “Just a sec.”

  Kneeling beside one of the nets, reaching deep into its interstices, Orca watched the display that hung in the air beside her. She was forcing the repair of a broken connection. The information she was reading looked, to Radu, like numbers studded along a tangle of electric-orange string. From his point of view the numbers were backward.

  Radu watched quietly, until Orca sat on her heels with a sigh, freed her hands from the net, and stretched. The data block faded out.

  “Nice docking,” she said cheerfully.

  “Thanks,” Radu said, pleased she had noticed.

  “How’s Atna?”

  “He sent these.” Radu handed her several of the wyunas.

  “So that’s why we’re here,” she said. She looked at them closely. “They’re even prettier than he said. Thank you. But how is he?”

  “He looked much better after he landed…” After what Vasili had told him, it seemed hardly necessary, indeed foolish, to tell Orca of Atna’s fears. Even if he had promised.

  “I’ve been worried about him,” Orca said. She raised one eyebrow, silently questioning the uncertainty in Radu’s tone.

  “He’s worried about us,” Radu said. Because he had promised.

  “Why?”

  “He had… a premonition, I suppose… that something will happen to the ship in transit. He wants us to stay behind with him.”

  Orca cupped the wyunas in her webbed hand, shook them so they rang together softly,
and stared at them intently.

  “He was very upset,” Radu said. “He made me promise to tell you and Vasili Nikolaievich. The pilot said it was nothing.” When Orca did not reply, he continued. “If you want to stay —”

  She touched his hand without looking at him, and he fell silent. He watched her, disturbed by her reaction. Two short vertical frown lines deepened on her forehead, then smoothed and vanished. The engine’s eerie pulsations continued; the wind-chime touch of the wyunas reminded Radu of Ngthummulun’s forest.

  Orca took a breath, exhaled, and closed her hand into a fist.

  “All right,” she said. “It’s all right. What were you saying?”

  “Do you want to go down to Ngthummulun?”

  “No. Do you?”

  Radu shook his head. “Then you agree with Vasili, that there’s nothing to Atna’s dream?”

  “On the contrary. Atna’s dreams are as real as this world. They’re another level of reality. Another way of perceiving things. I’m not explaining this right. I’m not sure you can, in Standard. If we were underwater —” She shrugged helplessly.

  “You’re staying on the ship.”

  “I don’t get any resonances from his perception. I don’t feel a threat. To me, I mean.”

  “I would have assumed you’d dismiss it out of hand.”

  “No — and I would have assumed you’d take him more seriously.”

  Radu shivered suddenly.

  “I’m sorry,” Orca said, in response to his silence. “I didn’t mean that as an insult.”

  “No, I — I didn’t take it as one. I just can’t…”

  Again she waited for him to finish his thought; again he failed to speak.

  “Atna’s frame of reference is a whole lot different from mine, and I suppose from yours,” Orca said. “But I’ve learned to take it seriously.”

  They walked together back to the crew lounge, to report to the pilot, to make the final preparations for transit, to ready themselves for sleep. At a porthole, Orca paused and looked out at Ngthummulun.

  “Besides,” she said, “this place has a million lakes and no ocean. I’d sooner vacation in a bathtub.”

  o0o

  In the box room, Radu and Orca hugged each other good-bye. Orca lay down and positioned her face mask. In a few seconds she was asleep. Radu closed her in.

  The computer spoke softly to remind Radu of the time.

  “I know the time!” he said, angry for reasons he did not understand. He sat on the edge of his chamber, pulled off his boots, and flung them into a corner. Bending down, he rested his forehead on his crossed arms for a moment. Then, calmly and surely, for his life depended on it, he prepared himself for transit and went to sleep.

  Chapter 5

  Laenea was calling to him, she needed him, as he had needed her —

  A raucous siren penetrated the last thin haze of transit sleep, dissolving Radu’s frightening dream. He fumbled for the latch on his body box. The lid clicked open and he pushed it aside and climbed out, made awkward by the remnants of anesthetic chemicals, and confused by memories recalled by his dream.

  The dim light faded, and in the twilit last moment the ship began to spin. Its motion threw Radu against his sleep chamber. He struggled to his feet, reaching out to get his bearings in the darkness. But as he oriented himself toward the control room the synthetic gravity contracted, twisted, and flung him down.

  This time he lay still, waiting for the ship’s convulsions to end. Waves lapped over him, slow and dry, not of water but of weight and weightlessness. His heart pounded and his vision turned scarlet against night. If the waves rose higher, they would crush him as easily as any angry sea.

  But the oscillation slowed, gentled, and finally ceased. A circle of light from the port brightened the room: strange that the darkness before had appeared so complete. The ship had been spinning… now the patch of light remained in one place. Radu climbed to his feet. Beyond the port spun a red-orange star.

  It should be yellow, he thought with a shock. It should be earth’s sun. But it’s a red giant.

  The siren moaned to silence. Radu’s shirt was soaked at the armpits, and drops of sweat ran down his sides. Footsteps hurried down the corridor, but halted outside the box room.

  Radu waited a moment, but nothing happened. He opened the door and came face to face with Vasili Nikolaievich.

  “What’s wrong?”

  The pilot gazed up at him in silence. His black eyes glittered as he searched Radu’s face, and his pale skin was flushed.

  “What’s wrong?” Radu said again. “What’s the matter?”

  “How do you feel?”

  “How do I feel!” Perhaps transit did make pilots unstable, as rumor would have it. “I feel I ought to be responding to the emergency, if you’d tell me what it is.”

  “The emergency is that you started to wake up in transit.”

  Radu stared at him, all his reactions clamped into a tight ball in his chest. His heart pounded.

  “The sensors protected you. They threw us back into normal space,” Vasili said calmly. “Don’t look so worried — you’re all right, they worked in time.”

  Radu gazed down at his hands. They looked no different, but now he knew why the pilot had stared at him so intently, and why he had hesitated until Radu opened the door. They both knew how normal people died in transit.

  “How could I wake up?”

  Vasili shrugged. “A mistake in the anesthetic. An obstruction in the gas line. I don’t know.”

  He no longer sounded upset, and Radu permitted himself to relax, too. He was, after all, alive, and apparently unchanged by his experience.

  “Where are we?”

  The pilot shrugged again, left Radu in the hatchway, and went to inspect the information panel of Radu’s body box.

  “Then we’re lost?”

  “I haven’t checked yet,” Vasili said without turning toward him. “I came to see what happened as soon as I got the ship stabilized. I’ve never left transit quite so abruptly before.”

  Radu had never experienced leaving transit at all, having always gone through it sound asleep. He had wondered — as all crew members did — what he might see if he regained consciousness before he was supposed to. Now he had the evidence of his own confusion and bruises that the emergency sensors would prevent him from catching even a glimpse, at the risk of his life, of the spectacle the pilots kept so secret. If a crew member started to wake up, or slept too lightly, the sensors would always throw the ship out of transit and return it to normal space. The absolute certainty made Radu feel relieved, yet envious.

  Vasili glanced at the display again. “I’ll chart our position. You do a blood chemistry and check the anesthetic feeds. Do it quickly — I want to get back on our way.”

  He left Radu alone with the blinking machine that was supposed to protect him during flight. Radu set to work.

  After several hours, his frustration increased as he looked for and failed to find any malfunction. The anesthetic, a gas, flowed smoothly and at the upper limit of concentration for someone of Radu’s size and age. His blood chemistry was well within normal limits except for high readings of adrenaline and its breakdown products. He had expected that. After what had happened, low or normal levels would have been unusual.

  The shreds of his dream kept distracting him. Never before had he experienced a nightmare while he was asleep in transit. This was frighteningly like his hallucinations back on Twilight, just before he had become ill.

  Stop scaring yourself, he thought. No wonder you’re having nightmares.

  He frowned over the blood analysis. His knowledge of biochemistry was only superficial; he had to accept the information the programs gave him. The body sometimes rejected one drug and had to be switched to another. That was the only suggestion the computer offered. Radu could think of no other likely supposition.

  This ship carried supplies of two other transit drugs. Radu factored the second choice for
stress and noted the upper dosage limit. He left the information drifting above his box, set up the equipment, and returned to the control room.

  “I’m ready.”

  “Good,” Vasili said. “Did you find the problem?”

  “Reaction against the anesthetic, I think.”

  “That’s unusual.”

  “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.” He paused. “Unless Atna was right. Or unless he really was sick and I’m coming down with whatever he had.”

  Vasili snorted. “He wasn’t right, and you aren’t sick. Let’s go.”

  In the box room, Radu rolled up his sleeve, exposed his wrist to the antiseptic light, and climbed into his box.

  “The IV is ready,” he said. “It works quickly so I’ll wish you well now.”

  Vasili knelt and picked up the IV needle in its sterile covering. His hand trembled, and he looked, if possible, even paler than usual.

  “What’s the matter?” Radu asked.

  Vasili hesitated. “I’m not very fond of needles, I thought I was done with them…”

  Though Vasili did not show his scar, Radu had seen Laenea’s, and the other marks from the operations that had made her a pilot. He did not blame Vasili for his dislike of the needle. For a moment, Radu considered waking Orca up to help with the anesthetic. But that was ridiculous. Time aside, it would put her under a strain that was completely unnecessary.

  “Can’t you use another drug?” Vasili tried to smile but succeeded only in looking faintly ill.

  “I’d prefer to avoid it,” Radu said. The third-choice drug, though taken by mouth, had a range of unpleasant side effects. Radu wished for a transit drug that would migrate through the skin, but they all consisted of large organic molecules too complex for that procedure.

  Vasili shook his head quickly. “Of course. I’m sorry.” He took Radu’s wrist in one hand, and steadied the needle.

  The IV’s built-in topical anesthetic tingled against Radu’s inner arm, then numbed the skin. Vasili uncertainly guided the needle into a vein, digging so deep that the insertion hurt. Radu gritted his teeth.

  The drug affected him almost instantly. He tried to lie down and felt himself falling.