Superluminal

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “Vasili Nikolaievich was just... making clear the relative status of pilots and crew.” Almost worse than telling a lie was inventing such a feeble one.

  Orca glanced at him quizzically, but if she had more questions she kept them to herself.

  o0o

  The ship docked at Earthstation. Before the last remnants of artificial gravity faded and the radial acceleration of the satellite took over, the chief marketing agent from Ngthummulun banged energetically on the outer hatch. Radu opened it, and the agent bounded in.

  “I’m amazed at your speed,” she said. “And very pleased.” She grabbed Vasili’s hand and pumped it. Looking extremely uncomfortable, the pilot extricated himself as quickly as possible.

  “I’ve credited your accounts,” the agent said cheerfully, not even noticing Vasili’s distress. “I have a certain amount of authority in determining the bonuses, which I’ve used.”

  Radu felt too tired to react. Besides, most of his pay went directly to Twilight’s account; he never even saw it. Vasili muttered something and returned his attention to the message flowing in above the controls.

  Orca gave both Vasili and Radu a disgusted look. She gripped the agent’s hand warmly. “We appreciate it. Thank you. Radu will have your cargo module freed up and ready for transfer in a couple of minutes.”

  Radu heard a subtle “or else” in her tone.

  “Fine,” the agent said. “I have space reserved on the four o’clock shuttle — I may just make it.” She clasped Orca’s hand again, and hurried off as quickly as she had arrived.

  Orca swung around on Radu and Vasili. She folded her arms across her chest. “That was about as rude a performance as I ever saw,” she said. “I don’t care how mad you are at each other — or why. It’s no excuse for the way you behaved to her.”

  Radu stared at the deck. Vasili looked over his shoulder at Orca, then turned away again.

  Orca made a sharp noise of irritation and anger and strode out of the room. Her shoes made no noise, but the engine room hatch clanged loudly when she threw it open, and again when she banged it shut.

  At that moment Vasili snarled a curse and jumped to his feet, plunged out of the control room and into his cabin, and slammed his door behind him.

  Radu stood alone, upset, angry, and confused. He glanced over at the control panel, where Vasili’s message hung fading in the air. Perhaps he was invading Vasili’s privacy, but before it disappeared, he read it. Then he understood the pilot’s reaction. He had been replaced on the exploration team, and even though it was not scheduled to leave for several days, his request for reinstatement had been turned down.

  Orca and Radu worked apart and in silence, Radu transferring the cargo module and shutting down the ship, Orca finishing with the engines. When he was less than halfway done, Radu heard Vasili leave. The pilot had no obligation to stay, no captain’s duty to help his own crew or to turn the ship over to its next users.

  By the time Radu finished work, he felt groggy. He gingerly opened the hatch to the engine room.

  “Orca? Can I help?”

  She climbed up the ladder. “No, I’m all done.” She sat on the edge of the hatchway, rubbed her eyes, and yawned.

  “You were right,” Radu said. “About the way I behaved, I mean. I’m sorry.”

  “Most of those agents are such sharks, we ought to at least be civil to the ones who act human.”

  “Vasili had an excuse,” Radu said. “He was waiting for the reply for his x team.”

  “Did he get it?”

  “They turned him down.”

  She snorted. “He didn’t really expect them to give it back to him, did he?”

  “I think that he did.”

  “Radu, the administrators do as little as possible to interfere with their profits.” She stood up, stretched, and dogged the hatch shut. “They never change anything that works, even for the chance to do it better. Vaska’s broken the elapsed time record for every round trip he’s ever piloted. He can’t earn express bonuses for the transit authority if he’s off exploring.”

  “But he’d be helping find new planets —”

  “They don’t make as much as you’d expect off new worlds. They can’t claim them, they can’t own them. They wouldn’t even look for them if there weren’t a subsidy and a reward.”

  “But they gave Vasili the assignment at first —”

  “And he never got to go on it, did he?”

  “That’s a very cynical way to look at things,” Radu said.

  “Tell me that again after you’ve been on the crew a little longer,” she said.

  He would have liked to point out an explanation for the sequence of events that had some more altruistic structure behind it, but he could come up with nothing better than coincidence and bureaucratic thoughtlessness.

  “You look like I feel,” Orca said, “and I feel like hell. Let’s get out of here.”

  In the locker room, Orca held a wyuna up to the light, gazed into it, and put it in her duffel bag. Then she stuffed clothing, bright wrinkled bits of gold and metallic rainbows, in on top. Subjectively the trip had been so short that a change of clothes had hardly been necessary. Radu retrieved his other shirt from the cleaner and flung it into his bag.

  They left the ship and checked into Earthstation. Their accounts were, as promised, credited with a substantial bonus, and Radu’s was already debited with a transfer of funds to Twilight’s trade balance. He wondered if his contribution made even a blip in the debt his world had incurred as a result of the plague.

  Radu glanced at the shuttle schedule when Orca called it up. No seats were available until the next day. Radu clenched his fist around the handle of his duffel bag. All he wanted was to get away from Earthstation, away from the pilots, to a place where he could think.

  Orca made a reservation for herself; Radu reserved a place and put his name on the waiting list for any opening, to any landing port. Orca wanted to go to North America Northwest, but for Radu it held too many memories of Laenea. He would prefer to go elsewhere.

  He and Orca stepped onto the moving ramp that led to the station’s crew section.

  “Are you going out again?” Orca asked.

  “Not immediately,” Radu said. “And you?”

  “No. My family’s having a… a meeting. I promised to go if I possibly could.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In the Strait of Georgia. Do you know where that is?”

  “Approximately.” He had studied the areas around the landing platforms before his first trip down; he had chosen North America Northwest because the climate seemed most like Twilight’s. But he had never seen the mainland or the inland waters that lay east of the port; he had never even left the artificial island.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “When I’m gone, I do miss it. I even miss my family.” She grinned ruefully. “When I’m home, I don’t get along with some of them all that well.”

  Perhaps that explained why Orca, a diver, was working on the crew. He had wanted to ask her, but it was the custom, on Twilight and most colony worlds, to be satisfied with the information people volunteered about themselves. Besides, if Radu questioned Orca she could do the same to him, with the right to expect an answer. He could give whatever lame explanations he pleased about his home world’s need for hard currency, but he preferred to keep to himself his real reasons for leaving. And his reasons for staying on earth right now he could not talk about.

  Radu and Orca stepped off the ramp and through the entrance into the crew sector.

  Six pilots stood in a semicircle waiting for them. Ignoring the diver, they stared at Radu. At one end of the line, Vasili Nikolaievich watched Radu coldly, as if they had never met, as if they had never spoken together civilly. Orca took Radu’s hand. He grasped her long, strong fingers gratefully.

  She stepped hesitantly forward. Repressing an urge to pull her back and flee, Radu followed. The pilots stayed in their unwavering line — and they
were all pilots: Only Vasili among them did not show a scar.

  “Hello, Vaska,” Orca said to him. He did not move or speak or look at her; he simply kept staring at Radu.

  “Vasili Nikolaievich, I promise you —” Radu cut off his words when the pilot’s expression hardened from warning to anger.

  “You’re to come with us,” Vasili said, and, to Orca, “You’ve had your chances. Your presence won’t be required.”

  “Who says?” Still holding Radu’s hand, pulling him along behind her, Orca shouldered her way forward.

  “Don’t make trouble, Orca,” one of the other pilots said. “This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Oh? What does it have to do with? What the hell is going on?” She did not even slow down.

  The pilots turned and moved with them, surrounding them again, closing in.

  Radu felt his pulse quickening. He hoped it was only fear, but as the circle finished forming his heart began to pound, clenching in his chest like something trapped, sending his blood in a rush through his veins, so fast that his vision dimmed in a scarlet haze and a phantom wind roared in his ears. He stumbled after Orca, trying to calm himself, but his control was gone. He could no more slow his pulse and lower his blood pressure than he could grow a pair of wings and glide from Earthstation to earth itself. He walked faster — he tried to run but almost fell — and the pilots kept up easily. Orca glanced back at him. Radu could not speak. They were only a short way from a common room, where they would find other crew and station personnel. Radu set himself to get that far. Surely, in so public a setting, the pilots would have to leave him alone.

  He stumbled again. His knee hit the metal floor hard and his fingers slipped from Orca’s hand. He knelt, gasping for breath, his heart laboring. He could hear nothing but the roar of his pulse. There was nothing to hear. He raised his head slowly. The pilots stared down at him, still without speaking, fading in and out through his obscured vision.

  Orca tried to hold him up. He heard her, very far away, shouting.

  “Call a doctor! Damn you all, will you help!”

  Radu collapsed, but the diver kept him from falling and eased him to the deck. He felt cold metal against his back, against his quivering hands. The lights above him stretched away in infinite glowing lines. He felt the vibrations of footsteps through the floor and flung his arm across his eyes. He did not want to see the pilots gazing down at him, willing him to die.

  Then, almost imperceptibly, his heartbeat slowed. The pain clamped around his chest lessened, and he could breathe more easily. He let his arm fall to his side and opened his eyes. Orca knelt beside him, bending over him with her fingers at the angle of his jaw.

  The pilots were gone.

  “Don’t move,” Orca said. “I’ll get help.”

  Somehow he managed to grasp her wrist before she stood.

  “No, wait.” He stopped to catch his breath. He could only fill his lungs halfway, and his fingers trembled feebly.

  “You’re having a heart attack!”

  Radu shook his head. “It was… something else.”

  Orca frowned. “You’re nuts, I’m calling somebody. I’d’ve done it before only I was afraid you’d need resuscitation.”

  Radu had an overpowering urge to laugh, which made him gasp and giggle weakly.

  “What the hell is so funny?”

  “A diver knowing how to give artificial respiration.” He laughed again.

  “We’re not the only people in the water,” she said, “and sometimes the landers get into trouble. Good gods, who cares? Lie down.” She started away.

  Radu’s laughter trailed off, but he pushed himself up and tried to stand. Orca’s spangled jacket slipped from his shoulders where she had thrown it. His fingers felt numb; he had to concentrate to make them grasp it. Orca heard him, stopped, and turned back. He held her jacket out to her.

  Watching him, worried, she took it and absently slipped on. She glanced down. There was a run in her sleeveless knitted shirt, where the gold thread had parted and the fabric unraveled in a line up her ribs and the side of her small breast. She jerked the front edges of the jacket together, hiding the flaw in irritation.

  “You’re all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “I react badly to pilots. I don’t understand why. I think it’s getting worse.”

  “Did they know? Did they do it deliberately?”

  “I guess they did.” He had, after all, told Vasili Nikolaievich.

  “What did they want?”

  “They wanted… to convince me not to tell anyone what they want.”

  She scowled at him. “All right. Forget it.” She turned and started away. He tried to follow, but stumbled and nearly fell. She caught him and slipped his arm over her shoulders to let him lean on her. “Come on.”

  Radu would not have gotten very far without her. She helped him along to the station’s section of small crew rooms. Finding an empty cubicle, she unlatched the door, got him inside, and eased him down on the narrow bed.

  “Want your boots off?”

  “I can do it.” He bent his knee, drawing one foot toward his hands as he lay flat on the hard mattress. He did not feel as if he could sit up again.

  “Don’t be stupid.” Orca grasped his boot and pulled.

  “Be careful of your hands —”

  Orca gave the boot a solid jerk and it slid off. She dropped it and held up her hand, spreading her fingers so the translucent webbing showed.

  “I know it looks fragile,” she said. “But it isn’t. It’s very tough.” Then she showed him a long, jagged scar between the second and third fingers of her left hand. “And it heals fast when something does happen.” She grabbed his other boot and pulled it off. “Besides, it doesn’t make that much difference swimming.”

  “Then why do you have it?” he asked, surprised.

  “Because when people thought about what divers would be like, even before anybody could create us, they always imagined us looking like this. So that’s how they designed us. We decided to stay this way.”

  “Are your feet like that too?” Radu never would have asked such a question if he were not so tired. He blushed. “I’m sorry —”

  “I have foldover toes, like a platypus,” she said. “With webs between.” Then she grinned. “No, my feet are pretty much the same as anybody’s, except for the nails. Want to see?”

  He nodded, curious, and glad she was not offended by his prying.

  “There’s nothing secret about being a diver, you know.” She sat on the edge of his bed, pulled off her red canvas shoes, and wiggled her toes. They were long, but not abnormally so, and they were not appreciably webbed.

  Radu pushed himself up on one elbow and took her foot in his other hand. Her toenails were like claws, cat claws, tiger claws, retractable and heavy and quit sharp. Orca flexed her foot and the claws extended. One dimpled the flesh of his hand, very gently.

  “Good protection,” she said. “You need it sometimes, in the sea. They aren’t much against sharks, but then there aren’t many dangerous sharks where I live.” She retracted her claws and reached for her shoes.

  Radu lay back on the bed as she stood up.

  “Do you think they’ll come after you again?” she asked abruptly.

  Radu shook his head. “I don’t know.” His reasoning was none too clear right now; he did not want to think about pilots. He could not. Surrounded by normal space-time, he wanted only to sleep.

  Orca stood gazing at the closed door, silhouetted against its dirty white surface. She shrugged, an action more like shaking off doubt than expressing it, and put her hand up against the panel to seal the room against outside intrusion. She turned around.

  “I’m not so recently out of the water that I think this is a clever line. But I don’t want to leave you alone tonight, and to tell you the truth I’m not anxious to be alone myself. Do you mind if I stay?”

  “No,” Radu said.
“Of course not.”

  She kicked off her shoes again and dropped her spangled jacket on the floor. “Is there room? Not that there’s much difference between floors and beds in these places.”

  “There’s plenty of room.” Radu moved over and Orca lay down beside him, between him and the door. He was as glad of her company as he was grateful for her concern.

  She smelled like no one he had ever been close to before, cool and salty, like the sea’s morning mist. He wondered if he smelled, to her, like forest or earth or alien ground.

  “Lights out, please,” Radu said. The lights obeyed, leaving the room completely dark.

  Radu lay in the narrow bed for nearly an hour, unable to rest, trying not to toss and turn.

  “You can’t sleep,” Orca said softly.

  “No. How did you know? Did I wake you?”

  “I can see you,” Orca said.

  “It’s pitch dark in here,” Radu said. That was one of the few things Radu did not like about being in space. Interior rooms, rooms with no windows, were as lightless as caves. He turned his head toward the sound of Orca’s voice, but he could see nothing of her, not even the glint of her pale, fine hair. The scarlet pattern of the blood vessels in his retinas flickered against blackness.

  “For you it’s dark,” she said. “Not for me. You don’t know much about divers, do you?”

  “Only that they have foldover toes, like a platypus,” he said. “With webs between.”

  Orca chuckled and dug her claws gently into the heavy fabric of his pants. He heard the quick pricking sound, but her talons never touched his skin.

  “No,” he said, more seriously. “I only know what you’ve told me.”

  “We see farther into the infrared, and farther into the violet, than humans do.”

  “Don’t you consider yourself still human?”

  “My father would say no,” she said.

  “What would you say?”

  She hesitated. “I’d say we were more different than a race, but less different than a separate species. We’re a transition phase.”

  “A transition to what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, and to Radu she sounded very sad.