Superluminal

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “What’s the matter?” He slid his hand up her arm to her shoulder, to her throat, to her face. He touched her cheek in the darkness and brushed the tears with his fingertips. “Orca, what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know what we’re changing to. I’m not sure I want to know.”

  “But it’s all speculation, it’s all generations away.”

  “Not for us,” she said. “We didn’t become divers by natural evolution. There’s no reason to slow down to that rate now.”

  “Oh.” Radu felt embarrassed by his own ignorance. “Of course. Your next generation could be different.”

  “Or I could.”

  “You —?“

  “That’s what the meeting’s about. To decide if we should change. The techniques are easy enough. You figure out what you want, build the DNA, construct a series of carrier viruses, sensitize yourself to them —” Radu felt her shrug. “You feel like you have the flu for a few days, while the virus replicates. Then you’re well, the new genes are integrated, and they slowly change you to fit.”

  Radu suddenly shuddered.

  “Hey,” Orca said. “It’s not bad at all, not really. The process itself is trivial. I’ve done it myself, a couple of times. But just for little things. The big ones scare me, but they won’t turn us into Frankenstein monsters.”

  “Of course not, I’m sorry — I don’t know why I reacted like that. Have you ever had an experience, and in the middle of it suddenly felt you’d gone through it before, exactly as it was happening?”

  “Sure. Déjà vu, it’s called. It’s just a trick your mind plays on you, like an echo. Crossed axons.”

  “I suppose,” Radu said. “Whatever it was, it made me understand why you feel wary of the changes you might have to undergo.”

  “I wouldn’t have to,” she said. “It would be my choice. But if I didn’t, and everyone else did…”

  She stopped.

  “You’d be left behind,” Radu said finally. “Whatever it was your family was going to, you’d be left behind.”

  Orca nodded against his shoulder, then held him in silence for some time.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” she said. Her voice was easy again, full of her usual good humor. “Tell me about Twilight. What did you do before this, or did you join the crew straight out of school?”

  “We never formally go to school,” Radu said. “But we never formally leave it, either. There aren’t enough people on Twilight for many of us to spend all our time studying. So we do that, and other things too. I liked geology, so I went on surveys every summer from the time I was old enough to be more asset than liability, first with a group and later by myself. Everybody does everything on Twilight, more or less. I helped in my clan’s nursery, and built houses, and I piloted one of the blimps —”

  Orca made a strange noise. “Something wrong?”

  “A blimp?”

  “Don’t you like blimps?”

  “The only thing I like less than blimps is boats.”

  “But why?”

  “Because with a boat you can’t see what’s under you. It’s like driving a ground car down the road with your eyes and ears covered.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you don’t like blimps.”

  “You’ll laugh,” she said.

  “That’s possible,” Radu said. “I could use a good laugh right now.”

  Orca chuckled again. “Get ready for one, then. I get airsick. I get seasick even worse.”

  Radu did laugh. Orca was not offended, because she laughed, too.

  “Most divers don’t like boats,” she said. “You need a lot of equipment to find out things that you can learn underwater by giving one good shout and listening carefully.”

  “What about blimps?” Radu said.

  “As far as I know,” she said, “I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t like blimps.”

  “The only person in several worlds, I think. I got to fly ours for only one season because the waiting list to take it over was so long.” Suddenly he yawned.

  “Me, too,” Orca said.

  Tentatively each put an arm around the other, and then they slept.

  o0o

  Radu struggled up out of dreams that, instead of being distinct and vivid, were jumbled and muddy, mixing Laenea and transit and homesickness and fear. He sat bolt upright, staring in the darkness toward the door, expecting it to open and reveal a line of pilots beyond.

  He pushed the paranoid thought away, muttered for the lights, and looked around the tiny windowless room. Orca was gone. He was disappointed, and rather surprised, but he could hardly blame her.

  Using the communications terminal in the room, he checked the status of Laenea’s transit ship. It was still out. He frowned, and rechecked, but the display gave no additional information. He shut it off.

  Combing his hair with his fingers and shedding his clothes behind him, he went into the minuscule bathroom.

  No one on Twilight would have taken as long or as hot a shower as he indulged in. He did not even feel guilty about it.

  Earthstation has plenty of water, he thought. It has plenty of power. I know that. But that isn’t why I’m standing here with luxurious amounts of water running wasted between my toes. It’s because I’m changing. I’m coming to expect what this life has to offer. And I like it.

  But he disliked that realization.

  When Radu came out again, more relaxed but no closer than before to knowing what he should do, Orca was sitting crosslegged on the rumpled bed with breakfast spread out before her. Radu stepped back, reaching for a towel.

  “I’ve seen naked people before,” Orca said. “We hardly ever even wear clothes at home. Come and eat.”

  He wrapped himself up in the towel before he came out.

  “I thought you’d left,” he said.

  “I did. But I came back.”

  “I mean permanently.”

  She stopped smiling. “I thought about it.”

  Radu sat on the edge of the bed. “It probably would have been better if you had.”

  Orca handed him a piece of fruit and began unwrapping elegantly folded paper parcels.

  “You’re determined not to accept any help, aren’t you?”

  Radu took a cautious bite of the round yellow-green fruit. It was tart and sweet.

  “This is very good,” he said. “What is it?”

  “An apple,” Orca said impatiently.

  Radu took another bite, and started to comment again on the taste, but Orca’s expression made him think better of any more dissembling.

  “I’m sorry you’ve been involved,” he said. “If I knew anything you could do I’d accept your help gladly. But the truth is I don’t understand what’s happened myself, or what I can do about it.”

  “Oh, come on. This is what you were arguing with Vaska about, back on the ship, wasn’t it? As for that little production last night — you were scared, gods know so was I, but you weren’t surprised.”

  “I’d be doing you an injury if I told you everything,” Radu said. “I’d be putting you in considerable danger.”

  “Look, Radu, we’re crew. We don’t give that up when we leave the ship.”

  “It would be stupid to endanger you any more!”

  She shrugged. “I’m in about as deep as I can be. They’ll assume I know anything you know.”

  Of course she was right. If the pilots saw him as a sufficient threat, they would have to believe Orca was dangerous to them as well. It would not be safe for them to leave her alone.

  “You’ll have to tell them you don’t,” he said. “They know how to detect the truth —”

  “They wouldn’t even bother to try. Divers learn biocontrol as well as pilots do. Better, in some ways. We can neutralize stress so it doesn’t even show. I could pretend to lie — but I can’t prove it if I’m telling the truth.”

  Radu rubbed his face with one hand. “It’s pointless,” he said. “Simply pointless.”
<
br />   Orca crumpled a piece of wrapping paper slowly and very tightly, and dropped the wad on the bed.

  Chapter 7

  Radu’s seat on the earth shuttle was right next to Orca’s. It would have been easier if they could have changed, but the ship was full. They strapped in without speaking as the craft prepared to undock.

  Radu glanced carefully up and down the aisle, noting each passenger. No one else was crew. A few, by their ease in weightlessness, were station personnel; most were tourists or other visitors.

  He wished he had something to say to Orca to ease the anger and distrust he had forced between them. She sat straight and tense. He followed her gaze toward the front of the shuttle.

  A pilot had just come on board. Radu’s pulse rate increased.

  Ramona-Teresa paused in the aisle when she reached his place. Her glance at him was milder than when she had warned Laenea not to take Radu, or anyone else not a pilot, as her lover. She nodded to Orca, and smiled at Radu, as if to say, So, my dear, you like your lovers exotic: but you should have taken my advice about pilots in the first place.

  Radu looked away from her, blushing. He did not speak to her, and he was too embarrassed to say anything to Orca.

  o0o

  Neither Radu nor Orca broke the silence, all the way down. They landed on the port platform late at night. In the disorder of getting off the shuttle, Orca vanished among the other passengers. Though he was glad she would be out of his conflict with the pilots, after her departure Radu felt very much alone. He saw Ramona-Teresa in the crowd, but she paid him no attention. Radu was puzzled. She had not been with the pilots who had confronted him. Could she be unaware of what had happened?

  Radu passed his hand over his eyes and rubbed his temples. She knew. He was quite sure that she knew.

  He went to the nearest communications terminal and requested the status of Laenea’s ship.

  It was still out.

  His concern increased. He needed to find someone who knew about pilot training, who knew how long the first flight usually lasted.

  Why don’t you catch up to Ramona-Teresa, and ask her? he thought, and laughed quickly.

  “Do you wish to receive your message?” the terminal asked him.

  “Do I have one?”

  Taking his question as an affirmative, the terminal responded, spitting out hard copy for privacy rather than spinning the words in the air or speaking them aloud: I must see you alone as soon as you return. Come to my restaurant. Marc.

  Radu touched the wyuna in his pocket. He was surprised that Laenea’s mysterious friend even remembered him.

  Radu shoved the message into his pocket beside the wyuna. He wondered what Marc could have to say to him, to sound so urgent. He decided he had better find out.

  o0o

  Marc’s restaurant was dark. Radu stood outside the closed ornamental gate, unsure what to do.

  Marc’s image flickered into existence before him.

  “Hello, Radu Dracul.”

  “I hope I didn’t wake you,” Radu said. “But I just got your message.”

  “I seldom sleep,” Marc said. “Come in.”

  The gate swung silently open. Radu peered into the dimness, seeing no one; a light came on, but no one was there.

  “It’s safe,” Marc said. “I don’t keep a nest of tigers, which is more than I can say for some other of Laenea’s friends.”

  The reference to tigers reminded Radu of Kathell Stafford and her threat. He had barely thought of her since he left. Could Marc know of the incident? Uneasily, Radu went inside.

  Ferns and vines and tropical plants lined the walls and drooped from the ceiling of the foyer. Radu had not even noticed them the first time he was here. He smiled, remembering: He and Laenea had had other things to notice than the décor.

  Like the plants in a ship’s ecosystem, these raised their environment’s oxygen content. Radu recognized several species that were specially designed to be used in transit vessels. He had never seen them outside one before. He stopped in front of a second wrought-iron gate. Marc’s indoor display formed, its colors sparkling through a rainbow.

  “Not that way,” he said. “In here.”

  A door, completely concealed by the vegetation, slipped open silently to reveal another unlit passage.

  “I don’t like to leave this open very long,” Marc said when Radu hesitated.

  Radu stepped through the foliage. The door glided shut, narrowing and then obliterating the block of light cast from behind him.

  Blind, Radu waited for one of Marc’s communication displays, for any glimmer of light. The echo of a large room replied to the beat of his heart.

  His eyes began to adjust. A glowing ember touched the edge of his vision. Then one indistinct shape sprang into focus, and another. He was surrounded by luminescent objects of delicate form.

  The lights came up gradually. The luminescence faded, eclipsed by artifacts whose beauty was brought out by color. Glass shelves lined the walls, displaying Marc’s collection of all the pretty things that people brought him.

  “Do you like them?”

  The voice was not the smooth production of the machine, but clear, direct, and human. Radu turned reluctantly toward it. Marc sat in an alcove at the end of the room. He was not deformed, as rumor made him. He was quite a handsome man, forty-five or fifty, with dark brown hair and eyes, and very pale skin. His face was unlined, gentle, and calm.

  “It’s safe,” Marc said again. “I’m safe. I know the rumors about me. You don’t need to be frightened.”

  “I’m not.” Radu approached, and, at Marc’s nod, sat on a bench nearby. “It’s only that I didn’t expect to meet you. Laenea told me no one ever did.”

  “That’s almost true,” Marc said. “Almost, but not quite.”

  Marc wore blue velvet pants, sandals, and a sleeveless silk shirt. He held himself motionless, but the tension in the muscles of his bare arms showed that his lack of animation was deliberate.

  He isn’t paralyzed, Radu thought; and then Marc slowly crossed one leg over the other. He moved as if he were afraid of what might happen if he did not stay almost perfectly quiet. Some diseases cause the bones to grow brittle and break with any exertion…

  “Thank you for coming in,” Marc said. “I hoped you would answer my message. I was extremely anxious to speak with you, before you took any action about the pilots.”

  Radu raised one eyebrow. “Your sources are very efficient.”

  “Some people bring me things,” Marc said. “Others give me information.”

  Radu remembered the wyuna. He drew it from his pocket. Its hard opalescent ridges caught the light.

  “I thought of you when I saw this.”

  Marc gazed smiling at Radu’s offering, but he did not reach out.

  “You must already have a whole shelf full,” Radu said. Marc, with his connections, had probably been given wyunas when they were still an experiment. Radu closed his hand around the jewel. He seemed always to behave like a naïf, here on earth.

  “No!” Marc said quickly. “On the contrary, I’ve never seen anything like it. Is it a shell? A stone?”

  Radu placed it on the arm of Marc’s chair. Both Marc’s hands covered panels of switches and buttons; he did not move from touching them, but bent down to look at his gift.

  “It’s a wyuna,” Radu said. As he explained about Ngthwnmulun’s new cash crop, he decided he had better tell the whole truth about it. “There’s one other fact, but I don’t think Atna’s people want it widely known.”

  “Their secrets are safe here,” Marc said. “As are yours.”

  While he explained to Marc about tree warts, Radu considered what the older man had told him in that single offhand phrase.

  Marc reached out very slowly, with a visible tremor in his hand, to lift the wyuna between his thumb and forefinger. He barely raised his arm. Radu wondered if, instead of fragile bones, he had some sort of muscle ailment that prevented his moving easily.r />
  “It’s lovely,” Marc said. “Thank you for thinking of me.” Marc explored the wyuna with his gaze for several minutes, turning it over and over in his fingers. Finally he replaced it on the armrest of his chair and covered the control panel with his hand again.

  “You’ve disturbed the pilots rather badly,” he said.

  Radu hesitated before replying, but as Marc already knew what had occurred, Radu did not see how he could get him into trouble by discussing it with him.

  “How did you know what happened? They showed me they didn’t want me to tell anyone — why did they tell you?”

  “‘Who knows, with pilots?’”

  “I’m tired of hearing that! I’m tired of thinking it — they’re human beings just like you and me. I don’t believe they’re so different.” He forced his voice to a calmer tone. “I don’t think you do, either.”

  “No,” Marc said. “You’re right. And you’re right that they’re still very human.” He smiled briefly. “They’re human enough that a few are incurable gossips. But they’re also human enough to be unpredictable when they’re in a panic.”

  “I’m not a threat to them.”

  “That remains to be seen. There’s no way to tell how the administrators will react to the news. First, they’ll want to study you.”

  “Do they have to find out?”

  “I’m afraid so. It may take a few days, but even if they don’t hear directly the flight recorder will contain anomalies that the computer will flag.”

  “You know a great deal about this,” Radu said.

  “Yes… well… I used to be a pilot.”

  Radu sat back, astonished. “A pilot! Laenea never said —”

  “She doesn’t know,” Marc said sharply. “Very few people know. The old pilots, but not the new ones. I wasn’t even a member of the first working group. I was an experiment. Most of the people who knew me before believe I’m dead.”

  “Why? Why have you locked yourself up here? And why did you let me in?”

  “Something happened to me in transit,” Marc said. “And something happened to you. I thought I might be of help.”

  Near Marc, Radu felt none of the unease he felt around Vasili Nikolaievich or Laenea, and none of the terror he had experienced in the face of the imperturbable circle of pilots who had nearly killed him. Even now that he was aware of Marc’s status, he felt calm in his presence.