Another, smaller and slower, military shuttle from the cruiser had driven over to the transport hub satellite, where in addition to performing other routine business it had disgorged Gift and a couple of other Space Force people who had been hitching a ride home on leave.
The Earth satellite on which Gift's journey home had stumbled to a halt was an elaborate transportation hub, a metal doughnut hundreds of meters in the diameter of its outer rim.
There his progress stalled. The high state of military alert was drastically slowing all nonessential travel.
The ubiquitous space police, in their symbolic lightweight white helmets and white gloves, had checked Gift out as soon as he got off the little shuttle. They scrutinized the traveler's orders closely, though being convalescent allowed him great freedom of travel, even under the high state of alert currently in effect. It didn't matter to them how he had arrived here. He was no celebrity to them; everyone in uniform—and there were a fair number scattered through the crowd—was getting the same treatment. This was one of the results of the high state of alert under which everyone was now functioning. A lot of military people traveled in civilian clothes, when possible, to avoid this; but you were required to wear your uniform if you were hitching a ride on a military vehicle.
The transport hub was one of several similar satellites hanging close to Earth. This one rode in a polar curve, a few thousand klicks above the planet's mostly watery surface. Entering the main waiting room or concourse, Gift found himself standing in an echoing, cavernous space almost the size of a football field, surrounded by several hundred other people who were also waiting for transport down to the planet or on the next leg of some outward journey. It almost seemed that everyone in the homeworlds wanted to be somewhere else, just at the time when travel restrictions were going into effect.
There would be no military lift available down to the surface for several hours at least; and the next one tentatively scheduled, which might or might not have space for him to get aboard, would land him far from the location of his home. Lengthy, elaborate surface or aerial transport would have been required for him to complete his journey. He hadn't been invited to get aboard the admiral's shuttle, so where it might be bound for on the surface was a moot point.
Carrying his single bag in his right hand, Gift turned his back on the phone niche and strolled about. Almost immediately he found himself being drawn to an observation port.
Seen like this, from close above, the nearby bulk of Earth was armored in the dun-brown of defensive force fields, the normal colors of land, water, and air invisible.
It was the first time in several years, since his last visit home on leave, that Gift had had a close look at Earth. It produced in him surprisingly mixed feelings. The grimness down there looked like industrial smoke from some previous millennium, though he knew it wasn't.
Somewhere in the throng a tired infant wailed, and was immediately answered by an accomplice at a distance. The sound pierced the muted murmur of a hundred people talking, while hundreds more endured the wait in silence. Some meditated, some read, others dozed or watched advertisements or news programs on one of the stages scattered about everywhere.
The unexpected sense of relief Gift experienced when the notice board told him he would have a long delay made him realize how deeply reluctant to go home he really was. Thinking back to how attractive the idea had seemed only a few days ago when he was in the hospital, he realized that it was probably his childhood and not his home that he had wanted to get back to.
That was not a welcome thought.
Slowly he paced what seemed a random pathway through the crowd, carrying his modest traveling bag in his right hand— he didn't wholly trust the new fingers on his left. The new hand had plenty of strength, but the control was still uncertain, and the sensations in the fingers blurred. He wondered idly if the artificial nails were going to grow. He supposed they'd given him information on that detail, along with a lot of other stuff, at the hospital. But if so, he'd forgotten. Experimentally he now shifted the weight of the bag to his left hand, and it seemed to work all right.
For years now, ever since his middle teens, Gift had been drifting away from his parents, who had also, since about that time, been separated from each other though they lived at no great geographical distance. Nifty hadn't heard from either one of them for—how long now? About a standard year? He couldn't quite recall.
Noticing that his seemingly random walk had brought him back to the same observation port, he reflected that he wasn't entirely sure if either his mother or father was still alive.
Gift was also feeling a definite reluctance to face certain other people he thought he would be very likely to encounter if he visited his parents. These were folk who had been close to some other of Gift's and Traskeluk's former shipmates. And if he met them they were certain, in their bereavement and their ignorance, to ask the only survivor on the crew some uncomfortable questions.
The next leg of his stroll, conducted without any conscious planning, ended when he found himself standing in line to buy a shuttle ticket down. When he thought about it, he realized that he was in the line mainly because he didn't know what else to do.
Abruptly he left the queue, and walked through the crowd some more, feeling trapped.
Thinking these matters over, Gift had come yet again to a standstill in front of one of the big statglass viewports, where he stood looking out into low space, watching among other things the faint visible traces of the impressive array of defensive satellites that helped to screen from attack the parent planet of all Solarians. Each of those artificial moons, of course, carried formidable weapons, none of which were apparent to the casual observer. Their orbits, crisscrossing space just above Earth's atmosphere at almost every angle, wove an intricate pattern, thousands of kilometers in depth.
Even as Gift stood watching, a small blur leaped over Earth's dun-brown limb, hurtling along on a course that would bring it within a few hundred kilometers of the windowed doughnut where he and hundreds of others waited for transportation. Gift knew the blur was Power Station One, a tamed black hole. In times of peace the power-hungry billions on the planet drew from it half their needed energy. Station One—he had forgotten how many there were like it—was visible to the eye only as a slight, flowing distortion of the stars beyond.
The black hole, given a wide berth by all the other orbiting objects, flashed by. Not really tamed, of course, though that was a reassuring word. Just harnessed. There were those who thought such power sources represented a danger worse than berserkers. Danger, maybe, thought Gift now. But not worse. Whoever said that had never been anywhere near a real berserker.
Gift had also heard rumors that the power station had been integrated into the defensive network, where it played the role of a kind of trap or sink, into which attacking machines were to be decoyed or pushed.
A moment later, Gift experienced a feeling of being under intense observation, and looked around him sharply. It was beginning to become a familiar sensation. And since leaving the hospital he sometimes had the feeling when it seemed that no one could possibly be watching him.
This time he had to consciously reassure himself that the attention he sensed could not possibly be that of either Terrin nor Traskeluk. Both of them were dead, and going to remain so.
No, he wasn't being stalked by any of the dead come back. But this time his instincts were right on target. Someone was studying him intently. There she was.
When the girl who was actually watching Spacer Gift approached him, as he stood in line or looking out the window, he thought he knew what she was going to say. Under other circumstances he would certainly have found her attentions flattering. Since he'd left the base at Port Diamond, other young women along the way had given signs that they would like to get to know him better; but until now he'd been in a hurry. And now he wondered why.
Nifty first became aware of this one through her reflected image in the composite glass t
hat formed the inner layer of the broad observation port. She looked truly young, not yet twenty at an estimate, and her slender figure was coming toward him steadily and purposefully; the nature of the movement, the determined look on her pale face, and the fact that her small fists were clenched, told him that this was not going to be easy to discourage.
And suddenly he realized that he was in no hurry to get anywhere anyway, and therefore he had no reason to be discouraging.
So far, from his dramatic return to Uhao until he boarded the admiral's cruiser at Port Diamond, Gift had been frequently reminded of his celebrity status. His brief experience since leaving the hospital suggested that he would have no problem at all finding any kind of companionship he wanted. No doubt the badly concealed fear and disgust he felt gave the impression of shyness, and made him all the more attractive. So far he'd been avoiding that kind of attention, beyond a few minutes' casual conversation. A few months ago, immediately after the berserker raid on Port Diamond, casualties had come pouring through here in a flood; but for the last few weeks, wounded war heroes had once more been rare.
And the more he looked at this one, the more easily he could convince himself that she was truly different. She was good-looking, all right, but not the best he'd seen on his way home. Wearing sandals, and a clinging, short-skirted dress that, he decided, was probably more expensive than a first look at it suggested. Certainly it was flattering. Legs were displayed to ad-vantage, slim hips neatly suggested rather than revealed. Like him, she was carrying one small piece of luggage. Her eyes were hazel, skin a creamy off-white, her long hair in braids was almost the color of metal shavings. But there was nothing harsh or cold about her face or attitude.
"Hello," she said, in a slightly husky and distinctive voice.
"Hello." He turned fully around, setting his back to the observation port.
"I've been watching you." Her voice was not hero-worshiping but almost challenging. She was almost as tall as he.
"Do I pass inspection?"
That didn't get a direct answer. "I've been waiting for you."
"Really? How did you know I was going to be here?"
They were standing an arm's length apart, with the crowd milling around them.
"I knew." The girl nodded solemnly. "You're going home on leave now, right? The story said your home was on Earth."
He heard himself say: "I'm not sure where my home is any longer." And as he said the words, he realized that they were true, and that he was basically comfortable with them.
In any case, the girl ignored the statement. Under pressure of various crowd nudges, they were now a couple of centimeters closer to each other. "I'm not going to offer to buy you a drink, anything like that. I just wanted to see what a hero looked like." There was no gushing or simpering in the remark. But at the same time, as far as Gift could tell, she sounded perfectly sincere.
He cleared his throat. "Who says I'm a hero?"
"Lots of people." She tossed her metalized braids. "You're Spacer First Class Nifty Gift, aren't you?"
"I have to plead guilty to that, at least."
"Spacer First Class," she mused, as if there were something remarkable about that very ordinary rank. It wasn't clear if she thought it ought to be higher or lower. Her forefinger traced gently the stripes on his right sleeve, and it seemed to Gift that he could feel a surprising physical warmth of contact, even through the thickness of his uniform. Her fingernails appeared to have been altered to grow in the same color as her hair.
"And your left arm has been hurt," she went on. "They said that on the news." Now she touched the sleeved forearm on that side, even more gently. There was no obvious giveaway that the hand and wrist were artificial, and he supposed the idea never occurred to her. She went on: "So you're the one. You've been in the news for days. How you were the only survivor of your ship."
It had already occurred to Nifty that his one brief press conference must have been broadcast a large number of times, all across the homeworlds and probably farther. He had seen it, or part of it, a couple of times himself, by accident.
It gave him an odd feeling to think of his image, his few stumbling, untruthful words on all the media, spreading out across the Solarian Galaxy. Uncounted billions of people had heard his name, thought that his ship had been a crewed courier or a scout or supply ship. The location where it had been destroyed was only vaguely specified.
"I guess a lot of people have seen my face on holostages and in pictures," he said, aware of understatement.
"Indeed, you're famous."
Several anonymous units of the crowd bumped him again, one after another in rapid succession. "Well, we're the only two here who seem to realize it. Let me buy you a drink after all, if you don't want to buy me one. What's your name?"
"I didn't say I wouldn't buy you one. My name is Flower."
"Just generic Flower? Why not maybe Lily, Rose, Violet, some particular kind of flower. Orchid?"
"No. Just Flower. One name is enough."
He understood, from listening to young people at the hospital, that having only a single name was a fast-spreading fad just now among the young. Anyway, this girl's features were delicate, and the name she had picked for herself seemed to fit.
"Pretty." He was thinking that he didn't believe it, it somehow fit too well. "Real name?"
They had linked arms now and were walking together. Flower gripped his left arm, as if it had already slipped her mind that it was supposed to be wounded. Her voice took on an edge. "Certainly it is. If I use it for myself, that makes it real."
"Can't argue with that." Still, he wasn't sure that it really fit. It wouldn't be the name he'd pick for her.
"Why do they call you Nifty? That's what the media said. Is that your real name?"
He shrugged. "Real name's Sebastian. 'Nifty' because of a… a way I have of doing things, I guess."
"Doing things?"
"People think—or they used to think—I have a knack for keeping myself out of trouble."
Strolling together in the crowd was difficult, but they kept at it. She asked: "They used to think that but they don't anymore?"
He sighed. His right arm, carrying his traveling bag, was growing tired, and he wished he could set the burden down somewhere. "I don't know what people think about me right now."
"They think you're a hero."
The words had a flat tone. He inspected his questioner silently. Evidently the remark had been innocent.
"Is it all right if I call you Nifty?"
"I'm used to it. Everybody else does." Nobody in the world but his parents would now call him by the name that they had given him.
"How long of a leave do you have?"
He told her the number of remaining days.
Flower was dressed in a fairly inconspicuous fashion. It was as if she gave only sporadic attention to her wardrobe, but had good taste when she did. She was slender and looked rather frail, with a kind of pastel darkness about her. Hair dyed, some steel colored and some copper. Probably, Gift thought, it had been genetically root dyed, so you could only try to guess what its original color might have been. In his opinion, it didn't add any points to her appearance.
She was wearing some kind of mechanical jewelry. Not ex-pensive, he supposed, but not what you ordinarily saw. A brooch that displayed, in optical illusion, moving dots of light against a changing background. Then, in the next moment, moving dots of darkness against light.
Only when they were walking together did Gift notice that his companion's earlobes had been mutilated. Tiny holes, now lined with skin, had at some time been punched in them to accommodate earrings. He hadn't noticed immediately, he supposed, because she wore no earrings now. The holes were only simple punctures, but it was a thing that he had only seen once or twice before, and never in an otherwise attractive woman. It made him feel a little queasy.
Flower's thoughts were elsewhere. Absently she let go his arm again.
"Nifty."
&nbs
p; "What?"
"Did you ever see a berserker? I mean like close up?"
"That's a funny question."
"Did you?"
"One, yes."
"Only one?"
"One was enough."
"What did it look like?"
"Pretty hard to describe." He didn't feel like making the effort.
Flower, after giving him plenty of time in which to change his mind, said something sympathetic. She had some way of putting her interest in Gift that caught his interest too, and made him think that she was offering him something that he needed. Nobody else was even coming close in that regard.
"So, are you going home now to see your family? I suppose they still live down there?" With a nod she indicated the smoggy blue-and-brown expanse slowly turning beyond the nearest viewport.
"Yep."
"You don't sound all that enthusiastic. No wife and kids to welcome you?"
"No. And my parents and I don't always see eye to eye about everything," With a sigh he looked at Flower hopefully. "Maybe you know how that is."
"Of course I do." And her hand came out once more, impulsively, to touch his arm.
Gift didn't see why the answer to that question should be of course. But if she did, so be it. Maybe, it just might be, he would be able to talk to this one.
"Come here on a military ship?"
"Yep. How about you?"
"The ship I came on was a lot more comfortable than yours, I bet."
"No bet."
Spacer Gift kept on talking to the girl. The little things about her that might have put him off—like her hair and her earlobes—were in a faintly perverse way kind of attractive too. She was something different. It seemed that she really didn't want to talk to him so much as she wanted to listen. It felt like exactly what he had needed; the chance to be with someone with a gift for uncritical listening—not that he was going to tell her anything of real importance. He wasn't going to tell such matters to anyone. Not for a long time, anyway.
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