“All that room—for me?” Bain nearly whispered. His bunk in the dormitory had been only a third of that size.
“During a really long voyage, it might start to feel cramped.” Lin sat on the edge of the cushion and brushed her hand over it. “Still soft enough. You need more blankets, and a new net. Ganfer can tell you where it's all stored. Take whatever you need.”
“Thanks. Captain.” Bain pushed his bag into a corner. It raised a ridge of dust when it slid along the cushion.
“Definitely needs cleaning. Ganfer, where's that hose when I need it?”
“You don't have to,” Bain blurted. He felt his face get hot again when Lin frowned at him. “I mean, I can fix the straps on my bunk net real fast. Tonight. I don't want to be any trouble.”
“Bain, what Toly did to you—” She smiled a little, when he flinched at the bully's name. “What he did is partly my fault. I set you apart, gave you privileges and duties. I gave him reason to be jealous of you, then I didn't do anything to protect you.”
“He'd pick on me, anyway.”
“Doesn't matter anymore. You're too good a Spacer to spend your time dodging bullies—and babysitting littles,” she added, her smile wider. “You're not just my student, you're my apprentice.” She turned and floated over to the sanitary cabinet and didn't see the startled grin on Bain's face.
Apprentice meant Lin wasn't just being nice; she taught him because he did have talent.
Bain felt so good, he didn't mind the hour they spent vacuuming and scrubbing and polishing every speck and cupboard and piece of cloth in his cubicle. His cubicle, because Lin said it was his while he shipped with her.
Chapter Thirteen
That night, Bain dreamed Kisa called him. He groaned and rolled over and tried to reach her without waking up. He woke up anyway. Then he got scared.
He wasn't floating in a cocoon of blankets and his net. Bain lay face-down on a soft mattress that smelled of soap and lemons. Blankets covered him, held down with a net spread over the whole bed. Then he remembered. He was in his new cubicle on the bridge. He was Lin's apprentice.
But he was wide awake, and he still heard Kisa crying. Bain thought how loud she had to be, for the sound to get up from the hold to the bridge.
“Hush, now. What's wrong, little one?” The voice didn't sound like Lin, but it was. Bain had heard her laugh and yell, speak in anger and give orders. He'd never heard her talk soft and gentle and sweet before. She sounded like his mother.
“Want Bain,” Kisa said. She hiccupped.
“Bain's asleep. He did a lot of work today.” Lin's blankets rustled. “How did you get all the way up here?”
“Climbed.” Kisa sounded proud. Bain moved aside the curtain across his cubicle. He stared at the sight of Lin in a white sleeveless smock down past her knees. She had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and floated over to Kisa, who held onto the hatch.
“Who taught you to climb?” Lin plucked Kisa off the wall and wrapped part of the blanket around her.
“Bain taught. Want Bain!” Kisa's voice broke, like she would burst out crying again.
“Don't you cry and wake him up. He had a hard day, and you kept him awake last night.” Lin's faintly scolding voice stopped Kisa. The little girl stared at the woman, her mouth hanging open. “You're not really scared of the dark, are you?” Lin asked. Her voice softened to a croon.
She brushed a few curls out of Kisa's eyes and jounced the little girl. They started to rise to the ceiling. Lin grabbed at the hatch frame. Kisa laughed.
“Bain friend,” she said. “Want tell me story.”
Bain sighed and tried to unfasten his net. Kisa would keep asking for him until Lin got angry. It was cold on the bridge, and neither of them had been asleep for very long.
“Bain is my crew now,” Lin said. “He has to help me run the ship. I know you like him, but he has too much work to play with you right now.”
“My friend.”
“I have a friend you might like better. Will you take her back to your bed and tell her a story?” Lin waited until the little girl nodded, then flew across the bridge to a storage drawer she hadn't opened before. Bain leaned out of his cubicle a little to see.
Lin pulled out a doll. It looked soft and limp and hung loose in her hand. Bain couldn't tell what color it was, in the shadows and the flashing blue, green and red lights. Kisa's mouth dropped open, and she stared at the doll.
“Go on,” Lin said. She pushed the doll and let go so it flew to Kisa and bounced against her face. “Take care of her. She's almost as old as this ship.”
Kisa laughed and snatched at the doll before it bounced away. Lin held the little girl close and floated off the bridge.
Bain closed his curtain before Lin caught him watching. Something told him Lin might not like to know he saw this soft side of her.
Maybe Lin was shy, afraid of people? His mother used to tell him people acted rough to cover fear. Maybe Lin's growling was the same thing. If she growled enough, she didn't need to bite.
Bain was almost asleep again when Lin came back to the bridge.
“That was very well done,” Ganfer said. “I thought you didn't like children.”
“What about Bain?” she retorted.
“You don't see Bain as a child.” Ganfer chuckled. It sounded warm and comforting in the dark bridge. “I never thought you'd let anyone touch that doll.”
“I don't need dolls to chase away monsters from under my bunk.” Lin moved over to the control panel and pressed a few switches. The clicks were loud in the night quiet.
“There was a time she was more real to you than I was. Maybe you're growing up at last, Lin.”
“Thank you ever so much, Bucket of Bolts. When will I be too old to need you?” Lin laughed.
Bain relaxed. He didn't know he had been holding his breath until then. Had he been afraid Lin would get mad?
“You're getting soft in your old age,” Ganfer said.
“Not as soft as you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Just thinking about going through a Knaught Point made Bain feel queasy one second, and want to turn somersaults the next.
Everybody knew about Knaught Points, but nobody really knew what they were or how they worked.
Any school child knew the basics—Knaught Points made it possible to go from one solar system to another while avoiding months of boring travel. The savings in fuel, food and time outweighed the risk, expense and effort of navigating the Knaught Points.
Even adults didn't know much more than that. Bain had checked textbooks and asked the library computer. All he learned were theories and a basic idea of why it was so hard to navigate Knaught Points.
Knaught Points, everyone agreed, were disturbances in the material of space-time. The disturbances registered as constant waves of energy. Nothing could change the wave patterns. People had tried energy weapons; they had hurtled asteroids into the gaps; they had piloted robot ships halfway through a Knaught Point and then tried to reverse course. Weapons blew up; asteroids vanished into other solar systems; robot ships vanished or blew up. The Knaught Points never changed.
Free Traders learned to use the Knaught Points, but never told how they learned: trial and error, or accident, or a vision sent by Fi'in. They said using Knaught Points had nothing to do with what made them.
Some people suspected the Order and the followers of Kilvordi had something to do with the Spacers’ talents as well as their inability or unwillingness to explain Knaught Points. The fact that the Order supported Spacers made the whole mystery easier to accept. Free Traders and the Spacers who willingly worked with the Commonwealth's colonial exploration branch were the most envied and admired people in the universe. Without the abilities of Spacers, the Commonwealth would have been limited to its home world.
Knaught Points were tangles in the unraveling threads of space-time. They were folds in the material of the space-time continuum. They were rips. They were points where mult
iple universes and versions of reality met. They were weak spots in the fabric of reality. They were places where Fi'in allowed one universe and dimension of reality to flow into another. There were a thousand theories, some supported and some mocked by the Spacers.
No one could decide which poetic, imaginative, hopeful theory suited Knaught Points best. But, they knew Knaught Points, when used properly, got a ship from point A to point B without going through thousands of kilometers of space C.
Where a ship entered the Knaught Point determined what solar system was the exit point. Each entry point always led to the same exit point every time. Three degrees off would send the ship to another system, sometimes halfway across the galaxy. The hardest part in using Knaught Points was making accurate calculations for entrance.
The second hardest part was entering at the right speed. Too fast would create an electronic energy field that distorted navigation sensors. Too slow, and the ship would bounce off the Knaught Point energy wall like a seed off a drumhead.
Spacers were the only ones able to use Knaught Points for nearly a century after Humans discovered them. Only after someone learned to build guidance computers to handle a Knaught Point transition did military and colonial ships start using them.
Spacers never refused to teach or share their secrets and their skills. There were just some things Spacers couldn't explain. The skill and knowledge was part of their flesh and bone and reflex. Until non-spacers figured it out in terms that could be taught, no one but Spacers used the Knaught Points.
Bain knew if he couldn't understand Knaught Points, it meant he wasn't a real Spacer, no matter what Lin said, no matter how well he did in his lessons and chores.
* * * *
The day before they reached their first Knaught Point jump, Lin taught Bain how to reduce Sunsinger's speed. She stood behind him and told him what buttons to push, and watched how he handled the board. Bain didn't feel nervous about Lin watching over his shoulder. She could reach over and hit the buttons and levers to correct any mistake he made and that made him nervous. Lin could move so fast he sometimes didn't see her hands. Bain dreaded seeing that blur of movement, and knowing he had made a mistake.
“Very good,” Lin murmured. “Always remember, Bain, a careful, slow touch is better in the long run. It lets you feel the movement of the switches, lets it get into your blood and bone. It becomes part of you, so when you do need to hurry, you do it right without thinking.” She rested her hand on his shoulder and chuckled when Bain tensed. “Don't worry. You did well.”
“It's done?” Bain stared at the slow pulses of color on the control board. It had been too easy. Lin had praised him for caution and he had been afraid he moved too slowly and carefully.
“Done. Listen, now. Close your eyes and listen to the ship. Not just with your ears, but with your whole body and your spirit.” Lin slid into her chair, leaned back and closed her eyes.
Bain watched her for a moment, then closed his eyes. He couldn't relax. The muscles in his back and legs tightened, raising him in the seat, pressing him against his safety strap. He took deep, slow breaths, trying not to breathe too loudly, and told his body to relax.
He thought he felt something. Maybe the vibration of the ship was softer. Less pulsing in his fingertips and the soles of his feet and where his shoulder blades met the chair. Bain felt it, but when he concentrated the sensation vanished.
“Don't push it,” Lin whispered. “The harder you try to feel it, the harder it is to feel it.”
“I felt something—I think.”
“Don't worry about it,” she said in normal volume. “Eyes open and sit alert now. This is where we reach a danger zone. The Mashrami know how to use Knaught Points. We don't want to meet them coming or going.”
“Nobody ever told us that.” He opened his eyes.
“The military doesn't even want Spacers to know, but what one of us knows...” She gave him a sly grin.
“The rest of you know,” Bain finished.
“The rest of us. You're Spacer, by birth and training. Soon, you'll be Spacer by going through the Knaught Point.”
“Does it change you?”
“How do you mean?” Lin ran her fingers over a row of green lights. With a ripple of tiny clicks, they turned blue. She watched rows of numbers on a screen change.
“Like...” Bain tried to think of the right words so he wouldn't sound silly or afraid. “Changing your body or your brain or ... “ He ran out of words.
“Or your soul?” she whispered.
“I guess.”
“Only if you need to change.” She shrugged. “Knaught Points are where everything and nothing meet.” Lin let out a choked laugh. “What I mean is ... there's so much energy packed into a Knaught Point, it's like being everywhere in the universe and hitting oblivion at the same time. Depending on what you've done with your life or what you plan to do with your life, the Knaught Point affects you for good or bad.”
“How do you think it'll affect me?”
“You?” She leaned forward, turned sideways and rested her chin in her palm, elbow on the edge of the console. “You'll probably enjoy it.” Lin unbuckled her safety strap and propelled herself over to a supply cabinet door. “Come on—we have plenty of time before it gets serious.”
“What? Where?” Bain hesitated until he saw her grin. He followed her. Lin waited for him with her hand on the latch of the door.
The storage cabinet was deep and half empty and extended up through the roof of the bridge. A ladder climbed the wall at the back of the cabinet. Lin pulled herself up the ladder, her feet trailing through the air after her. Bain kept his mouth shut and followed her into the darkness. He felt his way up and stopped when he ran out of ladder.
Bain held on with one hand and felt through the darkness with the other. The light under his feet was dim. He wondered where Lin had gone. He tried to listen for some clue where to go, what to do. He only heard his heart beating in his ears and the rasp of his breathing.
“Ganfer.” Lin's voice had a faint echo and sounded near. The lights in her collar came on, illuminating her face. “Open the shield.”
Bain heard a hum, a click, the growl of machines and gears engaging to move something heavy. Metal rasped against metal, dragging. A tiny point of light pierced the darkness. Spots of light appeared in a narrow strip above his head.
His perspective shifted. He saw a high dome of metal plates overhead, moving aside, parting in the middle to reveal stars. More stars than he thought existed; spots of white and pale red and blue, sharp and brilliant in the deep black of space.
In the growing light, Bain saw two layers of heavy metal plate shielding, one outside the ship, one inside, with a clear layer between. The plates moved across the ceiling and made rumbling clicks as they folded down into each other.
Bain and Lin floated inside a dome on the top of Sunsinger. Acceleration couches dotted the floor; six couches, with thick padding and straps and old-fashioned control pads with joysticks and tracking balls and switches. Bain barely looked at them. All his attention went to the stars. All around him, shining everywhere, close enough to touch and thousands of years of travel away.
Bain wanted to press his hands against the dome and feel the pulse of energy against his fingers. Space looked hot, sparkling bright and black with cold. He shivered. His heart beat faster. He wished he had rockets, to swoop around inside the dome and turn somersaults. It hurt to just hang there and stare.
“You're a Spacer, all right,” Lin whispered, her voice thick with repressed laughter. Her voice threw a chain of echoes off the dome, like cracking, chiming glass and ice in the coldest winter.
“How can you tell?” Bain's voice sounded loud in his ears and then lost in the vastness of space.
“You want to get out there and play. Those not born to space don't like it so well. They have to work up to the hunger and excitement you're feeling.”
“How did you feel the first time?” he asked, swinging h
is arm at the black and white brilliance. The movement made him pivot off the ladder. Bain tightened his grip. This was not the time to go bouncing off the dome's sides, much as he wanted to do just that.
“I was born on Sunsinger. My mother brought me up here when I was five days old.” Lin pushed off the ladder side of the wall and drifted over to a couch. She grinned at Bain. “I've been looking at the stars all my life. My mother said I recognized them before I knew her face, and when I started grasping for things, I tried to put the stars in my mouth. But ... I still get a little breathless every time I come up here. Come sit. This is important.”
Lin maneuvered into a couch and hooked her leg under an armrest, so she could sit without strapping in. She tugged a control panel on a pivot arm over to the couch. Bain settled into the next couch and copied her anchoring trick.
“This is how Free Traders handle Knaught Points,” Lin said. “There's something in the Human eye that even the most sophisticated computers can't match. Can't convince the military of that, though. Nor the big, expensive shipping companies.” She chuckled.
Lin ran her fingers down a row of switches on the far left of the board. Each moved stiffly with a loud click, all the colors of the rainbow. The last switch was purple and turned on the whole board.
“Simulation?” Ganfer asked, speaking from their collars.
“No. Too much un-teaching to do later.” She leaned back into the couch and stared up at the stars, her arms crossed behind her head. “This is where you learn by doing.”
“It's not computer-guidance?” Bain asked. The levers, sticks and balls looked like a coordination test.
“Oh, yes—we do need the computers to make the picky calculations and track energy changes. Without all those numbers and tiny details, even Spacers couldn't navigate the Knaught Points. But just before you make the dive into the energy field...” She shrugged. “It's instinct, I suppose. It's partly feeling what's happening to the ship all around you, partly listening to the music of space.”
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