Further: Beyond the Threshold (22 page)

Tentatively, I slipped the signet ring on the ring finger of my right hand.

“And you’re just going to ride along with me, then?” I said, looking from the ring to the woman on the table.

“Sure,” the projection answered, and I found I couldn’t think of her as anything but plain old Amelia. “Just think of me as your personal advisor.”

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head slowly but smiling all the same. “This is going to take some getting used to.”

“Ah, what have you got to worry about? It’ll be beaut!”

It was late in the ship’s night, the percentage of the day when the lights in the corridor were dimmed and many of the biologicals in the crew let their bodies rest, and I was propped up in my bed, trying to read.

I’ve always been something of a bookworm. It comes from having a writer for a grandfather and a professor of English for a father, I suppose. Our house in Bangalore was always full of books. When I left home and moved to Ethiopia to start university, I brought a few of my favorite books along, many of them handed down to me by my grandfather—Robert Heinlein’s
Space Cadet
, Cordwainer Smith’s
Norstrilia
, Iain Banks’s
Use of Weapons
. After graduating, when I signed on with the Orbital Patrol, mass restrictions meant that I had to leave all of the books behind, and so I brought digital copies along instead. I included my handheld in my mass allotment on board
Wayfarer One
, years later, and loaded onto it every book that I could lay my hands on, everything that I’d ever read and everything I’d never found the time to try.

Now, finding myself in the distant future in a rejuvenated body that, according to Maruti, need never age, I had all the time in the world. And since we were still days out from Aglibol and I couldn’t sleep, I saw no reason not to catch up on my reading.

But my damned interlink kept getting in the way.

Perhaps I should explain. I’m fluent in several languages—English, Hindi, Kannada, and Amharic—and the books on my handheld are written in all four of those, with a sizable percentage in other languages I can’t even read but that I thought the other members of the
Wayfarer One
crew might enjoy.

That night, propped up in my bed on board the
Further
, with Amelia entertaining herself in some virtual environment inside the ring sitting on the side table, I paged through the handheld’s index, seeing if anything sparked my interest. I thought I might try something new, but then chanced upon something very old, indeed.

I’d been forced to memorize and recite whole stanzas of Goswami Tulsidas’s epic poem
Ramacharitamanasa
in secondary school, and though I preferred other versions of the
Ramayana
, there was still something about this 16C Hindi version that resonated with me.

I tapped the title listing on the display, and the first stanzas scrolled on the screen, but I was immediately disoriented as the Hindi characters were completely obscured by glowing roman letters superimposed over them, a precise translation of the text into English.

Puzzled, I called up the handheld’s menu interface but could find no settings that could account for the translation. I scanned a few more pages of Tulsidas’s text and found the English translation superimposed across all of them.

I closed the file and called up a few more texts. All of the English texts displayed fine, but any other languages were obscured by the same superimposed translations.

It wasn’t until I dropped the handheld onto the bed that I realized that the superimposed text was not on the display itself, but seemed to hover slightly
above
the display. I picked the handheld back up, turning it first one direction and then the other, and slowly began to understand what was happening.

The table in my sitting room was made of the same smart matter as the control center on the bridge, and with only a little effort, I was able to configure it into a touch-sensitive display. Using my index finger as a stylus, I wrote out a few simple words and phrases, in Kannada, in Amharic, even a few simple words I knew of Spanish, Dutch, and Russian. In each instance, as the words were completed on the display, the superimposed translation would appear—and, as with the handheld, hovering just above the surface.

It wasn’t the displays that were providing the translations. It was
me.

It had to be the interlink, of course. It interrupted the flow of sensory input from my ears to my brain and substituted my language of choice—Information Age English—for whatever language the speaker was using, provided it had the full grammar and lexicon in its stores. There was no reason it couldn’t do the same with visual information. I was surprised not to have noticed the effect in the few days previous but, on reflection, realized that I’d seen very little in the way of written language since arriving. Perhaps a culture able to beam data back and forth directly between their heads had little use for the written word? Or was it simply a question of taste and style? Or had I just been unobservant?

Whatever the case, it was pretty annoying. I could see how instant translations could come in handy, but the inability to turn the thing off was just a damned nuisance.

Maruti would likely be able to tell me how to set the preferences on my interlink, configuring it to my liking, but it was late, and I had little desire to get dressed and traipse out into the darkened hallways. Was there some sort of communication or phone system I could use to call him?

And then I remembered that interlink communication didn’t require line of sight. Maruti had explained that an interlink could connect to the infostructure, and though we were cut off from the datascape of the Entelechy, there was a smaller shipboard information environment that could serve the same purpose.

“Maruti?” I said out loud and then repeated, concentrating. ::MARUTI?::

::Can you
please
stop with the shouting, Captain?:: immediately came the reply, sounding as clear as if he were in the room with me.

::Sorry. I wasn’t sure if this would work.::

::Well, clearly it has.:: Strangely, I got the impression of a sigh. Clearly, nonvocal communication could also be transmitted by interlink. I’d have to be careful about that. ::I’m quite busy at the moment, enjoying a glass of port with another of our crewmates, that delightful Ailuros from the café. Is there something I can help you with?::

::Oh, sorry,:: I replied. I hadn’t even thought about what the chimpanzee might be doing when I “called,” having been so eager to see if I could even make connection. ::It’s just…I’m trying to read, and my interlink keeps tossing up unwanted translations.::

::Hmm. This text is in your language of choice?::

::No, it’s not. Everything in English is fine, it’s just everything else that gets stomped on.::

Again, I got the impression of a weary sigh. ::Well,
obviously
an interlink is going to translate any language that doesn’t fit its profile, unless told otherwise.::

::Ri-ight. So how do I get it to stop?::

There came a long pause, and I wondered what sort of facial expression Maruti was sharing with the cat-woman. I couldn’t help but think of someone holding a phone away form their ear and twirling their finger in circles around their ear, making the once universal sign of insanity. ::You simply
tell
it to stop. Now, is there any
other
burning question I can answer for you at this late hour?::

::Um, no?::

::Good night, Captain.::

“Good night,” I said out loud, having already felt the connection to the chimpanzee drop.

I picked up the handheld and brought up a page full of Hindi text, obscured by English translation.

“Interlink,” I said out loud, “stop translating the text.”

Suddenly, the translation vanished, and the Hindi text was unobscured.

I tried another experiment. ::Interlink, start translating.::

Again, text floated in front of my eyes.

“Well, that was easy,” I said.

I ordered the translation to turn off again and settled back onto the bed to read the story of my namesake trying to rescue his wife Sita from the demon lord.

And promptly fell asleep.

The next ship’s morning, rested and refreshed, I bathed, dressed in a simple black coverall ship suit and slip-on shoes, and ate a quick meal of oatmeal and buna in my kitchen, chatting with Amelia, who projected herself onto the table and enjoyed an emulated meal of her own. After we’d finished, Amelia popped back into the ring for a while, and I decided to head to the bridge.

My quarters, like those of the rest of the command crew and most of the department heads, were on the same level as the bridge, and while I was sure I’d have been alerted if the ship had run into any problems while I slept, as captain I felt obliged to check in as a matter of course.

Stepping out into the now brightly lit corridor beyond my door, I was immediately brought up short by the unlikely trio standing just beyond. It was a woman dressed in the uniform of a Napoleonic-era British officer in Nelson’s Navy; a man dressed in a red velour tunic with a gold star embroidered on the breast, black trousers that flared below the knee, and high black boots; and another man wearing a styled mid-20C-era dark-blue sailor’s uniform, with a white “Dixie cup” hat and a red kerchief around his neck.

“O Captain,” the woman in the Napoleonic uniform said in passable English, standing to attention, snapping off a crisp salute, “Midshipman Euphagenia d’Angelique Bibblecombe-Aldwinkle, reporting for duty. May I present Lieutenant Commander Rex Starr”—she indicated the redshirt and then pointed with her chin to the sailor suit—“and Chief Warrant Officer Donald Duke.”

“Donald
Duck
?” I said.

“Duke, sir,” the sailor suit said. “Donald Duke.”

“Ah, of course. And, Starr, was it?”

The redshirt stood to attention, chin held high. “Yessir.”

“I think you might have the wrong starship, friend.”

“Sir?”

“Never mind.” I surveyed the trio. When I’d first seen them outside the diamond house, they’d been a superheroine and a pair of zoot suiters, and later on Cronos, they’d been Scarlett O’Hara and the blue-and-gray brothers. The Anachronists had clearly found a new mode to explore. “So you’re part of the
Further
’s crew, I take it?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” the midshipwoman said, positively gushing. “When we heard that you were taking command, we couldn’t resist.”

“We’ve taken on new personas and everything,” the redshirt added proudly. “Do you like them?”

“They’re…they’re just splendid. Glad to have you on board.” I paused, considering. “Um, if you don’t mind me asking, what positions have you taken in the crew, come to that?”

“I’m in astrometrics,” the sailor suit said, “and Rex and Gina—”

“Euphagenia d’Angelique Bibblecombe-Aldwinkle!” the midshipwoman said hastily, interrupting.

“Right, sorry. Rex and Euphagenia d’Angelique Bibblecombe-Aldwinkle are helping out in industrial fabrication.”

“Any post is fine with us,” the redshirt said. “We couldn’t pass up the chance to experience what it must have been like for the ancient explorers of your time.”

“And you all have adopted ranks, I see.”

“Oh, naturally,” the midshipwoman said, shoulders back. “It wouldn’t have been an authentic primitive experience without them.”

“Quite right,” I said, nodding sagely. “Well…” I waved my hands in absent motions. “Erm, carry on the good work?”

The three beamed. They stood to crisp attention and snapped off salutes, then turned on their heels and marched off down the corridor.