Superluminal (11 page)

The tiger’s breathing grew rougher and more labored.

“My friends won’t understand,” she said.
“I could still keep him alive —”

“No, you mustn’t!” Radu felt his face and
throat color with embarrassment. If she talked herself into keeping the animal
alive, what business was it of his? Yet he could not stand the thought that the
creature, who should be so magnificent, might be forced to stumble through its
life for another year, or two, or ten, because people wanted to absorb its
uniqueness.

“I’m sorry,” Radu said.

“No,” she said. “Don’t be.
You’re right.”

The tiger stopped breathing. Radu and Kathell both stared at
it. Radu held his breath. All he could hear was the passing of the sea.

The white tiger shuddered and convulsed, jerking its hind
feet up against its belly. Foam dripped from its mouth. Then its muscles
slackened and it lay motionless. It breathed only intermittently. Kathell did
not move or speak while its life was passing. Radu flinched every time the
creature gasped for one more straining breath. The intervals lengthened.

The tiger took so long to die that Radu wanted to grab
Kathell and shake her and demand that she call a veterinarian, even a doctor,
to put the animal out of its pain. But finally, just when he thought he could
stand it no longer, Kathell felt for the creature’s pulse. She let her
hand drop; her shoulders slumped.

“Poor damned thing,” she muttered. Her voice
shook. Her face was nearly in darkness, but tears glistened on her cheeks. Radu
laid his hand over hers in the comforting, asexual way by which one crew member
helped another wake. Kathell stiffened and pulled away. Radu drew back in turn,
a little hurt, but embarrassed, too, feeling that she must have mistaken his
gesture.

“I’m all right,” she said.
“I’ve known long enough that this had to happen.” She looked
over at him, her movement abrupt. “I shouldn’t have let you
stay,” she said. “I shouldn’t have inflicted this on
you.” She sounded neither regretful nor sad, but angry and frightened.
Laenea had said Kathell never asked anything of anyone, but surely she would
accept sympathy freely given.

“You’ve shown me only kindness,” he said.
“Staying was little enough for me to do.”

“I didn’t ask you to do anything!” She got
up and loosened the tent’s heavy satin floor, detaching it from the
walls. Radu got up to help, but she motioned him back.

“I’d like to help,” he said.
“I’ve taken things from you, it’s only fair —”

“If you can’t take what I offer without
burdening me with gratitude,” she said, ripping the last corner from its
fastenings, “there’s no need for you to take it at all!”

She took a vial from her pocket, opened it, and spilled its
contents over the tiger’s body. A thin film of dust dulled its coat.

“It’s different where I come from,” Radu
said. “We have to depend on each other more.”

She gathered up a corner of the satin. Radu stepped over the
edge of the floor and found himself ankle deep in crushed bracken.

“I depend on no one,” Kathell said. “I
never accept gratitude.”

“You’ll have to excuse an ignorant
barbarian,” Radu said with irritation.

Kathell flung the thick material around the tiger’s
body.

“Nor guilt.” Even her tone did not relent.
“I don’t want your gratitude and you have no right to try to make
me feel guilty.” She folded her arms. Head down, she gazed at the
tiger’s shroud.

Speechless, Radu waited beside her, slightly hunched in the
low tent. He searched for something to say. The temperature began to rise.

“Come outside,” Kathell said.

She led him onto the deck, then turned back to face the
tent’s dark interior.

Sudden intense flames erupted from the shadowed shroud,
spilling down its sides like liquid. The bracken ignited, burning with a dry,
harsh crackle. Radu stepped back from the heat, but Kathell did not move. Smoke
billowed out, and the tiger’s body imploded. The fire died.

The heat faded rapidly; the night breeze dispersed the
smoke.

The tent itself remained unscorched. Kathell went back
inside and unfolded the satin shroud. In its center lay a scattering of gray
dust. She gathered it up in a small cloth bag.

“Go away now.” She was shivering. “Go
—” The bravado trembled and broke. She turned away, silently
crying, fighting for control.

Radu touched her shoulder, brushing the soft fabric of her
gown with his fingertips. She flinched away from him, then abruptly flung
herself around and against him. Radu held her, stroking her hair and comforting
her as he might a child. She felt like a child, she was so small and frail. For
a moment he was back on Twilight, hugging his younger sister, who had come to
him terrified and ill with the plague’s first symptoms. She died the next
day. The fear and pain and grief of those terrible weeks returned.

Kathell struggled against every tear she shed. Then, in a
change as abrupt as all her other changes, she shrugged Radu’s hands from
her shoulders and stepped out of his reach. Silhouetted by the light behind
her, she wiped her face roughly on her sleeve.

“I told you to leave me alone!” she said, angry
and resentful. “I never asked for your help. What do you want?”

Radu shook his head, startled and confused. “I
don’t want anything.”

“I owe you now! I won’t leave debts
unpaid!”

“I want nothing from you,” he said, feeling as
if he had given an unwelcome gift, then demanded reciprocation. “You are
Laenea’s friend, and you were kind to me as well.”

“That wasn’t kindness,” she said sharply.
“I didn’t even notice it. That has nothing to do with this.”

“Nonsense,” Radu said. “If you feel that a
few minutes of time and sympathy need to be repaid, then
I
am repaying
you.”

“I don’t permit anything I give to be
repaid!” she said.

“Then permit me the same courtesy.” The
conversation had evolved into a strange and disquieting game, which he expected
at every move to be ended with Kathell’s being convinced that he had no
secret motives.

“No,” Kathell said. “Courtesy has nothing
to do with it. I owe you. I do not like to be in debt. Is that so hard to
understand?”

“You are not in my debt,” Radu said. He felt as
if he had been repeating himself for a long time. “This is trivial. This
is silly! Why are you insisting that I demand something of you when I want
nothing?”

“Because if once I accept something, I’ll never
stop!” she shouted. She took one quick step toward him with her fists
clenched and her eyes narrowed to slits. “I’ll not be accused of
that ever again!”

The outburst shocked him. “Who accused you of such a
thing? And why would you believe it?”

“You don’t know me,” Kathell said.
“You never will, and gods willing neither will anyone else.”

“I ask you to forgive me this debt,” Radu said.
“That’s all I want, for you to believe I want nothing.”

“Don’t insult me!” she cried.
“You’re saying my reasons are meaningless and
they are not
!”

Radu reached out to her, in supplication, but she struck his
hand away. Angry at her for misunderstanding his motion, Radu stepped back and
gradually unclenched his fists.

“I want nothing from you,” he said again.
“I will accept nothing. I’m leaving earth. With any luck I’ll
never see it, or you, again.” He walked around her, staying well out of
reach, to continue on his way.

“I owe you. And I intend to pay you and be done with
it.”

Radu flushed scarlet in anger and humiliation, but he kept
on walking.

“Choose,” Kathell said behind him. “And
pick something soon, or you’ll have made yourself an enemy.”

Radu did not look back.

Trams passed him several times, moving silently through the
darkness along their magnetic tracks. Toward the center of the spaceport bright
lights waxed and waned among clouds of vapor from supercooled fuel.

He was still angry and upset when he reached the control
office, which lay nestled in a low complex of buildings at the corner of the
landing port. Radu reserved a place on the next shuttle to Earthstation, then
requested the transit schedule. Several flights listed crew berths open. As
Radu was about to apply to a ship traveling as far as New Snoqualmie, a colony
world not unlike Twilight, he noticed the ship was piloted.

He cursed. The last thing Radu wanted right now was to
travel in the company of a pilot. But only a few of the available automated
ships offered crew positions. Since automated ships still held the numerical
majority, this was a fluke, a coincidence of his misfortune.

None of the other destinations particularly appealed to him.
Since one of Radu’s excuses for leaving Twilight was that his home world
needed the foreign exchange he would earn, he chose the automated flight that
paid the most. He would crew it on its outbound stops, then, if he could,
transfer to another ship traveling even farther. He wanted to travel as close
to the limits of explored space as possible. He had applications in for
exploratory missions, of course, but so did almost every other crew member he
had ever met. They applied out of curiosity, for the excitement, for the money.
Radu had very little seniority and it would be quite a while before he could
hope to win such an assignment.

Instead of an electronic approval, the response to his query
was a personal reply.

“Radu, how are you?” The crew member whose
translucent image formed before him was a normal-space navigator with the
credentials to prepare an automated ship for transit. Atnaterta looked much
older than the last time Radu had seen him. The time since they last had flown
together was only a few weeks, for Radu, but might be of much longer subjective
duration for Atna. The lines in the navigator’s ebony face were more
heavily sculpted, and he seemed exhausted in a way that could never be eased by
transit sleep. His hair was graying from a black as deep as that of his skin
and eyes. Radu trusted his ability and his experience. Most of all he valued
his serenity. He was glad to see him.

“I’m fine, Atna.” It would be too
complicated to reply to a purely social question with the convoluted truth.

Atna’s response took a moment to relay from
Earthstation to a satellite to Radu.

“Can you catch the next shuttle? We need a
third.”

“Yes, I already have a reservation.” Again, the
awkward pause of light-speed’s limits.

“Good. I’ll put you on the roster.”

An approval notice formed the air into small lighted
letters.

“Thanks, Atna.”

“Good to have you.”

He signed off.

The trick of Radu’s mind that let him always know what
time it was, anywhere he was, did not help him know when the sun would rise.
Looking toward the east, he searched for a glimmer of light, even false dawn.
In the few days he had been on earth he had never seen the sun; he had never
been outside in daylight. But until right now he had neither noticed that nor
cared. He would have liked to see earth illuminated by its sun, but he would be
gone too soon. Perhaps he would never come back.

He hurried to the shuttle, boarded it, and waited for
liftoff.

Acceleration pressed him into his seat, back toward the earth.
But the shuttle escaped, as it always did, and while it did not leave behind
his hurt or his memories, it was taking him to a place where he would be busy
enough, at times, to forget both for a while.

o0o

Laenea staggered out of bed, aching as if she had been in a
brawl against a better fighter. In the bathroom she splashed ice water on her
face; it did not help. Her urine was tinged but not thick with blood. She
ignored it.

Radu was gone. He had left no message. Nor had he left
anything behind, as if wiping out all his traces could wipe out the loss and
pain of their parting. Laenea knew nothing could do that. She wanted to talk to
him, touch him — just one more time — and try to show him, insist
he understand, that he had not failed. He could not demand of himself what he
could break himself — break his heart — attempting.

She called the crew lounge, but he did not answer the page.
The computer crosschecked and told Laenea that Radu Dracul was on board transit
ship A-28493, preparing for departure.

There was still time to reach him before he had to go to
sleep, but he had chosen an automated ship on a dull run, probably the first
assignment he could get. Nothing he could have said or done would have told
Laenea more clearly that he did not want to see or touch or talk to her again.

She could not stay in Kathell’s apartment any longer.
She threw on the clothes she had arrived in; she left the vest open, defiantly,
to well below her breastbone, not caring if she were recognized, returned to
the hospital, anything. At the top of the elevator shaft the wind whipped
through her hair and snapped the cape behind her. Laenea pulled the black
velvet close and waited. When the tram came she boarded it, to return to her
own city and her own people, the pilots, to live apart with them and never tell
their secrets.

Laenea knew where the pilots stayed when they were on the
spaceport, but she had never been inside their quarters. She had taken her
training on the mainland, and, as far as she knew, no one not a pilot was
permitted on their floor. She stepped into the elevator and touched the proper
button. The cage fell. When it stopped, the doors remained closed.

“What is your name, please?” The voice had the
artificial smoothness created only by machine.

“Laenea Trevelyan.”

Machine response ordinarily occurred instantaneously, as far
as human beings could tell. Laenea expected instant acceptance or instant
refusal.

Nothing happened.

“My name is Laenea Trevelyan,” she said again.