Superluminal (13 page)

He put together an ordinary stew that everyone could season
as they preferred. Then he poured himself a mug of coffee and returned to the
crew lounge to wait for the others to revive.

Stretched out on a chair with his feet propped up, he
thought about what he should do next. Earth had lost its luster for him and
even travel did not seem nearly as inviting as it had when he joined the crew.
As for exploration — Vasili’s experience proved how little chance
Radu had of fulfilling that ambition.

He was homesick, but he did not want to go home. Though he
loved his world, its ghosts haunted him. The ache of his family’s passing
had diminished, but it would never go away. Before the emergency team arrived
and synthesized a vaccine, too many people had died while Radu, by chance and
luck, had lived. The plague killed those it touched; Radu had never met anyone
else who caught it and survived, though he supposed there must be a few. But
everyone who avoided infection, through natural immunity or good fortune, and
then by vaccination, looked at Radu and wondered why someone they had loved was
dead, instead of him.

He rubbed his face, smooth forehead and scarred cheeks, the
soft scratchy bristle of his heavy mustache. Perhaps he should let his beard
grow. He had, once before, but it came in in different colors and made him look
like a jester. The beard hid the scars, but he preferred looking ugly to
looking a fool, so he had shaved it off.

He did not have to leave it the color it grew. He could as
easily change it to the same dark blond as his mustache. His reasons for
leaving it alone seemed absurd even to him. He preferred to present himself to
the world as he was, without a façade. Hiding never worked. He had tried hiding
for two years, up in the mountains alone on Twilight. Hiding his physical scars
behind a beard — or even hiding his mental scars behind regenerated skin
— would not help him either.

At a sudden noise he jumped to his feet. He had forgotten
about the others. Hurrying into the box room, Radu found Atnaterta pulling
himself upright.

“Atna, wait, let me help.”

Radu took him by the shoulder and arm and eased him from his
sleep chamber. The navigator was shivering, deeply and steadily. Radu hugged
him, rubbing his back, until after a few moments the older man responded with a
brief, sleepy embrace. Gradually, his shivering subsided.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m awake
now.” He looked tireder and older than before the journey. He picked up
his thick sweater and zipped himself into it. He was always cold on the ship.

Radu helped him to the lounge. Instead of stopping when they
reached it, the navigator kept on going toward the control room.

“We’re on course,” Radu said.
“There’s a pilot on board.”

“Oh.” Atna stopped. “Yes. The pilot.
I’d forgot the pilot.” Then his expression brightened. “Come
to think of it, I’d even forgot that this trip I’m just a
passenger.” He stepped into the control room and gazed up at Ngthummulun.
“Vaska did it again, I see. How far out are we? Two hours?”

“Even less,” Radu said.

Atna returned to the lounge and lowered himself stiffly into
a chair. Radu fetched him some coffee and sat down across from him.

“What happened?”

Atna wrapped his long fingers around his cup, savoring the
warmth. “They flew him out to us. We were nearly at the transit point
when the listing came through. Some ship was going to be ordered to take it,
so… I volunteered us. I hope you don’t mind.”

Radu shrugged. Anger was pointless; the deed was done.

“Why?” he asked.

“Ngthummulun is my home world, so I suppose I have to
say pure selfishness,” Atna said smiling. “We don’t buy many
offworld goods, so ships don’t come here often. I haven’t been home
for a long time.”

“Why are we going there now?” Radu tried to
memorize how the planet’s name was pronounced.

“I can’t be certain,” Atna said.
“But as it isn’t an emergency, I think I know. Perhaps I’ll
get a chance to show you.”

Radu was curious to hear more, but he heard the sharp click
of a sleep chamber lid. Atna moved to get up but Radu put out one hand to
restrain him. “I’ll help her. You finish your coffee.”

“All right. Thanks.”

Radu opened Orca’s sleep chamber. She shifted,
regaining consciousness. He took her hand gently, afraid he might injure the
delicate swimming membranes. But when she closed her fingers the web folded
back out of the way. He helped her up. She smiled sleepily and slid her arms
around his waist, hugging him tight while he enfolded her in his arms and
stroked her back and shoulders, easing away the cramps. Her long sleek
swimmer’s muscles tensed and relaxed beneath his hands.

She sighed deeply. “Thanks.” She let him go and
rubbed her eyes with her fists, then combed her short, pale hair with her fingers.
It fell back into place exactly as it had been, nearly smooth, not quite
rumpled.

“You’re welcome,” Radu said.

“How did Atna come through?”

“Fairly well. He seems tired, but I think he’s
all right.” He explained about the ship’s being diverted, the pilot,
Atna’s home world.

“Every time I see him, transit’s taken a little
more out of him.” Orca shook her head, flinging away the worry, and
grinned. “I’m glad he’s finally decided to take a
vacation.”

Orca tolerated transit sleep as well as anyone Radu had ever
met. She stretched luxuriously. “Is that dinner I smell? I’m
starved.”

“It’ll be ready soon.”

They returned to the lounge, where Atna sat hunched over his
coffee.

Everything about Orca — her prominent canines, her
lithe walk, her narrow hips and small breasts and large eyes and hands —
all her features were at one end or the other of a normal range, so except for
the swimming webs Radu could not tell what about her was inherent and what
intentionally changed. He admitted his fascination to himself. Whatever factors
had formed Orca, they combined into a being of ethereal grace. She was not by
any classical definition beautiful, but she was striking. Somehow it made Radu
uncomfortable to find her so attractive, because he felt as if he were
betraying Laenea.

He reached up absently to touch his rough, scarred face. He
had been with Laenea too short a time to get used to her not caring about the
marks. He had been away from Twilight too short a time to find out if hers was
the usual reaction, or if most people off his home world as well as on it
thought him ugly. He assumed they did.

“Hi, Atna.” Orca kissed the navigator’s
cheek. He patted her hand. Radu set another cup of coffee on the table. Orca
took it gratefully and sipped it, black.

She was about to sit down when the intercom clicked on.
“One hour to pre-orbital check.” The computer’s voice gave no
indication of the urgency its message implied. The crew had more than an
hour’s work to do. Radu stood up quickly, thinking, A lot of good it does
you to know what time it is if you don’t pay attention.

Atna pushed himself to his feet; Orca glanced wistfully at
her coffee, shrugged, and left it behind. She vanished into the engines while
Radu and Atnaterta carried out the systems checks. Used to having plenty of
time between transit and orbital insertion, they had to push hard to perform
all their tasks. Vasili Nikolaievich maintained his silence and his seclusion.
Radu wondered if he had offended the pilot even more seriously than he had
thought. It was too late to do anything about it now. They could certainly have
used his help. Radu regretted his own surly behavior as he tried to complete
the technical work, assist Atna, and, in the few minutes in between, finish
putting together a reasonably edible dinner, which they ate on the run.

o0o

Water dappled and streaked the surface of Ngthummulun in
thousands of rivers and millions of lakes that touched the infinite shades of
green with blue and blue gray and silver. Ngthummulun had only primitive
landing facilities, so the cargo truck had to be taken down by hand. Atna had
turned the controls over to Radu, and Radu was nervous. Vasili had made it
clear that he expected the cargo back through the first launch window. That
meant no aborted landing approaches, no second tries.

Radu drove the truck closer to the surface, diving in at a
steep, fast angle. The paisley patchwork of the land stretched and spread. All
the separate shades of green and blue, mottled specks from high overhead, grew
into discrete spots, then, as the truck neared the ground and the horizon
flattened and receded, the little ship skimmed over a single color at a time
and the borders whipped past as blurred uneven lines.

Radu concentrated on controls and signals. The forest swept
away beneath him, deep green velvet streaked here and there with sparkling
patches as bright as snow. The landing strip appeared suddenly, a violent
slash, a dark- rimmed canyon.

“You’re fine,” Atna said. “Quite
nice.”

The truck slid between the trees; Radu slowed it and touched
down as smoothly as he ever had in the simulator. Easing on reverse power, he
braked the ship and it glided to a halt. He hesitated for a moment, leaning
tensely over the controls, then sat back and let out his breath.

“Very good,” Atna said. “Couldn’t
have done better if we carried gravity.”

“Thanks,” Radu said. Delayed tension took over.
Until now, Atna’s easy manner had kept him from noticing how severely his
competence was being tested. It had sufficed. He had made no mistakes. If the
cargo was ready, the truck could catch the next window back to the ship. Radu
was happier to have pleased Atna than he was relieved to have kept, so far, to
Vasili’s timetable.

Radu opened the hatch. The hot, humid air rolled in on him.
Tropical regions always surprised him with the force of their climates.

He jumped to the runway and glanced back, ready to give Atna
a hand. But the older man moved freely and with more animation. He looked
around at the rain-dazzled forest and took a deep, slow breath of the air of
his home world.

A large ground truck approached them, its wheels spraying
sails of water from every puddle. Atna took off his sweater. Radu was tempted
to take off his shirt, but he wore nothing under it and he did not know if it
would be proper.

When the ground truck stopped, Atna greeted the loading crew
fondly in a language Radu had never heard. Atna introduced him to his friends,
and they all switched back to speaking Standard.

“What are you shipping?” Atna asked.

“Wyunas,” said the loading crew chief.
“The first crop.”

Atna laughed. “So that
is
what all this is
about! Sending a message probe, hiring a pilot, diverting a ship —”
He laughed again, an amused low chuckle.

The crew chief laughed too. “I suppose they think they
ought to start out with some fanfare.”

“It gave me a start at first, I don’t mind
telling you.”

“We had good growing weather, and an early harvest.
There’s a major holiday cluster on earth that the first shipment will
catch, if the ship makes the deadline.”

“It will make it, with Vaska piloting — but the
express charge will eat up the profits,” Atna said drily.

His friend shook her head. “If they sell the wyunas
for what they expect to, the cost of the ship and the pilot will be negligible
in comparison.”

Atna gave her a quizzical glance.

“Don’t look so skeptical — hope
they’re right,” she said. “We need the currency.” She
clasped his hand. “It’s good to see you home, Atna. Can I give you
a ride to town?”

“Thanks, yes.”

“Good. Till we’re done, then.” She patted
his arm, then she and the others opened up the cargo hatch and began
transferring small boxes marked FRAGILE from the ground truck to the ship.

“What are wyunas?” Radu asked.

“Come along. Perhaps I can show you.”

Atna led the way through a forest bordering the field. A
path crossed marshy ground between huge fern trees. Radu followed up a gentle
rise to the far bank of a narrow valley. The path grew drier and the trees
shorter, but the fronds still reached well over his head. He brushed against
one thick stem and the tree showered him with droplets of water.

Atna peered through branches into a clearing.

“Good,” he said. “This field’s still
unharvested.” He pushed the ferns back and stood aside.

It was as if he had broken through into a winter forest
after an ice storm. The trees’ bare limbs sparkled like diamonds. Radu
followed Atnaterta into the ice forest until they were surrounded by silver and
black. Fallen leaves lay mushy and rotting on the ground, but the bark of the
trees sprouted thousands of marble-sized transparent spheres, all intricately
patterned inside and out in loops and swirls, shaped by the uncertainties of
their growth. Each was slightly different, like a snowflake or a fingerprint.

The trees sang, so delicately that their wind-chime whisper
was inaudible anywhere but among the shimmering crystals.

Atna stripped several from the end of a branch and handed
them to Radu. They fractured the sunlight into a hundred tiny rainbows,
sparkling among the arches and prisms.

“Are they seeds?”

Atna laughed. “To tell you the truth they’re
more like warts. Tree warts. That’s something we don’t intend to
mention too prominently in the advertising. They aren’t infectious, of
course — the host organism has to be specially adapted and sensitized or
the wyunas won’t grow at all. But ‘tree wart’ isn’t an
aesthetically pleasing name.”

“You’re right. ‘Wyuna’ is better.
But what are they for?”

“They’re our cash crop. We needed one, so we
invented it.”

Radu nodded. Twilight exported the hardwoods that grew in
its high forests. But Ngthummulun was terraformed. It had started out a dead
world. Everything growing on it had been brought from earth or hand evolved
here.