Superluminal (20 page)

“You’ll have to tell them you
don’t,” he said. “They know how to detect the truth —”

“They wouldn’t even bother to try. Divers learn
biocontrol as well as pilots do. Better, in some ways. We can neutralize stress
so it doesn’t even show. I could pretend to lie — but I can’t
prove it if I’m telling the truth.”

Radu rubbed his face with one hand. “It’s
pointless,” he said. “Simply pointless.”

Orca crumpled a piece of wrapping paper slowly and very
tightly, and dropped the wad on the bed.

Radu’s seat on the earth shuttle was right next to
Orca’s. It would have been easier if they could have changed, but the
ship was full. They strapped in without speaking as the craft prepared to
undock.

Radu glanced carefully up and down the aisle, noting each
passenger. No one else was crew. A few, by their ease in weightlessness, were
station personnel; most were tourists or other visitors.

He wished he had something to say to Orca to ease the anger
and distrust he had forced between them. She sat straight and tense. He
followed her gaze toward the front of the shuttle.

A pilot had just come on board. Radu’s pulse rate
increased.

Ramona-Teresa paused in the aisle when she reached his
place. Her glance at him was milder than when she had warned Laenea not to take
Radu, or anyone else not a pilot, as her lover. She nodded to Orca, and smiled
at Radu, as if to say, So, my dear, you like your lovers exotic: but you should
have taken my advice about pilots in the first place.

Radu looked away from her, blushing. He did not speak to
her, and he was too embarrassed to say anything to Orca.

o0o

Neither Radu nor Orca broke the silence, all the way down.
They landed on the port platform late at night. In the disorder of getting off
the shuttle, Orca vanished among the other passengers. Though he was glad she
would be out of his conflict with the pilots, after her departure Radu felt
very much alone. He saw Ramona-Teresa in the crowd, but she paid him no
attention. Radu was puzzled. She had not been with the pilots who had
confronted him. Could she be unaware of what had happened?

Radu passed his hand over his eyes and rubbed his temples.
She knew. He was quite sure that she knew.

He went to the nearest communications terminal and requested
the status of Laenea’s ship.

It was still out.

His concern increased. He needed to find someone who knew
about pilot training, who knew how long the first flight usually lasted.

Why don’t you catch up to Ramona-Teresa, and ask her?
he thought, and laughed quickly.

“Do you wish to receive your message?” the
terminal asked him.

“Do I have one?”

Taking his question as an affirmative, the terminal
responded, spitting out hard copy for privacy rather than spinning the words in
the air or speaking them aloud: I must see you alone as soon as you return.
Come to my restaurant. Marc.

Radu touched the wyuna in his pocket. He was surprised that
Laenea’s mysterious friend even remembered him.

Radu shoved the message into his pocket beside the wyuna. He
wondered what Marc could have to say to him, to sound so urgent. He decided he
had better find out.

o0o

Marc’s restaurant was dark. Radu stood outside the
closed ornamental gate, unsure what to do.

Marc’s image flickered into existence before him.

“Hello, Radu Dracul.”

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” Radu said.
“But I just got your message.”

“I seldom sleep,” Marc said. “Come
in.”

The gate swung silently open. Radu peered into the dimness,
seeing no one; a light came on, but no one was there.

“It’s safe,” Marc said. “I
don’t keep a nest of tigers, which is more than I can say for some other
of Laenea’s friends.”

The reference to tigers reminded Radu of Kathell Stafford
and her threat. He had barely thought of her since he left. Could Marc know of
the incident? Uneasily, Radu went inside.

Ferns and vines and tropical plants lined the walls and
drooped from the ceiling of the foyer. Radu had not even noticed them the first
time he was here. He smiled, remembering: He and Laenea had had other things to
notice than the décor.

Like the plants in a ship’s ecosystem, these raised
their environment’s oxygen content. Radu recognized several species that
were specially designed to be used in transit vessels. He had never seen them
outside one before. He stopped in front of a second wrought-iron gate.
Marc’s indoor display formed, its colors sparkling through a rainbow.

“Not that way,” he said. “In here.”

A door, completely concealed by the vegetation, slipped open
silently to reveal another unlit passage.

“I don’t like to leave this open very
long,” Marc said when Radu hesitated.

Radu stepped through the foliage. The door glided shut,
narrowing and then obliterating the block of light cast from behind him.

Blind, Radu waited for one of Marc’s communication
displays, for any glimmer of light. The echo of a large room replied to the
beat of his heart.

His eyes began to adjust. A glowing ember touched the edge
of his vision. Then one indistinct shape sprang into focus, and another. He was
surrounded by luminescent objects of delicate form.

The lights came up gradually. The luminescence faded,
eclipsed by artifacts whose beauty was brought out by color. Glass shelves
lined the walls, displaying Marc’s collection of all the pretty things
that people brought him.

“Do you like them?”

The voice was not the smooth production of the machine, but
clear, direct, and human. Radu turned reluctantly toward it. Marc sat in an
alcove at the end of the room. He was not deformed, as rumor made him. He was
quite a handsome man, forty-five or fifty, with dark brown hair and eyes, and
very pale skin. His face was unlined, gentle, and calm.

“It’s safe,” Marc said again.
“I’m safe. I know the rumors about me. You don’t need to be
frightened.”

“I’m not.” Radu approached, and, at
Marc’s nod, sat on a bench nearby. “It’s only that I
didn’t expect to meet you. Laenea told me no one ever did.”

“That’s almost true,” Marc said.
“Almost, but not quite.”

Marc wore blue velvet pants, sandals, and a sleeveless silk
shirt. He held himself motionless, but the tension in the muscles of his bare
arms showed that his lack of animation was deliberate.

He isn’t paralyzed, Radu thought; and then Marc slowly
crossed one leg over the other. He moved as if he were afraid of what might
happen if he did not stay almost perfectly quiet. Some diseases cause the bones
to grow brittle and break with any exertion…

“Thank you for coming in,” Marc said. “I
hoped you would answer my message. I was extremely anxious to speak with you,
before you took any action about the pilots.”

Radu raised one eyebrow. “Your sources are very
efficient.”

“Some people bring me things,” Marc said.
“Others give me information.”

Radu remembered the wyuna. He drew it from his pocket. Its
hard opalescent ridges caught the light.

“I thought of you when I saw this.”

Marc gazed smiling at Radu’s offering, but he did not
reach out.

“You must already have a whole shelf full,” Radu
said. Marc, with his connections, had probably been given wyunas when they were
still an experiment. Radu closed his hand around the jewel. He seemed always to
behave like a
naïf
, here on earth.

“No!” Marc said quickly. “On the contrary,
I’ve never seen anything like it. Is it a shell? A stone?”

Radu placed it on the arm of Marc’s chair. Both
Marc’s hands covered panels of switches and buttons; he did not move from
touching them, but bent down to look at his gift.

“It’s a wyuna,” Radu said. As he explained
about Ngthwnmulun’s new cash crop, he decided he had better tell the
whole truth about it. “There’s one other fact, but I don’t
think Atna’s people want it widely known.”

“Their secrets are safe here,” Marc said.
“As are yours.”

While he explained to Marc about tree warts, Radu considered
what the older man had told him in that single offhand phrase.

Marc reached out very slowly, with a visible tremor in his
hand, to lift the wyuna between his thumb and forefinger. He barely raised his
arm. Radu wondered if, instead of fragile bones, he had some sort of muscle
ailment that prevented his moving easily.

“It’s lovely,” Marc said. “Thank you
for thinking of me.” Marc explored the wyuna with his gaze for several
minutes, turning it over and over in his fingers. Finally he replaced it on the
armrest of his chair and covered the control panel with his hand again.

“You’ve disturbed the pilots rather
badly,” he said.

Radu hesitated before replying, but as Marc already knew
what had occurred, Radu did not see how he could get him into trouble by
discussing it with him.

“How did you know what happened? They showed me they
didn’t want me to tell anyone — why did they tell you?”

“‘Who knows, with pilots?’”

“I’m tired of hearing that! I’m tired of
thinking it — they’re human beings just like you and me. I
don’t believe they’re so different.” He forced his voice to a
calmer tone. “I don’t think you do, either.”

“No,” Marc said. “You’re right. And
you’re right that they’re still very human.” He smiled
briefly. “They’re human enough that a few are incurable gossips.
But they’re also human enough to be unpredictable when they’re in a
panic.”

“I’m not a threat to them.”

“That remains to be seen. There’s no way to tell
how the administrators will react to the news. First, they’ll want to
study you.”

“Do they have to find out?”

“I’m afraid so. It may take a few days, but even
if they don’t hear directly the flight recorder will contain anomalies
that the computer will flag.”

“You know a great deal about this,” Radu said.

“Yes… well… I used to be a pilot.”

Radu sat back, astonished. “A pilot! Laenea never said
—”

“She doesn’t know,” Marc said sharply.
“Very few people know. The old pilots, but not the new ones. I
wasn’t even a member of the first working group. I was an experiment.
Most of the people who knew me before believe I’m dead.”

“Why? Why have you locked yourself up here? And why
did you let me in?”

“Something happened to me in transit,” Marc
said. “And something happened to you. I thought I might be of
help.”

Near Marc, Radu felt none of the unease he felt around
Vasili Nikolaievich or Laenea, and none of the terror he had experienced in the
face of the imperturbable circle of pilots who had nearly killed him. Even now
that he was aware of Marc’s status, he felt calm in his presence.

“What should I do?” he asked. “I’m
no pilot.”

“Not by the usual criteria, no,” Marc said.
“But if you’re an indication that some normal folk can withstand
transit, the pilots will become curiosities. They have no society but their
own. They might continue working, but they’d soon be outnumbered. They
give up a great deal to become pilots. But they gain more. They cannot —
they will not — go back to being ordinary people.”

“Surely I’m the one who’s a
curiosity,” Radu said.

“Perhaps,” Marc said in a noncommittal tone.

“Vasili Nikolaievich said he should kill me,”
Radu said. “I didn’t think he would, but I didn’t believe he
was trying to make a joke, either.”

Radu expected him to smile, but his expression remained
grave.

“Do you intend to let me leave here?” Radu
asked.

At that Marc did smile. “Of course I do,” he
said. “I’m not a pilot anymore. My loyalties are a bit wider. I
confess, though, I am curious about your experience.”

“I don’t think I can tell you much more than you
already know. I woke up in transit. I’m alive.”

“There’s more than that. There must be. Did you
ever come out of the anesthetic early before? Did you have any indication that
you were restless?”

“No. The opposite. The recordings always showed I
slept more peacefully than most.”

“Did anything unusual ever happen on your other
flights?”

”No.”

“Don’t answer so quickly with such certainty.
Did you awaken easily?”

“Yes.”

“You were often first, then.”

“Yes.” He thought back over his rather small
number of transit dives. The one time he had been helped from his sleep
chamber, it had been by Vasili, the only pilot he had ever flown with.
“Always first, so far. But I’ve not been crew that long.”

“You felt that you slept soundly in transit.”

“Yes. I used a high anesthetic level, and I
dreamed.”

“Dreamed!”

Radu hesitated. “Laenea was surprised, too, when I
told her. Is it all that uncommon?”

“Yes. It’s unique as far as I know.”

“I don’t see how it could make the least bit of
difference.”

“There is a difference. Like the difference between
real sleep and the crew’s drugged coma. How did you wake up when you were
supposed to be drugged?”

“The first time, I thought the gas line was stopped
up. I found no obstruction.” He stretched out his arm so the sleeve
pulled back from his wrist, revealing the bandage. “The second time, I
tore loose the needle. The third time I reacted badly to the drug.” He
scowled and folded his arms across his chest. “Maybe there’s nothing
strange about what happened to me. Maybe most people can live through transit
awake and it was something else that killed the first ones to try it.”

“Do you think so?”

Radu did not answer for a while. Finally he said, “No.
I wish I did, but I don’t.”

“Nor do I, and I have reasons for my opinion. What do
you dream about?”

“Usually? Or this time?”

“Both. Tell me the difference.”

“Before now, my dreams were always pleasant. About
home, and my clan. Before the plague. And on the way to Ngthummulun, I dreamed
about being with Laenea.”