Superluminal (29 page)

o0o

After Radu had already begun chopping up the vegetables, he
noticed that the meal he had chosen to prepare took longer than anything else
he knew how to make. He could have put everything through the preparer in the
galley, and quite probably everyone would laugh at him if they realized he had
not done so. But he was beyond caring what any of the others thought. The work
was comforting. Slicing through onions and bok choy in a steady rhythm gave him
something to concentrate on other than seventh, other than his new perceptions,
other than the edge.

He tasted the sauce. It had no taste. He added pippali, more
than he should have, and a handful of chopped ginger.

He felt the radial acceleration as the linked ships slid
into a slow, gentle spin. After half a turn, a counterthrust stopped them. Radu
shut his eyes, then opened them again. With his eyes closed it was all too easy
to let the petals of dimension open out onto an endless abyss.

Radu Dracul shivered.

o0o

When Laenea turned the ships to face the edge, Orca gazed at
it, into it. It lay just beyond the port; no, it lay forever beyond vision or
understanding.

“Turn the ship around.” Vasili’s voice was
haunted and strained.

“No!” Orca said.

“Laenea —”

“Don’t look at it if you don’t like
it,” Orca said.

“It’d be there, all the same, I’d know it,
I’d feel it.”

“It’s there, even when we aren’t facing
it!”

Vasili reached for the controls. Ramona put her hand over
his. “Vaska, it isn’t going to jump in and eat us.”

His shoulders stiff with anger, Vasili strode from the
control room.

Ramona hesitated, sighed, and finally got up and followed
him.

“Laenea, what’s out there?” Orca asked
softly.

“I wish I knew,” Laenea said. “I tried to
figure it out, but beyond where we are, the transit equations haven’t any
solutions. We’ve come just about as far as we can.”

Orca kept staring at the edge. Laenea busied herself at the
control console.

Quite some time later, the ship began a slow spin. Orca made
a sound of protest, or supplication.

“Sorry,” Laenea said. “But I don’t
much like it looming over me, either. Orca, can you get your ship ready,
please? We’ll have to use its engines, too, to get home.”

Orca stood, reluctant, still staring at the viewport. Now it
held a field of galaxies.

“Yes…” she said. “All
right…” She left Laenea’s ship. She felt both enlarged and
diminished by what she had seen, and all she knew for certain was that she
wanted to explore it until she understood its secrets.

Now she knew how her brother felt when he dove into the sea
until its depths sliced away all the sunlight. She knew why he loved it, and
why he would never leave.

o0o

Radu felt the ships spin again, returning to their original
orientation. He wondered how Orca, down in Laenea’s control room, had
reacted to the sight of the edge.

It will excite her, he thought. It won’t surprise her
any more than she was surprised by seeing constellations formed by galaxies
instead of stars. She can swim across an ocean all alone, or accompanied by a
predator that would terrify any ordinary human being. The edge of reality would
not frighten Orca.

He scraped his knife a few times across the sharpening
stone, then went back to chopping everything very fine.

o0o

Orca climbed down into the engines. She found stress wear
even more severe than the damage she felt within her own body. The distance
they had come had penetrated all the protective mechanisms of sleep and
shielding. She signaled the computer for the schematics, replaced three circuit
splinters, and reached into a net. She pushed herself into the heightened state
of awareness she needed to heal the frayed luminescent connections. The energy
flux tingled through her hands and along the edges of her finger webbing.

o0o

Radu flicked on the intercom.

“Lunch, everybody,” he said.

Laenea came in a minute later, Ramona soon thereafter. Radu
finished slicing a green onion, swept the pieces onto the edge of his knife,
and scattered them across the soup for garnish.

“Smells good,” Laenea said. “Is it —”

“What’s that smell?” Vasili put all his
disappointment and disgust over the whole trip into those three words.

“Lunch,” Radu said, without apology. He was
thoroughly sick of Vasili’s bad humor.

“
I
can’t eat it.” The young pilot
stormed back to his cabin.

Ramona made as if to go after him but Laenea touched her arm
and she stopped.

“Let him sulk, Ramona. Come have some lunch. It smells
wonderful.”

Ramona allowed Laenea to lead her to her place at the head
of the table.

“I’m not very hungry,” she said
apologetically to Radu. “But Laenea’s right, it does smell
good.”

Laenea glanced at Radu, struggled not to laugh, and broke
out giggling. He gave her a quizzical look.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You looked
so funny, when Vaska said he wouldn’t eat lunch. Poor Vaska, he
hasn’t even the sense not to insult the cook when he’s holding a
butcher knife!”

Radu wiped off the blade and put the knife away. “I
forgot I had it,” he said. “Go ahead and start. I’ll get
Orca.”

He went to the engine room hatchway and called her. He
expected to hear her climbing the ladder, but silence was the only response. He
went down to look for her.

She was sitting crosslegged on the floor, her chin on her
fist, faint frown lines of intense concentration on her forehead. Radu sat on
his heels beside her. The light from circuit interstices flowed over her.

“Orca?”

She stayed where she was, without answering; she took a
long, deep breath, and let it out again. She blinked slowly and looked at him.

“Lunch,” he said lamely.

It was a quiet meal. Laenea, having recovered from her fit
of laughter, complimented Radu on the taste as well as the smell of the soup,
then lapsed into a thoughtful silence. Vasili remained in his cabin. Orca
responded to nothing more complicated than “Pass the soy sauce.”
Ramona picked at her food for a few minutes, then murmured a word of apology
and left the galley. Orca watched her go, and soon thereafter, without another
word, got up and followed her.

“I don’t think they meant it as a comment on
your cooking,” Laenea said.

“I know they didn’t,” Radu said. “It
doesn’t matter. I don’t expect anyone to act as if this trip were
ordinary. I’m surprised I feel as normal as I do.”

“I feel better than normal,” Laenea said.
“I’m sorry about Miikala, I’m sorry Vasili is disappointed.
But I can’t help it. I feel wonderful.”

o0o

Orca paused just inside the control room where Ramona-Teresa
sat all alone with the lights out. The diver thought about seeing deeper into
the infrared. Ramona became a deep glow, motionless and silent. The strangeness
of pilots intensified in the darkness. At night Orca could see the pulse of
ordinary people. Pilots changed their blood pressure without any definite
rhythm. The bright strokes of the veins in Ramona’s throat suddenly faded
and her skin darkened to deep red.

“Ramona-Teresa,” Orca whispered, “are you
all right?”

“Yes, my dear,” the pilot said sadly. Cool black
tracks streaked her face, where tears had fallen and not yet quite dried.
“There aren’t many of us left, the first pilots. I’ve
survived losing friends before. Never quite as close a friend as Miikala,
though.”

“I’m very sorry. That this happened.”

“Thank you.”

“Ramona-Teresa…”

“Yes?”

“Would you turn the ships around again? Just for a few
minutes? Please?”

“If you wish.” The pilot’s short, square
hands moved on the controls. The galaxies slid away.

Orca sat crosslegged on the deck in front of the port and
let the edge engulf her and slice through her.

Someone spoke. Orca did not hear the words; she did not
reply.

Ramona crouched next to her and put one hand on her
shoulder.

“Orca —” she said again. The reflection of
her face overlaid the edge. “Orca, what do you see in it?”

“I… I don’t know.” Using true speech
underwater, she might be able to describe it. She said a few phrases in middle
speech.

“Are you singing?” Ramona asked.

“No,” Orca said. “I was trying to explain.
But I don’t have any words you can understand.”

Ramona’s reflection showed outrage, then she began to
laugh.

“I deserve that,” the pilot said. “Oh, I
do deserve that, I and all the pilots.”

Radu came in. Though his steps were silent, the warmth of
his body reflected from the viewport and outlined him in a faint glow that
brightened and dimmed with his pulse. His image combined and melded with
Orca’s. She met his gaze in the reflection. As quiet as his image, he
crossed the floor and sat beside her, and both of them looked out, out at the
edge.

o0o

When Ramona’s signal came through the linked control
panel, Laenea could have turned on the intercom and asked the older pilot not
to change their orientation; she could even have counteracted the thrust.
Instead, she ordered all the lights out and watched the edge come into view
again. The viewport disappeared against black, and Laenea stared into a mystery
so close she might reach out and touch it. It frightened her in a way she had
never before been frightened. She had been scared before her first transit
voyage, when she was still a crew member, as well as before the operation that
made her a pilot and during the approach to this, her first training flight.
Scared, yet excited and eager as well. This fear was of a much more intense
unknown.

But it was a familiar factor that immediately threatened
them. The ships were traveling at a significant percentage of the speed of
light. The time distortion of transit aside, here in normal space (or was the
edge normal space anymore?) they would experience relativistic effects. A
minute here was some longer time back on earth. Laenea set the computer to
figuring out the factor, then went looking for Radu.

She found him sitting next to Orca, both of them gazing
fascinated at the edge.

“Radu —”

She thought he had not heard her, but he finally looked over
his shoulder.

“Yes?”

“Can you still tell
when
it is, back on
earth?”

“Of course.” He paused a moment.
“Oh,” he said. “I see. You’re right. We probably
shouldn’t stay here too much longer.”

“How long have we been gone?”

“You’d been gone nearly three weeks when we
left, and since then it’s been, earth time, about eight days.”

Laenea nodded. As long as they could measure their presence
here in hours, their world would not outdistance them in time. But if they
stayed too long, the effect of time dilation would be to transport them years
into the future, when they would be not merely lost, but forgotten.

“Ramona, we really had better go home,” Laenea
said.

Ramona nodded. “I suppose we had. Orca, is our ship
ready?”

Radu had to nudge her gently before she responded.

“Yeah,” she said absently. “The repairs
are done.”

“Good. We’ll start home as soon as you’re
asleep.”

Startled out of her reverie, Orca jumped up and grabbed
Laenea’s arm.

“We’re going
home?
We came all this way
just to turn around and go back?”

“I came all this way by mistake — and you came
all this way to find me.” Laenea drew away.

Scowling, Orca kept her grip.

“I’m sorry,” Laenea said. “I
didn’t mean to be flippant. Orca, would you please let me go?”

Orca complied without apology.

“We aren’t prepared for exploration or
research,” Laenea said. “We need to go back and set up a proper
expedition. Besides, no one on board either ship contracted to be away from
home for a couple of years. That’ll be the elapsed time on earth for even
a short research trip.”

“But —”

“I’m sorry,” Laenea said again. “We
have to go home.”

Orca strode from the control room.

Radu helped prepare his ship for transit, shunting the
computers to transit mode. When they were ready, he went to the box room to
help Orca go to sleep.

She was gone.

“Orca?”

He hurried through the small ship, swung down into the
engine room, searched for and failed to find her. He opened the intercom.

“Laenea, is Orca on board your ship?”

“I don’t think so. Isn’t she sleeping yet?
I’m ready to start for a transit point.”

“I can’t find her.”

Laenea’s voice switched channels, following him
automatically as he went from room to room.

“Shall I come help you look?”

Radu stopped in front of the airlock. One of the suit packs
was missing.

“Laenea!”

“Yes?”

“Don’t put any delta vee on the ship!” He
grabbed a second pack and fastened the collar around his neck and shoulders.

“Why not? What’s wrong?”

“Just don’t. Don’t do anything.” He
was afraid to take the time to explain. He turned on the suit. The fine support
of an energy field enclosed him. Everything he looked at sparkled slightly
around its edges. He hurried into the airlock and started it cycling.

When the exterior hatch slid aside, Radu found Orca
immediately. Her suit glowed faintly blue against the formidable blackness.
Lacking even a tether, she floated in space as she might float in the sea. Radu
touched the lifeline plate, and a tenuous extension formed from the ship to his
suit.

He pushed off toward her, toggling his radio on.

Orca was singing.

The sound made him shiver. It spoke of the whole universe
behind him, and of something unknown, perhaps unknowable, before him.

Orca drifted farther and farther away. By the time Radu
reached her, his lifeline had stretched far beyond its limits of safety, into a
filmy, silky wisp, a filament of blue smoke connecting him to the ship. The
hypnotic notes of Orca’s singing drew him on.