Superluminal (39 page)

“Because it doesn’t matter. The vote will be for
transition. But I’m not going through it again.”

“Orca, you’ll be left behind. Your whole family
will change —”

“I will, too. But it will be a different kind of
change, one that isn’t compatible with remaining a diver. I’ve applied
for pilot’s training, and they’ve accepted me.”

He started to protest, for he could not imagine giving up
the freedom of the ocean once one had tasted it. But Orca was reaching for a
different freedom.

“Soon you’ll be able to find out for yourself if
true speech can explain transit.”

Her soft laugh held an undertone of sadness. “Yes.
I’m glad you understand. Some of my blood-family thinks I’m crazy.
I had an awful fight with my father about it.”

“Your father sounds like a formidable opponent,”
Radu said.

“Yes,
formidable
,” she said, stretching
the word out in its French pronunciation. “I tried to get him to come
meet you, but he wouldn’t. Even after the blue talked to you. He said he
hadn’t spoken to a lander since the revolution, and he wasn’t about
to start now.”

“Would he speak to me,” Radu said hesitantly,
“if I… if I weren’t a lander?”

Silently, Orca reached out and brushed a damp lock of
Radu’s hair from his forehead.

“Is that what the blue understood?” she said.
“Will you be staying here? Will the blues finally have a human
cousin?”

“Is it possible?”

“That’s how we all started, as landers, a couple
of generations ago. And once in a while — not often, and I won’t
pretend it’s easy — ordinary humans join us and change. To change
among the blues, though… Radu, I’m scared for you.”

He sat down on the window seat. The great mass of hope and
confusion he had carried inside him since seeing and touching the great blue
whale grew denser and hotter and suddenly fused into a white and glowing star.
He flung his arms around Orca and held her tight. She embraced him, stroking
his hair.

“Don’t be afraid for me. Be happy for me, and
I’ll be happy for you.”

She knelt beside him, and kissed him, hard. She took his
hand and drew it between them so their bodies pressed their clasped hands
together.

o0o

Laenea stepped on board her transit ship.

True, she would not be piloting it herself, for she had
never even flown simulation on such a large craft. True, she was technically
not qualified to solo even in a training ship, for Miikala had not, of course,
certified her. And true, every other pilot on board had far more seniority.

Nevertheless, it was hers. It was here because of her; it
was preparing for transit because of her. Kristen van de Graaf had asked her to
return to transit with a group of experienced pilots, in the hope of
introducing them to seventh.

She stepped on board, and a dozen pilots, who had been
gathering here all day, greeted her.

She knew several of them — Jenneth, and Chase, both
from earth, and Quentin, from the same home world as Atnaterta. She paused, not
knowing what to say, seeing in them the same expression she had seen in the
faces of grounders meeting a pilot. She glanced quickly over her shoulder. The
hatch swung slowly closed.

“Laenea —”

She faced the pilots again. Jenneth, who had spoken, came
toward her, carrying a small flask of iridescent blue glass. She offered it to
Laenea. Laenea accepted it.

“What is it?”

“The ashes of your heart.”

Laenea looked down at the flask again, and traced a pattern
of color that curved up its cool, smooth side.

She tried to say something, but joy made her speechless. She
raised her head. All the other pilots watched her, smiling, remembering their
own final initiation, the gift of their freedom.

“Thank you,” Laenea finally managed to whisper.
She laughed suddenly with joy, and the other pilots surrounded her, laughing
with her, embracing her, welcoming her to their company.

o0o

Radu woke warm and content, with Orca nestled sleeping
against him. The room was suffused with the midnight blue light just preceding
dawn.

He stretched, happy for the moment to doze in the silence.
But as midnight blue turned to azure, he could not stay inside. He kissed Orca
gently and slid from beneath the down comforter without disturbing her.

He put on his pants, picked up his boots in the foyer, and
sat on the outside steps to slip into them. There was a lot of brush on the
hillside, and the path was rough. Even among the divers, only Orca’s
brother Mark climbed around barefoot on their rocky island.

The approaching dawn turned the world a soft, misty blue-gray.
The salt tang of the ocean and the spicy scent of the trees blended into one.
In the bay, the killer whales lay in black patterns against the slate-colored
water. He looked for the blue, but could not find her.

Radu climbed the path to the crest of the island. The blimp
drifted motionless in the still air, its landing wheel a hands- breadth from
the ground.

Radu clambered to the top of a projection of smooth gray
lichen-patched rock, the highest point of the island, to watch the first
sunrise that he had ever witnessed on this world.

The edge of the sun crept over the mountains to the east, a
single point of clear yellow light. It grew to an arc, until he had to look
away.

The sunlight and the colors fairly dazzled him. He took a
deep breath of the sun-sharpened resiny air and stretched his arms wide. He
chose, deliberately and willingly, to see this place in the manner that had
been forced upon him in seventh. Since returning to earth he had been afraid to
look at the world that way, afraid of being overwhelmed again by the perception
of rapid change. Here, the pace would be slower and more careful.

The morning breeze touched his hair, ruffling the locks at
the back of his neck, on his forehead, touching his chest and shoulders with a
caress as gentle as Orca’s lips.

The world opened out around him. He did not try again to see
any single specific thing. He knew from trying to look at Laenea that it was
impossible. But he could see and feel the multiplicity of outlines of gradual,
inevitable, growth and life and change and even death.

When he heard a thought as clear as a nearby voice, he was
not at all surprised.

o0o

Laenea’s great ship slid into transit. All the pilots
had gathered in the control room, and now they waited. They were fearful,
eager, apprehensive, intent.

Laenea sat back in the pilot’s chair and let herself
experience transit. All the words she had used to describe it during her
debriefing, the words she had imagined captured its very essence, lost their
meaning and became not only inadequate, but simply wrong. Trying to define what
she had missed before, she responded again to the sensation of existing within
the universe and, at the same time, surrounding it completely.

“Laenea!”

She realized that Chase had spoken her name several times
and received no response.

“Sorry,” she said. “What?”

“No, that’s my question, what are we supposed to
be seeing?”

“We don’t know what to look for,
remember,” Jenneth said, “you have to show us.”

She showed them.

Chase gasped. One of the other pilots, whose name Laenea
could not remember, cursed softly and joyfully, damning himself to horrible
purgatories for never having seen what was right in front of him all the time.
Quentin frowned slightly. Jenneth folded her arms and stared belligerently
through the viewport. The others remained mystified.

“That’s amazing,” Quentin said.

“How do we get into it?” Chase said.

They were always in it, but Laenea knew what she meant. She
found an anomaly and took them from a deep cave to the open air, from the land
to the sky, from the ground to the excited state.

Jenneth cried out as they made the transition. She covered
her eyes and flung herself away from the port. Quentin caught her and held her,
embracing her.

“It’s all right,” he said, “it will
be all right.”

Laenea stood, worried for the other pilot.

“What did you see?” Quentin said. His tone
became more insistent and he grabbed her by the shoulders. “What’s
out there?” He shook her.

“Quentin!” Laenea and Chase both grabbed him and
dragged him away from Jenneth, who was sobbing and gasping for breath. Chase
put her breathing mask to her face, and tried to soothe her.

“Quentin, what’s the matter with you — you
saw it for yourself!” Laenea kept her grasp on his arm.

“No,” he said. Tears glistened in his eyes.
“No, that’s just it, I didn’t, I lied.”

He fled from the control room.

Laenea returned to Jenneth and Chase.

“What happened, are you all right?”

“I saw… I knew… something…”
Jenneth was still crying. “Laenea, please, I want to go home.”

“Soon,” Laenea said, “soon, we won’t
stay very long, come lie down.” She glanced back at Chase, who nodded and
took over the controls.

Laenea helped Jenneth to the lounge, let her lie on the
couch, made sure her breathing mask was easily in reach, and covered her with a
blanket.

“Just rest for a few minutes, and we’ll go back
soon.”

Jenneth turned her face toward the wall.

In the corridor, Laenea hesitated. She should go back to the
control room. Instead, she slipped into her cabin and picked up the small glass
jar. She hurried to the airlock and put on a field suit.

Laenea stepped into the airlock and cycled it. She linked
her suit to the tether-plate, then opened the hatch.

She pushed herself out of the ship.

She loosened the flask’s stopper. The air within
pushed against it. She released it, and the pressure exploded the ashes of her
heart into a delicate white sphere, its dust roiling and dispersing as momentum
carried it away from the ship.

Laenea cast the urn after it.

She would have liked to remain where she was; instead, she
stroked the tether line.

Back inside the ship, Laenea took off her field suit, closed
her eyes, and attempted the task she had truly come here to carry out.

Radu?

Laenea.

The tone of his reply was calm and strong and sure.

You
can
hear me! she said to him.

We’re very near each other, after all.

The administrators are looking for you.

I know it.

They’re hoping you’ll think I’m lost
again, so when you try to find me, they’ll find you.

Thank you for telling me.

Did I need to?

Maybe not. But I’m glad to be able to be close to you.

She sent him a smile. So am I. Radu — two more pilots,
two who came with me, can see seventh.

Radu said, I’m glad. Is Vasili there? Did he have
better luck this time? I didn’t see what was right in front of me, at
first. Perhaps it takes practice.

Laenea’s tone was sad. He’s been in transit
hundreds of times. If he were able to perceive it… But, no, he
isn’t here. He went to Ngthummulun. He’s convinced Atna has some
clue to everything that’s happened.

Vasili behaved in a manner both impulsive and compulsive,
yet Radu could not convince himself that the young pilot had switched so
abruptly from complete rejection to complete acceptance of Atna’s
beliefs.

Did Vasili go alone? he asked Laenea.

Just with a crew member. No other pilots.

Laenea, Radu told her urgently, he never meant to go to
Ngthummulun. He’s going to Twilight. Don’t you see? He thinks the
plague explains what I can do. He’s never been there before, so he
hasn’t been vaccinated —

Oh, gods. Of course. The silly fool — !

After a moment’s thought, Radu felt more disgusted
than worried. After all, humans had been on Twilight for a generation before
the first outbreak of the plague. Perhaps the disease was, as Radu hoped and
Kristen van de Graaf feared, extinct. But even if it still existed, Vasili
Nikolaievich would have to have incredible bad fortune to contract it with a
single unprotected visit to Radu’s home world.

But the risk, however small, was real.

Can you stop him? Radu asked Laenea.

I can try.

I love you, he said, pure and clear, without any shadow of
regret or loss.

Laenea sent Radu a caress of love and affection, and
vanished suddenly from his perception.

Radu gasped and nearly slid from the pinnacle to the field
several meters below. He recovered himself, brought back to the world of the
present. Laenea’s touch had been every bit as intense and erotic as any
physical contact they had ever had. It was, in some ways, even more powerful.
He felt breathless and aroused, yet peaceful. Even his concern for Vasili could
not mar his extraordinary sense of well-being. He reached out to Laenea again,
to tell her what had happened, to see if the same thing would work for her, but
when he tried to find her, she was gone. She had to leave seventh, of course,
to chase Vasili to Twilight.

Never mind, for now. Laenea would return to seventh very
soon, if she had her way.

They had plenty of time.

He laughed aloud, and jumped down. He turned all the way
around, as if he could absorb this spot into his skin and keep it with him
forever.

He saw a transparent sparkle in the sky, and heard the
distant hummingbird buzz of an engine. The ultralight dipped closer, waggling
its wings. Radu waved. The tiny aircraft shimmered to a crooked, bumpy landing.
Radu ran after it to help tie it down; it was even more vulnerable to random
winds than the blimp, and harder to moor.

He was astonished when Marc climbed stiffly from the tiny
cockpit.

“Marc!”

“Good morning, Radu.”

“How did you find me?”

He led the older man to a bench at the edge of the meadow.
Marc sat down and stretched his legs out before him.