One's Aspect to the Sun (5 page)

She looked up from her screen and grinned. “Two out of six useful, Captain. They're nice ones, too.”

“Really?” I slid a skimchair over from communications to look at her screen. She pulled up a number of starmaps and overlaid them.

“Now watch.” She typed in a command and twelve endpoints appeared in green, connected in pairs by broken yellow lines. Four of them started in Nearspace but ended in systems that didn't even have names yet, just Gliese Codes from the star catalogue. Two, however, looked promising.

“This one,” said Yuskeya, tracing a broken line with a delicate finger, “starts near Eri and ends not far from Jertenda in Beta Comae Berenices, so that cuts a whole lot of time off that run.”

She looked up at me and I nodded. “Impressive.”

“And this one,” she said, indicating the other wormhole, “goes between MI 2 and GI 892.”

“Great.” It was hard to keep the disappointment out of my voice. I know I had no right to expect it, but neither route was going to make the trip to Kiando any faster.

Yuskeya notices everything. “I thought you'd be pleased!”

“Well, I am. I was just hoping there'd be something that would work for the Cassiopeias. It was silly.”

She pursed her lips and I realized she was suppressing a smile. “Want to take another look?”

I frowned and leaned in toward the screen, but I still couldn't see what she meant. “The Beta Comae Berenices route eliminates one skip, but the in-system travel times would still be longer.” Since every wormhole seems to be similar in “length” no matter how distant the systems they connect, in-system travel times are the deciding factor in making routes longer or shorter.

Yuskeya grinned. “That's not it.”

I grimaced. “I'm
stulta
today, I guess. You'll have to tell me.”

“It's risky. You may not want to do it,” she said. “Look at where this second hole terminates. It's only about two days from the Split.”

I saw it then. The Split was a wormhole that connected the uninhabited system GI 892 and Delta Pavonis. Another wormhole out of Delta Pavonis terminated about a day's journey from Cengare, Kiando's sister planet. Yuskeya was right, that route could cut a good bit off the travel time.

The Split was rarely travelled, however, for very good reason.

I don't pretend to understand exactly how wormhole travel works—you'd have to talk to Viss for that and you'd probably come away feeling like you'd just stuck your head into a plasma drive. I do know that the skip drive generates a thin layer of what the physicists call “Krasnikov matter,” enough to keep the wormhole from destabilizing while a ship is inside it. Then it uses alternating positive and negative energy pulses to launch the ship into the wormhole at one end. The effects of the Krasnikov matter and the pulses allow the ship to skip along the tunnel-like inside of the wormhole, much like a rock skipping on water. A Ford-Roman field holds the ship intact, countering the immense forces at work inside the wormhole and protecting it from the high-frequency radiation, which would prove disastrous for ship and crew.

However,
unlike
a rock skipping on water, the skips don't follow a straight line. As the Ford-Roman field repels from one side of the hole, the ship slides around to bounce the next time off the other side, to create a water-going-down-the-drain effect.

Inside the ship, one isn't aware of these sensations, or at least they're very faint. Some folks feel slightly nauseous, and occasionally someone takes a heart attack, but it's rare. The hardest thing for most people to deal with is that the pseudo-grav fields get intensified, so it's pretty difficult to move around during a skip. Possible, but not fun. Sit and stay until we're out the other side, is what I tell passengers. It's a whole lot easier that way.

The problem with the Split is this: once you get inside it, you realize quickly that it's only half a wormhole. From outside, the terminal point is just like any other. But inside, the usual tube-like passage is more like the half-pipe used in extreme gravity sports. While one half of the tube looks perfectly normal (for a wormhole), the other half of the tube—well, it either isn't there or isn't anything we can figure out. Instead of a brilliantly colour-shifting wall, that half is simply a plain grey haze, no sensors can penetrate it, and no probe that's gone through it has ever come back or been heard from again. So you can't skip through it the way you can a normal wormhole; you don't get that water-down-a-drain effect. Everything has to be tightly controlled—field, speed, pulses and other delicate factors—so the ship can go the whole distance like a skipping rock, in a relatively straight line down the normal half of the wormhole. Very few crews will take it on.

I'd done it once before. It was an emergency, it was unavoidable, and Hirin was piloting. I didn't know if I could do it with anyone else, even Rei. I'd have to think about it.

Yuskeya just sat there looking at me, her ebony eyes bright. She'd never say it, but she was daring me to say it was a bad idea.

“You might have a point, Yuskeya,” I said with my best poker face. “Any far trader willing to go that route could offer some pretty nice discounts. I'll see what the others think.”

“They'd do it if you wanted them to,” she said.

“Maybe.” What was she waiting for me to say? You'd think at my age I could read people better. “Good work, Yuskeya, and thanks for telling me about it. We'll discuss it with the others later.”

I didn't bother telling her not to mention it until then. I was sure she wouldn't be able to resist anyway, and that way they'd be prepared by the time I brought it up. I could get a reaction they'd had time to think about, not an automatic one.

I heard the main bridge hatch cycle open as I went down the corridor to my cabin, still carrying my half-empty mug of caff.

Yuskeya said, “Viss! Come here for a minute. I want to show you something.”

I smiled. Maybe I wasn't so
stulta
after all.

The next day I got a call from Hirin's nursing home. I was listed in their records as his next-of-kin, although to avoid questions about the age difference we hadn't specified the relationship.

“Ms. Paixon?” The woman on my screen looked very corporate, with grey-streaked hair pulled back rather severely from her pinched and taut face. Her dark grey suit was unrelieved by any hint of colour or pattern, and although she wore earrings, they were also grey. I didn't remember her from the time we'd admitted Hirin there.

“How can I help you?” I asked.

She folded her hands on her desk. “My name is Evlyn Travis, I'm an administrator at Holbencare. We've had a rather abrupt and worrisome notice from Hirin Paixon, that he intends to leave our care,” she said. “I'm not sure that such a move should be permitted.”

Permitted?
Odd way to put it. “Yes, I've spoken with Hirin about this matter,” I told her. “It may not be convenient, but it's his decision.”

She leaned forward a little and softened her face. I had the impression it was a very deliberate gesture. “His health is really not good, Ms. Paixon,” she said. “It is not in his best interests to leave here, but sometimes the older residents . . . well, they get these strange notions.”

“I've spoken to him about his health, thank you, and I do understand the situation. But it is his decision to make—”

She interrupted me smoothly, as if I hadn't been speaking. “Now, you may not be aware that it's possible to apply to the courts for a declaration of incompetency—”

“Hirin is quite mentally competent, I assure you,” I snapped. “I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding someone to occupy his room, if that's your concern.”

She managed to look misunderstood and sorrowful. “Our only concern is for the welfare of our residents,” she said. “Perhaps you haven't been fully informed concerning Mr. Paixon's health situation—”

“As I understand it, he's dying, and there's nothing to be done to save him,” I said bluntly.

Evlyn Travis blinked. “It's—very serious, yes. So you can see why—”

“In which case,” I continued, “I don't see that it makes a hell of a lot of difference if he's here, there, or orbiting Mars. His residence fees will be paid until the end of the month. If there's paperwork to be done, please have it completed as soon as possible. I'll sign anything necessary to relieve you of responsibility.”

“It's neither the money nor the liability we're concerned about,” she said stiffly. “We simply feel that the most beneficial health care option would be for Mr. Paixon to remain with us. His wish to leave does not seem . . . rational.”

“Then thank you for your concern, Ms. Travis,” I said coldly. “It certainly seems rational to me. And I'll tell Mr. Paixon that everything is arranged.”

I didn't wait for her to say anything else, and broke the connection. Yes, it was rude, but my heart was pounding and my chest felt swollen with repressed sorrow. And anger. To suggest that Hirin was not in his right mind! I pushed away from my desk and stood, pulling a deep breath and moving into the familiar rhythm of my tae-ga-chi workout to try and calm down. The fluid ease of the form, with its interlock of sweeping hand movements and choreographed steps, was my favourite way to regain focus and center my mind. 
Block, bend, step, balance, reach
. . . muscles loosened and relaxed into a meditative, physical mantra, leading my emotions to follow suit. I could complete this particular form inside a three-foot square, making it perfect for small shipboard spaces. After only a few moments, my body settled into the well-known cadence and I started to feel better.

Another incoming call beeped and I moved to the screen, chest tightening again. This time it was Hirin himself. His grizzled face looked about as angry as I'd ever seen it, and he was breathing fast. “Luta? You won't believe the visit I got from the administration here this morning!”

I leaned toward him. “It's okay, Hirin, calm down. I think I can guess, as a matter of fact. They're trying to talk you out of leaving?”

He barked a short, humourless laugh. “As good as told me I wasn't
allowed
to leave, if you can believe that. I gave them a piece of my mind, I can tell you.”

I smiled. I could just imagine how that had gone, and now I knew what had prompted my call from Evlyn Travis. “I hope you didn't give them too much. They already seem to think you're getting a little short in that department.”

He stared at me, uncomprehending, then chuckled. “They called you.”

“And I told them in no uncertain terms that you were sane, you were leaving, and that was the end of it. Don't worry. When the
Tane Ikai
lifts off, you'll be aboard. I promise.”

Hirin drew a deep breath. “I haven't told Maja yet.”

“Well, she's not going to like it, but she can't stop you.”

“I think we should tell her together, if you don't mind.”

I nodded. “I think you're right. Just let me know when, and I'll be there.”

We ended the call, and I went back to my tae-ga-chi. It took a while before I felt better.

Three days passed in a frenzy of preparations. If PrimeCorp was following me around, they were being much more covert about it, because I didn’t notice any more suspicious flitters or individuals as I made my way around the spaceport and the city. Dr. Ndasa had accepted my tender. I took cargo hauling jobs for Mars, Eri, Rhea, and Renata, but nothing beyond that, so that my ultimate destination wouldn't be on the records. I couldn't find any other passengers. I wasn't too disappointed about that. Most people would have backed out when they heard we were going through the Split, anyway.

Not surprisingly, no-one on the crew had a problem with that, and if they were willing, then I could accept the risks, too. Viss stated flatly that he was not going unless he had a chance to clean those plasma intakes and tinker with a few other things, but I gave him the go-ahead and then he was fine with it. Baden raised his eyebrows but said nothing. I already knew Yuskeya was willing, and Rei let out a whoop of joy.

“I get to pilot the Split!? No
blago
?” She turned to Viss. “Better get busy on those plasma intakes.”

“
Tane Ikai
can do it, Rei dam-Rowan, she's done it once before. Have you?”

“No,” Rei retorted, “but I know the drill. I've studied logs and field data from every known Split run that's ever been made.”

Baden turned to her and drawled, “And why would you do that, Rei? It's not a common run.”

Rei flushed suddenly, her clear skin a bright pink beneath her
pridattii.
It was something I'd only seen happen once—maybe twice—before.

“It was for another job,” she said evasively. “We made a lot of runs in the vicinity. I wanted to be prepared, just in case.”

Everyone had to know she was lying—the only ships that made regular runs through the Split were usually running
from
something—but no-one called her on it. We all had things in our pasts that we didn't care to talk about, and so we all naturally respected each other's right to those secrets. It was always interesting when a revelation happened by accident, however.