Starfarers (26 page)

“Your health, sir,” Kenri said, emboldened. He lifted the vessel and drank. The liquor burned his throat.

“Such as it is,” said the man indifferently. “No trouble to me.” He was doubtless a petty criminal of some sort, maybe
an assassin, if that guild still flourished. His somatype was not quite human. He must be Special-X, created for a particular job or for study or for fun. Presumably he’d been released when his master was done with him, and had ended in the slums.

“Been away long?” he asked, his gaze on the dice.

Kenri couldn’t immediately remember. “About a hundred years.” Or more?

“Watch out. They really hate Kithfolk these days. Hereabouts, anyhow. If you get slugged or robbed, it’ll do you no good complaining to the militia. You’d probably get your butt kicked.”

“It’s kind of you—”

“Nothing.” The supple fingers gathered the dice, rattled them in the cup, and tossed. “I like having somebody to feel superior to.”

“Oh.” Kenri set the goblet down. “I see. Well—”

“No, don’t go.” The yellow eyes lifted toward his and, astonished, he saw tears glimmer. “I’m sorry. Sometimes the bitterness breaks loose. No offense to you. I tried to sign on as a spaceman once. Naturally, they wouldn’t have me.”

Kenri found no response.

“A single voyage would have been enough,” said the X dully. “Can’t an Earthling dream, too, now and then? But I realize I’d have been useless. And my looks. Underdogs don’t like each other.”

Kenri winced.

“Maybe I shouldn’t envy you at that,” the X muttered. “You see too much history. Me, I’ve made my place. I don’t do badly. As for whether it’s worth the trouble, staying alive—” He shrugged. “I’m not, anyway. A man’s only alive when he has something bigger than himself to live and die for. Oh, well.” He rolled the dice. “Nine. I’m losing my touch.” After a moment: “I know a place where they don’t care who you are if you’ve got money.”

“Thank you, sir, but I’ve an appointment,” Kenri said. How awkward it sounded. And false, in spite of being true.

“I thought so. Go ahead.” The X glanced elsewhere.

“Thank you for the drink, sir.”

“Nothing. Come in whenever you want. I’ll tell Ilm to remember you and serve you. I’m here pretty often. But don’t yarn to me about the worlds out there. I don’t want to hear that.”

“No, sir. Thank you. Good night.” Kenri left most of his drink untasted.

As he went out, the dice clattered across the bar again.

While she
waited on Maia for
Fleetwing
’s departure, Nivala had taken the opportunity to see the Tirian Desert. She could have had her pick of the colony for escorts, but when she heard that Kenri had been there before and knew his way around it, she named him. Less annoyed than he would have expected, he dropped promising negotiations for vivagems and made the arrangements. An aircamper brought them to the best site. He had proposed that from this base they tour the area for two days, overnighting here in between. She readily agreed, though they’d be alone. Both knew he wouldn’t touch her without leave, and to a person of her status scandal was as irrelevant as the weather on another planet.

For a while they rode quietly in the groundcar he had rented. Stone and sand stretched around them, flamboyantly colored. Crags lifted from the hills in fantastic shapes. Scattered thornbush breathed a slight peppery odor into thin, cool air. Overhead the sky arched cloudless, royal blue.

“This is a marvelous world,” she said at last. “It’s just as well we’re leaving soon. I might come to like it too much.”

“Aside from the scenery, Freelady, I should think you’d find it rather unexciting,” Kenri ventured. “Hardly even provincial.”

The fair head shook. “Things here are real. People have hopes.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

After a few more minutes she murmured thoughtfully, “I envy you, Kenri Shaun. All that you’ve seen and done. That
you will see and do. Thank you for the data your ships bring. Infinitely better than any fiction or … entertainment. On Earth I spent much of my virtuality time playing Kith documentaries—riding along with you like a ghost. You live it.”

The wistfulness made him feel he could ask: “Was that why you came here, Freelady?”

She nodded. “Yes. Inspecting the property was an excuse. Worth doing, but an agent, or perhaps even a robot, could have done it better. I wanted the experience. A taste of the reality.”

He thought of weeks and months on end in a flying metal cave, of huddling in a groundside shelter while deadliness raged outside, of toil and danger, hurt and death—fleeting days of friendship, and then your friends were gone on their next voyage and you wondered if you’d ever meet them again; sometimes you didn’t, and then maybe you wondered how they had come to die. “Reality doesn’t always taste good, Freelady.”

“I know. Because it is reality. But I didn’t quite know how hungry I was till I made this trip.”

The words stayed with him. When they returned to camp he suggested that he build a fire and cook their evening meal over it, primitive style. Her delight chimed in him.

The sun set while he worked. A small, hasty moon rose, nearly full, to join the lesser half-disk already aloft, and argency rippled over the dunes. Afar a creature wailed—a hunting song? Warmly clad, they squatted close to the fire. Flamelight and shadow played across her, and her hair seemed as frosty as her breath. “Can I help?” she offered.

“It isn’t fitting, Freelady.”
You’d make a mess of it
. The filets in the skillet sizzled, savory-smelling. They were natural food, purchased at a waterfarm.

She regarded them. “I didn’t think you people ate fish,” she said.

By now he knew she didn’t intend any condescension. “Some do, some don’t, Freelady. You’ve seen we grow fruits and vegetables aboard, along with flowers, more for the sake
of the gardening than to supplement the nanosystems; and we often have aquariums, also mainly for pleasure but sometimes for a special meal. In early days, when ships were smaller, an aquarium would have crowded out a substantial piece of garden far the benefit of a very few. Crews couldn’t afford the resentment that would cause. Abstention acquired almost the force of a taboo. Even offship; it was a symbolic act of loyalty. Nowadays, mostly, only older folk observe it.”

She smiled. “I see. Fascinating. One doesn’t think of the Kith as having a history. You’ve always simply
been.
”

“Oh, we do, Freelady. Maybe we have more history and tradition than anybody else.” He considered. “Or maybe it’s just that we pay more attention to what we have, study and talk about it more. Another thing that helps hold us together, keep us what we are.”

Her gaze dwelt on him through the smoke, above the sputtering flames. “And it’s an intellectual activity, isn’t it?” she said. “You Kithfolk are a brainy lot.”

His cheeks grew warm. He concentrated on his cooking. “You flatter us, Freelady. We’re not exactly Star-Frees.”

“No, you’re more whole.” She jumped back toward impersonality; it was safer. “I did do research on you before leaving Earth. Spacefolk always had to be intelligent, with quick reactions but stable personalities. It was best they not be too big, physically, but they must be tough. Dark skin gives some protection against soft radiation, though I suppose genetic drift, happenstance, has been at work, too. Over generations, those who couldn’t fit into your difficult life dropped out. The time factor, and the widening cultural gap, made recruitment more and more unlikely, till now it’s essentially impossible. And we have the race of starfarers.”

“Not really, Freelady,” he protested. “Anybody who wants to can build a ship and flit away. But it’s a big investment, of lifetime still more than capital, for small profit or none; so nobody does. We, though—we never attempt the kind of voyage they embarked on aboard
Envoy
, before there ever was a Kith.”
Does that name mean anything to you?

And the profits shrink century by century, as demand shrinks; and so we do not replace our losses any longer, and our numbers grow less and less.

“Small profit or none? No, you gain your lives, the freedom to be what you are,” she said. “Except on Earth—You’re aliens there; because the profit
is
small, you have to set high prices; you obey our laws, but you don’t submit in your hearts; and so you come to be hated. I’ve wondered why you don’t abandon Earth altogether.”

The idea had passed through his mind occasionally.
Veer off. Don’t speak it
. Dangerous, also to his soul. “Earth is our planet too, Freelady. We get by. Please don’t feel sorry for us.”

“A stiff-necked people,” she said. “You don’t even want pity.”

“Who does, Freelady?” He laid her meal on a plate and handed it to her.

Where the
slum ended, Kenri found a monorail nexus and took an ascensor up to the line he wanted. Nobody else boarded the car that stopped for him and nobody else was on it. He sat down and looked out the canopy. The view speeding past was undeniably superb. Towers soared in columns and tiers and pinnacles; streets and skyways glowed, phosphorescent spiderwebs; lights blazed and flashed in strings, arcs, fountains, every color eyes could know; scraps of dark sky heightened the brilliance. Was any world anywhere more exotic? Surely he could spend a lifetime exploring this, with Nivala for guide.

As he neared city center, the car paused to admit four young persons. They were Frees, he saw, though styles of appearance and behavior had changed. Filmy cloaks streamed from luminous draperies or skintights; jewels glittered in headbands; men sported elaborately curled short beards, women wore twinkling lights in flowing hair. Kenri hunched in his seat, acutely aware of his drabness.

The couples came down the aisle toward him. “Oh, look, a tumy,” cried a girl.

“He’s got a nerve,” said a boy. “I’ll order him off.”

“No, Scanish.” The second female voice sounded gentler than the first. “He has the right.”

“He shouldn’t have, I know these tumies. Give ’em a finger and they’ll take your whole arm.” The four passed by and settled behind Kenri. They left three rows vacant between themselves and him. Their conversation still reached his ears.

“My father’s in Transsolar Trading. He’ll tell you.”

“Don’t, Scanish. He’s listening.”

“Well, I hope he gets a potful.”

“Never mind,” said the other boy. “What’ll we do tonight? Haven’t settled that yet, have we? Go to Halgor’s?”

“Ah, we’ve been there a hundred times. How ’bout we hop over to Zanthu? I know a place there, not virtual, realies, it’s got apparatuses and tricks you never—”

“No, I’m not in that kind of mood. I don’t know what I want to do.”

“My nerves have been terrible lately. I think they’re trying to tell me something. I refuse medication. I might try this new Yanist religion. It should at least be amusing.”

“Say, have you heard about Marli’s latest? Who was seen coming out of her bedroom?”

Ignore them
, Kenri thought.
They may be of Nivala’s class, but they’re not of her kind. She’s a from Canda. An old family, proud, the blood of soldiers in them.

A Kithman’s not too unlike a soldier.

Their building loomed into view, stone and crystal and light mounting heavenward. Their crest flamed on its front. The depression that had dogged him let go. He signaled his stop and rose.
She loves me
, sang within him.
We have a life before us.

Pain stabbed into his right buttock, through his back and down the leg. He stumbled, fell to a knee, and looked around. A boy grinned and waved a shockstick. Everybody
began to laugh. He picked himself up and limped to the exit. The laughter followed him.

Aboard ship
he served in the navigation department. Ordinarily one person was plenty to stand watch in the immensity between suns. The room was big, however. With interior illumination dimmed, it became a twilit grotto where instrument panels shone like muted lamps. The viewscreens dominated it, fireballs fore and aft, sparks streaming from them across the dark to melt into a girdle of intermingled keen hues. Air moved inaudibly; it was as if the ship kept silence before that sight.

When Nivala came in, Kenri forgot to bow. His heart sprang, his breath stopped. She wore a long, close-fitting blue gown, which rustled to her stride. The unbound tresses fell over bare shoulders in waves of pale gold.

She halted. Her eyes widened. A hand went to her mouth. “O-o-o-oh,” she whispered.

“Weird, isn’t it?” was the lame best he found to say. “But you’ve surely seen pictures and virtuals.”

“Yes. Not like this. Not at all like this. It’s nearly terrifying.”

He went to stand before her. “An optical effect, you know, Freelady. The system here doesn’t process photons captured in the instants between zero-zero jumps. It displays the scene during the jumps, when we’re moving close to the speed of light. Aberration displaces the stars in the field, Doppler shift changes their colors. Among other things, these readings help us monitor our vectors.”

He was suddenly afraid he had sounded patronizing, afraid not that she would be angry but that she would think him a pedantic fool. Instead, she smiled and looked from the sky to him. “Yes, I do know. Thank you for trying to reassure me with a lecture, but it wasn’t necessary.” Seriousness returned. “I misspoke myself. I should have said ‘overawing.’ The other face of the universe, and I’m not being shown it, I’m meeting it.”

“I’m, uh, glad you like it.”

“A passenger, like a child, wasn’t allowed in vital sections on
Eagle
,” she said.
And you didn’t use your status to force your way in
, he thought. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“My pleasure, Freelady. I knew you wouldn’t do anything stupid.”

“It was good of you, Kenri Shaun.” Her fingers brushed his knuckles. “You’re always kind to me.”

“Could anybody be anything else, to you?” he blurted.

Did she blush? He couldn’t tell, in this dusk he had made for her to get the most from the spectacle. She eased him when she said merely, slowly, “I’d be interested to hear what you do at your post.”