Superluminal (15 page)

Laenea was calling to him, she needed him, as he had
needed her —

A raucous siren penetrated the last thin haze of transit
sleep, dissolving Radu’s frightening dream. He fumbled for the latch on
his body box. The lid clicked open and he pushed it aside and climbed out, made
awkward by the remnants of anesthetic chemicals, and confused by memories
recalled by his dream.

The dim light faded, and in the twilit last moment the ship
began to spin. Its motion threw Radu against his sleep chamber. He struggled to
his feet, reaching out to get his bearings in the darkness. But as he oriented
himself toward the control room the synthetic gravity contracted, twisted, and
flung him down.

This time he lay still, waiting for the ship’s
convulsions to end. Waves lapped over him, slow and dry, not of water but of
weight and weightlessness. His heart pounded and his vision turned scarlet
against night. If the waves rose higher, they would crush him as easily as any
angry sea.

But the oscillation slowed, gentled, and finally ceased. A
circle of light from the port brightened the room: strange that the darkness
before had appeared so complete. The ship had been spinning… now the
patch of light remained in one place. Radu climbed to his feet. Beyond the port
spun a red-orange star.

It should be yellow, he thought with a shock. It should be
earth’s sun. But it’s a red giant.

The siren moaned to silence. Radu’s shirt was soaked
at the armpits, and drops of sweat ran down his sides. Footsteps hurried down
the corridor, but halted outside the box room.

Radu waited a moment, but nothing happened. He opened the
door and came face to face with Vasili Nikolaievich.

“What’s wrong?”

The pilot gazed up at him in silence. His black eyes
glittered as he searched Radu’s face, and his pale skin was flushed.

“What’s wrong?” Radu said again.
“What’s the matter?”

“How do you feel?”

“How do I feel!” Perhaps transit
did
make
pilots unstable, as rumor would have it. “I feel I ought to be responding
to the emergency, if you’d tell me what it is.”

“The emergency is that you started to wake up in
transit.”

Radu stared at him, all his reactions clamped into a tight
ball in his chest. His heart pounded.

“The sensors protected you. They threw us back into
normal space,” Vasili said calmly. “Don’t look so worried
— you’re all right, they worked in time.”

Radu gazed down at his hands. They looked no different, but
now he knew why the pilot had stared at him so intently, and why he had
hesitated until Radu opened the door. They both knew how normal people died in
transit.

“How could I wake up?”

Vasili shrugged. “A mistake in the anesthetic. An
obstruction in the gas line. I don’t know.”

He no longer sounded upset, and Radu permitted himself to
relax, too. He was, after all, alive, and apparently unchanged by his
experience.

“Where are we?”

The pilot shrugged again, left Radu in the hatchway, and
went to inspect the information panel of Radu’s body box.

“Then we’re lost?”

“I haven’t checked yet,” Vasili said
without turning toward him. “I came to see what happened as soon as I got
the ship stabilized. I’ve never left transit quite so abruptly
before.”

Radu had never experienced leaving transit at all, having
always gone through it sound asleep. He had wondered — as all crew
members did — what he might see if he regained consciousness before he
was supposed to. Now he had the evidence of his own confusion and bruises that
the emergency sensors would prevent him from catching even a glimpse, at the
risk of his life, of the spectacle the pilots kept so secret. If a crew member
started to wake up, or slept too lightly, the sensors would always throw the
ship out of transit and return it to normal space. The absolute certainty made
Radu feel relieved, yet envious.

Vasili glanced at the display again. “I’ll chart
our position. You do a blood chemistry and check the anesthetic feeds. Do it
quickly — I want to get back on our way.”

He left Radu alone with the blinking machine that was
supposed to protect him during flight. Radu set to work.

After several hours, his frustration increased as he looked
for and failed to find any malfunction. The anesthetic, a gas, flowed smoothly
and at the upper limit of concentration for someone of Radu’s size and
age. His blood chemistry was well within normal limits except for high readings
of adrenaline and its breakdown products. He had expected that. After what had
happened, low or normal levels would have been unusual.

The shreds of his dream kept distracting him. Never before
had he experienced a nightmare while he was asleep in transit. This was
frighteningly like his hallucinations back on Twilight, just before he had
become ill.

Stop scaring yourself, he thought. No wonder you’re
having nightmares.

He frowned over the blood analysis. His knowledge of
biochemistry was only superficial; he had to accept the information the
programs gave him. The body sometimes rejected one drug and had to be switched
to another. That was the only suggestion the computer offered. Radu could think
of no other likely supposition.

This ship carried supplies of two other transit drugs. Radu
factored the second choice for stress and noted the upper dosage limit. He left
the information drifting above his box, set up the equipment, and returned to
the control room.

“I’m ready.”

“Good,” Vasili said. “Did you find the
problem?”

“Reaction against the anesthetic, I think.”

“That’s unusual.”

“It’s the only explanation that makes
sense.” He paused. “Unless Atna was right. Or unless he really was
sick and I’m coming down with whatever he had.”

Vasili snorted. “He wasn’t right, and you
aren’t sick. Let’s go.”

In the box room, Radu rolled up his sleeve, exposed his
wrist to the antiseptic light, and climbed into his box.

“The IV is ready,” he said. “It works
quickly so I’ll wish you well now.”

Vasili knelt and picked up the IV needle in its sterile
covering. His hand trembled, and he looked, if possible, even paler than usual.

“What’s the matter?” Radu asked.

Vasili hesitated. “I’m not very fond of needles,
I thought I was done with them…”

Though Vasili did not show his scar, Radu had seen
Laenea’s, and the other marks from the operations that had made her a
pilot. He did not blame Vasili for his dislike of the needle. For a moment,
Radu considered waking Orca up to help with the anesthetic. But that was
ridiculous. Time aside, it would put her under a strain that was completely
unnecessary.

“Can’t you use another drug?” Vasili tried
to smile but succeeded only in looking faintly ill.

“I’d prefer to avoid it,” Radu said. The
third-choice drug, though taken by mouth, had a range of unpleasant side
effects. Radu wished for a transit drug that would migrate through the skin,
but they all consisted of large organic molecules too complex for that
procedure.

Vasili shook his head quickly. “Of course. I’m
sorry.” He took Radu’s wrist in one hand, and steadied the needle.

The IV’s built-in topical anesthetic tingled against
Radu’s inner arm, then numbed the skin. Vasili uncertainly guided the
needle into a vein, digging so deep that the insertion hurt. Radu gritted his
teeth.

The drug affected him almost instantly. He tried to lie down
and felt himself falling.

The crystalline blackness of transit sleep formed solid
around him.

o0o

Radu dreamed, as always; he dreamed again of Laenea. He
could feel and smell and taste her. His hand slid gently from her breast across
the ridged new scar. She whispered something that he could not quite hear, that
he could not quite understand, and she laughed in the wonderful soft low way
she had. Her hair swung down and caressed his shoulder and he twined the locks
in his fingers.

She whispered again. “I love you.” His whispered
back, “I love you.” She said a few more words. He thought she said,
“I need you.” She leaned down and kissed him, on the lips, at his
throat, on the palm of his hand. Then, suddenly, she bit him hard on the wrist,
slashing tendons and arteries.

“I’m sorry,” she called to him. “I
didn’t want to —”

She was very far away. Tears streaming down her face, she
vanished. Radu struggled up, clutching at his wrist to stop the blood.

He woke expecting the dream to vanish, too, but blood ran
down his hand and between his fingers. The world spun, as it had before. He
scrabbled for the lock on his box and flung the lid open. The lights flickered
and dimmed; the gravity pulsed in waves.

Dangling from his wrist by a crumpled piece of tape, the
bloody needle dripped fluid from its point.

Radu jerked it loose and flung it away and clamped his left
hand across the long gash where the needle had torn out. His head throbbed: He
had come out of unconsciousness far too quickly.

Unable to use his hands to push himself out of the box, he
braced his elbow on the chamber’s edge, rolled over, and landed on his
knees on the floor.

Vasili Nikolaievich slammed open the door.

“What in the bloody flaming hell is happening?”

Radu managed to rise to one knee. He lurched to his feet.
Vasili caught him and supported him. Radu’s dark shirt stayed the same
color, where blood stained it, but the spots were shiny. Blood oozed between
his fingers. He was surprised at the warmth.

He had ripped out the needle from base to tip, cutting a
long gash. A good suicide cut. It would leave a scar, unless he went to some
trouble to have it removed. Anyone who saw it would assume he had tried
seriously to take his own life. The thought angered and embarrassed him.

“I taped the needle in!” Vasili said.

Radu took an unsteady step forward. “I tore it out
myself, I think. I must have. I couldn’t stay asleep. I can’t
—”

“You have to,” Vasili said.

o0o

By the time Vasili finished cleaning the gash on
Radu’s wrist, Radu feared the pilot was near fainting. He worked with his
teeth clenched, in silence, a little clumsily, as if his eyes were focused just
to one side of the gash. Radu put pressure on it while Vasili fetched bandages.
Tissue repair would have to wait, for Vasili could not even try it. The
bleeding stopped, but the stinging pain continued.

Holding the bandage, Vasili stopped an arm’s length
from Radu.

“Give it to me.” Radu took the package. But when
he tried to tear it open, he dropped it on the floor. He gazed at it stupidly.
His strength continued to drain away.

The pilot closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, scooped
up the bandage, and tore off its covering with a violent jerk.

Once he had covered the wound he was able to work more
easily. He bound it too tightly, but Radu did not have the heart to ask him to
do it over. He was obviously being affected by Radu’s presence. The
longer he stayed near, the more uncomfortable Radu felt, too. His pulse began
to speed up again, and each beat of his heart made the deep cut throb.

Vasili finished the bandage and stepped back, looking as
relieved as Radu that he was done.

“Thank you,” Radu said.

Vasili went quickly to the sink and washed away the blood.

Radu stood shakily, flexing his fingers. The needle had
missed all the tendons, but the troubling dream forced him to keep reassuring
himself that he could still use his hand. The dream confused him. His dreams in
transit had always been pleasant, except these two times when he had awakened.

He tried to push Atnaterta’s vision from his memory.
He failed.

“Vasili Nikolaievich, can you contact earth?”

“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I don’t mean now, of course. I meant from
transit. I —” No, he could not tell Vasili what he had dreamed.
“A friend of mine, Laenea Trevelyan —”

Vasili sighed. “You have to leave her alone,” he
said. “If she weren’t so damned stubborn you two would never have
got together, it would have been better if you hadn’t. But if you
don’t stay away from her, you’ll destroy her. Can’t you
understand that?”

“I understand perfectly!” Radu said angrily. He
hated to be reminded of what common knowledge, and common talk, he and Laenea
were. “Our friendship is none of your business, but all I wanted anyway
was to find out… to find out…” He tried to explain what he
did want to find out. “… if her first transit flight went
well,” he said lamely.

“I can’t call earth, or anyplace else, from
transit,” Vasili said. “In any case, you’ll be asleep.
You’ll just have to wait till we get home.”

They went back to work, maintaining an irritable silence.
Neither Radu nor Vasili could discover why Radu had awakened this time. Perhaps
blood had clotted in the needle; if so, the clot had dislodged when Radu ripped
the IV out. Perhaps the open tip had pressed against the inside of the vein.
The computer made the same suggestion it had before: anesthetic rejection.
Discomforting to have that happen twice in a row.

Radu opened the drug locker and took down a vial of
capsules, the third transit drug.

“Do you know where we are?” he asked the pilot.

“I haven’t had a chance to plot our
location,” Vasili said, his voice strained. He avoided Radu’s gaze,
but added quickly, “I’m sure I’ll have a course by the time
you’re asleep.”

All Radu could do was take the drug. He stepped into the
body box, sat down, opened the vial, and poured pills into his hand. His dose was
five. He counted carefully, as if it were a difficult task.

He swallowed the capsules dry and lay down. As his shoulders
sank into the padding, he felt the drug begin to work.

o0o