Superluminal (18 page)

“I realize that!”

“Tell me something. Do you dislike me in particular,
or pilots in general?”

“Neither,” Radu said. “It’s only
that I react to pilots the same way pilots react to normal people when
they’re too near.”

“What!”

Radu shrugged.

“I never heard of that happening before,” Vasili
said.

Radu sighed. The last thing he wanted was to be told
something else about himself that was unusual.

“You’ll have to stay here,” the pilot
said.

“On Earthstation? Why?”

“You can go to earth if you want. But you can’t
go any farther without the cooperation of a pilot, and no pilot will let you
fly until we’ve decided what to do with you.”

“Vasili Nikolaievich,” Radu said, trying to keep
his tone reasonable, “something very odd has happened. We need to talk to
the administrators about it —”

The pilot strode toward him with such fury that Radu backed
up a step.

“And then what? If you ever got away from them —
if they don’t take your brain apart cell by cell to find out what makes
it work —”

Radu felt no inclination whatever to laugh at the ludicrous
idea.

“— you’d still have to ship out with a
pilot. And if you betray us…” He let his words trail off. The
threat was all the stronger for only being implied.

“Pilot, I’m not your enemy. I’m not your
rival. We ought to find out if anyone else is like me. I could have caused our
ship to be lost — maybe this is what happened to other lost ships.”

“What to do isn’t your decision.”

“I think that it is.”

“If you say anything to anyone without the consent of
the pilots, you’ll regret it.”

Radu gazed down at him. “You know,” he said
suddenly, “Atna’s premonition was right.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Vasili said. He turned
abruptly and left the room.

Radu swore under his breath. Losing his temper was a bad
mistake: Now he had complicated matters even worse. And it had been completely
unnecessary to remind Vasili of Atna’s warning. He did not even know why
he had done it.

Orca climbed up from the engine room and slammed the hatch
shut.

“What was that all about?”

Radu hesitated, wondering how much she had heard. He had to
put aside the temptation to retract his earlier lie and explain everything. But
that would put Orca in danger to no purpose.

“Vasili Nikolaievich was just... making clear the
relative status of pilots and crew.” Almost worse than telling a lie was
inventing such a feeble one.

Orca glanced at him quizzically, but if she had more
questions she kept them to herself.

o0o

The ship docked at Earthstation. Before the last remnants of
artificial gravity faded and the radial acceleration of the satellite took
over, the chief marketing agent from Ngthummulun banged energetically on the
outer hatch. Radu opened it, and the agent bounded in.

“I’m amazed at your speed,” she said.
“And very pleased.” She grabbed Vasili’s hand and pumped it.
Looking extremely uncomfortable, the pilot extricated himself as quickly as
possible.

“I’ve credited your accounts,” the agent
said cheerfully, not even noticing Vasili’s distress. “I have a
certain amount of authority in determining the bonuses, which I’ve
used.”

Radu felt too tired to react. Besides, most of his pay went
directly to Twilight’s account; he never even saw it. Vasili muttered
something and returned his attention to the message flowing in above the
controls.

Orca gave both Vasili and Radu a disgusted look. She gripped
the agent’s hand warmly. “We appreciate it. Thank you. Radu will
have your cargo module freed up and ready for transfer in a couple of
minutes.”

Radu heard a subtle “or else” in her tone.

“Fine,” the agent said. “I have space
reserved on the four o’clock shuttle — I may just make it.”
She clasped Orca’s hand again, and hurried off as quickly as she had
arrived.

Orca swung around on Radu and Vasili. She folded her arms
across her chest. “That was about as rude a performance as I ever
saw,” she said. “I don’t care how mad you are at each other
— or why. It’s no excuse for the way you behaved to her.”

Radu stared at the deck. Vasili looked over his shoulder at
Orca, then turned away again.

Orca made a sharp noise of irritation and anger and strode
out of the room. Her shoes made no noise, but the engine room hatch clanged
loudly when she threw it open, and again when she banged it shut.

At that moment Vasili snarled a curse and jumped to his
feet, plunged out of the control room and into his cabin, and slammed his door
behind him.

Radu stood alone, upset, angry, and confused. He glanced
over at the control panel, where Vasili’s message hung fading in the air.
Perhaps he was invading Vasili’s privacy, but before it disappeared, he
read it. Then he understood the pilot’s reaction. He had been replaced on
the exploration team, and even though it was not scheduled to leave for several
days, his request for reinstatement had been turned down.

Orca and Radu worked apart and in silence, Radu transferring
the cargo module and shutting down the ship, Orca finishing with the engines.
When he was less than halfway done, Radu heard Vasili leave. The pilot had no
obligation to stay, no captain’s duty to help his own crew or to turn the
ship over to its next users.

By the time Radu finished work, he felt groggy. He gingerly
opened the hatch to the engine room.

“Orca? Can I help?”

She climbed up the ladder. “No, I’m all
done.” She sat on the edge of the hatchway, rubbed her eyes, and yawned.

“You were right,” Radu said. “About the
way I behaved, I mean. I’m sorry.”

“Most of those agents are such sharks, we ought to at
least be civil to the ones who act human.”

“Vasili had an excuse,” Radu said. “He was
waiting for the reply for his x team.”

“Did he get it?”

“They turned him down.”

She snorted. “He didn’t really expect them to
give it back to him, did he?”

“I think that he did.”

“Radu, the administrators do as little as possible to
interfere with their profits.” She stood up, stretched, and dogged the
hatch shut. “They never change anything that works, even for the chance
to do it better. Vaska’s broken the elapsed time record for every round
trip he’s ever piloted. He can’t earn express bonuses for the
transit authority if he’s off exploring.”

“But he’d be helping find new planets —”

“They don’t make as much as you’d expect
off new worlds. They can’t claim them, they can’t own them. They
wouldn’t even look for them if there weren’t a subsidy and a
reward.”

“But they gave Vasili the assignment at first —”

“And he never got to go on it, did he?”

“That’s a very cynical way to look at
things,” Radu said.

“Tell me that again after you’ve been on the
crew a little longer,” she said.

He would have liked to point out an explanation for the
sequence of events that had some more altruistic structure behind it, but he
could come up with nothing better than coincidence and bureaucratic
thoughtlessness.

“You look like I feel,” Orca said, “and I
feel like hell. Let’s get out of here.”

In the locker room, Orca held a wyuna up to the light, gazed
into it, and put it in her duffel bag. Then she stuffed clothing, bright wrinkled
bits of gold and metallic rainbows, in on top. Subjectively the trip had been
so short that a change of clothes had hardly been necessary. Radu retrieved his
other shirt from the cleaner and flung it into his bag.

They left the ship and checked into Earthstation. Their
accounts were, as promised, credited with a substantial bonus, and Radu’s
was already debited with a transfer of funds to Twilight’s trade balance.
He wondered if his contribution made even a blip in the debt his world had
incurred as a result of the plague.

Radu glanced at the shuttle schedule when Orca called it up.
No seats were available until the next day. Radu clenched his fist around the
handle of his duffel bag. All he wanted was to get away from Earthstation, away
from the pilots, to a place where he could think.

Orca made a reservation for herself; Radu reserved a place
and put his name on the waiting list for any opening, to any landing port. Orca
wanted to go to North America Northwest, but for Radu it held too many memories
of Laenea. He would prefer to go elsewhere.

He and Orca stepped onto the moving ramp that led to the
station’s crew section.

“Are you going out again?” Orca asked.

“Not immediately,” Radu said. “And
you?”

“No. My family’s having a… a meeting. I
promised to go if I possibly could.”

“Where do you live?”

“In the Strait of Georgia. Do you know where that
is?”

“Approximately.” He had studied the areas around
the landing platforms before his first trip down; he had chosen North America
Northwest because the climate seemed most like Twilight’s. But he had
never seen the mainland or the inland waters that lay east of the port; he had
never even left the artificial island.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “When
I’m gone, I do miss it. I even miss my family.” She grinned ruefully.
“When I’m home, I don’t get along with some of them all that
well.”

Perhaps that explained why Orca, a diver, was working on the
crew. He had wanted to ask her, but it was the custom, on Twilight and most
colony worlds, to be satisfied with the information people volunteered about
themselves. Besides, if Radu questioned Orca she could do the same to him, with
the right to expect an answer. He could give whatever lame explanations he
pleased about his home world’s need for hard currency, but he preferred
to keep to himself his real reasons for leaving. And his reasons for staying on
earth right now he
could
not talk about.

Radu and Orca stepped off the ramp and through the entrance
into the crew sector.

Six pilots stood in a semicircle waiting for them. Ignoring
the diver, they stared at Radu. At one end of the line, Vasili Nikolaievich
watched Radu coldly, as if they had never met, as if they had never spoken
together civilly. Orca took Radu’s hand. He grasped her long, strong
fingers gratefully.

She stepped hesitantly forward. Repressing an urge to pull
her back and flee, Radu followed. The pilots stayed in their unwavering line
— and they
were
all pilots: Only Vasili among them did not show a
scar.

“Hello, Vaska,” Orca said to him. He did not
move or speak or look at her; he simply kept staring at Radu.

“Vasili Nikolaievich, I promise you —”
Radu cut off his words when the pilot’s expression hardened from warning
to anger.

“You’re to come with us,” Vasili said,
and, to Orca, “You’ve had your chances. Your presence won’t
be required.”

“Who says?” Still holding Radu’s hand,
pulling him along behind her, Orca shouldered her way forward.

“Don’t make trouble, Orca,” one of the
other pilots said. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“Oh? What does it have to do with? What the hell is
going on?” She did not even slow down.

The pilots turned and moved with them, surrounding them
again, closing in.

Radu felt his pulse quickening. He hoped it was only fear,
but as the circle finished forming his heart began to pound, clenching in his
chest like something trapped, sending his blood in a rush through his veins, so
fast that his vision dimmed in a scarlet haze and a phantom wind roared in his
ears. He stumbled after Orca, trying to calm himself, but his control was gone.
He could no more slow his pulse and lower his blood pressure than he could grow
a pair of wings and glide from Earthstation to earth itself. He walked faster
— he tried to run but almost fell — and the pilots kept up easily.
Orca glanced back at him. Radu could not speak. They were only a short way from
a common room, where they would find other crew and station personnel. Radu set
himself to get that far. Surely, in so public a setting, the pilots would have
to leave him alone.

He stumbled again. His knee hit the metal floor hard and his
fingers slipped from Orca’s hand. He knelt, gasping for breath, his heart
laboring. He could hear nothing but the roar of his pulse. There was nothing to
hear. He raised his head slowly. The pilots stared down at him, still without
speaking, fading in and out through his obscured vision.

Orca tried to hold him up. He heard her, very far away,
shouting.

“Call a doctor! Damn you all, will you help!”

Radu collapsed, but the diver kept him from falling and
eased him to the deck. He felt cold metal against his back, against his
quivering hands. The lights above him stretched away in infinite glowing lines.
He felt the vibrations of footsteps through the floor and flung his arm across
his eyes. He did not want to see the pilots gazing down at him, willing him to
die.

Then, almost imperceptibly, his heartbeat slowed. The pain
clamped around his chest lessened, and he could breathe more easily. He let his
arm fall to his side and opened his eyes. Orca knelt beside him, bending over
him with her fingers at the angle of his jaw.

The pilots were gone.

“Don’t move,” Orca said. “I’ll
get help.”

Somehow he managed to grasp her wrist before she stood.

“No, wait.” He stopped to catch his breath. He
could only fill his lungs halfway, and his fingers trembled feebly.

“You’re having a heart attack!”

Radu shook his head. “It was… something
else.”

Orca frowned. “You’re nuts, I’m calling
somebody. I’d’ve done it before only I was afraid you’d need
resuscitation.”

Radu had an overpowering urge to laugh, which made him gasp
and giggle weakly.

“What the hell is so funny?”

“A diver knowing how to give artificial
respiration.” He laughed again.