Superluminal (34 page)

I haven’t decided yet, Orca said. I came out to talk
to you.

But how can you think of missing it?

You sound like father, Orca told her.

Her cousin’s laugh vibrated past, and then her cousin
disguised her echo pattern so she really did sound like Orca’s father:
His voice, his swimming patterns, his outline.

You must at least come to the gathering, she said in
father’s voice, stern and self-satisfied, with a parodic note thrown in.

All the cousins and a few of the divers could do the same
thing, a little, but her ability was uncanny.

Orca and her cousin both laughed, but Orca grew serious
again very quickly.

I’m not that anxious to attend this meeting, she said.

But it will be fun.

You have a different idea of fun than I.

Aren’t you excited?

No, Orca said. I wish I were. I’m frightened, my dear
friend, I can’t help it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to
survive these changes.

Then you should come to the gathering and speak your mind
about it.

You’re right, Orca said, Of course, you’re
right. I’ll try. Whatever happens otherwise, I will try to come to the
gathering.

Come now, her cousin said.

I can’t. I wish I could, but something has happened,
something important.

Does it have to do with your friend the newborn?

Yes, Orca told the killer whale. He — she told them
his name, a sound pattern that would immediately identify him to anyone who saw
him or met him, and who spoke true speech — he took us to the edge of the
universe.

The patterns the whales used for communication, the
three-dimensional shapes, as transparent to sound as solid objects, could
express any concept. Any concept except, perhaps, vacuum, infinity, nothingness
so complete it would never become anything. The nearest way she could try to
describe it was with silence. She expected them to be confused when she told
them that she had gone, deliberately, to a place of silence, and that she would
return to it if she could. She expected, not that they would be afraid for her,
because they did not feel fear, but that they would be worried about her. The
whales did know madness.

Her nearest cousin rubbed against her, spiraling around her
in a warm embrace.

You have seen this, my cousin? Seen it, heard it, felt it?

Yes.

You are right, the killer whale said. You must go back.

I know it, Orca said, astonished. But I didn’t think
you’d understand.

Of course I understand. I’ve always understood.
We’ve waited for what you are telling us. You must go back, and learn,
and return to tell us more.

o0o

Radu touched the call bell at Marc’s one last time,
not expecting an answer, not getting any. Marc must still be taken by his
affliction. Even his analogue remained silent.

Radu moved to the back of the dark, leaf-lined alcove and
sat on the floor in the shadows, trying to think.

It was, perhaps, for the best. Radu had endangered Orca,
earlier, with his naiveté. He did not want to do the same thing to Marc. He
should have learned enough by now, he should know enough about earth, to solve
his own problems without jeopardizing everyone who made the mistake of
befriending him.

The pilots had made serious threats when they knew neither
what they wanted from Radu, nor whether what they wanted would be important.
Now the administrators knew what they wanted, and had defined it as essential.
If they were willing to attempt what he feared, then they admitted no limits to
the means they would use to get it.

He closed his eyes for a moment, but that made it too easy
to remember Twilight, and the plague.

He had only one course left to take, one he had avoided
because he had sworn never to use it. He went to Kathell Stafford’s
apartment.

The hour was unconscionably late, but one of her aides was
always on duty. Radu put his hand to the sensor concealed in the silver
filigree. When he stayed here the door had opened to his touch, but he expected
no more, now, than an answer from inside.

The door opened. Lights, music, and laughter spilled out
around him. Radu hesitated. He had become accustomed to silence and solitude in
this place, where he and Laenea had begun to know each other. Seeing it overrun
by Kathell Stafford’s permanent floating party made him uncomfortable and
unhappy. He moved inside. All the other guests wore gold or silver or rainbow
colors with the quality of jewels. Radu felt as if he could pass among them
completely unnoticed, obliterated like a drab satellite at the noon of a
hundred suns.

He made his way through the smoke of cigars as heavy and
pungent as any Ramona ever smoked, through the powerful artificial odors meant
to represent outdoor smells. He repressed a sneeze.

Deep inside the apartment the crowd thinned slightly and the
music changed from loud and atonal to delicate and melodic. The light here had
a softer quality. He paused, lost, in the middle of an unfamiliar room. Some of
the interior walls had been changed around and redecorated.

It would be painful bad luck to stumble upon the scarlet and
gold room where he and Laenea had spent so much time.

Finally he saw Kathell, standing all alone against the
curving wall of her largest living room. When she saw him, her expression
hardened. He crossed the thick carpet and stopped before her.

“You took your time,” she said coldly.
“What do you want?”

“I need to talk to you alone,” he said. “I
can’t tell you what I want in public.”

One of her guests wandered toward them, staggering slightly,
a drink in his hand. He wore an emerald-colored robe, opaque yet giving the
impression that a deep jewel formed its surface.

He blinked blearily at Radu, then, with disappointment, at
Kathell.

“Oh…” he said.

“What do you want?” Kathell was speaking to Radu
but her invited guest took the question for himself.

“I thought this one had come back with the
Aztec,” he said.

“It’s urgent,” Radu said to Kathell,
ignoring her guest’s insulting reference to Laenea.

“This isn’t one of your better parties,
Kathell,” the other man said querulously. “Where’s the
entertainment?” He looked Radu up and down. “And I don’t mean
the rare privilege of chatting with a novice crew member.”

“Will you go away!” Radu snapped.
“Can’t you see we’re trying to talk?”

“Last time I came to one of your parties, I
didn’t even get to meet the Aztec —”

“The pilot!” Radu said angrily.

“What?” He looked around. “Where?”

“She isn’t here,” Radu said. “Pilots
don’t like to be called ‘Aztecs.’” To Kathell he said,
“It’s important.”

The other guest spoke to Radu directly for the first time.
“And what makes you think you know so much about pilots?”

Radu started to get angry, but that was pointless. The
question was ludicrous, yet entirely appropriate. He opened his mouth to
answer, changed his mind and shut it again, and realized he must look like a
gasping fish. He began to laugh.

“Nothing,” he said. He chuckled. “Nothing
at all.” A fit of laughter overcame him. He could not stop it. He laughed
till tears ran down his face, till he had to lean against the wall or risk
falling down. “What makes you think I know
anything
about
pilots?”

A young man, almost as plainly dressed as Radu and with the
look of one of Kathell’s aides about him, appeared at the edge of their
small group.

“Find him something to amuse him,” Kathell said
to her aide, and then, to Radu, “Come along.”

The aide led her drunken guest in one direction; Kathell
took Radu the other way, to a smaller, quiet room.

“Now,” she said, “what do you want?”

“Is one of your blimps on the port?”

“Of course,” she said. “Is that
all?
”

“No,” Radu said, reacting to the contempt in her
voice. “It’s true I want to use the blimp, but no doubt you’d
consider that — or any material request my barbarian imagination could
come up with — an unacceptably trivial demand.”

“That is true. You’re trying my patience, Radu
Dracul. Are you looking for an enemy?”

“I have as many enemies as I need,” he said.
“It isn’t just the blimp I want from you. I want something more
important and more difficult.”

She waited.

“I want you to lie for me.”

“Explain yourself.”

“I want you to loan me your blimp. I won’t tell
you where I intend to take it, but I will return it to you if I possibly can.
When people come asking for me — and it won’t be just anyone, they
will be powerful, and they make threats they can carry out — I want you
to tell them… I don’t care what, but anything except that you know
how I got away.”

“What am I helping you run away from, Radu
Dracul?”

“I don’t owe you an explanation. You made the
rules, and the rules say
you
owe
me
. You can either pay the debt
you’ve imposed upon yourself, or declare yourself my enemy. But decide
which, now, because I don’t have time to wait.”

“You’re learning the ways of earth
quickly,” she said.

“Not with any willingness,” he said.

Her eyelids fluttered.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling a pilot, of course,” she said, most of
her attention on her internal communicator.

“The last thing I want is a pilot!” he said,
thinking, How could she know enough to betray me?

She opened her eyes again. “A
blimp
pilot,” she said, smiling very slightly.

“I don’t want a blimp pilot, either,” Radu
said. “Do you want to see my license?”

“From Twilight, no doubt.”

“No doubt.”

“Anyone who works for me will abide by the promises I
give,” she said.

Radu turned and started for the door.

“The airship and the deception are yours,”
Kathell said. “And then my debt is paid.”

Radu went back out into the night, made his way to the
airship field, and sought Kathell Stafford’s blimp. No other was like it.
It was a great gold oval glowing with reflected light against the sky. The
breeze shifted slightly. Each airship swung a few degrees around the mast to
which its nose was tethered. The tail of Stafford’s craft began to rise.
The fan controlling the buoyancy whirred, and the landing wheel touched down
with a gentle thump of rubber on the decking.

Despite his claim to Stafford, Radu felt apprehensive about
piloting a blimp here, where the level of technology was so much higher than on
his own world. The controls might easily be alien. He swung up into the gondola
and reached for the spot where the dashboard light switch would be, if he were
back on Twilight.

The lights glowed on, illuminating a panel almost identical
to the one on the airship he had piloted as a youth, directing a rudimentary
autopilot, a few electronics, and simple mechanical controls for buoyancy and
orientation.

And in only three dimensions, he thought.

He disconnected the sensors, started the engine and left it
in neutral, then jumped back to the deck. He climbed the mast in the dark,
expecting at any moment to be challenged and stopped.

Launching a blimp solo was a tricky job. Ten meters above
the deck, he unfastened the line and pulled it free. The wind immediately began
to blow the ship backward. Radu climbed down again, gripping the line. While he
let the wind push the ship away from the mast, he moved sideways, set his heels,
and pulled. Almost imperceptibly the ship swung toward him, so its nose no
longer pointed directly at the mast. The wind caught its flank and pushed and
lifted it like an enormous kite.

Radu sprinted for the gondola, grabbed the bottom rung of
the ladder, dragged himself up, flung himself inside, and scrambled to the
pilot’s seat.

He tilted the airship back on its tail and threw the engine
out of neutral. The propellers roared.

The airship took off, rising almost straight up into the
sky.

o0o

Marc chatted with Orca’s brother while they waited for
Orca to return. The young man was fascinating: He had had experiences Marc had
never imagined, experiences at least as unusual as those of pilots. While they
talked, the crowd slowly dispersed and vanished. When almost everyone had left,
a slender woman with short iron-gray hair came out of the shuttle alone and
approached the bench where Marc was sitting. Marc smiled to himself, wondering
if Kri van de Graaf would recognize him after all these years.

She stopped and frowned, looking at the diver.

“Sorry,” she said abruptly to Mark. “I
thought you were someone else.”

“Are you looking for Orca? We’re waiting for
her, too. She just went for a swim. She’ll be back soon. I’m her
brother. I’ve come to visit.”

“Oh,” Kri said. Marc had seldom seen her
nonplussed. He cleared his throat. She glanced at him, then took a step
forward.

“Marc?” she said. “Marc, my gods, where
did you come from?”

He stood to greet her. “So many interesting things
have been happening, I couldn’t resist.”

“‘Interesting,’” she said.
“Yes, indeed. As in the curse, ‘May you live in interesting
times.’”

“Can you tell me?”

She drew her eyebrows together. “I’m sorry. I
think not, for the moment. I don’t know quite what your status is.”

He offered her a place on the bench and sat down beside her.
Suddenly she shivered.

“Where are your clothes?” she asked Mark.

“I don’t have any.”

“Aren’t you cold?”

“No. Are you?”

“Yes. What size are you?” she asked him.

Mark looked down at his own naked body. “I don’t
know. Where do you measure?”

She started to laugh, but he was quite serious. “Never
mind,” she said. She ran her hand through her short gray hair. “So
Orca’s gone for a swim, and Radu — does either of you know Radu
Dracul?”