by Greg Bear
The winds outside were already rising above a hundred kilometers an hour. He shook his head in resignation. “I’ll have to send a message to my lander.”
“Feel free,” Nestor said, pointing out the communications panel.
Within the hour all three ships were firmly rooted into the concrete. The winds began to show their true faces. By early evening the cloud cover was clear and stars twinkled in the oncoming night. Minutes later a vast wet front swept over and dropped a flood on the plains of concrete.
Most of Nestor’s entourage were preparing to sleep in the cargo bay. Spare sleeping pads, and blankets were being brought out, and hot drinks were served. Two women came up to the bridge to talk with Nestor, carrying ampoules of liquid for all of them.
Elvox watched Nestor closely. The women were musicians from her entourage, and their manner with her was informal, relaxed. The way her lander crew acted, the whole affair might have been a family outing. Elvox wondered how she kept discipline. But it wasn’t his concern. The drink was relaxing him, but he couldn’t shake a kind of awe at being in Nestor’s presence.
Some of her women were very attractive. He hadn’t seen so many women in one place for a month or more. The USC ship in orbit was crewed by both men and women, but on this mission the proportions had been hastily mixed, and before that, Elvox had served on an all-male ship. Most of the women on the main ship were married or career-minded. Here, things seemed much looser. Not that he was a Lothario under any circumstances. Still the old, familiar pressures were building, and he tried to push them aside. The drink wasn’t helping.
It hardly seemed possible for Nestor to be scheming all the time. Perhaps she was letting her guard down. He decided to play along, make the best of an awkward situation. If Nestor was offering her hospitality out of some ulterior motive, perhaps he could turn the tables on her. It wouldn’t be an unpleasant job.
While Kawashita talked with the pilot, Nestor took Elvox aside. “I’ve given up my own cabin,” she said. “I’ll be sleeping in a small cubicle usually reserved for Kiril.” She indicated the pilot. “He’ll sleep on the bridge. I don’t recommend you sleep in the cargo bay. My friends are always on the lookout for fresh provisions. I doubt you’d get any sleep.”
“Doesn’t sound too unpleasant,” Elvox said.
“Yes, but you don’t know my crew. Beyond that, space is pretty limited. I’m giving Yoshio complete privacy for a while, and as you can see, there’s not much room here for more than one.”
“I can sleep in a corridor,” Elvox suggested. Was she joking with him, about the crew? He had heard stories—
“The best idea might be for you to share my cubicle. There’s room enough for two, and I don’t want to be accused of shirking my social obligations to United Stars.”
He felt as if he were dreaming. Nestor and her family were celebrities, to say the least. Some maintained they were sacred monsters, necessary in society but hardly respectable. Still, she seemed reasonably decent. She was also attractive when not bent on business. The totality was not undesirable. He didn’t know what to say, however, so he just nodded.
“Good,” Nestor said. “This’ll give Yoshio a chance to get used to the modern facilities.”
The utilities on her lander were fancier than those on the main USC ship. Kawashita, considering his position and status, would probably never have to make do with less. Elvox watched Nestor from behind as she gave her pilot instructions for the morning.
Outside, the storm was letting loose with alarming fury.
“What held it all back so long?” Nestor asked. Elvox tried to get a view through a rain-and slush-spattered port.
“Landers aren’t made to withstand hurricanes,” the pilot said.
“Maybe they were just being humanitarians,” Elvox suggested. “They just wanted Yoshio rescued.”
“That doesn’t answer my question. What did they leave behind that controlled this until we landed? Is there a weather machine someplace? Or were we just lucky to be in time for the waterworks?”
They were almost shouting to overcome the noise outside. “We can investigate when things clear up,” Elvox said. “Right now, I’m a little afraid to go to sleep.”
“It’s my job to worry about it,” the pilot said.
“Kiril, don’t forget Loytnant Elvox is a lander captain, too,” Nestor said.
“Of course. But I think our ships are tough enough. Everybody go to sleep. I’ll yell if we get blown apart.”
“Very reassuring,” Kawashita said. He looked up from a technical manual on the lander’s primary operating systems. His tapas was busily translating from a queue of definition requests, and his eyes were squinty. “I know nothing about weather. I was never outside dome until now.”
“To rest with all of us,” Nestor said. “Yoshio, you know the way to your cabin. Mr. Elvox, are you happy with the sleeping arrangements?”
“Yes.” Happy was not quite the word. Uncertain, perhaps.
“Good. You’ll find the cabin just around the curve clockwise from Yoshio’s quarters. I’ll be down in a while.”
Elvox walked with the Japanese. He was curious about the man’s story, but discretion was best for the moment. It was a credit to Nestor and her people that the man was accepting things so calmly. Kawashita gestured for Elvox to wait as they came to his door.
“I am not familiar with some things here,” he said. “It would embarrass to ask her about them. Could you explain?”
“I can try,” Elvox said. “What don’t you understand?”
“The bed. I was shown, but it is not easy.”
“Of course.” The sleep field was easy to operate but difficult to explain. He showed Kawashita how to lie across it for maximum comfort, and how to set the timer for a gentle let-down after however many hours he wished to sleep.
“And these?” Kawashita pointed to the sleep-induction phones.
“Try them on,” Elvox suggested. “Over your ears, just like old-fashioned…like the ones in your time.”
Kawashita put them on and Elvox adjusted the knob for mild relaxation. Kawashita’s eyes began to droop, and his face relaxed. Suddenly he tensed and removed the phones, handing them back to Elvox. “Don’t need that now,” he said. “Sleep enough without.”
“They’re not the most pleasant way to sleep. But you do wake up feeling you’ve slept a whole night, when only a half hour has passed. They’re useful for long watches.”
“Yes, I see that,” Kawashita said. “I was a pilot. There were many days I could not sleep, thinking about the battle, flying. This would have been good. But not now.” He walked across the cabin. “The lavatory bothers me very much. Have questions—” He cut himself short and smiled politely, then shook his head. “No, never mind. I will ask later. I thank, and ask you forgive me very much.”
“No forgiveness for asking questions,” Elvox said. Kawashita’s face fell. “I mean, questions are essential. We expect them and don’t mind at all.”
He still looked worried when Elvox left. Before the door closed, Elvox heard him muttering.
“He’s been doing that a lot,” Nestor said behind Elvox. He turned in surprise.
“Oh?”
“It’s not the most polite thing to do, but we’ve been taping and listening.”
“I see.”
Nestor held up a translator tapas. “He’s talking to someone named Ko. Every chance, he discusses Japanese history with Ko. I suspect it’s been going on for some time, since they—he—makes reference to different events across about a thousand years. Right now,” she indicated the tapas screen, “they’re talking about the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the Chinese incident, and the destruction of an Earth city called Nanking. In detail. Assigning blame to individuals.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know. We don’t know whether this Ko e
ver existed.”
“Perfidisian, perhaps?” Elvox said.
“No. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the cabin with him. Ko, whatever he or it was, is purely imaginary now.”
“But why the debate?”
Nestor shook her head. “Go ahead to the cabin, Mr. Elvox. I’ll be with you shortly.”
There was only one sleep-field in the cubicle he and Nestor were sharing. He wondered if he should use it, and decided it was more polite to take out the secondary mattress and lie on that. With the lights out, and the ship shuddering, he felt an odd smugness, something he hadn’t known in years.
He was almost asleep when Nestor entered the cabin. She left the light off and removed her clothes in the glow from the corridor. Then she bent over Elvox. “Loytnant,” she said, “unless it violates your creed, I’d much rather have something warmer than just a sleep field.”
“I—” He hesitated, knowing his barriers were down, and not particularly caring. “So would I.”
“Thank you, Mr. Elvox.” She fitted herself against his back and put her arms around him. “You’re a gentleman and a scholar.”
Six
It was a terrible time. Alae marched back and forth in their cabin, screaming at Oomalo—though he knew very well she was only screaming in his direction—and twirling a piece of bedding like a banner.
“Why should we have given up? There’s nothing here, and if there is, he has it—a damned savage! What do we end up with? Nothing!”
“Our job was over anyway,” Oomalo said softly. “When the signals stopped. We don’t need any more money. Our employers could care less where we are or what we’re doing now that the job is over. They might relocate us if we make up another contract—and that isn’t likely. But it all amounts to the same thing.” The disappointment hadn’t hit him as deeply, but resentment still gnawed at him. “It isn’t all over yet,” he said, aware he was contradicting himself. “We may still have a claim. We have to wait until the Centrum ship arrives.”
“I’d rather leave now before we go through any more humiliation.”
Oomalo shrugged. “We’re bolted down and we can’t leave until the storm passes. I suggest you relax and—”
“It was peaceful out there,” she said. “With the routine, the jobs that always needed doing, and no way we could ever lose our home or get into trouble. It was secure. We traded that for this. For concrete and emptiness and a foul little man who wouldn’t even tell us where he came from!” She flung the sheet away and sat hard on the sleep-field frame. “We should have killed him. Hidden him or broken him down in the lander waste units. We’re just not ruthless enough.”
Oomalo nodded and sat across from her on a pile of bedclothes. “We didn’t do it, and now it’s too late. It just takes patience from here in…”
Alae lay back and stared at the overhead blankly, her gray eyes wide. “Toys,” she said. “Baubles. The most dangerous things imaginable. Passion and need.” She straightened up. “How long has it been since we conjoined?”
“I don’t know.”
“Years. Even that passion had left us.”
He lifted up his hands and shook his head. “It was no longer needed.”
“It was a poison. But you know that it’s returned? Don’t you feel it? It’s come back to add to the misery.”
He wasn’t sure he felt anything. Alae’s femininity had never been very strong, and in time he had simply blanked out the fact that they were man and wife. They were companions above and beyond anything else.
“I even need that now,” she said.
Oomalo took a deep breath, put his hands down to lift himself off the bedclothes, and hesitated. Alae looked at him almost fiercely. She untied her robe.
The ship vibrated in the wind, and a weird whistling noise made Oomalo open his eyes. Alae was breathing through her teeth as she rode him. Abruptly he sat up and held her around the ribs, squeezing with all his strength. She exploded a breath and struggled to take in another. He didn’t let her. “Damn you,” she grunted. “Let me breathe.” He rolled her over and pinned her against the yielding sleep-field with an arm across her neck.
“Are you done with the histrionics?” he asked. Her eyes widened and she groaned, twisting her hips against him. “Are you done?”
“No,” she wheezed.
He pulled his arm up and felt the anger getting stronger in him. He didn’t know who or what he was trying to hurt. With typical restraint he didn’t hit her hard. For both of them it seemed to work. She screwed her face up and screamed into his breast. He felt nothing as he came in her, but his tension subsided.
Outside, the rain increased and the wind drove drops of water and ice against the hull like a crowd’s fists.
Seven
When Kawashita awoke, the storm was still raging. He lay in the sleepfield, listening to the muffled noises of the wind, the rain, acclimating himself to the surroundings. Each morning he awoke, he had to swallow back a nameless fear—that it was all still illusion, that he was still in the dome. He sat up, rubbed his face with his hands, and went into the lavatory. Ignoring the strange devices, he washed his face off with a thin stream of water and held his hands out, examining the fingernails. How often—in how many different situations—had he gone through just such a ritual? It seemed to be a connection, a common thread through all of his lives. He felt ready to talk to Ko again.
“Ko!” he called. There was no answer. “Come, we haven’t finished yet. Many years yet.” He looked around the cabin, frowning. “Ko?” The panic arose again. Ko had stayed with him when all the others had left. Was he to be deserted again, left in a strange, empty ship, with Ko gone, and all the others, too? He sucked in his breath and tried to bury his fear, concentrating on the strength in his stomach. He reached down to feel his testicles. They were tight, drawn-up. Centuries ago, lifetimes ago, he had been told that was a sign of impending panic and disgrace. He pulled the testicles down as best he could, and his fear seemed to subside.
The fact that Ko was gone did not necessarily mean the others were gone. He groped for a way to that foggy realization—to understanding the difference between Ko and the ones who had found him. Perhaps Ko…
He had been brave so long, had witnessed the strangeness and newness. It would do no good to examine things too closely before he was ready. What he and Ko had been doing had helped, for there was blame to be established, but perhaps they had been on the wrong track.
He exercised briefly, regulating his breath to calm himself. Then he dressed and opened the door. He remembered his way around the ship well enough.
When the others awoke, Kawashita was in the lounge ahead of them, eating from a plate of what looked like partially cooked vegetables. He had learned how to customize the menu’s offerings. The machinery presented few problems to him—he was a quick learner, always had been—but the people…he was not used to so many people.
Without Ko, he would have to pursue another tack. He made his decision.
“Good morning, Yoshio,” Anna said.
He stood and bowed quickly to Nestor and the man called Elvox. “Good morning, if it is morning.”
“For us, close enough,” Anna said.
“I am ready to tell my story.”
“Fine. I’ll get my first officer and an unabridged tapas bank.” She left and returned a few minutes later with the woman, who carried a suitcase-like object and two tapas pads. She was about seventy, though she looked younger. Anna had explained juvenates to Yoshio, and he understood their effects fairly well. The first officer sat down beside Yoshio and smiled at him.
“My name is Carina,” she said, arranging her equipment. Anna and Elvox sat together on the opposite side of the table.
“I am honored,” Yoshio said, standing and bowing, then bowing to the others. He sat again, folding his hands on the table top. “If you are ready…
”
“We are,” Carina said.
“I was born in the twentieth century,” Yoshio began, “thirteen years after my nation’s victory over the Russians at Tsushima.”
“That was 1905,” Carina said, “so you were born in 1918.”
“Yes. I joined the armed forces in 1940 and became a flier. I flew in airplanes launched from large, flat-topped ships called aircraft carriers. I was a part of Kido Butai, the carrier strike force of Japan. I was an enlisted pilot, not very experienced at first, and I did not take part in the early battles with the United States of America—in the attack at Pearl Harbor, or the Philippines. I flew my first missions in the Coral Sea, near Australia, and was proud to shoot down three aircraft, and help sink the Lexington aircraft carrier. We also thought we sank Yorktown, another carrier, but not so. My airplanes were Aichi type 99s, what the Americans called Vals. I was a gunner usually, seated behind the pilot, but I had done much flying alone in trainers and fighters a few times.
“My air group was assigned to the carrier Hiryu. I flew a type 99 to capture the small American-occupied island on Midway. This was in the middle of 1942. Many things escape my memory, so if I am inaccurate, tell me…”
“Why tell us the story now, Yoshio?” Anna asked.
“Hht!” He drew in his breath, stood, and bowed. “Many pardon. You are not ready.”
“No, no!” Carina said, giving Anna a withering glance. “We’re ready. Anna means, are you sure you’re ready to tell us? We are most interested in your welfare.”
“I am ready. Appreciate your thoughts. I will go on.” He sat down. “We lost many ships in that battle. I was let to read how many, but that was long ago. Have not paid much attention to numbers since.”
“Who let you read?” Elvox asked.
“Those who capture me. I never saw them, I think. I tell you how. Island was attacked early in the morning, about six. I flew in the first wave of planes, led by Lieutenant Joichi Tomonoga. Before we fly, we eat victory breakfast—rice, soybean soup, chestnuts and sake. We leave at twenty minutes after four—I am looking at a Rolex watch my father gave me.” He pointed at his bare wrist, his eyes intense. “Later, lost the watch at sea. I climbed in the back of my dive bomber. It is going to be glorious. My pilot has scarf around his head, and belt of a thousand stitches is wrapped around my waist under the flight suit. My mother stood on street corner, asking passers-by to add stitch, until all prayers and wishes go with me, a thousand.
