Knowing better than to presume Drake would wish to share a mealtime with her, Harper assembled dinner from the autoserv, paying little attention to her selections. All food onboard a spacecraft, no matter how it tasted—and most of it tasted remarkably good—was a synthetic formulation of the same nutrients. A space crew could dine solely on chocolates and still eat a balanced diet.
Dutifully consuming her poached trout and vegetable salad, Harper concentrated on reassembling her self-assurance. Drake might know every technological configuration of her spacecraft, she reflected spitefully, but that did not mean she was a superior being. Rumor had it that transport captains were psychologically hermitic and sexually dysfunctional—major reasons why they performed so sanely and successfully in space.
And the formidable Drake did not, after all, outrank her; her captaincy was a civilian title, and civilian captains were a dying breed. Transport craft increasingly were unmanned, guided by a network of space stations in the civilized universe. Once another method was found for either harvesting the Antares asteroid crystals or duplicating them, little work would be left for a specialist like Drake; she would be reduced to transporting conventional cargo between the few cultures who stubbornly continued to demand traditionally manned craft for commercial transactions.
Drake might be contracted to the great ExxTel Corporation, but she, Harper, represented the elite Space Service, the military arm of the most dominant coalition of corporate, military, and democratic power in the history of Earth. She had been assigned to Scorpio IV because she was well qualified to be military liaison on this civilian voyage to the asteroid belt girdling Antares; it was her sole responsibility to monitor the collection and transportation of the asteroid crystals to ExxTel warehousing facilities orbiting Mars.
But still ... Harper suddenly pushed her food away, grimacing. She knew very well that she was a mere passenger. Only one military liaison had been assigned to this spacecraft because one person with nothing to do was sufficient. She would perform the duties for which she had been meticulously trained only if incapacitating illness or death struck the captain of Scorpio IV.
She would then limp this craft into the nearest Space Station—unless the illness or death occurred within the asteroid belt. Rescue within the asteroid belt, if possible at all, would have to be attempted by another transport captain because she, Harper, would be helpless to accomplish it herself. Her prime function on this voyage, she conceded darkly, was the equivalent of a hovering vulture, a cemetery watcher.
Only a transport captain with Drake’s skills would dare venture into the Antares asteroid belt which had been claimed indisputably by Earth, nearby civilizations having believed it to be a mysterious, destructive wasteland of drifting rock. Nearly two centuries earlier, twelve military cruisers—nine of them investigative craft—had vanished near Antares without any visual or vocal transmission to provide the faintest clue. The sector had finally been abandoned, written off as the deep space equivalent of the Bermuda triangle, declared off limits to military patrols and transport vessels.
Then ten years ago one of those lost ships, Pisces II, perhaps propelled by the effects of a solar flare from the violent Antares, had floated free from the negligible gravity of the asteroid belt, had been picked up on the scanners of civilian transport Captain Reba Morton. All controls and communication equipment in Morton’s spacecraft had lost their calibration as she approached the asteroid belt and Pisces II, but still she had managed to dock with the dead cruiser and manually guide her craft to a Space Service monitoring station. Only a civilian transport captain like Morton could have overcome the disabling of her own basic robot repair devices and recalibrated the spacecraft’s instrumentation sufficiently to accomplish such a feat.
Apparently the crew of Pisces II, victims of suicidal madness, had blown themselves out through a hatchlock. And Antares asteroid crystals had drifted in ... Thus, by purest chance, a vital component of human life on Earth and other Earth-gravity planets had been discovered. Morton and the Space Station crew were the first to experience the wondrous property of the Antares asteroid crystals.
In direct ratio to their size and quantity, the crystals imparted weightlessness. Applications for the crystals were immediately and excitingly obvious in virtually every technological area, especially transportation and medicine. But the greatest clamor was raised by gerontologists. After a century of well-financed research, they had not been able to extend life expectancy beyond one hundred and ten years. Antares asteroid crystals were not the fountain of youth but they represented a dramatic breakthrough, releasing individuals from the wearing, aging effects of standard Earth gravity. Use of the crystals to reduce weight to one-tenth standard gravity could add as much as thirty years to the average human life span.
The drawback was scarcity. For the first time since the twenty-first century, glaring disparity again existed between rich and poor, this time involving not the commodities affecting the quality of life, but the commodity of life itself. The crystals were costly and in continuous demand, due to the difficulty in harvesting them and their perishability: over time their power gradually faded.
Because of their priority-one military applications, the crystals had been rated as strategic materials and placed under the jurisdiction of ExxTel and the Space Service. Token patrols guarded the Antares system at a cautious half-a-light-year distance and in desultory fashion—the gates of heaven could be no less accessible.
In an age of specialization, any spacecraft large enough to transport the many technicians required for recalibrating its disabled systems would be gripped by Antares’ gravity, with lethal results. And ExxTel scientists had thus far failed to provide effective shielding against the crystals’ effect on a spacecraft’s onboard computers and guidance systems. Nor had they made any progress toward duplicating the molecular structure of the crystals, seemingly unique in their defiance of the laws of physics, nor in recreating the environment that would allow them to self-replenish as they did within their home in the Antares asteroid belt.
Only an extraordinarily gifted civilian transport captain like Drake could venture into an asteroid system with spacecraft guidance and communication systems inoperative, and recalibrate those systems without benefit of robot repair or remote command ...
Feeling a prickling between her shoulder blades, a sensation of being watched, Harper whirled. At the periphery of her vision was a tiny dark fluttering. She blinked once and the fluttering was gone. She blinked again, in annoyance. She had been in deep space a matter of mere hours, it was much too early for mind tricks to begin ...
Drake walked into the room, her long lean body fluid in its movements. She drew a small tumbler of tomato juice from the autoserv and sipped it standing, her dark, unreadable gaze lingering on Harper.
“You’ll have dinner now?” Harper politely inquired.
“Later,” answered Drake in her cello tones. She contemplated her tomato juice and smiled, then drained it and disposed of the container. Without another word she left the galley.
Too bone-weary to further speculate about the enigmatic Captain Drake, Harper went off to her quarters, knowing the spacecraft’s alarms—or Drake—would awaken her if need be, and no need would be.
Early the next morning Drake was absent from the command cabin. She would be in her quarters, Harper knew, although from what she now understood about the captain, those so-called unusual diurnal rhythms which required daytime sleep were undoubtedly an excuse for avoiding Harper’s company.
After receiving a loving transmission from Niklaus over the privacy channel, and dispatching a message back, Harper went up to the observation deck. As she stepped off the ramp she looked around in amazement. Although equipped with the usual library and aural-visual access, the deck was definitely nonstandard in its accoutrements. A huge earth-toned body-meld sofa and two oversize chaises finished in sensuous gold fabric, faced the non-reflective windows. Harper sighed happily.
Except
for her meals and an occasional mandatory status review of the spacecraft’s basic systems, she spent the day on the deck curled up in the sofa, lost in spectacular coronas, shimmering veils of stardust, the blazing hues of star systems filling the windows.
Around seven o’clock that evening, as Harper finished her bouillabaisse, Drake appeared in the galley. Again Drake wore black pants and another high-collared shirt, this one scarlet. Again Harper was startled by her, unsettled by the masculine elements softened by feminine beauty. Recovering, she said wryly, “Good morning. Ready for breakfast?”
As she had last night, Drake drew a glass of tomato juice from the autoserv. “This will do,” she replied expressionlessly. A pale hand resting flower-like on her hip, she sipped her juice. She studied Harper until Harper rose under the intensity of the gaze and disposed of her dinner receptacle.
“I’ll be on the observation deck,” she told Drake tersely. The psych probes might pronounce Drake sane, but she was strange.
“I’ll join you shortly,” Drake returned.
A tiny gesture of friendliness? Not likely. From the distance of that tone, from the look of the observation deck, Drake simply preferred to be there. Abruptly, Harper took her leave.
Several minutes later Drake entered the deck and reclined on a chaise, gracefully crossing her long legs. She had chosen the chaise across from where Harper sat on the sofa as if she meant to invite conversation, but she turned fully away to gaze out the windows. Harper looked at her with bold resentment. Drake was in her line of vision and disturbed her absorption in the spectacular vistas beyond the windows. And Drake’s aloofness, her silence, disturbed for less tangible reasons. As Harper stared at her, she became gradually, unwillingly, absorbed in her.
Drake could be in her thirties or forties—perhaps even her fifties. Her skin, with its luminous, silken pallor, held no sign of age; but the dark eyes, with their weary, almost haunted intelligence, suggested that she had seen altogether too much. Drake’s cap of fine dark hair, smoothed back over her ears, curled softly around the nape of her neck and over the top of her collar; a few unruly strands fell over her forehead. Her nose was thin and straight, a slight flare to the nostrils. The lips were cast delicately, the teeth interesting in their slight unevenness. Drake looked like a poetically handsome young man—or a boyish woman of intriguing beauty.
Feeling a pull on her own sexuality, stirred by the remote melancholy of Drake’s face, the inviting texture of the dark hair, those strong yet fine hands, Harper reminded herself that Drake’s body was the body of a woman. And she had never wished to touch or be touched by a woman. If Drake were a man ...
Reminding herself of the patiently waiting Niklaus, Harper reflected that it was not much wonder Drake spent her in-port time cloistered within this spacecraft. Wherever she might venture, her striking beauty and ambiguous sexuality would arrest conversation, would compel attention no matter what the onlooker’s sexual proclivities. It was also not much wonder that Drake would hold Harper herself at arm’s length; Drake had been forced to endure lengthy contact with a woman in whom she had not the slightest emotional or sexual interest.
This journey, Harper groaned inwardly, would be interminable. She might as well be occupying Scorpio IV by herself unless she could somehow break through this woman’s wall of isolation by establishing that she had no intention of making any demand of any kind.
She cleared her throat. “I can’t imagine ever tiring of this.” She gestured toward the windows. “I suppose you must be accustomed to it.”
Drake turned to look directly at her. “The pleasure has never lessened.”
The intense dark eyes compelled, and seemed suddenly dangerous, as if Harper could be drawn into their depths without possibility of release. Gathering, steeling herself against this disquieting woman, Harper offered, “I’m sure you’ve made great inroads in the ship’s library.”
Drake’s face softened into a smile. “I’ve read everything.”
Harper quickly recovered herself and smiled back, realizing that Drake was either joking or she had read only within limited fields of interest; there were half a million volumes stored in the spacecraft’s memory. “How do you pass the time, then? What do you enjoy?”
“What do I enjoy,” Drake repeated. She turned away again, but Harper knew she was contemplating her answer.
“I enjoy this,” Drake finally responded, gesturing toward the grandeur beyond the windows. “I enjoy music.” She tapped a control on the arm of her chaise, and Harper was immediately chilled by the keenly wrought grief of a solo violin. “And I enjoy ... taking nourishment.”
Harper gaped at her. She had yet to see Drake consume anything but tomato juice. But then in all probability she had installed an autoserv in her quarters. But still ... Drake was reed slender, her flesh distributed with sparest economy over her tall frame. Autoserv controlled the balance of nutrients in the food taken from its self-replenishing banks, but did not govern the amount of intake; psych probes measured weight gain beyond the individual’s established norm as an indicator of psychosis.
Drake was smiling, a maddeningly private smile. Too fascinated to feel resentment, Harper stared at her.
“Something else I enjoy,” Drake said, “is learning about the individuals who join me on these voyages. I look forward to hearing about your life.”
“That will take twenty minutes,” Harper stated, making no pretense at modesty. Her life had taken on color and energy only since she had joined the Service.
Again Drake smiled. “We have one hundred and eighteen days before we achieve final orbit. You have twenty-seven entire years to tell me about between now and then.”
“The twenty-seven years just aren’t that interesting,” Harper insisted, morose with her certainty.
“Perhaps not to you but they will be to me,” Drake said in her low expressive tones. Again her intense gaze settled on Harper.
Whatever else Drake might be, Harper realized, she had to be very lonely. She gazed back at Drake. Her beauty seemed even more poetic than before.
For the past hour they had been sitting quietly, listening to a string quartet, watching ever-changing spectacle transmute the view windows.
Drake broke the silence. “Tell me where you were born.”
To Harper, the quiet had been companionable, and the question—this particular question—was distinctly unwelcome. “British Columbia,” she answered crisply, hoping the unembellished reply would divert Drake to another topic.
Drake flicked a glance at her. “And where in British Columbia?”
Harper sighed. “New Alabama.”
The fine, slightly curved brush strokes that were Drake’s eyebrows moved upward. “A Trad settlement, is it not?”
“Yes. It’s also the large part of my life that’s not interesting.”
“Your family, are they still there?”
Sighing again, Harper nodded. “They’re happy to be there. I’m happy not being there. They’re ashamed of me. I’m ashamed of them.”
Drake got up from her chaise, moved to sit beside Harper. “Tell me about it. Tell me about your parents. Describe them.”
She nodded again, less reluctantly. The eyes looking into hers were alert and interested. She could not shut off Drake’s first attempt at communication. “My mother is a small woman, my father—”
“No. Describe them in detail. So I can see them. So I can see your life with them as well.”
Held by Drake’s dark gaze, Harper continued obediently, “My mother is fifty-three now. I have her eyes except mine are a lighter blue ...”
Professing interest in the smallest detail of Harper’s growing up years, Drake drew out reminiscence, her precise questions opening doors to memory Harper had closed off or forgotten existed. She had managed for the past ten years to avoid discussion and even thought of that pain-filled time when she had defied her parents, when she had scorned the Traditionalist doctrines of the militant settlements which had sprung u
p more than two centuries ago and to this day continued to attract colonists. The detailed recounting seemed to relieve a deep inner festering, and she spoke more and more willingly.
“It was my great-grandparents who moved there, when Montreal put in its free-trade spaceport. They packed up and left along with thousands of other Quebec families—”
Drake was nodding gravely. “And your own parents inherited all that xenophobia.”
“Exactly. They thought an ancient convoluted mess like the Bible was sacred; they were afraid of the real sacredness of the entire living universe. My parents—all the Trads—have a desperate need to control some part of a world that continues to evolve all around them.”
“We may dream of an unchanging present and a predictable future,” Drake mused, “but real survival comes from adaptation. And the true secret is seeing the exact ways one must adapt ...”
“The settlement finally judged me a non-conformist heretic,” Harper continued in a rush of words, almost dizzy with the release of emotion. “But I’d been longing to escape from the time I was small ...”
As she began to describe the childhood dreams of space and freedom which had been awakened by the drama and majesty of the Northern Lights, Drake interrupted her. “Enough for tonight. Tomorrow you can tell me more.”
Harper looked at her chronometer in amazement. She had been talking nearly four hours. And suddenly she was tired. She was drained.
As she got up from the sofa she asked Drake curiously, “When do you usually turn in?”
“I always retire before six o’clock in the morning.”
The next day Harper spent more than an hour in her quarters performing her entire repertoire of physical exercise, then passed the rest of the day on the observation deck, too enthralled with the brilliance beyond the windows to avail herself of the ship’s library or any other distraction.
Dreams and Swords Page 12
