Distant Friends and Other Stories

by Timothy Zahn

  "Did you have to drop us in the lift pattern?"

  "No, I was going to give you another five minutes before I called the tower, I told her as she slid into her chair.

  "They'd have had your head," she said, keying for a systems check. "You're supposed to give them twenty minutes' notice of a delay.

  "Life is tough all over," I shrugged, watching her fingers skate over the keys. For a moment I considered telling her all the pre-lift checks had been done, but changed my mind. Alana was the serious type who insisted on pulling her own share of the load, and there was no point making her feel any worse about her tardiness. Not that she was really feeling bad now, but it would eventually catch up with her. "So... how did the Angelwing take the news that they had a new captain?"

  She laughed, a sparkling splash of sound we heard all too seldom aboard ship. "The funny thing is that they really do have one. Old Captain Azizi's finally retired, and Lenn Grandy's been promoted."

  "Ah." The name was vaguely familiar; one of Alana's fellow junior officers during the year she'd been on the Angelwing. "I presume you compared notes on which of you got the captaincy first?"

  "Oh, we tried, but we ran into the usual simultaneity problems. He probably made it first, though."

  "Well, I bet you look better in the captain's uniform than he does."

  She glanced a smile up at me. "Why, thank you, Pall. Maybe sometime this trip you can stay with me during a cascade point and see for yourself."

  She glanced a smile up at me. "Why, thank you, Pall. Maybe sometime this trip you can stay with me during a cascade point and see for yourself."

  "They're not clock-watchers-Cunard's just very touchy about keeping their liners on schedule," she protested. But she obediently got to her feet and headed for the door. "Just remember, I've got first cascade point duty in four hours."

  "We'll see if you're up to it," I called after her, a line that permitted me to be basically honest while still avoiding an argument. Physically, she'd certainly be up to doing the point by then. But emotionally- Emotionally, she would still be carrying the warm glow of the celebration and the triumph of a "captaincy" which, though purely imaginary, was in another sense very real.

  And I had no intention of letting cascade point duty ruin that for her quite so quickly.

  Four hours later I was alone on the bridge, and ready for the first cascade point.

  The Dancer was quiet. All her sensors and control surfaces had been shut down, all electronics including the computer put into neutral/standby mode. The crewers and passengers were shut down, too, the sleepers Kate Epstein had administered guaranteeing they would all doze blissfully unaware through the point. They were ready, the Dancer was ready; and postponing the inevitable gained nothing for anyone.

  Lifting the safety cover, I twisted the field generator knob... and watched as the cascade pattern began to fill up the room.

  Someone early in the Colloton Drive's history, I'd once heard, had described the experience as being like that of watching some exotic and rapid-growing crystal, and there'd been times I could see it myself on almost that high of an intellectual level. The first four images that appeared an arm's length away were quickly joined by the next set, perfectly aligned with them, and then by the third and fourth and so on, until I was at the center of an ever-expanding horizontal cross of images.

  Images, of course, of me.

  Land-bound philosophers and scientists still had lively arguments as to what the effect "really" was and what the images "really" represented, but most of us who saw them regularly had long since come to our own conclusions, minus the fine details. The Colloton Drive puts us into a different kind of space... and somehow it links us through to other realities. The images stretching four ways toward infinity were hints of what I would be doing in each of those universes.

  In other words, what my life would be like if each of my major decisions had gone the other way.

  I spent a moment looking down the line, focusing on each of the semi-transparent images in turn. Four figures away, conspicuous among the jumpsuits and coveralls on either side of it, was an image of myself in the gold and white of a star liner captain.

  I didn't regret the decision I'd made a year earlier that had lost me that universe, but the image still sometimes raised a reflexive lump into my throat. I had the Dancer-my ship, not some bureaucracy's-and I was satisfied with my position... but there was still something siren-song impressive about the idea of being a liner captain.

  I didn't regret the decision I'd made a year earlier that had lost me that universe, but the image still sometimes raised a reflexive lump into my throat. I had the Dancer-my ship, not some bureaucracy's-and I was satisfied with my position... but there was still something siren-song impressive about the idea of being a liner captain.

  Reaching to the small section of control board that still showed lights, I activated the Dancer's flywheel.

  The hum was clearly audible in the silence, and I shifted my gaze to the mirror that showed the long gyroscope needle set into the ceiling above my head. Slowly, as the flywheel built up speed, the needle began to move. The computer printout by my elbow told me the Dancer needed a rotation of three point two degrees to make the four point four light-years we needed for this jump. It was annoying to have to endure a cascade point for such relatively small gain-the distance traveled when we left Colloton space went up rapidly with the size of the yaw angle the ship had rotated through-but there was nothing I could do about it. The configuration of masses, galactic magnetic field, and a dozen other factors meant that the first leg of the Baroja/Earth run was always this short. And it was accounted for in our-as usual-tight schedule. So I just leaned back in my chair, did what I could to ease the induced tension that would turn into a black depression when we returned to normal space, and thought about Alana. Alana, and her phantom captaincy.

  It had been on the last cascade point coming in to Baroja that she'd first seen the gold-and-white uniform in her own cascade image pattern, tucked in there among the handful of first- and second-officer dress whites that represented the range of possibilities had she stayed with the Angelwing. She'd caught the significance immediately, and the resulting ego-boost had very nearly gotten her through the point's aftermath without any depression at all. She'd left the liner four years back for reasons she'd apparently never regretted, which put the new image into the realm of pleasant surprise rather than that of missed opportunity. A confirmation of her skills; because had she stayed aboard the liner, she, not Lenn Grandy, would be captain today.

  Or so the theory went. None of us who believed it had ever come up with a way to prove it.

  The gyro needle was creeping toward the three-degree mark now. Another minute and I'd shut the flywheel down, letting momentum carry the Dancer the rest of the way. A conjugate inversion bilinear conformal mapping something something, the mathematicians called the whole thing: a one-to-one mapping between rotational motion in Colloton space and linear translation in normal space. Theorists loved the whole notion-elegant, they called it. Of course, they never had to suffer the drive's side effects.

  But then, neither did most anyone else these days. The Aker-Ming Autotorque had replaced the old-fashioned manual approach to cascade maneuvers aboard every ship that could afford the gadgets.

  The Angelwing could do so; the Dancer and I could not. I wondered, with the first hint of cascade point depression, whether Alana would spend her own next point regretting her decision to join up with me.

  Three point one degrees. I flipped the gyro off and, for no particular reason, turned my attention back to my cascade pattern.

  The ship was still rotating, and so the images were still doing their slow dance, a strange kaleidoscopic thing that moved the different images around within each branch of the cross. A shiver went up my back as I watched: that complex interweaving had saved my life once, but the memory served mainly to remind me of how close I'd come to death on that trip. Automatically, my eye
s sought out the pattern's blank spots, those half-dozen gaps where no image existed. In those six possible realities I had died... and I would never know what the decision had been that had doomed me.

  The gyro needle had almost stopped. I watched it closely, feeling afresh the sensation of death quietly waiting by my shoulder. If I brought the Dancer out of Colloton space before its rotation had completely stopped, our atoms would wind up spread out over a million kilometers of space.

  But the spin lock holding the field switch in place worked with its usual perfection, releasing the switch to my control only when the ship was as close to stationary as made no difference. I flipped the field off and watched my cascade images disappear in reverse order; and then I drew a shuddering breath as my eyes filled with tears and cascade point depression hit like a white-capped breaker, dragging me under. I reactivated the Dancer's systems and, slumping in my seat, settled down to ride out the siege.

  By dinnertime two hours later the ship and crew were long back to normal, and the passengers were showing signs of life, as well.

  Or at least some of them were. I reached the dining room to find a remarkably small crowd: three of our eight passengers plus Alana, Tobbar, and Matope. They were grouped around one of the two tables, with two seats to spare. "Good evening, all," I said, coming forward.

  "Ah-Captain," Alana said, a look of surprise flicking across her face before she could catch it. "I was just explaining that you probably wouldn't be able to make it down here for dinner."

  A fair enough assumption, if not entirely true: I usually managed to find a plausible reason to avoid these get-togethers. But a chance comment Tobbar had made when reporting the passengers were all aboard had made me curious, and I'd decided to drop by and see the phenomenon for myself. "I probably won't be able to stay very long," I said aloud to Alana and the table at large. "But I'd hoped at least to be able to personally welcome our passengers aboard." I cocked an eyebrow at Tobbar.

  He took the cue. "Captain Pall Durriken, may I present three of our passengers: Mr. Hays Trent, Mr.

  Kiln Eiser, and Mr. Rollin Orlandis."

  Trent and Eiser were youngish men, with what seemed to be very athletic bodies under their business suits and smiles that somehow didn't reach their eyes. I said hello and turned my attention to Orlandis...

  and found that Tobbar had been right.

  Orlandis didn't belong on a ship like the Dancer.

  That much I got in my first quick glance; but as my brain switched to logic mode to try and back up that intuitive impression, I realized it wasn't nearly as obvious a conclusion as I'd thought. His suit, which had seemed too expensively cut for a tramp starmer passenger, turned out to be merely a small jump above the outfits Trent and Eiser were wearing, not much more than twice what I could afford myself. His ring and watch looked new but ordinary enough; his vaguely amused look no worse than others I'd seen directed the Dancer's way. But something about the man still felt wrong.

  I apparently hesitated too long, and the conversational ball was plucked neatly from my hands. "Good evening, Captain Durriken," Orlandis said, giving me an easy, not-quite-condescending smile. His voice was quiet and measured, with the feel of someone used to being listened to. "First Officer Keal has been explaining the ins and outs of the Aura Dancer to us, and I must say it sounds like a fascinating craft.

  Would you be able to spare her a bit later in the journey for a guided tour? Say, tomorrow or the next day?"

  Would you be able to spare her a bit later in the journey for a guided tour? Say, tomorrow or the next day?"

  "I'd prefer Ms. Keal."

  For a moment my tongue tangled around itself with confusion. Orlandis hadn't raised his voice, hadn't so much as cocked an eyebrow, but suddenly I felt like a child... or an underling.

  And if there was anything guaranteed to pull my control rods it was someone pushing me around who didn't have the right to do so. I was ungluing my tongue to say something approximating that when Alana jumped in. "If you don't mind, Captain," she said, "I have no objections to showing Mr. Orlandis around during my off-duty hours."

  I looked away from Orlandis's steady gaze to find Alana staring just as intently at me, a hint of pleading in her expression. Don't anger the passengers. With a supreme effort of will I gave in. "Very well, I said, turning back to Mr. Orlandis. "You and Ms. Keal may make your own arrangements on this. Please bear in mind that her work schedule may need to change on short notice; ships like the Aura Dancer are almost by definition always short of hands to do the necessary work."

  He nodded once, a simple acknowledgment without any detectable trace of triumph to it. He was used to being obeyed; pure and simple. "It will be, what, another five days until the next cascade maneuver?"

  "About that," I told him, wishing obscurely that I could rattle off the precise time to him, in days, hours, and minutes. "You'll have plenty of warning; don't worry."

  "I wasn't. Will the food be much longer?"

  I glanced at Tobbar, who had presumably been there when they all submitted their orders. "Another minute or two; no more," he told Orlandis. "Our autochef is getting a bit old and sometimes takes its time filling orders."

  "These things happen," Orlandis said equably. "Captain, I don't believe you've ordered yet."

  An invitation to an entire evening of cat-eat-mouse sparring? Perhaps; but if it was, I was going to take the coward's way out. "I'm sorry; but as I said, I won't be able to stay," I told him, getting to my feet.

  "There's some work on the bridge I need to attend to. Please enjoy your dinner, and I expect I'll be talking with you all again soon."

  "Perhaps under more relaxed conditions," Orlandis said. "Good evening, Captain."

  I turned, and as I did so the autochef beeped its announcement that dinner was finally ready. Assured that they all had something more interesting than me to occupy their attention, I made my escape.

  I went to the bridge, kicked Pascal out-it was his shift, but he had some maintenance work on the computer he wanted to do anyway-and pulled a copy of the cargo manifest. Just for something to do, actually... but when Alana stopped in an hour later I was still studying it. "Dinner over already?" I asked her as she slid into her chair and swiveled it to face me.

  "More or less," she said, eying me closely. "Orlandis and Tobbar are going hard at a discussion on governmental theory. I get the impression Orlandis knows a lot about the subject."

  "More or less," she said, eying me closely. "Orlandis and Tobbar are going hard at a discussion on governmental theory. I get the impression Orlandis knows a lot about the subject."

  I grunted. "You noticed that, did you?"

  "Come on, Pall-it's no big deal if I play tour guide for a couple of hours. I've done it before, you know."

  "It's the principle of the thing," I told her stiffly. "Passengers don't give a ship's captain orders."

  Her eyebrows rose at that. "He never ordered you to let me show him around. You could have said no anywhere along the line."

  "After you cut the landing skids out from under me?" I retorted. "Come on, now-I couldn't very well fight both of you."

  "And you shouldn't fight with passengers at all," she shot back. "I was trying to give you a dignified way out; if you're hot about that, take it out on me, not him. But bear in mind I was doing you a big favor in there."

  "How do you figure that?"

  She flashed an impish smile. "He could have asked you to show him around."

  I held onto my frown for another second before giving up and grudging her a twisted smile in return. "I can't win anything today, can I?" I muttered, only half joking. "Oh, all right, I owe you one. If Orlandis was bound and determined to cause me trouble he missed his biggest chance."

  "I don't think that was what he was up to," she demurred thoughtfully. "I think he's just used to the very best of everything."

  "Then the change here should do him good," I snorted.

  She gave me a now, now sort of look and w
aved at the manifest in front of me. "Trouble with the cargo?"

  "Not really." I shook my head, glad to have a change of topic. "Just trying to figure out why we've suddenly attracted new customers."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, I didn't notice it before, but nearly a quarter of our cargo space is being taken up by four large crates coming from two companies we've never done business with."

  She got out of her seat and peered over my shoulder. "Huh. Are we the only ship heading between Baroja and Earth at the moment? If they need to get the cargo there right away that might explain it."

  And also explain why someone like Orlandis would stoop to our level? "Maybe, but that seems unlikely.

  Didn't you say the Angelwing was even going to Earth this trip?"

  "Yes, but by way of Lorraine. They won't arrive until a month after we do."

  I sighed. "Well, I suppose it's not impossible. Seems pretty odd, though."

  "Maybe I can poke around the question with Orlandis tomorrow," Alana suggested. "He's a businessman; he ought to know about shipping schedules and all."

  "What business is he in?"

  Her forehead furrowed. "Now that you mention it, I don't think he ever actually said," she told me slowly.

  "Though I got the impression it was something important."

  "He ought to be on a commercial liner if he's that rich," I grumbled.

  "Unless," she said quietly, "he's afraid of people."

  I looked up at her, feeling my stomach tighten reflexively. Alana had made practically a second career for herself years back as a mender of bruised spirits and broken wings; had overdosed on the loss and pain that nearly always seemed to come with the job; and was only in the last year or so taking her first tentative steps out from behind the self-erected barriers. If Orlandis was aboard because he was psychologically unable to mingle with the masses of people on a standard liner, then she probably had enough of a challenge to last her the rest of the trip. "Well, if he is he's picked a lousy place to hide," I growled. "Not much real privacy on this albatross."