Across the Spectrum

by Nagle, Pati

  “Tajarivani,” Taj said in response. Then, not allowing time for a possible snub, he added a note of informality: “Taj.”

  She smiled. “Ama.”

  Taj abruptly felt very light. He smiled back.

  But Naramutro just nodded, not offering a nickname, and motioned at the simgame console. “Your choice.”

  A thrill ran through Taj. Naramutro was treating this like a formal duel.

  He glanced past his opponent, out the viewport. The sky was black now as the S’lift pod climbed toward space. Above, the bright arch of the ring of highdwellings about the planet formed a vivid stroke of light over the curve of Sundara’s horizon.

  Taj suddenly realized that the S’lift was not only carrying him into orbit, it was also carrying him away from his old identity. Up here no one knew him; he didn’t have to be “Icky” anymore.

  With a boldness he’d formerly reserved for the battlesims he replied, “Random.”

  Naramutro’s lips tightened as a whispered current of excitement ran through the others. The girl who’d just beaten Naramutro suppressed a laugh. Taj had thrown away his advantage by letting the simgame choose any of the millions of scenarios stored in its memory. In effect, he’d just announced that he could beat Naramutro at any game.

  And he proved it. The simgame windowed up a duel between battlecruisers in a dense asteroid belt. Within fifteen minutes Taj had maneuvered behind Naramutro’s cruiser and delivered a crippling blow to his opponent’s radiants, a notable weak spot in those otherwise almost invulnerable ships. Before Taj could launch a second hypermissile to finish him off, Naramutro slapped the concede tab and sat back, his face dark with anger.

  “You worked the sims pretty hard downside, didn’t you?” The High Douloi’s voice was almost a snarl. Before Taj could reply the other boy went on. “I suppose that’s how you learned to fly, too.”

  “Sort of hard to fly downside, otherwise,” said the girl with the shock of blue hair. She grinned at Taj.

  Naramutro stood up. “It takes more than simtime to make a fledgie from an eyaz. Not that you’re likely to find out.” He turned to Ama. “Come on, Ama. The air’s a bit thick in here.”

  Taj flushed at the slighting reference to his downsider origins—the atmosphere on most of the highdwellings was thinner than Sundara’s.

  Ama shook her head. “You go on, Nara; I think I’ll play a few games.”

  Naramutro stared at her for a moment, then turned and walked out, his gait stiff.

  The others crowded around Taj, congratulating him on his victory and offering introductions at a speed that taxed his memory.

  “You’ve got problems with Nara,” said Elli, the blue-haired girl. “He’s the cadet master of the aerie in Talajara, and he’s sure to hand you the black feather.”

  “I’ve got a red feather already,” said Taj.

  Elli’s brow knitted in doubt and Ama said, “It may not be enough; our uncle is the temenarch of Talajara.”

  But then her eyes widened as Taj, feeling doubtful himself, pulled his aerie pass out of a pocket and held it out on the palm of his hand. It was just a piece of red dyplast, shaped like a small feather, with an embedded datachip; but on it was inlaid a gold circle with two wings.

  Elli burst into laughter. “I’d like to see Nara black-feather this one. That’s Gee-Em’s sigil!”

  “She’s my greatmother in the twelfth generation,” explained Taj. “I’m visiting her on Talajara.”

  “Then we’re cousins,” said Ama. Perhaps a bit of Taj’s disappointment showed, for she added—with just the hint of a wink, he was sure—“In the fourth degree. Distant cousins.”

  “What kind of wings are those?” interrupted Tulli, a Talajaran boy with a square face and stocky build.

  “Jihari Apodines. They’re modeled after the swifts brought by the Exiles from Lost Earth.”

  Ama looked at the wing pack longingly. “My parents won’t let me fly sport; I have to use an old set of Creswill Diomedes. Just once I’d like to do more than just soar.”

  “They don’t want you to lose your figure,” said Elli. Taj heard a mixture of envy and challenge in her voice. He noticed for the first time that the blue-haired girl had the wide shoulders of a flyer who used highly maneuverable wings like his, in contrast to Ama’s willowy frame.

  Elli turned to him and squeezed his shoulder. “You’ve got great wings, Gee-Em’s chop, and a good set of flight muscles—I’m looking forward to seeing your first real flight.” She smiled. “Maybe we can fly together.”

  “That’d be great! Maybe we can all meet at the aerie.”

  Much of the rest of the journey to the Node was spent playing simgames, which he kept winning until Ama, Elli, and Tulli ganged up on him in a three-destroyer-versus-battlecruiser scenario that ended in a spectacular explosion. After that, they all talked and joked. Being the center of attention was an unfamiliar and heady sensation for Taj, so he barely noticed their impending arrival until one especially funny story made him laugh so hard he floated out of his seat. They were at the Node, the main link between Sundara and its highdwellings, and the Thousand Suns beyond.

  From there it was a short shuttle flight to Talajara Highdwelling. Taj didn’t see Naramutro on the little ship, but Ama merely said that her brother would probably take a different flight. Taj couldn’t decipher her expression.

  From the shuttle they disembarked into an enormous ring concourse that circled the inside of one of Talajara’s end caps, the one his highdweller friends called the south pole. There, close to the spin axis, the gravity was about one-eighth of Sundara’s, but if Taj moved slowly the sticky shoe covers he had been issued let him walk almost normally.

  Taj looked around, and what he saw made him dizzy. To either side of him the floor curved up under a ceiling perhaps fifty meters high, both paralleling in miniature the curve of the habitat’s sides. In the distance, before the ceiling cut off his view almost a half kilometer away, he could see the tiny figures of people hurrying about canted over at an angle of forty-five degrees to him. He knew that at every point along the concourse, spin-gravity was straight down, but he still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that at any moment all of those people would suddenly come sliding down into a giant heap, with him at the bottom.

  Ahead, looking down the length of Talajara through the opening at the edge of the curved floor and ceiling of the concourse, Taj saw a huge smile-shaped slice of blue sky with strange hook-topped clouds ringing a pair of enormous glowing tubes. The tubes speared out overhead and converged in the misty distance, a blindingly bright spot of light midway along each of them. And farther out he saw what appeared to be islands hanging in the sky—or were they mountains?

  His planet-bred mind couldn’t make sense of the scene, which pulled him forward, his friends following silently. As he approached the edge, he realized that the concourse was nothing more than a huge balcony overlooking the interior of Talajara, with no concessions to the fears of downsiders. Only a low railing separated him from a sheer four-kilometer drop.

  On the railing Taj saw a bright red sign with a chilling message:

  ATTENTION TRAVELERS: DROPPING AN OBJECT FROM HERE IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH!

  A moment’s thought told him why: the surface of Talajara was rotating at more than seven hundred kilometers per hour with respect to the spin axis, so an object of any significant weight falling from here would hit with incredible force: a kind of trash meteorite.

  But then Taj forgot everything else as he got his first look at the interior of Talajara.

  He stood for a long time at the railing, at the edge of a green cliff covered with vines bearing sweet-smelling flowers. The cliff dropped sheer to a cottony cloud layer that obscured the view directly below, but farther away the clouds broke up a little, revealing the distant inner surface of the highdwelling. A tapestry of villages and fields interspersed with tall buildings stretched into the hazy distance, stitched through with the bright gleaming of streams and
ponds. The far end of Talajara was invisible, while to either side the land curved up into dizzying overhangs—what his eyes had first seen as mountains—that were lost in the dazzle of the diffusers overhead, the huge tubular structures stretching from pole to pole that delivered sunlight to the interior.

  It was beautiful and utterly strange. Every time he looked straight ahead, it was pretty much like being in an aircar on Sundara. But then the disorienting landscape curving up on either side, with buildings jutting sideways out of huge green overarching cliffs, reminded him he was inside an enormous cylinder. He knew that to the people in those buildings, he would be the one apparently hanging sideways. Thinking about it made him dizzy all over again.

  “The aerie’s at the north pole,” said Ama. “Where are you staying?”

  As he opened his mouth to answer, his boswell buzzed with a locate signal and a swift glitter in the distance arrested his attention. Between one breath and another it swooped up and resolved into an incredibly ancient human enclosed in a shimmering bubble. Taj couldn’t see the machinery that kept the geebubble weightless, just a kind of spindly chair in which the nuller was seated. The geebubble hesitated momentarily in front of him before darting over the railing and into the concourse. Taj twisted to face the bubble as it abruptly stopped and hovered a few centimeters off the floor. He found himself face to face with his ancestor twelve generations removed.

  Gee-Em’s face was deeply seamed with wrinkles, her eyes a fierce bright blue, and only the long iron gray hair floating loose around her head identified her as female, so much had three and a half centuries of life withered her. Her limbs, as far as Taj could see in the enveloping folds of the garment floating around her, were incredibly thin. But her bare hands and feet were strong and sinewy, as were her wrists and ankles. A constant breeze blew from the bubble, generated by the gravitational difference between its weightless interior and the outside. The breeze smelled of roses and dust.

  “Greetings, Tajarivani vlith-Ramajugandra,” she said in a surprisingly strong voice. Her use of the inheritance prefix “vlith” acknowledged his position as heir. Next to him he felt Elli’s sudden stare fall on him.

  Taj bowed in a full formal deference, feeling awkward, a sensation intensified by the fact that Gee-Em floated at a slight angle to the floor. He found himself leaning sideways as they talked.

  “You do me honor,” he replied. Her meeting him here, instead of waiting for him to come to her, was an inversion of the usual etiquette.

  “Not honor but necessity,” she said, waving aside formality with a graceful gesture. “I’m afraid the press of business will keep me from my duties as your host, at least for a short time, so I have arranged for your lodging at the Hack.”

  “Oh! I . . . Thank you!”

  As he spoke, Taj heard the sharp intake of breath from his three friends. The Hack was the ultra-exclusive hotel near the Talajara aerie that catered specifically to flyers. Then, noting the direction of Gee-Em’s gaze, he collected himself and introduced his suddenly shy companions.

  But Gee-Em quickly put them at ease with a brief conversation with each—not like grown-ups usually did, but as if she really cared about what they said, as if they were responsible adults. Taj suddenly realized that, as old as she was, there probably wasn’t all that much difference to her between people his age and adults his parents’ age.

  “Of course, I needn’t inquire about your interests,” she said to Taj with a smile that made her face even more wrinkly, if that were possible. She motioned at his wing pack. “I’m sure you’re eager to put those to use—Apodines, aren’t they?”

  He nodded dumbly. Then her boswell chimed.

  “Your pardon, greatson, but time presses,” she said after a glance at her wrist. She waved toward the railing. “And the clouds are calling you.”

  He bowed deeply, realizing the interview was at an end; but then she squinted at him, her gaze suddenly sharp. “You watched the orientation, did you not?”

  “Umm . . . yes.”

  “Very well. Fair winds to you, then. And to you all.”

  With that, her bubble spun about and darted off down the concourse, skimming over the heads of the hurrying throng until it disappeared above the curve of the ceiling.

  “I wonder what it’s like to fly in a geebubble,” said Elli.

  “She seemed a little abrupt,” commented Ama.

  “My dad says that nullers don’t like to waste time,” said Tulli. “’Cause they’ve seen enough of it go by to know how valuable it is.”

  But Taj said nothing. What would she have said if he’d admitted he hadn’t watched the whole vid? Why was it important to her?

  His anxiety lasted long after his friends left, promising to meet him at the aerie the next morning. Even the astounding luxury of the Hack didn’t entirely shake it. He fell asleep still wondering if he’d made a mistake.

  The next morning, before dawn, a hotel aircar took him to the aerie, where he found Ama, Elli, and Tulli waiting for him. Naramutro was there as well. Taj braced himself for a confrontation as he held out the red feather given him by Gee-Em, but the other boy was carefully polite, and to Taj’s surprise, he assigned him and his friends one of the best sets of perches in the aerie. Not that Naramutro stiffed himself; Taj noticed that he took up a position nearby.

  As they unpacked their wings the diffusers slowly kindled near the other pole. The bright spot of light relayed by the huge mirrors outside the highdwelling would move slowly along the length of the diffusers until it reached this pole and put an end to flying for the day—the heat generated wind currents too unpredictable for even the most skillful flyers. As the light in the diffusers swelled, it gradually revealed an astonishing waterfall cascading in a feathery spiral around the north pole of Talajara down to the rain forest below. A fitful breeze carried its muted thunder to their ears.

  They chatted quietly while they inspected their wings. A flyer’s wing sets actually had two pairs of wings, like dragonflies, plus a tail, manipulated by the legs and feet, for directional control. The first set of wings, the lift wings, didn’t move, but could be tilted and trimmed to change the amount of lift generated. The other pair, the flight wings, actually propelled the flyer, whose arms and chest muscles moved them in a circular motion, cupping the air and pushing back and down. The flight angle of the wings and their quillions—dyplast feathers—were coordinated by a computer operated by the flight gloves.

  Ama carefully unfolded her Diomedes, which had short flight wings and long, graceful lift wings for slow, soaring flight. Elli, it turned out, had a pair of Jihari Tiercels, designed for fast flight and dramatic dives. Tulli carefully combed the quillions on the flight wings of an old pair of Megharan Passerines before putting them on while he watched Taj spread the colorful lift wings of his Apodines. Taj felt Naramutro watching him. He smiled to show there were no hard feelings, but the other boy turned away and launched himself out into the air. His wings looked like they might be Apodines, too.

  “Come on,” said Tulli when they all had their wings on. “Let’s go!”

  Taj stood for a moment, feeling an unfamiliar vertigo as he watched his friends launch themselves out into the air, with Talajara’s distant surface curving up cliff-like on either side. It was so different from the simulator: most of his flying had been done over planetary landscapes that existed only in the imagination of artists, and the WingWorld bubbloid was far smaller than Talajara.

  A group of kids swooped by, led by Naramutro. One of them cocked his head toward Taj and sneered, “Mudfoot.”

  Taj flushed, flexed his legs, and jumped. Low gee was low gee. As the strong strokes of his wings caught the cool air, the familiar excitement of flight wiped away his doubts.

  At first he stayed with his friends, darting around Ama as she soared, mock dogfighting with Elli in her more maneuverable wings, and briefly playing tag with Tulli and some other kids. But, to his surprise, he found he was a better flyer than any of them.


  Later, during a brief rest on his perch, he watched the flyers around Naramutro, now including Elli, play an unfamiliar version of scoopball, which he’d often practiced in the simulator. They used the standard gear: helmets with a scoop on top that was used to catch and then launch a small ball. But here there was no playing space and no goal hoops. They just tossed the ball and retrieved it in darting swoops. He couldn’t figure out the point.

  Tulli landed next to him, followed by Ama.

  “What happens if they drop the ball?” asked Taj, remembering the sign on the concourse.

  “It’s got a gas cylinder in it that triggers if they lose it,” said Tulli. “It balloons up and floats back up to the axis.”

  Suddenly Naramutro flew up and hovered in front of them. “I’ve been watching you,” he said. “You’re not too bad, for a downsider—you want to try some real flying?”

  “AyKay,” replied Taj, feeling a tingle of excitement in his chest.

  “Be careful,” whispered Ama. “They fly rough. And Nara’s still angry about the simgame; he doesn’t like to lose.”

  “I’ll look out,” he said, warmed by her concern.

  “Just work with me,” said Elli, who had flown up as Naramutro darted away. “I’ll show you the moves.”

  At first Taj felt a little clumsy, not fully understanding the strategy of the game, but he soon caught on. The goal mostly seemed to be to swoop in and intercept the ball before another flyer could catch it; but there was an elaborate etiquette of avoidance and alliance that he slowly came to understand with Elli’s help.

  After a while he sensed the attitudes of the others changing. A couple of them actually cheered when he pulled off a graceful chandelle, reversing direction at the point of a stall to slip under the ball and snatch it away only inches from Elli’s scoop. She laughed and fell away in a reverse loop; he launched the ball toward her, only to have it intercepted by Naramutro.

  He climbed after the other boy, shadowing him closely, feeling the strain in his chest and arms as he and Naramutro zigzagged across the sky, Talajara wheeling around them. Taj could hear the other’s harsh breathing and realized that he was panting just as hard.