“What should I do?” he asked. “I’m no pilot.”
“Not by the usual criteria, no,” Marc said. “But if you’re an indication that some normal folk can withstand transit, the pilots will become curiosities. They have no society but their own. They might continue working, but they’d soon be outnumbered. They give up a great deal to become pilots. But they gain more. They cannot — they will not — go back to being ordinary people.”
“Surely I’m the one who’s a curiosity,” Radu said.
“Perhaps,” Marc said in a noncommittal tone.
“Vasili Nikolaievich said he should kill me,” Radu said. “I didn’t think he would, but I didn’t believe he was trying to make a joke, either.”
Radu expected him to smile, but his expression remained grave.
“Do you intend to let me leave here?” Radu asked.
At that Marc did smile. “Of course I do,” he said. “I’m not a pilot anymore. My loyalties are a bit wider. I confess, though, I am curious about your experience.”
“I don’t think I can tell you much more than you already know. I woke up in transit. I’m alive.”
“There’s more than that. There must be. Did you ever come out of the anesthetic early before? Did you have any indication that you were restless?”
“No. The opposite. The recordings always showed I slept more peacefully than most.”
“Did anything unusual ever happen on your other flights?”
”No.”
“Don’t answer so quickly with such certainty. Did you awaken easily?”
“Yes.”
“You were often first, then.”
“Yes.” He thought back over his rather small number of transit dives. The one time he had been helped from his sleep chamber, it had been by Vasili, the only pilot he had ever flown with. “Always first, so far. But I’ve not been crew that long.”
“You felt that you slept soundly in transit.”
“Yes. I used a high anesthetic level, and I dreamed.”
“Dreamed!”
Radu hesitated. “Laenea was surprised, too, when I told her. Is it all that uncommon?”
“Yes. It’s unique as far as I know.”
“I don’t see how it could make the least bit of difference.”
“There is a difference. Like the difference between real sleep and the crew’s drugged coma. How did you wake up when you were supposed to be drugged?”
“The first time, I thought the gas line was stopped up. I found no obstruction.” He stretched out his arm so the sleeve pulled back from his wrist, revealing the bandage. “The second time, I tore loose the needle. The third time I reacted badly to the drug.” He scowled and folded his arms across his chest. “Maybe there’s nothing strange about what happened to me. Maybe most people can live through transit awake and it was something else that killed the first ones to try it.”
“Do you think so?”
Radu did not answer for a while. Finally he said, “No. I wish I did, but I don’t.”
“Nor do I, and I have reasons for my opinion. What do you dream about?”
“Usually? Or this time?”
“Both. Tell me the difference.”
“Before now, my dreams were always pleasant. About home, and my clan. Before the plague. And on the way to Ngthummulun, I dreamed about being with Laenea.”
“And coming back?”
“I dreamed about her again, but something was wrong; she needed help, she was calling to me —” He shivered. The dreams had been very real. He would not feel comfortable, he would not believe she was safe, until he talked to her. “The nightmares woke me up.”
“Did you ever have nightmares like that before?” Marc asked.
“For a while,” Radu said reluctantly. “Back on Twilight…”
“Under what circumstances?”
“It was during the plague. I’d dream of people, and they’d die. I had nightmares, or hallucinations. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference —”
“Wait,” Marc said. “What did you say?”
“Just now? I said sometimes I was too tired to tell the difference between dreams and hallucinations. I’d have nightmares about being able to help my family and my friends who died.”
“Not exactly,” Marc said. “You said, ‘I’d dream of people, and they’d die.’ ”
Radu hesitated, tempted to say he had misspoken himself. “That’s how it seemed, sometimes,” he said. “That I’d know someone was going to die before they got sick. You see what I mean about hallucinations.”
Marc gave no sign of immediate agreement. “Were there similarities between those dreams and the ones you had in transit?”
“Only superficially. The people back home really were in danger. Laenea’s perfectly safe.”
“No one’s ever perfectly safe in transit,” Marc said. “Laenea’s training flight has lasted an exceptionally long time.”
“You don’t think she might really be in trouble, do you?” Radu asked.
“There’s no way to tell, until she comes back… or doesn’t.”
Radu tried to smile. “She probably just insisted on learning everything there is to learn, all on the first trip.”
“No doubt.” Marc sat very still, watching Radu and blinking slowly. “Now tell me what happened when you were awake.”
“I saw nothing. Vasili Nikolaievich asked me what I thought of transit, and I got angry at him because I thought he was making fun of me. But he wasn’t. He perceived something.”
“Yes…” Marc said. “And you did not?”
“Just a flat gray surface, as if the port had been covered over.” He shrugged. “Oh, once in a while I thought I saw a flash of color, but I think that must have been my imagination.”
“Perhaps.”
“Surely one can’t fly blind in transit — what use could I be? How could I be a threat?”
“Radu,” Marc said kindly, “I think you’re going to have to accept this ability, not deny it. There’s a lot we don’t know about transit yet. You’re going to be a factor in its exploration, however uncomfortable that makes you feel.”
Radu slouched down, feeling unhappy, uneasy, angry.
“Do you have any immediate plans?”
“I don’t see how I can make any,” Radu said. “Last night, on Earthstation, the pilots confronted me. They wanted me to go with them, and I refused. But I can’t crew again without their help. I can’t even go home.”
“I think if you don’t antagonize them, they’ll come to a reasonable decision.”
“What’s a reasonable decision, for a pilot? That they’ll deign not to kill me? Can’t you help?” he asked desperately. “They must respect you and consider your advice.”
Marc gazed over Radu’s head, then around the room. Radu heard his breathing deepen, as if he were working hard to control a strong emotional reaction.
“Not as much as you might think,” he said.
“But you’re one of the first. You made everything possible for them.”
“I’m a failed pilot,” Marc said. “One of the first or not, I returned and had my natural heart put back in my chest. I’m not one of them anymore, nor am I like you.”
Radu waited. He asked no questions. But he waited.
Marc looked at him, his eyes half closed.
“Transit is different for everyone. The people who ask what it’s like think that if they’re lucky enough to get an answer, they’ll understand it. But the truth is that no one, pilot or not, understands it at all. If you got a reply from every pilot you talked to, you’d still not know what transit is like, you’d only be more confused.” Marc uncrossed his legs and sat with his knees together and his feet flat on the floor, his hands curled around the arms of his chair. “The way it affected me… was to send me into a panic.” His voice shook. His eyes were wide open now, but he was not staring at anything in this room or in this universe.
“I was in terror — I hit the emergency switch. Y
ou know —”
Radu nodded, reliving a precipitous departure from transit.
“It took me some time to gather my courage enough to try to go home. It took me so long that the choice was between the terror, and starvation. I was too far from any system to try to reach a world where I could die peacefully.” He smiled sadly. “And I do believe I would have chosen exile to transit, if I’d had the choice.
“The return was completely different. I can no more describe it than I could the other. I came back… in a daze of rapture. But I wasn’t a pilot any longer. I wasn’t sufficiently freed from normal space-time. Transit changed me. Not quite enough to kill me, but if I flew awake again, I’d die. I would have accepted that fate, to return. But of course they wouldn’t permit it.”
“When you went out,” Radu said, “you had no assurance that you’d survive.”
“They were still developing the parameters. They thought I fit. But I didn’t. Not quite.”
“But you’re a hero,” Radu said. “Why do you shut yourself away like this?”
Marc sighed. “Don’t think I wouldn’t enjoy being lionized,” he said. “But I’m old history. And then there’s this.” He lifted his trembling hand.
“A tremor? Who would care?”
“It’s more than that. I lost a lot of brain cells during the trip.”
“Oh,” Radu said, and then, inadequately, “I’m sorry.”
“I never did see much use in regenerating a ruined brain into a new one.”
“You seem far from ruined.”
“Close enough to need regeneration, not close enough to have the decision taken from me. When I’m rational I’m not quite ready to lose myself.”
“The damage… is in the cerebral cortex.”
“The damage is all over.” For the first time Marc’s voice held a hint of bitterness. “No worse there than anywhere — except of course that’s the place it really matters.”
Radu nodded. It was one thing to regenerate a lost hand or a severed nerve or a heart damaged by disease, or removed. Even large areas of the brain, the motor and sensory regions, were well worth bringing back. But what point to regenerating the gray matter, to reforming the connections until memories were stretched and fuzzed beyond recall?
“I’d be left at the level of a three-year-old,” Marc said. “With great luck, four. I don’t even remember being four.” He shook his head. “I have some memories, you see, that I want very much to keep. Those moments in transit. A few others. No, my friend, I’m stuck with me as I am or not at all.”
“I’m sorry,” Radu said again.
“Never mind. It’s far too easy to be maudlin about it. It’s your problem that concerns us now. I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you,” Radu said. “Until I got your message, I had nowhere to turn. I tried to call Laenea, but she’s still in transit.”
“Radu —” Marc stopped. He closed his eyes, then glanced down at his hand. It trembled despite his efforts to clench his fingers over the panel of knobs and switches. He sighed, and touched one button.
Radu started violently at the abrupt sliding crystalline noise. He was on his feet, turned around and crouched, before he realized that the sound was simply the closing of glass doors over the front of each display shelf. Abashed, he turned back toward Marc.
“I apologize for startling you,” Marc said. “Radu, you’ll have to leave now. I’ve overtired myself and I won’t be able to answer for what I do, in a few minutes.”
“Then you’ll need help —”
“No. I won’t. I’ll be all right if I don’t have to worry about you. Please go.”
“But —”
“Don’t argue,” Marc said sharply. “Get off the port and stay away from the pilots till I’ve had a chance to talk to them. I’ll do it as soon as I’m able.”
“Marc…”
“Please, go.”
He stood. Moving awkwardly, he took Radu’s arm. Afraid to resist and take the chance of hurting Marc, Radu let himself be guided through the door.
“Marc —”
Marc stepped back abruptly and the hidden door slid shut between them. Radu put his hands to the wall, thrusting his fingers between the clinging vines to try to find his way back inside. He scratched for a crevice but found only smooth metal.
Marc’s image formed in tenuous colors nearby.
“Believe me,” Marc’s electronically modulated voice said. Radu could hear the resonances of the true voice that formed its basis. “Believe me, I’ll be all right. It’s a matter of pride. These spells aren’t pretty. Call me every day until I answer, but don’t leave word where you are.” The image vanished.
“But —” Radu hesitated in the foyer, disgusted with himself for having left Marc alone. He willed the image to reappear, but it remained as hidden as the doorway. Radu knew he must go.
From the alcove, he looked cautiously out at the mall. This late at night, it lay deserted and silent. Radu stepped out into the corridor and headed for the elevator. Marc had made the pilots more comprehensible to him, yet more frightening. They were frightened, too, which made them seem more human, but more unpredictable and therefore more dangerous. Marc’s suggestion that Radu avoid them was, Radu decided, excellent advice.
He turned a corner and came face to face with Orca. Astonished, he stopped. She glared up at him, folding her arms across her chest.
“Do you want the pilots to follow you?” she said belligerently.
“No,” he said. “No, of course not. What are you doing here? How did you know where I was?”
“Gods,” she said. “They shouldn’t let you off the ship. They ought to give colonists a survival manual. They ought to wrap you in structural foam. Radu, you didn’t put a guard on your file. Is everybody on Twilight that respectful of privacy? What were you thinking of?”
“Wait,” he said. “You read my messages?”
“Don’t sound so distressed. I looked to see if you’d protected yourself, and you hadn’t. The pilots wouldn’t have any more trouble finding you than I did.”
“I don’t understand, Orca. Can anyone learn anything about me, whenever they want? How can that be?”
She unfolded her arms and shook her head. “It’s practically reflex to protect your file,” she said. “People’s parents start doing it for them, when they’re kids. But it isn’t automatic, and if you don’t keep track of it, then, yes, people can find out anything they want.”
Radu calmed down. “Thank you for telling me,” he said. “How do I fix it?”
“You don’t have a personal communicator, do you?”
He shook his head. He carried none; they were rare on Twilight and unnecessary on shipboard. He had not bothered to get one when he landed on earth because he had known no one to call.
“Come with me.”
She took him to a terminal and brought up his files. She did not even have to identify herself; without any question of Orca’s right to the information, they revealed Radu’s comings and goings, his credit balance, Marc’s message.
Orca spoke a code, and a patch of light, like the image of a nova, formed before her.
“Stick your hand in there,” she said.
Radu tentatively touched the boundary of the sphere of light. It tingled against his hand like a field of static electricity.
“It’s okay,” Orca said. “It just records your fingerprints.”
Radu thrust his hand into the chaotic light. It read his handprint to the wrist; its border dimpled down where the bandage touched its surface.
Then the display faded to translucence, to transparence, to nothingness.
“Done,” Orca said.
“Is that all?”
“That’s it. The guard isn’t foolproof, but if anybody’s trying to keep track of you, it’ll slow them down.”
“Why did you come back?” Radu asked.
“Not to ask you any more questions, don’t worry,” she said. She started toward the elevator.
>
He reached to take her hand. “Orca—”
He heard something behind him and spun, afraid of having to face another group of pilots. But a perfectly ordinary person rounded the corner, passed him with a quizzical glance, got on the elevator, and disappeared.
Radu laughed quickly, with relief, then suddenly realized how tightly he was holding Orca’s hand. He let loose his desperate grip.
“I’m sorry — are you —?”
She flexed her long, fine-boned fingers. Radu feared he had crushed them.
“I’m okay.” She put her hand back in his, a gesture of trust and perhaps even of forgiveness.
“I might have broken a bone, or torn your skin —”
Her fingers clamped around his wrist, tight, cutting off the circulation, though she did not appear to be putting much effort into the grip. She squeezed, and Radu winced in pain.
“Orca —” He tried to pull away. Orca appeared perfectly relaxed, but her hand stayed still and so did Radu’s.
“I keep telling you,” she said coldly, “that I’m not delicate. The webs won’t tear and you’d have to work at it, hard, to break my fingers. Are we friends? I thought we were starting to be, but you don’t even trust what I say.”
She let him go.
Radu looked at his wrist. The white impressions of her fingers slowly turned red. He would be bruised in stripes, to match the bruise that spread around the wound on his other arm. “I believe you,” he said. “I won’t doubt you again.”
“You can think me a liar for all I care right now. But when you treat me like a surface child, or some shell that the sand or the water could smash —” She snorted in derision.
“It’s just that you’re so small,” Radu said. “Back home…” He hoped he could say what he meant well enough not to offend her again. “Ever since I left home, I’ve been surrounded by people who seemed fragile to me. I feel as if I could hurt them without meaning to. I felt awkward around Vasili Nikolaievich, and when I helped Atna awaken, I could have been holding a songbird in my hands, his bones seemed so frail.” Radu did not mention Laenea: He had never felt that she was frail, but she was unique in his mind anyway.
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