“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I heard what happened. I was afraid for you.”
She had never thought to see him in the human world, and so close to so many landers. He was wary of them, yet he had come to help her without so much as a knife belt. Touched, she knelt and hugged him. He put his arms around her and nuzzled the hollow of her collarbone.
“I missed you,” he said softly, and drew away again. Orca squeezed his hand and let him go.
She heard the high-pitched descending whistle of a killer whale’s greeting. She answered as well as she could, but did not try to explain where she had been or what had happened. It would be difficult underwater; in the air she could not even make a start at it.
A half dozen port security officers came out of the blockhouse. They paused to assess the crowd and to curse, though rather good-naturedly, at the thought of trying to break it up without offending tourists or earning the wrath of reporters. Ramona had vanished inside the shuttle, so the spectators at the edge of the group were drifting away. The air of expectancy was fading. A network helicopter took off with its news crew; farther away, another information corporation’s microjet powered up with a sighing whine.
“This is my sister Orca,” her brother said to the older man.
“How do you do,” he said to her. “My name is also Marc.”
She did not have a chance to wonder what he meant by “also,” for he was trying to rise. He got to his knees and steadied himself with his stick; Orca helped him with a hand under his elbow.
The spot of warmth behind Orca’s eyes became tinged with red; she let the emergency message through.
This is van de Graaf. Where are you?
Right outside, Orca replied. If you look you can see me.
Is Radu with you?
No.
You should have stayed here. Now stay there. If you see him, keep him there, too. The rest of us will be out in a minute.
Without replying, Orca ceased to accept the transmission. Though the crowd had thinned it would be longer than a minute before anyone — any pilots, at least — got through it from the shuttle. Orca looked around for Radu, but did not see him.
She heard her cousins calling for her to return to the sea, welcoming her, curious as always about what she had done during her absence in the air.
“Go ahead,” her brother said. “I’ll stay here.”
“Wait —” Marc said.
Orca kicked off her shoes and her pants. “I’ll be right back,” she called, throwing off her vest and running for the edge of the port.
She dove. The sea closed in over her with an energizing shock. Air bubbles tickled past her body. She let her momentum carry her straight down, then swam even deeper. The conversations of her cousins showed her where they were. She was inside the delicate webbing of a three-dimensional sound net. Fifty meters underwater she arched her body and circled upward again.
Her metabolism accelerated to the higher rate. When she broke the surface she took a deep breath and felt the oxygen burning in her lungs. She dove again, humming to her cousins. Their dark shapes surrounded her. They brushed her with their bodies, their fins, their flukes, more gently than any human lover.
I’m glad you decided to come to the gathering, her closest cousin said.
I haven’t decided yet, Orca said. I came out to talk to you.
But how can you think of missing it?
You sound like father, Orca told her.
Her cousin’s laugh vibrated past, and then her cousin disguised her echo pattern so she really did sound like Orca’s father: His voice, his swimming patterns, his outline.
You must at least come to the gathering, she said in father’s voice, stern and self-satisfied, with a parodic note thrown in.
All the cousins and a few of the divers could do the same thing, a little, but her ability was uncanny.
Orca and her cousin both laughed, but Orca grew serious again very quickly.
I’m not that anxious to attend this meeting, she said.
But it will be fun.
You have a different idea of fun than I.
Aren’t you excited?
No, Orca said. I wish I were. I’m frightened, my dear friend, I can’t help it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to survive these changes.
Then you should come to the gathering and speak your mind about it.
You’re right, Orca said, Of course, you’re right. I’ll try. Whatever happens otherwise, I will try to come to the gathering.
Come now, her cousin said.
I can’t. I wish I could, but something has happened, something important.
Does it have to do with your friend the newborn?
Yes, Orca told the killer whale. He — she told them his name, a sound pattern that would immediately identify him to anyone who saw him or met him, and who spoke true speech — he took us to the edge of the universe.
The patterns the whales used for communication, the three-dimensional shapes, as transparent to sound as solid objects, could express any concept. Any concept except, perhaps, vacuum, infinity, nothingness so complete it would never become anything. The nearest way she could try to describe it was with silence. She expected them to be confused when she told them that she had gone, deliberately, to a place of silence, and that she would return to it if she could. She expected, not that they would be afraid for her, because they did not feel fear, but that they would be worried about her. The whales did know madness.
Her nearest cousin rubbed against her, spiraling around her in a warm embrace.
You have seen this, my cousin? Seen it, heard it, felt it?
Yes.
You are right, the killer whale said. You must go back.
I know it, Orca said, astonished. But I didn’t think you’d understand.
Of course I understand. I’ve always understood. We’ve waited for what you are telling us. You must go back, and learn, and return to tell us more.
o0o
Radu touched the call bell at Marc’s one last time, not expecting an answer, not getting any. Marc must still be taken by his affliction. Even his analogue remained silent.
Radu moved to the back of the dark, leaf-lined alcove and sat on the floor in the shadows, trying to think.
It was, perhaps, for the best. Radu had endangered Orca, earlier, with his naiveté. He did not want to do the same thing to Marc. He should have learned enough by now, he should know enough about earth, to solve his own problems without jeopardizing everyone who made the mistake of befriending him.
The pilots had made serious threats when they knew neither what they wanted from Radu, nor whether what they wanted would be important. Now the administrators knew what they wanted, and had defined it as essential. If they were willing to attempt what he feared, then they admitted no limits to the means they would use to get it.
He closed his eyes for a moment, but that made it too easy to remember Twilight, and the plague.
He had only one course left to take, one he had avoided because he had sworn never to use it. He went to Kathell Stafford’s apartment.
The hour was unconscionably late, but one of her aides was always on duty. Radu put his hand to the sensor concealed in the silver filigree. When he stayed here the door had opened to his touch, but he expected no more, now, than an answer from inside.
The door opened. Lights, music, and laughter spilled out around him. Radu hesitated. He had become accustomed to silence and solitude in this place, where he and Laenea had begun to know each other. Seeing it overrun by Kathell Stafford’s permanent floating party made him uncomfortable and unhappy. He moved inside. All the other guests wore gold or silver or rainbow colors with the quality of jewels. Radu felt as if he could pass among them completely unnoticed, obliterated like a drab satellite at the noon of a hundred suns.
He made his way through the smoke of cigars as heavy and pungent as any Ramona ever smoked, through the powerful artificial odors meant to represent outdoor sm
ells. He repressed a sneeze.
Deep inside the apartment the crowd thinned slightly and the music changed from loud and atonal to delicate and melodic. The light here had a softer quality. He paused, lost, in the middle of an unfamiliar room. Some of the interior walls had been changed around and redecorated.
It would be painful bad luck to stumble upon the scarlet and gold room where he and Laenea had spent so much time.
Finally he saw Kathell, standing all alone against the curving wall of her largest living room. When she saw him, her expression hardened. He crossed the thick carpet and stopped before her.
“You took your time,” she said coldly. “What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you alone,” he said. “I can’t tell you what I want in public.”
One of her guests wandered toward them, staggering slightly, a drink in his hand. He wore an emerald-colored robe, opaque yet giving the impression that a deep jewel formed its surface.
He blinked blearily at Radu, then, with disappointment, at Kathell.
“Oh…” he said.
“What do you want?” Kathell was speaking to Radu but her invited guest took the question for himself.
“I thought this one had come back with the Aztec,” he said.
“It’s urgent,” Radu said to Kathell, ignoring her guest’s insulting reference to Laenea.
“This isn’t one of your better parties, Kathell,” the other man said querulously. “Where’s the entertainment?” He looked Radu up and down. “And I don’t mean the rare privilege of chatting with a novice crew member.”
“Will you go away!” Radu snapped. “Can’t you see we’re trying to talk?”
“Last time I came to one of your parties, I didn’t even get to meet the Aztec —”
“The pilot!” Radu said angrily.
“What?” He looked around. “Where?”
“She isn’t here,” Radu said. “Pilots don’t like to be called ‘Aztecs.’” To Kathell he said, “It’s important.”
The other guest spoke to Radu directly for the first time. “And what makes you think you know so much about pilots?”
Radu started to get angry, but that was pointless. The question was ludicrous, yet entirely appropriate. He opened his mouth to answer, changed his mind and shut it again, and realized he must look like a gasping fish. He began to laugh.
“Nothing,” he said. He chuckled. “Nothing at all.” A fit of laughter overcame him. He could not stop it. He laughed till tears ran down his face, till he had to lean against the wall or risk falling down. “What makes you think I know anything about pilots?”
A young man, almost as plainly dressed as Radu and with the look of one of Kathell’s aides about him, appeared at the edge of their small group.
“Find him something to amuse him,” Kathell said to her aide, and then, to Radu, “Come along.”
The aide led her drunken guest in one direction; Kathell took Radu the other way, to a smaller, quiet room.
“Now,” she said, “what do you want?”
“Is one of your blimps on the port?”
“Of course,” she said. “Is that all?”
“No,” Radu said, reacting to the contempt in her voice. “It’s true I want to use the blimp, but no doubt you’d consider that — or any material request my barbarian imagination could come up with — an unacceptably trivial demand.”
“That is true. You’re trying my patience, Radu Dracul. Are you looking for an enemy?”
“I have as many enemies as I need,” he said. “It isn’t just the blimp I want from you. I want something more important and more difficult.”
She waited.
“I want you to lie for me.”
“Explain yourself.”
“I want you to loan me your blimp. I won’t tell you where I intend to take it, but I will return it to you if I possibly can. When people come asking for me — and it won’t be just anyone, they will be powerful, and they make threats they can carry out — I want you to tell them… I don’t care what, but anything except that you know how I got away.”
“What am I helping you run away from, Radu Dracul?”
“I don’t owe you an explanation. You made the rules, and the rules say you owe me. You can either pay the debt you’ve imposed upon yourself, or declare yourself my enemy. But decide which, now, because I don’t have time to wait.”
“You’re learning the ways of earth quickly,” she said.
“Not with any willingness,” he said.
Her eyelids fluttered.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling a pilot, of course,” she said, most of her attention on her internal communicator.
“The last thing I want is a pilot!” he said, thinking, How could she know enough to betray me?
She opened her eyes again. “A blimp pilot,” she said, smiling very slightly.
“I don’t want a blimp pilot, either,” Radu said. “Do you want to see my license?”
“From Twilight, no doubt.”
“No doubt.”
“Anyone who works for me will abide by the promises I give,” she said.
Radu turned and started for the door.
“The airship and the deception are yours,” Kathell said. “And then my debt is paid.”
Radu went back out into the night, made his way to the airship field, and sought Kathell Stafford’s blimp. No other was like it. It was a great gold oval glowing with reflected light against the sky. The breeze shifted slightly. Each airship swung a few degrees around the mast to which its nose was tethered. The tail of Stafford’s craft began to rise. The fan controlling the buoyancy whirred, and the landing wheel touched down with a gentle thump of rubber on the decking.
Despite his claim to Stafford, Radu felt apprehensive about piloting a blimp here, where the level of technology was so much higher than on his own world. The controls might easily be alien. He swung up into the gondola and reached for the spot where the dashboard light switch would be, if he were back on Twilight.
The lights glowed on, illuminating a panel almost identical to the one on the airship he had piloted as a youth, directing a rudimentary autopilot, a few electronics, and simple mechanical controls for buoyancy and orientation.
And in only three dimensions, he thought.
He disconnected the sensors, started the engine and left it in neutral, then jumped back to the deck. He climbed the mast in the dark, expecting at any moment to be challenged and stopped.
Launching a blimp solo was a tricky job. Ten meters above the deck, he unfastened the line and pulled it free. The wind immediately began to blow the ship backward. Radu climbed down again, gripping the line. While he let the wind push the ship away from the mast, he moved sideways, set his heels, and pulled. Almost imperceptibly the ship swung toward him, so its nose no longer pointed directly at the mast. The wind caught its flank and pushed and lifted it like an enormous kite.
Radu sprinted for the gondola, grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder, dragged himself up, flung himself inside, and scrambled to the pilot’s seat.
He tilted the airship back on its tail and threw the engine out of neutral. The propellers roared.
The airship took off, rising almost straight up into the sky.
o0o
Marc chatted with Orca’s brother while they waited for Orca to return. The young man was fascinating: He had had experiences Marc had never imagined, experiences at least as unusual as those of pilots. While they talked, the crowd slowly dispersed and vanished. When almost everyone had left, a slender woman with short iron-gray hair came out of the shuttle alone and approached the bench where Marc was sitting. Marc smiled to himself, wondering if Kri van de Graaf would recognize him after all these years.
She stopped and frowned, looking at the diver.
“Sorry,” she said abruptly to Mark. “I thought you were someone else.”
“Are you looking for Orca? We’re waiting for her, too. She just went for a swim. S
he’ll be back soon. I’m her brother. I’ve come to visit.”
“Oh,” Kri said. Marc had seldom seen her nonplussed. He cleared his throat. She glanced at him, then took a step forward.
“Marc?” she said. “Marc, my gods, where did you come from?”
He stood to greet her. “So many interesting things have been happening, I couldn’t resist.”
“‘Interesting,’” she said. “Yes, indeed. As in the curse, ‘May you live in interesting times.’”
“Can you tell me?”
She drew her eyebrows together. “I’m sorry. I think not, for the moment. I don’t know quite what your status is.”
He offered her a place on the bench and sat down beside her. Suddenly she shivered.
“Where are your clothes?” she asked Mark.
“I don’t have any.”
“Aren’t you cold?”
“No. Are you?”
“Yes. What size are you?” she asked him.
Mark looked down at his own naked body. “I don’t know. Where do you measure?”
She started to laugh, but he was quite serious. “Never mind,” she said. She ran her hand through her short gray hair. “So Orca’s gone for a swim, and Radu — does either of you know Radu Dracul?”
“No,” Mark said.
But Marc kept his silence until he could find out what she wanted with the young offworlder. For the moment Marc felt glad that Kri did not quite trust him; it saved him from the guilt of not quite trusting her.
Van de Graaf’s irritation increased the longer Orca remained in the sea. Most of the crowd had gone home, and it would be quite safe for the pilots to come out of the shuttle.
A young woman stepped out of the blockhouse, hurried across the deck, and handed a stack of folded material to Dr. van de Graaf.
“Thank you,” the doctor said, handing it on to Mark. Mark looked curiously at what van de Graaf had given him.
“Thank you,” he said. “What is it?”
“Clothes. They’ll fit, or close enough.”
“You want me to put these on?”
“If you plan to stay here long,” she said, “other people will be a great deal more comfortable if you do.”
Mark shrugged, put the folded garments on the deck, and picked up the one on top. He shook it out. It was an ordinary cotton T-shirt.
Superluminal Page 26
