Superluminal Read Free Page B

looked. She folded its edges so the scarlet
lining showed, so her throat and the upper curve of her breasts and the tip of
the scar were exposed. She shook back her hair.
    “Not quite that,” she said, smiling. She was too
tall and big-boned for delicacy. She had a widow’s peak and high
cheekbones, but her jaw was strong and square.
    “It does not please you.” He sounded downcast.
Laenea could not quite place his faint accent.
    “It does,” she said. “I’ll take
it.”
    He bowed her toward the front of the shop, and she took out
her credit key.
    “No, no, pilot,” he said. “Not
that.”
    Laenea raised one eyebrow. A few shops on the waterfront
accepted only cash, retaining an illicit flavor in a time when almost any
activity was legal. But few even of those select establishments would refuse
the credit of a crew member or a pilot.
    “I have no cash,” Laenea said. She had stopped
carrying it years ago, since the time she found in various pockets three coins
of metal, one of plastic, one of wood, a pleasingly atavistic animal claw (or
excellent duplicate), and a boxed bit of organic matter that would have been
forbidden on earth fifty years before. Laenea never expected to revisit at
least three of the worlds the currency represented.
    “No cash,” he said. “It is yours, pilot.
Only —” He glanced up. His eyes were very dark and deep, hopeful,
expectant. “Only tell me, what is it like? What do you see?”
    He was the first person to ask her that question. People
asked it often, of pilots. She had asked it herself, wordlessly after the first
few times of silence and patient head-shakings. The pilots never answered.
Machines could not answer, pilots could not answer. Or would not. The question
was answerable only individually. Laenea felt sorry for the shopkeeper. She
started to say she had not yet been in transit awake, that she was new, that
she had only traveled in the crew, drugged near death to stay alive. But,
finally, she could not say even that. It was too easy; it was an untrue truth.
It implied she would tell him if she knew, while she did not know if she could
or would. She shook her head; she smiled gently. “I’m sorry.”
    He nodded sadly. “I should not have
asked…”
    “That’s all right.”
    “I’m too old, you see. Too old for adventure. I
came here so long ago… but the time, the time disappeared. I never knew
what happened. I’ve dreamed about it. Bad dreams…”
    “I understand. I was crew for ten years. We never knew
what happened either.”
    “That would be worse, yes. Over and over again, no
time between. But now you know.”
    “Pilots know,” Laenea agreed. She handed him the
credit key. Though he still tried to refuse it, she insisted on paying.
    Hugging the cloak around her, Laenea stepped out into the
fog. She fantasied that the shop would now disappear, like all legendary shops
dispensing magic and cloaks of invisibility. But she did not look back, for
everything a few paces away dissolved into grayness. In a small space around
each low antique streetlamp, heat swirled the fog in wisps toward the sky.
    o0o
    The midnight ferry sped silently across the water, propelled
through the waves by great silver sails. Wrapped in her cloak, Laenea was
anonymous. She put her feet on the opposite bench, stretched, and gazed out the
window into the darkness. Laenea could see her own reflection, and, beyond, the
water. Light from the ferry wavered across the long low swells.
    o0o
    The spaceport was a huge, floating, artificial island. It
gleamed in its own lights. The solar mirrors looked like the multiple compound
eyes of a gigantic water insect, an illusion continued by the spidery reach of
launching towers. The port’s other sea-level buildings curved like hills,
like sand dunes, offering surfaces that might have been smoothed by the wind.
Tall, angular buildings suitable to the mainland would have presented sail-like
faces to the northwest storms.
    Overhead, a small,